West Virginia conservative Joe Manchin says he wants a bipartisan compromise with the Republicans on the infrastructure bill. Is that even possible when the compromise is between the White House + the congressional who want to make America great and a minority party which wants to prevent that at all costs? Manchin (and Sinema) don't see it that way, but if Biden's plans for kick-starting the greatest economic boom in 75 years, GOP plans to recapture Congress next year, will come to naught. And a massive economic boom is exactly what economists and financial titans see on the horizon-- "the biggest economic boom since World War II, with the promise of years of growth after the privation of the pandemic... Biden administration spending will have ripple effects around the world... Governments' actions in response to the pandemic raised global GDP growth by a full six percentage points, estimates the IMF, adding that 'the global growth contraction last year could have been three times worse than it was.' Still, total output shrank so much-- by a stunning 3.3% in total-- that there's now an unprecedented amount of slack in the global economy. In other words: The world has more potential upside than ever. The biggest names in finance are making increasingly bullish predictions. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said Wednesday in his annual shareholder letter, closely watched on Wall Street: 'This boom could easily run into 2023 because all the spending could extend well into 2023.' Golden Sachs last month raised its U.S. growth projection for this year to 8%, which would constitute the largest economic expansion in generations."
And that does not fit in with GOP plans to to voter-suppress and gerrymander their way back into control. Will the party of treason, greed and power-lust put the country's well-being ahead of their narrow partisan interests? Have been been paying attention to a rapid transformation of a party that recent former House speaker John Boehner says he no longer even recognizes?
This morning NBC's Meet the Press crew wrote that about the 2022 battle lines between the 2 parties: "Democrats are concentrating on the economy and recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, while Republicans are fixated on the culture wars. And the midterms will be a fascinating political experiment to see what message resonates more with American voters. Democrats are already betting the house-- and continued control of the U.S. House-- on the $1,400 checks to voters, the number of vaccinated Americans, the state of the unemployment rate (now down to 6.0 percent) and the expectation that American society, the economy and schools will all be humming by next year after the pandemic. Republicans, meanwhile, have gone all-in on culture-- whether it’s criticizing the “canceling” of Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head; opposing vaccine passports; suing the CDC to allow cruise ships to resume business in the pandemic; concentrating on immigration and borders; and leaning more into President Biden’s executive orders on guns than they ever did his Covid-19 relief package."
As we saw yesterday, "Republican voters don’t care about tangible government outcomes. They don’t care whether or not a border wall is built, or who would have (theoretically) paid for it. They don’t care about whether or not the government fails to manage a global pandemic, killing hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens. They don’t care if unemployment is up-- or down. They don’t care about stimulus checks. Or the national debt... Republican voters-- a group distinct from Conservatism Inc.-- no longer have any concrete outcomes that they want from government. What they have, instead, is a lifestyle brand."
Besides, as Ryan Grim wrote this morning at The Intercept, the Republicans plan to gerrymander their way back into power, something they can only do while Manchin and Sinema purposefully confuse, in the filibuster reform debate, the idea of giving the minority a voice with giving the minority a veto. "Democrats," wrote Grim, "are in a peculiar position: With control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, they have the opportunity to ban gerrymandering, restore a semblance of democratic balance to House races, and at the same time give themselves a fighting chance to hold on to the lower chamber. But it’s far from a guarantee that the party will do it. Democrats may choose instead to voluntarily march themselves into a political abyss for no reason other than their own inertia and lack of imagination."
The gerrymandering threat index is "extreme" or "high" in many states but there are six states where this could potentially determine control of Congress:
Texas (extreme)
Florida (high)
Georgia (extreme)
North Carolina (extreme)
Tennessee (extreme)
Missouri (high)
The Republican Party has no intention of "compromising" or doing anything in a bipartisan way. The only Republican who could possibly give Biden a vote for his infrastructure plan would be Lisa Murkowski and that would take two things: 1- a great deal of pork for Alaska and 2- a concerted effort to get Democratic voters to back her in her contest against Trumpist sociopath Kelly Tshibaka. To do that the White House would have to begin by persuading Anchorage state Senator Bill Wielechowski to not run against her. That may be very difficult, especially because Wielechowski, who is getting ready to declare.