Alabama, Biden, And Being Who We Wanted

A Plea

Every time I do someone else’s podcast, I always spend the time before listening to one specific song on repeat before I do the hit. First time I did Politics Politics Politics, it was Alone Together by The Strokes – othertimes, it’s been Sinatra, Jeff Buckley, The Smiths, and as I’m writing this, it’s Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead. (If you couldn’t tell, doing double duty on Px3 this week again – go listen, it’s a great even when I’m not on it.)

Fake Plastic Trees is Radiohead at its early, melancholiest – and it’s their arguably their best song, even if I’m partial to the Exit Music-Let Down-Karma Police trio off of OK Computer. Last night, when I was listening to the song, rum and coke in hand, tennis on the TV, and making sure I was prepared for the podcast, one stanza kept replaying for me, and it made me tear up.

“And if I could be who you wanted/If I could be who you wanted, all the time”

…

On Monday night, Marc Elias et al won a case in Federal Court arguing that Alabama’s Congressional map – the new one, which maintained the 2011-2021 status quo that elected Doug Jones on the back of one CD – was an unconstitutional diminishment of the rights of Black voters on the basis that there could be two Black districts drawn, and they drew one. I’m not a lawyer and I’m going to be very honest here, the VRA is something that I – not being from a country where such a thing is required – have never spent any time studying. Will this get tossed by higher courts? I have no actual idea, but I’m certainly assuming so.

I can play SCOTUS Kremlinologist all I want, and I can point out that Roberts in Shelby County objected to the non-universality of the preclearance provisions, and that here a re-working of Section 2 would be different, but it’s not helpful. I have no idea if Roberts genuinely believed the argument made in Shelby or whether he just wanted to bust the VRA, so I have no idea if he’d be vote 4 or not. Even if he were, who’s vote 5? I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. What I do know is all the people who are trying to find a path for this flipping a seat in Louisiana (and maybe South Carolina and maybe others) are the same people who are desperately trying to will a Biden approval surge into happening, and it’s not.

Joe Biden is currently at another nadir of approval, with his -12% net approvals worse than his previous low (-9.5%, in mid November) and getting worse every time I give 538 a click. His approvals are tanking, and if they don’t get out of the fucking mud fast, it doesn’t matter if Baby Jesus comes back to earth and draws a 26-0 in New York while finding a cure for cancer. Biden, the supposedly popular, electable candidate, has done nothing with what is coming up on three months since I wrote a scathing indictment of his Administration the Saturday after Virginia, and now his approvals are down another 4% since his party got wiped the fuck out. And nobody knows what to say or how to deal with it.

Like, I’ve got a thousand column ideas I want to do about the US, from #ScrimshawSix pieces on fun groupings of seats (the “I’m Honestly Shocked These Are Still Winnable” one, with all the seats the GOP could have, and didn’t, nuke is gonna be especially fun) to analyzing spending decisions, from district poll analysis to overreading state polls, and none of it matters if Biden’s approval is just going to stay shit. Like, Whitmer’s apparently currently on track to win in Michigan, but do I fucking believe it? God no, because Whitmer’s not up 5 if Biden’s approval in Michigan is in the low 30s.

Ah, but NBC and Fox had decent Generic Ballot numbers for Dems, right? Yeah, that bit me in the fucking ass in Virginia, because the fact that Democrats had a Generic Ballot lead was one of the ways I justified tossing those Virginia state polls out, when it turned out the state polls were right and the generic ballot wasn’t reflective of reality.

At some point, all of this analysis – from me, and from others – is a complete waste of time if Biden and his team don’t get their heads out of their collective asses. This White House clearly botched the Build Back Better negotiations, what the fuck they were doing on voting rights is entirely unclear, and what they’re doing now is even less clear. If the strategy is do nothing and pray inflation halves by election day, that’s great, and not at all a solution to the main problem that this White House is out to lunch. And pretending it isn’t is insanity.

If you ask me right now for a prediction, for a forecast, I’d say the GOP win the House narrowly and Democrats retain a 50-50 Senate majority, if only because Federal partisanship and shitty GOP candidates should be enough to keep Democrats ahead in Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia. That said, I feel a whole lot less confident in that Senate prediction that I do the House one, because in the House Democratic upside is low, and GOP upside is pretty high in the Senate.

I desperately want Joe Biden to be who we wanted, I need Joe Biden to be who we wanted, and we need it now. I really hope that the Court ruling in Alabama’s upheld, I really hope North Carolina tosses their gerrymander, and most of all I really, really want Biden and the White House to rally, and prove me wrong. But it’s been nearly three months since Virginia and he’s running on empty. Let’s just hope he can be who we wanted, all the time.