This is the responsibility the Democratic majority must bear: If they fail or falter, they will open the door for Trumpism or something like it to return, and there is every reason to believe it will be far worse next time.
They feed on ineffective government — and their great appeal is that they claim to replace it with a government that
is effective through their own autocratic power."
First, they need to help people fast and visibly. Second, they need to take politics seriously, recognizing that defeat in 2022 will result in catastrophe. The Trumpist Republican Party needs to be politically discredited through repeated losses; it cannot simply be allowed to ride back to primacy on the coattails of Democratic failure. And, finally, they need to do more than talk about the importance of democracy. They need to deepen American democracy.
But none of these bills will pass a Senate in which the filibuster forces 60-vote supermajorities on routine legislation. And that clarifies the real question Democrats face. They have plenty of ideas that could improve people's lives and strengthen democracy. But they have, repeatedly, proven themselves more committed to preserving the status quo of the political system than fulfilling their promises to voters. They have preferred the false peace of decorum to the true progress of democracy. If they choose that path again, they will lose their majority in 2022, and they will deserve it.
"There's a belief among a certain set of Democrats that taking an idea and cutting it in half makes it a better idea when it just makes it a worse idea,"
The Making Work Pay tax credit, which was a centerpiece of the Recovery Act, was
constructed to be invisible — the Obama administration, working off new research in behavioral economics, believed Americans would be more likely to spend a windfall that they didn't know they got. "When all was said and done, only around 10 percent of people who received benefits knew they had received something from the government," says Suzanne Mettler, a political scientist at Cornell. You don't get re-elected for things voters don't know you did.
"Democrats are famous for 87-point programs which sometimes do some good but nobody understands what they are," Senator Sanders said.
Thus far, America has bobbled its vaccination rollout. But the fault doesn't lie only with Trump. In blue states where Democrats command both power and resources, like California and New York, overly restrictive eligibility criteria slowed the rollout, and huge numbers of shots were locked in freezers. It's an embarrassment.
In other words, what Democrats need to do is simple: Just help people, and do it fast.
