WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A21
WEDNESDAY Opinion
H
ere’s a quick review of American
politics 101: Congressional dis-
tricts elect one member of the
House of Representatives each;
states elect two senators each. House mem-
bers represent their districts; senators,
their states.
In those governmental units, groups that
speak out, often based on economic inter-
ests, get the most attention from politi-
cians. Otherwise, the latter may have trou-
ble getting reelected.
Elementary as they are, the above con-
cepts bear repeating because at the mo-
ment quite a few people in Washington,
Democrats especially, have completely for-
gotten them.
Or so it would seem, judging by the fury
being vented at Sen. Joe Manchin III
(D-W.Va.) after he said he will not support
the $2.4 trillion Build Back Better bill.
Manchin stands accused by Rep. Pramila
Jayapal (D-Wash.) of a “lack of integrity.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Manchin
“doesn’t have the courage to do the right
thing.”
What Manchin is actually guilty of — if
anything — is representing his state, in-
cluding, to some extent, its special
i nterests.
There’s nothing particularly admirable
about this, but there’s absolutely nothing
unusual about it either. The only surprise
in this situation is that people are surprised
— or claiming to be.
There would have to be a lot in BBB for
his home state to overcome Manchin’s
ostensible concerns about inflation and
such. There’s not: To the contrary, it’s hard
to imagine a bill that would have been more
difficult for any senator from West Vir-
ginia, Democrat or Republican, to support.
It’s quite clear what’s in BBB for New
York, California and New Jersey. The most
expensive item in the House-passed ver-
sion is $275 billion worth of restored
federal deductions for state and local taxes
(SALT). This is valuable to high-tax blue
states, especially their upper-middle-class
suburban residents, which explains why
representatives from those districts, per
American politics 101, made it a dealbreak-
er in the House.
West Virginia has a middling state and
local tax burden — 26th largest in the
country, according to the Tax Foundation.
The SALT break helps mainly well-off
taxpayers for whom it is profitable to
itemize deductions. West Virginia, as one
of the poorest states, has the lowest share of
itemizers of any state, 17.3 percent, accord-
ing to the Tax Foundation. That finding is
based on data from 2016 — before the 2017
tax bill raised the standard deduction,
further reducing the number of itemizers.
There’s also a provision in the bill for
Michigan: a tax break for purchases of
electric cars, which substantially favors
vehicles built by members of the United
Auto Workers. This creates a de facto
penalty for the Toyota plant in Buffalo,
W.Va., which is nonunion.
The electric-car subsidy is part of BBB’s
$550 billion in tax incentives and spending
to promote alternative energy and other-
wise fight climate change.
There is no denying climate change.
There is also no denying that decarboniza-
tion presents a disproportionate economic
challenge for West Virginia. It’s one of six
states (along with Texas, Oklahoma, North
Dakota, Pennsylvania and Wyoming) that
account for a combined 55 percent of the
primary energy production in the United
States. The vast majority of West Virginia’s
share comes from coal and natural gas —
industries that also fund the state’s govern-
ment with tens of millions of dollars in
taxes each year.
Yes, coal employs only 11,000 West Vir-
ginians, 3 percent of all jobs in the state.
Those are some of the best-paying jobs still
available, however, with an average salary
of $55,630 per year in a state whose median
household income is just under $47,000.
Not to mention intangibles such as local
tradition and working-class pride.
Natural gas is a growing business in
West Virginia, and a potential source of
high-paying jobs once coal dies out — as
seems inevitable, partly because lower-
c arbon gas would replace it. Yet BBB is not
exactly pro-gas, either: It includes a stiff fee
on methane emissions and $6 billion to
convert gas appliances to electric
a lternatives.
The point here is not to endorse Man-
chin’s “no” on BBB. It’s true, as Manchin’s
critics assert, that West Virginians could
benefit from letting Medicare bargain for
lower drug costs, or from an expanded
child tax credit, and that Manchin’s objec-
tions could doom those.
What matters politically, though, is that
these benefits are not uniquely advanta-
geous for his state — whereas other provi-
sions are particularly disadvantageous, or
could plausibly be portrayed as such by
Manchin’s opponents. That was still true
even after the White House removed a $150
billion clean-electricity provision at Man-
chin’s request.
At times, Manchin’s motivations for re-
sisting BBB have been portrayed as a
“mystery.” The real mystery is why the
White House and Senate Majority Leader
Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) bet their polit-
ical future on getting Manchin to vote for a
bill such as this one.
When Manchin, defending his position,
says, “If I can’t go home and explain it to the
people of West Virginia, I can’t vote for it,”
he’s not lying. He’s practicing American
politics 101. Who knows what the other
Democrats are doing.
