Beware the Ides of March -- U.S. Politics March 2021

if i were the president of the united states and knew that joe manchin was who he is, you know what I'd do? make my proposal higher than I'd know Manchin would agree to, so that he would negotiate it back down to where I thought I could make the deal in the first place.

seriously - if you have centrist assholes like manchin and sinema, and you know you have zero GOP votes, than you're effectively just negotiating with the centrists. if it was widely foreseeable that manchin and sinema would probably choose to flex their newfound Centrist asshole political power - and it was - then you shouldn't be surprised to see that the final bill moved a bit toward them. how else were they going to get 50 votes?

Manchin started trying to tank it yesterday and held the whole affair up for almost an entire day because he's a messy bitch who lives for drama. It's very difficult to chalk that up to a planned negotiating position on Biden's part, I would think. He certainly seemed surprised by Manchin's last minute actions.

I don't know why any of this is supposed to make it impossible to compare the bill as proposed and as it existed even early this week (remember how deeper means testing was off the table and all the leftists were dummies for getting preemptively mad about it?) and the final outcome. All I said was it could have been better.

It's one thing if Joe Biden bargained with an opposition party to pass a bill that was less than hoped for but better than nothing - but that isn't the situation. The Democrats made their own bill worse all on their own. That simple fact is inherently disappointing.

Well, again, not to bring up the Way Things Have Always Been, but I don't know why you think intra-party negotiations are easier than inter-party negotiations. They never, ever have been.

I just don't know, in an era without pork, what executive tools Biden could've used to bend a Manchin or Sinema. They're assholes from red(dish) states.

Wedgies?

have you seen Manchin's ass

I suppose I can guess.

Wedgies?

― Canon in Deez (silby), Saturday, 6 March 2021 22:36 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well its setting the sights higher than bootstraps tbf

xxxxp Even if that was true (it's really not - you're not going to see a government shutdown with a unified Democratic government for instance), so what? The initial offer was better - in pretty much every way - than the final result, all without a single Republican being able to obstruct. It wasn't all a some play acted negotiation, as Manchin started to fuck with them for fun yesterday.

The final product is more disappointing than what it could have been and the way it went down is disappointing for what it tells about the future of progressive legislative priorities.

Imagine what these bills would look like if the Republicans actually tried to negotiate in good faith, extremely compromised!

And that's the pie in the sky scenario

it seems weird to place all the blame on biden for not being a corleone, while ignoring the widely foreseen grandstanding of manchin and the centrists, which was inevitable, and the reality of composition of the senate, which the democrats only control by a thread.

otm

The results, caveats assumed, are much better than what I expected from a Joseph Fucking Biden.

The Democrats made their own bill worse all on their own. That simple fact is inherently disappointing.

the 2020 election results were inherently disappointing. that's what made today.

It can be both better than expected and dramatically worse than we have the right to expect.

and i predict that the rest of 2021-22, legislatively speaking, will be disappointing as well. they call me nostrildamus

Well yeah.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/91/8d/75/918d75f16c1378e807563bc4b37011f0.gif

xp
definitely. i mean, in some alternate universe the mess of the trump era culminating in the pandemic failure leads to a progressive utopia, with some person under the age of 75 years old rising on the (beloved by all, opposed by zero GOP in this universe) Green New Deal and basic income, and the conservative supreme court justices are so awed by the righteousness of it all that they die of heart attacks, all of them, and the court is suddenly 9-0 and guns are banned. goddamn that would be awesome. forgot what i was talking about

it seems weird to place all the blame on biden

Who's placing all the blame on Biden?! I've done nothing but lay the blame on Manchin and other centrists/obstructionists. Biden certainly didn't seem to be asking Manchin to attempt to gut the UI and he didn't ask that the most famous image from his signature $1.9 trillion stimulus be a Democrat putting some zing on her vote to shit on the poor.

I don't think Biden cares deeply about progressive priorities or the $15 minimum wage and isn't showing any strategy to but his actual proposal was good. The failure to assert himself (until the last minute when Manchin started to really fuck things up) is not good and does not bode well for those priorities.

Any strategy to check Manchin*

Assume he is napping a lot

it's naptime for america

'Democrats' being such a roomy denomination is presumably a problem here (and elsewhere).

