It's spooky season for the Biden agenda
October 1, 2021 5:16 AM   Subscribe

High drama on Capitol Hill this week as the slim Democratic majority struggles over President Biden's "Build Back Better" plan. On one side: the $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF!), exhaustively hashed out this summer by a cross-party cadre of moderate senators. On the other: a $3.5 trillion "human infrastructure" package containing the rest of Biden's sweeping agenda: climate, education, social care, and so much more, all packed into a single reconciliation bill that needs only 50 Senate votes. Dem centrists (led by the inscrutable Manchin and Sinema) demand passing infrastructure first, while House progressives, doubtful of centrist support for reconciliation, insist both bills pass together. After a progressive rebellion derailed an infrastructure vote late last night, and a leaked memo shed some light on Manchin's positions, the path is open to a perilous negotiation that could make or break Biden's domestic policy. Spookiest of all: the specter of a catastrophic debt default just weeks away as Republican stonewalling blocks all attempts to lift the debt ceiling.
posted by Rhaomi (113 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
Just mint the trillion dollar coin already!
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:18 AM on October 1, 2021 [11 favorites]


I don't understand the need to expand Medicare to include vision, hearing and dental care. These all get better with age right?
posted by DJZouke at 5:21 AM on October 1, 2021 [30 favorites]


Remember how during the Obama years progressives were repeatedly told that they need to get off their high horse and fall in line with the President's plan for the sake of unity and getting things done?

The $3.5 trilion dollar package is President Biden's plan. This is what he campaigned on. This is what he supports, and it's already a compromise from the $6 trillion progressives wanted.

I'm happy progressives are holding firm, and although I don't know what's happening behind the scenes with party leadership, I think the mood has changed (Pelosi's press conference about Build Back Better being the "culmination" of her time as speaker) and I'm cautiously optimistic that Manchin and Sinema might be the ones to fold. The stakes are just too high.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:28 AM on October 1, 2021 [37 favorites]


For fuck's sake, even the Rockefellers are openly telling Manchin to quit being an asshole and vote for the larger bill already.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:47 AM on October 1, 2021 [33 favorites]


Manchin and Sinema aren't moderates. They're conservatives that call themselves Democrats because there isn't a conservative party any more, only a group of mostly fascist extreme right wing nutballs that calls themselves Republican.

The political press either can't or won't recognize the reality of what the Republican Party has become, so people like Manchin and Sinema get labeled centrist.
posted by wierdo at 5:47 AM on October 1, 2021 [78 favorites]


I don't understand the need to expand Medicare to include vision, hearing and dental care. These all get better with age right?

Not gonna lie, you had me there in the first half.
posted by Literaryhero at 6:11 AM on October 1, 2021 [23 favorites]


Manchin is untouchable outside of genuine (illegal) blackmail or threat - as Maciej puts it, he's the last WV Dem senator for the foreseeable future - WV is solidly red and it's only the fact that he's a good ol' boy with a huge (corrupt!) record that keeps him as a senator for WV. It isn't the democratic party's vision, that's for sure.

What I don't understand is why isn't the democratic party primarying the FUCK out of Sinema or cutting off all conventional funding sources. "Bend to our will on our signature legislative requirement or we will destroy you politically". There are plenty of OTHER dems that could win in AZ. Isn't this what a whip is for?
posted by lalochezia at 6:12 AM on October 1, 2021 [24 favorites]


@thrasherxy: "A catastrophic failure of US journalism and politics is that something like Biden's 10-year, $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill is not called a $350 billion annual bill...but the Pentagon's budget, which will exceed $7.5 trillion over a decade, is called a $750 billion annual bill. Manchin says he won't vote for a $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill. The US war budget doesn't go down, not even after we allegedly end wars. It was bigger than ever this year. $7.5 trillion is the floor for what it will be over the next decade—and Manchin voted for it."[1]

@doctorow: "But as @HaroldMeyerson writes for @TheProspect, there's a high-stakes, high-risk gambit that would let the willing, principled Democrats pass the whole package - simply cut the programs' funding to four years, rather than a decade."[2]
posted by kliuless at 6:14 AM on October 1, 2021 [29 favorites]


As someone represented by Sinema for many years and who has begged the Justice Dems for many years to run people against her in primaries and done as much as I could to get the Democratic Party to stop supporting her and run other candidates, I don’t have a single kind word for anyone who ever said “vote blue no matter who.”

Sinema is completely unaccountable to her constituents and even the most watered down of Democratic Party beliefs and this was obvious long before she was running for Senate. Another self inflicted wound by the Democratic Party.
posted by congen at 6:27 AM on October 1, 2021 [15 favorites]


The difficulty the Dems have in getting their collective shit together is both mind-boggling and profoundly heartbreaking.
posted by tommasz at 6:28 AM on October 1, 2021 [11 favorites]


Sloan Sabbath (The Newsroom) on the debt ceiling. Hope you all get your stuff together cause I'm not sure I can handle the kind of collapse that would precipitate out of a US default. Would make the results of Brexit feel like a warm tropical breeze.
posted by Mitheral at 6:43 AM on October 1, 2021 [5 favorites]


Manchin says he won't vote for a $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill. The US war budget doesn't go down, not even after we allegedly end wars. It was bigger than ever this year. $7.5 trillion is the floor for what it will be over the next decade—and Manchin voted for it.

I think you're forgetting the basic economic principle that military spending is done in special defence dollars with a special ability to create jobs.
posted by flabdablet at 6:44 AM on October 1, 2021 [8 favorites]


Didn't I hear a report on Marketplace a couple nights ago that the Treasury has a plan to continue servicing debt (to avoid the catastrophe of outright default) at the expense of funding government services?

Is that the key to this? Are Republicans counting on the country not technically defaulting if the ceiling isn't raised? Do they know that the adults in the room will avert complete disaster in a way that is beneficial to Republican causes (i.e. starving the government?).
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:54 AM on October 1, 2021


The $3.5 trilion dollar package is President Biden's plan. This is what he campaigned on. This is what he supports, and it's already a compromise from the $6 trillion progressives wanted.

This needs to be repeated over and over and over again. Progressives and moderates came to an agreement to get BIF passed in the Senate, which was approved by Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer. Everything that has happened in this last week is 100% the fault of Manchin/Sinema and serially dishonest moderate goobers like Gottheimer, all of whom have been going back on their word. As an example, here's Manchin in June saying that passing the bills together is "the only strategy we have" and "reconciliation is inevitable"; two days ago he claimed that he'd never heard of such a thing. It certainly didn't help that Schumer kept the "agreement" between him and Manchin a secret for several months just for it to pop up at the worst possible moment, which strikes me as a nadir in Schumer's already pitifully low trustworthiness.

The difficulty the Dems have in getting their collective shit together is both mind-boggling and profoundly heartbreaking.

Reminder that at the end of the day (at least for now), the White House, Dem leadership, and around 95% of the Democrats in both chambers supports both the two-track plan and the $3.5T number. The problem is entirely on the Gruesome Twosome in the Senate and a less than a dozen assholes in the House. It also helps to just ignore the rabidly angry Terminal Centrist Brain™ types and AOC Reply Guys painting this as a bunch of bomb-throwing leftist women of color committing treason to spite Biden.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 6:55 AM on October 1, 2021 [36 favorites]


Months later and I still don't understand how the response to Manchin stonewalling isn't drawing up charges against his daughter for Epi-Pen price fixing, and essentially telling him they'll give her a plea deal if he fucking works with us and votes with the rest of the party, and if not, nail her ass to the wall, throw her in prison, throw away the key, and definitely start taking any connections she had with her father and start investigating those as well.

