On Sinema at the Sinema: October 2021 US Politics thread

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.

Bernie 2024! Who's with me?!?

Come on. We've been over this.

Bernie is different. He knows how to communicate his points strongly, simply and emphatically and he connects far more strongly with his base and exactly no one else.

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.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, October 28, 2021 5:45 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Genuine question: would it work within the Democratic party? The nature of the coalition makes me think perhaps it couldn't. The Dems seems more like a different bunch of groups that need each other rather than a top down hierarchical structure. To me at least, power seems to be wielded differently within both parties.

Gosh

https://apple.news/ApvPHWpM_RpapVi3AVVh-eA

Nooooooooooo pic.twitter.com/VY4dtolqZY

— David Dayen (@ddayen) October 29, 2021

More like hyperpoop

It is shocking how much the Democratic Party hates their voters. I’ve spent my adult life convinced that this level of cynicism was mostly the province of the GOP, but the Dems really have managed to pull ahead. At least the GOP their voters the circuses.

gives their voters

update on student debt relief:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-biden-cant-do-on-student-debt-and-what-he-wont-do

they've had the legal/regulation thinking on it ready to go since early April. he's just sitting on it.

After reviewing Gokey’s documents, I asked both the White House and the Department of Education whether the department’s internal legal review was complete, but I didn’t get a specific answer. Nor is it clear whether, if Biden’s lawyers do conclude that he has the authority to cancel a large (or unlimited) amount of student debt, he is willing to use that authority. “The Department of Education is continuing to work in partnership with colleagues at the Department of Justice and the White House to review options with respect to debt cancellation,” a spokesperson from the Department of Education told me. A White House official told me that the President “continues to look into what debt-relief actions can be taken administratively” but that “these steps take time.” The Debt Collective is not mollified. “We’re a signature away from wiping out everyone’s federal student loans, and Biden apparently just doesn’t want to,” Gokey said. “We’ve given him a magic wand, a way to help millions of people and get them excited to come out to vote for him. Who wouldn’t want to do that?” The President’s party almost always loses seats during a midterm election—which would mean, in this case, that the Democrats would lose control of one or both houses of Congress next year. A way to prevent that, Astra Taylor said, “would be to materially improve people’s lives in ways that are intelligible to them. And, believe me, if you cancel forty-five million people’s debt, they will notice.” On Friday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Instagram that it was time to “bring the heat on Biden to cancel student loans. He doesn’t need Manchin’s permission for that.”

As of now, the two bills that comprise most of Biden’s agenda are still stalled in Congress. They might soon pass, in some form, but they are likely to be Biden’s last major legislative accomplishment before the midterms, if not the last one of his Presidency. After that, if Biden wants to get big things done, he will have to do most of them via executive order. But if the protracted and bitter struggle over debt cancellation is any indication, Biden’s base may want to temper its expectations. In early 2020, Taylor, who is also a filmmaker, made a short documentary called “You Are Not a Loan.” “We filmed it in February, when the Bernie dream was still alive,” she said. What happened over the next year and a half—Biden campaigning on a promise of broad-based debt cancellation but, as President, hesitating to deliver—struck her as disappointing but not shocking. “The only thing that does continue to surprise me,” she said, “is the Democratic Party seems so unwilling, or unable, to act in its own self-interest.”

you know, if i were sitting on it, i think i would wait until about a week after the BIF (BIF! GREAT FUCKING NAME DEMOCRATS!) passes and everyone's very disappointed on both the left and right, and then forgive some student loans, get some pats on the back and move on

but instead we'll have to wait until a republican president passes student loan relief sometime in the 2030s

It seems like such a no-brainer to reduce or get rid of student debt, if they deem it legally feasible. Because what Republican is going to run on bringing back student debt?

no one. if they do, they'll just convert it to "wasteful government spending" and add that to the pile. it does nothing

you know, if i were sitting on it, i think i would wait until about a week after the BIF (BIF! GREAT FUCKING NAME DEMOCRATS!) passes and everyone's very disappointed on both the left and right, and then forgive some student loans, get some pats on the back and move on

― Karl Malone,

I had the same thought reading the piece.

meanwhile, millions of americans would be like "oh wait...i don't have to pay $650 a month for that shitty useless degree i got back in the bush administration? holy shit!"

Because what Republican is going to run on bringing back student debt?

They wouldn't. But they would run on stoking up resentment that those latte-sipping, croissant-munching, college-degree-having elites got student debt relief and you're still buried under thousands in credit card debt. Because why not?

i would love for republicans to run on a platform focused on how everyone has credit card debt