Is NATO expansion the new Versailles?

On 1 September 1939, German military forces crossed the border into Poland. The UK and France, after some days, complied with their treaty obligations to Poland and declared war on Germany. They then basically sat back and did nothing while Poland burned. The invasion of Poland was inevitable, and it is possible to put a date on that inevitability: 28 June 1919.

We’ve seen this cycle before; fight a war, win/lose a war, impose a treaty (or not) and then wait 20 – 40 years for the ‘losing side’ to complete their grievance process and start a war to ‘rectify’ the ‘injustice’ of the previously imposed peace.

As World War II followed as an inevitability from the one-sided Treaty of Versailles, so will the invasion of Ukraine follow the relentless expansion of NATO after the end of the Cold War. While there was no victory parade, no humiliating armistice signing in a rail carriage, and no grand treaty at Versailles, there most certainly was a 'victory', and the victors did impose their will on the defeated.

As Versailles begat WWII, so to the constant eastward expansion of NATO begat the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, and the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. And yet NATO did not learn from either, and continues to state that it is Ukraine's prerogative to choose to join NATO, thus leaving the door open for further eastward expansion.

Giving credit to the concept of NATO, its very existence has ensured peace across its member nations for over seventy years. And it is inconceivable that any nation-state would seriously consider attacking a NATO member. So there are huge incentives to join NATO, not least being the end of historically ever-present external threats and the need for large armies always ready for war.

And there have been incentives for NATO to seek to add new countries to the club, not least ensuring that there are no more wars between member nations, and eliminating the threat of near-peer aggression against any NATO member. For that matter, any country, near-peer or not, has to think twice or even three times before engaging in overt aggression against a NATO member. An attack on a NATO member is a terrible idea.

Should NATO have expanded? Yes. The eastward expansion was appropriate, especially into Poland, the Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. Creating a mutually defending core European entity that (almost) mirrors the EU was the logical progression. There cannot be a European Union without a common European defence sphere. The issue, however, is not the future of the European core, but about the extent to which Europe and the United States are willing to go to impose their will on the rest of Europe and surrounding areas.

In effect, NATO creates a giant overlapping sphere of influence and control, protecting the western core (France, Germany and the Benelux) from aggression from the east, the exact mirror of Moscow's needs. Russia needs its borderlands in the west, namely Belarus and Ukraine. Russia remembers German tanks. And they know perfectly well that those German tanks had to fight through eastern Poland, Belarus and Ukraine to reach Russian soil.

Would this justify an invasion of Ukraine? No. Of course not. Did Versailles justify the invasion of Poland in 1939? Of course not.

Was the Treaty of Versailles unjust, and did it contribute to the rise of militant nationalism in Germany? Sadly yes. Has the west's apparent inability to say "enough is enough" when it comes to the eastward expansion of NATO contributed to Russia's recent wars? Sadly also yes.

Will NATO and the United States now accept that NATO expansion is at an end? No. And they cannot, because to do so 'abandons' Ukraine and other countries, and tells them that they will never have the same security that all NATO members share. But to now make that statement will force Russia's hand.

Brutally honestly, the best we can hope for now is a Cuban Missle Crisis outcome, in which Russia blinks after receiving a secret promise that Ukraine will never be part of NATO. That back door agreement will have to come with a guarantee that there will be, at an 'appropriate time', probably within the next six months, a public statement that NATO agrees that Ukraine will never join.

But that will not happen, and cannot happen.

So probably the realistic best hope is for a fast Russian offensive, the quick collapse of the Ukrainian government and the formation of a new government in Kyiv that publicly renounces any NATO ambitions and pledges closer ties with Russia. The alternative will be the occupation of Ukraine while the west looks on, making as much noise as possible, all the while doing nothing. Just like 1939 and Poland.

Can a wrong treaty be undone? Can NATO admit that it has reached its limits? I think we are about to find out.

 

So goes the Covid in Greece; 2 Feb 2022

There is definitely a weariness that permeates everything. Sure, we all wear the mask most of the time, except that it is more common to see groups of people without masks, certainly indoors. And even we will not wear a mask indoors when dining. Being triple vaxxed, we feel a sense of, not immunity but, less concern about catching Covid-19 and the potential impact on us. We have an expectation that it will be mild and will pass over us.

Still, there remains the concern that we, either of us, could be one of the few that has a bad case, or has a “long Covid” case with problems lingering for some time. So we remain cautious, but in all honesty not as cautious as we should be. 

