Good News and Bad News

The bad news is that Biden’s Build Back Better initiatives have been set back to square 1. Republican obstructionism (with a little help from certain Democrats) prevailed. Even worse, because potentially far more consequential, Republicans (with decisive help from Democratic senators Manchin and Sinema, whom I’ve referred to as “enigmatic” and “obdurate,” and have quite a stock of unflattering adjectives would be equally apt in referring to them) successfully blocked passage of voting rights and electoral process integrity bills that would have greatly lessened the likelihood that the United States will fall under authoritarian rule.

The good news is that Trump and his cohorts have been thrown on the defensive in Federal courts, in the House Select Committee investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, and in various state judicial and investigative proceedings. There’s an increasing chance that he won’t get away with as much as quite recently it looked as if he would.