The fact that something like this doesn't happen is all I need to know about Democrats not actually being willing to try much at all to move these fucks. His daughter is a criminal, full stop. The fact that she walks free is bad enough, the fact that we don't use it as ammunition against him to get him to do his fucking job is even worse.

Sinema should be the final nail in the coffin of the idea that token minorities are going to save us. Is the first LGBT, woman President worth it if she ends up being a snake like Sinema?

We got Obama out here giving speeches about how young people are his hope. Huh, funny, Obama, you were supposed to be our hope motherfucker, and a lot of what you did was codifying and keeping the worst parts of the Bush administration... which then went into the hands of the orange fuckwit, because we didn't bother to remove those controls beforehand. Sick of hearing it from people who had a chance to change things and didn't.
posted by deadaluspark at 7:56 AM on October 1, 2021 [50 favorites]


The progressives are not trying to spite Biden. The progressives are trying to get Biden's bill passed using the only leverage they have.

As a famous author once said, roughly paraphrased, control of something involves the ability to destroy it. If Manchin and Sinema's loyalty to their corporate ghoul donors constituents is important enough for them to destroy the recon bill, the left's loyalty to their constituents is certainly valid for protecting their interests and insisting on their half of the deal just as strongly.

I mean, I am famously not a Biden fan. I viewed 2020 as an election between Trump and Not Trump, and cited the need to push Biden to the left at every opportunity during his term. Well, for once, backing Biden's plan IS the more progressive option, both for what's in the recon bill and as a mandatory show of strength. If that means all or nothing, it means all or nothing; if the BIF passes and the recon doesn't, this cycle will repeat on every bill of substance until the Republicans take Congress next fall in a rout.
posted by delfin at 7:56 AM on October 1, 2021 [13 favorites]


This reminds me of a story I once heard about Bill Bradley, former Senator from New Jersey (and former NY Knick champion). When he was somewhat new to the senate, he went to some political rubber chicken dinner. He was sitting on the dais and was prepared to speak. Before the speakers, there was the dinner. A server comes by each person on the dais and drops a pad of butter on their bread plate. Sen Bradley says, "Excuse me, may I have another pad of butter please." The server said, "I am sorry, I am supposed to only put one pad of butter on each plate." Bradley said in classic style, "Do you know who I am?" The server replied, "No, do you know who I am? I am the person in charge of the butter." Bradley said it was the most important lesson he ever learned about power.

Manchin and Sinema are in charge of the butter.
posted by AugustWest at 7:58 AM on October 1, 2021 [44 favorites]


Manchin told everyone who he years ago. The people who leapt to defend him every time should maybe have a little think about what has failed in their perception of the world that they didn’t pick this up.
posted by Artw at 8:03 AM on October 1, 2021 [5 favorites]


I think it's clear at this point that, for whatever reason, Manchin and Sinema have decided to destroy the Democrats chances in 2022 and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do.

Manchin, maybe, could be bribed. He has a long history of naked corruption for cash, promising a bill to stop lawsuits over EPI pen prices or whatever might buy his cooperation. It'd match his prior actions anyway. Though it does seem like a long shot given how intransigent he's been on this.

Sinema though? As far as I can tell she's just maliciously trolling and is in it for the lulz. I don't think anything could move her.

And yeah, it'd really help if the "liberal media" would accurately report that a) this is already a compromise that Manchin agreed to, and b) it's 350 billion per year not 3.5 trillion.
posted by sotonohito at 8:07 AM on October 1, 2021 [15 favorites]


So the 2 pretend Democratic senators should be called Dino's? Seriously I always support public good and I think the large dollar packages can help a lot of people. Realistically they will be chopped up in smaller versions of the bill leaving in the top items the lobbyists with the most money like.Frankly I don't care about anything republicans do until they pass a law making men responsible to care and feed any child of someone they impregnate. Of course the NBA and NFL will fight that one in court.
posted by Upon Further Review at 8:12 AM on October 1, 2021


Manchin knows that if he resigns or gets forced out, he'd get replaced by a Republican and we'd lose the Senate. He's essentially got a bomb on a deadman switch.
posted by octothorpe at 8:13 AM on October 1, 2021 [11 favorites]


After a progressive rebellion derailed an infrastructure vote late last night, and a leaked memo shed some light on Manchin's positions, the path is open to a perilous negotiation that could make or break Biden's domestic policy.

There was no progressive rebellion. Let me add my voice to the chorus making this point!

If the president and 95% of the caucus are behind the approach of not passing the infrastructure bill in isolation, then it's the holdouts insisting on an independent vote that are in rebellion.
posted by billjings at 8:18 AM on October 1, 2021 [30 favorites]


What really gets me when people complain about the price tag is that it didn't need to be this way. If investing in infrastructure and all the other housekeeping stuff that needs to be taken care of - which includes things like weatherproofing your home and taking care of its residents and maybe finding someplace to dump your trash/emissions that isn't a giant pile in your own yard poisoning your own soil and air - if all that were done regularly, like every year or two, the price tag wouldn't be so high.

But people keep saying "once in a generation bill" in one breath and "giant price tag" in the next. The fact that having a large enough number of responsible politicians to do the housekeeping stuff happens only once every twenty years or so is the problem, not the price tag when they finally have to fix all the neglect that's built up over decades and invest in things that will (fingers crossed) last long enough to tide us over until the next responsible Congress.

If Manchin wants to pass a housekeeping bill every single year, like a responsible homeowner and family man, great. He wouldn't need to get into the trillions then. If he wants to do once-a-decade-or-two-maintenance, then sorry, but costs add up.
posted by trig at 8:18 AM on October 1, 2021 [20 favorites]




Manchin in June: “One can’t be done without the other,” Schumer said. “We can’t get the bipartisan bill done unless we’re sure of getting the budget reconciliation bill done.”

When President Joe Biden that day made the same argument, Manchin came to his defense. “It’s the only strategy we have — is two-track,” he said that afternoon.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:22 AM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


Men shouldn't be allowed to name boats, as if the yacht wasn't gross enough already.

Source: Live near a marina with a yacht club and at least half the names are gross and sexual
posted by deadaluspark at 8:25 AM on October 1, 2021 [6 favorites]


Sinema though? As far as I can tell she's just maliciously trolling and is in it for the lulz

Robert Reich Twitter: "Kyrsten Sinema has received over $750,000 from Big Pharma. Her office is led by a former lobbyist whose firm worked on behalf of pharmaceutical companies.

And now she's trying to tank a bill to lower drug prices.

This is the power of big money, folks."

Salon.com source
posted by soundguy99 at 8:30 AM on October 1, 2021 [29 favorites]


Men shouldn't be allowed to name boats, as if the yacht wasn't gross enough already.

"Almost Heaven"? It's from the John Denver song. It's an unofficial motto of WV.
posted by octothorpe at 8:31 AM on October 1, 2021 [20 favorites]


If the president and 95% of the caucus are behind the approach of not passing the infrastructure bill in isolation, then it's the holdouts insisting on an independent vote that are in rebellion.

The progressives are rebelling against the idea that they are supposed to always support the option that the moderates decide is appropriate, whatever or whoever it is, without question because otherwise the Critical Swing Voters in the Middle will be unhappy. That the priorities of the left don't matter because the main party's too busy having recurring McGovern flashbacks.

For some odd reason, the progressives have become disenchanted with that idea, even while the media views that lack of knee-bending as heresy.
posted by delfin at 8:32 AM on October 1, 2021 [8 favorites]


Money buys sophists who persuade people to vote against their best interests.
posted by lon_star at 8:56 AM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


The difficulty the Dems have in getting their collective shit together is both mind-boggling and profoundly heartbreaking.

