Over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about the late Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont. Jeffords gave us one of the few bright moments of 2001 when he left the Republican Party and became a Democrat. This flipped the Senate and gave the Democrats a 51-49 Senate majority until they lost it again in the 2002 midterms.

The 2000 election gave us a 50-50 Senate, with Vice President Dick Cheney breaking the tie. Almost immediately Senate minority whip Harry Reid began looking for a disgruntled Repubican senator who might be flipped. He succeeded with Jeffords, a moderate whose disenchantment with the Repubican Party had been growing for years. CNN reported at the time:

Moderates don’t survive in the Republican Party without a thick skin. Over the years, the proud, laconic Jeffords had endured countless arm twistings, cold shoulders and petty slights for taking stands at odds with his party–against Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut and Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination, for the Clintons’ health-care reform, minimum-wage hikes and more money for the National Endowment for the Arts. But by last year, the hostility had begun to wear him down. He was chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, a post that could be powerful in promoting his passion for schools, but conservative G.O.P. upstarts on the panel, such as New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, were constantly maneuvering to undercut Jeffords’ authority, doing things like convening private meetings of the committee’s Republicans and not inviting him. Jeffords complained to Lott, but the majority leader didn’t rein in the right-wingers.

Jeffords’s favored policies, such as education funding, were getting no respect from the “movement conservatism” Republicans aligning themselves with Bush and Cheney. He found himself butting heads with the “fiscal conservatives” who were determined to cut everything out of government but military spending. Oh, and it was more important to cut taxes than fund schools.

Angry over Jeffords’ opposition to Bush’s $1.6 trillion tax-cut plan, Bush aides didn’t invite him to a White House ceremony honoring a Vermont teacher, a minor slight of the kind Jeffords had grown used to over the years. Others were more serious. The Administration began hinting that a program aiding Vermont dairy farmers might be in jeopardy. Jeffords was getting the silent treatment in the Finance Committee, and Gregg  [Judd Gregg, R-NH] announced that he would be “spearheading” the education bill for the G.O.P.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats were being very, very nice to Jim Jeffords. At some point Harry Reid offered to step down as chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee so that Jeffords could have the position, although it’s not clear whether this was before or after Jeffords committed to switch.

All this negotiating was being kept secret from the Republicans, somehow. Then, one day, Jeffords confessed to Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) that he was thinking of switching parties. Snow immediately tried to alert the White House. And tried, and tried. White House chief of staff Andrew Card wasn’t available to return her call until the afternoon of the following day. And then, it was too late.

So here we are with another 50-50 Senate, and thank goodness the Vice President is a Democrat this time. But then there’s the Joe Manchin problem. Manchin is vowing to “never” vote to end the filibuster. He’s not the only holdout, but he’s the most visible one. All over social media I see people demanding that Manchin be “pressured” to go along with the program.

And I keep thinking of Jim Jeffords. I’m betting Chuck Schumer and a lot of other people are thinking about Jeffords. What are the chances Mitch and the boys aren’t dropping hints to Manchin about how welcome he’d be to their party? Pretty damn low, I’d say. I expect there’s only so far Manchin can be pushed before we end up with Mitch McConnell leading the Senate again. I expect a lot of legislation going forward will be written with Manchin’s parameters in mind.

Now I’m hearing that the Senate covid bill will likely scale back the direct checks for some people who got them before:

Under the plan passed by the House, individuals earning up to $75,000 per year and couples making up to $150,000 per year would qualify for the full $1,400 stimulus payment. The size of the payments then begins to scale down before zeroing out for individuals making $100,000 per year and couples making $200,000.
Under the changes agreed to by Biden and Senate Democratic leadership, individuals earning $75,000 per year and couples earning $150,000 would still receive the full $1,400-per-person benefit. However, the benefit would disappear for individuals earning more than $80,000 annually and couples earning more than $160,000.

As Paul Waldman says, this is really stupid. To save a few bucks in the bill moderate Democrats are risking alienating a whole lot of voters. “Do Democrats actually gain anything by making this change?” Waldman asks. “Because it’s hard to see how they do.”