This is especially the case with the high numbers now. We are immured to the numbers, which when they were a thousand a day, we panicked, but at 19,000 a day we now think that is, if not a good day, then at least a standard day in a stream of days in which the numbers are slowly coming down. But of course, they are not coming down yet, and deaths are now back up to a seven-day moving average that is as high as it has ever been. 

Last week, Francoise went to her regular yoga on Wednesday. She goes to a studio that currently has only three people at a time, with plenty of space between them. The window is open the entire time, even in winter. So that would make this “cold yoga” and not “hot yoga” (bad joke). 

On Saturday, her yoga instructor sent her a message saying that she tested on Wednesday and was positive for Covid-19, probably caught from her child’s school. 

So it was a self-test for Francoise, which thankfully came up negative. That is one is a string of near misses we’ve had. I’m not terribly impressed that the yoga teacher took until the weekend to tell Francoise, with there then being a few days in which Francoise would have been building up a good case, and potentially being contagious herself. 

Total cases in Greece from the beginning of the pandemic is now ar around 1.9 million, or around 18% of the population. One in five people has had Covid-19, officially. Yet there have been so many cases that were asymptomatic and therefore never identified, and probably many cases spotted in self-tests that were not reported. If that is the case, then my personal estimate is that the number of confirmed cases is 50%, at best of the total number of cases. That makes the total percentage of cases closer to 40% or more of the population. And we have no idea how many of the children have had Covid-19 and just brushed it off as nothing. 

 So if 40% have been infected and therefore have a significantly lower chance of catching it again soon, and 45% (as of yesterday's numbers) have been vaxxed and boosted, then that accounts for 85% of the population, leaving a scant 15% left who are fully exposed. I’m not suggesting that the 85% cannot be infected, but I would expect that the potential infection rate for that part of the community is much less than for the remaining unvaccinated who have yet to be infected.

So with those kinds of numbers, that leaves around another 1.5 million exposed. At 20,000 per day, and with an expectation that of the remaining 15%, only 7.5% of them will actually contract Covid-19, we should start seeing a dropping off of new cases this month, hopefully tapering off the very few ongoing new infections by the end of March.

Is that good news? I think it is. Certainly, there will be more variants, and there will be additional waves as new variants sneak past vaccination protection. But unless those new variants are really scary, I’m hopeful that we will be “back” to a “new normal” is mask-less walks and an awakening city and country just in time for spring.

For us, being dosed is helpful, but there remain too many unvaccinated. The Greek government is now fining the elderly who are not vaccinated, and there is a recommendation that the fines be deducted directly from their pension payments. Unfortunately, I think that seems reasonable, except. 

Anne Marie in Costa Rica remains unvaccinated and is worried that being alone, the side effects from being vaccinated could be too much for her. With a reverse-placebo effect, I’m afraid that she is right, and the side effects will be too much. Not because there would have been any, but because she has now convinced herself that there will be, and therefore there will be. Reverse-placebo. I think even we were subject to a bit of that, with both of us experiencing lethargy and aches over a couple of days. Francoise on the day of the vaccination and me starting the following day for 24 hours.. 

If we experienced that, with our comfort at being vaccinated, there is absolutely no doubt that Anne Marie will have serious side effects. 

And that brings me back to the elderly Greeks who are not vaccinated and now face fines. I lack sympathy, or I did. Now I'm beginning to think that these elderly will have a disproportionate rate of serious side effects, due not to actual causes but simply due to their deeply held expectation of negative side effects. I don't know what the right trade-off is, but certainly, there will be a need for greater monitoring of the elderly when they do get their vaccinations.

(All images from Google search phrase "Covid Greece" on 2 Feb 2022)

A Second Amerikan Civil War - not likely

Peter shared an interesting article yesterday (Divisions in America are even worse than you thought) that suggests that a Civil War in Amerika is inevitable. It's a very good snapshot of Amerika today. It does leave out a few things that should be taken into consideration in the "civil war" discussion. The first and most important is that the demographics are against the Republicans, and the economics are against them. It mentions the economics, but not the full extent of the problem.

So I'll add my own thoughts on the situation and the potential for a Second Civil War:

We all know about the Bell Curve, and especially the bell curve of intelligence across populations. I'll not draw one, but will say that there are sets of three bell curves at play here. 

1. Intelligence. There is of course the standard across the entire population. But there are also the Republican (R) and Democrat/Independent (D/I) bell curves. The Republican bell curve peaks to the left of the centre, while the Democrat/Independent skews to the right of the centre. Sorry, just a fact. The very exploitability of the Trumpist base and their willingness to believe any bullshit is all the proof that is needed.

