Why facing reality on the filibuster is so difficult for Democrats, and broad lessons

 The Democrats' voting legislation is dead.  It is an ex-bill.  Its plumage may be lovely, but it was dead when you bought it, and the only reason that credulous consumers convinced themselves otherwise is that it had been nailed to its perch.  May I interest you in something else?  Perhaps a half-a-bee?  His name is Eric.  Fish licenses are sold next door.

Would I have voted for the various bills the Democrats have drafted?  Yes.  I do not agree with everything in them, much of the breathless rhetoric is hyperventilation over nothing, as was the case with voter IDs, but the threat of handing administrative tasks to Republican hacks, and worse yet, creating pathways to overturn legitimate vote counts... this is serious stuff.  Nevertheless, these bills were all dead on arrival.  As dead as that parrot.  I would not have wasted any money on that parrot, nor any real effort on bills that had zero chance of passing.  Did it made sense for congressional Democrats to draft doomed legislation for symbolic purposes?  See Mayhew, David.  Congress: The Electoral Connection.  My point for today is not the strategy of crafting doomed legislation.  My point for today is the denialism.  The problem that many Democrats, within Congress, outside of it, and even working at various levels within the White House, have seemed unable to grasp the doomed nature of these bills.

Perhaps some nails would help.  Not for a coffin, but to assist in the "grasping."  They kept the parrot on the perch, so maybe they'll help the lefties grasp what should have been obvious concepts.

Every time I start one of these posts, I tell myself that I'm going to be less snarky and more purely analytical.  And then the snarky references come to mind and I remember that nobody reads this blog, so why not just make a reference?  The joke already went through my mind anyway.  If a blog snarks and nobody reads it, did it really snark?

Anyway, these legislative efforts were doomed from the get-go.  The Democrats' chances of passing anything were always precisely zero.  Let's have a quick review of some indisputable observations.

1)  The Democrats do not have the votes to invoke the nuclear option.  Period.  Manchin and Sinema have been clear from the start that they would vote against invoking the nuclear option.

2)  The Democrats cannot pass any legislation on voting without using the nuclear option.

3)  Following from 1 and 2, the Democrats cannot pass any federal legislation on voting.  Period.  There was never a fight.  This was never a battle, a struggle, or any other word you may choose.  This was always arithmetic, and arithmetic does not care about anything but raw numbers.  The Democrats do not have a working majority in the Senate.

4)  Precisely zero anger should be directed at Joe Biden.  Anyone angry about any of this should direct their anger first at Republicans, and secondarily at Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, to the degree that one believes that it would be appropriate to abolish the filibuster.

5)  There is no such thing as a "carve-out" for the filibuster, applying to voting legislation and only to voting legislation.  To invoke the nuclear option on any of the pending legislation under any such specious claim would guarantee, with 100% certainty, that under unified Republican government, any time the GOP wants to pass a bill being filibustered by the Democrats, the GOP "carves out" an exception to the filibuster under the same specious reasoning.  Harry Reid made the silly ruling that his use of the nuclear option applied to court appointments below SCOTUS, but not to SCOTUS.  You saw how effectively that "carve-out" limitation worked.  The same principle applies.

None of these points are debatable, and all have been clear since the start.  Yet, Democrats and left-wing activists have been in denial about each of them.  They have told themselves that if they "fight" hard enough, maybe they could pass something.  No.  They have been talking about the nuclear option as though it were an option.  It is not.  It never was, as I have been telling you from the beginning.  They do not have the votes, and they never did.  Some fool came up the the idea of the "carve-out," as though Republicans would come into the majority and say, oh darn, that nuclear option requires us to respect Democratic filibusters!  Darn it!  And no, McConnell would not nuke the filibuster.  How do we know?  A)  He didn't, and b) he didn't because he wanted to do what he is doing now.

When you are trying to pass legislation, it is easy to forget that the shoe will be on the other foot, and you will want to use the filibuster to stop the other side, and it is similarly easy to forget all the times you did use the filibuster to stop them in the past.  For some unfathomable reason, Democrats can't seem to remember that they have ever filibustered anything!

What should Democrats do right now?  Organize and mobilize for in-person voting.  Yes, it's harder, but think in terms of move-and-countermove.  Republicans are making a move.  What is your best countermove?  Not the move you'd like to make, but can't, but the best move you can make?  Organize and mobilize.  Move.  Get up, and move.

How should Democrats prepare for the fact that the GOP will inevitably attempt to steal the 2024 election if Dems win with a new mobilization effort?  Mass protest, of some appropriate form.  That's the end of democracy, and that's much harder, but right now, the task is old-fashioned GOTV.  Like the old days.  One step at a time.  One task at a time.  One problem at a time.

And instead, Democrats and left-wing activists have been engaging in something else.  Riverboat gamblers, on the River Nile.  Knowledge is required for such endeavors, as I understand it.  I do not endorse gambling.  I recommend that you live within your means, save, and invest.  Most studies show that your best returns come from passively managed index funds, such as an S&P fund.  Gambling?  I do not recommend gambling, despite the placid romance of a riverboat.  Some rivers are different from others, of course.  That Egyptian river?  Tricksy.  Very tricksy.  Tricksy riverses.

Should you find yourself compelled to board a riverboat for some gambling trip, avoid that Egyptian one.  Cognitive errors abound upon that cradle of human civilization.  Your next bit of wisdom, contingent upon the error of riverboat gambling?  Knowledge.  Knowledge of probability.  The probability of winning, the probability of losing, and how that must affect your decision to lay down your hand, or possibly "hold."

