Reporter: "What do you say to people who think you and Senator Sinema are holding this whole thing up?"
Senator Manchin: "I'm not--we only have 50 votes. . .. All they need to do is we have to elect more--I guess for them to get theirs--elect more liberals."
I've never been a liberal in any way, shape or form. There's no one that's ever thought I was. I've been governor, I've been secretary of state, I've been in the state legislature, I've been a U.S. senator, and, I hope, voted pretty consistently all my whole life.
I don't fault any of them who believe that they're much more progressive and much more liberal, God bless them. And all they need to do is, we have to elect more liberals.
Manchin frustrates Democrats because he is telling them the simple, unwelcome truth. It is a 50-50 senate, and he got elected in West Virginia by being exactly who he is. Manchin is not the opponent of Democrats. He is the bellwether. He tells Democrats the balance point of American politics.
Democrats who wish that Biden could be another FDR should be careful what they wish for. The New Deal was possible because the Solid South Democrats openly favored racist policies that maintained segregation and White supremacy. FDR tolerated it as the price of keeping their support. The Solid South supported White working people. Democrats sometimes forget that.
Democrats also forget that the popular New Deal suite of programs created earned benefits and work programs, not free food. The WPA and CCC put unemployed people to work. Social Security was a benefit, based on quarters of taxed earned income. The GI Bill was a reward for wartime service. FDR understood that even in the Depression, with a quarter of the workforce out of work, people were skeptical of spending tax money to support idleness. Manchin understands it too:
My top line has not been — my top line has been $1.5 [trillion] because I believe in my heart that what we can do and what the needs we have right now, and what we can afford to do without basically changing our whole society to an entitlement mentality.
Manchin gave Democrats a challenge, put up or shut up. You think you understand where the votes are in America, then prove it. Try selling entitlements:
Take that on the campaign trail next year, and I'm sure that you'll get many more liberal, progressive Democrats with what they say they want.
Manchin thinks they will fail at that. Republicans will call it socialistic, fiscal conservatives will think it is too expensive, and rank and file voters will suspect that it is giving money away to the undeserving, the lazy, the improvident, and to people of other races and ethnicities. Reagan's "welfare queen" was Black and drove a Cadillac.
Manchin is a reality fix for Democrats. What works in Berkeley and Portland and Brooklyn, and what motivates the progressive activist base of the party, is not broadly popular across heartland America. Who says? The simple fact that Democrats don't have a working majority now and history suggests Democrats will lose votes in the 2022 election. Progressive Democrats see this as a reason to move boldly now, while they still can. Manchin sees it as the reason they must not. They are already out of touch with America, and this bill makes things worse.
Manchin, frustrating as he is, represents the center of gravity in American politics. If that weren't true, Democrats wouldn't need his vote.
11 comments:
Progressives are a small minority: 8% in one poll. If the Democrats allow their progressive minority to dominate their policies, 2024 will be an electoral disaster for them. 1994, anyone?
All this points out is that Republicans, many of whose states would benefit from the bills, have chosen not participate in any negotiation that might give Democrats a smidgen of advantage.
This is their 2022 strategy and it's pathetic.
If Republicans weren't under the knee of you-know-who we wouldn't need Manchin or any other so called moderate, there would be reasonable members who would be in support of the legislation. How is a bridge or clean water partisan? How are policies that are central in every other Western Democracy "radical"?
Speaking of GOP Joe, Mitch M. is dancing a jig of joy, and sending Manchin gift baskets. There was a great and telling joke on SNL last night:
Manchin: "I'm from West Virginia. If I voted for an electric car they'd kill me."
Meanwhile, health care continues to hobble millions of Americans while Congress fiddles. UHC should be front and center and it's nowhere to be found.
Now that's infrastructure...
Big changes are often met with massive counter opposition. The reframe is “I liked it the way it was.” For people with an established position we find they are not easily swayed. Time will tell but in a country with 320 million people, moving to quickly often backfires. I’m reminded of RBG comment on abortion. I paraphrase. I wish we’d let the States adopt legislation that spread to a majority of the country before we issues our ruling from the bench. Look at gay marriage, started small in a few states and spread quickly as people could see the effects were minimal and, in many cases, most welcome. Shifting the focus to the smaller bill may be exactly what is needed to galvanize voter turnout in 2022. The two bills are still 2.5 trillion. If we want more - demonstrate the need. Biden’s legacy is secured if that happens.
