Things have changed for the better on Capitol Hill. Republicans are passing legislation, which hasn’t happened since 2020, and there is a pleasing, if limited, measure of bipartisanship, which had been absent throughout the grim tenure of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
It is not just that Republicans now own the House majority and that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has, as Karl Rove pointed out, restored regular order and respect across the aisle. Nor is it that Democrats are helping pass GOP legislation, let alone in gratitude that the minority is no longer treated with contempt. Republican legislation is passing, rather, because McCarthy is holding his once-fractious conference together — he only has five votes to spare — and because Democrats have lost their Senate majority.
This last extraordinary development wasn’t achieved in an election. It is just that members of the blue party are ailing and incapable of doing their jobs. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has been out for a week with age-related health problems, and Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is being treated for depression. It’s weeks at best before he can return to work, and there are grounds to suspect he’ll never recover sufficiently from the stroke he suffered 10 months ago. Then newly installed Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) would appoint a replacement. Fetterman’s wife, Gisele, would get the sympathy vote and has long aroused suspicion.
The upshot? Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who thought he’d enjoy a 51-49 majority, finds himself back on par with the GOP, this time at 49-49 rather than the 50-50 he endured during the last Congress. So, even if he corrals all his colleagues, he still needs Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote.
And he also can’t corral them. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and John Tester (D-MT) joined Republicans 50-46 to cancel egregious rules that force retirement fund managers to consider environmental and social issues when making investment decisions. This undercuts the investment mission of maximizing value, which is what retirees want, and dragoons the industry into service of left-wing obsessions. The House already passed the legislation, so President Joe Biden will have to uncap his veto pen for the first time.
Biden wouldn’t have this problem if Democrats were less inclined to prop up tottering candidates for jobs that they are clearly incapable of doing. It makes stark the priority Democrats give to winning elections rather than governing effectively.
But if Democrats didn’t turn blind eyes to their candidates’ evident incapacities, Biden himself would not be where he is. Being president and governing against Congress is a good problem to have if the alternative is not being president.
He is the prime example of a pol who was years or decades past his sell-by date when elected. He was the Democrats’ last best hope of briefly throwing up a smoke screen of centrism and, in the fog of election war, defeating the insurgency of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
They propped Biden up, kept him in his basement, and now he is the president, vetoing legislation passed by the people’s representatives on Capitol Hill.