The time has come to let the Build Back Better bill go. It just isn’t going to happen in its present form.
With all of its good intentions and focus on gaps that need filling and things that need doing, it’s just too big, and that is its critical flaw. The complaint is made that there is too much focus on the number and that not enough has been done to sell the elements of BBB. But the number, in trillions, is the dominant note, and it’s just too much for many legislators to swallow. Maybe smaller bites - selected elements as standalone bills - would fare better.
The number issue, though, reminds us that this situation is all about math. Math is beautiful sometimes, cruel at others, but it has no political party, it just IS. The Democrats can complain that one or two of their number in the Senate are spoilers, but the shoe could just as easily be on the other foot – and has been. Remember how John McCain cast the final deciding vote that saved Obamacare from repeal?
Now it’s true that the current legislative math is apparently based on faulty formulas embedded in the Senate rules. These rules are either undemocratic or useful, depending on your point of view, but they are what they are until they’re changed. The loss of BBB, if that’s what happens here, is not totally because the Democratic Party failed, or because Joe Manchin is a squirrel. The math was simply against it.
There is no shame in shifting priorities. President Biden’s decision to focus on voting rights is an effort to change many faulty formulas related to elections. That may seem like an impossible task too. But this is where it has to start: changing the math in Congress and in state houses.
I personally am getting tired of hearing that the Democrats are going to lose in 2022 and 2024. It’s like deciding which team will win the World Series or the Super Bowl, or which horse will win the Kentucky Derby. We can say that future Republican wins are more likely, based on historical voting patterns or faulty rules. But as Yogi used to say – the original one, not the cartoon character – it ain’t over till it’s over, and in the case of elections, the game has barely begun. Sometimes underdogs beat impossible odds. So-called sure winners can have bad days. And as I often say, the next Civil War will be fought at the ballot box, and that’s exactly how seriously the fight has to be taken.
