Reality check: The stakes of the infrastructure and reconciliation bills

 There were many posts I had in my head as I approached my computer this morning, heaping mug of coffee in hand.  Yet when a political science grumble sings its siren song, who am I to resist?  That's right.  I am no one.  Or rather, I am just a schlub, shouting into the void.  So I shall shout some political science into the void, to vent a little frustration at an irritating line of bullshit currently floating around the political commentariat.

The Democrats currently have two bills that may or may not pass.  They have their infrastructure bill, which has some bipartisan support, and they have their catch-all bill, which is more like a grab back of social spending items, being moved under budget reconciliation rules so that it can pass on a straight party line vote, as long as literally every Democrat stays in line, and I detest misuse of the word, "literally," but the Senate is 50-50, so even a single Democratic defection in the Senate kills the bill, even though budget reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered due to a quirk in Senate procedure.  Anyway, what if the Democrats... fail?

Failure is always an option.  If anyone ever tells you that failure isn't an option, you look that person right in the eyes and give 'em the Lost line:  "don't tell me what I can't do!"  What I can't do being ironic in this particular instance.  Can Democrats fail?  Have ya' seen these people?  Yes, they can fail.  I have confidence in their ability to lack ability, and if you don't, you're able-ist, you bigot, you!

Where was I?  Oh, right.  Point being, this could fall apart.  Remember how amped Republicans were to, like, do something about Obamacare, and then the whole thing turned into farce in 2017, completely independently of all of the other farces that were politics under the Trump Administration ?  (While I'm on the topic, remember that McCain, Collins and Murkowski canceled out their 'no' votes because the 2017/8 tax bill included a repeal of the individual mandate, which was the only thing on the floor under the weird nickname of 'skinny repeal' when they voted 'no,' so make sure you never give any of them credit for bravery or standing up to their party, or anything like that.  Least of all, McCain, who was a fraud, who should be remembered primarily for his role in the Keating 5, but I'm way off track in a parenthetical.  How does one escape parentheses of one's own construction?)

Where was I?  Flyingspaghettimonsterdamned parentheses.  Yes, the Democrats could fail.

What if they do?  So here's the line of bullshit motivating this morning's grumbling:  if the Democrats don't pass their bill(s), they're toast in the 2022 midterm!

Um... do you know enough political science to spot the flaw in this assertion?  It's quite simple.  They're toast anyway!

OK, let's lay this out.  The general term is "surge and decline."  This is sort of a Kleenex thing-- a brand, and a generic.  The term is associated with both a general empirical pattern, and a specific model, but whatever.  For today, anyway.  The empirical pattern is as follows.  Whichever party wins the White House tends to pick up seats in Congress, and then lose seats in the midterm.  Of course, 2020 was actually kind of complicated.  The presidential year effect has a lot goin' on, and that effect is contingent on stuff, but the midterm elections?

In the House, there are two modern midterms in which the president's party gained seats-- 2002, and 1998.  In 1998, the Republicans were facing a backwashlash for an impeachment that public opinion did not support.  Most of the electorate looked at the Clinton/Lewinsky matter and simply didn't think it came anywhere near... let me re-write that... did not approach the standard for removal from office.  23 years, and the bad jokes are still impossible to avoid.  Like, I wrote that, and it wasn't until after I typed it that I thought, and had to do the ellipses, and... enough.  Moving on.  Point being, Newt was cheating on his wife with a staffer and impeaching the president for having an affair with an intern, which had fuck-all to do with the Whitewater land deal, which was what Ken Starr was originally hired to "investigate" under a broad mandate, and this did not sit well with public opinion, so the electorate took that out on the GOP.  Newt was then out, which led to Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA) as the presumptive Speaker until Hustler Magazine's Larry Flynt put out a million dollar offer for dirt on Republicans involved in the impeachment, which took down Livingston.  That put Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) in the Speaker's office, and Hastert was actually a high school wrestling coach.  Translation:  child molester.  No joke.  In fact, he was paying blackmail money, which was illegal, because you're not allowed to pay blackmailers, and when the cops caught him making the payments, that sent him to prison.

