Biden needs an accomplishment as soon as possible

 I woke up this morning to look at this graph from fivethirtyeight.com

 

Needless to say,  I'm a bit scared right now. Biden has the second worst approval of the last 5 presidents (so every President in this Party System) and the other two saw massive losses in the House and Senate in their first midterms. Neither of them won their reelection with over 50% of the vote (Clinton won the electoral college, but it didn't have to go that way).

The exception is Obama who lost the House in his midterm, mostly because the GOP turned against the Affordable Care Act, lied about it, it wasn't fully in force, and according to my local Democratic Party the system built by Howard Dean had been almost fully destroyed after Tim Kaine became chair.

The ONLY president who kept the house in his first midterm was George W. Bush, and this chart makes it really clear  that is because of 9/11 and how almost every American supported our president in the wake of that disaster. Bush of course turned out to be the worst president in American history, using his power to undo our constitutional rights, but we needed leadership after that terrorist attack, and we trusted the wrong man.

So, this makes it clear that Biden needs three things right now, 

1. He needs a major accomplishment which will be felt by every American
2. He needs the party infrastructure which will be able to get out the vote next year
3. His policies need to help a significant portion of Americans within the next six months, or most Americans will remember in November, and many of his base will not turn out, which is part of what happened in 2010.

Now, Biden is a lucky son of a bitch. He ran against the least popular incumbent in a very long time. There are numerous issues which he can attack via executive order right now which will hold up in court.  The party infrastructure has been significantly rebuilt relative to how weak it was in 2010, so he doesn't have to worry about that.

While he is very clearly not going to get anything significant through congress, and it is obvious that Democrats are not going to censure Sinema and Manchin because they are obstinate assholes, and courtesy of #jillnothill and a terribly run campaign in 2016 we have a court system which is highly stacked against the Democratic Platform, that leaves only one option left...

Biden needs to pass executive orders which are popular and are going  to improve the lives of almost every American family as soon as possible. Every American should be able to look back in the midterms and see their lives are better, and be able to point to an executive order signed by President Joe Biden which made their lives better.

If a popular executive order is  defeated in the court system, Democrats can bring that to voters and make the case, "Hey, did you like this policy the President signed? Great! It really helped my family too. The reason that policy was destroyed is because Trump and Bush appointees in the Supreme Court shot it down. Can you help us win back the Senate so that we can rebalance the courts and make America work for everyone?" This is short enough and clear enough for a radio ad.

This argument works. Trust me.

Because if the Republican Party starts campaigning on what is happening in Afghanistan post-withdrawal, and the Democratic Party has no success from the last two years to point to, then the Democrats are screwed. The graph makes it very clear that President Biden saw a significant drop in approval in August, and Afghanistan was that point where his approval dropped. It doesn't matter that the withdrawal was planned under Trump. Joe Biden chose to honor the treaty which was negotiated with terrorists, and he chose to withdraw. Joe Biden is the President, the buck stops with him, both in reality, and in the eyes of the average American voter.

The choice is obvious, President Biden can sign some executive orders to make life better in the immediate future, or we can lose the midterms, according to history.

The easiest executive order which he can pass which fulfills this criteria is to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt.

The law already gives him this authority.

Get it done.

2022 Midterms update

(My personal site is currently down, and I have some sysadmin work to do which is being tricky, it will hopefully be up this weekend, but I needed to write this out, and this still exists.)

The John Lewis Voting Rights Act is dead. It was killed today by that most peculiar of institutions, the filibuster. While Chuck Schumer could potentially bring it back up with his strategic no vote, unless if we get both Sinema and Manchin on board to kill the filibuster, it is unlikely the John Lewis Voting Rights Act will pass this session.

This means that the crystal ball for the 2022 midterms needs to be updated immediately.

The 2016 elections saw Democrats pick up 2 seats. Democrats have since picked up two more seats which were up in that cycle, with Mark Kelly in Arizona and Raphael Warnock Georgia. Both of them won in narrow elections. Nine races had a margin of victory under 10%, in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Missouri, Wisconsin, Colorado, North Carolina, Florida, and Indiana.

The Brennan Center reports that 19 states enacted 33 laws which make it harder to vote, and 25 states enacted 62 laws which make it easier to vote.

 

Blue states have expanded voting rights, red states have restricted voting rights, purple states have done both, grey states haven't passed any according to the Brennan Center.

Combining this map with the map for current Senate seats which are up in 2022 gives us this map:

dark blue: Democrat is up, voting rights are expanded

blue: Democrat is up, no change or both directions

light blue: Democrat is up, voting rights are restricted

dark red: Republican is up, voting rights are restricted

red: Republican is up, no change or both directions

light red: Republican is up, voting rights are expanded

grey: No seat is up.

This map is super messy... so first we have to define our question. I want to know which states are up next year, which are currently held by Republicans, which haven't seen new voter disenfranchisement laws, and the Republican won with fewer than 10% of the votes last time it was up. Likewise, I want to know which seats are likely R pickups, which have seen a reduction in voting rights, and which Democrats won with a margin of less than 10%. We can be fairly confident at this point in time these seats will be lost without substantial organizing.

We are probably going to lose both Senator Mark Kelly and Senator Raphael Warnock next year, if we then pick up both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, we will then have 46 Democrats who support abolition of the  Filibuster, 50 Republicans, 2 Independents who caucus with Democrats and support filibuster abolition, and 2 Dixiecrats who support the filibuster. This would not change the status quo where we have 48 abolitionists and 52 who support the peculiar institution of the Filibuster.

The only potentially realistic path in this world which isn't from the depths of crazy land is for the Democratic Party to gain enough votes in the Senate in 2022 where we are not going to see the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is to flip all four states I highlighted in blue on the map above. this will give us 48 Democrats, 48 Republicans, 2 independents, and 2 Dixiecrats.

Missouri has a Republican trifecta, and if we start focusing on campaigning there, they will pass voter discrimination laws.

But this leaves out a very very big hole in my analysis, which is no excuse mail in voting. When you look at the actual list of new restrictive laws which are being proposed right now, Georgia has 4 new laws which make it harder to do absentee voting. This is going to make efforts to convince voters to use absentee voting less effective. Arizona is making it harder to stay on absentee voting lists and has stricter signature requirements, which make absentee GOTV efforts less efficient than they were in the past. So I didn't actually leave it out, because it's irrelevant.

 

This means the best possible realistic scenario is flipping North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania while losing Arizona and Georgia. This gives us 47 Democrats, 49 Republicans, 2 independents, and 2 Dixiecrats.

Also known as a de facto minority as our best possible realistic scenario.

There is no path to passing significant legislation without filibuster reform. Anyone telling you otherwise doesn't understand American government.

There is no realistic path in this world to picking up a net of two seats in the 2022 midterms without the John Lewis Voting Rights Act looking at these factors alone.

References:

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-october-2021