If Pelosi pushes these quick bills, they might achieve wonders… even if blocked!

 All eyes turn to Georgia, whose January 6 runoff election will decide if Mitch McConnell's tightly-disciplined* Senate majority will keep blocking any possibility of legislation - even negotiation - in the U.S. Billions are flowing into the Peach State, where Stacey Abrams might achieve wonders, yet again. But the person who might tip the balance is...Nancy Pelosi.

It's all complicated and interesting; will you let me explain? For those too impatient to read, here's a capsule summary:

1-  Those MAGAs yammering that only keeping the two Georgia seats Republican can prevent communism are fools, for many reasons. Above all, there's Joe Manchin, Democrat from deep red West Virginia, who's vowed to block Supreme Court expansion and to keep the filibuster**. So, even if VP Kamala can break 50:50 ties, there will be a 'check on radicalism.' 

Oh, I'd rather things were different. Let's give Bern&Liz more power to reinstate the Roosevelt social contract loved by the Greatest Generation! But Manchin will at least vote for the most-urgent reforms, like anti-cheating measures, and his vote will make democrats the committee chairs and end Mitch's Moscow rule! That is, if Loeffler and Perdue are tossed. 

Meanwhile though the Manchin thing shatters your semi-sane uncle's 'check on communism' argument. So use him that way.

2- Okay so Joe Biden asks Pelosi to rush through a new attempt at a a stimulus bill, just today. Alas, we know it's for show because Mitch will block it. 

So I am about to propose other quickie bills that would have a different effect, altogether! Bills that are so simple and obvious that Perdue and Loeffler would be put in an awkward position of opposing them in the Senate, just before the January 6 run-off!

Okay, capsule is done. If you want the actual ideas, you're gonna have to read.

== Proposed actions BEFORE Inauguration! ==

With the election of Joe Biden and the imminent expulsion of the Liar/Saboteur-in Chief, about one quarter of the tactics and methods proposed in Polemical Judo are rendered obsolete. That is, until Trump’s “Rant n’ Roll” rave rallies and his maniacal Trump TV Network become more than a nuisance. The rest of the book contains many unconventional tactics that could have turned our recent, nailbiter election into the hoped-for rout.

And so we come to suggestion time. As I did in 2008.  

Phase one: Now until January 20 Inauguration Day

Phase two: The first few weeks and months

Phase Three: More legislation to achieve near and mid-term benefits

Today it's all phase one.

Priority #1 for all new legislators and appointees to the new administration is... avoid blackmail traps!  Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but I promise you, Putin's agents are all over DC, setting up hotel rooms with one way mirrors, just like in the Borat movie! Blackmail has been standard Russian spy technique, going back to the Czarist Okrahna. And even if you shrug this off... but grow more wary of entrapment, I'll have done some good! And warn all your relatives, especially the male ones, about the story of Anthony Kennedy.

(Seriously, no other explanation than blackmail can explain the behavior of many in DC. Read the explanation.)

Note also, even if you have already been snared, now is the time to contact the FBI! They will likely say you were part of a sting, if you help catch the bastards.

Priority #2 - confront the GOP, especially Loeffler and Perdue with lose-lose choices! The goppers are expert at this tactic, so why can't we use it?  Trap them into publicly opposing things that would be wildly popular with voters! 

Want examples that could be passed super quickly, even in the next two weeks?  Defy Perdue and Loeffler to take a stand and demand immediate votes on these! If they refuse, it could tip a few thousand votes.***

- Imagine a bill putting new limits on Presidential powers -- including Biden's! And with Joe's active support! Seriously, it must be done anyway. Incredible failure modes were revealed by a madman predecessor. Like reasonable limits on war powers, or establishing procedures to rule on emoluments. This needn't be the only such bill, so it needn't be perfect! Just cover the quick-obvious ones that also serve as zingers. Nothing would better slash at the Foxite rants that Dems are power-hungry cheats... like Republicans are.

- A COVID relief bill? Sure, try that. Though I doubt Mitch would face defections there. And others on this list will be more effective because they can be utterly simple! A few sentences. 

 

- How about a bill immediately giving medicare coverage to all CHILDREN, a move so guaranteed of parental enthusiasm that anyone opposing it would face toasting. It's a win-win, if we demand those Georgia senators decide now, risking ire from either those parents or Moscow Mitch.

 

- How about making it clear that Secret Service agents aren't personal servants!  A few sentences, and suddenly you have all those dedicated men and women eagerly grateful. And the implied slap at all Trumps would be rich! 

- Likewise a quickie-bill requiring up-front payment for political use of Air Force One? A real jab in Trump's eye.

- Or passing rules ending the travesty of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel 'advising' that sitting presidents cannot be sued or indicted or even investigated! Instead, ensure that Presidents can be "slow-indicted" or "slow-sued" without destroying their ability to perform vital functions, and above all they are not totally immune? Would GOP senators dare not to defect, break ranks, to hem in Joe Biden with such rules? 

And with Biden consenting to them, won't this wind up making dems look like non-partisan reformers? And would that also not put those two GA senators (and others like Murkowsk) on the spot, at just the moment we want them to squirm?

- Or here's a clever-tricky one. Pass a few of the promised reforms that gave Newt Gingrich the House in 94, like making Congress subject to the same laws as the rest of us. Those parts of the "Contract With America" - the obviously good parts, that the GOP entirely betrayed - helped win the GOP an undeserved reputation for sober reformism, back then. How tasty if dems actually implemented them!

- Here's one that could be passed in less than an hour, requiring just one sentence! A bill that simply ends the ban on refinancing student debt. It is insane that folks are forbidden to do what anyone with a mortgage can do, taking advantage of low interest rates. Sure, this is not the student debt forgiveness that so many of us want. But it would be a start and matter to millions. So would a second sentence letting student loans be discharged in bankruptcy. (Not available to high earners.) 

Crucially, it can be done quickly in as little as one sentence!  Pelosi/Schiff could do it right now! Making GOP senators choose in what amounts to a lose-lose for Mitch's cabal.

Oh, there are many more of these reforms that don't have to wait for inauguration! Because they'll either get Senate defections to pass with Trump's grudging assent... or else make Republicans look very, very bad and Democrats very good.

Act now (!) and you might get GOP senators (especially Perdue and Loeffler) to either vote yes or else explain why they’d block something so spectacularly positive and simple that any citizen... even a MAGA cultist... should want it.

======

* There has never been a more tightly disciplined political movement in US history, even including the Confederacy or the Communist Party of America than today's Republican Party. Deviation from party commands might be forgiven once. Never twice. Unless you are from Utah. And democrats are fools not to make overtures there.

**About the filibuster. Even if sanity prevails in Georgia, but Joe Manchin prevents total trashing of the filibuster, there's something Manchin might allow... restore the TALK filibuster! End today's idiocy of requiring 60 votes for all actions. Return to tradition where creaky gopper senators will have to talk all night, for days, to block bills that even MAGAs start to realize make perfect sense. It's very likely Manchin might go along with that. In fact, it might even pass if GA doesn't go our way.

*** A few thousand here and there matter! Take the eminently spreadable meme that many MAGAs in GA plan to write in Trump for the Senate seats. Okaaay> Sounds like a good thing to suggest at Thanksgiving dinner....