Democrats, Prepare for Kabuki

“If you elect us, we will repeal Obamacare,” Republicans claimed in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016.  Each victory brought a goalpost shift.  Ultimately, the GOP never got rid of Obamacare.  The same happened with Planned Parenthood.  Despite Republican control, reconciliation processes that bypass the filibuster, and Republican presidents, Planned Parenthood funding remained.

Republicans are used to the kabuki theater their politicians engage in.  The stylized performance, boastfulness on the campaign stage, and campaign ads and mail pieces inevitably lead to impressive speeches and theater in Congress before the inevitable and foreordained failure to keep promises.  The epilogue is excuse making and blame.

Republican voters fell for it repeatedly and ultimately both caught on and empowered one man to burn it all down.  Donald Trump, in 2016, got elected and did force through some changes to Obamacare and then, by executive order, finally took on Planned Parenthood.  The enduring loyalty the Republican base has for Donald Trump can best be understood as Trump kept his core promise — to fight back and gut the Republican established that both denied its own existence and perfected ritualistic kabuki theater always designed to impress and always designed to fail.

Democrats are engaged in the kabuki theater of foreordained defeat right now.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Joe Biden are promising to bring HR1, the Democrats’ progressive largesse of a voting reform package, for a vote.  The filibuster is in the way so they are pledging to scrap that too.

They will display their passion.  They will display their rage.  They will display their commitment.  Behind closed doors, Democrats know both that HR1 is a terrible idea and the filibuster is a very good idea worth saving.  They cannot say either publicly lest they spark a civil war within their own party.

Ask yourself one question — do Democrats want federal taxpayer dollars funding the campaign of QAnon sympathetic Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene?  HR1 would require federal dollars subsidize political campaigns.  Do you really think Democrats who vilify Greene at every opportunity want to fund her campaign?  HR1, written largely by progressive activists, is a grab back of many unworkable and publicly unpopular proposals.  But progressive activists love them all.

Democrats in Washington know better than to pass HR1.  In addition to the inevitable court fight, it would fund people like Greene.  Democrats in Washington also know they’ve been so performative on the campaign trail about voting rights and voting reform, they cannot do anything other than emotively perform for their base.

Concurrently, the House will flip to the GOP next year.  Republicans do not even need redistricting.  The party that does not control the White House almost always makes gains in the House in off year elections.  Redistricting will add to the Republican edge.  The Senate may stay Democrat, but the GOP will kill any initiatives in the House.

In 2024, the GOP has massive odds of retaking the Senate.  The Democrats will have to defend the most seats and many of them are in states Donald Trump won.  Right now, the Democrats have a 50-50 Senate.  Even without the filibuster, Democrats are having trouble passing key legislation.  They have failed to repeal most of Trump’s last minute regulations — a maneuver that bypasses the filibuster. The Senate Parliamentarian purported gave Senate Democrats an additional reconciliation attempt, which also bypasses the filibuster.  But Democrats have failed to use that too.  

With Republicans restored to the House next year and Mitch McConnell on the cusp of regaining power, why on earth would Democrats want to scrap the filibuster?  They will need it against McConnell and House Republicans.  Unfortunately, Democrats cannot be honest.  They must instead, with help from friends in the press, go through the ritualistic and stylized dance of defeat that signals to the base they care and are fighters while privately knowing defeat was always the only outcome.

Democrats will inevitably have hell to pay from their base as Republicans did.  The difference between them and Republicans is Trump was actually far closer to mainstream America than the far left.  That gives the GOP one more advantage moving forward even if the press and Democrats cannot admit it.

One More Thing

Pay attention to this website. Let me explain what it is. Some environmentalists have figured out the national media will generate more content on those stories that earn the most clicks and generate the most revenue. Likewise, algorithms in Google, etc. will prioritize views to those sorts of stories.

Consequently, that link goes to a website that displays a “bot,” or a computer engine designed to find news content related to climate change, click into those stories, then click on the ads to make those stories more lucrative and profit for media outlets. If you go to that site, you are watching in real-time as environmentalists try to use automated scripts to game algorithms to generate more coverage of climate change.

I have to hand it to them. It is a creative way to incentive an algorithmic-based and clickbait-based news system to generate more pro-climate change stories than they already are.

Lastly

It is my birthday today. I actually forgot till my wife reminded me last night. In lieu of a gift, please consider donating to Help the Persecuted, a nonprofit that helps persecuted Christians around the world. They have done and continue to do truly amazing work extracting Christians from harm’s way in Middle Eastern countries and elsewhere. It is an organization you should know about. I keep on my desk a wooden cross made by a Christian who this organization saved. He converted from Islam to Christianity and would have been murdered but for Help the Persecuted. Help them help others.