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      ‘It’s been a lot’: Joyce Carol Oates, SA Cosby, Richard Ford and Margo Jefferson on Biden’s first year

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      ‘It’s been a lot’: Joyce Carol Oates, SA Cosby, Richard Ford and Margo Jefferson on Biden’s first year Four leading American authors assess the Covid-battered first year of Joe Biden’s presidencyRichard Ford: ‘Something about Biden isn’t rubbing through’Richard Ford is a novelist and short story writer best known for his quartet of novels featuring the protagonist Frank Bascombe, a failed sportswriter turned novelist, which includes The Sportswriter, Independence Day and the Pulitzer prize-winning The Lay of the Land. Ford’s acclaimed memoir, Between Them: Remembering My Parents, was published in 2017 and the following year his 1990 novel, Wildlife, was made into a widely praised film starring Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal. His most recent short story collection is Sorry for Your TroubleMy wife and I, last week, were watching the NBC nightly news at 6.30 – a usually profitless exercise which, when Trump was president, often eventuated in both of us cursing and shouting execrations at the television and having to go pour ourselves stronger drink. This time, however, the reporting concerned Joseph R Biden, who is now president of the United States. The suggestion was that Biden’s presidency – a year old this month – has actually produced considerable good for our country and the world, despite poll numbers that indicate many Americans think he hasn’t gotten much done at all.The list of accomplishments might obviously surprise you. Serious, hard-won new infrastructure legislation; aggressive federal prosecutions of seditionists and white nationalists; spurting jobs numbers. And more, on the domestic front. On the international list, there’s the renewal of US membership in the Paris climate accords; efforts to reframe an Iran nuclear treaty – impulsively abandoned by Trump; a re-pledging of old Nato affiliations. This list is long as well.Still. Muddling over the dinner dishes and wondering aloud about why Mr Biden’s having a rough go getting credit for his accomplishments, my wife pointed out she really doesn’t know much about President Biden, whom we both voted for, campaigned for, contributed money to and lost a few old friends in behalf of. We knew the Biden saga – the tragically lost young wife and daughter; the folksy, pliable Catholic; all about riding the Amtrak home each weekend. The lost son. We know about Scranton and Wilmington, the pretty, savvy second wife with the PhD, the Senate years, Anita Hill, the go-to union constituency, the Barack sidekick of loyalty, mirth and patience; the pivotal South Carolina Black vote. The boilerplate stuff anybody knows about any politician.Yet it seems that something about Biden isn’t rubbing through so as to confer on him the credit due. One wonders – I wonder – if it’s his fault or ours.Americans at ground level – bobbing along in a political culture that prefers light-operatic campaigning to grinding out legislation, implementing it and delivering on promises – Americans seem to care much less about who’s in office than, incongruously, who’s kept out. It’s the Hillary syndrome. Winning, for both national parties, feels second best to making the other guy wear the scarlet “L”. Americans also don’t really see national politics and governance as a pressing home-front concern – more as an annoying obligation they’re happy to stay un- or misinformed about. If you live in Billings, Montana, Washington DC’s a long ways off. People here believe politicians there don’t know or much care what’s going on here. We may all consider ourselves good Americans – citizens, patriots – but we do so mostly only in emblematic and ceremonial ways. Our core geo-identity (after our racial and gender ones) originates in regions and states – even in cities. It’s true, as you have heard, politics really is local. Probably it’s the same in Thailand.And yet Joe Biden, where both these political conjecturings are concerned, suffers from being precisely an old-playbook, elderly white man committed to nationalised policies and delivery schemes; a patient, behind-the-scenes, self-deferring deal-maker with the plying mentality of a legislator – somebody who has to win and stay in office to get things done. Plus, for 36 years he was known to us, if at all, as the senator from Delaware – somebody we didn’t need to think much about if we didn’t live in Delaware (which almost no one does). On top of all that, being vice-president – for Americans, now an almost comical office – didn’t help the way you’d think it might, having a seat so close to power. Lyndon Johnson is the great countervailing case, of course – senator, VP, bodacious, arm-twisting chief executive. But Joe Biden, for better and for worse is no Lyndon Johnson, who unlike Biden governed with a historical, two-house congressional majority that couldn’t resist him.Succeeding Trump, of course – while lifesaving for our country – hasn’t been easy. The guy who follows along behind the elephants traditionally has a hard time being seen as part of the parade. Biden, in my view, has been pointedly successful in advancing much more than a reverse’n’repair un-Trump agenda – legions of federal judges seated, industrial production up 0.5% as of November 2021, aggressive Covid vaccine distribution and advocacy – along with just plain being willing to show up when citizens are in trouble – killed in Afghanistan, storm-ravaged and homeless in Kentucky, murdered in school rooms in Michigan. But Trump remains ludicrously popular among infatuated Republicans, 53% of whom think he actually won the 2020 election, and 42% of whom fear this fall’s midterm elections will not be fairly run, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Which means, treacherously, that both parties now fear our most vital democratic institution – our elections – has been de-legitimised. Twenty-three million Americans bought a gun last year. Not all of them are Republicans. But many are the same people who believe the Covid vaccine contains magnets that’ll cause a soup spoon to stick to your forehead if you touch it there. I mean… why would a majority of Americans bother to support earnest old Uncle Joe, when you have fun facts like that to take your mind off your miseries? When Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992 his campaign clarion call was: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Now you’d be better to exclaim: “It’s the people (stupid).”I’ll concede that for the past year it’s been a relief to feel merely “among the governed” rather than what citizenship felt like under Trump – a bizarre, civic death dance. This relief may have caused me and others to let our minds wander from how it was before Biden became president, and from what’s being done now to make that bad time not come back. This kind of vigilance – the kind that remembers and then acts – may not be native to our side. After all, our side has the high ground, doesn’t it?It’s been a hell of a year to be president of the United States if your portfolio says you’re here to restore sound government. Forget about trying to gain separation from the other guy. In 2021, we saw a violent attempt to overthrow our presidential election, a multiply-resurgent killer pandemic, a seditious chief executive, an impeachment, no fewer than 470 mass shootings that claimed 482 of our citizens. Thousands of lives have been lost to global climate calamity. Immigrants are massing at our southern border and aren’t going away. Meanwhile, the party in nominal power is fractured nearly beyond repair and can’t find a common vision of what’s good for the country. While the opposition remains smirkingly disloyal and often appears dislodged from its senses. It’s a lot. Race relations may be the best thing that’s happening. It must seem, sometimes, to Mr Biden that what unifies all sides of the political chasm is an urge to let the whole contraption of America collapse just to see what that’ll look like.The American presidency is an optic on to the state of the nation. The president’s job is to cause citizens to see that nation more clearly, more as a unity worth preserving, and then to show us how that preserving can be done. Donald Trump did it – in spades – by lying about most everything. But here at the beginning of year two of the Biden administration (so it seems to me, though I wish it didn’t) our citizens’ gaze doesn’t seem to linger on Mr Biden himself – even in