This is just going to play out in perpetuity

Bill in Portland, Maine, who writes a Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos, has been keeping score of what Democrats have accomplished with their majority since coming into power in the House, Senate, and White House.

Pandemic relief bill? Yep. Election reform/Voter rights reform? Nope. Immigration reform? Nope. Equality Act? Nope. Infrastructure bill? Nope. January 6 insurrection commission? Nope. D.C. statehood? Nope. Police reform? Nope. Gun violence reform? Nope. Preventing GOP terrorists like Marjorie Taylor-Greene from getting to the House floor with guns Nope. Climate change? Nope.

It seems depressing that so little has been done and our democracy needs so much help and needs it quickly. But this Congress was seated less than five months ago and the president inaugurated just over four months ago. However, with a to-do list like that, what Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema are doing is news worthy. Joan McCarter of Kos reported:

Here's their latest, a joint statement imploring Republicans to play nice on the Jan. 6 commission. Literally. "We implore our Senate Republican colleagues to work with us to find a path forward on a commission to examine the events of January 6th." Or what? They’ll finally decide to do the right thing to save the nation by voting with Democrats to end the filibuster?

McCarter quoted a tweet from Andrew Solender:

Joe Manchin says he would NOT be willing to nuke the filibuster even if Republicans use it to block the Jan. 6 commission. “I can’t take the fallout,” he told us, laughing loudly.

McCarter added:

He won't nuke the filibuster no matter what—even for the Jan. 6 commission bill—because of the fallout? The only fallout would be from Republican senators. The rest of the nation would consider him a hero if he finally stood up for our democracy. Instead he's worried that the Republicans won't let him sit at their lunch table anymore?

Laura Clawson of Kos wrote in another post:

McConnell’s opposition to an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is “is extremely frustrating and disturbing. I know he’s an institutionalist. I would like to think he loves this institution,” Manchin said Tuesday. “There’s a time when you rise above. And I’m hoping this would be the time he would do that. What I’m hearing is, he hasn’t.” No, Joe, he hasn’t. Because he’s not an institutionalist if the institution in question is the U.S. Senate.

Clawson wrote that an institutionalist would not have blocked Merrick Garland from the Supreme Court, then rush Amy Coney Barrett onto it. An institutionalist would back an investigation into the Capitol attack. Moscow Mitch is not an institutionalist. Add to that what Mitch is saying about the infrastructure bill and he is playing Manchin for a chump. And chumphood will be his legacy. Ian Millhiser tweeted:

Republicans: "Here is our latest counteroffer to your infrastructure proposal." Biden: "This is just a dirty cocktail napkin with the words 'repeal Obamacare' scrawled on it in crayon." Manchin: "The important thing is that we let this bipartisan negotiation continue."

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Zach Montellaro of Politico. The title of Montellaro’s article is “They tried to overturn the 2020 election. Now they want to run the next one.” It includes this:

Republicans who sought to undercut or overturn President Joe Biden’s election win are launching campaigns to become their states’ top election officials next year, alarming local officeholders and opponents who are warning about pro-Trump, “ends justify the means” candidates taking big roles in running the vote.

In another roundup Dworkin quoted the New York Times, which discussed another GOP voting proposal of strict punishment for election workers and officials who make errors or violate the rules.

Ms. Phillips is one of millions of citizens who act as foot soldiers of the American democratic system, working long hours for low pay to administer the country’s elections. Yet this often thankless task has quickly become a key target of Republicans who are propagating former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. In their hunt for nonexistent fraud, they have turned on those who work the polls as somehow suspect.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported:

Arizona's Senate Republicans had a great idea: Let's fund a sham election audit that costs state taxpayers millions, compromises ballots and voting equipment, and produces zero credible results that we can then feed to delusional Trump voters desperate to believe they're not losers. Sure, it will be needlessly expensive and laughable to everyone living in the real world, and death threats will surely fly, but who cares—Trumpers will gobble it up like ravenous vultures feasting on a rotten carcass.

The idea of a fraudit (Eleveld’s term) is spreading. A county in northern Michigan tried it (I think the idea was halted by a judge before starting). Alarmingly Fulton County, Georgia (where Atlanta) is trying to start one.

“In a healthy democracy, you have an auditing process, you have legal recourse, and when that period is over, all the candidates who have won take over and you move on,” said Tammy Patrick, an adviser at The Democracy Fund who also used to run post-election audits in Maricopa County. “They are not going to be satisfied,” Patrick told the AP. “This is just going to play out in perpetuity.”

Clawson reported that Republicans in Arizona and elsewhere are so intent on their fraudits that they are willing to arrest anyone who gets in the way – including other Republicans. Clawson concluded:

These kinds of local Republican officials are coming under attack by their fellow Republicans because they stand by the integrity of the elections they conducted and reject conspiracy theories. The House Republican vote to kick Rep. Liz Cheney out of leadership for her insistence that the election was not stolen and the insurrection was wrong has gotten a lot of attention, rightly. But the civil war in the Republican Party goes down to the local level, too, pitting Trump loyalists against Republicans who have any values beyond Trump.

Leah McElrath tweeted:

I make this observation in the hope it will help others—especially people socialized as girls and women—to become more comfortable with people being angry with them. Other people’s anger does not necessarily mean you have done anything wrong. Sometimes it means the opposite.