Serial complainer Alan Dershowitz isn’t the only one having a bad summer. The year 2021 was filled with predictions that the waning of the coronavirus pandemic would lead to another Roaring Twenties. Instead, America is stuck in yet another summer of suck. Americans are (still) filled with worry: about the ever-mutating coronavirus, the arrival of monkeypox, inflation, the possibility of a recession, a potential second Trump presidency, and, of course, climate change.
About that: Last week Joe Manchin said he would kill President Joe Biden’s climate agenda. It was not the first time the senator from West Virginia has delighted in disappointing those of us who don’t want to die in a heat dome, but it might be the worst possible time for him to have yanked yet another legislative football from out in front of Biden.
(According to an op-ed in The New York Times, Manchin also “delayed crucial regulations that would cut carbon pollution. Wary of upsetting the delicate negotiations, the Biden administration has held back on using the full force of its executive authority on climate over the past 18 months, likely in hopes of securing legislation first.” Who would have thought that the person to derail the Biden climate agenda would be the guy whom then-Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy called a “kingmaker”?)
This summer, a brutal heat wave has killed people in Spain and Portugal and aggravated forest fires in the French countryside. Here at home, fires are burning in Alaska, New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona, among other places. Intense heat is sometimes associated with an increase in crime and seems to breed hostility toward our fellow man. Heat is not the only by-product of climate change. Lake Mead, just outside Las Vegas, recently hit its lowest level since the 1930s (it’s down about 200 feet from a peak in 1983), and the pictures of the reservoir are grim.
The pandemic is another threat that looms on the horizon even as its consequences are playing out right now. I have been fully vaccinated and boosted and still tested positive for COVID twice since December. I didn’t get very sick, but I did quarantine, and I still gave it to my teenagers. (Remember in February 2020 when Donald Trump said, “You know, a lot of people think that [COVID-19] goes away in April with the heat—as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April”? I do.) Then there’s the spread of monkeypox, which is rarely fatal, but is not giving us much reason to believe that American officials have learned the right lessons from the pandemic.
The misery in the air is not just confined to current losses but also to projected losses; there’s something crushing about watching certain Republican politicians set their sights on same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges) and birth control (Griswold v. Connecticut). It’s incredibly painful to watch Republicans delight in knowledge that this deeply partisan Supreme Court is just getting started.
Then there is what Derek Thompson calls the “everything is weird” economy. Employment numbers are good. Inflation numbers are bad. The things we need and want are more expensive, from milk to plane tickets to hotel rooms. There’s no simple way for Biden or anyone else to tame inflation, but when summer vacations are out of reach and even just driving to work is draining your bank account, the season loses its luster. And I haven’t even gotten to Roe rage.
It’s no surprise that Americans are unhappy—with Biden, with Trump, with the state of democracy. But there is some good news: Republicans are having an even worse summer than Democrats, who are posting blockbuster fundraising numbers. Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona raised $13.6 million in the second quarter, compared with $827,000 by Blake Masters, who leads in the GOP primary for that Senate seat. In the same quarter, one of New Hampshire’s potential GOP Senate candidates, Chuck Morse, raised $538,000 compared with the more than $5 million that Senator Maggie Hassan did. No, it’s not the roaring 2020s. But a cup of Mitch McConnell’s tears is refreshing.