the way it lingered on Donald Trump; but instead seems given to stray away – toward our fractious, individual rights, toward new sources of complaint, toward our irredeemable differences from the other side, even when the other side is our side; and then absent-mindedly to shove on to who will assume the presidency next. As if now didn’t matter.What I don’t know about Joe Biden maybe doesn’t matter as much as what he gets done in his four years. My wife tells the story of briefly believing that self-respecting American women would never vote for Donald Trump, only to find out that indeed they would – because they understood they’d never have to know the man. Yes, I’d feel better if I knew what made Joe Biden really angry, and beyond that could know who fears him. These are just my private metrics of what’s intrinsic about other humans. But whether we need to know him or not, it is Mr Biden’s peril and it will be our great loss if he fails to make us look truthfully at our country through him and through the prism of his beliefs. Today, it’s one down and three to go before we have to face up to our worser angels again. There’s still time, I think, to get it right.SA Cosby: ‘He’s the grownup in the room after four years of temper tantrums’SA Cosby is a mystery and thriller writer from Virginia whose breakthrough novel, Blacktop Wasteland, won an LA Times award in 2020 and topped the New York Times bestseller list. His latest book, Razorblade Tears, is a revenge thriller that confronts homophobia in the deep south. Film rights have been bought by Paramount PlayersTo properly assess the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency we have to take a look back at his predecessor’s tenure. For many Americans not indoctrinated into the cult of 45 the previous four years was like being in a house that was simultaneously on fire and also possessed by a demon that was trying to kill you while a sink hole was opening up in the basement. It was a nearly daily emotional rollercoaster that veered from embarrassment to rage to abject apathy like battle hardened survivors in some dystopian epic.Compared to that the Biden presidency is like being in a house with a leaky roof and a few faucets that drip and the kitchen could use a new coat of paint.It’s not perfect but it’s salvageable.I think the one thing Joe Biden brings to the office is something all Americans, even those that voted for his opponent, didn’t realise they needed.Stability.Whatever Joe’s issues, and he has a few, the one thing he exudes in spades is a sense of calmness. His is a sure hand on the wheel. Sure, it may tremble a bit but one never fears he will steer the ship into the rocks on purpose.There is a quaint anachronistic nature to President Biden’s managerial style that is a step or two behind the times. He still believes in the real art of the deal. In the quid pro quo that was the bedrock of the American legislative branch during his time as a representative and senator and even during his time as vice-president. The smoke-filled backroom or the wood-panelled office where the real business of government takes place.I fear that moment has passed in American politics. In some ways President Biden refuses to accept that notion. The Republican and Democrat parties are no longer just ideologically distinct. One party is fractured between a centrist pragmatic philosophy and an earnestly progressive one. The other party pretends that their followers didn’t attempt a coup on 6 January 2021. They count among their constituents white supremacists and fascists who live in an alternate universe where elections are only legitimate if they win and science is whatever causes you the least inconvenience.Given this monumental divide it’s difficult really to quantify the president’s job performance. He’s had some big wins. His bill to improve America’s roads, bridges and digital superhighways passed, although with a significantly smaller price tag that he originally envisioned. He has made vaccines a cornerstone in his fight against Covid-19. The fact that vaccines are free all across America is an achievement in itself. He has implemented policies to slash childhood poverty and medical inequality. His justice department is defending a woman’s right to choose while also holding police departments across the country accountable for corruption and violence.He’s also had some remarkable mistakes and defeats. His Build Back Better plan has been stymied by two senators in his own party for… reasons that seem at best vague and at worst nefarious. He has resisted the calls to use executive orders to erase student loan debt or extend Medicare for All or address voting rights.But for me most of those wins and losses don’t matter.In terms of my own politics, I would probably be classified as a liberal. I tend to vote the Democrat ticket, especially since the Republican party has seemingly lost its ever-loving mind. But philosophically I’m a pragmatist first and foremost. I fully see politics as theatre. All politics is a show upon a stage. And that’s where President Biden has impressed me the most.He knows this instinctively. He has a true politician’s gift for communication and artifice. Even his enemies don’t realise the performance he is giving is award-worthy. After four years of [Trump’s] buffoonery and brat king antics Joe Biden is most successful at acting like… an adult. Republicans like to mock his age and his speaking style, which was influenced by a stutter that he overcame as a young man, but even his most ardent critics can’t pierce the armour of his single-minded seriousness. He is the grownup in the room after four years of temper tantrums. During the worst pandemic of modern times and also one of the worst economic catastrophes in decades, President Joseph Robinette Biden has walked up to a podium and spoken to the people he leads in clear and concise tones that are measured and weighted by the gravitas of the moment.I haven’t always agreed with the president’s decisions but I’ve never once doubted he wanted what was best for the entire country. Even the folks that didn’t vote for him or are actively hostile to him don’t doubt that.That itself, in this age of bellicose strongmen and disingenuously self-effacing leaders and outright authoritarian autocrats, is a minor political miracle.Margo Jefferson: ‘There’s a lack of inventiveness – the great political movements were all imaginative’Award-winning writer and academic Margo Jefferson taught journalism and writing at New York university and Columbia university before joining the New York Times, initially as a book reviewer, where she went on to win the Pulitzer prize for criticism. Her 2006 book On Michael Jackson won widespread praise, as did her memoir, Negroland, which explored how her own experience intersected with politics, from the civil-rights movement to feminism, and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford prizeI had various levels of hopes for the Biden presidency – and in retrospect those hopes were mixed with fears. Like millions of people, I hoped that a halt would be put to the vehement processes of tyranny [that flourished under Trump], and that we might return to some kind of decent normality. After which, we wanted voting rights secured, and Build Back Better. We were terrified about the supreme court, and we had a right to be. We were hoping for an end to the avalanche of action and reaction, of propaganda, that in its own way is as violent as the literal attacks on 6 January were.The other day, someone was talking about the DW Winnicott idea of the good enough mother: she’s not a saint, she has her own problems, but she’s good enough for the child to grow up reasonably well. With Joe Biden, it’s a case of the good enough president, meaning: he has some good ideas and, as he’s shown over the years, he’s willing to work hard. But it would appear that, unless you are a tyrant, there aren’t enough powers to really work your will when an entire party, flanked by these strange supporters, are actively working against you and prepared to do anything to get their way.When the election was confirmed on 7 November 2020, I heard screams and cheers right outside my window in Greenwich Village. I peeked through and asked, “What’s going on?”, and people started yelling, “Biden won!” I ran outside and people were weeping, from happiness and sheer relief. Everybody was just giddy. There was an extra intensity to it, because of our terror.In the early days of Biden’s presidency, when he was outlining the policies and laying out the bills, and also responding to Covid, he was good, and