The Democrats now essentially represent two political parties: a center-left party and a center-right party. The Republicans are just a frothing incoherent white supremacist id.
posted by mr_roboto at 8:59 AM on October 1, 2021 [18 favorites]


McGovern flashbacks

Money buys sophists

Y'all are killin' it with these unbidden puppet names.
posted by riverlife at 9:01 AM on October 1, 2021 [11 favorites]


I don't believe people who can afford a yacht should be allowed to hold elected office.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:01 AM on October 1, 2021 [10 favorites]


I don't believe people who want to afford a yacht should be allowed to hold elected office.
posted by flabdablet at 9:27 AM on October 1, 2021 [26 favorites]


The progressives are rebelling against the idea that they are supposed to always support the option that the moderates decide is appropriate, whatever or whoever it is, without question because otherwise the Critical Swing Voters in the Middle will be unhappy. That the priorities of the left don't matter because the main party's too busy having recurring McGovern flashbacks.

There is for sure an establishment perspective that views things as you describe, because that's traditionally how things worked and they would be perfectly happy to take the infra bill and call it a day.

But the President and 95% of the Congressional Democratic caucus knows that if they only get the infrastructure bill, they are completely screwed in the midterms. So they are willing to kill the infra bill if it comes to that, because the alternative isn't safe. Progressives aren't really driving that conflict at this point.

That may change if Manchin and Sinema start talking turkey and asking progressives to give up their priorities. But right now the choice is between pushing through the President's big bill (which includes a bunch of progressive priorities) and letting the entire thing die.
posted by billjings at 9:38 AM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


I think it's clear at this point that, for whatever reason, Manchin and Sinema have decided to destroy the Democrats chances in 2022...

The reason is simple for Manchin. Coal money.

...........
Manchin, maybe, could be bribed.

He is. See above.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:45 AM on October 1, 2021 [7 favorites]


This is kind of what happens when your political party is, more or less, a big tent party. Cobbling together votes for something ginormous like this becomes an exercise in herding cats. Cats who all have different owners.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are a single, tiny tent with very strict rules for who gets to enter. Thus, they rarely have the issues the Dems have in building support for whatever nihilistic bill they see fit to foist on the country.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:51 AM on October 1, 2021 [10 favorites]


The amazing thing about the Republican tent is how many people are willing to stand outside in the rain waiting for scraps.
posted by klanawa at 10:22 AM on October 1, 2021 [17 favorites]


The progressives and the Prez and the true moderates in the party have all already aligned on a plan, the rest is grandstanding.

The equivalent in the R party to point to is not their tent size or functional discipline, it's their whole Murkowski/Collins hand-wringing displays. And they always land those votes at the end...

We should expect our party to do the same, but in the meantime the narrative keeps portraying the Dems as inept bumblers who can't get their shit together, which you somehow never hear about R's. Even when McCain thumbs-downed in McConnell's face humiliatingly on the Senate floor, somehow McConnell gets hailed as a legislative genius after a short pause.

It's ugly American politics - that doesn't make it right or good and it doesn't make the pain stop but it's not a problem of 'Dems suck amirite?'. Not this time. It's two grandstanding Senators and a handful of jerks in the House.
posted by dragstroke at 10:29 AM on October 1, 2021 [13 favorites]


Thorzdad, your observation about broad-coalition-majority versus homogenous minority was the theme of a recent three part essay by JV Last at The Bulwark. Definitely worth a read:
1. Chaos Reigns

Over the weekend Shay Khatiri put out an excellent issue of his Russia-Iran file newsletter. If you’re one of the 20 people in America who cares about foreign policy, you should subscribe to it.

I want to focus on a piece he linked to from 2018, which looks at how Vladimir Putin views chaos as a strategy:

For all of Russia’s weaknesses as a great power, the Kremlin thinks it possesses one key advantage in long-term competition with America and the democratic West: Russia is more cohesive internally and will thus be able to outlast its technologically superior but culturally and politically pluralistic opponents. In recent years, Putin, his chief military strategist Valery Gerasimov, and other Russian leaders have employed disinformation to spread chaos for strategic effect. The Kremlin’s goal is to create an environment in which the side that copes best with chaos (that is, which is less susceptible to societal disruption) wins. The premise is Huntingtonian: that Russia can endure in a clash of civilizations by splintering its opponents’ alliances with each other, dividing them internally, and undermining their political systems while consolidating its own population, resources, and cultural base. Such a strategy avoids competition in those areas where the Kremlin is weak in hopes of ensuring that, when confrontation does come, it will enjoy a more level playing field.

Boom.

This is observation is so penetrating that once you see it, the entire world looks different. Of course it’s correct.

But reading it, I was also struck by how this exact same strategic embrace of chaos has been embraced by Trump’s Republican party.

On the surface, the Democrats appear to have a number of strategic advantages. They’ve won the popular vote in every election but one since 1992. (A string of dominance not seen since the aftermath of the Civil War.) They command a clear national majority. Their electoral base is strongest in the states which have the most dynamic economies. They are strongest in the urban and suburban centers—which is where we see America’s population growth. Their support is dispersed widely among different racial and ethnic groups. They hold an overwhelming advantage with young voters.

Compared with Democrats, the Republican party is closer to a rump. A minoritarian party composed of the old and the lesser-educated and concentrated in parts of the country whose populations are shrinking.

Whether by accident or design, Donald Trump intuited the same lesson that Vladimir Putin hit upon as he looked to leverage Russia’s strengths against the West’s weaknesses.

What Trump showed Republicans is that:

While the GOP coalition is smaller, it’s much more internally cohesive than the Democrats’. It is the party of rural, white Christians.
While Democrats have specific legislative goals their coalition wants to achieve through governing, the Republican coalition has no governing agenda (aside from appointing judges).
The geographic dispersion of voters means that Republicans do not need to create a majority in order to hold power, while Democrats require not just a majority, but a sizable majority.
And the obvious lesson for Republicans, then, is that chaos is their friend.

Disruption is more likely to help Republicans. Their coalition is more resistant to adverse outcomes. They need fewer votes to hold power.

Democrats require a large coalition in order to attain power. Their coalition is broad and therefore diverse, which makes it both harder to manage and more easily splintered. They need to both (a) achieve tangible legislative goals and (b) keep the ship of state moving steadily and without turbulence. In short: They need to govern effectively and with a minimum of drama.

That’s hard to do in the best of times.

It may be impossible when the former president, the other political party, and 40 percent of the country are strategically committed to stoking chaos.
posted by Sublimity at 10:54 AM on October 1, 2021 [29 favorites]


Why do we expect software developers to fix exploits to their software so quickly, but we never actually expect our government to actually fix the exploits to our government?

That's what's so frustrating to me. It's just people exploiting a system and the way it works to find ways to squirrel their way into more power. It feels so much like privilege escalation or lateral movement and the like, except it's all really social engineering.

Like, why is that not even a conversation? Why is it not considered a bad thing to try to exploit the systems as they exist to accumulate power? Why aren't there laws against it and an instant expectation that lawmakers will "fix the exploit" as quickly as possible?
posted by deadaluspark at 11:05 AM on October 1, 2021 [4 favorites]


The difficulty the Dems have in getting their collective shit together is both mind-boggling and profoundly heartbreaking.

My working theory is that the Dems never really recovered from the savage electoral beatings they took in the 80's. The party was so collectively traumatized that even 2 terms of Clinton couldn't rid them of their scars. Somewhere in the Bush years they huddled around the idea of becoming a party of token opposition, and found that it gave them an identity. Even after two terms of Obama, no one was willing to ditch the residual image of the GOP as the powerhouse trying to force fascism through the House of Reps, and the Dems as the plucky rebels flying X-Wings or something.

