Will Passage Of Biden Infrastructure Budget Trigger "Trump States" Secession?

(Photo, Senators Manchin and Sanders: reunited and it feels so good...)

Good Morning friends, it's time for your Monday morning wake-up call. Actually, let's call it our Morning Briefing instead. I would hope that my early Blog post is not greeted with anything like my usual violent reaction toward my own alarm clock going off. I've thought about tying a Bungee cord to my phone as a safeguard to protect it, along with our walls and furniture, since I can't afford to keep replacing my phones and destroyed alarm clocks. 

There are indications from Speaker Pelosi and others that the Democrats are "close" on a compromise infrastructure budget, social infrastructure budget, and a "wealth tax" on Billionaires to fund it. There are reports that Manchin is open to it after his Sunday "Mud Wrestling" blowout with the President and Schumer in Delaware yesterday.

Before we get excited though, I would caution that Manchin's ego is such that he might drag the process out interminably, just because. He is sadistic, manipulative, ideologically driven, has backdoor deals with McConnell, despises Bernie Sanders and the Progressives, and sees the FDR Depression Era legacy of the social safety net as an "Entitlement" system.

Manchin has it backwards. The top 5% of the US income brackets have been subsidized by "entitlements" gouged from the living standard of working class families, through an unfair tax burden, and low paid minimum wage labor in order to give huge tax cuts to the wealthy. These tax cuts somehow only seem to "trickle up" to corporations, wealthy donors, the politicians which they buy up, and offshore accounts or tax havens. Manchin is, in effect, worried about giving medicine to a person with a tapeworm because it would do harm to the parasite, and the patient would expect then to receive medicine to treat other sicknesses in the future, which would lower his or her motivation to live a healthy lifestyle.

Manchin and his Right Wing conservative Ilk (just what is an "Ilk" anyway, is it a secret men's hunting club like a "Moose Lodge? "Hey Ken, wanna drop by the Ilk Lodge a little later, I hear they are screening the Squid Games")  have the same line as the Right Wing Billionaires who fund the radical free market think tanks which run the GOP. And, as we all know, several have given significant money to the only Democrat from a very poor State who sails around on the Potomac in a luxury yacht. Are there ever Tsunamis that happen in River systems? People are asking. 

So, we have Manchin, recently announced an honorary Kroch Brother, tag teaming with his highly educated airhead partner from Arizona Kyrsten Sinema, who appears to be in a state of confusion and Oxygen deprived from overtraining for her Triathalon competitions. Either that or she is adapting Tantra techniques to politics, and takes pleasure from keeping everyone hanging. Maybe she will issue a "release" tomorrow to tell us all her plans. 

The truth is, no one knows what the Manchin/Sinema Hydra will do because their ability to sabotage and obstruct is their source of power, and they have their own agenda. Maybe President Biden will have the Pope call Manchin and threaten excommunication.

In the meantime, let's assume that there is a framework for a deal, and it goes through. What happens then? Let us imagine the best case scenario. 

First, Manchin's infamous "ten GOP votes" materialize, the bill passes, and it is hailed as the greatest breakthrough in Bipartisan cooperation since George W. Bush gave Michelle Obama a cough drop at John McCain's funeral. 

The Democratic Centrists and the Progressive Caucus throw a celebratory Halloween Party blowout bash at the Trump Hotel in DC, and by sheer coincidence, all of the men come dressed as Bill Clinton, and the women all wearing pantsuits dressed as...wait for it. Hillary Clinton! And the whole affair goes so well, Manchin and Bernie Sanders hold a joint press conference to announce their trip to Cancun for the holidays, to "reconnect". 