I was encouraged. With Biden, he always has this ability to make a statement, at a certain point, that’s decent, honourable, even impressive. But then one has to see where it goes. I’m not blaming him for [the setbacks to] the Build Back Better plan, though a part of me wishes that he were more like Lyndon Johnson, who for the passage of the civil rights bill would take these recalcitrant guys aside and say, “I’ve got this dirt on you.”How has Biden done in his first year? I am still trying to decide. I can of course give you the predictable list of things that I’m beside myself about. Yes, I wanted him to work immediately and insistently to get the John Lewis Voting Rights Act passed. I don’t know what he could do about the supreme court, but I do want clean statements. I want to feel that Biden and the other Democrats are working all the time to strategise how to fight back, practically, but also rhetorically. The denunciation of the support of 6 January is all well and good, but please: a pattern, strategies, and resourcefulness. There’s also a lack of inventiveness. The great political movements – the labour movement in its early days, civil rights, feminism, LGBTQ – were imaginative. They find ways to work with, or against, bills. I see grassroots organisations figuring this out, but I don’t yet see the party doing it. Yes, Stacey Abrams is terrific, but she can’t do it all by herself.Biden has tried to do well, and he has done some decent things, but there’s a limit to what can be done within this institutional structure, the American body politic, when outlaw forces are not only fighting it strategically, but creating a kind of atmosphere of hysteria. There’s this spilling out of hatred, with a kind of glee as well as fury, that is terrifying. I see it in the attacks on voting rights, on critical race theory, on anti-immigrant legislation, I also see it in the language in the supreme court rulings on abortion. We were back to, implicitly and well-nigh explicitly: how dare you women think you have primary rights to your body? I’ve heard many black and brown people, and women, say, “My god they hate us so much.” It’s a kind of venom linked with a desire for vengeance on all of us for not just wanting these rights, but thinking we deserve them.It’s unfair to imagine that one man, even if he’s the president, could rein in all these forces. A friend of mine said during the Obama election, that if the structures aren’t in place and functioning properly, it almost doesn’t matter who’s president – although when Trump came in, it turned out that it mattered a whole lot. But Biden is, as Obama was, hemmed in by all kinds of systems and structures and power dynamics that make him more of a decoration. I think Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders would have presented a much more active, combative style, and that might have helped.I don’t know how the rest of Biden’s term will play out, but I am in a state of terror. If the Republicans snatch back power in the House and the Senate, which is highly possible, then all bets are off. It’s legitimate to be terrified, and angry, too. We sometimes don’t take account of the sheer shock value of the past year or two and all that that does to your senses, your responses. It’s like we’re multitasking emotionally and intellectually. We’ve got compromised nervous systems.Joyce Carol Oates: ‘Like battered spouses we’ve been grateful, simply, to have survived’Joyce Carol Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published 58 novels, numerous volumes of short stories, poetry and nonfiction plus a number of plays and novellas. Her novels Black Water, What I Lived For and Blonde were finalists for the Pulitzer prize as were two of her short story collections. She taught creative writing at Princeton University for 36 years until 2014, where her students included the novelist Jonathan Safran FoerFor a majority of Americans, Biden’s First Year has been most precious for what it wasn’t: Trump’s Fifth Year. Any discontent or disappointment with Joe Biden is immediately qualified by a gesture of resignation, a roll of the eyes – but at least he isn’t Trump!Like battered spouses in a combat zone of a household we’ve been grateful – simply – to have survived the traumatic Trump years. Any Democrat, indeed virtually anyone who was not Trump, including Senator Mitt Romney, even that scion of a largely discredited political family, Jeb Bush, would have been welcome as president. Never have I witnessed such desperation among friends, university colleagues, students and random strangers as in the weeks leading to the 2020 election – the feeling that, if Trump were re-elected, the United States would become uninhabitable, a white-nationalist state resembling South Africa with a corrupt rightwing ruling class tyrannising a large, diverse, but politically fragmented population.(Talk of leaving the country if Trump had been re-elected for – where, exactly? Ireland is most frequently cited, followed by New Zealand, Canada. So far as I know, no one has made even preliminary plans.)Unfortunately for Joe Biden, as for us all, Biden’s first year has overlapped with the second, protracted year of the Covid-19 pandemic, which stretches before us like a nightmare Sahara without a horizon, all shimmering mirage of fear if not outright terror. It has been the devious Republican strategy – cynical, malicious, in some quarters highly successful – to resist public health measures such as vaccine and masking mandates, in order to “make Biden look bad”, with the result that the pandemic prevails, like a rolling toxic mist over the country. Political energies that might be directed elsewhere are continually deflected toward Covid-19, an immense black hole sucking up the patience and good will of the electorate.Younger Americans, those who identify themselves as progressive, are increasingly critical of Biden for his bipartisanship and willingness to compromise with the opposition; their hearts lie still with Bernie Sanders, and they will not easily forget. (The young daughter of a friend of mine, a Bernie Sanders supporter, pressed her hands over her ears when I asked for opinions on Joe Biden’s first year as president – “If you keep talking about Biden, I’m going to run out of the room.”) Supporters of Trump are fierce in their belief in Trump’s “big lie” – that he’d won the 2020 election, not Biden – so determined to thwart Biden they are willing to risk death by refusing to be vaccinated or to take Covid precautions prescribed by public health officials. Indeed, resisting Biden even when it’s in the interests of their constituents has been a sort of loyalty oath for conservatives: far more Republicans are dying of Covid than Democrats, a testimony to the bizarre nature of rabidly polarised politics in the US.Many of us who’d voted for Biden had in fact preferred other Democrats – Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, to name just two – but were happy, indeed impassioned, to vote for the Democrat who’d seemed most likely to prevail against Trump: “beggars can’t be choosers” is an adage uniquely suited for the politics of expediency. Despite the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law (his chief achievement), as well as his handling of the Covid crisis and a rebooting of much-needed American involvement in global climate change reform, Joe Biden has been disadvantaged by being, in contrast to his predecessor, a low-key, non-self-dramatising personality. He has been hampered by his very nature: hoping to unify, not divide; hoping to “reach out” to all Americans with policies of generosity and inclusiveness; unexciting to the media, which crave agitation and unrest, and find mere competency, honesty, and empathy boring. On social media it’s outrage and misinformation that capture the attention of the crowd, not so much diligence, hard work, integrity. US journalism is guided by the cynical adage: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Consequently, mainstream media has been unkind to Biden virtually since the start of his presidency; cable news has been pitiless.However, Joe Biden will likely prevail, in his stubbornly idealistic if unsensational way, and come to be valued, like Jimmy Carter, Dwight Eisenhower, and Harry Truman, as presidents underestimated and undervalued in their time; taken for granted, even scorned, most appreciated and honoured in retrospect.TopicsBiden administrationThe ObserverJoe BidenUS politicsDemocratsDonald TrumpfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Is the US really heading for a second civil war?

