President Biden just won a major victory. Will it make any difference? NPR reports on the House’s passage, on a bipartisan basis, of the bipartisan “infrastructure bill”:

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: On this vote, the yeas are 228 and the nays are 206. The motion is adopted.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

And that means a trillion dollars in spending on so-called hard infrastructure is headed to President Biden. The rest of his priorities, including early childhood education, clean energy, paid family leave, are in a larger package that continues to divide his own party.

NPR’s Deirdre Walsh covers Congress and joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.

DEIRDRE WALSH, BYLINE: Good morning, Scott.

SIMON: One part, at least, of the president’s agenda has gotten through the House. What’s in the bill?

WALSH: This is really a major accomplishment. Previous presidents have tried and failed to pass smaller infrastructure bill. This one has money for roads, bridges, broadband projects, water systems, airport upgrades. The Senate passed it in August, but progressive Democrats wanted to move it in tandem with that broader social spending package. This was actually Pelosi’s third time she brought up the bill. This time, it turns out, third time was the charm. Thirteen Republicans backed it. Six Democrats voted no because they really wanted first to pass that broader spending bill on child care and health care.

I’ve been looking around in vain for commentary on the passage of the bill. My guess is that the floodgates will open tomorrow. The closest I’ve been able to find so far is Michelle Cottle’s New York Times column:

This is a major win for America.

The infrastructure bill will provide close to $600 billion in new federal spending over the next decade on a cornucopia of infrastructure delights: roads, rail, ports, water systems, bridges, dams, airports, broadband! It puts $47 billion toward helping communities deal with the impacts of climate change. Jobs will be created, “the vast majority” of which, Mr. Biden stressed, would not require a college degree. “This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America,” he said.

It is also a much-needed win for Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats. For months, the public has suffered through the dispiriting sight of the party’s centrists and progressives slashing at each other over this bill and the Build Back Better plan to which it had been linked. Both bills have experienced multiple near-death experiences, and many, many Americans were beginning to doubt whether Democrats had what it takes to get anything done. Their basic competence was being called into question, and the rolling spectacle of — altogether now! — Democrats In Disarray likely contributed to the party’s poor showing in Tuesday’s elections.

At this point my take is that at this point it is too little too late to change the narrative on the Biden presidency. If it had passed in this form three months ago, it would have been seen as a tremendous victory. Now, after all of the hoopla about the much larger “Build Back Better” bill which the passage of the so-called “hard” infrastructure bill will inevitably jeopardize, it is anticlimactic. The phrase of the day is “sausage-making”.

Additionally, something rarely mentioned is that in all likelihood not a penny of the money appropriated under the infrastructure bill will be spent on anything but administrative costs by Election Day 2022 which is less than a year away now. Remember President Obama’s admission back in 2010: “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects”? And that doesn’t even consider the actual merits of the priorities of the infrastructure bill.

I want to preface this post with the observation that I find romantics not just naive but irritating. By “romantics” I don’t mean what the term has come to mean. The reference is to the 19th century Romantic movement (as opposed to the Classical movement or the Realists).

In an op-ed in the New York Times David Graeber and David Wengrow tell us a story about Neolithic “megasites”, early large habitations. Some, apparently including the authors, have claimed that they prove that class systems are not inherent to civilized habit:

What held these early experiments in urbanization together, if not kings, soldiers, and bureaucrats? For answers, we might turn to some other surprising discoveries on the interior grasslands of eastern Europe, north of the Black Sea, where archaeologists have found cities, just as large and ancient as those of Mesopotamia. The earliest date back to around 4100 B.C. While Mesopotamian cities, in what are now the lands of Syria and Iraq, took form initially around temples, and later also royal palaces, the prehistoric cities of Ukraine and Moldova were startling experiments in decentralized urbanization. These sites were planned on the image of a great circle — or series of circles — of houses, with nobody first, nobody last, divided into districts with assembly buildings for public meetings.

What they don’t tell you is that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that these megasites weren’t cities at all, at least not as we understand them. They were either ritual sites or trading places where large groups of hunter-gatherers, possibly numbering in the thousands, gathered for one month out of the year.

So, yeah, sure. They were all equal. For one month out of the year.

The reality is that true agriculture, cities, and class systems go hand in hand not just in Mesopotamia but in Southern China, Central America, Europe—everywhere. What has brought a relative level of equality, at least temporarily, has been free market systems and the freedom from class systems that leaving the aristocrats behind in the Old Country brought. Carrying the beacon for this development was the young United States with its notions of individual rights.

Speaking of scoring the Penn Wharton Budget Model has some bad news for the Biden Administration on its “reconciliation framework”: it’s going to cost more than they’ve project and bring in less revenue. Furthermore, if the new entitlements they’re proposing are made permanent, the cost over ten years will be nearly $4 trillion while the incremental revenue over that period will be around $1.55 trillion.

Try to see it under lights.

Speaking of advice, here’s the advice Josh Rogin provides for the Biden Administration in his Washington Post column:

Rather than focusing on persuading Beijing to sign vague, nonbinding pledges, the Biden administration should be focused on building out a domestic climate change industry whose supply lines don’t run through China.