So now we have an extremely competent far-right party that's ruthlessly efficient at getting their legislative goals passed, and a borderline-incompetent center-right party permanently mired in the idea of being the opposition party, who can't get their shit together long enough to pass their own legislative centerpiece while controlling both chambers of the legislature and the White House. The Reagan/Mondale shellacking was nearly 40 years ago--far enough in the past that almost no one in Congress was even in politics when it happened--but somehow we're stuck with the institutional memory of it.
posted by Mayor West at 11:16 AM on October 1, 2021 [7 favorites]


Because the involved parties disagree as to the desired purpose of the program.
posted by delfin at 11:16 AM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


The amazing thing about the Republican tent is how many people are willing to stand outside in the rain waiting for scraps.

"I might just be a roofer with a GED, but someday I'm going to become a self-made billionaire sitting on the board of trustees at General Electric, and I'm not paying no 38% marginal tax on my millions of future dollars." -- most GOP voters, probably
posted by Mayor West at 11:20 AM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


LOL. Take THAT roofers!
posted by riruro at 11:32 AM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


I continue to think over and over, evil will always triumph because good is dumb. The Democrats can't or won't play dirty and literally nothing but playing dirty is gonna work with some people.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:16 PM on October 1, 2021 [4 favorites]


This season's "Dems in disarray" is exactly two barely-Democrats holding up something the rest all basically agree upon. So yeah, we should absolutely buy into the narrative that the whole party is a giant mess.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 12:22 PM on October 1, 2021 [41 favorites]


(How can you tell the difference between evil and good if they both play dirty?) Anyway, thanks for this post, OP. It's good to see the roundup but I'm not going to shit on the Democrats this round. Sure, the two corrupt senators are piles of shit. But the party as a whole is doing the best it can in a system that is rigged against democratic (small d) representation and will probably get more rigged with this next redistricting round. The party needs to clone Stacy Abrams and other activists who have been working to make elections more democratic for decades, basically. Also, what scaryblackdeath said.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:24 PM on October 1, 2021 [5 favorites]


How can you tell the difference between evil and good if they both play dirty?

One differentiator is that one of the dirty players wants to help people avoid dying via vaccinations and the other one pushes the idea that covid is a hoax.
posted by axiom at 12:26 PM on October 1, 2021 [10 favorites]


How can you tell the difference between evil and good if they both play dirty?

The ends shouldn't systematically justify the means, but the means can't systematically justify the ends, either. It doesn't matter how noble your intent if it ends in a tragedy you knew would come if you stuck with your noble intent above all else. I think sometimes good guys need (and should use) fixers. The problem isn't the tool. The problem is that the tool is so seductive. But complete abstinence is just as immoral and just as much a cop-out. "Can't do that, we're the good guys!" makes decisions simple, and simple decisions are also seductive.
posted by tllaya at 1:14 PM on October 1, 2021 [10 favorites]


This season's "Dems in disarray" is exactly two barely-Democrats holding up something the rest all basically agree upon. So yeah, we should absolutely buy into the narrative that the whole party is a giant mess.

This.

Two Democratic senators are backward-thinking, dead weight; we keep hearing "The Democrats can't agree on anything."

Biden picked up 7 million more votes than Trump in 2020, and roughly a third of eligible voters didn't weigh in at all; we keep hearing "Half the country loves Trump."

Three-quarters of eligible USians have received at least one dose of the vaccine against COVID, but the ICUs and morgues are still brim-full; we keep hearing "Americans don't think it's serious."

I'm used to the GQP counting on its audience not to understand the difference between (1) genuine statistical might and (2) the ability of a pain-in-the-ass, solipsist minority faction to hijack an inherently unfair system and ruin things for everybody else. We on the Left should really be less disingenuous, though.
posted by armeowda at 1:34 PM on October 1, 2021 [25 favorites]


Like, why is that not even a conversation?

Media outlets largely dictate the terms of that public conversation. As an industry, the media makes record amounts of money from election advertising. Even Trump had the public support of CBS executive Les Moonves: "The money's rolling in and this is fun." Questioning where politicians get their money from is bad for shareholders.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:36 PM on October 1, 2021 [4 favorites]


Modern midterm elections have resulted in an average loss of 30 seats in the House of Representatives and Senate by the political party whose president occupies the White House. Party A gets elected, Party B obstructs them, Party A gets punished in the midterms for not getting anything done, Party B gets rewarded for obstruction.*

If the Democrats could actually pass these two bills, they might be able to improve enough people's lives by the midterms to break the trend.

* Usually, but not always, Party B is the Republicans.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:42 PM on October 1, 2021 [3 favorites]


they might be able to improve enough people's lives by the midterms to break the trend

Seriously. Can we really not harness the power of populism for actual good? It's a pretty strong force for getting people elected!
posted by trig at 2:32 PM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


Schumer was so stupid to even put the BIF up for a vote to begin with. Everyone looking at this knew that the entire purpose of the BIF -- instead of the American Jobs Plan + American Families Plan that Biden proposed -- was to create a highway-centric cudgel that would be used against the bigger and more important proposals.

Once the BIF passed the Senate, it was inevitable that we would be in this position -- forcing the progressives to threaten to vote down a popular bill in order to save the Biden agenda. Crazy.

Honestly the BIF never should have existed to begin with. Biden proposed the AJP and the AFP, which could both be passed via reconciliation. The Senate should have negotiated both those proposals and passed each of them via reconciliation, instead of giving 10 Republicans leverage.
posted by lewedswiver at 4:42 PM on October 1, 2021 [3 favorites]


d passed each of them via reconciliation

Don't they get one reconciliation bill per session?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:12 PM on October 1, 2021


The only solution to the Manchin problem is to have enough Senators that you can afford to lose his vote sometime. If 2020 had gone better, this would have been the case.

Sinema seems different because it (to me anyway) seems quite possible to elect a non-Sinema Democratic Senator from Arizona. After all, Mark Kelly exists. As others said, Manchin is probably the last WV Dem Senator until some future time when the parties realign again or something.

It's still better to have the current 50-50 Senate where at least McConnell doesn't control the agenda, but Manchin is obviously not a reliable Democratic vote.
posted by thefoxgod at 5:21 PM on October 1, 2021 [10 favorites]


Yeah, we don't actually even have a bare Democratic "majority" here. I don't know WHAT we call this shit, mind you.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:39 PM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


So, just out of curiosity, if both the BIF and the human infrastructure package go down in flames, what's plan B?
posted by Reverend John at 6:16 PM on October 1, 2021


Getting your shots in order and really moving to Canada.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:20 PM on October 1, 2021 [3 favorites]


Inasmuch as we can say Good and Evil exist and we aren't eliding over smarter ethical perspectives, Good looks dumb to Evil in that Good is an inherently exposed and vulnerable position. It *is* a dumb strategy. But fuck Evil; those guys suck
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 6:26 PM on October 1, 2021 [4 favorites]


I'm kind of joking, but a minority party is deciding America's fate and seems hellbent on pushing us to become a third-world state. Some hard choices are ahead.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:48 PM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


The only solution to the Manchin problem is to have enough Senators that you can afford to lose his vote sometime.

Manchin himself said this. He said he is not a progressive, he is a moderate. If you want a progressive agenda, elect more progressives.

To me, this is similar to the Republicans. This is the Tea Party and the moderate republicans (yes, there are moderate republicans just as there are moderate democrats).