I appreciate someone who stands for their convictions, especially if he stands alone. Reminds me of August Landmesser, a man who in a dense crowd of Nazis in 1936 refused to give the stiff armed salute to Hitler.
I recently happened upon the remains of a CCC camp, right on the banks of Union Creek; you know, right by Beckey's café on the road to Crater Lake. Just north (?) of the highway. (62?)
Fascinating shelter filled with interesting facts, history, photos, memories of those days.
The best preserved building is the cookhouse, with four stoves/ovens all backed up against a stone chimney. Apparently, it took four cooks and staff to feed the hoards of CCC fellers, who got two hot meals per day.
According to the data, most these guys learned jobs as blue collar workers. Some even learned to read and write first. Most of them sent their wages home to loved ones :) For one thing, there were apparently few places to spend their money!
Why not more CCC camps? Why are we paying all these unemployed people to drink beer and watch tv? I say, “mandate either get a job, or sign up with the CCC.
LOVELY AREA in which to live/work, incidentally. Well worth the 200 foot detour when your already on your way to Crater Lake, Diamond Lake, Sunriver, Bend, etc.
Ruy Teixeira is a Democrat who used to believe that demography was destiny, and that the continuing influx of Hispanics was going to eventually tilt US electoral politics irreversibly towards the Democrats.
It has, however, not turned out that way. Hispanics are assimilating rapidly. More and more of them view themselves either as White, or, in the latest census as "some other race." More and more of them are voting for Republicans. They are tracking down the same path that the Irish and Italians did before them. The politics of anti-White racial resentment do not appeal to them.
Here are two posts from Teixeira that I think are very smart and relevant:
The Cultural Left Puts a Ceiling on Democratic Support
What Country Does the Left Think It's Living In?
I don't see how anyone who believes in free and fair elections can identify with a Republican Party that's totally complicit in Trump's attempted coup.
Mike—
More precise version of you: “I don’t see how anyone can identify with a Republican Party if they are fed from a spoon from the callow Democratic polemicists at CNN, MSNBC, the NYT or WaPo”.
The “coup” story took off with the abject lie that was the murder of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick via a fire extinguisher—he died of natural causes—and has steadily diminished ever since.
A group of Trump louts committed trespass and criminal mischief in a shocking and reprehensible location….and to date that’s the full extent of the connected criminal convictions. It’s a soufflé.
What’s most amusing about the conceit that Republicans have gone crazy Right is that in 2021 the elder statesman and lead negotiator for the Democrats is ersatz communist loon Bernie Sanders.
Unless something odd occurs in the next several months, Democrats will soon lose 40 seats in the House and likely Senate control as well. Most Americans are not ingrates nor moralizing pharisees.
Entitlements , bah humbug. Clever lobbyists are driving this conversation. Let’s talk entitlements of tax loopholes, military spending, and the medicare giveaway to pharma prices, the tax free religious schools and televangelists. Giveaways without paying into the system. Joe M and Kirsten S are grabbing all the corporate money they can get and understand quid pro quo. What is so progressive about the Biden bill? Even the Germans with their emphasis on work for benefits offer free college and work force training. Spit on the free lunch kids, spit on the SNAP recipients, spit on the Oregon Healthcare clients, spit on the prisoners. Praise the hedge fund crooks , praise the Amazon rocketeers, bow down to the mighty silicon gods, vomit up and eat again the fast food of plenty as the forests burn and the rivers run dry belching up oil slicks
and floundering fish.
I expect to write on Tuesday about Low Dudgeon's comment about January 6. I disagree with him/her. I consider it one more step in an effort to overthrow the election, done with purpose by Trump and a few loyalists. It did not work, but it was an attempted coup d'etat. I am dismayed that federal prosecutors are apparently not looking at the overt, publicized purpose of the riot. It was to stop a very consequential act by Congress, completing the installaton of a new president, by intimidating members of Congress and the Vice President. Their goal was not ambiguous. It was an attempt. Trump said people who damaged federal buildings like the federal courthouse should be imprisoned for ten years. I am ok with that. People should not set fire to courthouses. They should also not break windows and climb into the Capitol. If a few hundred of them spent ten miserable years in prison, I would be ok with that. It would send a body language message. Same with the jerks who set fires at public buildings in Portland.
Manchin is a tool of the coal and oil lobby.
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