In case you’re wondering why the Democrats have been spinning their wheels on a doomed push to nuke the filibuster in order to pass two voting-rights bills to counteract the phony supposed emergency of minor tweaks to voting procedures in states such as Georgia, keep in mind that it’s a party in thrall to mega-donors. And what the mega-donors want, the mega-donors get. Chuck Schumer is probably aware that nothing is going to get done on this, but he has to “make a push,” i.e., keep saying the same stuff, in order to put on a show for big-bucks donors who are yanking his strings.

Puck News is reporting that mega-donors Ron Conway and Karla Jurvetson (whose fortune derives from the venture-capital investments of her ex-husband Steve Jurvetson) started insisting last fall that Democrats make a big thing of the doomed legislation, with Conway leaning hard on White House chief of staff Ron Klain to urge President Biden to pressure Joe Manchin on the deal (Manchin has consistently said no dice). Ms. Jurvetson, meanwhile, “has been the ringleader of this donor machine” and is “investing her considerable fortune and influence into convincing the party to swing big, even if it means fraying her relationship with [Kyrsten] Sinema, whom she once supported.” Sinema also says no dice.

This is a best-case scenario for the Right: Progs are wasting their time, money, energy, and political capital on a nonissue that is going nowhere, as Joe Biden splutters ineffectually and looks even more incompetent and buffoonish than he did before he started tilting at this particular windmill. May the erstwhile “party of the people” continue to “push hard” on this arcane boutique issue for the rest of 2022, to prevent them from either reconnecting with issues the voters actually care about or enacting any of their other terrible plans.