Look, nobody reads this blog, but in the hypothetical case that anyone did, that person would know that I sincerely love country music, but not so much that particular style.  Pop country is not my thing.  Appalachian?  Bluegrass?  Modern "Americana/No Depression" or whatever used to be called "alternative country?"  Yeah, love it.  But I'm not singing that song, not even with my typin' fingers.  Yet there is no way to avoid it.

Look, Dems.  Your hand sucks.  It doesn't just suck.  This isn't even poker.  All the cards are already on the table.  They were from the start.  This is not five card stud, Texas hold 'em, or any other game in existence.  Every variation of poker in existence requires there to be private information.  I must have cards that only I can see, and you must have cards that only you can see.  Other forms of gambling must at least have some element of random chance.

There is no private information here.  No random chance.

This is chess.  This is 'mate in two, you're on the losing side, and your opponent is McConnell rather than Trump, so he isn't going to do something so phenomenally stupid that you somehow win with an un-winnable position.  There's no game here.

In chess, when you find yourself in this position, you tip your king.  You do it, not necessarily as a sign of respect, but just to avoid playing out the inevitable.

What you don't do is engage in smack-talk, pretend that you have some trick up your sleeve to win, get mad at the ref, or any other silliness.

Chess, an already-lost hand in poker, whatever.  The game is over.  There never was a game.  The Democrats cannot win this in the Senate.  Period.  They never could.  It's not Joe Biden's fault, there's no nuclear option, "carve-outs" don't work, and I can't find a Democrat other than Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema who recognized this basic reality.

Why?

Rage and reality denial operate in a vicious, mutually reinforcing cycle.  Anger creates incentives to believe absurdities wherein the impossible becomes possible, and an inevitable loss can become a victory.  When that victory fails to materialize because it was based on denial of reality, the anger multiplies and the cycle begins anew.

Does this sound familiar?  Like... Donald Trump?

Donald Trump is as divorced from reality as any figure in political history, and as motivated by pure rage as anyone this side of the Hulk, except that the Hulk is cool, and Donnie is orange instead of green, and I apologize deeply for that pointlessly banal comment.  I'd like to think that I'm better than that, but I know I'm not.  I suck, but at least I'm not in denial about that.

Anyway, as we continue to live in the shadow of January 6, we should remember how we got there.  By that, I mean the ridiculous plot to steal the election that Trump and his kooky lawyers handed to Pence and the congressional GOP as part of January 6.  It involved contesting the electors, having Pence declare Trump the winner, and a bunch of other insanity.  I shall not rehash it here, because others have summarized it more effectively, but the most important point for today is that Trump did not have the votes.  It was a doomed plot.

Why did Trump think it would work?  It is not merely that Trump is stupid, although he is.  He was angry.  So he told himself that a stupid idea without the votes would somehow work.  The more clear it became that he didn't have a way to hang onto the White House, the angrier he got, and the more credulous he got when offered tenth-baked plots to steal the election.  Even when shown, indisputably, that he didn't have the votes, he still thought that somehow, it would work.

Why?  Trump begins at a base-level of stupidity.  His anger makes him even less capable of processing information.  Show him that he is losing, and that he has no way to win, and he gets angry.  He denies reality with greater vehemence as a way of coping with his anger.  His new plot fails.  What happens?  He gets angrier, and justifying that anger requires distancing himself ever more from the fact-based world.

Anger and reality denial reinforcing each other in a vicious cycle.

And here are the Democrats.

As I said, I would vote for these bills, but the votes aren't there.  This was always doomed.  Carve-outs are stupid and unworkable, Manchin and Sinema told you long ago that they weren't going to support the nuclear option, Biden never had any cards to play, and any anger directed at him is absurdly misdirected.  Failure to understand these points, from Day 1, has been Trumpian reality denial.

That leads to anger.  Anger leads to... no, I'm not doing that.

What do you do when you count up the votes, and see that you don't have them?  You move on.  You find another avenue.  In this case, that means GOTV.  The old way.  What about if the Dems win in 2024, and Republicans try to toss the results?

One step at a time.  First step is you gotta fucking win, and this is not the path to winning.  This?  This is the path to Trumpian self-own.

Yes, it is difficult to recognize when you can't win.  Every officer who faces the Kobayashi Maru thinks there's a way to win.  But the only way to win is to cheat.

Kirk cheated.

Of course, the nuclear option is cheating.  It isn't changing the rules.  Changing the rules takes a 2/3 supermajority.  The nuclear option is cheating.  I have covered this, many times.  However, after Kirk pulled that stunt, you have to assume that Star Fleet ratcheted up the security on that simulator to prevent anyone else from doing the same thing.

The security preventing the Dems from cheating on this Kobayashi Maru?

Their names are Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.  You aren't getting through them.  You never were.  This is real-deal Kobayashi Maru territory.  The point of the test is how you face a no-win situation.  The Dems are failing in the real world.  But there is an answer.

The answer is to play a different game.  The old-fashioned, GOTV game.  Deluding yourself into thinking you can beat the Kobayashi Maru?  And getting angry when you lose every time?  No, you are completely failing this test, Dems.

Anger and reality denial.  That's a bad combination, because at the end of the day, politics isn't about "fighting."  Remember Elizabeth Warren?  Remember her, but only to learn the core lesson that she was always wrong about everything.  Legislating is nothing more than counting.  Actually much of politics is counting.  Math is dispassionate.  Never let it be otherwise, save passion for the beauty of math itself.