It's easy to fixate on the President of the United States in these times, particularly on this Wednesday morning, when he took a break from his campaign to reopen the country—even if COVID-19 deaths are at or near single-day highs—to threaten military action against Iran during a worldwide pandemic, possibly in response to a Fox & Friends segment. The commander-in-chief says he told the Navy to "shoot down" Iranian gunboats, which raises the prospect that our adversaries have developed ships that can fly. Maybe he's been playing too much Hydro Thunder. Get out of the arcade, Don!

But it's also worth taking a look at the only other political party our system allows us, The Democrats. And boy, are they being Democrats. Keep in mind, the Democratic Party controls the lower house of Congress, and has the capacity to block pretty much anything it wants in the Senate, too—you know, like Republicans do. They will continually run up against Mitch McConnell's titanic megalomania, but they are not powerless. And yet with every bill, they seem to declare victory while also declaring they will get 'em next time.

On Wednesday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared such a victory on the latest coronavirus response bill, which secured around $380 billion for small businesses, $75 billion for hospitals, and $25 billion for disease testing. She trumpeted that it would now be easier for small businesses without established banking connections to get funding, which lawmakers decided on a bipartisan basis in the earlier CARES Act to fork over to the nation's giant banks to distribute. Four of those banks are currently being sued for prioritizing big customers. This is why some have suggested the CARES Act basically functioned as a bailout for the nation's most powerful business interests, which was, of course, Republicans' main priority, though they also secured a millionaire tax break.

What are the Democrats' priorities? In a conference call on Monday, some of the most progressive Democrats in the House, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, decried the new bill—albeit without having seen the final text—for failing on a raft of progressive aims. Unlike many European countries, the United States has continually chosen not to prioritize subsidizing payrolls to keep workers employed, instead funneling people into the beefed-up unemployment system. But many Americans may struggle to secure unemployment insurance promptly with more than 22 million people filing applications across the (often overwhelmed) state systems, and then they'll eventually have to try to re-enter the workforce. There's nothing in the bill on rent cancellations, a growing demand in many cities, including New York. Nothing on hazard pay for essential workers or expanding health coverage. Nothing on vote-by-mail.

Democrats secured some funding for less-connected small businesses in the new bill. Chip Somodevilla Getty Images

On the other hand, the cash for increased testing that Democrats did secure was packaged as a concession from McConnell and the Republicans, despite the fact that everybody who knows about this says a widespread testing program is a prerequisite for easing lockdown restrictions and initiating some sort of recovery. It's an issue the president is getting killed on, rightfully so, and yet Democrats agreed to settle on a state of affairs where his party is allowed to block it and extract concessions from them?

This is not to suggest that they do what Republicans did in the last financial meltdown, in kneecapping the federal response indefinitely—and hurting the country—in an attempt to harm the president politically. It's that the shot clock is running down on Republicans here far more than Democrats. Press them hard while they can feel the clock ticking. You can have a cutting edge without becoming McConnell. (The president's veto power also looms, but would he really refuse to sign something passed by the Republican Senate during crisis?) Pelosi and Schumer did do this somewhat, resisting McConnell's attempt to railroad the Democrats into a bill that only dealt with the small-business program. The Speaker caught some flak in the conservative press because the program was running out of money, but did Democrats take any lasting political damage? And why didn't Democrats try to draw the battle lines themselves, by writing their own bill before McConnell could set "only small-business funding" as the baseline?

Somehow, these battles are always fought on a playing field chosen by Mitch McConnell. Chip Somodevilla Getty Images

If roles were reversed, McConnell would not acquiesce to a playing field wherein the party whose figurehead is in power atop the federal government—and so will take the lion's share of the blame for outcomes, as President Obama did—is allowed to turn things they need into concessions they're willing to grant. McConnell doesn't care about Non-Donor Americans, but surely he sees political peril in not getting testing right. The president's numbers with older Americans in particular are already in decline, along with his approval ratings after a brief rally-around-the-leader-in-crisis bump.

Critics have already pointed out the new bill once again has minimal oversight, which Democrats also refuse to do much of in the House. (The Government Accountability Office has pledged to look into the federal government's pandemic response, but the opposition party largely has not.) What oversight they are doing of the corporate bailout is led, in part, by folks who may have some conflicts of interest. Democrats were also unable to secure more funding for state and local governments, and here's where they've kicked off the calls of we'll get 'em next time. There seems to be absolute faith among Democratic leadership that there will be another bill soon, and there may well be if the small-business money once again proves to be too small. But McConnell is already staking out one of his trademark absurd positions, via Politico:

McConnell said the Senate will proceed “cautiously” to the next phase of coronavirus relief despite rapidly escalating demands for more aid from members of both parties. And he said that all 100 senators need to be around before Washington spends more money on an unprecedented economic rescue of workers and businesses caught in the virus’ fallout.

“You’ve seen the talk from both sides about acting, but my goal from the beginning of this, given the extraordinary numbers that we’re racking up to the national debt, is that we need to be as cautious as we can be,” McConnell said. “We need to see how things are working, see what needs to be corrected, and I do think that the next time we pass a coronavirus rescue bill we need to have everyone here and everyone engaged.”

The rules are simple: when interests that Republicans represent need help, money is no object. The rest of the time, The National Debt is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This is the position from which McConnell will operate going into the next bill, where he will once again demand funding for "small" business run through the nation's big banks while providing no funding for anything else Democrats might want on the basis that it would destroy our children's future.

AOC and other progressives have voiced disappointment with the new bill. JOHANNES EISELE Getty Images

By now, Schumer should know who he's dealing with. McConnell signaled again Wednesday that he will embark on an all-out effort to stuff the federal judiciary full of right-wingers before November, pandemic be damned. Have Democrats ever considered a scorched-earth campaign to block these nominees—some of whom are manifestly unqualified—like Republicans did under Obama? There was no political cost then, and it would have the added benefit this time of blocking hacks from serving for life and further undermining what's left of our democracy for decades. This is a method to remake the playing field, by holding McConnell's feet to the fire on the issue he cares most about.

But we know the next bill, if it's coming anytime soon, will be another all-out war that is somehow fought, as always, on McConnell's ground. If that's allowed to happen again, you can say goodbye to national vote-by-mail, which is a necessity if you're interested in guaranteeing that American elections will be free and fair in November. Just look at what Republicans tried in Wisconsin. There's reason to believe there will be another pandemic wave in the fall, which may coincide with flu season, and which will possibly make in-person voting perilous. Vote-by-mail is safe and popular—two-thirds support it—yet national Democrats have not tried to force it into any bill, or even made much of a public stink about it.

For now, securing our elections will fall to the states, where Republicans are also fighting tooth and nail against vote-by-mail as part of a broader strategy—bordering on an admission of guilt—to suppress votes. So things are going even more local now: following the travesty in Wisconsin, where at least seven people are known to have contracted coronavirus because the Republican legislature and conservative judges forced them to vote in person during a pandemic, the Milwaukee city council will mail 300,000 residents absentee ballots. This is part of a broader initiative among local governments to make vote-by-mail a reality within their jurisdictions. No wonder McConnell was so against more money for local governments.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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