Led Pipe cinched: the Orange “Anus* Horribilis” Blowhard seems now even more troubled by the coming multiple prosecutions that will definitely unfold in 2022. The pandemic has brought a mixed set of outcomes in 2021. Dems must do better.
WASHINGTON — A congressional year that began with an assault on the seat of democracy ended at 4 a.m. Saturday with the failure of a narrow Democratic majority to deliver on its most cherished promises, leaving lawmakers in both parties wondering if the legislative branch can be rehabilitated without major changes to its rules of operations.
“It has been a horrible year, hasn’t it?” asked Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, as she looked back on failed efforts to convict a former president and to create a bipartisan commission to examine the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, as well as numerous legislative endeavors that could not find bipartisan majorities.
The Senate limped out of town in pre-dawn darkness after slogging through nominations one by one, but leaving dozens of Mr. Biden’s nominees still awaiting confirmation to fill key positions at home and abroad — because a handful of Republican senators erected a blockade.
President Biden and Democrats can point to some major successes in 2021, including a $1.9 trillion pandemic aid plan that included a $300-per-child income support that slashed poverty rates; a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law that had eluded the two previous presidents; the confirmation of 40 judges in Mr. Biden’s first year, the most of any president since Ronald Reagan; and a House inquiry that has begun to reveal more about the roots of the Jan. 6 riot.
But the desultory end to the first session of the 117th Congress left few happy. Republicans — helped along by Democratic holdouts — succeeded in obstructing much of Mr. Biden’s agenda, including a major voting rights push meant to neutralize new restrictions their party has enacted at the state level. Democrats accused them of an assault on the foundations of democratic pluralism.
At times, Democrats tried resorting to bare-knuckled tactics to steer around that obstruction — drawing charges from Republicans that they were trampling the rights of the congressional minority in ways that they would soon regret — and still fell short of their goals.
