Manchin has simply declared Biden’s agenda lifeless. It is time to transfer on to the midterms

“Everyone has their own style,” Tester told the Wall Street Journal. “My style is: I wanna do shit, OK? And I think being on TV and then having a bunch of reporters around is fine, but it doesn’t help me get things done. “

At this point it is useless to argue with the unreasonable. Manchin actively supports a faction whose leader, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, has made it clear that he is “100%” committed to killing Biden’s legislative agenda as an electoral tactic. So, whatever its motivations, Manchin is now nothing but a tool of the GOP.

What remains for the Democrats is the mid-term elections and everything in their power to do to win them – or at least keep control of a chamber of Congress. This includes formulating every single fight from now on as Republicans against Democracy and not as Republicans against Democrats. Republican efforts to suppress state voting, abolish federal voting legislation, and the doom laws the vast majority of Americans seek to enact all come from the same source – Republicans’ disdain for democracy and the vote of the people.

The schedule for everything should now be moved up to maximize the amount of time the Democrats can test their messages and settle on the most effective lines of attack.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should proceed to appoint a special committee to investigate January 6th. Republicans chose to kill the wide-ranging bipartisan investigation aimed at protecting our democracy because they are no longer invested in protecting democracy.

The White House should be bullshit very soon on infrastructure talks with Senate Republicans and make it clear that they had no interest in making major investments in the country’s future, given the protection of tax cuts for the corporations and the wealthiest in the country was paramount. The Democrats should have the inability to pass laws that would have created millions of jobs around the necks of Republicans, Manchins and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona alike. But for their intransigence, the federal government could create jobs, create the economic foundation, empower the American middle class, and set the country on track to compete with other superpowers in the 21st century.

The Senate is already on course for a hectic June in which Republicans will block any bill that comes to the vote – another chance to show that Republicans would block a bill to send good news to their mothers if it did would be put to the vote.

But after the Senate logs another glorious month of GOP disability, every major agenda item for the Democrats should be retooled to maximize the pain for Senate Republicans, Manchin and Sinema. For example, why not take the four most popular elements of the For The People Act and bundle them into a new voting law? According to surveys by Crooked Media / Data For Progress, the following elements were extremely popular: preventing foreign interference (86%), limiting funding in politics (85%), increasing electoral security (84%) and bipartisan redistribution (74%). It is up to the Senate Democrats to decide whether parts of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act should be included or whether they should be left in a separate draft law. It’s about getting the strongest bill with the juiciest provisions so that Democratic members and candidates can tell their voters: Republicans voted against.

Republicans speak to none more than the 30% or so of Americans (two-thirds of Republicans) who believe Donald Trump’s election was stolen. In other words, the GOP’s sole constituency is now made up of voters who are no longer committed to democracy – and yes, that’s an estimate based on multiple polls for the 2020 election.

It is the job of the Democrats to reach the other 70% of the electorate with the widespread policies and proposals they wanted to pass and which would have been adopted had the Republicans invested in a working democracy.

The good news is that President Biden’s agenda is incredibly popular. After this month’s Senate votes, every single bill should from now on be tailored to corner the Republicans and make Sens. Manchin and Sinema as miserable as possible. The same goes for America’s job and family plans – wrap the most popular elements of both proposals in a blockbuster law and get the GOP and Joe-Curtsy to devour their defeat. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll buckle under the right circumstances. But any legislative effort must now be made knowing that Joe-Curtsy will almost certainly help Republicans kill them, and that their real worth lies in demonstrating the GOP’s disdain for our nation’s constitutional democracy.