On Sinema at the Sinema: October 2021 US Politics thread

if biden cared about this stuff he would have been on tv as often as he could, hammering home what this bill would do for the american people, and calling out sinema and manchin for blocking it.

― treeship

what?

I absolutely don't believe it's just Sinema and Manchin, but it's hard to discern just how many others are tanking this shit

thus inspiring the millions of West Virginian and Arizonan libs to visit Sinemanchin with pitchforks to eat their brains

if biden cared about paid family leave, lower prescription drug prices, and other provisions that have been cut in the new spending bill, he would have advocated for them more forecefully, taking the case directly to the american people. instead he negotiated them away.

xp

their constituency are democratic voters who want paid family leave etc. this way they don't need to anger them.

― treeship., Thursday, October 28, 2021 3:16 PM

so they get to be part of the 96% or so of senate/house that is behind the $3.5T plan, which pleases their democratic constituents, but they also benefit because the bill gets cut down to 1.75T, and they like that because they are fiscal conservatives at heart?

sorry if i'm misunderstanding

yes

they appease their voters and also their corporate donors.

most likely there are other senators that want to eviscerate this bill as much as possible to please their donor base but would rather not be the face of that because they still want people to vote for them. Manchin can get away with this because his voters lean more conservative, Sinema thinks she can get away with this because it makes her look like a "maverick" but she's problem miscalculating. Other senators know they cannot get away with it.

ugh, she's *probably miscalculating

he would have advocated for them more forecefully, taking the case directly to the american people

who would do what with it?

it might not have done anything. could have shamed sinema into falling in line.

can someone utterly devoid of shame be shamed into anything?

The 'taking it to the people' strategy probably would have failed - but not doing so has definitely failed so it's probably fair to say he might have given it a shot?

xp

i'm just going off of milo's "Coons, Warner, Tester, etc.." grouping of moderate dems that aren't manchin/sinema, but even just those three are very different. tester's a democrat in Montana. Coons is in safer territory, Warner somewhat less so.

mark warner has $200M, cooner has $7M, tester has $1M (source: google search, 45 seconds total, 60% reliable, 20% speculative, 50% dependable).

to what degree are they in a bloc that comes down to "faking support of a $3.5T while secretly backing the effort to whittle social spending down as much as possible to please corporate donors"? they seem like they would all have separate motives

"fiscal conservatives who don't want to get yelled at by everyone else in the party" seems pretty explanatory. Manchin is safer from that because of WV and frankly both he and Sinema seem to enjoy getting yelled at.

self-explanatory

The rail of Joe's yacht hid his rock-hard erection at poor people in kayaks roasting him.

in my lifetime, the democratic party has never taken real steps to secure a decent safety net in line with other developed countries.

it seems weird that this time they really attempted it and were only thwarted, in the final hour, by a single blue haired weirdo. just like too convenient. perhaps this is a conspiratorial instinct -- i just don't trust that the real power brokers in washington, including biden, actually wanted this bill.

Biden doesn't want to be a failure, I think he's invested in passing a signature bill. It happens to be this one so he wants it as much as anything, but it could have been any other legislation in any other moment.

are you guys at stoned as i am, i mean what

The rail of Joe's yacht hid his rock-hard erection at poor people in kayaks roasting him.

new monthly thread title!

maybe biden wanted to make it feasible for single moms to take care of their kids without sliding into poverty. who knows. never seemed like a priority for him before. and i'm angry that he and the senate democrats didn't get it done.

You two both sound like idiots right now. treeship with your "Joe should have just bully-pulpited harder, there's no way US Senators would be able to withstand the tide of grass roots support!" and milo with your...milo-ness, where everyone but you is forever operating from only the most dastardly motives.

the relevance of all of this is that it influences how one thinks of democratic leadership. are they a progressive party that just keeps getting thwarted by that darned duo sinema and manchin? or are they what they always were?

for real, explain to me what was in the full $3.5T bill, but removed from the now $1.75T bill, that aligns with what the power brokers wanted. we're talking K STREET! i realize there are a bunch of obvious things, probably. i'm thinking, family leave - that sounds like something the power broker boys don't want, because that would mean employees taking off work to have families more often! fuck that! no!

but what other things? please forgive me, because i have been trying to avoid politics for most of this year (believe it or not!), so i actually haven't been paying attention to the particulars of what is in and out at this point

the relevance of all of this is that it influences how one thinks of democratic leadership. are they a progressive party that just keeps getting thwarted by that darned duo sinema and manchin? or are they what they always were?

i think it leans toward the former - progressive party. they may very well turn into a very progressive party that is crushed under fascists. but i think it's encouraging that the vast majority of democratic senators are behind abolishing the filibuster and a 3.5T bill. if they can ever manage to get even a small majority back (rather than 50-50), i expect them to accomplish some big things. but (BUT! as always, BUT!) i can't see a likely future where that happens in the next 8 years

medicare expansion and a prescription drug pricing plan

but paid family leave is a huge deal.

where everyone but you is forever operating from only the most dastardly motives

? You mean my reference to Biden not wanting to be a failure? How is that a dastardly motive?

beyond the actual things in the bill, the bigger the price tag, the greater pressure there is to maybe make the wealthy people bankrolling these candidates pay for some of it

massive xps
bernie is old but he would have done that

fully agree! that's why we all preferred bernie to biden.

biden still wants to wheedle and horse trade with the so-called moderates who are blocking progress and he's puzzled how to respond when they don't have anything positive they want done, just invoking nebulous 'principles' against spending money to do things.

bernie would have bargained first, but faced with Manchin & Sinema's stupid intransigence, he'd have reached for other weapons to budge them. and bernie would have been blasting the stupid intransigence of the Republicans constantly from the get go.

