Manchin Mania

Let me get the housekeeping out of the way first.

I intend to mostly take off the next couple of weeks, but y’all all know how good I am at that. In truth, last Tuesday I thought I got food poisoning, but it turned out to be one of the worst stomach bugs I have ever had. By Saturday, I’d lost fifteen pounds. I had a nice meal on Tuesday evening and it was the last food I consumed until Saturday afternoon. I feel completely better today, which is good, because I’m writing this from Las Vegas.

I occasionally try to be a good boss. For Christmas, I sent one employee and his family on a trip to see family. Another is an NHL fan and has never been to a hockey game. So we came out to Vegas last night for both of our first NHL game (Golden Knights v. The Lightning). I went to a really nice restaurant last night, took one bite of my dinner, and that was about all I could manage to eat. But I really am feeling a ton better.

In any event, I’m going to devote this week to rest and Christmas. I’ll be back on the radio on January 3rd except I will, as I always do, give everyone the day off on Christmas Eve and do my show solo so no one else has to work. I hope you’ll tune in. Several dozen stations beyond my normal stations have decided to air the show, which puts me in the unusual space of being a conservative talker talking on a bunch of stations that have never heard me and talking about Jesus instead of politics. Prayers are appreciated.

Now, on to the big news of the day.

The Great Joe Manchin Freak Out

I say this all the time, and I continue to be absolutely dumbfounded by it. The Democrats have just gotten bad at politics. I don’t know how it happened, but they really have. And my guess is that they made the most unfortunate, disastrous mistake in American politics — they dared to believe their own press.

From the anchor desk at CNN to the editorialists at the New York Times and at all non-Fox points in between, actual news anchors have posited that the GOP is at war with democracy and the Democrats are the only thing standing between democracy and tyranny. “The Big Lie” is the pervasive daily news fodder at CNN, which prides itself as the most credible name in news on TV. The New York Times, Washington Post editorialists, etc. have declared Build Back Better the necessary solution to climate change; threats to democracy; inflation; education; and everything else they could imagine.

With the cheering section of the American press corps telling the Democrats to go for broke, they simply forgot basic math.

A fifty seat Senate and a five seat margin in the House with losses at the state legislative level in 2020 is not a mandate. Still, the press corps told the Democrats and the Democrats told themselves that they had to do something to stop Trump.

And therein lies the problem — Build Back Better, whatever it was for, became about Biden v. Trump, not reasonable public policy.

The problem is people like Joe Manchin do not live in perpetual 2020 outrage. He lives in West Virginia and Build Back Better is not popular there. The Democrats tried to construct a package that could be passed by fifty senators and a tie breaking vote from the most unpopular Vice President in decades. They simple assumed a congressional majority meant they could do as they pleased, but congress is made up of individuals and individuals have individual agendas. The Democrats have gotten so used to mob politics, they forgot individuals and their agendas matter in Congress.

It was all terrible politics. One man did not stop the Biden agenda. Fifty-one individual senators did. The Democrats believed their press, believed in the righteousness of their cause, and believed they could ram through a social revolution without ever having to entertain the opinions of fifty senators with an “R” next to their names.

This was never going to work out well for them. That they staked all of Biden’s presidency to it was and is political malpractice. The Democrats have gotten really bad at politics. I can only conclude it is because they truly have forgotten they’re playing politics and really think they are trying to save a nation, as their press fans say. That may sound high minded. But a party the voters actually mostly rejected in 2020 can’t be the one to save the nation. And also, the nation doesn’t think it needs saving. It thinks it needs cheaper gas, cheaper groceries, and a return to normalcy.

Joe Manchin didn’t kill Joe Biden’s presidency. Ron Klain did. The man is less than a year into a job for which he has given Biden way more losses than wins. If a coach were racking up the losses Klain is racking up, he’d be fired or he’d resign to save his team.

About the only thing that might help Biden in the next year is for Klain to resign to at least allow Biden an attempt at a reboot strategy headed into the midterms. The only headlines they’re going to get otherwise are doom, gloom, and despair.

Democrats really think they need to save America. They can’t even save themselves. The reality for Democrats and their friends in the press is this — they need to get out more. They’ve decided the people work for them, but unlike the East Germans, the people cannot be dissolved and another elected. Instead, the people will dissolve the Democrats and elect Republicans in November.

The sooner Democrats stop making their agenda about saving America from Trump and move on to saving Americans from inflation, the better off they’ll be. But, they internalized their own press so much and their own talking points so much, they are psychologically stuck. That’s actually really good news for America because it means the odds of a Republican House and Senate go up. The sooner the GOP controls Congress, the sooner Biden will have to cut deals or have his cabinet forced to answer very tough questions from Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz.

Fauci

In addition to everything else, I cannot express enough how unhelpful Dr. Fauci has gotten. I gave the man the benefit of the doubt for far longer than many. At this point, the man is just a disaster.

By telling Americans we will never get masks off airplanes, he is telling them we will never go back to normal. By suggesting lockdowns might have to happen, he is telling Americans they will never go back to normal. Fauci is single-handedly undermining Joe Biden’s presidency and the Democrats’ majorities across the country.

That they let him, an unelected bureaucrat, set fear-based policies that do not balance public interests, but only prioritize those in his wheelhouse, is going to be a disaster for them and they’ll deserve it.

Public health must always be balanced against other interests, including economic interest. There is always an acceptable risk and an acceptable amount of death — however crass that may be to say. We do not ban vehicles because a certain number of people will die. We do not ban planes because some might crash. We cannot keep America locked down permanently due to an endemic disease that is never going to go away.

But in Fauci-land, that is exactly what we are doing. He continues to sell COVID-Zero, even as he admits it will never happen. By continuing to allow Fauci to set the terms of normalcy, Biden ensures the only way to get to normal is to get rid of Biden. The public is going to do just that.

Now, a picture from take off last night. No, it wasn’t a private plane. It was, however, a good seat on Delta. You guys have a great rest of the day.