The infrastructure plan is carried out, and the Red State governors issue a joint statement, thanking President Biden, and welcoming the massive Federal government intervention into their States and way of life, by bringing jobs, child care, health care, clean water, safe roads and bridges, and Monster Trucks into their grateful communities. (Wait, is that in the Bill?) They also announce their State's future compliance with mask mandates, vax mandates, and commitment to removing all signs and symbols of the Confederacy. Kristi Noem presents a small statuette of Mt. Rushmore with President Biden's face on it, breaks down in tears and tells the President, "I've just been so f**king wrong about you. I'm so sorry"

And in general, we have a happy ending. The economic benefits of the Biden plan take the wind out of the Insurrection, and because people are working now, they have less time to watch Tucker Carlson, and his ratings crater. Fox is forced to dump Carlson to get their advertisers back, and he shifts over to touring with Mike Lindell, Matt Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Green. And of course, Donald Trump's fundraising collapses, his social media venture fails, and his daughter Ivanka cooperates with the New York prosecution sending Trump to jail for tax fraud. No attorney will represent him so all of his appeals fail. He shares a prison cell with some nice young boys with M19 tattoos, learns a great deal about Mexico, then is rapidly rehabilitated, paroled, and starts off a new life, getting painting lessons from George W. Bush, and takes up a new hobby drawing still life. 

Wait, stop! Really, a happy ending? Violins playing, Unicorns mating, "everything is beautiful" playing in the background? Uh, sorry. That's a hard no. Not happening, and we are not off the hook. We know what will happen but would rather not think about it now, because "it's Monday morning Lance and I'm not letting you ruin my week, ok?!"

Well, I'm just going to have to spell it out anyway. That's what you pay me for. (not)  In life, war, politics and Chess, you are forced by necessity to think several, in fact many moves ahead. You don't have the luxury of caving into exhaustion or brain digestion to "take a break" from the stress, because of the small matter of your having an adversary who never gets tired. You can't relax after a tactical victory, because that gives the enemy a strategic advantage in which your own victory sows the seeds of your defeat. The truth is, that any victory anywhere is only as decisive as the actions WE take following on, to clinch the advantage gained. Some of the worst blunders in military history were the result of not doing that. General Meade's failure to go into hot pursuit of Lee's Army after Gettysburg is one. Napoleon's decision to occupy Moscow and hunker down for the Winter literally went up in smoke, when the Czar ordered partisans to set fire to the Capitol, driving Napoleon and his Army into to clutches of Russia's best General, "General Winter". 

We know that it is likely that the Trump States will escalate their gradual Secession from the Federal government by refusing flat out to comply with Federal law.  Just as it was known that Abraham Lincoln's 1860 Election would trigger Southern Secession. 

Several of the Red State governors refused to distribute stimulus money for unemployment, they continue to nullify the Constitutional protections for voting, they continue their "work arounds" of the Supreme Court decisions on abortion, they are tearing apart the First Amendment through legislating a form of legal book burning in States like Texas. They are deploying State National Guard units to our Southern Border to override US Government policy there. What do you think will happen after this great Democratic Victory? A summit between Trump and Barack Obama at Bill Clinton's Harlem Office? Please. 

Resting after a victory can be fatal. If we are working scenarios in our mind that this legislative package will fix things, or even remain in force for more than two years, we are deluding ourselves. It will do some good in the meantime for sure. Americans will finally get a break. But we all know what the enemy is doing and planning. 

The urgency of getting the Voting Rights legislation passed cannot be overstated. Nothing good will happen down the road if it is not. What this means is that the President needs to see large scale political action from the American population to really have the backup to crush Manchin/Sinema's political will, and find a "carve out" for  the fillibuster to get it done. I don't necessarily mean mass demonstrations, but heightened political activity which is public, though limited by covid restrictions. 

The problem here is that the Trump base, and his fascist political allies like the governors are fanatics, and don't shut down for the holidays. In fact, they have turned the holidays themselves into a strategic flank in their "Culture War". So the question becomes, what are we going to do, if indeed we do get this Bill passed? Can we coast into the New Year, and hope that we can cheerlead the Democrats to some kind of vague and dreamy victory?  

Not really. We know the Democrats are not unified. We know that President Biden has Centrists in his Cabinet that are working on him to appeal to suburban Republican Women, not the traditional base of Democrats in minorities and labor. We know that the Russians, China, and other US adversaries will continue to test and aggressively confront the Biden administration. Putin's machinations with the Gas price have already started an economic shock in the West which we are feeling. Economic shocks don't play well for incumbent Presidents in mid term elections. There are many aspects to this. 

However the most important thing in my view in such a situation does get back to what we do IF and when the Bill is passed. If we are not oriented that way, we will squander the victory. Take it from an old revolutionary, this is how history works. 

OK, signing off, until tomorrow.