CHARLES LANE
What’s in it for
West Virginia?
BY DOUG SOSNIK
W
e don’t need to wait for the
results of next year’s mid-
term elections to know that
a political shock wave is
headed toward Washington. The early
tremors are already detectable.
Donald Trump’s takeover of the Re-
publican Party will soon be complete,
and what had previously been a fringe
element within the GOP will emerge
fully in control. The two big lies — that
the 2020 election was stolen from
Trump and that the Jan. 6 attack on the
U.S. Capitol was not serious enough to
merit an investigation — are no longer
considered radical inside the GOP.
Republicans can be expected to take
over the House of Representatives after
the midterm elections — most likely by
a considerable margin. Trump already
dominates the GOP at the state and
local levels, and with the notable ex-
ceptions of Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.)
and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), has a
vice-like grip on Republican House
members. Even if Trump does not run
in 2024, his views and policies now
represent mainstream Republican
thinking.
And even if the Democrats maintain
their narrow grip on the Senate, what is
left of the reasonable wing of the
Republican Senate is about to disap-
pear. The Republican half of the Senate
is on the brink of a new, and irresponsi-
ble, era. The 2022 election will cement
the trend.
The Senate Republican Caucus has
been the last remaining guardrail pre-
venting Trump’s complete takeover of
the Republican Party. That is about to
change. There are five senators from
what passes for the “governing wing”
of the Republican Party who have
announced their retirements: Richard
C. Shelby (Alabama), Roy Blunt (Mis-
souri), Richard Burr (North Carolina),
Rob Portman (Ohio) and Patrick J.
Toomey (Pennsylvania). Because
Trump carried all but one of these
states (Pennsylvania) in 2020, it is a
safe bet all these men will be replaced
by more Trump acolytes. In each of
these states, the Republican primary
has been a referendum on which candi-
date is most similar to Trump.
It is only because of some of the
soon-departing establishment Repub-
licans — and a small handful of others
— that President Biden got a hard
infrastructure bill on his desk and an
increase in the debt ceiling, while at the
same time allowing the government to
remain open.
Because they control the redistrict-
ing process in most states, Republicans
have been busy redrawing maps and
packing swing districts to provide
them with more conservative voters.
Since winning a Republican congres-
sional primary is tantamount to win-
ning the general election, the GOP will
have spent 2021 creating the condi-
tions that will push the party even
further to the right.
It might work: Based on trends since
World War II, Republicans will likely
rack up big wins in next year’s midterm
elections. However, if history is any
guide, the GOP will also misinterpret
these successes as a mandate for their
kind of change.
In 1994, the GOP picked up 54 House
seats, eight Senate seats and 10 gover-
norships — a colossal slaughter among
Democrats. Yet Bill Clinton was easily
reelected in 1996. In 2010, it happened
again as Republicans picked up 63
House seats, six Senate seats, six gover-
norships and 729 state legislative seats.
And yet Barack Obama coasted to
victory in 2012.
There are signs the GOP is still
working from its old playbook. Over
the past weekend, a memo was leaked
showing that with their expected ma-
jority, House Republicans plan two
years of investigations of the Biden
administration as a way to stoke the
culture wars ahead of the 2024 presi-
dential election.
The 2024 election will begin the day
after the midterm elections. Trump
easily eliminated any candidate he
faced during the 2016 primaries, and
he now has a much firmer grip on the
GOP. That means the safest harbor for
aspiring Republican presidential can-
didates in 2024 is to take as many
extreme positions as possible in oppo-
sition to Biden and Democrats — but to
do so in a way that avoids Trump’s
wrath. This path might position them
to fill the Trump vacuum if the former
president chooses not to run — or
begin the audition to be on the GOP
ticket as vice president if he does.
These forces and factors guarantee
that we are entering a phase far more
volatile and divisive than the period we
have just come through. The tremors
felt during the Trump presidency, and
even the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, will feel
relatively mild compared to the days
and months ahead.
The writer was a senior adviser to President
Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000 and is a
counselor to the Brunswick Group.
The Trump
takeover of
the GOP is all
but complete
A
fter 15 weeks of testimony, the
fate of Theranos founder Eliza-
beth Holmes now rests with a
jury. Did she, as the prosecution
has alleged, run a greedy scam? Or, as
her defense contends, was she the vic-
tim — of her own inexperience, of sexual
abuse, of overwhelming pressure to de-
liver? We’ll find out soon.
