News : Democrats’ two-track mind

Monday, January 10, 2022

Democrats’ two-track mind

Jan 10, 2022

With help from Tyler Weyant

Sen. Joe Manchin walks the tunnel between the Senate office buildings and the U.S. Capitol.

Sen. Joe Manchin walks the tunnel between the Senate office buildings and the U.S. Capitol. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

GETTING OFF TRACK — Remember Democrats' "two-track strategy"? We know, it's so 2021 — but that was the shorthand used on the Hill to describe the dual-pronged approach the party tried to use to muscle through President Joe Biden's domestic policy agenda. It didn't work. Yet the same logic is rearing its head again in 2022, this time on elections and voting.

Before we get to that, let's recap the dawn of two-track thinking. As Democrats envisioned it last year, the first track was a $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill, and the second track was a $1.7 trillion social spending and climate proposal teed up to pass without GOP votes. Progressives contended that the latter had to pass alongside the former, or else centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) would lose interest in such an ambitiously liberal piece of legislation.

Lo and behold,Manchin did walk away from the table on the social spending bill known as "Build Back Better." Even so, as much as some in his party might tell themselves that holding the infrastructure bill hostage would have helped win his vote, the evidence shows that wasn't the case: Manchin had long outlined significant concerns with elements of the bill that his party showed little signs of heeding.

Here's what this has to do with the election reform bill that Senate Democrats plan to push to a vote as soon as this week. Stay with me …

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, memorably laconic on the fly, told POLITICO last week that he'd consider changes to the Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law that governs presidential certification. McConnell's broad interest, if it were to be translated into a viable deal to update the Act, might help prevent future threats to the transfer of power like the one that became the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

You would think this would be good news for Democrats, whose insurrection investigative panel has been mulling its own reforms to that law. Instead, Biden's party dismissed this glimmer of GOP interest in changing the law that Donald Trump's allies tried to exploit as they pushed to overturn the former president's election loss.

And in doing so, Democrats adopted a (wait for it) two-track approach to election reform — effectively deeming any attempt at bipartisan Electoral Count Act reform a ploy by the GOP to distract attention from the bigger voting rights bill that Republicans almost unanimously oppose.

"It's a cynical idea to divert attention from the real issue" of voting rights, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said last week of Electoral Count Act changes that, in principle at least, quite a few fellow Democrats had hoped to consider this year.

Electoral Count Act changes are "not a substitute" for the voting rights bill, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters today.

In this reboot of 2021's tortured logic, the Electoral Count Act is the new infrastructure bill. Both are topics that many Democrats want to see action on, even as many progressives simply don't trust that bipartisan progress for progress' sake is possible.

The voting rights measure is the new Build Back Better. Both are vital Democratic priorities that don't have a clear path to passage.

The parallel isn't exact: Manchin supports the voting rights bill (as does Kyrsten Sinema). But when it comes to a proposed weakening of the filibuster that would strengthen the voting bill's chances of passage, there Manchin and Sinema are very unconvinced.

The common thread in each of these two-track forays is their zero-sum mentality. Many in the party placed a bet that Manchin's vote for a $1 trillion-plus progressive bill was best earned by blocking the path for the infrastructure plan he helped negotiate. Now some in the party sound like they think the best way to keep Manchin focused on voting rights is blocking the path for talks on reforming the Electoral Count Act.

In both cases, public attention is placed on Manchin — and on an enduring Democratic schism. Democrats might be better served this time to embrace the idea of letting centrists talk to the GOP about how to improve presidential certification … and trying to blame the GOP if the talks fizzle.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. A big Nightly welcome to new POLITICO CEO Goli Sheikholeslami. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight's author at eschor@politico.com, or on Twitter at @eschor.

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What'd I Miss?

— Judge mulls whether Trump's silence on Jan. 6 could amount to agreement with rioters: Donald Trump's hours of silence while a violent mob ransacked the Capitol — egged on by his own words and tweets — could be plausibly construed as agreement with rioters' actions, a federal judge suggested today. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta made the analysis as he pressed Trump's lawyers about their efforts to dismiss a series of lawsuits against the former president seeking to hold him financially liable for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.

— Biden administration lays out rules for reimbursing at-home Covid tests: The Biden administration issued guidance that will require private health insurers to reimburse people for up to eight over-the-counter Covid-19 tests every month beginning Jan. 15. Under the plan, private insurers can set up programs at preferred pharmacies or retailers where the upfront cost of home tests is covered for beneficiaries. A family of four would be able to have 32 home tests covered by their health plan each month.

