Do Democrats Have the Courage of Liz Cheney?

By Thomas L. Friedman
Opinion Columnist

A few months ago I had the chance to have a long conversation with Wyoming Representative
Liz Cheney. While we disagreed on many policy issues, I could not have been more impressed
with her unflinching argument that Donald Trump represented an unprecedented threat to
American democracy. I was also struck by her commitment to risk her re-election, all the issues
she cares about, and even physical harm, to not only vote for Trump’s impeachment but also
help lead the House investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

At the end of our conversation, though, I could only shake my head and ask: Liz, how could
there be only one of you?

She could only shake her head back.

After all, a recent avalanche of news stories and books leaves not a shred of doubt that Trump
was attempting to enlist his vice president, his Justice Department and pliant Republican state
legislators in a coup d’état to stay in the White House based on fabricated claims of election
fraud.

Nearly the entire G.O.P. caucus (save for Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger, who is
also risking his all to join the Jan. 6 investigation, and a few other Republicans who defied
Trump on impeachment) has shamelessly bowed to Trump’s will or decided to quietly retire.
They are all complicit in the greatest political sin imaginable: destroying faith in our nation’s
most sacred process, the peaceful and legitimate transfer of power through free and fair elec-
tions. Looking at how Trump and his cult are now laying the groundwork — with new laws, bo-
gus audits, fraud allegations and the installation of more pliant state election officials to ensure
victory in 2024 no matter what the count — there is no question that America’s 245-year experi-
ment in democracy is in real peril.

Our next presidential election could well be our last as a shining example of democracy.

Just listen to Cheney. Addressing her fellow Republicans on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, she noted
that when they abet Trump’s delegitimization of the last election, “in the face of rulings of the
courts, in the face of recounts, in the face of everything that’s gone on to demonstrate that there
was not fraud … we are contributing to the undermining of our system. And it’s a really serious
and dangerous moment because of that.”

This is Code Red. And that leads me to the Democrats in Congress.

I have only one question for them: Are you ready to risk a lot less than Liz Cheney did to do
what is necessary right now — from your side — to save our democracy?

Because, when one party in our two-party system completely goes rogue, it falls on the other
party to act. Democrats have to do three things at the same time: advance their agenda, protect
the integrity of our elections and prevent this unprincipled Trump-cult version of the G.O.P.
from ever gaining national power again.
It is a tall order and a wholly unfair burden in many ways. But if Cheney is ready to risk every-
thing to stop Trump, then Democrats — both moderates and progressives — must rise to this
moment and forge the majorities needed in the Senate and House to pass the bipartisan infra-
structure bill (now scheduled for a Thursday vote in the House), a voting rights bill and as much
of the Build Back Better legislation as moderate and progressives can agree on.

If the Democrats instead form a circular firing squad, and all three of these major bills get scat-
tered to the winds and the Biden presidency goes into a tailspin — and the Trump Republicans
retake the House and Senate and propel Trump back into the White House — there will be no
chance later. Later will be too late for the country as we know it.

So, I repeat: Do Representative Josh Gottheimer, the leader of the centrist Democrats in the
House, and Representative Pramila Jayapal, leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus,
have the guts to stop issuing all-or-nothing ultimatums and instead give each other ironclad as-
surances that they will do something hard?

Yes, they will each risk the wrath of some portion of their constituencies to reach a compromise
on passing infrastructure now and voting rights and the Build Back Better social spending soon
after — without anyone getting all that they wanted, but both sides getting a whole lot. It’s called
politics.

And are centrist Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema ready to risk not being
re-elected the way Liz Cheney has by forging a substantive compromise to ensure that conse-
quential election integrity, infrastructure and Build Back Better measures go forward? Or are
they just the Democratic equivalents of the careerist hacks keeping Trump afloat — people so at-
tached to their $174,000 salaries and free parking at Reagan National Airport that they will risk
nothing?

And, frankly, is the Biden White House ready to forge this compromise with whatever pressures,
Oval Office teas, inducements, pork and seductions are needed? It could energize the public a lot
more by never referring to this F.D.R.-scale social reform package as “reconciliation” and only
calling it by its actual substance: universal pre-K, home health care for the sick and elderly,
lower prescription drug prices, strengthened Obamacare, cleaner energy, green jobs and easier
access to college education that begins a long-overdue leveling of the playing field between the
wealthy and the working class. Also, the White House needs to sell it not only to urban
Democrats but to rural Republicans, who will benefit as well.

The progressives need to have the courage to accept less than they want. They also could use a
little more humility by acknowledging that there could be some unintended effects from such a
big spending bill — and far more respect for the risk-takers who create jobs, whom they never
have a good word for. If Biden’s presidency is propelled forward and seen as a success for every-
day Americans, Democrats can hold the Senate and House and come back for more later.