But I'm not done.  So, when Livingston had to step down, he was replaced by Rep. David Vitter (R-LA) who was a hardcore "family values" Republican, who was eventually caught with his name in the "DC Madam's" books, which meant he was spending a lot of time and money with DC hookers, but since he was more shameless than his predecessors, he just stayed around, ran for Senate, and the political world got used to hypocritical shitbags like him, and then eventually, you get the apotheosis of shitbaggery and Republican "family values" hypocrisy in mushroom-boy himself, Donald Trump.

Point being, 1998 was weird.  Nobody cared about the Lewinsky thing beyond the comedians, and I'm not talking about Eddie Blake, but the GOP impeached.  Slightly different from inciting an insurrection and attempting to overthrow democracy.  Just... as an example.  Anyway, though, that meant that in 1998, the Dems picked up some seats, breaking from the pattern, as Clinton's approval rating went up during the impeachment saga.

Then there was 2002.  Do I have to spell this out for you?  In 2001, to quote that idiotic, antisemitic, anti-American shitbag, Ilhan Omar, "some people did something."  Actually, yeah, that really is language to diminish 9/11.  Yeah, that's what it is.  Stop defending her, Democrats.  She is not a good person.  Neither party consists 100% of good people.  Can you grasp that?  At least in the abstract?  And once you grasp that in the abstract, can you figure out how to assess whether or not you are looking at one of the bad ones?  'Cuz Omar?  She's a bad one.

Anyway, on September 11, 2001, some psychopathically evil, radical islamic terrorists committed the worst attack on American soil in modern history.  They murdered several thousand Americans in an act of war.  You know:  some people doing something.  Here's what happens.  The political science term is the rally 'round the flag effect.  In times of national crisis, contingent on elite consensus, public support for the president goes up.  And it did, to an historic high.  By the 2002 midterm, it had declined noticeably, but George W. Bush's approval rating was still remarkably high.  Way higher than any president has a reason to expect.  And the Republicans picked up seats.

So 9/11, and the Lewinsky impeachment.  Those are your midterms that break from the midterm loss pattern.  You can get some weirdness in a presidential election year, blah, blah, but the Democrats' House majority?

That is absolutely fucking gone in 2022.  Period.  It doesn't matter what happens with the infrastructure bill, the reconciliation bill, state-level rules on absentee ballots, or any of that shit.  Nancy Pelosi ain't gonna be Speaker, and it won't be because those dumbasses in her caucus are going to depose her in one of their childish fits of pique.

McCarthy?  Call that 50/50.  He wants it.  He wants it like Trump was to be declared god emperor of the known universe, but the thing is, he is so obviously a fraud, even within the GOP, that he satisfies no one.  The contingent within the House GOP that just wants to manage the loonies looks at him as someone who will indulge the loonies to the point of danger, so they don't trust him, and the true crackpots can smell their own, so they know he's faking it.  We've been down this road before with McCarthy, and I got into a thing about it when I wrote a piece elsewhere, but here, my blog, my rules, so I'm just telling you straight up, don't assume it's McCarthy.  Who will it be?  I dunno.  Maybe Scalise, maybe someone even crazier than Scalise, and he's pretty out there, but don't assume it's McCarthy, and since no one is editing me (obviously), I don't have anyone forcing me to assume McCarthy.  Who is still a shitweasel.  See?  No editor.  All me, baby.

What if another 9/11 happened?  The modern Republican Party would say that Biden, and the Democrats planned it.  Not just that they failed to stop it, but that they fucking did it.  9/11 was one of the two instances in modern history that led to a midterm gain for the president's party, because of a rally effect.  Rally effects are contingent on elite consensus.

We can't have that anymore.  We can't have facts anymore.  Yeah, I bash the Democrats a lot these days.  I think they are going nuts.  But COVID denialism, anti-vaxxerism, 2020 election conspiracy theories, authoritarianism, support for an insurrection... the modern Republican Party is no longer a small-d democratic political party.  It's an authoritarian, insurrectionist, pro-terrorist group, seeking to break down small-d democratic institutions and seize power.

Democrats suck.

Republicans... holy shit.

The Republicans are not in an institutional position to impeach Biden for not being Trump, and rally effects can't really happen anymore.

So the Republicans will get the House in 2022.  The Democrats' margin is razor thin, and it'll be gone.  And that Senate margin?  That 50-50 margin?  Predicting that stuff right now is difficult, because it can turn a lot on who the nominees will be, but if the Democrats lose even one seat, the Senate is gone.