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      Is the US really heading for a second civil war? With the country polarised and Republicans embracing authoritarianism, some experts fear a Northern Ireland-style insurgency but others say armed conflict remains improbableJoe Biden had spent a year in the hope that America could go back to normal. But last Thursday, the first anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, the president finally recognised the full scale of the current threat to American democracy.“At this moment, we must decide,” Biden said in Statuary Hall, where rioters had swarmed a year earlier. “What kind of nation are we going to be? Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm?”Trump has birthed a dangerous new ‘Lost Cause’ myth. We must fight it | David BlightRead moreIt is a question that many inside America and beyond are now asking. In a deeply divided society, where even a national tragedy such as 6 January only pushed people further apart, there is fear that that day was the just the beginning of a wave of unrest, conflict and domestic terrorism.A slew of recent opinion polls show a significant minority of Americans at ease with the idea of violence against the government. Even talk of a second American civil war has gone from fringe fantasy to media mainstream.“Is a Civil War ahead?” was the blunt headline of a New Yorker magazine article this week. “Are We Really Facing a Second Civil War?” posed the headline of a column in Friday’s New York Times. Three retired US generals wrote a recent Washington Post column warning that another coup attempt “could lead to civil war”.The mere fact that such notions are entering the public domain shows the once unthinkable has become thinkable, even though some would argue it remains firmly improbable.The anxiety is fed by rancour in Washington, where Biden’s desire for bipartisanship has crashed into radicalized Republican opposition. The president’s remarks on Thursday – “I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of our democracy” – appeared to acknowledge that there can be no business as usual when one of America’s major parties has embraced authoritarianism.Illustrating the point, almost no Republicans attended the commemorations as the party seeks to rewrite history, recasting the mob who tried to overturn Trump’s election defeat as martyrs fighting for democracy. Tucker Carlson, the most watched host on the conservative Fox News network, refused to play any clips of Biden’s speech, arguing that 6 January 2021 “barely rates as a footnote” historically because “really not a lot happened that day”.With the cult of Trump more dominant in the Republican party than ever, and radical rightwing groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys on the march, some regard the threat to democracy as greater now than it was a year ago. Among those raising the alarm is Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and author of a new book, How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them.Walter previously served on the political instability taskforce, an advisory panel to the CIA, which had a model to predict political violence in countries all over the world – except the US itself. Yet with the rise of Trump’s racist demagoguery, Walter, who has studied civil wars for 30 years, recognized telltale signs on her own doorstep.One was the emergence of a government that is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic – an “anocracy”. The other is a landscape devolving into identity politics where parties no longer organise around ideology or specific policies but along racial, ethnic or religious lines.Walter told the Observer: “By the 2020 elections, 90% of the Republican party was now white. On the taskforce, if we were to see that in another multiethnic, multi-religious country which is based on a two-party system, this is what we would call a super faction, and a super faction is particularly dangerous.”Not even the gloomiest pessimist is predicting a rerun of the 1861-65 civil war with a blue army and red army fighting pitched battles. “It would look more like Northern Ireland and what Britain experienced, where it’s more of an insurgency,” Walter continued. “It would probably be more decentralized than Northern Ireland because we have such a large country and there are so many militias all around the country.”“They would turn to unconventional tactics, in particular terrorism, maybe even a little bit of guerrilla warfare, where they would target federal buildings, synagogues, places with large crowds. The strategy would be one of intimidation and to scare the American public into believing that the federal government isn’t capable of taking care of them.”A 2020 plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan, could be a sign of things to come. Walter suggests that opposition figures, moderate Republicans and judges deemed unsympathetic might all become potential assassination targets.“I could also imagine situations where militias, in conjunction with law enforcement in those areas, carve out little white ethnostates in areas where that’s possible because of the way power is divided here in the United States. It would certainly not look anything like the civil war that happened in the 1860s.”Walter notes that most people tend to assume civil wars are started by the poor or oppressed. Not so. In America’s case, it is a backlash from a white majority destined to become a minority by around 2045, an eclipse symbolized by Barack Obama’s election in 2008.The academic explained: “The groups that tend to start civil wars are the groups that were once dominant politically but are in decline. They’ve either lost political power or they’re losing political power and they truly believe that the country is theirs by right and they are justified in using force to regain control because the system no longer works for them.”A year after the 6 January insurrection, the atmosphere on Capitol Hill remains toxic amid a breakdown of civility, trust and shared norms. Several Republican members of Congress received menacing messages, including a death threat, after voting for an otherwise bipartisan infrastructure bill that Trump opposed.The two Republicans on the House of Representatives select committee investigating the 6 January attack, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, face calls to be banished from their party. Democrat Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali-born Muslim, has suffered Islamophobic abuse.Yet Trump’s supporters argue that they are the ones fighting to save democracy. Last year Congressman Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina said: “If our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place and that’s bloodshed.”Last month Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has bemoaned the treatment of 6 January defendants jailed for their role in the attack, called for a “national divorce” between blue and red states. Democrat Ruben Gallego responded forcefully: “There is no ‘National Divorce’. Either you are for civil war or not. Just say it if you want a civil war and officially declare yourself a traitor.”There is also the prospect of Trump running for president again in 2024. Republican-led states are imposing voter restriction laws calculated to favour the party while Trump loyalists are seeking to take charge of running elections. A disputed White House race could make for an incendiary cocktail.James Hawdon, director of the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention at Virginia Tech university, said: “I don’t like to be an alarmist, but the country has been moving more and more toward violence, not away from it. Another contested election may have grim consequences.”Although most Americans have grown up taking its stable democracy for granted, this is also a society where violence is the norm, not the exception, from the genocide of Native Americans to slavery, from the civil war to four presidential assassinations, from gun violence that takes 40,000 lives a year to a military-industrial complex that has killed millions overseas.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “America is not unaccustomed to violence. It is a very violent society and what we’re talking about is violence being given an explicit political agenda. That’s a kind of terrifying new direction in America.”While he does not currently foresee political violence becoming endemic, Jacobs agrees that any such unravelling would also be most likely to resemble Northern Ireland’s Troubles.