Valentine's Day arrives in August as the NY Times goes mad for Sen. Duckworth.
Politically she seems to fall in the center of the Democratic Party. Her personal story of military service and sacrifice gives her natural appeal to folks further to the right. Which inspires my current Mad Hope: Biden taps Duckworth and chases centrists and disaffected Republicans. He win in a rout while progressives pout and his new administration makes a serious (and successful!) effort to work with chastened Republicans.
In that world, we still get "comprehensive" immigration reform as a cram-down. Per Kausian Logic, the amnesty and path to citizenship will be implemented quickly and flawlessly; any faux efforts at border security and workplace enforcement will be tied up in the courts and eventually abandoned. Not Good!
However, Biden ran as a centrist and remembers well the 1994 and 2010 repudiations of a newly elected Dem President. After immigration, if Republicans show some flexibiity, there is an impressive progressive wish-list that Biden might bury:
- We won't see the filibuster eliminated (Mend It, Don't End It? How about a 55 vote cloture rule? It was 67 when I was a lad!).
- We won't see the Supreme Court augmented with 2 new justices; consequently, we won't see the critical DC v. Heller gun rights case overturned by a 6-5 vote (after which Dems would have resumed chanting about the importance of respecting precedent as they dug in around Roe v. Wade.)
- We won't see Washington DC and Puerto Rico granted statehood to ensure four new Democratic senators.
Look, this is not the best of all possible worlds. But the Republican Party has brought this upon itself. Peggy Noonan pounded the table on that point [link]: Trump didn't fall from the sky - his insurgency succeeded because the Republican establishment delivered two belly-flop wars and a housing collapse while mocking the rubes on immigration. Sadly, the Trump experiment has not gone well (IMHO.) So now the Republican Party has no clear message or trusted leaders. Not helpful! But she predicts reform will "bubble up" from the states, and I'll Boldly Predict the 2024 nominee will be famous as a governor, not Senator.
We'll see. This all starts with Biden committing to a centrist strategy and pulling it off. I guess Plan B is a Trump miracle. Biden pandering to and governing like a progressive, with a 2022 public revolt and Republican re-conquest of the House and/or Senate, is Plan C Ya Later.