— Wisconsin judge lets GOP-led election review continue: A state judge in Wisconsin is allowing a GOP-led review of the 2020 election to proceed in the state, turning back — at least temporarily — a bid to stymie the probe led by the Democratic state attorney general . Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman is leading an investigation of the 2020 election with the blessing of state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. Election experts have warned that post-election partisan reviews, like the one in the state, are harmful to the democratic system because they can serve as vehicles to legitimize Trump's conspiracy theories about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

— Fed's No. 2 official resigns amid trading scandal: Federal Reserve Vice Chair Richard Clarida announced he will step down from the central bank on Friday, two weeks earlier than his term was scheduled to end, in the wake of renewed questions about his trading activity at the onset of the pandemic. Clarida, whose term was set to end Jan. 31, admitted last month that he had failed to fully disclose financial trades in February 2020, the latest revelation in a string of ethics problems at the central bank.

— Treasury begins distribution of quarter featuring Maya Angelou: The U.S. Mint has begun rolling out quarters which feature writer, poet and activist Maya Angelou, the first Black woman to appear on the coin . "Each time we redesign our currency, we have the chance to say something about our country — what we value, and how we've progressed as a society," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. "I'm very proud that these coins celebrate the contributions of some of America's most remarkable women, including Maya Angelou."

STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.

AROUND THE WORLD

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, left, and Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov attend security talks at the United States Mission in Geneva, Switzerland.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, left, and Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov attend security talks at the United States Mission in Geneva, Switzerland. | Denis Balibouse/Pool via AP

FIRST DAY DOWN IN GENEVA — The United States and Russia managed a first day of security talks today without a breakdown that might give Moscow any basis to carry out a threatened military strike on Ukraine, Quint Forgey and David M. Herszenhorn write.

But even as Russia's lead negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, insisted the Kremlin had no plan for another invasion of its western neighbor, it was clear that Moscow and Washington are confronting virtually unbridgeable differences on many issues — including a repeated demand by the Kremlin for hard guarantees that Ukraine and Georgia will never join NATO.

The wide gulf between the former Cold War rivals became clear as Ryabkov and his U.S. counterpart, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, held dueling news conferences at the end of the daylong negotiations, which were conducted at the U.S. Mission in Geneva.

Discussions over the threat of a Russian military incursion and demands for an array of security concessions by the West will continue on Wednesday in Brussels at NATO headquarters, and on Thursday in Vienna at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The highlight from the first round of deliberations today, however, was Ryabkov's insistence that Russia was not preparing to move against Ukraine, which it last invaded in 2014.

Nightly Number

6 million

The number of unprocessed individual tax returns at the IRS as of Dec. 23, the most recent date for which data is available on the agency's website. Americans can start filing their income tax returns Jan. 24, but existing backlogs and longstanding operational problems at the IRS, aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic, are likely to make for a frustrating filing season for taxpayers and tax preparers, a Treasury Department official said today.

Parting Words

Serbian tennis fans march along Collins Street in support of Novak Djokovic in Melbourne, Australia.

Serbian tennis fans march along Collins Street in support of Novak Djokovic in Melbourne, Australia. | Diego Fedele/Getty Images

DOUBLE FAULT COMING? The first major global tennis tournament of the year has turned into a geopolitical minefield: An Australian judge ordered the immediate release today of 20-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic , who had been held in hotel detention since Thursday, when officials canceled his visa after he arrived in Melbourne for the Australian Open without a Covid vaccine.

To discuss what this says about Australia's battle with Covid, Nightly's Tyler Weyant chatted on Slack with Global Insider author Ryan Heath. This conversation has been edited.

With the court ruling in Australia, what are the remaining hurdles for Djokovic to play in the Australian Open?

Now Djokovic will play, unless the Australian immigration minister (Alex Hawke), exercises his legal power to personally remove Djokovic from the country, if he deems that in the "public interest."

While Djokovic's vaccine stance is unpopular in Australia, it's not clear Hawke will step in. The federal government had initially punted these questions to the Victorian state government, where the Australian Open is held, and Hawke is quite far to the right of the political spectrum. On the other side of the equation, Prime Minister Scott Morrison insists Djokovic should not get special treatment. The test many will apply to the final outcome: Would an ordinary tourist be let in without being vaccinated?

What does the visa battle tell us about how Australia is battling Covid-19?

Australians are learning to live with Covid, after combining the luxury of a relatively easy-to-police border with strict quarantine rules through 2020 and 2021. But having been locked down and locked into their own country for nearly two years, Australians are generally in no mood to give the rich and famous special treatment. Australians reserve a special place in hell for people they consider rule breakers.

Have we seen any geopolitical ramifications from the battle over Djokovic's visa?

The net is, very little impact. The Australian government isn't bothered by diplomatic protests from small countries outside the EU, like Serbia, and plenty of vaccinated people around the world will have cheered Canberra on. But this saga also reminded millions about how Australia's harsh border policies hurt people who don't have Djokovic's resources to fight back. One of his neighbors in immigration detention has been held there for nine years.

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