Also true of 'Republicans', apparently:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/06/donald-trump-republican-national-committee-fundraising-name

xp you're right milo, i shouldn't have phrased that way, i know no one's putting 100% blame on biden. there's plenty of blame and disappointment to go around, it is dismal.

yet it isn't because we have a decent bill

The Democrats roomy denomination is their own choice, though - the party machine wanted Sinema, they helped beat back a progressive challenge to Manchin, they do everything they can to bolster center-right candidates and remain hostile to the left wing of the party. It serves their purposes to be a big tent that just so happens to only knock down progressive priorities. Democrats don't get a pass on that front.

Thread:

1) Despite having only a 50-vote Senate majority, Democrats are about to pass a nearly $2 trillion bill that puts more than $7,600 into the bank account of the typical family of 4, establishes America's first proper child allowance (on a temporary basis for now)...

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) March 6, 2021

it's wild no matter when I check out this thread milo has just posted, relentless...like the t-1000 terminator of saying democrats suck

Remember when we said we wouldn't need monthly threads anymore, it was going to be so quiet

dramatically worse than we have the right to expect

What do you base that "right" on? American history? Take a second look at the last 250+ years.

We deserve everything

otm

I agree with milo’s description of manchin as a messy bitch who lives for drama, but it could be worse. He could be Lieberman or a Democratic ted Cruz or something. He does seem to actually want to accomplish things.

Sinema is far far more worrying to me for everything else on the agenda. Given the kind of politics she was involved in 10 years ago and what she’s doing now, she seems ... unpredictable?

The other thing I find worrying is that both Delaware senators, biden allies, voted against $15.

senators from Citibank

it's wild no matter when I check out this thread milo has just posted, relentless...like the t-1000 terminator of saying democrats suck

we all mourn Morbs in our own ways

https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2021/03/03/biden-minimum-wage-negotiations-republicans-473583

The consent factory is about to start working double shifts about how $15 was impossible and never the real goal.

Can we take the Sabbath off for silent contemplation of God’s glory please, and resume Monday with fresh vigor and determination?

The outrage is not that Manchin, Sinema and the Centrist Democrats watered this bill down. That’s to be expected. They are doing what their voters sent them to the Senate to do- be a Democrat, yes, but be a pain in the ass and gum up the works whenever possible so things don’t go too far progressive. The real outrage is that there was never any question that there might be even a single Republican vote for this bill. The outrage is that every single Republican senator was willing to line up and vote no on a bill that is going to help people during a crisis. Where are the Centrist Republicans, who are willing to buck their party and vote their conscience and vote with the best interests of the people in mind? Oh, there are none? They are all more interested in scoring political points and taking advantage of schisms in the other party, knowing that the Democrats will take the hit for any watering down of this bill? Knowing that it will be Manchin’s name in the news during negotiations and not theirs? Fuck them. We have one whole party in our 2 party system that is complete and utter shit. That’s the outrage here. I’m not happy about this bill getting watered down, and I think Manchin et al can fuck right off, but the real problem is the party that has been completely radicalized and has no interest in helping people unless it’s incidental to them scoring political points, i.e. not the Democrats, but the other fucks that have no qualms about lining up to say “fuck you” to the American people en masse while people are suffering.

agree

We have one whole party in our 2 party system that is complete and utter shit.

afaics, they, too, are doing what their voters sent them to the Senate to do, to use the power of government only to repress anyone who is not in lockstep with whatever the outrage machine decides is "conservatism" this week.

We deserve everything

silby otm

There is no conceivable world where the conservative party has a role in good policymaking/isn’t shit. The reactionaries are inherently and eternally trash. The only way to deal with them is to render them powerless - which is what they are in Congress and the White House right now.

It's hard to argue that's what they were sent there to do when a bill enjoys 70% support

Yeah I might buy that if it weren’t every single one of them. Surely some of the Senate Republicans were sent to Congress to own the libs at all costs. But all of them?

You were referring to Manchin and Sinema with 'be Democrats but gum up the works,' weren't you?

If there were Republicans willing to cross the aisle and vote for the relief bill it would have been worse. Manchin and Sinema would have jumped at the chance to strip more from the bill.

I thought I was agreeing with Moodles that it’s hard to argue that every single Republican was sent to Congress to try to kill a bill that has 70% support. But in any case the 70% support is unclear. Did everyone who was polled actually read the proposed bill and say, yes that’s just exactly how I want it? Or was there more generically 70% support for *a bill*? Because we did end up with a bill passing.

I was referring to Aimless' comment about Republicans. I think to an extent they are going against their own voters wishes. I buy the idea that Manchin was sent to gum up the works though. I have no fucking idea what Sinema's deal is.