Off Topic: China backing Russia against NATO expansion shouldn’t be that surprising. I think the only thing that is at all surprising is that the world’s two foremost illiberal powers were willing to bring their reluctant bromance out of the shadows. Both thrive on strategic ambiguity, and this move indicates that they may be tiring of the effort involved in keeping up that façade.
I’d bet that Xi doesn’t see opposing NATO as costing him much of anything. NATO’s not encroaching on his own sphere of influence, and economically NATO’s just as dependent on China as ever. And it’s not like NATO was seriously courting Ukraine anyways — remember, Ukraine were the ones begging for admission. For Xi, this is most likely purely about defending the principle that he should be perfectly free to meddle in his own backyard without the West interfering.Main Topic: Over the past several weeks of reflection and drama on January 6 and voting rights, I’m beginning to lean towards declaring that there isn’t really a decent path for Democrats to single-handedly fix America.
The most direct reform they could choose — a national campaign for RCV — is possibly the least realistic one for them ever to choose given the party’s current inclinations.Take the notion of popularism. The popularists think that they were right about what went wrong with the Democrats’ agenda in 2021.
But something tells me that if Democrats had prioritized popularist issues in 2021, they’d still have mostly lost in the court of public opinion. For instance, if Pelosi had challenged The Squad to tank the bipartisan infrastructure bill right off the bat, they probably would have tanked it. And then we’d be having a different conversation about how we should have put the screws to Manchin instead, and dared him to tank voting rights, while trying to move the ball forward more slowly on infrastructure and spending.
But of course, we back here in the Real Timeline know exactly what would have happened with that strategy, because we lived it.
The point is, I think America is just plain ungovernable today. At least not from a perspective of effective governance. And we all know why…On that note, the Atlantic is absolutely right about the filibuster. It’s doomed! Unfortunately, centrist Democrats made a critical mistake. Despite all evidence to the contrary — 3 straight decades of erosion of filibuster norms — their entire position relies on the estimation that Republicans won’t selectively erode the filibuster whenever it suits them.
That doesn’t mean they’ll ever do it all at once; reconciliation seems to have mostly worked for their purposes during the Trump era. But just take a second and imagine that Trump gets re-elected in 2024 by amping up his anti-immigration stance. Do you really think Senate Republicans won’t, say, fire the parliamentarian if he rules against them tossing a ban on chain-migration into a reconciliation bill?1
It’s hard not to be too hard on Manchin, but he’s really just pandering to his own voters (and ego), and as we’ll discuss in next week’s newsletter, American centrism is just ideologically not that coherent or bright, so we can’t be too surprised that his position doesn’t make any sense here. But boy, is it annoying to know the answer and still have to watch the only two idiots in the room fumble around blindly because they can’t put 2 and 2 together.
Cue Kirsten Sinema in 2029, the first year of President Pete’s administration, still defending the filibuster.