Democratic
centrists and progressives remain in a tizzy over how they should
approach the passage of President Biden’s infrastructure and
reconciliation bills. The centrists want the infrastructure to move
first while the progressives want them to move as an all-or-nothing
package deal. After an earlier commitment to move them together and
call a vote for the former, Speaker Pelosi has decided to decouple
the two.
All
eyes are on Speaker Pelosi as she works her magic to get
infrastructure through with a promissory note that the reconciliation
bill will immediately follow. Simultaneously, Sen. Mitch McConnell
has thrown down the gauntlet, telling the Democrats that no
Republican Senator will vote with them to raise the debt ceiling, and
therefore, leaving them to pass it alone or allow the nation to go
into insolvency.
Thus,
with their slim majorities in the House and Senate, and faced with
internal and external distractions in their effort to pass
legislation, Democrats seem to be unaware as to how they are being
‘played.’ The reality of these contretemps is that it
demonstrates that the Democrats’ focus on their alleged mission
of equity has presently been derailed.
Republicans
are hanging together politically while their Democratic opponents
are, perplexingly, engaged in hand-to-hand, political combat among
themselves - to the GOP’s delight. While all of this occurs,
Republicans are upscaling ongoing school-choice initiatives via
virtual schools, vouchers, and corporate-owned charter schools.
Michigan,
the home state of former Trump Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, is
on a tear in its expansion of corporate-owned charter schools and the
movement of White students to all-White schools and nearly all-White
school districts. Betsy DeVos is back funding these programs and
schemes with her multi-billion dollar fortune through her American
Federation for Children (AFC), which she founded and primarily funds.
She
has also targeted North Carolina, Texas Tennessee, Georgia, Arizona,
and a mass of red and blue states to expand the reach of the
privatization of public schools. Her endeavors are largely being
ignored while Americans’ and Democrats’ concentrate on
eradicating COVID-19 and personal squabbles. Republicans are running
free with a school-choice agenda as their corporate donors fill their
campaign coffers.
Along
with the aforementioned moves, Republicans are being helped by
Democrats ignoring the escalating gun violence among youth of color
during the pandemic. Chicago, Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, and
other large and small urban centers are awash in school-related and
neighborhood shootings causing communities of color to question
Democratic priorities.
It
got so bad in Durham, North Carolina that the Chancellor of the local
Historically Black University, North Carolina Central University
(NCCU), held a news conference on September 20th to inform the
community that the September 18th murders of two men in an NCCU
parking lot during a home football game caused the local police
department to lock down the stadium.
Murders
and shootings have increased dramatically in Chicago; Mayor Lori
Lightfoot has “…pledged
more funding to “Choose to Change,” which provides
students at a higher risk of gun violence involvement in positive
mentoring, therapy, enrichment activities and more.”
These incidents of violence are sweeping urban communities across
the nation, according to federal data, are pandemic-related, and are
disproportionately occurring among low-income families and youth of
color.
These
issues are major challenges facing communities of color who were the
base voters of the 2020 Democratic victories and will be essential to
holding the Democratic majorities in the 2022 midterms and keeping
the presidency in 2024. The Democrats are, perhaps unintentionally,
ceding their political advantage to Republicans by the negligence of
their base.
The
Republican strategy is to cause dissension and loss of morale within
the ranks of Democratic voters as the politicians to whom they
delivered the reins of political power are not delivering on their
promises of voting rights, climate change, health and child care, and
police reform.
The
two voting rights bills, the ‘For
the People Act’
and the ‘John
Lewis Voting Rights Advancement
Act’
have
basically been sidelined from discussion and debate. Irrespective of
the ravages wrought by Hurricane Ida, in an odd kind of unity,
Republicans and Democrats have stalled climate change. Health and
child care, and social infrastructure legislation, have been paused
with no clear path to implementation. Despite the year-long protests
following George Floyd’s murder, the naive efforts of the only
two Black U.S. Senators, Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) and Cory Booker
(D-New Jersey) have scuttled police reform.
To
quote former World Heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson, “Everybody
has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Here, Republicans have repeatedly hit Democrats in the mouth with
jabs, political left and right hooks, and uppercuts, and despite
their eyes being politically blackened and bleeding from their
mouths, Democrats have yet to respond.
The
Republicans have Democrats chasing their tails and running in place.
Their aim is to have a drop-off in the turnout of the Democratic base
as it becomes disillusioned with its leaders as it reaps limited
returns on the political investment it made in 2020, flipping several
purple and red states to blue. Along with Republicans’
continuing success with voter suppression laws, Democrats are headed
for political annihilation in the 2022 midterms and the 2024
presidential election unless they attend to the needs of their
voters.
|