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For much of the first year of Joe Biden's presidency, progressive Democrats pushed radical ideas to change Senate rules, abolish the filibuster, and enact their agenda with a simple majority.

Even Biden, ever the rusty weather vane of Democratic politics, eventually swung around to supporting the idea. Though he has a long track record of defending the filibusterkilling it would only demonstrate "the arrogance of power," he said on the Senate floor in 2005Biden in January officially called for the Senate to abolish the rule requiring 60 votes on most bills. "Let the majority prevail," Biden said. "If that majority is blocked, then we have no choice but to change the Senate rules, including getting rid of the filibuster."

For Democrats, however, the stumbling block during the first 15 months of Biden's presidency hasn't been the Senate's 60-vote "cloture" rule or the Republican minority's use of it. It's been that Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin (DW.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (DAriz.) have objected to key parts of the party's agendaincluding the anti-filibuster campaign.

"Eliminating the 60-vote threshold will simply guarantee that we lose a critical tool that we need to safeguard our democracy from threats in the years to come," Sinema said on the Senate floor in January, just days after Biden's call to action.

Looks like she's about to be proven right.

"Democrats need to wake up, because right now they're sleepwalking into disaster, with no plan to avert it," writes Simon Bazelon, an advisor at the liberal political think tank Data for Progress, in a post published Monday on Matthew Yglesias' Slow Boringnewsletter. Bazelon cites polling data and historical midterm election trends to suggest that Democrats are likely to lose three to four Senate seats this year before heading into a potential electoral wipeout in 2024.

Bazelon's post builds on a tweet from David Shor, a Democratic pollster who has lately played the role of liberal Cassandra, in which Shor suggests that Republicans could be heading for a filibuster-proof 60-seat Senate majority after the next election.

It's probably right to be skeptical that Republicans will be able to swing 10 or more Senate seats in the next two electionsif for no other reason than the fact that politics change rapidly these days, and today's trends will be in the distant past by November 2024.

Still, a quick look at the Senate maps for the next two elections suggests that Republicans are poised to pick up several seats, even if the party can't hit the all-important 60-seat threshold. In 2024 alone, Democrats have to defend seats in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. That's 10 seats that Republicans could, in a very good year, flip. If you assume that Republicans will pick up at least two or three seats currently held by Democrats this yearArizona, Georgia, and Nevada seem the most likely to flip, and midterm elections are typically unfavorable for the president's partythen getting to 60 by winning seven or eight of those other races in 2024 is at least within the realm of possibility.

"'Business as usual' will result in President Trump or President DeSantis, with somewhere between 56 and 62 Senate seats," writes Bazelon. "And this is actually worse than it might seem at first. In recent years, Republican senators who have retired (or announced that they are retiring) have skewed heavily toward those who were willing to occasionally stand up to Trump, like Jeff Flake, Lamar Alexander, Rob Portman, Pat Toomey, and Richard Burr. If Trump returns to office, he will do so with a median Senator who is far more deferent to his wishes than the last time around."

Of course, it's also not difficult to imagine Republicans blowing it despite this favorable electoral terrain. Look no further than the GOP Senate primary in Pennsylvania to see how the GOP, now unmoored from any sense of commitment to principles or specific policies, is inviting voters to take one look and go running back to the Democrats. Grievance politics that lacks a coherent and compelling vision for the future of America will never provide more than a temporary electoral advantage.

But it doesn't really matter whether Republicans can reach the 60-seat threshold or not. What matters is that they are now overwhelmingly likely to have a Senate majority after this year's midterms, with a good chance of expanding that majority in 2024 when Democrats have to defend the gains they made during Trump's midterm defeats in 2018.

When that happens, Democrats, liberals, and anyone else who isn't thrilled by the prospect of an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party getting to enact its agenda at the federal level will owe a debt of gratitude to Sinema, Manchin, and other Democrats who resisted the urge to blow up the filibuster. Instead of an emerging and permanent Democratic majority, the party is now heading into a cycle where it is likely to be playing defense.

Thankfully, one of the fundamental virtues of the American democratic system is that legislative majorities are not all-powerful. Minorities in Congress rarely get what they want, but they can slow or stop the majority from simply ramming through whatever agenda it wants.