These two bills will be passed. The physical infrastructure bill will pass with some republican votes. The so called human infrastructure bill will pass too, just not as the progressive or far left want. Turns out, Biden won, not Sanders and not Warren. He is much less progressive. There will have to be a compromise with Manchin and Sinema. Just because you are a democrat (or republican) does not mean you need to toe the party line. Manchin is going to help get a bill passed. It just won't be as encompassing as some want. The alternative, that a republican wins or won the WV seat means that the dems would not even have a tie-breaking majority.

AOC and the progressives recognize what Manchin said about if you want a progressive agenda, elect more progressives. They are primarying the moderate dems that won't toe the line. They can primary Sinema and they might win. A progressive primarying Manchin will get crushed. WV is at most a moderate state. It is more of a red state that appreciates Manchin for whatever it is he deserves to be appreciated for. Mainly that is he looks out for WV. He fights for the coal and other industry of WV.

It strikes me as odd that the progressives would vote down a bill that is not large enough. Politics is about compromise (or should be). Get the half loaf today and next week come back and ask for another half loaf. The realists among the progressives appreciate that if they don't get it all now, they won't have another opportunity because the midterms are likely to to change the balance of power. Despite calling the republicans the minority party, as THorrzdad points out, they are unified whereas the dems are stratified. What is the saying? United we stand; divided we fall.?

The democrats are the big tent party, but the only way they are unified is in their opposition to republicans. On policy, give me 100 democrats and I will give you 100 different priorities. Give me 100 republicans and they will be unified in what they grab in the short term and debate the long term amongst themselves.
posted by AugustWest at 8:05 PM on October 1, 2021 [2 favorites]


Yeah, we don't actually even have a bare Democratic "majority" here. I don't know WHAT we call this shit, mind you.

We have a caretaker Senate majority, led by Manchin. His role is to prevent the Republicans from controlling nominations, processes and bill submissions, and to keep the Democrats from preventing the Republicans from preventing everything else of substance. No surprises, no transformative policy, no big changes; he's there to keep the hedges trimmed, the windows closed and the keys to the car safely hidden, let anyone get any ideas.
posted by delfin at 8:24 PM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


In Rawls' formulation of the Veil of Ignorance, did he anticipate a sizable portion of supporters for particular ethical and political systems which favor non-democratic or, at best, bad-faith democratic social structures?
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 11:12 PM on October 1, 2021


It strikes me as odd that the progressives would vote down a bill that is not large enough. Politics is about compromise (or should be). Get the half loaf today and next week come back and ask for another half loaf. The realists among the progressives appreciate that if they don't get it all now, they won't have another opportunity because the midterms are likely to to change the balance of power.

Except that it's not about the size of the bill, it's about the priorities. Manchin and other so-called "centrists" want to frame the debate in terms of cost. They want to lure reasonable people into making that exact conclusion--that something is better than nothing--without having to go into the details about what that "something" includes.

Does that "something" include free community college? Does it include permanent direct-payment child tax credits? Does it include childcare? Does it include an expansion of medicare? Does it include measures to combat climate change? It's easy to look at raw numbers and say "if the alternative was we didn't fund anything, providing some funding is still a win". It's much harder to say "Ok, we're going to drop child care in order to get the top line numbers under this amount".

So far I don't think Manchin has bothered to elaborate what it is he wants in the bill and what he doesn't want. I think that's because his real issue is with what the bill provides. He gave away the game the other day when he warned about making Americans dependent on the government. He's against directly helping people, and I strongly suspect if he were to provide an outline of what his funding priorities would be for that $1.5 trillion, it would mostly be giveaways to corporations that might indirectly help people (i.e. just like the bipartisan infrastructure plan which he negotiated and supports)

Don't let Manchin fool you with his pathetic appeals to reasonableness. This is not about compromise. It's about nickling and diming the bill so that it can be hollowed out and turned into yet another corporate giveaway. The realists among the progressives understand this, which is why they haven't backed down yet.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:58 AM on October 2, 2021 [12 favorites]


And also, for the Nth time: This is President Biden's plan. Progressives wanted $6 trillion and compromised on $3.5 trillion. All of the Democratic party is on board with this except for a couple of selfish idiots.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:07 AM on October 2, 2021 [24 favorites]


It strikes me as odd that the progressives would vote down a bill that is not large enough. Politics is about compromise (or should be). Get the half loaf today and next week come back and ask for another half loaf.

This is the compromise, the progressives are fighting for Biden's agenda (he is not progressive), and everyone knows we're not getting the half loaf later. The bills--which, again, are moderate and supported by moderates--must be paired.
posted by Mavri at 8:36 AM on October 2, 2021 [10 favorites]


OK, but still. Manchin and Sinema are Senators. We can't get around this fact. If both bills go down in flames, whats the upside? We get to blame them?

Do we think what is in the BIF and a possibly watered-down human infrastructure bill are important? Or will we be glad to go without anything if we can't get everything?

ETA: I mean, I personally don't mind the progressives playing hardball if it goes down like AugustWest predicts. I just hope they don't actually spike things in favor of nothing in the end.
posted by Reverend John at 1:16 PM on October 2, 2021


All of the Democratic party is on board with this except for a couple of selfish idiots.

If everyone was "on board", they'd all work day and night to pull out every stop and put every last damn screw down on these two idiots, for the very reason that not doing so has so far entirely relinquished their majority power to a Republican minority.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:36 PM on October 2, 2021 [3 favorites]


I don't believe people who can afford a yacht should be allowed to hold elected office.
I don't believe people who want to afford a yacht should be allowed to hold elected office.

I don't believe people, thinking Manchin paid full-price for that yacht.

(Manchin paid $220K, and insured for $700K. He lives and entertains on the boat when in DC, and his taxes probably reflect that.) The Koch Empire Goes All Out to Sink Joe Biden’s Agenda — and His Presidency, Too / Joe Manchin Just Cooked the Planet (Rolling Stone, Thursday and Friday)

Re: the current 50-50 Senate. The California recall/trial balloon that could have ultimately upset that balance was two weeks ago. The Republicans took notes, and scurried off to well-funded think tanks.

The gentleman from West Virginia voiced concerns about "making Americans dependent on the government"?! Only four states rely more than West Virginia on federal funding: New Mexico, Alaska, Mississippi, & North Dakota. WV's in the fifth position, and Kentucky, Arizona, Alabama, Montana, and South Carolina finish out the top ten. (With the exception of New Mexico, all are 'Republican' affiliated states.) And as noted by deadaluspark, Manchin's daughter, Heather Bresch, former president and CEO of Mylan Pharma, is a criminal mastermind, while Manchin himself rec'd large campaign contributions from her company during the EpiPen price-gouging conspiracy. Superb.

Senator Sinema's lengthy statement today on the cancelled vote is on Twitter (threadreader link; AZ Central article): “The failure of the U.S. House to hold a vote on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is inexcusable, and deeply disappointing for communities across our country. Denying Americans millions of good-paying jobs, safer roads, cleaner water, more reliable electricity, and better broadband only hurts everyday families...."

This senator's "ideology score" per govtrack, based on the bills Sinema has sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2017 to Sep 30, 2021. She's more to the right than Manchin, and, like Manchin, deeper into the GOP cluster than actual Republicans Murkowski and Collins. (Sinema was one of the two Democratic senators who declined to vote in May on H.R.3233 (the National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex Act). Sen. Patty Murray, from WA, was the other; they were joined by 9 Republican colleagues.) The Democratic Party can get a celebrity Democrat and primary her out, or really work to make more states (the How Much Does Your State Depend on Federal Funding? chart linked above already has "blue/Dem" Washington, DC in the mix at #19). This culture-limiting, wobbly Senate precarity has to go.
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:36 PM on October 2, 2021 [7 favorites]


Do we think what is in the BIF and a possibly watered-down human infrastructure bill are important? Or will we be glad to go without anything if we can't get everything?