It is important to recognise that the bell curve does have individuals at the upper intellect extreme. Those are the people who are Republican because they know that they can exploit the rest of the curve (and plenty on the D/I curve). Repugnant as he may be, Liddel is probably further up the curve, and I'm willing to bet that past daily cognitive dissonance that is his life, that he knows that the "Big Lie" BS is actually great for sales. He will never expand into the D/I market, but there remains plenty of R market that has not yet bought from him. The same goes for Mike Flynn, Giuliani and the rest of them. They are exploiting the simple for financial or power gain. Trump himself is somewhere above the mean, but I'll not venture a pin on the chart.

I'm not saying that being D/I makes one more intelligent, but if the left-skewed part of the population is excluded, the remaining will skew ever so slightly to the right. Let's face it; you are probably not the brightest light in the tent if you still think that there is a cannibalistic cabal of paedophiles in Washington, even though Trump was unable, in four years, to expose even one of them. Put simply, it takes a special kind of stupid to believe QAnon. 

That leads to the second.

2. Economics. The bell curves of economic productive capacity and personal wealth are similar to the intelligence bell curves. This means that, while they do have enough money to buy guns and ammunition, they do not have the economic capacity to sustain themselves (or their states). That economic capacity will be further eroded by the flight of money from their areas as the D/I wealthy remove investment and capital, and the wealthy R cohort removes profits to "safer" D/I regions.

As the first Amerikan Civil War proved, a non-industrial South, lacking in capacity and hindered by geography, was ultimately no match for the power and productive capacity of the North. Add to that the international community's refusal to recognise the slave-owning South (and probably refuse to recognise a theocratic South today) in part for morality reasons and in part to avoid risking the wrath of the North. The international community will "sit this one out", which cannot work to the advantage of the South.

Economically the R regions do not have a chance; they import everything, produce nothing (other than coal and country music, oh and tourism to Florida beaches) and have little capacity to produce what they will need to keep their adherents supplied with the ammunition that the Crispy Cream Brigades will need.

3. Now let's look at the demographic problem. Republicans and the ultra-conservatives are a shrinking (already) minority. As the article points out, the younger cohorts - future voters displacing the older voters as they die out - are very D/I. That will reduce the ability of the R factions to retain power. Sure, there will be individual states, and blocks of states, that will go further right, and will enact the harshest right-wing agendas. They will also suppress D/I voters in order to retain almost perpetual control. But they will suffer from the loss of population as the younger migrate to the more D/I centres of economic activity. 

As the article points out, it may take a while, but those D/I states will lose the desire to continue to prop up the R states through infinite largesse to the detriment of their own people, especially when it becomes (became?) clear that the R states will never reform. 

4. Centres of power. The other thing missing from the article is the great dreaded and vilified "Deep State". Actually, the Deep State does exist, it is called the infrastructure of government across the country, and ranges from the local DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles, issuing drivers licenses) to Congress, from the administrator in the VA to the policy analysts in the Department of Transportation. The Republicans and Trumpists have created a mythical monster where there is indeed a monster, but not the monster that they think it is. The real monster that they need to be afraid of is two-headed - the DoJ and the DoD.

DoJ is not going to allow January 6th to go unanswered. They will prosecute as high as they can find evidence to support those prosecutions. And they will do so by the tried and true tactics of bringing in the small fish, offering token sentences for evidence and agreements to testify. They will continue to collect the evidence, over Trump's lawsuits (and the SCOTUS just rejected his "let me hide the evidence" lawsuit) and the stalling actions of the rest of his cabal. A lot of people are going to jail. 2022 will be the year of indictments, and of the Deep State reminding people that there are consequences.

DoD will go through a purge this year and next. They will be quietly purging the January 6th supporters and insurrectionists, and there were plenty. They will be removing "political" generals, and they will be reinforcing the civics training that has always been a component of initial and ongoing military training. An apolitical military is one of the foundations of the US of Amerika, and the military leadership will demand a perpetuation of that value. That will be non-negotiable to the generals and the Joint Chiefs. So, in 2024, whoever is lawfully elected and certified by Congress will be sworn in as the next president. No matter who that is. It won't be the Great Pussy Grabber.

