Giving away the advantage

Sadly for them, Democrats in Washington copped headlines last week.

They did it talking about reducing one unfathomably large dollar amount in a spending bill to another unfathomably large dollar amount.

I can’t rightly picture $3.5 trillion. But then I can’t rightly picture $1.9 trillion either.

Democrats also talked about the esoterica of their negotiations on what to keep, reduce or ditch in that massive bill, which addresses kindergarten, community colleges, climate change, Medicaid expansion, Medicare expansion, family leave, child-care tax credits, dozens of tax increases and revisions and … well, this sentence is getting like the bill — way too long.

The measure contains all those popular proposals but is known for none of them; only for its big number.

Republicans thus won the week when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the real issues for people were not those of Democrats arguing with each other, but gasoline and grocery prices and Democrats proposing “hair of the dog” policies to “inflate their way out of inflation.”

Back-bench sniping is easier than governing, of course. But do the Democrats have to make it that easy?

Meantime, House Democrats and a few brave and noble Republicans in Washington voted to recommend that the House cite Steve Bannon for criminal contempt for defying a subpoena from the special committee investigating the events at the Capitol of Jan. 6. And the Bannon legal strategy was to draw the matter out past the midterms at which time Republicans would gain control and deep-six the investigation.

The confident Republican thinking is that people will care more in November 2022 about the things McConnell talked about than whether Democrats spent $3.5 trillion or $1.9 trillion.

The story is political messaging for the midterms.

The Democratic narrative is boring. Gradations of trillions for wish lists do not connect with voters. Nor does the Democratic narrative of angst-ridden internal debate on whether to lower the spending amount by doing fewer things thoroughly or doing everything on the list less thoroughly.

The discussion of “hard infrastructure” and “soft infrastructure” through “reconciliation” is not as compelling to the public as the questions of what we’re going to do about gasoline prices, grocery prices, supply chains and the border.

Democrats are laden with this internal policy strife because Republicans have defaulted on policy, mainly to cheer inflation and border problems. Democrats are in disarray because they don’t have a real congressional majority but one both razor-thin and as disconnected as a socialist and a West Virginian. Literally.

That’s Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin, who actually get along unless they’re talking about issues — coal-fired electricity-generating facilities, for example, and whether they ought to get money in this bill to reduce emissions, such as from coal, and face fines if they don’t.

You could say Sanders is right in general but that Manchin is defensible specifically because of the state he represents. But that’s not the point.

The point is that a party claiming a majority with a 51-50 Senate split spanning those two fellows — those two constituencies — does not really have a majority.

As Manchin put it, liberals need to elect more liberals if they want to do more liberal things.

There was a report midweek that

Manchin is considering becoming an independent if the eventual compromise is more than he can accept. He called the report “bull- - - -,” but it makes some sense. He could still align with the Democrats’ caucus to preserve a majority they’ll probably lose in November 2022.

Democrats could have acted in linear, incremental and strategic fashion to advance fewer issues at a time and sell those individually popular programs one at a time, not deliver them to oblivion beneath headlines all about $3.5 trillion and $1.9 trillion.

Democrats went with the big comprehensive bill because they can only use budget reconciliation once more this session, thus pass something by themselves absent Republican filibuster. They didn’t want to leave out any Democratic congressman’s play-pretties.

But what if, instead, they had shown the discipline, patience and savvy to use reconciliation only for expanding Medicare for vision, dental and eye care and expanding childcare tax credits for working families? I’m not sure a couple of Republicans wouldn’t have voted for that.

A headline declaring progress on the Democrats’ plan to help old people hear better and enable working folks to keep more of their money by getting relief on child-care costs … that’d be better than a headline of dollar signs, especially with Republicans isolated as the sole opposition, not augmented by factions of Democrats.

And it would better position the Democrats to still be in charge in 2023 and beyond so that they could continue to roll out play-pretties in a linear, incremental and strategic way that would showcase their popularity and isolate the Republican opposition.

But that’s not the way they’ve gone. So, it’s advantage-GOP, for doing nothing except criticizing and chortling.