If Joe Biden only had one recalcitrant senator to deal with on his Build Back Better agenda, this wouldn't all be ending in so much disappointment. If it was just one of them (or even two who were united in their objections), then the horse-trading would have been a lot easier. As it stands though, the tag team of Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are ripping so much out of Biden's overall plan that it is almost guaranteed to be disappointing to most of the Democratic voters who heard Biden campaigning for president. Some might be disappointed that tuition-free community college is not going to happen, while others will be disappointed that there will be no significant reduction in prescription drug prices. Still others will become disillusioned at all the cutbacks the Child Tax Credit seems to be undergoing. The number of issues where the reality of any deal is now going to fall far shorter than the promises means a whole bunch of single-issue (or even "major-issue") voters are going to feel let down. And that could be crucial for the Democratic Party's chances in the next few elections (including Biden's himself, if he chooses to run for re-election).

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This week, the House of Representatives declared that Steve Bannon was contemptible. Well, that's not strictly legally accurate -- they actually officially held him in contempt of Congress, but it's more fun to say it the other way. Because he so obviously is, of course.

Democrats were patting themselves on the back for "moving quickly" on the issue, which is kind of a joke -- it is now almost ten months after the January 6th insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, and the select committee investigating it has only now gotten around to attempting to call their first contentious and politically-charged witness. This Congress only lasts until January of 2023, which is only 15 months away. If the committee hasn't finished by that point, it will be disbanded (if Republicans win back control of the chamber). In other words, time's a-wastin'.

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So we're now really down to: "Build Back Smaller." Once again, Democrats have taken what could have been monumentally historic change and watered it down to the point where many Democratic voters are going to actually wind up disappointed, even if a deal is struck and something passes Congress and is signed into law by President Joe Biden. Whatever passes will still be historic legislation, just as Obamacare was (and still is), but a lot of Democratic voters will inevitably be left with a strong sense of "what might have been."

As with the passage of Obamacare, no doubt some progressives (including Biden himself -- after all, this is his agenda, that he explicitly ran on in his presidential campaign) will promise to revisit all the things which got left out (or are going to get left out, before we're done). I have two words in response to this, before I ever even hear it: "public option." Still waiting for that one, guys....

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Today, the United States Senate staged a Kabuki vote for the benefit of one senator. It will probably come as no surprise to hear that Senator Joe Manchin was the reason for this doomed attempt to pass new voting rights legislation. This is, in fact, the second such Kabuki vote this year on the subject, the only difference being this time around the Senate voted on the compromise plan Manchin himself had drafted. And, just like before, it failed along strict party lines. The entire exercise was designed to prove to Manchin that this was exactly what was going to happen.

Manchin is downright delusional in his belief that voting rights legislation of any kind will garner a single Republican vote in this Congress. Theoretically, according to Manchin's delusion, he was supposed to water down the original Democratic bill and add in a few Republican ideas, all in order to garner Republican support. He would have needed ten of them for this effort to succeed. In the end, he got precisely zero of them -- which is exactly what everyone not named "Joe Manchin" had predicted would happen all along.

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[Program Note: When I sat down to write today's article, what was foremost in my mind was the former president proving again what an absolutely miserable excuse for a human being he truly is, but I resisted the urge to write about it or him (I'm not even going to provide a link to the story, in fact). Anyone who marks the passing of an American patriot and soldier by making it all about himself doesn't deserve even the scorn that is currently being heaped upon him -- he deserves nothing short of being ignored, instead. So I thought I'd write about another patriotic military subject, seeing what day it is on the calendar.]

Today marks the 240th anniversary of the United States of America taking its place at the world's table of nations. No, it's not the Fourth of July or even the ratification of the Constitution, but instead today is the day that British Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown, Virginia. This was the pivotal moment in the Revolutionary War when the British began negotiating with the United States instead of continuing the attempt to militarily crush the rebellion in the colonies. It was also the last significant battle fought in the American Revolution. Although the Treaty of Paris wasn't signed for two more years, this was really the point where we won the war, to put it another way. And that's certainly worth celebrating.

