Don't Believe The Hype
Democrats will pass an infrastructure bill ... and they'll do it without Republican votes
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If someone sent you this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
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Remember how yesterday I said I wasn’t going to talk about Joe Manchin today …
Ok, I promise this will be short, and I won’t talk about the filibuster. Instead the issue is Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill and Manchin’s continued insistence that the final legislation is bipartisan.
In an interview with NBC’s Garrett Haake, Manchin said this:
I will get deep into the political science jargon with this one, but there is a word to describe Manchin’s position: bullshit.
Manchin is so full of it that he can barely even keep his story straight. The part where he says that “right now” Democrats should not try to go it alone is what we in the business call a tell.
Here’s how I expect this will play out over the next few weeks. Biden will continue negotiating over the infrastructure bill with top Republican West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito, but it will go nowhere. Indeed, during a conversation with the president on Friday, Capito proposed adding $50 billion to the GOP’s proposal of $928 billion in infrastructure spending. Biden is calling for $1.7 trillion in spending. There’s no middle ground here, and none will be found - though the two agreed to speak again on Monday.
Inevitably these talks will fall apart - and that’s fine for both sides. Biden can say he tried to work with Republicans on reaching a deal, but they wouldn’t compromise. Capito and her fellow Senate Republicans will lodge the same accusation against the president. The thing is, even if Capito and Biden did reach a deal, there’s close to no chance that ten Senate Republicans will support breaking the filibuster to pass it.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, Manchin will continue to call for a bipartisan approach. Once it is clear there is no possible compromise, he will support passing a massive infrastructure bill through reconciliation - just as he did with the American Rescue Plan, which passed earlier this Spring. No senator from West Virginia will kill an infrastructure bill, and Manchin isn’t going to be responsible for stalling legislation that is popular with a broad cross-section of Democratic members. He will hem and haw as he always does about bipartisanship - and maybe as was the case with the Rescue Plan, he’ll ask for some cosmetic changes to the bill - but when push comes to shove, he’s not going to let legislation that will benefit his constituents (and him) die. The same goes for Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Infrastructure spending is broadly popular, and she’s not going to kill it either.
I think NBC News Sahil Kapur gets this right:
I generally avoid making predictions because my track record is not good, but I feel confident in saying that an infrastructure bill will pass - and it will happen through budget reconciliation.
What we see now is political theater on all sides. But we all know how this play is going to end.
Odds and Ends
It’s always a mistake to make too much out of a single special election, but this week’s House race in New Mexico offers some interesting political data. When Rep. Deb Haaland was picked to be Joe Biden’s Interior Secretary, it created a vacancy in her House district. On Tuesday, Democratic state representative Melanie Stansbury crushed her Republican opponent, Mark Moores, by 24 points. That’s a larger margin than Haaland won by in 2020 (16 points) and even Biden (23 points).
It’s worth pointing out that Republicans largely ignored the race, and Democrats spent a great deal of money on Stansbury’s behalf, so it’s difficult to draw too much of a conclusion from this. But Stansbury’s opponent ran almost entirely on the issue of crime, at a time when murder rates in Albuquerque-based district have significantly increased. Yet, that didn’t seem to do much to help Moores or dent Stansbury’s image. Indeed, Stansbury ran ads playing up her support from law enforcement.
Now it’s possible that in a different election in which a Republican candidate is well-funded and gets support from the party, the results will be closer. But if Republicans are banking on an anti-crime message or Biden’s supporters losing enthusiasm for Democratic candidates, what happened in New Mexico this week will not give them confidence.
Reading
It’s always a good idea to read Jonathan Freedland, but especially this week for his smart piece on the end of Bibi Netanyahu’s reign in Israel.
Friend of the newsletter, Jonathan Kirshner, reviews a new biography of Mike Nichols.
Ted Gioia wants to know why investment funds are obsessed with old songs. I’m a fan of Gioia’s book on the history of jazz, and I’m looking forward to seeing what he does with his substack newsletter.
Musical Interlude
It’s hard to go wrong with a little Dexter Gordon for the weekend.
If you prefer a shorter cut, here ya go.
OK, the Obstreperous Dem Duo might be risking getting primaried, but I'm honestly wondering if they'll then "just make it official" and switch to the Red Team after proving their loyalty. They could then take advantage of the baked in levers of electoral theft they allowed to continue.