Republicans really are serious about becoming a minority-rule party. The party’s vote-suppression legislation in state after state is simply their most bald-faced effort in that direction. But not the only one.
The party is making a concerted effort to undercut widespread public support for President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan. Why, this element isn’t infrastructure, and that isn’t infrastructure, they complain. Only roads and bridges (and maybe airports) count as infrastructure, conservatives argue.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell declared last week that Biden’s plan “is not going to get support from our side.” McConnell said he will fight Biden’s agenda “every step of the way.”
Meaning, what the majority of American people want the Republican minority will oppose. That’s some real “outside the ballot box” thinking there.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Wednesday evening pointed to a Politico/Morning Consult poll (above) showing majority support for elements of Biden’s infrastructure package. Even among Republican voters.
That does not mean congressional Republicans will not pull out all the stops to persuade Americans that they don’t want their government to do what they want their government to do.
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent consulted Sean McElwee of Data for Progress about how Democrats (with no help from Sen. Joe Manchin) might push back. Ditch “caregiving infrastructure” for “health care jobs,” McElwee suggests:
“You’re basically setting up a situation like 2018, where Democrats wanted to give you health care, and Republicans wanted to strip it away,” McElwee told me.
McElwee said the particulars of Biden’s plan could play well in 2022 precisely because they are focused on funding health care for the elderly.
“Older voters are most likely to be engaged and mobilized in a midterm environment,” McElwee said.
Referring to “health care jobs,” McElwee suggested, casts the concept of a care economy or a caregiving infrastructure as a blueprint for creating jobs while making more health care available to more people.
“I don’t think it’s bad for us to be talking about this as part of an infrastructure bill,” McElwee told me. “It’s the strongest grounds for us to be talking about it.”
And a place Republicans do not want to be again after their disastrous losses in the 2018 mid-term elections.
As the millennial generation ages, they will soon be caring for older parents:
“Home health care and eldercare — that’s a millennial issue,” McElwee told me, adding that branding Democrats as the party that wants to invest in these things could pay off just when millennials start voting “at much higher rates.”
Combine that with this poll data from Gallup:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In Gallup polling throughout the first quarter of 2021, an average of 49% of U.S. adults identified with the Democratic Party or said they are independents who lean toward the Democratic Party. That compares with 40% who identified as Republicans or Republican leaners. The nine-percentage-point Democratic advantage is the largest Gallup has measured since the fourth quarter of 2012. In recent years, Democratic advantages have typically been between four and six percentage points.
The Grim Reaper and his minority-rule party have Joe Biden just where they want him.