Some Democrats have spent the past year or so acting like that's a flaw in the system. They were wrong, as they'll likely learn very soon.

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Democrats Might Soon Rediscover the Value of the Filibuster - Reason

The expiration of the child tax credit expansion late last year sent an estimated 3.7 million children back into poverty and undermined the financial security of millions more. With the rising cost of living squeezing family budgets, the expiration of the credit could not have been more poorly timed.

Research has shown that the program, which provided families with monthly payments worth $250 to $300 per child, led to dramatic declines in food insecurity and helped parents offset the costs of school closures.

Democrats tried to extend the program on their own, but the effort fell to an intraparty squabble. There is the possibility of a new approach and one that has a surprisingly strong chance of working. Democrats can work with Republicans on a bipartisan child tax credit expansion as the most viable path forward. A similar approach worked for infrastructure, and there are plenty of reasons to believe it can work again.

A key obstacle to the Democrats attempt to expand the child tax credit alone was Senator Joe Manchins insistence that the monthly child benefit include a work requirement. Democrats chose not to compromise on that condition; they also ignored the option of expanding the program on a bipartisan basis. If persuading Mr. Manchin was hard, the thinking was, then convincing 10 or more Republicans to cross the aisle would surely be impossible.

But that assumption may be wrong. Consider that in 2021 Senator Mitt Romney released a child benefit proposal of his own, the Family Security Act. That proposal was more generous than the child credit from President Biden and earned praise from across the political spectrum, including an array of conservative policy analysts and thought leaders. The proposal also inspired conservative interest in child benefits more generally, from Senator Josh Hawleys Parent Tax Credit to the proposal for a Family Income Supplemental Credit from American Compass, a conservative think tank.

When it looked likely that the child tax credit would expire at the end of December, several Republican senators expressed interest in working with Democrats on a stopgap measure. Senator Susan Collins, for instance, said that she was open to proposals that would support working families and reduce childhood poverty and that she looked forward to working with colleagues of both parties on bipartisan solutions.

Bipartisan appetite for expanding the child tax credit is nothing new. During negotiations over the American Rescue Plan in 2021, Senate Republicans voted unanimously for a proposal from Senators Marco Rubio and Mike Lee to increase the child tax credit to $3,500 for children 18 and younger and to $4,500 for children younger than 6. The credit would be available only to the lowest income families to the extent that it offset their payroll taxes, creating a de facto work requirement. Despite sacrificing the simplicity and universality of a true child allowance, an expansion along those lines would produce significant benefits for children in poverty and provide greater tax relief in total dollar terms for working-class and middle-class families than the Biden credit. It also suggests that cost is not the main barrier to reaching a compromise.

Maintaining the child tax credits connection to work or earnings nevertheless remains a sticking point for most Republicans. To that end, designing the credit to rapidly phase in eligibility with earnings would serve to strengthen the child tax credits work incentive, helping to expand the labor supply and the credits bipartisan appeal simultaneously.

The focus could then be put on preserving an unconditional benefit for young children, say below age 6. Parents of young children have higher average poverty rates and greater upfront expenses, including child care.

An unconditional child benefit for infants is unlikely to face serious Republican opposition. Fears about work disincentives are simply much less relevant for parents of newborns. Senator Bill Cassidy has even proposed letting new parents pull forward $5,000 in child credits to help offset the huge expenses associated with pregnancy, which often include unpaid time off from work. And with the Supreme Court preparing to rule on a major abortion case, Republican interest in providing flexible resources to new parents only stands to grow.

Democrats may be unwilling to move off their ideal proposal, but some historical perspective is warranted. In 2016, Hillary Clintons presidential campaign proposed expanding the child tax credit for young children to $2,000 with a 45 percent phase-in. Reports hailed the proposal as a serious effort to tackle deep poverty, citing an analysis from the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The only thing preventing Democrats from advancing an identical proposal on a bipartisan basis today is their expectations for more.

An ideal compromise would therefore combine a larger credit and strong work incentive for parents of school-aged children with a robust monthly benefit for those caring for infants and toddlers. A deal along these lines would still have a large impact on child poverty, only now with the all-important benefit of bipartisan political support.