Manchin appears to have been the chief “moderate” who demanded the change. Waldman:

It was always a little odd that it was moderates who wanted to make sure those at higher incomes didn’t get too much assistance, but the disagreement wasn’t so much about fairness and equity as it was about how aggressive Democrats should be in confronting the effects of the pandemic. Progressives wanted to do as much as possible, and moderates wanted to find ways to scale back the bill’s ambitions.

And since the checks are the most visible part of the bill, that was a good place for the moderates to come out for trimming it back. Never forget that moderate Democrats such as Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are always on the lookout for high-profile ways they can disagree with their party, which helps them sustain their reputation for independence.

But it’s also probably the case that had Biden wanted, he could have held firm on the House’s numbers and the moderate Democrats would have gone along in the end. It’s implausible to think that Manchin or Sinema would have torpedoed the entire relief bill over this relatively minor question.

See also Moderate Democrats Strip Stimulus Checks From Twelve Million Voters for No Reason.by Eric Levitz. “… what do Democrats gain at the cost of denying checks to 12 million potential 2022 voters? How much money did Joe Manchin ‘save’ the U.S. Treasury?” Levitz asks. And the answer is, it makes the relief package 0.63 percent cheaper.

And if I were in charge of coming up with a Manchin strategy, I honestly don’t know what I would do.

Let’s start with a message from this disgruntled gentleman:

Okay then. On to the news.

It appears Senate Democrats are preparing to abandon attempts to keep the $15 minimum wage, or a variation thereof, in the Senate covid relief bill. The plan to penalize large companies that pay low wages is also being abandoned after it became clear over the weekend that getting all 50 Democratic senators to agree on language for the provision could drag on indefinitely. The Dems want the whole thing signed into law by March 14, when current extended unemployment benefits expire.

Related to this, on Friday Paul Waldman wrote that “Republicans seem unable to find their opposition mojo.” The great Republican outrage machine is still chugging away, but its reach ain’t what it used to be. “Social conservatives are getting exorcised about transgender rights — but much of the party seems uninterested in taking up this rallying cry,” Waldman writes. “There’s plenty of apocalyptic rhetoric on Fox News, but it isn’t doing much to affect the rest of the debate (and Fox’s greatest influence comes when it shapes mainstream news coverage).”

The outrage machine has been unable to persuade Americans outside of the hard-core base that Joe Biden is the devil, and this has impeded the Right’s ability to whip up opposition to what Biden is trying to do. It’s also the case that a whole lot of people are really really hurting because of the pandemic and really really need more relief from the government. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that 68 percent of Americans support the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion covid relief bill, and only 24 precent oppose it. Getting voters angry at Democrats about transgender girls playing sports isn’t working.

So, now is the time for Democrats to push ahead to enact their undiluted agenda.  But after the relief package passes, they’ll be up against the filibuster. And a few Democrats still think it’s more important to preserve the filibuster than, you know, pass anything. How we’re gong to get around that, I do not know. I fear that after the relief bill we’re looking at an unbroken several months of obstruction followed by a disaster in the 2022 midterm elections. The GOP may be flailing around more than usual, but it still controls a lot of states, and in those states Republicans are pushing full speed ahead with voter suppression.

I highly recommend David Atkins’s  Voter Suppression Is The Only Policy Agenda Left for a White Christian Identity Party at Washington Monthly. There’s a lot packed into this, and you don’t need a subscription to read it. I’m just going to quote the ending here:

All they have left is opposition, voter suppression and judges. Don’t do anything about crises–but also don’t let anyone else do anything about them, either. Don’t say the racism too loud (though that’s changing fast), but also make sure no one else gets to vote or have any power. Don’t pass any laws, but just let some extremist Federalist Society judges stop anyone else from passing any laws, either.

This dynamic is not going to change anytime soon, regardless of how long Trump holds sway over the party.

Oh, yes, the T word. See also Atkins’s As CPAC Goes, So Goes the GOP. And It’s Not Looking Good. And Greg Sargent, at WaPo, today: