Thread by @drvolts

A 🧵on the Republican approach to killing Dem initiatives.

Rs were caught flat-footed by the Covid recovery bill last month -- it was popular, the insurrection was still on people's minds, they couldn't find an effective attack line, it was a rout. That won't happen again.

Rs are on much firmer ground now, in the face of a big spending bill that's not tied to an immediate crisis. They will run the same play they ran on Obama several times.

Step one is promising that they are open to cooperation. They *want* an infrastructure bill, really!

That then sucks Dems into negotiations, where they will agree to give things up in the name of compromise. That will go on as long as Rs can keep it going -- they will draw it out & draw it out, with cooperation always juuuust over the horizon.

In giving up pieces of their plan, Dems implicitly *concede Republican critiques*. Oh, this really is "too much spending." Oh, this spending really is frivolous. Oh, we really don't need this much money for this particular area. Oh, this really isn't related to infrastructure.

Thus will the headlines go: Republicans attack, Dems retreat. Dems go on record with every critique they concede, every bit of spending they're willing to give up. They will collaborate in sapping the urgency & turning focus away from benefits, to "costs."

After Republicans have succeeded in getting as many concessions as they can, after they've kept "partisan squabbling" in the headlines for weeks/months, after they've made the whole process contentious, ugly, & unpopular ... they will bail. Zero support, zero votes.

This leaves Dems with the worst of all worlds -- an ugly process, a bunch of substantive policy concessions, a bill that now looks like a jalopy ... AND a "party line vote" that signals to the public that they're being rigid & uncompromising.

Make the process ugly, make Dems look weak, & then bail & make Dems look partisan. It's super-shitty, but it works. They ran it on Obama's stimulus; they ran it on his health care plan. And they're going to run it on Biden's investment bills.

Unfortunately, Dems can't just skip the whole empty, pointless process & go straight to passing whatever 50 Dems can pass -- which would at least make them look decisive & keep focus on the bill's benefits -- because Joe Manchin has silly, vain political games to play.

In fact, one reason the bill is vulnerable -- the big tax hikes, which Rs are trumpeting as usual -- is only in there to satisfy Manchin's ridiculous & unfounded deficit hysteria! He made the bill vulnerable to R attacks in the name of "fiscal conservatism"! So f'ing dumb.

Anyway, I'm no Machiavelli, I don't know exactly how Dems can pull this off. They gotta do what they gotta do for Manchin, so he can be fully convinced that Rs won't cooperate. I guess the one thing I'd emphasize is *speed*. Getting bogged down will be the death of this thing.

The key thing to remember is that *only political obsessives care about process*. Rs will fool media into focusing on process obsessively, but voters. don't. care.

W/in a week of passage, all process stories will fade from the news. Only results matter.

Ignore bad-faith R process complaints. Process stories are vapor. Get the money out the door & in front of voters. Show voters actual things changing/happening. That is the political north star & the only path to survival in 2022. </fin>