Under our legal system, Holmes is
innocent until proven guilty. In my own
court, though, she’s guilty on at least two
counts: providing me with a terrible
customer experience, and embracing
one of Silicon Valley’s most dangerous
philosophies.
I first encountered Theranos where
all the magic began, on the campus of
California’s Stanford University. My
time there as a student in business
school coincided almost perfectly with
Peak Holmes. The place was, not sur-
prisingly, high on the dropout-turned-
billionaire, the seeming embodiment of
everything the Valley prizes: youth, au-
dacity, technological savvy and a vision
for changing the world.
After all, Theranos was not just an-
other app for sharing better photos of
your Bichon Frise. Holmes offered what
every angel investor and venture capi-
talist wants — the chance to make an
obscene amount of money — and real
nobility of purpose, by promising better
health care for the masses. The seduc-
tion was irresistible.
I was taken in, too, but for different
reasons. I’m a lifelong needle-phobe.
Few things terrify me like the death grip
of the rubber tourniquet, the savage
piercing of tender flesh, the sight of my
vital fluids being drained into a plastic
vial. Holmes’s finger-prick alternative
promised to be life-changing.
So when, in 2015, I was told I needed a
basic metabolic panel to test potassium
levels, I thought: Here’s my chance.
Sure, I could have just done the test at
Stanford’s clinic with student insurance
footing the bill. But I was living in Palo
Alto, and the local Walgreens — Thera-
nos’s key pharmaceutical partner — had
a testing site. It seemed worth the
schlep and expense.
I marched into the Walgreens with a
lab order in my purse and hope in my
heart. But that hope was crushed when I
was told that, for the test I needed, the
finger-prick wasn’t an option; I’d have
to do an old-school venous draw. Incred-
ulous, I protested: This is a routine test.
But, said the tech, no luck. In high
dudgeon, I asked what the point was of
taking the time to go to their site, and
paying more, when I could have had the
same experience at the Stanford health
center, effectively for free?
Well, the tech said, we use less-scary
butterfly needles. Plus, the space was
nicer. No gray, sterile closet was this:
The walls were painted a soothing hue,
and I sat in a recliner next to a potted
orchid. Like pretty much everything
about Theranos, I’ll never know wheth-
er the recliner’s leather or the orchid’s
blooms were real or faux. Including my
results, delivered through a buggy app.
I forgot to pay the bill when it came —
I was in transition after graduation,
moving from one address to the next,
starting a new job. A couple of months
later I found it again sifting through
some old mail. In the interim, John
Carreyrou had published his exposés.
Suddenly my unintentional nonpay-
ment was a righteous protest. Eventual-
ly, the company went under; problem
solved.
Yet the lesson I absorbed was not
“Postpone bill-paying until corporate
bankruptcy.” What made the episode
illuminating was that it unfolded near
the conclusion of my B-school entrepre-
neurship course, which was built
around case studies of company found-
ers who came into class to share their
origin stories. The innovators’ creed
was dogma in the Valley: Fake it ’til you
make it.
After all, no truly innovative product
or business model is certain to succeed.
The more revolutionary the idea, the
less evidence there usually is to indicate
the bet will pay off. So in a world where
investors, the media, employees and
customers want to back winners, the
only way to get their buy-in is to bluff.
The confidence that’s exaggerated, the
sales pitch that’s too optimistic, the
delivery deadlines that are too aggres-
sive — you do what you gotta do to reach
the next step toward world domination,
or at least Series B funding.
And if you crash and burn? So what?
Being willing to fail is the only way to
spectacularly succeed. In the Valley, it’s
an ethos thick in the air, like the fragrant
eucalyptus.
Except failure can have consequences
— consequences that don’t often make
the tidy summaries in the case studies.
Livelihoods are ruined, families upend-
ed, wealth destroyed. Part of the trouble
with the cult of the young founder is that
20-somethings don’t usually have a solid
grasp on the life-altering downsides of
the risks they take. If Holmes skates
because a sympathetic jury agrees she
was too young to be a CEO, it will be the
height of hypocrisy for venture capital-
ists to scream in outrage.
Because, in some industries, the price
of faking it ’til you make it is measured
in human lives. It’s fine to laugh along-
side the bakery-chain founder remi-
niscing about overpromising on crois-
sant deliveries to Starbucks. It’s another
when your product is all that stands
between a patient and, say, a deadly
reaction to a prescription drug.
Just as there is a fine line between
madness and genius, there’s a blurred
distinction between the brazenness
that defines successful entrepreneurs
and outright fraud. Holmes now waits
to see which side of the line 12 jurors
think she was on.
Meghan Kruger is associate opinions editor
for The Post.