“We would see these episodic, scattered terrorist attacks,” he added. “The Northern Ireland model is the one that frankly most fear because it doesn’t take a huge number of people to do this and right now there are highly motivated, well-armed groups. The question is, has the FBI infiltrated them sufficiently to be able to knock them out before they they’ve launch a campaign of terror?”“Of course, it doesn’t help in America that guns are prevalent. Anyone can get a gun and you have ready access to explosives. All of this is kindling for the precarious position we now find ourselves in.”Nothing, though, is inevitable.Biden also used his speech to praise the 2020 election as the greatest demonstration of democracy in US history with a record 150 million-plus people voting despite a pandemic. Trump’s bogus challenges to the result were thrown out by what remains a robust court system and scrutinised by what remains a vibrant civil society and media.In a reality check, Josh Kertzer, a political scientist at Harvard University, tweeted: “I know a lot of civil war scholars, and … very few of them think the United States is on the precipice of a civil war.”And yet the assumption that “it can’t happen here,” is as old as politics itself. Walter has interviewed many survivors about the lead-up to civil wars. “What everybody said, whether they were in Baghdad or Sarajevo or Kiev, was we didn’t see it coming,” she recalled. “In fact, we weren’t willing to accept that anything was wrong until we heard machine gun fire in the hillside. And by that time, it was too late.”TopicsUS politicsThe ObserverRepublicansDemocratsAmerican civil warUS Capitol attackfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Unthinkable review: Jamie Raskin, his lost son and defending democracy from Trump

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      Unthinkable review: Jamie Raskin, his lost son and defending democracy from Trump The Maryland Democrat has written an extraordinary memoir of grief, the Capitol attack and the second impeachment

      David Blight: Trump has birthed a new Lost Cause myth
      Unthinkable is the perfect title for this extraordinary book, because it describes a superhuman feat.The Steal review: stethoscope for a democracy close to cardiac arrestRead moreJamie Raskin is a fine writer, a Democratic congressman, a constitutional scholar and a deeply loving father. When 2020 began, he had no inkling that just 12 months later his country and his family would face “two impossible traumas”.On 31 December, his beautiful, brilliant, charismatic 25-year-old son, Tommy, took his own life. Six days later, a vicious mob invaded Raskin’s workplace, the cradle of democracy, leaving several dead and injuring 140 police officers.Raskin suffered “a violent and comprehensive shock to the foundations”. Never had he felt “so equidistant … between the increasingly unrecognizable place called life and the suddenly intimate and expanding jurisdiction called death”.This is where the superhuman part came in. Instead of succumbing to unfathomable grief over the death of his son, Raskin seized a lifeline thrown by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and agreed to lead the effort to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the riot which might have derailed the peaceful transition of power.He found “salvation and sustenance … a pathway back to the land of the living”.“I’m not going to lose my son at the end of 2020 and lose my country and my republic in 2021,” he told CNN, less than three weeks after Tommy’s death.Raskin’s astonishing story of tragedy and redemption, of “despair and survival”, depended entirely on all the “good and compassionate people” like Tommy, “the non-narcissists, the feisty, life-size human beings who hate bullying and fascism naturally – people just the right size for a democracy … where we are all created equal”.Tommy Raskin was the fourth generation in a great liberal family. His maternal great grandfather was the first Jew elected to the Minnesota legislature. His father, Marcus Raskin, was one of the earliest opponents of the Vietnam war when he worked in the Kennedy White House. In 1968, Marcus Raskin was indicted with William Sloane Coffin, Dr Benjamin Spock and others for conspiracy to aid resistance to the draft. When Raskin was the only one acquitted, he famously demanded a retrial.Jamie Raskin taught constitutional law then ran for the Maryland Senate, with Tommy, then 10, his first campaign aide. In the state legislature, Raskin helped outlaw the death penalty and legalize same-sex marriage.Tommy was a second-year student at Harvard Law School when Covid began. Like so many others with clinical depression, the catastrophe deepened his symptoms. His father described his illness as “a kind of relentless torture in the brain … Despite very fine doctors and a loving family … the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last.”Congressman Jamie Raskin: ‘I’ll never forget the terrible sound of them trying to barrel into the chamber’Read moreThis is also a political memoir, of the Capitol attack and the second impeachment. Driving to the Capitol, Raskin spotted MAGA supporters heckling a young Black driver and a car with a bumper sticker reading: “If Guns Are Outlawed, How Am I Going To Shoot Liberals?”He realizes these “fascist bread crumbs throughout the city” should have activated “some kind of cultural alarm”. More chillingly, he reports the decision of some Democrats to cross their chamber after Congress was invaded, “because they thought a mass shooter who entered would be less likely to aim at the Republican side of the House”.But Raskin was never afraid: “The very worst thing that could ever have happened to us has already happened … and Tommy is with me somehow every step of the way. He is occupying my heart … He is showing me the way to some kind of safety … My wound has now become my shield of defense and my path to escape, and all I can think of is my son propelling me forward to fight.”The most powerful part of Raskin’s book, the heart-shattering part, is his love letter to Tommy, a “dazzling, precious, brilliant … moral visionary, a slam poet, an intellectual giant slayer, the king of Boggle, a natural-born comedian, a friend to all human beings but tyrants and bullies, a freedom fighter, a political essayist, a playwright, a jazz pianist, and a handsome, radical visitor from a distant future where war, mass hunger and the eating of animals are considered barbaric intolerable and absurd”.Raskin realized that for the last week of his life, his son had made an effort to impersonate someone in perfect mental health, so no one would intervene. These were his parting words: “Please forgive me. My illness won today. Please look after each other, the animals and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.”Raskin takes some solace remembering the story of Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie, who died of typhoid fever at the age of 12 in 1862, plunging his parents into depression.It had been a point of pride that Raskin responded to every constituent, but a deluge of condolences made that impossible. There was also a call from Joe Biden, three days after Tommy died. The president-elect promised “the day would come when Tommy’s name would bring a smile to my lip before tears to my eyes”.Congressman Jamie Raskin on the day democracy almost crumbled in the US: Politics Weekly podcastRead moreEventually Raskin was convinced to write one letter for everyone sending condolences, one for everyone who wrote about impeachment and a third for everyone who offered condolences and political solidarity. One actually wrote: “I was looking for a condolence card for the loss of your son which also said ‘and thanks for saving our country too’, but Hallmark apparently doesn’t make those.”Naturally, one of Raskin’s son’s heroes was Wittgenstein, who believed the truth of ethical propositions is determined by the courage with which you act to make them real.“On this standard,” Raskin writes, “there have never been truer ethical claims than the ones made by Tommy Raskin, because he was all courage and engagement with his moral convictions.”May this book and Tommy’s example inspire us all to rescue our gravely beleaguered democracy.
      Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy is published in the US by Harper
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      ‘Being tough, being a fighter’: Obama and Biden salute Harry Reid at Las Vegas funeral

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      ‘Being tough, being a fighter’: Obama and Biden salute Harry Reid at Las Vegas funeral
      Two presidents, Pelosi and Schumer address service in Nevada
      Former Senate majority leader died at 82 in December
      Obituary: Harry Reid, 1939-2021
      Two presidents and Democratic leaders in Congress joined on Saturday to commemorate Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader who rose from poverty in Nevada to become one of the most powerful US politicians.Capitol attack panel investigates Trump over potential criminal conspiracyRead more“Being tough, being a fighter was once of Harry’s signatures characteristics,” Barack Obama said, at the service in Las Vegas.“He didn’t believe in high-falutin’ theories or rigid ideologies. Harry knew who he was. In a town obsessed with appearance, Harry had a vanity deficit. He didn’t like phonies. He didn’t like grandstanding.”Reid died on 28 December at home in Henderson, Nevada, at 82 and of complications from pancreatic cancer. He served for 34 years in Washington, leading the Senate through the great recession and a Republican resurgence after the 2010 elections.His work to push Obama’s signature healthcare act through the Senate was prominent among memories expressed at his funeral.Obama credits Reid for helping his rapid rise from the Senate to the White House. He delivered the eulogy.“He was more generous to me than I had any right to expect,” he said. “He was one of the first people to encourage me to run for president believing that, despite my youth, despite my an experience, despite fact that I was African American, I can actually win. At the time, that made one of us.”The turnout at the memorial service testified to Reid’s impact on some of the most consequential legislation of the 21st century.President Joe Biden escorted Reid’s widow, Landra Reid, to her seat before an honor guard bore Reid’s flag-draped casket to auditorium’s well.“Harry would always have your back, like the kids I grew up with in Scranton,” Biden said. “His story was unmistakably American. He was proof that there is nothing ordinary about America, and that Americans can do anything given half a chance.”Remembering a Senate colleague, Biden said America had lost “a giant, an honorable, decent, brave, unyielding man”.For Reid, Biden said, politics wasn’t about power for its own sake. It was about “power do right by people”.“That’s why you wanted Harry in your corner,” he said.Biden also worked with Reid for eight years after the senator from Delaware became vice-president to Obama.On Saturday, Biden spoke of his own decision to run for president in 2016, repeating themes outlined when he declared his campaign to oust Donald Trump from the White House and again last week, on the first anniversary of the Capitol attack.“The idea of America itself is under attack,” he said, “from dark and deepening forces. We’re in a battle for the soul America.”The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, also spoke. Schumer described Reid as a “truly honest and original character” and joked about receiving sartorial advice.Reid’s son, Leif, recalled his father’s well-known habit of abruptly ending telephone conversations without saying goodbye, sometimes leaving the other person – whether a powerful politician or a close family member – talking for several minutes before they realized Reid was gone.In a letter to Reid before his death, Obama recalled their close relationship, their different backgrounds and Reid’s climb from an impoverished former gold mining town in the Mojave desert to leadership in Congress.“Not bad for a skinny, poor kid from Searchlight,” Obama wrote. “I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”Trump has birthed a dangerous new ‘Lost Cause’ myth. We must fight it | David BlightRead moreOn Saturday, Obama spoke most clearly of Reid’s contribution to democratic principles. ”He understood we don’t have to see eye to eye on everything in order to live together and be decent toward each other,” he said. “That we can learn to bridge differences of background, race and religion.“He knew that our system of government isn’t based on demanding that everybody think exactly the same way.”In what almost amounted to a requiem for a vanished political era, Obama said Reid presumed to live in a big and diverse country and for people to still work together.“He may have been a proud Democratic partisan,” he said, “and he didn’t shy away from bare-knuckle politics. But what is true is that I never heard Harry speak of politics as if it was some unbending battle between good and evil.”TopicsDemocratsUS politicsUS CongressUS SenateNevadaBarack ObamaJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Harry Reid: Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and Obama attend Nevada memorial

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      Harry Reid: Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and Obama attend Nevada memorial
      Carole King and Brandon Flowers set to perform
      Former Senate leader died in December at 82
      Obituary: Harry Reid, 1939-2021
      The life of the former Senate majority leader Harry Reid was celebrated by two presidents and other Democratic leaders in Las Vegas on Saturday.Strategy shift: Biden confronts Trump head on after year of silent treatmentRead morePresident Joe Biden, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, were scheduled to speak at a memorial for the longtime Senate leader, who died on 28 December at home in Henderson, Nevada, at 82 and of complications from pancreatic cancer.Barack Obama, who credits Reid for his rise to the White House, was scheduled to deliver the eulogy.“The president believes Harry Reid is one of the greatest leaders in Senate history,” Karine Jean-Pierre, a deputy White House press secretary, said on Friday. “So he is traveling to pay his respects to a man who had a profound impact on this nation.”Biden served for two decades with Reid in the Senate and worked with him for eight years as vice-president.Elder M Russell Ballard, a senior apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was also to speak at the 2,000-seat concert hall about Reid’s 60 years in the Mormon faith. Vice-President Kamala Harris also attended.“These are not only some of the most consequential leaders of our time – they are also some of Harry’s best friends,” Reid’s wife of 62 years, Landra Reid, said in a statement announcing plans for the Smith Center for the Performing Arts event.“Harry loved every minute of his decades working with these leaders and the incredible things they accomplished together.”Reid’s daughter and four sons were scheduled to speak too.In a letter to Reid before his death, Obama recalled their close relationship, their different backgrounds and Reid’s climb from an impoverished former gold mining town of Searchlight in the Mojave Desert to leadership in Congress.“Not bad for a skinny, poor kid from Searchlight,” Obama wrote. “I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”Reid spent 34 years in Washington and led the Senate through a crippling recession and the Republican takeover of the House after the 2010 elections. He muscled Obama’s signature healthcare act through the Senate.Reid hitchhiked 40 miles to high school and was an amateur boxer before he was elected to the Nevada state Assembly at 28. He had graduated from Utah State University and worked nights as a US Capitol police officer while attending George Washington University Law School in Washington.In 1970, at 30, he was elected state lieutenant governor with a Democratic governor, Mike O’Callaghan. Reid was elected to the House in 1982 and the Senate in 1986.Reid built a political machine in Nevada that for years helped Democrats win key elections. When he retired in 2016 after an exercise accident at home left him blind in one eye, he picked a former Nevada attorney general, Catherine Cortez Masto, to replace him.Cortez Masto was the first woman from Nevada and the first Latina ever elected to the US Senate.“Most of all, you’ve been a good friend,” Obama told Reid in his letter. “As different as we are, I think we both saw something of ourselves in each other – a couple of outsiders who had defied the odds and knew how to take a punch and cared about the little guy.”Democrats could still salvage Build Back Better – and perhaps their midterm prospects Read moreThe singer-songwriter and environmentalist Carole King and Brandon Flowers, lead singer of the Las Vegas-based rock band the Killers, were scheduled to perform during the memorial.“The thought of having Carole King performing in Harry’s honor is a tribute truly beyond words,” Landra Reid said.Flowers, a longtime friend, shares the Reids’ faith and has been a headliner at events including a Lake Tahoe Summit that Reid founded in 1997 to draw attention to the ecology of the lake, and the National Clean Energy Summit that Reid helped launch in 2008 in Las Vegas. Among other songs, Flowers was scheduled to sing the Nevada state anthem, Home Means Nevada.Those flying to Las Vegas arrived at the newly renamed Harry Reid international airport. It was formerly named for Pat McCarran, a former Democratic US senator from Nevada who once owned the airfield and whose legacy is clouded by racism and antisemitism.TopicsUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsDemocratsJoe BidenBarack ObamaNancy PelosinewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Manchin appears to have withdrawn offer to back $1.8tn bill on Biden agenda

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      Joe Manchin appears to have withdrawn offer to back $1.8tn bill on Biden agendaConservative Democratic senator has signalled privately he is not interested in supporting any Build Back Better package

      Can Democrats can salvage Build Back Better?