5. The insurrectionists. Let me start by calling Ashli Babbit what she was; a traitor, who died a traitor's death. An underperforming, lower intellect Senior Airman. PLEASE, Senior Airman after 12 years of service, active, reserve and National Guard? Please, not even a Sergeant, which is the "other half" of the E-4 rank. You almost have to try to not make Sergeant in under 4 years, let alone 12. Yet by getting herself shot dead inside the Capital, she is the martyr for the insurrectionists. They were the gullible, led by a cadre of true insurrectionists who actually did want to overthrow the government and the election.  

When a "real civil war" starts, they will be isolated and tracked down by real police and real military units, trained and with the intel on their side. Their leaders will flee to Canada or Mexico as if it was a bad snowstorm. Government institutions will not support the insurrectionists at any level. A secret about the "Deep State"; as government service tends to be more of a meritocracy, those who rise in the "Deep State" tend to skew right on the intellectual bell curve, and they tend also to support the Constitution and rule of law. This is going to make it difficult for the insurrectionists to gain the kind of traction that they will require to actually enact and complete an effective insurrection or secession.

Summary

Will there be a new Civil War in Amerika? Probably. Will it last as long as the previous one? Probably not. Will states secede from the Union? Possibly. Will the Union accept it? Not a chance. Will the secessionist states be able to survive or will they lose the Second Civil War? They will be crushed. The Union will be restored. The insurrectionists will be crushed. 

In fact, it may already be happening. The investigations by the DoJ may be the counteroffensive that will lead to the restoration of the Union and the destruction of the insurrection. Time will tell.

Random January 7th thoughts

January 6th managed to pass by without my commenting on the events one year ago. My horror remains, and my disgust at virtually all Republicans remains as well. Their attempts to pretend it never happened, or that it was ‘peaceful’ or even that it wasn’t really Trump supporters remains sickening. The Republican Party has moved so far into the land of dreams and lies that it is almost impossible to see a road back.

Demographically they will fade, but that will take decades. And what we are seeing now is their fight-back to avoid irrelevance. They actually believe that they will be able to turn back the clock to days of theocracy and racism across Amerika. What is frightening is the number of people who believe that message.

Yesterday Biden began the road back. He was forceful, and he needs to be. Trump did not "just go away" after January 20th last year. He remains a spoiler, and too many Republican senators and congressmen rely upon him to stay in office. That must change. Biden has a State of the Union coming up in late January. He must be equally forceful then. I do like that he called out Trump (though not by name of course) multiple times, with what were, in some cases, personal insults. 

Now we need Marick Garland to start charging people with conspiracy. Pero-walk the bastards. Let the tide turn. Then we will see a change in the thinking. 

And Congress needs to have public hearings, and expose the lies and deceit of the Republican congressional representatives who were involved, or who were excessively supportive of the "protesters". 

But they need to start soon, so that the message and the disgust can be well established long before the mid-terms. The Republicans probably will gain seats, and then they will attempt to reinforce the "Big Lie". They will be seen through.

Imagine having the only two Republicans in attendance being the former Vice President and a prime contender for the title of the "Dark Lord", and his daughter, an almost equally conservative Republican. Imagine what it says about how unhinged from the roots of the party (even the recent roots) the current party must be. It is scary. Can that line hold? Will the conservative but not crazy Republicans actually come out to vote for the current crop of lunatics?

I keep saying that only 5% need to stay home. Is it too much to hope that one out of 20 Republicans, seeing just how messed up their party has become, wouldn't stay home? It probably is too much to ask, but not too much to hope for.

SASB’s XBRL Taxonomy; Stepping forward by stepping sideways

SASB’s XBRL Taxonomy

Stepping forward by stepping sideways

The future of business reporting is incomplete without a significant increase in the quantity and quality of ESG reporting, ultimately mandated by regulators and included in the scope of the external audit. For ESG data to be of an auditable quality, a common standard is required, with a level of rigour equivalent to IFRS or US GAAP standards approved by the FASB (and for the US government, GASB). To meet the need for higher quality ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reporting, the SASB has just released an XBRL taxonomy version of their standards.

Is the SASB XBRL Taxonomy an extravagance, a step sideways, or in a strange way, a step forward for ESG reporting? Is an(other) XBRL taxonomy required, and if so, why and what benefit will be achieved (and for whom)? After all, there is already a GRI XBRL Taxonomy for Sustainability reporting.

The foundations for effective ESG reporting are being laid, but there remains a lack of compulsion that will be required to force companies to deliver.

