Like many, now President Joe Biden wasn’t my first choice and I was rougher on him in the primary than I should have been. Current Vice President Kamala Harris was my first choice by far. I regrouped after my disappointment and Senator Elizabeth Warren was a clear second choice. However, I was confident that he would be a good president and felt that he probably would defeat Donald Trump. Perhaps it is due to the white men who are alienated from everybody who never showed up in polls, but Donald Trump was closer both in the popular vote and the electoral college than the polls indicated. While Joe Biden won 7 million more votes than Donald Trump, he only won the electoral college by 40,000 votes. Had 40,000 votes gone a different way in the three states of Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia, then the former guy would still be in office. It is my belief that at least seven million republicans voted for Joe Biden for president. In my view, it turned out that Joe Biden was the only Democratic Party candidate who could win. He has been a moderate or centrist democrat the vast majority of his political life. He is a white, heterosexual man who was impossible to turn into a socialist boogeyman. Socialism likely seems preferable to the madman who occupied the office previously.
We saw what damage the former guy could do to the country: he spiked racism, he divided the country, he promoted conspiracy theories, he spoke an almost uncountable number of lies to the country, he put children in cages, he added two trillion dollars to the debt but did it by giving that money to the wealthy and to corporations which pay in reality much less than the nominal rate, he threw away the pandemic playbook, he removed the pandemic team in any meaningful way because when alone the only concern was preparing for and dealing with pandemics but in the NSC they were ignored by those who had other concerns, he prevented transgender patriots who wanted to serve in the military from being able to do so (certainly openly), the economic growth even prior to the pandemic was weaker than President Obama who unlike the former guy inherited a terrible economy which he had to turn around (the former guy inherited a very good economy), he pulled out of the Paris climate accords making the US the only country in the world to do so, he pulled the US out of the Iran treaty, he created huge divisions with our historic allies and weakened NATO, he praised Putin, he obstructed justice repeatedly , he failed to protect our soldiers from a bounty placed on their heads by Putin, he disparaged our soldiers, he golfed far more in one term than President Obama did in two terms despite his criticism of President Obama for his fewer golf outings, he dismantled the Affordable Care Act without any replacement, he committed numerous crimes ( the president doesn’t have the power of the purse, Congress does and it approved financial aid for Ukraine and the president had zero rights or power to hold onto it until conditions he added were met, especially political ones like you must announce an investigation into my political opponent’s son), he violated campaign finance laws (Donald Trump jr met with Natalia Veselnitskaya on the third floor of Trump Tower for a quid pro quo to get opposition research on HRC, had his fixer pay off women to be silent about affairs three weeks prior to election by amount far greater than campaign finance law allowed and he repaid it), then he tried to kill off as many people as he could — it was even better in his “thinking” that it was people in blue states originally who were dying — he made decision after decision based upon what he thought would be best for him in the moment regardless of the consequences for anybody else no matter what they might be and this led to a death toll that is up to 90 % greater than it had to me all because he at the moment thought that it might make it easier for him to win an election , he lied about the pandemic, he refused to wear a mask not because of a phobia or asthma issue but simply because he didn’t care about anybody else, and then he tried to take down American democracy. After the Ukraine I am the dictator of the country bit failed, he tried to pressure state legislatures into choosing his slate of electors regardless of whether or not he won the popular vote in the state, he said, “We must get rid of the ballot.” , he tried to force a low turnout by making it so that if people voted they would be risking their lives by opposing voting by mail which he himself did, suspecting he would lose he kept pushing that the election was somehow rigged, because he viewed himself as more important than our democracy he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, he pushed the big lie onto republican voters and since republicans in Congress were afraid that he would back their political opponent in the primary if he crossed them, they were complicit and silent. Finally, he incited the insurrection.
President Biden managed to get the American Rescue Plan passed, he has pushed an incredibly progressive agenda and is doing everything he can to get his agenda passed. He gave a transformational speech and he has made it clear that he will do everything he can to pass it. He may not be able to get more things passed because of Joe Manchin in West Virginia which Trump won by 39%. Joe Manchin may refuse to prioritize voting rights and opposing Jim Crow over the filibuster even though republicans already have a structural advantage in the federal government because the number of US Senators for Wyoming with a population of 5 people and for California with a population of 40 million people is the same. Republicans don’t need the filibuster to relevant in creating legislation. They simply must avoid extremism and opposing bills that even a plurality of their own voters support. Jim Crow is wrong whether it is pushed at local levels or in the halls of Congress. The For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act must be passed and whatever must happen to the filibuster to make that happen must be done. However, Joe Manchin will, in the end, determine whether that or anything else happens. He is that 50th vote. If Joe Manchin is obstinate and decides to go full on Dixiecrat, we can’t fault President Biden or the other democrats in Congress who are supporting his legislation. That failure will be on Joe Manchin. We can’t carp on or disparage President Biden for Joe Manchin’s moral and political failures. President Biden himself won’t be perfect. He will make mistakes. Maybe significant ones. However, he will be a very good to great president and we must retain our perspective in our criticism of him and Congress.
Look at how extreme the republican Congress is. Now think about this, if we decided to throw President Biden under the bus and republicans take control of Congress in 2022 and then Donald Trump or another version of Donald Trump is their nominee, you know that republicans in both the US Senate and the US House of Representatives will sign onto written challenges of the electoral college vote count regardless of whether the challenges are valid.
The question is, “Do you really think that if republicans control both chambers of Congress that they will hesitate for one second in going all in , all of them, a majority of members in each chamber, in challenging the electoral college vote count ? “ And then if they do, do you think that a republican controlled US Supreme Court won’t allow them to get away with their challenge ?
And if that happens, what happens to America and what happens to our democracy ? A Civil War could happen if our candidate whether President Biden runs for re-election or Vice President Kamala Harris is our candidate for president and that candidate legitimately wins the electoral college vote count but republicans baselessly challenge it and they do that with enough members to make it a majority of each chamber and the US Supreme Court allows them to get away with it.
I will be as angry as anybody if republicans continue to pass their Jim Crow legislation across the country and we fail to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act because of Joe Manchin. However, if you are angry that it didn’t pass, then the last thing to do would be to take it out on our party which almost all supported it because that would mean that the next Congress would have no chance of passing it. Lt Gov John Fetterman has a great chance of winning the open seat for US Senate from Pennsylvania and we can win Wisconsin. If we win those two US Senate seats and we hold onto the US House of Representatives, then we can pass our democracy bills by either eliminating the filibuster (best choice) or carving out an exception.
The consequences for losing Congress in 2022 are too severe for us to attack President Biden and the good democrats in Congress for Joe Manchin’s moral and political failures. West Virginia is West Virginia. This is why we needed to win in Maine and not screw up North Carolina. It will be hard enough to retain our control of Congress in the 2022 elections due to voter suppression, Jim Crow.
Does that mean we can’t push for more progressive action ? Of course not. And it doesn’t mean that we say nothing if President Biden or our party makes a mistake. However, it does mean that we must retain perspective and context and consider the consequences of our words if we don’t approve of certain legislation or executive orders. We must weigh our words and weigh whatever minor mistakes that President Biden or our party may make against not only the good things that they have done and are doing and will do, but also against what the republicans will do if they retake control of Congress.
We will need every vote and we will need every hand on deck. What we are attempting has apparently happened three times in the last 100 years: retain control of Congress after retaking the White House. We will all need to do everything that we can to keep control of Congress. We need to value state legislatures like the republicans do. After all, it’s their control of state legislatures that enables them to pass the Jim Crow legislation in states across the country.
After President Biden’s great speech, I thought that remembering what is at stake in 2022 would be worthwhile.