      A $1.8tn spending offer proposed to the White House in late 2021 by Senator Joe Manchin appears to be off the table, following another breakdown in talks between the moderate Democrat from West Virginia and the Biden White House, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.Harry Reid: Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and Obama to attend Nevada memorialRead moreManchin told reporters this week he is no longer involved in discussions with the White House and has signaled privately that he is not interested in approving any legislation like Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Package, the newspaper said, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.Manchin’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The legislation is one of Biden’s signature domestic priorities. Manchin’s vote is critical in the evenly divided Senate. In December, his opposition torpedoed Build Back Better, drawing ire from progressives and sending the party scrambling to find a way to resurrect the package.Biden’s plan includes funding for high-priority issues for many Americans, including free pre-school, support for childcare costs, coverage of home-care costs for the elderly and expansion of free school meals. It also seeks to fund measures to combat the climate crisis.Manchin has spoken with officials and others seeking to garner his support, the Post said, among them the senior White House aide Steve Ricchetti; a former economic adviser to Donald Trump, Larry Kudlow; and the Republican senator Mitt Romney, of Utah.Manchin is the only Democrat in major elected office in West Virginia. Attempts to secure his support for Build Back Better have been dogged by fears he could quit the party, either to sit as an independent or to switch to the Republicans, thereby tipping the Senate to the GOP.TopicsJoe ManchinDemocratsUS politicsUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      Strategy shift: Biden confronts Trump head on after year of silent treatment

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      Strategy shift: Biden confronts Trump head on after year of silent treatmentPresident strikes different tone in tacit admission that ignoring the most powerful force in the Republican party is risky In the first moments of his presidency, Joe Biden called on Americans to set aside their deep divisions inflamed by a predecessor he intentionally ignored. He emphasized national unity and appealed to Americans to come together to “end this uncivil war”.The Trump menace is darker than ever – and he’s snapping at Biden’s heels | Jonathan FreedlandRead moreNearly a year later, as a divided nation reflects on the first anniversary of the 6 January assault on the US Capitol, the uncivil war he sought to extinguish rages on, stronger than ever. In a searing speech on Thursday, Biden struck a different tone.He said he was “crystal clear” about the dangers facing the nation, and accused Donald Trump and his political allies of holding a “dagger at the throat of America, at American democracy”. In the course of the 21-minute speech, delivered from the US Capitol, Biden offered himself as a defender of democracy in the “battle for the soul of America”.“I will stand in this breach,” he promised. “I will defend this nation.”That moment of visceral speech-making marked a shift in strategy for how Biden has chosen to engage Trump – whose name he never uttered but instead taunted as the “defeated former president”.The decision to break his silence about Trump comes at a challenging moment in Biden’s presidency, with his Build Back Better agenda stalled, the Covid-19 pandemic resurgent and economic malaise widespread. It also reflected the reality that, far from being shunned, Trump remains the most powerful force in the Republican party and a potential rival to Biden in 2024.Confronting Trump was a calculated risk. Trump seized the opportunity to hurl all manner of insults and accusations at his successor, whose remarks he said were “very hurtful to many people”.But Biden’s speech was an acknowledgment that there were dangers in continuing to ignore Trump and what Biden called his “web of lies”. Recent polling suggests the vast majority of Republicans believe Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about the election fraud while a growing percentage of Americans are willing to tolerate political violence in some instances.Republican-controlled states are pursuing a raft of new voting restrictions, motivated in part by the doubts they sowed about the 2020 election results. At the same time, Republicans are passing laws that inject partisanship into the administration of elections and vote-counting while stripping power from and driving power from election officials who resisted pressure to throw out votes or overturn the elections in their state.“It was essential to be specific about the problem, and the source of the crisis,” said Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University. “Otherwise the vague rhetoric, without agency, that we hear about polarization misses the way in which Trump and the GOP are the source of so much instability.”But he warned that a speech can only do so much. “Without holding people accountable for January 6 and the campaign against the 2020 election, and without real legislation to protecting voting rights and the electoral process, the ‘dagger at the throat of democracy’ won’t go away.”In his remarks, Biden argued that protecting voting rights was paramount to safeguarding American democracy. He sought to connect the dots between Trump’s promotion that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud and Republicans’ coordinated effort to “subvert” and undermine the electoral process in states where they control the levers of power.“Right now, in state after state, new laws are being written – not to protect the vote, but to deny it; not only to suppress the vote, but to subvert it; not to strengthen or protect our democracy, but because the former president lost,” he said.Biden will follow up on the theme on Tuesday when he delivers another consequential speech on voting rights. In Atlanta, Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris will call for the passage of two voting rights bills that face daunting odds in the US Senate: the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.The issue of voting rights has taken center stage after hopes of passing Biden’s sweeping domestic policy agenda were dashed by the opposition of Senator Joe Manchin, the conservative Democrat from West Virginia. So far Republican opposition has blocked passage of the legislation in the evenly divided chamber, where Democrats lack the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.Manchin again holds the keys on voting rights legislation, which he broadly supports. But his opposition to eliminating the filibuster has forced Democrats to pursue other avenues such as creating an exception in the rules for certain legislation. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said he would schedule a vote on easing the filibuster rules not later than 17 January, which is Martin Luther King Day.Biden has faced immense pressure from civil rights leaders and voting rights advocates frustrated with his handling of the issue, seen as critical to the president’s legacy. Indeed, a coalition of Georgia-based voting rights groups warned Biden and Harris not to bother coming to the state unless they delivered a concrete plan to move forward, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters this week that Biden planned to stress the “urgent need to pass legislation to protect the constitutional right to vote and the integrity of our elections”.Spencer Overton, an election law expert and the president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, hopes Biden will use his bully pulpit to explain why passing federal voting rights legislation is so essential to combatting the lies and conspiracies undermining faith in the nation’s system of government.“Those lies have real consequences,” said. “Sometimes they’re graphic, as we saw a year ago on 6 January, but sometimes they silently erode democracy by preventing average citizens from participating in our democracy, and exercising their freedom to vote.”“This is the most important legislation in Congress now,” he added. “There’s just no benefit in waiting. The moment is now.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Democrats could still salvage Build Back Better – and perhaps their midterm prospects