Over the next decades, the United States and its partners will need secure supply chains for solar panels, semiconductors, electric vehicles, rare earth materials and much more. That will require more investment up front, but it will create more U.S. jobs and stronger national security in the long run. Also, it means saving the planet without becoming complicit in crimes against humanity.

We must always leave the door open to cooperation with China, but not at the cost of intentionally blinding ourselves to the reality of the situation. China will pursue its own development on its own terms. It’s hubristic to think we can change that in the near term.

Now it’s time to play “spot the trend”. Consider this graph illustrating carbon emissions by the four largest global economies (plus India):

What does that graph tell us? To me it looks as though even if the U. S. reduced its carbon emissions to zero without China and India reducing their own emissions, something for which I see no prospect of happening, it won’t actually accomplish much.

And regardless of what the wishful thinkers say, we can’t reduce our carbon emissions to zero. All baseline power is either produced using fossil fuels or nuclear. All of it.

Furthermore, increasing our production as Mr. Rogin proposes requires us to generate more power not less and, indeed, produce more pollution rather than less although I did read a very interesting study on using citric acid in refining rare earths the other day. What that tells me in turn is that if we’re really serious about reducing carbon emissions we need to build more nuclear power plants and look seriously into CCS. Solar and wind power have niche uses but insisting they can supply all our future needs is for poseurs and dilettantes.

Everybody has advice for the Democrats after Tuesday’s elections. You should see what James Carville had to say. Here’s David Brooks’s advice from his New York Times column:

Democrats need a positive moral vision that would start by rejecting the idea that we are locked into incessant conflict along class, cultural, racial and ideological lines. It would reject all the appurtenances of the culture warrior pose — the us/them thinking, exaggerating the malevolence of the other half of the country, relying on crude essentialist stereotypes to categorize yourself and others.

It would instead offer a vision of unity, unity, unity. That unity is based on a recognition of the complex humanity of each person — that each person is in the act of creating a meaningful life. It would reject racism, the ultimate dehumanizing force, but also reject any act that seeks to control the marketplace of ideas or intimidate those with opposing views. It would reject ideas and movements that seek to reduce complex humans to their group identities. It would stand for racial, economic and ideological integration, and against separatism, criticizing, for example, the way conservatives are often shut out from elite cultural institutions.

Democrats will be outvoted if they are seen to be standing with elite culture warriors against mass culture warriors, or imposing the values of metropolitan centers. On the cultural front especially, they have to be seen as champions of the whole nation.

I’m afraid he misunderstands what is going on. The people he’s exhorting aren’t Democrats, broadly, they’re progressives who have embraced a version of Marxism substituting race conflict, culture conflict, gender conflict for class conflict. They’re also a vanguardist movement which as I have explained previously means they believe that the plebs needs their guidance. They don’t care what the plebs wants.

How likely is it they will take his advice?

The editors of the New York Times do their level best to convince House progressives that half a loaf is, indeed, better than none:

What would do justice, and what is badly needed, is an honest conversation in the Democratic Party about how to return to the moderate policies and values that fueled the blue-wave victories in 2018 and won Joe Biden the presidency in 2020.

Given the stakes for the country, from urgent climate and social spending needs to the future of democracy, Americans badly need a rolling conversation today and in the coming weeks and months about how moderate voters of all affiliations can coalesce behind and guide the only party right now that shows an interest in governing and preserving democratic norms.

concluding:

Democrats should work to implement policies to help the American people. Congress should focus on what is possible, not what would be possible if Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and — frankly — a host of lesser-known Democratic moderates who haven’t had to vote on policies they might oppose were not in office.

Democrats agree about far more than they disagree about. But it doesn’t look that way to voters after months and months of intraparty squabbling. Time to focus on — and pass — policies with broad support. Or risk getting run out of office.

The philosopher George Santayana once quipped that fanaticism is redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. Armed with that advice let’s consider the House Democrats reaction to the same events to which the editors draw attention:

WASHINGTON—House Democrats released an updated version of the party’s social spending and climate package, adding back a paid-leave program that had previously fallen out of the bill and including a measure sharply raising the $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction.

The House bill, which top Democrats want to bring up to a vote in the chamber soon, is the latest proposal in the monthslong negotiations among Democrats over President Biden’s agenda. But it is set to face changes in the Senate, where Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) has objected to the inclusion of a paid-leave benefit.

What does that sound like to you? Opening a “conversation” of the sort being advocated by the editors or redoubling their efforts?

Pollster Sean Trende makes a few observations about yesterday’s election outcomes at RealClearPolitics:

1. The Virginia results were bad news for Democrats.
2. The results could have been much worse.
3. The New Jersey results are much worse for Democrats.

He sees what happened as being a general reaction against the party in power rather than as a reaction against or in favor of any particular candidate or issue as he makes clear in an interview in The New Yorker:

It appears that Democrats’ loss of voters since 2017 was spread across the state fairly uniformly. Is that your sense, and what do you think it implies?