if there's one thing Manchin has made really clear, it's that he's totally against any possible way of paying for any of this that might take a single cent from an extremely wealthy person

it's infuriating.

if they were going to use the precious first year on anything else, i wish Biden/leadership would have started with the voting rights legislation. before you do ANYTHING, let's address the whole 2022/2024 is a national crisis in plain view, foreseeable from very far away, a Novice-level challenge suitable for any rookie lookout. because now look where we are. by the time they get to passing anything (if! if!) it will likely be just ahead of the 2022 election - put aside everything else, it's not a good look to change the rules on voting just before there's a big vote. i, more than most people i think, have the view that there's no point in worrying about how conservatives will exploit things, because they always distort and spin things for their own bubble. but a big change to voting rights should have taken place immediately after the last election, not just before a new one. i don't understand why they backed off on that -- they'd rather cede the voting/election headlines to stories about Trump's "lawsuits" all year instead? why not provide a foil to those bullshit "keep your eyes on maricopa!" kind of stories by pushing the legislation to counteract that exact kind of bullshit, at the same time? instead, the democrats just kind of retreated into this idiotic "negotiation" with sinema/manchin all summer. THAT is worth criticizing them for, i think

i mean, i think something needed to be done to help working class and poor americans in a tangible way. once people see those policies paying off in their real lives, they would maybe insist on more things like that, and it could lead to a shift in the bootlicking culture of american politics.

Build Back Better is also a bit of a MacGuffin in assessing the Democratic President and Congress's performance - the PRO Act, voting rights, minimum wage, treatment of refugees, fostering a cold war with China (and Russia), defense spending, etc.. Joe B can't make Joe M vote for anything but Joe B could reschedule weed tomorrow.

The Manchin/Sinema obstinancy on BBB also serves to obscure all the other failures.

voting rights absolutely should have been the top priority, but I suspect that is even less popular with certain democrats than tossing money at a few social programs

perhaps this is a conspiratorial instinct -- i just don't trust that the real power brokers in washington, including biden, actually wanted this bill.

I don't think there's a shadowy cabal of Democratic members of Congress looking for excuses to kill popular legislation. I do think there are a disappointing number of Democrats who have misgivings about big spending bills, which may partially be out of self-interested concern for their own bank account (esp. in the case of people like Mark Warner or Dianne Feinstein), but also just a temperamental or ideological fear of doing anything too "extreme" and/or desire to be "sensible."

I think Biden has been that guy at various points in his career, and it still holds him back now from pushing for things like student debt forgiveness, although I agree with Milo that he wants the bill to pass if for no other reason than he wants his presidency to be transformative and impactful. Plus, the White House has been actively involved in shaping the legislation, so I'd be surprised if there was lot in there that Biden personally isn't comfortable with.

yeah maybe idk

voting rights absolutely should have been the top priority, but I suspect that is even less popular with certain democrats than tossing money at a few social programs

https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/nKdLbJ

Depressing but understandable.

You can tell this technology is legit because the federal government is committing "third starter money" towards it. https://t.co/9NG7DLATK0

— David Roth (@david_j_roth) October 28, 2021

the relevance of all of this is that it influences how one thinks of democratic leadership. are they a progressive party that just keeps getting thwarted by that darned duo sinema and manchin? or are they what they always were?

I think it's inarguable that the Democratic congressional caucus as a whole is more progressive than it was 10-15 years ago. But it's also a big tent that includes both Manchin and AOC, so it requires a lot of coalition-building. And that work becomes particularly challenging when the party's leaders are a million years old, and the majorities in both houses are razor-thin.

Even though I do think that Manchin and Sinema are covering for other less-progressive senators, I also think there's a scenario in which Cal Cunningham and Sara Gideon squeak out wins in 2020, and some of the calculus in the Senate changes.

i wish Biden/leadership would have started with the voting rights legislation

on this I totally agree. With the budget we're talking about stuff there aren't 50 votes for, you can talk about what arms could have been twistd in what ways but in the end it's gonna be limited by what can get 50.

The voting stuff DOES have 50. You just gotta say, like Supreme Court Justice confirmation, it's not the normal order of business of the Senate, it's structural requirements for the function of government, and for this special case, like that one, we don't allow the filibuster.

Whatever, I don't know anything about Congress, I'm just some dude on the Internet, I'm sure there's something I'm missing (and maybe it's just, Joe Manchin is authentically unwilling to loosen one more bolt on the filibuster in the same way he's unwilling to let his friends pay one more dollar in taxes.)

Only six weeks until we get a debt limit fight again!

I think it's the same thing, Manchin gets to say he's for it but alas it can't possibly pass because he is duty-bound to preserve the sacred rules of the senate, when really he just likes any scenario he can cling to that will make him the deciding vote for ever more

he'd have reached for other weapons to budge them

What are these weapons?

Like, I would love to know what levers there are put there to make progress happen, that are currently sitting unused

Genuinely curious

*out there

You can't even kill Joe Manchin -- the WA governor would appoint a Republican!

What are these weapons?

Once a senator is elected and seated, I understand perfectly that the options are limited if they obstinately refuse to cooperate in any way. But presumably they came to the senate because they were willing to bend their entire life to their effort to get there. There is no person on earth whose every utterance is reported more breathlessly than a US president. Trump used this hammer multiple times a day and was never afraid to confront any member of congress over the slightest hint of opposition and they feared his tweets to the point of cowardice, because Trump could fuck up their chance of re-election.

Biden is no Trump. He has no command over that weapon. Bernie is different. He knows how to communicate his points strongly, simply and emphatically and he connects far more strongly with his base. If Bernie were in Biden's place, he would use that ability fearlessly. But that presupposes Bernie had won the election, which is counterfactual. Biden is never going to be Bernie and that weapon is not in his arsenal.