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      Democrats could still salvage Build Back Better – and perhaps their midterm prospects Best-case scenario: a scaled down plan that saves popular programs and a billionaire tax to pay for it Democrats were already facing a bleak landscape for this year’s midterm elections, with Joe Biden’s approval rating languishing in the low 40s and his party holding narrow majorities in both the House and the Senate.Now, with Senator Joe Manchin’s refusal to support the Build Back Better Act, the chances of Republicans regaining control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate as well, appear higher than ever.If Democrats cannot pass Biden’s signature legislation, which includes massive investments in childcare, healthcare and climate initiatives, their failure may convince enough voters to support Republicans in November. However, if Democrats try to move forward with a version of the bill that Manchin supports, as some strategists have suggested, the final product may not be as attractive to voters.Democrats’ unappealing options will probably aid Republicans, who were already favored to take back the House after the midterms. Historically, the president’s party loses House seats in midterm elections, and Republicans need to flip only five districts to regain the majority.The decennial redistricting process has aided House Republicans’ cause, as the party controls the governorship and the state legislature in 23 states, compared with 14 states for Democrats. That advantage has allowed Republicans to draw more favorable congressional maps in a number of crucial swing states. Democrats have also accused Republicans of using voting restrictions, which were approved by at least 19 states last year, to limit their supporters’ access to the ballot box.In the evenly divided Senate, Republicans need to gain just one seat to take control of the chamber. Rick Scott, who leads Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, has already said he expects the party to have “a hell of a year”.Democrats’ possible failure to pass the Build Back Better Act may further assist Republican candidates, as it could strengthen their argument to voters that the $1.75tn spending package is the wrong solution for families struggling to recover financially from the coronavirus pandemic.Emma Vaughn, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, attacked the Democratic bill as a “reckless spending spree”, telling the Guardian, “Americans reject their failed agenda and Republicans will continue to fight for American workers and businesses.”But despite Manchin’s surprise announcement last month that he would not support the Build Back Better Act, the White House and Democratic congressional leaders are still voicing optimism about getting the bill passed.“We have a very slim majority in the Senate. That means you need every single senator from across the spectrum of the Democratic party agreeing to what a package looks like moving forward,” the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said last week.“We’re not naive about how challenging that is and how challenging it can be, but we feel good about the possibility of getting something done. What the final package looks like, I can’t outline that for you at this point in time.”However, just hours earlier, Manchin had insisted that there were no conversations happening between him and the White House. “I’m really not going to talk about Build Back Better any more because I think I’ve been very clear on that. There [are] no negotiations going on at this time,” Manchin told reporters on Capitol Hill.Manchin’s opposition to the bill has intensified concerns among Democratic leaders that many vulnerable members may lose re-election this year, as voters blame the party for failing to follow through on their campaign promises despite having full control of the White House and Congress.“Voters have shown time and again that they want a robust economic environment creating good opportunities to build a better life for themselves and their family,” said Congressman Brad Schneider, chair of the political arm of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, the NewDem Action Fund. “At the end of the day, we have to show working families we’re responsive to their kitchen table concerns.”Some Democratic strategists have argued the party’s best option now is to work with Manchin to craft a version of the Build Back Better Act that he can support and then move forward with that proposal.“Mr Manchin said at various points that he could support a scaled-back bill that made long-term commitments to fewer priorities,” David Axelrod, a former adviser to Barack Obama, said in a recent New York Times column. “If, through a retooled Build Back Better Act, Mr Biden can achieve significant and durable progress on some major priorities that will benefit children and families for generations, Democrats would be wise to celebrate and tout those gains instead of complaining about what wasn’t possible.”Schneider echoed that argument, telling the Guardian, “Since the start of negotiations, New Dems have been advocating to do a select number of things better for longer, and we still believe that approach is the best path forward.”But a Manchin-approved version of the Build Back Better Act does not come without potential pitfalls. Manchin has raised concerns about the cost of the legislation and the impact on the national debt if all of its programs are made permanent. (Under the current version of the bill, many of its programs expire after a year or a few years.)The child tax credit, which was expanded under the coronavirus relief package signed by Biden last year, is particularly worrisome for deficit hawks. The current version of the Build Back Better bill calls for the expanded program to continue through 2022, at a cost of $185bn. However, if the expanded program is made permanent, as many Democrats would prefer, the 10-year cost of that policy would be $1.6tn, according to the Congressional Budget Office.Despite the cost of the policy, many Americans have come to rely on the monthly checks from the expanded child tax credit, and failing to extend the program could be disastrous for families’ budgets and Democrats’ electoral prospects.“If [Manchin] brings down the price tag below $1.75tn, if he cuts really popular things like the child tax credit especially or any of the pharma provisions, then that could be disastrous for Democrats,” said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.But Green argued there may be an upside to Manchin’s deficit concerns. If Manchin is determined to lower the national debt, it could provide an opening for progressives to advocate for revenue-raising proposals that they support, such as a tax on billionaires.“There’s actually a scenario where we raise $1.75tn and invest that money, and then on top of that implement a very popular billionaires tax, the majority of which goes toward debt reduction,” Green said. “What that would do is give Democrats this extremely popular talking point that we’re the ones who finally taxed billionaires.”Of course, that scenario will only be possible if Democrats are successful at bringing Manchin back to the negotiating table and actually getting a bill across the finish line. “Depending on how the negotiations go, Manchin’s current involvement could make things disastrous or very good for Democrats,” Green said. “It really depends on where things land.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More