Do we even know that this is Manchin's final offer? What happens if Democrats yield to him and reduce the size of the bill to his $1.5 trillion? What's stopping him from just saying "Nah, I really meant $0.5 trillion. I'm still not going to vote for it" when the time comes?

This isn't an argument about getting everything vs getting something. This is an argument about getting something meaningful vs getting nothing meaningful at all. Manchin isn't doing this song and dance because he has issues with the cost of the bill, he's doing this because he's against the fundamental New Deal-like scope of the bill, and I guarantee you any capitulation will only result in further demands because Manchin cares more about coal and his wealthy benefactors than he cares about the future of American Democracy and the fate of our planet.

The BIF is our only leverage on Manchin. It has stuff he wants. If he wants it to become law, he has to support the reconciliation bill.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:11 PM on October 2, 2021 [6 favorites]


"Nah, I really meant $0.5 trillion. I'm still not going to vote for it" when the time comes?

I've been saying since this whole thing started, we're going to get something in the billions, and it'll have a 'gotta renew this every 2 years clause' where that will get whittled down to nothing by the time the 10 year mark comes.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:34 PM on October 2, 2021 [1 favorite]


Turns out, Biden won, not Sanders and not Warren. He is much less progressive. There will have to be a compromise with Manchin and Sinema. Just because you are a democrat (or republican) does not mean you need to toe the party line.

I don't want to pile on or be too harsh, but the idea that the reconciliation bill is somehow a leftwing bill needs to be buried after having a stake driven though its heart. The reconciliation bill is Biden's agenda. It is the agenda of the majority of the Democratic Party. It doesn't go nearly as far in any area - education, healthcare, and or decarbonization - as anything advocated by progressives. It doesn't even go as far as Biden's positions in the primary. It's already the compromise. Manchin and Sinema are the one's holding out. Even places the New York Times are picking on this.
posted by eagles123 at 10:38 PM on October 2, 2021 [12 favorites]


If everyone was "on board", they'd all work day and night to pull out every stop and put every last damn screw down on these two idiots, for the very reason that not doing so has so far entirely relinquished their majority power to a Republican minority.

So the intransigence of two senators is proof that the other Democrats are just not trying hard enough? What does "put every last damn screw down" even mean? What specifically do you want them to do? Physically threaten them? Kidnap family members? This is just pure Green Lanternism.
posted by octothorpe at 5:29 AM on October 3, 2021 [4 favorites]


Well, threatening to take him and Sinema off every committee they're on, threatening to lavishly fund a primary challenger next election, and in Manchin's case threatening to aggressively pursue criminal charges against his criminal daughter might be worthwhile.

Or it could make them say "fuck you, we're joining the Republcians officially now hope you like Senate Majority Leader McConnell again!"

I think at least threatening their committee seats might be worthwhile, there's nothing that actually says Manchin must be on the Energy Committee for example and he really loves being there.
posted by sotonohito at 5:41 AM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


What specifically do you want them to do?

Really? There's an awful lot that could be done to embarrass Sinema and Manchin publicly and pressure them legally, starting with criminal pay-for-play investigations. At the very least, they both have significant stakes in throwing wrenches into the infrastructure bill. Sinema is trading her opposition to the bill for money from business lobbyists opposed to the taxes that would be raised to pay for it. And outside of protecting the fossil fuel industries in WV, which this infrastructure package would push the country away from, Manchin has a daughter who was involved in the EpiPen pricing scandal. He personally received large donations from Mylan, the parent company his daughter was involved in. Get the FBI to dig openly into the financial dealings these people have, make the investigation findings public, and get the DoJ started on grand jury proceedings in parallel. If Dems are serious about this, they need to start playing hardball, and they have a lot to work with, with these two crooks.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:10 AM on October 3, 2021 [4 favorites]


I find it hard to believe that any of those tactics would change their votes or make them want to work with democrats.
posted by octothorpe at 6:55 AM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


They don't want to work with Democrats now.

The DCCC blacklisted people who worked for progressives who challenged incumbents. Dems have the energy to punch left, but won't threaten the conservative Dems tanking their moderate agenda.
posted by Mavri at 8:21 AM on October 3, 2021 [8 favorites]


Yeeeeah I don't think threatening those two with criminal charges would end well for anyone.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 9:00 AM on October 3, 2021


Well gee, not pursuing criminal charges against verifiable criminals in government has been working out just swimmingly, hasn't it?

big fat /s just in case
posted by deadaluspark at 10:21 AM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


I think the big difference between the Democrats and the GOP is that the Democrats really believe that it doesn't matter if you win or lose as long as you play fair. The GOP thinks it doesn't matter if you play fair as long as you win. So Trump would never let a Republican version of Manchin or Sinema happen, even though the rules allow it; he would publicly humiliate them at every opportunity, and soon they'd be begging for the chance to vote for whatever idiotic bullshit he wanted. But the Democrats are just like, "Well, this sucks, but we have to respect them, I guess," when actually we don't have to respect them at all, we have to make them realize that failing to support the bill will leave their careers pissing blood. But the Democrats don't think like that, and that's why even when we win, we still lose.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:57 AM on October 3, 2021 [6 favorites]


I think there's also the fear that pressure would drive them to be officially Republicans.

Given Sinema's trolling I could very easily see her switching parties to let Mitch be Majority Leader again just for the lulz if Schumer and/or Biden give her too much shit.

If we had 53 votes, well a) we wouldn't have this problem, and b) then we could be talking about really heavy handed action without any fear that they'd switch sides and hand the Senate back to the Republicans.

With Manchin I suspect the calculus is trying to hold onto him until 2024 when his term expires and he almost certainly won't run again. He won in 2018 by the skin of his teeth, 49.6% of the vote, and given Trumpism I doubt anyone thinks he can pull off a win in 2024 short of direct divine intervention.

Or, worse, that he might just swap parties to win. If he switched to Republican he'd be the Senator from WV for as long as he wanted, he only got the win as a Democrat due to a lot of people voting Republican for everything except him and that isn't going to carry him much longer no matter how many stupid ads he does of himself shooting paper copies of environmental legislation.

I can also see the Republicans salivating at the chance to turn Manchin just because they know it'd cause anguish to the Democrats. If he hasn't been being actively courted by Republicans I'd be very surprised.
posted by sotonohito at 3:25 PM on October 3, 2021 [3 favorites]


Are the Democrats courting anyone? A few Republicans voiced disgust at key points in the last few years -- while voting in lockstep and remaining on the gravy train, so is a terribly high-stakes "red rover, red rover" even possible?

Five of the six Republicans who broke with the party to vote "Yea" on H.R. 3233 are retirement age (62+) and may actually chose not to run again. Ben Sasse, 47, the junior senator from Nebraska, has served since Jan 6, 2015 and is next up for reelection in 2026. Sasse voted to impeach in February, and hates that his party has become Trump's death cult. Glaringly obvious drawback in that he's Ben Sasse (voting record), and the Republicans have a better overall track record with nurturing rising talent. Oh, nevermind: Ben Sasse Wants to Talk About Tocqueville, Not Marjorie Taylor Greene (the Atlantic, Sept. 29, 2021) Why a senator from the GOP heartland thinks today’s Trump-obsessed politics won’t stick around.

