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Last week on both CNN and MSNBC, political guru and first Clinton Presidential Campaign Manager James Carville said, "somebody has to get a calculator" because, with razor-thin Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate, that the votes are not there for the massive infrastructure package the Biden/Harris Administration originally proposed.
He also said that progressives (especially those in extreme blue districts) "need to do the math, live in real life," compromise, and build on smaller step by step incremental program successes to increase the Presidents and their approval ratings in order to win additional House and Senate seats in 2022.
While Progressives are right that the country has urgent needs that undoubtedly demand better than an incremental response, Carville is probably right that with the present math and configuration of the House and Senate, it is probably the best way to go.
That is not to say that Democrats should not try a reconciliation package to pass all their budget priorities like Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders are currently planning. They should. That is going to happen one way or the other.
But in order to secure reconciliation passage for a large budget bill or even an amended voter legislation proposal, Democratic leadership will probably have to persuade more people than just Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.
While those two have received the lions share of the press coverage (mostly because Manchin, for political theater purposes, likes to go on television and Sinema has a habit of being "eccentric,") President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will probably need to convince (to varying degrees) Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, Catherine Cortez Masto, Angus King, John Hickenlooper, and John Tester of the necessity of using reconciliation to pass the budget and create a carve-out for legislation to protect American Democracy.
To do that, Biden, Harris, and Schumer will have to give the revitalized bipartisan Senate negotiations on infrastructure more time to yield positive results. While the details have yet to be revealed (broad strokes and themes have only been publicly released,) the number of Senate supporters has doubled from 10 to 21.
All the Democrats leadership has to get on board for a budget reconciliation package and protect American Democracy carve out of the filibuster are in that group of 21. If all but one of the Democrats came on board, that would yield 60 votes for a bipartisan infrastructure deal.
In order to, as Carville indicated, get the right math, Democrats should support the bipartisan measure if it meets all the non-numeric goals of the Biden/Harris Administration as long as they get assurances from the Democrats on the bubble that their votes will be there for a larger reconciliation package which includes most (all of them are not happening) of the other Biden/Harris priorities in the American Jobs and Families Plans.
The same approach is applicable to voting rights and protecting American Democracy. Manchin has finally publicly said what he would support in a slimmed-down For the People Act.
In his proposal, Manchin said he would support:
- A federal holiday for election day.
- 15 consecutive days of early voting.
- Automatic voter registration when you get a driver's license.
- End to partisan gerrymandering.
- A voter id requirement which could be someone providing a utility bill or student id.
Mr. Manchin has met with some of the same Democratic Senators (and some Republicans) that (remember do the math) that would be necessary to do a carve-out of the filibuster to get voting rights measures, including the John Lewis one (which Mr. Manchin already supports) passed in the Senate.
Appearing on CNN, Voting rights activist and former Georgia Gubernatorial Candidate Stacey Abrams said that she supports the changes to the For the People Act that Manchin proposed.
Please click here to see Abrams speak to CNN's John Berman.
The bipartisan political center is showing signs of life, and potential achievement in infrastructure and voting rights.
Time will tell if this bipartisan arrangement holds.
It does deserve a chance to work out.
There is nothing wrong with bipartisan legislation as long as it uplifts the people, moves the country forward, and paves the way for future positive action.
Even if bipartisanship does not work (still a distinct possibility given the past Republican track record like the recent January 6 Commission proposal) the Centrist Democrats would be in a better position with their voters to vote for reconciliation measures if they were able to tell their constituents they tried to work with the other side.
Remember, like Carville said, it is all about the math.
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