MEGHAN KRUGER
What my Theranos blood test
revealed about Silicon Valley
STEPHEN LAM/REUTERS
Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes at the federal courthouse in San Jose, Calif., on July 17, 2019.
Warner Bros.’ trademark on the name has
curtailed “sponsorship and broadcast op-
portunities” for broom-bearing competi-
tors. Plus, it’s probably hard to convince
an audience that this is a legitimate
athletic pursuit rather than somewhat
cardiovascular make-believe.
The moral motivation also isn’t diffi-
cult to suss out. Rowling has hardly
hidden her animus toward transgender
people. She tweets frequently about the
sacrosanct nature of “biological sex”; she
blogged a manifesto as unnecessarily
long as “Harry Potter and the Order of the
Phoenix.” The sport formerly known as
quidditch, meanwhile, is inclusive as a
rule: A team may not have more than four
players on the pitch who identify as the
same gender, allowing even nonbinary
people to participate without the hassle
that haunts other contests.
Everyone, it seems, wants some space
from today’s she-who-must-not-be-
named. A January television special for
the 20th anniversary of the first “Harry
Potter” film will conspicuously leave out
of the lineup the woman (not wumben,
wimpund or woomud) who conjured the
whole phenomenon.
This is an impressive transfiguration:
“Harry Potter” has turned into some-
thing much more than a bunch of books
and movies, and lives now as a creature
all its own. The fan fiction that casts
Hermione as a person of color, or Remus
Lupin and Sirius Black as lovers, meets
its match in a quidditch that doesn’t need
Rowling anymore — indeed, would be
better off without her. The art has out-
grown the artist, and run away.
Yet is it really so easy as incanting
“Evanesco,” and, poof, she’s gone? Quid-
J.
K. Rowling cares a lot about
words. “‘People who menstruate.’
I’m sure there used to be a word
for those people,” she tweeted
last year in a fit of transphobic
snark. “Someone help me out. Wumben?
Wimpund? Woomud?”
Now, another word dear to the “Harry
Potter” author is under threat: quidditch.
US Quidditch and Major League Quid-
ditch declared last week that they would
change their names — partly because
they believe ditching the trademark will
allow the sport to expand, and partly
because they believe ditching its inventor
will avoid any nasty association with her
public bigotry.
The move is meaningful and meaning-
less at the same time — and could show
Rowling what she’s been missing all
along. But let’s back up a second to help
out those who can’t tell a bludger from a
quaffle. (Ouch.)
Quidditch is the made-up sport of
Rowling’s universe, in which witches and
wizards fly around on brooms hurling
some balls into hoops, hitting other balls
with bats at other players, and trying to
snatch one last little winged golden ball
out of the air. Quidditch is also the
real-life version of that sport, in which
decidedly non-magical humans run
around with brooms between their legs,
hurling slightly deflated volleyballs into
hoops and slightly deflated dodgeballs at
opponents, and trying to snatch a tennis
ball dangling in a sock from someone’s
shorts.
The second of these quidditches, how-
ever, will soon not be quidditch at all but
rather something to be determined. The
monetary motivation here is obvious:
ditch will still be quidditch, regardless of
the moniker these leagues invent. The
players will still be running around
astraddle brooms, still pinning their
hopes of victory on grabbing a yellow-
hued ball — inexplicably, unless “Harry
Potter” explains it.
If quidditch could stand on its own two
legs (Muggles can’t fly, after all), the
name could have been discarded quietly.
A year from now, you might have caught a
contest of Broomkey, or Battenhoop, or
Gibblewhomp on one of the lesser
E SPNs, and wondered who thought up
this oddball game. Yet the announcement
came with fanfare, and all of it depended
on the connection to the Boy Who Lived
and the writer who brought him to life.
Quidditch has the same problem
Rowling has, which is that the arbitrary
combinations of sounds and syllables
that we call words only mean something
in relation to the world they describe —
and more than that, the way they’re
understood. You can tweak a reference all
you like, but the referent will stay just the
same. The author herself should know
this better than anyone; after all, she
claims the name “quidditch” doesn’t
come from any etymological root but was
the result of pouring random nonsense
sounds starting with the letter Q into five
empty pages of a notebook.
The leaders of the quidditch leagues
can make a statement by disavowing J.K.
Rowling, but they can’t make quidditch
stop being, well, quidditch. Perhaps they
will accidentally teach her the same
lesson: that refusing to acknowledge
transgender people for who they are will
not magick them into something else,
either.
MOLLY ROBERTS
Quidditch’s new name might teach
J.K. Rowling a surprising lesson
