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Infrastructure week meets infrastructure summer

Photo: Santa Cruz Sentinel sportswriter Jim Seimas.

“Passing legislation is not a made-for-TV movie,” former legislative affairs director at the Obama White House, Phil Schiliro, tells the Associated Press. It is going to be a long, hot summer for Joe Biden’s $4 trillion “build back better” infrastructure plan:

To land the bills on his desk, the president is relying on an old-school legislative process that can feel out of step with today’s fast-moving political cycles and hopes for quick payoffs. Democrats are anxious it is taking too long and he is wasting precious time negotiating with Republicans, but Biden seems to like the laborious art of legislating.

On Monday, Biden is expected to launch another week of engagement with members of both parties, and the White House is likely at some point to hear from a bipartisan group of senators working on a scaled-back $1 trillion plan as an alternative.

“Everybody wants to do infrastructure,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. But do they?

Donald Trump governed by tweet. But Trump had neither the skill nor the inclination for legislating. “Infrastructure week” quickly became a joke under his administration. Biden’s old-school approach is slow, and may yet prove fruitless. Republicans are not in a bipartisan mood and more interested in running out the clock on Biden’s term. Democratic attempts at swaying them are at best performative, suggests Charles Blow in the New York Times, an attempt to show they played the game with honor:

But that is meaningless when Republicans no longer care about that form of morality, when they no longer want to play the game by the established rules at all. Democrats are playing an honor game; Republicans are playing an endgame.

Republicans are in win-at-all-costs mode. They don’t really care how they sound today or will be judged by history. The only thing that matters is winning and retaining power, defending the narrative of America that white people created and protecting the power and wealth they accrued because of it.

Democrats’ narrow margins in both houses hand its moderates their own veto over progressive ambitions. That’s before one considers that Republicans have no interest in signing on to Democratic legislative victories. “Democrats must brace for massive disappointment,” Blow cautions:

I say dispense with the phony, wish-driven narrative Democrats are selling. Go down screaming and fighting. Much of the Democratic agenda may be stalled, but never stop reminding voters why it is: not because Democrats haven’t compromised enough, but because they could never compromise enough.

The current status quo is an unwinnable negotiation, because it isn’t a negotiation. This is a war. And in it, all is fair. Republicans have embraced a liar and racist in Donald Trump because their voters embraced him. They have excused and multiplied, in fantastical ways, the insurrection at the Capitol. They are rushing to write voter restrictions that also give them more say over how results are verified.

There is a story here, but it’s not a legislative process one. Democrats cannot be the heroes in that story if they don’t name the bad guys. Voter restrictions did not erect themselves. Republicans erected them to stop you from voting. The popular infrastructure package will not stall itself. Republicans will stall it. Say so. Over and over and over.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again:

How many Rocky movies did Stallone make? And they’re all the same movie. So why do people keep going? Because so many Americans themselves feel like underdogs. We want to root for the little guy with heart. Facing insurmountable odds. Risking it all. We want to feel the thrill up our spines and in the tops of our heads when Bill Conti’s trumpet fanfare introduces the training sequence. We want to hear that. Wait for it. Cheer for it. Pay for it. Over and over and over.

Democrats think politics is about good policy and good governance. It is. But only if you win the power to make it happen. Elections are not about good policy. If Trumpism has not disabused Democrats of that fantasy, there’s no hope for them. Voters want leaders — even phony ones — willing to fight for them and to risk themselves in the effort. Wimps need not apply. Stern words to not count.

Rocky lost his match with Apollo Creed and won Best Picture beating All the President’s Men, Network, Taxi Driver, and Bound for Glory. Take a lesson, Democrats.

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