Hey, Breyer!  Retire, you narcissistic asshole!  (And Democrats?  Stop liking Ginsburg.  She fucked you, because she was stupid and narcissistic.  Stop it with the hero-worship.  Never with the hero-worship.)

Are there any electoral consequences to passage or failure?  Marginally.  There are actually a bunch of attempts to measure this stuff, and I'm not going to do a thorough lit review on a Saturday morning blog post, but here are the main relevant variables:  presidential approval, congressional approval, and approval of the incumbent.

Is success or failure really going to impact Biden's approval in a way that will carry forward to the election?  If it did, that would mean consequences for the midterm, because presidential approval does impact seat swings, and even though the Dems will lose the House, there may be a difference between the GOP having a razor-thin majority like the Dems now have, and them having a whopping majority.  Passage or failure here would be playing around in the margins.  The real effects are when Congress passes, and the president signs an unpopular bill.  When that happens, the majority suffers.  See, for example, Clinton's 1993 budget, Obamacare, and others.  But failure to pass a mostly popular bill, when people just don't really know the contents?  Likely irrelevant.

Congressional approval?  Well, yeah, people justifiably hate Congress anyway, but movement matters a bit, but really, the same principles apply as above.

The interesting stuff is more in terms of incumbent approval.  To the extent that an individual incumbent could engage in "credit-claiming" (see: David Mayhew's Congress: The Electoral Connection) for some financial benefit for constituents, there may be an electoral benefit for passage, but a) incumbent reelection rates are way over 90% most years anyway, and b) the effect will be small, and on the margin.  Bigger effects are, once again, for passage of an unpopular bill, which this isn't.

Mostly, this is electorally irrelevant.  If the Democrats pass this stuff, some incumbents would be able to tell their constituents, hey, I gave you X, isn't that awesome?!  Vote for me!  On the margin, that might move a few votes, but that's only on the margin.  The bigger thing is that they're just going to lose.  One way or another, they're going to lose.  2022 is a midterm election, there's a Democratic president, there's no rally effect, or bizarre impeachment, so they're-a-gonna lose.

The question is this.  What do you do now?

You may be tempted to pose it this way.  What do you do with your majority, when you have it?

But the thing is, the Democrats don't really have a majority.  They have a majority in the House of Representatives.  They do not have a working majority in the Senate.  They have 48 or 49 seats in the Senate, depending on what we think of Kyrsten Sinema today, and then there's a guy from West Virginia who will refrain from giving Mitch McConnell procedural control of the chamber, but is in no real sense a "Democrat."

From 1954 through 1994, the Democrats had a nominal majority in the House of Representatives.  Note:  "nominal."  It was not a functional majority.  Instead, we refer to "the conservative coalition" during much of this period, as the coalition between Republicans and the Southern Democrats, which often constituted more than 50% of the House.  That coalition stymied the Northern Democrats, and if you didn't understand the intra-party division within the Democrats, and just looked at which party "had a majority," you wouldn't understand the politics of the era.

The Democrats do not have a working majority.  Part of their frustration right now is that they keep looking at "50 seats in the Senate," and thinking that this means they control the Senate.  The Democrats control the Senate, right?

No, they don't.  That's not how Congress works, that's not how parties work, that's not how the legislative process works, that's not how the Constitution works, that's not how humans work, that's not how math works, and that's not how voting works.

It is not that either "the Democrats have control," or, "the Republicans have control," and whether or not stuff happens depends on whether or not "that party," as a unitary actor, acts with competence.  A party is not a unitary actor.  Not in this country, anyway.  If you want that, move to fuckin' China, and even there, it's a little more complicated.  No, "the Democrats" do not have control.

Might they fail?  Yup.  They might.  And if they do, will they lose Congress?  Well, yes, but they're going to lose Congress anyway.

So right now, this is about a policy negotiation.  If you like this stuff, try to pass it.  Because you like it.  And you go through the sausage-making process, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but you do it because that's why you try to win office, not to win office.

Because you're gonna lose anyway.  Losers.

And I really have no choice but to play this live performance by the Drive-By Truckers.  I haven't posted them in a while anyway, and that's just wrong.