Enacting an unconditional benefit for all children remains a worthy aspiration. But given that the most likely outcome is now no expansion at all, failure to consider creative compromises makes the perfect the enemy of the good. The popularity of the bipartisan infrastructure package provides a template for how to move forward.

Helping American families raise the next generation should not be a partisan issue. But while Democrats are in the legislative drivers seat, its up to them to make it a bipartisan one.

Samuel Hammond (@hamandcheese) is the director of poverty and welfare policy at the Niskanen Center.

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Opinion | To Help Children, Democrats are Going to Have to Reach Across the Aisle - The New York Times

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Fox News contributor James Freeman warned on "America's Newsroom" Wednesday that Democrats are facing a "political reckoning" in the 2022 midterm elections as the inflation crisis hits a 40-year high.

STUART VARNEY WARNS OF RECESSION AS INFLATION HITS 40-YEAR HIGH

JAMES FREEMAN: I think we're now at a point where this is the issue of this election season, especially after getting that awful 8.5% rating yesterday, as you said, the worst in 40 years. So it's not too late for Democrats to change course and for the Federal Reserve to be helpful. But we're getting close to a point where I think the political reckoning for the party in power is inevitable.

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Right at the start of the Biden administration inflation started to rise, and he mentioned the American Rescue Plan. And we recall last March 2021 Democrats, former Obama economic advisers were telling him, "Do not enact this plan. It's a lot more spending. It's just going to fuel demand. We have a budding inflation problem. Don't do it." He ignored that advice. And so now he's attempting to rewrite history and pretend that Vlad the Impaler created all this.

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'Political reckoning' for Democrats nearly 'inevitable' as inflation becomes primary election issue: Freeman - Fox News

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Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said on "Americas Newsroom" Wednesday that the Biden administration needs to take action to bring down the inflation affecting his state. Cramer accused Democrats of putting "gasoline" on the problem.

PSAKI SLAMS GOV. ABBOTT OVER TRUCK INSPECTIONS AT TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER, BLAMES HIM FOR PRICE INCREASES

SEN. KEVIN CRAMER: I'm on the Banking Committee and we were pleading, I was pleading, with the Federal Reserve over a year ago to start easing back a little bit on free money. Inflation is a simple issue. When demand outpaces supply, you're going to have inflation. And the Federal Reserve was very slow when it was obvious that there was inflation happening. They called it transitory, and now they still talk about the hope for soft landings. And every now and then, when you have a really bad cancer, you need to cut it out. You can't just simply hope it goes away over the course of time. And so you have that. On top of that, you have an administration and a Democratic Party that just keeps pouring fuel on this. It's like Joe Biden showed up at the West Wing one day and said, Kamala, the Oval Office is on fire, get some gasoline. Everything they do is counter to solving the problem in front of us.

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Sen. Cramer on 'America's Newsroom': Biden and Democrats 'pouring fuel' on the inflation fire - Fox News

On the surface, Ketanji Brown Jacksons confirmation to the Supreme Court appeared to portend a hopeful future for liberals. She was the bright, youthful (as these things go) face of a more enlightened judiciary.

But appearances can be deceiving. A more accurate picture of the Courts future could actually be discerned from two other stories that flanked it. The first was Ginni Thomass ravings to Donald Trumps chief of staff more specifically, the nonplussed response thereto from the Republican Establishment, which is perfectly satisfied to allow a prominent conservative activist to draw on her connection to an esteemed conservative jurist to promote QAnon-inflected conspiracy theories in the highest corridors of power.

The second was Mitch McConnells refusal to commit to hold any hearings for a potential Supreme Court vacancy should his party win a Senate majority when prodded by Jonathan Swan. McConnell made it clear that Jackson is likely the last Supreme Court justice Democrats will nominate for years, maybe even a decade or more.

Jacksons confirmation was a brief, joyful respite. The future is a semi-permanent Republican judicial majority in which, contrary to the visual impression, Thomass worldview is much closer to the mainstream and Jacksons is a relic of a rapidly fading past.

There is a plausible argument that the Ginni Thomas story did not reveal wrongdoing by Clarence Thomas or even his wife. (Being crazy is not a crime.) But this assumes the justice does not share any important elements in his wifes deranged worldview. And while that assumption is possible every marriage is different it is hardly a safe assumption.