Instead of another XBRL Taxonomy, I would recommend the SASB (VRF) put their energies and limited resources into:

1. lobbying the SEC and regulators to require ESG reporting in quarterly and annual reports, and
2. request the SEC to provide further guidance on how ESP information should be provide under Reg S-K, including the 2020 “modernisation” of the Rule, and
3. lobbying regulators to demand that ESG information be audited, and
4. developing course materials to enable universities to train young accountants to audit ESG information, and
5. developing CPD materials for established professionals to audit (including Partner review training) of ESG information, and
6. work with the data aggregators to develop easy to use reporting tools to analyse ESG content.

Sustainability data will remain “nice to have” until it mandated and it is audited, and any number of XBRL Taxonomies will not make that happen.

The importance of SASB

ESG (and Sustainability) reporting is not new, although its importance has increased through the pandemic and the climate crisis. When the Club of Rome released their “Limits to Growth” in 1972, there was little understanding of sustainability as a national and business priority. Over the next decades, that changed, and by the turn of the century, the first ESG and sustainability reporting standards were introduced.

The problem with almost all sustainability reporting standards is the lack of auditability of the reports, and the lack of accounting-standards level clarity or exactness of definition. It was almost impossible to ensure like-for-like meanings of the reported sustainability or governance concepts. Most standards were built with the PR department in mind, not Finance and share market or Compliance Reporting.

The SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board) was established in an already well-populated ecosystem of competing standards for ESG reporting. However, SASB is the first standards organisation of develop a set of sustainability and ESG reporting standards to the same level as traditional accounting standards. The IIRC (International Integrated Reporting Consortium) was founded in the UK to pursue the development and introduction of the “Integrated Report” to improve the quality of business reporting. The SASB and IIRC have merged to create the Value Reporting Foundation (VRF).

For a standard to be successful it requires three market drivers. First a need must be satisfied that exceeds the cost of implementation – a compelling commercial case for implementation. Second there must be natural users or ‘consumers’ of the product of the standard. Finally, there must be regulatory drivers that compel the recalcitrant to implement the standard.

Until now, Sustainability and/or ESG reporting has lacked the third of these, in that sustainability reporting has been optional. This resulted in a plethora of standards (the GRI, SASB, CDP, UNGC, etc)* each providing optional levels of compliance and limited, if any, assurance mechanisms. We shouldn’t forget the “Accounting for Sustainability” (A4S) initiative from the Prince of Wales, or the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) initiative.

All of these standards are voluntary. This means that Sustainability and/or ESG reporting have been, by the very option nature of such reporting, an opportunity for marketing and PR to put forward the best story, especially if it is not the whole story.

SASB’s standard provides one of the first ESG standard with the potential to meet regulator’s needs for an auditable and consistent content definition. Therefore, when the third driver is in place (regulatory mandate), the SASB standard is ready to be used to provide the level and quality of data mandated by regulators.

The XBRL Dream

In 1998 (long before the first iPhone), a group of accountants came up with an intriguing idea. What if they were able to create an XML based standard for the “tagging” of financial information, so that all consumers of that information would know exactly what each piece of data actually meant. Of course, it was not so easy, as any financial and later “business” “fact” requires an awful lot of contextual information to give it actual and consistent meaning. So the XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) Standard was born, extending the XML standard considerably.

With XBRL, it was possible to state with certainty that one company’s reported “Cash and Cash Equivalent” actually defined the same accounting concept as another company’s reported “Cash and Cash Equivalent”. In addition, the “eXtensible” part of the standard meant that if you require a more granular concept than already exists in the taxonomy, you could add a new element.

Business reporting would be simplified, consumption of like-for-like information would transform analysis, and companies, through the (modest it was hoped) use of extensions elements, could “tell their story their way”.

Now it was simply a matter of developing a taxonomy of business terms, and convincing software makers to develop the tools required to support what had become a very complex standard.

The XBRL Reality

Unfortunately, the complexity of XBRL meant that for the first decade, all three of the major drivers for adoption were missing. There was no economic case for developers to create software or for companies to spend their money to produce financials and business reports in XBRL, because there were no consumers of XBRL (and little or no software to consume and use the XBRL). Finally, no regulator had mandated the provision of XBRL versions for key reports. Certainly, there were niche software houses that bought into the dream of XBRL, and a few companies that chose to produce XBRL. Some of the financial reporting aggregators even said that they could or would support XBRL.

In 2009 the SEC’s mandate for the provision of parts of the 10K (annual reports) and 10Q (quarterly reports) in XBRL came into effect. But they have yet, more than a decade later, to mandate that the XBRL content be audited, nor have the expanded the coverage of content adequately to the full reports.

Across Europe, regulators have mandated XBRL for everything from company reports to insurance solvency reporting. Companies House in the UK receives XBRL version of company financials from all companies. But as these files are, in effect, produced from templates, the dream of high-quality business data has not been met.

XBRL remains a cumbersome and limited standard, and one that is used only (other than very few exceptions to prove the rule) by companies that are required to produce reports in the XBRL format. There remains virtually no voluntary uptake of a complex and expensive standard that delivers unaudited data for which there is no consumer driven demand.

The best-mangled metaphor I’ve ever seen was used to describe XBRL. It is “like using a dinosaur to crack a walnut”.

Implications of the SASB XBRL Taxonomy

Now SASB has, with the assistance of one of the Big-4 who has supported XBRL from the very beginning, developed an XBRL Taxonomy for their reporting standard. This is good news. It will now be possible to “tag” the ESG data in XBRL for automated consumption by XBRL capable regulators and reporting systems. 

Furthermore, when a company tags an ESG “fact” in XBRL, consumers of that data will know that the underlying meaning and concept associated with that “fact” is exactly the same and the underlying meaning and concept of that “fact” reported by any other company using the same taxonomy and taxonomy element.

SASB’s XBRL Taxonomy will neither derail nor spur ESG reporting

Realistic and meaningful ESG reporting will not happen until regulators mandate not only the reporting but that the information is audited, and a dedicated XBRL Taxonomy will have little impact on the uptake of ESG reporting.

Only then will reporting companies provide information that investors can trust (Google “Greenwashing”).

The provision of ESG information tagged in XBRL (and audited) might be an improvement. However, the XBRL standard is so old and cumbersome that only a limited number of people will ever have the skills required to exploit data provided in native XBRL.

If SASB really wants ESG adopted…

SASB (or the Value Reporting Foundation as it is now called after merging with the IIRC) is probably the best standard for real, auditable, ESG information. If they really want companies to be providing ESG reporting, and using SASB as “the standard”, I would recommend that instead of playing with the Big-4 and XBRL, that their energies go into the list of activities listed at the beginning of this arlticle.

I would also challenge for any reader to add to that list. What else should the SASB/VRF be doing to encourage the uptake and use of ESG reporting?

--------------------------------------------

*  “GRI, SASB, CDP, UNGC”. These are four of the multitude of ESG “standards”: Global Reporting Initiative, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the Carbon Disclosure Project, and the UN Global Compact.

The Author: Daniel Roberts served as Chair of the XBRL US Steering Committee in 2005 and 2006, a time when XBRL US was working closely with the SEC to advance the use of XBRL for corporate disclosures. 

The Virginia result is a wake up call

The Virginia governor's office, and potentially legislature, have gone Republican. 

It looks like the Democrats have (I fervently hope) a huge lesson to learn. If you take power through the ballot box, you better deliver or you will be thrown out; not by your voters, but by you voters who stay home while the 'defeated' come out to vote. I sure hope that those in Congress and the Senate now understand that imperfect but progressing legislation is imperative. Progress must be made, and be seen to be made. No more digging. Just get something done, now.

Sure, there is talk of Democrats holding the line in other states, but the clear swing is against them, and this will be very difficult to hide between now and early next year. 

Reading about Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and her selling out to the American Chamber of Commerce and corporate donors, and the discussion of the disaster that is "Citizens United", it is difficult to have much hope (https://www.salon.com/2021/11/02/kyrsten-sinema-epitomizes-21st-century-political-corruption--but-she-didnt-cause-it_partner/).

According to the article, Senema voted against legislation supported by 70% of the population of her state. 

She should take a look outside the United States of Amerika to see what happens to elected politicians when they do that. Greece provides a good case study, with the Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras. In 2015 he put approval of the EU Bailout programme to the people in a referendum. 63% voted against approval, yet Tsipras flew to Brussels and signed the agreement. 

In the following elections, Syriza was destroyed as a political party, and while it is still the second largest, it is only one of a number of leftist parties, while there is only one centre-right party. Tsipras says (as he must) that Syriza will form the next government. He has little chance of being able to do that, as too many Greeks consider him a traitor. 

If Democrats in Congress do not start passing legislation promised as part of the rejection of Trumpism and a rejection of the Amerikan Taliban, there is the very real danger that Democrats will stay home. Voters staying home will kill a political party faster than increasing numbers of voters for the opposition. If you cannot convince your voters to come out, then you cannot win elections. And if you have reneged on exactly why you were elected, then you will be rejected.