[...] Sasse thinks there’s a way out of an era of loneliness exploited by the likes of Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Matt Gaetz. The small number of Americans who pay attention to politics on a daily basis, who make political ideology their primary identifier, “are pretty weird,” he told Goldberg. The majority of Americans want to find common ground, at least in their more immediate communities, Sasse argued—and that approach is precisely how American democracy can survive and move beyond the Trump era.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:20 PM on October 3, 2021


If we had 53 votes, well a) we wouldn't have this problem, and b) then we could be talking about really heavy handed action without any fear that they'd switch sides and hand the Senate back to the Republicans.

I mean, maybe. I'd certainly hope so. Are we really sure about that, though? Isn't it possible that these same Senators would just become squeamish about using reconciliation to violate "norms" somehow, which would just put the filibuster back in the play? It's just that these Senators either are lawyers or are surrounded by lawyers employed by lobbying firms who are trained to zealously represent their clients by trying to exploit every procedural trick they can find. By design, the Senate seems to have many such hurdles.
posted by eagles123 at 8:24 PM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


Well, threatening to take him and Sinema off every committee they're on, threatening to lavishly fund a primary challenger next election, and in Manchin's case threatening to aggressively pursue criminal charges against his criminal daughter might be worthwhile.

You realize that last suggestion is VERY illegal, right?
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:31 AM on October 4, 2021 [2 favorites]


I think we should have pursued charges against her, and her father, years ago. But this is 'Murca where laws only apply to people like you and me, not to the rich and powerful. To an extent I'll take any penalty and law enforcement against the rich I can get. I'll admit to a great deal of class hatred here and that my thinking may not be fully rational. I tend to see anyone with more than $10 million or so as an enemy to be destroyed by any means possible, especially if they're using their wealth to hurt me.

But, and I think a lot more rationally, from my POV we're looking at the end of democracy in America and the beginning of an authoritarian one party state with (at best) sham elections.

If a crime against a corrupt evil person who should have been in in prison long ago is necessary to preserve democracy I'm not happy, but I'd be willing to pay that price.

I like the idea of people following rules, I don't like the idea of a government based on not following the rules.

But that can't be a suicide pact, and if following the rules means the nation is destroyed then I say it's time to give due consideration to breaking the rules. Yes, that's a slippery slope.

But what's the alternative? "Taking the high road" has given us an unbroken string of defeats and left us weakened and timid, and the enemy stronger and bolder.

There is only one outcome to a game where there is no one to enforces the rules, side A plays fair, and side B cheats at every opportunity. Side B will win. Every time.

It's like the paradox of tolerance. Sometimes, to preserve tolerance, you must be intolerant of those who wish to make intolerance the law. Sometimes, in order to preserve the rules, you must break those rules to penalize people who break the rules.

Worrying that if we're not careful then gosh some day the Republicans might break the rules is grotesque. They are. RIght now. Already. Currently. And they are winning because of it.

And, like I said, I'll concede to a degree of irrationality where Manchin is concerned. I want to crush him, to see him driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of his followers.
posted by sotonohito at 7:28 AM on October 4, 2021 [2 favorites]


I'm not suggesting she shouldn't be prosecuted. But using the threat of prosecution to get Manchin to change his vote? Oof.

If different from weaselly comments like "we can't do it because the Parliamentarian says no" - that's rule-following as cowardice, and we should absolutely rail against that. And I completely understand your frustration about this entire situation. But maybe let's not encourage prosecutorial misconduct and threats against a federal official.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 7:49 AM on October 4, 2021 [2 favorites]


That's why when I brought up the idea I didn't say threaten to charge them, I said to charge his daughter, start making investigations into his connection with that, but offer up plea deals if he works with his fellow Democrats.

In other words, start doing the work of holding people actually accountable, since there seems to be a lot of "but if we hold them accountable they might become Republicans" in here. The reason they can hold that over our heads is because we keep allowing this to happen to begin with and don't charge these people with crimes when it's appropriate the first time. The only way to stop it is to start holding them accountable now and keep that trend up.
posted by deadaluspark at 9:49 AM on October 4, 2021 [1 favorite]


Literally not prosecuting painfully obvious crimes for officeholders and their families is fucking exactly how we ended up with Trump and why he still hasn't any kind of comeuppance for his endless stream of fucking crimes while in office.

Let's stop pissing away our lives on this idea that we can't prosecute powerful people because then they might do things we don't like. Sounds like they shouldn't be powerful people if that's the fucking case, if they just use their power to strong-arm everyone into letting them get away with every criminal enterprise possible.

That attitude is literally killing our fucking nation and allowing unchecked corruption to grow like cancer.
posted by deadaluspark at 9:55 AM on October 4, 2021 [2 favorites]


You're completely missing my point. I'm not suggesting that we should not prosecute people who break the law. I'm suggesting we not use the threat of prosecuting his daughter as a ploy to get Joe Manchin to change his vote.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 10:35 AM on October 4, 2021 [2 favorites]


Using the prosecutorial/judicial power of the federal government against people to coerce them politically is not really a thing I want anybody to be doing, thank you very much. I didn't want Trump to be able to sic the Feds on Hillary and I don't want Biden to do be able to do it either. That's some authoritarian nonsense that absolutely should not be part of our society.
posted by axiom at 12:19 PM on October 4, 2021 [4 favorites]


I didn't want Trump to be able to sic the Feds on Hillary and I don't want Biden to do be able to do it either. That's some authoritarian nonsense that absolutely should not be part of our society.
Exactly: anyone tempted by this with Manchin should ask how they’d have felt with Barr going after anyone who opposed Trump using whatever federal laws they could stretch to cover it.

Plus, the answer is right in front of us: charge all of the white-collar grifters so it’s clear that he’s not being singled out.
posted by adamsc at 12:48 PM on October 4, 2021 [4 favorites]


I understand why we may be concerned about authoritarian nonsense, but on the other hand...do you think authoritarian nonsense would work?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:39 AM on October 5, 2021


Literally not prosecuting painfully obvious crimes for officeholders and their families is fucking exactly how we ended up with Trump and why he still hasn't any kind of comeuppance for his endless stream of fucking crimes while in office.

Sure, but what you seem to be keen on is offering immunity from prosecution for a senator's relative as a reward for that senator's political compliance (and raising the spectre of her prosecution specifically to make that offer), which is the Trumpiest thing I can think of.
posted by Grangousier at 3:53 AM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


Manchin has now announced that unless natural gas is counted as green energy and given massive subsidies he will vote against the bill. He has also explicitly stated that he will also veto any bill requiring carbon capture for natural gas to qualify for subsidy.

The planet is dying, we're going to go extinct, and we're not even permitted baby steps, or half a loaf, or whatever euphamism you like for "getting royally fucked but calling it a win anyway" because Manchin thinks we should all die.

The fact that our nation has even reached the point where one single Senator can condemn our entire species to death is a damning indictment of our entire political system.