The trouble is that we simply dont know whether, or to what degree, Clarence Thomas believes Trump really won the election, that a well of evidence could prove his victory, and so on. The life tenure of a Supreme Court justice means that, once given a seat on the Court, he could easily evolve from a reliable partisan to an unhinged, paranoid nut without exposing his seat to any risk or even necessarily giving any outward indication to the country. Conservatives admire Clarence Thomas, appreciate the results of his votes, and refuse to take any posture other than assuming the best and daring his critics to prove that he agrees with his wife which is, of course, unprovable.

The scandal, in other words, is that we have to rely on the unprovable good faith of the Courts justices. There barely exists any method to wall them off from partisan politics. A couple months ago, Neil Gorsuch appeared at a Federalist Society conference alongside Republicans such as Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, and Kayleigh McEnany. A few months before that, Amy Coney Barrett fted McConnell in a speech putatively dedicated to refuting the charge that she and her colleagues are partisan hacks but which in reality served to bolster it.

American Oversight obtained emails from Ginni Thomas revealing that her husband is in regular contact with DeSantis. That story received far less attention than her emails about Trumps stolen-election fantasies but seems far more ethically damning. If a Supreme Court justice can maintain regular, private communication with one of the leaders of a political party, exactly what is left of the Courts nonpolitical role other than its carefully burnished appearance?

What these events all reveal is that the justices, and especially the Republican ones, recognize they operate insulated from any practical accountability. They can appear with their legislative allies in public and confer with them in private, knowing full well they will face no accountability or consequences.

What surely enhances their confidence is the understanding that even if a public backlash were to develop and a backlash of any important magnitude is currently nowhere to be seen it would have little practical recourse. The Republican majority has two seats to spare and no prospect for reversal for a long time to come.

The important news from Jacksons confirmation was not that Democrats managed to seat a justice; their possession of a Senate majority and the presidency made that a foregone conclusion. The news was that Democrats would not get another justice confirmed without controlling the Senate.

When McConnell announced in 2016 that he would not permit a hearing for any Supreme Court nominee put forward by Barack Obama, his stated rationale was that it would be improper for the Senate to confirm anybody during an election year. An army of conservative pundits came forward to vouchsafe this rationale. Only once in U.S. history (in 1888) has the Senate acted before Election Day to confirm a justice who was nominated in the last year of a presidential term by a president of the opposing party, insisted National Reviews Dan McLaughlin.

It was perfectly obvious at the time that McConnell had simply concocted an arbitrary time frame, but conservatives put up a great show in pretending the distinction between election-year nominees and justices nominated other times had real meaning. But McConnell is now dispensing with the pretext and openly refusing to commit to holding hearings for a Democratic Court nominee at all, election year or no. As far as I can tell, the number of conservatives who disagree with him is zero.

The old norms governing Supreme Court nominations generally meant that a well-qualified jurist from within that partys mainstream would command overwhelming approval from senators in both parties. But that expectation relied on the shared belief that judges were ideologically unpredictable. (Because, indeed, they were.)

In the new world, confirming a Supreme Court justice is just like passing any other part of the presidents agenda: You either have a majority of the votes in Congress or you dont get it. It will now become routine for Supreme Court seats to stay vacant for years until one party controls the presidency and the Senate.

In practical terms, this will make it nearly impossible for Democrats to take back the Court in the near future. As Simon Bazelon argues, the median Electoral College state is now roughly four percentage points more Republican than the country, and the median Senate seat is about three percentage points more Republican than the country. Democrats have managed to eke out 50 seats by coasting on previous wins in red states, but the advantage to incumbency is shrinking, while the correlation between how a state votes in presidential elections and how it votes in Senate elections is rising. Bazelon forecasts that Republicans will probably hold somewhere between 56 and 62 Senate seats after the 2024 elections.

Republicans happen to have control of the Court as it is growing far more partisan and as its partisan composition is growing much harder to change. The answer to why they dont want to change the system is so self-evident that McConnell didnt even bother to offer one up in his response to Swan: When the wheel stopped turning, they happened to be on top.

Irregular musings from the center left.

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Why Ketanji Brown Jackson Will Be the Last Democratic Justice for a Long Time - New York Magazine