We absorbed the pandemic’s impact in stages, imagining the tireless little beasties at the root of the problem. The billions of stealthy insurgents eager to bond with human cell receptors, using spike proteins as battering rams to enter the cells and pollute them.

Now it’s almost over, fingers crossed, and we can rest up at my shack in Tinicum and talk about the promises Joe Biden made while running for president. He has already delivered on the covid-19 relief bill and seems to be trying to get more stuff done, but a big obstacle threatens to undo him and the country.

“Ain’t no way around it,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Joe Manchin is a DINO — a Democrat in name only. He likes the filibuster rule and thinks raising taxes on the rich is radical.”

He read from a news story about how Manchin

…on Monday began raising objections to President Biden’s legislation to fund infrastructure investments by raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent. Derailing the tax hike would be a lucrative gift to both corporate CEOs in general, and to private equity giants whose executives bankrolled the lawmaker’s 2018 campaign and funded a super PAC that boosted his closely contested reelection bid.

I confessed to being confused. Sure, U.S. senators typically have less integrity than crackheads. West Virginia’s Manchin, for example, is more beholden to his rich financial backers than to poor constituents who need the jobs that the infrastructure bill could generate. He’s clearly more concerned about corporate tax rates than about jobs. The question is, why do people who aren’t wealthy vote for such a man?

“Because they’re too dumb or lazy to know any better,“ Swamp Rabbit said. “Because it’s either vote for him or for some Republican who’s even more of a rat. Because he loves guns and the unborn. I live in a swamp, how would I know?“

I reminded him that the Senate has 50 Ds and 50 Rs, and that the infrastructure bill would crash and burn if Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, the DINO from Arizona, voted against it.

“The media keep saying that the New Deal-era Democratic Party, the party of the working class, is making a comeback,“ I noted. “Do you think Manchin got the memo?“

Swamp Rabbit snapped open a can of beer. “He got the memo, but he ain’t about to let no new deal mess up his old deals.“