Kennedy said it:"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Manchin et al are making peaceful means of stopping climate change impossible.
posted by sotonohito at 8:10 AM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


Ross Barkan: The Problem with Performative Protest
Sinema’s politics are even more infuriating when the political landscape is considered in full. Unlike Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator loathed by progressives, Sinema represents a state that Biden won. Arizona is trending left, becoming as much a battleground as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Manchin is unlikely to survive re-election in 2024, a presidential year, because Donald Trump won nearly 70 percent of the vote there in 2020. It can be argued that Democrats, for now, can’t do better than Manchin in West Virginia—but they certainly can do better than Sinema in Arizona. As Matt Yglesias pointed out, there was nothing remarkable about her electoral performance in 2018, considering that Mark Kelly, in a tougher 2020 environment, replicated it against literally the same opponent. We may have to suffer Manchin, but we needn’t think only Sinema-style ladder-climbers can win in Arizona and states like them. Jon Tester of Montana, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and Kelly himself are not holding hostage Biden’s reconciliation bill for vague and ultimately nonsensical reasons. They are loyal, center-left Democrats.
...
Moderates bemoan that leftists are always threatening primary challenges against Democrats, but the Left strategy is correct on this account. Primaries are good. Tea Party candidates dragged the Republican Party to the right in the 2010s by repeatedly threatening and undertaking primary challenges against moderates. Trump himself remade the Republican Party as an insurgent with no ties to party institutions. This is a democracy and elections do determine outcomes. The Justice Democrats and DSA strategy of running progressive and socialist Democrats against weaker Democratic incumbents in safe-blue seats is great.
...
A credible candidate already exists in Ruben Gallego, a congressman and combat veteran who has been very outspoken about Democratic efforts to mobilize the Latino vote. Gallego is more progressive than Sinema while being attentive enough to the ways educated elites in his own party may alienate average voters—he tweeted after the 2020 election that Democrats should stop using the term “Latinx”—and he probably has a good chance to defeat her, especially if the same online donations that powered Sinema in 2018 instead flow toward him. Politicians who fear primary challenges start to behave differently. If Gallego is serious about running in 2024, Sinema will be motivated to do more for progressives and Biden Democrats in general to give him less ammunition.
The rest of the article is about the recent bathroom incident, which is interesting but somewhat less related to the OP. "If the tactic overshadows the message, the tactic is a failure." is a good takeaway though.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:15 AM on October 5, 2021


Manchin wasn't ever going to vote for anything anyway. But is nice to see a supposed 'reason'
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:22 AM on October 5, 2021


one single Senator

What's the upside of blaming this on one Senator and deleting the other 51 Senators opposing the bill?
posted by Wood at 12:56 PM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


if they don't get that debt limit passed people will be blaming 1 government

bill clinton says he would declare the debt limit unconstitutional and defy the supreme court to overrule him - it's not even clear if anyone would have standing to sue

biden should do this but he won't

the resulting depression will make side a playing fair and side b cheating irrelevant because sides c,d,e,f etc won't be playing at all
posted by pyramid termite at 1:34 PM on October 5, 2021 [2 favorites]


Biden should order the treasury to strike a trillion AR coin and tell the Repuicans to STFU with this debt ceiling BS.
posted by sotonohito at 2:18 PM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]


In his ongoing quest to do as much damage to Biden and more broadly the entire Democratic Party, Sen Manchin has now hinted that he won't support any carve out in the filibuster for the debt ceiling.

The Republicans appear to be hellbent on forcing America to default on its debts, an action which is both guaranteed to be economically catastrophic and is completely a matter of choice.

And Manchin appears to be willing to ride his refusal to do anything without permission from 10 Republicans to America's grave.

We really do appear to be approaching a time when Biden will have to either allow the Republicans to force America to default, or to take some questionable Executive Branch action (trillion dollar coin or something else) to prevent default.

It's funny, I don't recall voting for either Joe Manchin or Mitch McConnell to be the ruler of America, yet somehow they're the ones calling the shots.
posted by sotonohito at 2:11 PM on October 6, 2021 [3 favorites]


We really do appear to be approaching a time when Biden will have to either allow the Republicans to force America to default, or to take some questionable Executive Branch action (trillion dollar coin or something else) to prevent default.

Or hey, maybe it should be illegal to let the country to default as a violation of fiduciary duty. Or as anarchy.
posted by rhizome at 2:14 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


Manchin needs to have his face slapped by the future until he gets out of the way.
posted by flabdablet at 1:40 AM on October 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


There are about 30,000 people, total, working in the coal industry in West Virginia.That figure isn't just miners but the **ENTIRE** coal industry workforce including miners yes but also everyone else from secretaries and accountants to CEO's.

30,000.

More people work at McDOnalds in West Virginia than work in the coal industry.

The seeming love of coal is just machismo and nostalgia. It's not an actual embrace of coal qua coal, but an embrace of the mythology of coal, the idea of a real man doing a real man's work.

Its the same thing that inspires all those Republicans to drive giant trucks and go to Cowboy Churches and talk about football and hunting even if they've never played football or gone hunting. Performative masculinity.

As such it's impervious to facts and reason. Clean energy is growing in Apalachia? Doesn't matter in the slightest, there is no myth laden image of a bold manly man working on a windmill. Instead that conjures up images of latte sipping effete liberals driving a Prius and eating avocado toast. Wind energy is to be despised as unmanly, the idea that it could grow is seen as a threat to morality not a benefit to the economy.
posted by sotonohito at 6:56 AM on October 7, 2021 [6 favorites]


More people work at McDonalds in West Virginia than work in the coal industry.

There's a huge amount of nostalgia over the smoky past of the Rust Belt among many people here in Appalachia. "It wasn't like this when the mills were still open" is something I've heard many times over the years. One of my photography teachers grew in WV and spend a lot of time there documenting it and has a photo of a young man with a giant tattoo of a smoke belching factory on his chest. The man isn't even old enough to have lived when the plants were open but it's a hard cultural mindset to shake.
posted by octothorpe at 8:41 AM on October 7, 2021 [5 favorites]


when there's a temperature inversion in battle creek one can smell the sickly sweet/sour smell of cereal all over town

it's kind of icky
posted by pyramid termite at 5:12 PM on October 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


There's more than one way to discourage masturbation.
posted by flabdablet at 8:01 PM on October 7, 2021


Can's been kicked: The Senate voted 50-48 Thursday evening to extend the nation's debt limit through early December after Democrats and Republicans reached a deal to avert economic disaster following weeks of partisan deadlock over the issue. (CNN)
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:14 PM on October 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


The seeming love of coal is just machismo and nostalgia. It's not an actual embrace of coal qua coal, but an embrace of the mythology of coal, the idea of a real man doing a real man's work

I know an industry where a handful billionaires have hundreds of thousands if not millions of people identifying with them.
posted by rhizome at 2:38 AM on October 8, 2021 [1 favorite]


This particular can has been kicked quite a number of times. It might be nice to see a list of all the times Republicans have pushed right up to the limit resulting in an “emergency” situation. Do any of you know of such a list?
posted by nat at 3:24 PM on October 9, 2021


Well, it's as simple as can be; if McConnell can gain political advantage from anything, he will.

In this case, McConnell is now insisting that Schumer's "This would have been so much easier if the Republicans hadn't obstructed us" post-extension speech was a horrible violation of decorum, and that now the Republican Senators will provide zero support for such an effort in December.

The intent of this, of course, is to force Dems to burn one of their reconciliation bills for the term on what should be a noncontroversial, bipartisan effort to get the country to pay for spending that a Republican Congress already authorized themselves. Schumer correctly pointed out that Republicans can either join Democrats in raising the limit, or simply get out of the way and allow the Democrats to do it themselves on a party-line vote... to which McConnell replied in so many words that it is Schumer's fault that McConnell refuses to allow Schumer to even vote on whether to raise the limit, and will continue to block votes.

I do despair of our new bipartisan era.
posted by delfin at 3:53 PM on October 9, 2021 [1 favorite]


it is Schumer's fault that McConnell refuses to allow Schumer to even vote on whether to raise the limit

"Now look what you made me do" is the favourite excuse of both the domestic abuser and the Republican.

What's clearly called for here is more empathy from the victims. That's the ticket.
posted by flabdablet at 11:24 PM on October 9, 2021 [2 favorites]


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