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Donald Trump made two types of legal news today. He filed suit against the House January 6th Select Committee in an attempt to block disclosure of White House records surrounding the attack on the U.S. Capitol, which will hinge on a very dubious "executive privilege" claim. But Trump is also sat down today for a video deposition in a case over Trump Tower guards' behavior towards a protest which happened when Trump first declared his bid for the presidency, back in 2015. These two separate cases bookend a real problem in America -- justice being delayed for so long it effectively becomes justice denied, just by running out the clock.

Think about it: Trump just had to sit for a deposition in a case six years after the actual event. The trial hasn't even been scheduled yet (a date is expected to be announced within a week or so). This one case has already spanned three presidencies: Barack Obama, Donald Trump himself, and Joe Biden. But this is a private case -- Trump was a private citizen when the protest happened, and he is a private citizen again. Trump's other legal move today was in relation to his actions while president -- meaning that in a very real way, the entire American public has an interest.

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Today's article title is from the song "Time," by Pink Floyd. Here's the whole first verse, for the proper context:

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

This lyrical rock masterpiece sprang to mind this week as we watched the Democrats... um... not get much of anything done. It's as if they had all the time in the world -- which they most assuredly do not. Especially relevant is that line: "Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown," since Congress is once again on vacation all week long. Most people don't even get Columbus/Indigenous Peoples' Day off work, but for Congress it is yet another excuse to blow off an entire week. This isn't that long after they took a month and a half off, mind you. Outdoing the Senate (which just took this week off) was the House, which took an entire two weeks off -- for a minor federal holiday most people have to work on.

Ticking away... not just the moments or the hours or even days, but full weeks.

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One year from now, the midterm elections will be looming in front of us. Candidates will be out on the hustings, frantically campaigning their little hearts out. But what will be the big issues they'll be talking about? It is impossible to say, really, beyond predicting: "it will not be what the pundits are worrying about right now." A year is an absolute eternity in politics, and in a year's time few will remember the topics which are currently hot -- that's a generic prediction that almost always comes true, so it's pretty safe to say right now.

There's really only one topic that isn't a permanent one (such as "the economy") that predictably will still be on voters' minds next year, and that is the state of the COVID-19 pandemic. Will we have largely "beaten" COVID by this time next year? It's certainly possible, or at least "beaten it into submission," where it doesn't qualify as a pandemic or global emergency any more. Of course, there are no guarantees -- perhaps we'll be dealing with the Zeta variant by then and have experienced several rollercoaster spikes from others over the course of a year. Anything is still possible, including the frightening possibility that one of these mutations will defeat the current vaccines. If that happens, all bets are off, really, and we might go right back to the start of the whole cycle once again. Either way, though, voters will be reacting to what state the pandemic is in. If the news is good, it will buoy President Joe Biden's approval rating and give the Democrats a much healthier chance (pun intended) of winning the midterms. If the news is bad, voters usually take out their frustration on the party in power (whether deserved or not).

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There will be no new column today because I have busy been doing my taxes rather than writing. I am (in general) lazy, and therefore usually get an automatic extension, which falls due on October 15th rather than April 15th. Since I've spent all day immersed in tax forms and numbers, I thought I'd revisit taking my rage out at Paul Ryan (and the rest of the usual suspects) for so royally screwing up the tax forms and entire income tax system.

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Is it time to start getting a little relieved about the state of the COVID-19 pandemic? I've been struck with a cautious case of optimism while doomscrolling over the past few weeks, and I now tend to think the country will likely return to the same sort of semi-normalcy we all experienced in July, probably right after the year-end holidays. I think January and February are going to be very good months, to put this another way.

I really have two reasons to be even cautiously optimistic that this will turn out to be the case. The first is the increasing level of both vaccinations and the (at least partial) natural immunity from those who have already contracted the coronavirus. To put it more plainly, I think we are within a few months of at least some degree of herd immunity.

The second reason is I don't expect any winter surge in new cases to be as large a spike as the Delta mutation was. Now, I fully admit I could be wrong about this one -- there could always be a new Greek-lettered variant that proves to be more virulent than even Delta. If one appears and spreads in the United States, then we could indeed see another sharp spike upwards, so I realize I'm on shaky ground here.

These two reasons are really intertwined. The more people there are who are vaccinated, the harder it will be for any variant to wreak havoc. And we're just as the start of the rollout of the booster shots, which weren't available during the Delta crisis.

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