The moderates need to have the courage to give the progressives much more than the moderates
prefer. Income and opportunity gaps in America helped to produce Trump; they will be our un-
doing if they persist.
We’re not writing the Ten Commandments here. We’re doing horse-trading. Just do it.

None of the Democratic lawmakers will be risking their careers by such a compromise, which is
child’s play compared with facing the daily wrath of running for re-election in the most pro-
Trump state in America, Wyoming, while denouncing Trump as the greatest threat to our
democracy.
But I fear common sense may not win out. As Minnesota Democratic Representative Dean
Phillips (a relative) remarked to me after Tuesday’s caucus of House Democrats: “The absence of
pragmatism among Democrats is as troubling as the absence of principle among Republicans.”
Manchin and Sinema Should Just Say No

By Bret Stephens
Opinion Columnist

Dear Senators Manchin and Sinema,

Whether the occasion is social or political, the hero of the party is the person who’ll grab the
keys before the drunks can get behind their wheels.

This week, it falls to the two of you to be that person. The progressives in your party think you’re
all that stands in the way of their expensive utopia, and they’re willing to hold a popular infra-
structure bill as hostage in order to get their wish. The leaders in your party expect you to go
along, at least partway, with a $4.5 trillion spending bonanza — $1 trillion for infrastructure, an
additional $3.5 trillion for new entitlements — because that’s what some members of their cau-
cus demand. If you don’t, much of the media will cast you as the villains who kneecapped an al-
ready faltering Biden presidency.

And they are doing this in the week when the only thing that ought to matter to Congress is rais-
ing the debt ceiling to avert default.

This is dumb. The likeliest way for President Biden to fail — and for Democrats to lose their con-
gressional majorities next year and for Donald Trump to return to the White House next term —
is for the spending bills to pass mostly as they are. A Democratic Party that abandons its center
(where many congressional seats are vulnerable) for the sake of its left (where the seats are usu-
ally safe) is heading straight for the minority come November 2022.
Let them call you names now so that they can thank you for your sobriety later.

The working class faces no greater thief than inflation. The rich can switch among asset classes,
find different tax shelters, rely on financial experts, ride it out. The less fortunate — your con-
stituency and much of the Democratic base — depend on regular paychecks to pay the rent.
And rents are now skyrocketing.

In June, the inflation forecast was 3.4 percent for the year. The forecast has since risen to 4.2
percent — more than double the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2 percent. The Fed hopes this
will taper once the pandemic ends and supply disruptions, supposedly the cause of inflation,
cease.

But what if it isn’t just supply disruptions that are causing prices to rise but rather a case of too
much money chasing too few goods? And what if the pandemic continues to defy expectations
and carries over until next year? Congress has already appropriated close to $6 trillion for Covid
relief. A continuing pandemic would most likely require further trillions in spending. How does
that square, fiscally, with the $4.5 trillion extravaganza?

This is what ought to keep Democratic leaders awake at night, along with the record spike in
homicides, an incoherent and chaotic policy on the southern border and the possibility that
a ticking real-estate debt bomb in China could be the world’s next Lehman Brothers collapse.

Instead, they’re pushing for the biggest expansion of the welfare state since the 1960s, to be fi-
nanced with the biggest tax increase in decades and to be passed with a three-vote edge in the
House and a tiebreaker vote in the Senate on a 100 percent partisan basis. This is not what
swing voters had in mind when they elected Biden on his pledge to be a unifier, a compromiser
and a moderate.

And it shows: Biden began with a 61 percent approval rating among independents, according to
Gallup. Eight months later, it’s at 37 percent. This is another stark portent of a midterm
blowout.

Would it help the cause if Democrats came up with a lower topline? Nope: It would be a classic
case of falling between two stools, placating neither friends nor critics. Is it honest to claim the
bill adds nothing to the national debt? “Biden’s own budget officials earlier this year estimated
that his agenda would increase the national debt by nearly $1.4 trillion over the decade,” The As-
sociated Press reports. Does it help that Biden is now claiming that his spending plan “costs zero
dollars”? Only if you enjoy having your intelligence insulted.

Which neither of you do.

There’s a way out of this standoff. Trade a clean vote in the House on infrastructure for Senate
Republican support for a debt-ceiling increase, gained by putting the $3.5 trillion reconciliation
bill on ice. Or simply hold a clean House vote on infrastructure and increase the debt ceiling uni-
laterally through reconciliation. Then disaggregate the spending bill into separate items of legis-
lation that could be voted on à la carte, according to their merits and political appeal. Let the
American people know what’s in this huge legislative burrito. Maybe they’ll find some of it appe-
tizing.

For Biden, it’s a way of realigning himself with the center of the country with a policy win on in-
frastructure and strengthening moderates of the party with a political win over the left. For the
two of you, it’s a chance to be both statesmanlike and politically shrewd.

Sometimes, the heroes of the story are those who just say no. Here’s your chance.