For anyone who cares about the economic and political future of the United States, or the survival of human life on planet earth, the last week has been a real nail biter. With razor-thin control of both the House and Senate, Democrats have appeared to be teetering at the edge of failure to pass legislation that could meaningfully reform the American economy and set us more solidly on a path to decarbonization. I’ll confess to being deeply stressed by the see-sawing struggle between House moderates and progressives, and by the prospect that either Senator Joe Manchin or Senator Kristyn Sinema might single-handedly gut the Democrats’ best efforts. On the economic front, the U.S. badly needs both “hard” infrastructure spending on things like bridges and roads, and “soft” infrastructure like child care and education that will help Americans in their daily work lives for the long-term good of the country.
But the nearer-term political consequences of failure could also be catastrophic. If the Democrats cannot get the bulk of their economic agenda passed, it will create a strong headwind against the party in the 2022 midterms, demoralizing the party’s base and clearing the way for GOP takeover of the House and Senate. This, in turn, would energize the authoritarian movement that has consumed the Republican Party, encouraging a new wave of anti-democratic actions across GOP states, while also crippling President Biden’s ability to get anything substantive done in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
Counterintuitively, though, the Democrats’ agonized push to not only pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill, but the much larger Build Back Better Act with its broad mix of economic and social spending, signals a positive, profound shift in the direction of the party. As much as I might lament that Biden and other Democrats chose to make bipartisan cooperation a priority for the infrastructure bill, the fact that the vast majority of Democrats are on board with passing Democrats-only-backed legislation in the BBB Act is a huge deal.
If anything, the party has been underselling the boldness of this legislation, which represents not just a vision of greater economic equality and productivity, but also an accompanying democratic vision. By mobilizing the power of government to support the economic well-being of ordinary Americans, the BBB Act represents democracy in action, as it serves the majority who put the Democrats in power to serve their interests. And at another level, increasing the economic power of lower and middle class Americans will also increase their political power relative to the millionaire and billionaire classes that have twisted so much of American politics to their priorities.
Democratic leaders, and Democratic voters, should not lose sight of the fact that the policies they’re trying to enact are broadly popular among the American citizenry, and that these policies in fact are the legislative outcome of a de facto social movement, as fragmented as it might be, towards greater social and economic justice in this country. One of my personal revelations in recent years has been that our society, economy, and democracy have been profoundly crippled by the suppression of individual opportunity, often based on lines of race and class. Of course, this has only been my personal revelation because these ideas have been discussed, analyzed, and propounded by many, many sociologists, historians, and activists, whose ideas, with the power of truth, have filtered into public consciousness and seized the imagination of increasing numbers of Americans, opening our eyes to the reality around us.
This means that whatever the outcome of the current legislative negotiations, there must be no backing down from the far-reaching goals that most Democratic senators and representatives now support. The fight against climate change strikes me as the single most non-negotiable element in the current legislation. We are at the point where it is reasonable to treat not only climate change deniers, but those who have no plan to combat climate change, as simply insane, and irrelevant to the public discussion. Reality is on the side of the Democrats — as is also the case for legislation that makes the economy fairer, and treats ordinary Americans as deserving the backing and full faith of their government.
The fraught negotiations also reinforce how Democrats need to keep the fight for American democracy, and against GOP authoritarianism, front and center. Even as the Democrats have effectively worked to normalize the GOP by prioritizing the importance of a bipartisan infrastructure bill, the Republican Party has continued down its path towards political radicalization, with state legislatures continuing their assault on voting rights and fair elections. The fact that the Democratic House majority is so narrow is due in part to Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression, creating the illusion that the Democratic Party is less popular that it is; if the Democrats are to push even more ambitious legislation in the future, they can only do so by ensuring free and fair elections going forward. There can be no economic advances without advances in democracy.