I think that’s right. If there is solace for Democrats, it is that this seems to be a pretty uniform swing from 2020, suggesting that this is about the unpopularity of the Biden Administration, and not some particular issue. It is general disenchantment with the party in power, it seems.

But just as there was speculation about whether Democratic gains in the suburbs are sticking, there was still speculation about the extent of Republican gains in rural areas sticking, and here that appears to be real and significant. If you go back to when McAuliffe ran in 2013, he is running twenty to thirty points behind what he did then in some of these rural areas. I know that, after almost a decade, this is almost old news, but it’s still significant that Republicans seem to be holding on to a lot of the gains in the rural areas that came about in 2016 and 2020.

My advice to the Democrats: stick with the one that brung you. Progressives didn’t win the 2020 presidential and House races for you. The voting bloc responsible for your victory was much more moderate than that. Pass the hard infrastructure bill, take your win, and move on.

Mickey Kaus reacts to yesterday’s election results and the House Democrats’ reaction to it:

Still an unlikely scenario, as it’s always been almost inconceivable that the Democrats would screw things up so badly they’d end up passing nothing. But this achievement is now within reach, and if it happens, it looks like there will be an obvious fall guy: Ron Klain, President Biden’s chief of staff.

In an extraordinary story last week, Politico reported how Klain, a few days before the Virginia election, decided to side with progressives (led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal) who wanted to vote against Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to hurriedly pass the bipartisan bill and give Biden at least one win before the Virginia vote.

Pelosi’s plan would have required pressuring Jayapal’s Progs, of course, but House leaders say this was possible—and why would Pelosi make the attempt if she didn’t think it was possible? The idea was that Biden would travel to Capitol HIll and ask for the progressives’ votes personally. Instead, what happened was Jayapal called Klain, who apparently believed her when she said her faction was strong enough to block the bill. Biden went to the Hill, talked about the bill, but he didn’t ask for the votes to pass it — and the rest of the White House didn’t apply much lobbying pressure either.

Most amazingly, it looks from the Politico piece like Pelosi was blindsided:

The top three Democrats knew they were within striking distance of passing the bill that morning and were left dumbfounded by the lack of a direct ask from Biden

When Biden didn’t ask, Pelosi was forced to desperately try to fill in, saying, falsely, “The President has asked for our vote today.” But, recounts Politico, Jayapal’s progressives “dug in against the infrastructure vote that the speaker wanted to tee up—using the president’s lack of a request for cover.” Biden “did not ask for a vote on [infrastructure] today, ” Jayapal told reporters afterward. “The speaker did, but he did not.” Biden flew off to Europe and the planned vote was soon cancelled, for the second time in a month.

If Biden wasn’t going to get the bill passed — and wasn’t even going to ask —why send him to Capitol Hill at all? Embarrassing.

Since the early days of his campaign I have been predicting that Joe Biden would move towards the progressive wing of his party and intimated that it would be an error. As of today it looks very much as though the progressives are dragging the party in the direction of a loss of as many as 40 seats in the 2022 mid-terms. Socialist candidates like the one in Buffalo did particularly poorly and particularly poorly among black voters, the heart of the party. They overwhelmingly voted against “defund the police” candidates and in favor of candidates who ran on law and order and conventional Democratic credentials.

I found William Galston’s column in the Wall Street Journal very thought-provoking. In outlining the results of a Brookings study he writes:

Many political observers think that as the parties have polarized, Democrats have become the liberal mirror-image of a predominantly conservative Republican Party. But conservative views are more common among Democrats than liberal ones are among Republicans. Although Democrats are often portrayed as secular, pro-immigrant internationalists, the survey finds that 45% of Democrats think that believing in God is part of being truly American, and 43% say the same thing about being born in the U.S. More than one-third of Democrats think that being Christian is another such requirement. Thirty-three percent of Democrats say that America is in danger of losing its culture and identity, and 37% believe that the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence.

Who are these often-overlooked Democrats? They are disproportionately black and Hispanic, especially black and Hispanic Protestants. Slightly more are women than men. Not many are under 30, and about 8 in 10 don’t have a four-year college degree. Many white progressives seem unaware that these Democrats exist, but they do, and they matter.

It is disconcerting that so many Republicans consider those who aren’t Christians to be less than fully American. But 35% of Democrats—most of them racial and ethnic minorities—feel the same way.

which, once again, echoes things I’ve been saying around here for some time. Whatever your views it simply isn’t true that Democrats are in lockstep agreement about much of anything and the progressive Democratic leadership is running a risk that they’ll look around and find that voting blocs they previously thought of as reliable aren’t quite as reliable any more for the simple reason that the leadership is so out of touch with what large numbers of Democrats believe. They should understand the risks they’re taking.

Feel lucky?

As for my views I don’t think that you need to have been born in the United States to be “truly American” but it helps. I don’t think you must be Christian to be “truly American” but it helps. I don’t even think you need to speak English to be “truly American” but, once again, it helps.