Absolutely. Honestly Democrats probably shouldn’t have the Senate at all.
Not even Obama really knows what to do today - his recent interview with Ezra Klein seems to believe nibbling on the edges. He’s also clear that Democrats are bad at the kind of theatrics around politics and policies that work for Republicans - because (imo) Democrats think the best of the electorate when they really shouldn’t and Republicans think worse of the electorate and are rewarded for their condescension. Obama reflected that the technocratic solutions in his administration which worked would be falsely attributed or even not understood even by fellow Democrats. Democrats need more flags, more Presidential standing on the bow telling people what’s what, ect. There’s certainly a strain of progressivism that loved the kind of anti-leadership of guys like Ralph Nader and loves today the kind of leaderless social capital group dynamic that… tbh, isn’t a winning formula. There are a lot of people that want to be led and feel like they’re part of something bigger.
The one thing that Obama does warn (indirectly) is that there needs to be accomplishments and they also need to be recognizably attributed to the Democratic leadership. The delay in the effect of ACA for ex., meant ordinary people can’t tell if it was the current or subsequent administration under whose governance their life improved. So it is a warning that if Manchin’s bipartisanship means doing nothing - the default preferred outcome of the American conservative - that’s going to do nothing but hurt Democrats.
I think people like Obama have the long arc of history in mind. In the long arc of American history, justice wins. It may not however win in our lifetimes. That’s… not exactly the answer we’re looking for.
I pretty much agree with all this , but I think we’re going to be mostly happy on election night 2022, with a kept House (by 1-5, but still), and at least 51 Senators.
Get that optimism outta here!
Seriously, I would like twenty doses of whatever gives you that sort of optimism so far ahead of the midterms.
RichVR
2885
So… not buckle up again? I think the next buckle up will actually kill me.
For me, the alternative is death, so I’d rather be optimistic.
I do prepare for the alternative.
Me too. Though that may be the COVID pounds I’ve put on. I need a different belt notch than I used to. :(
I thought the alternative was Canada!
I listened to an interview of Manchin by Chris Wallace.
Key takeaway, he is a big fan of Joe Biden, the right person for the job, especially to bring America back together.
- He believes the Senate is working in it is most bipartisan fashion since he’s been in the Senate 10 years.
- Lots of pressure by both sides to prevent working across the aisle, he and the group of 20 (10 Dems and 10 Republicans) are trying to resist this
- He is confident a bi-partisan infrastructure bill will happen, it is just going to take time.
- Did not rule out supporting infrastructure bill through reconciliation
- Will not support HR1, too partisan. Wants to see 1965 voting rights bill reauthorized but expanded to all 50 states. (Personally, I think that’s good idea. I haven’t read HR1 so I don’t really know what’s in it.)
- Appears to like Senator Schumer a lot more than McConnell, possibly a reason he isn’t going to switch parties.
Well that’s the dumbest shit I’ve read in weeks.
E: Manchin’s weathervane bullshit, not Strollens recap of it. I’m sure there are more contemptible shitheads in the Congress, but most of them wear it on their sleeves at least.
Sharpe
2891
I mean, an infrastructure bill with 1 or more GOP votes is likely, so technically there will be a “bi-partisan” infrastructure bill but it’s likely to be in the range of $250-300 billion new money, which is about 10-15% of what Biden originally proposed. I mean, I guess that’s compromise, giving up 85-90% of what you want to get a few votes from the other party. The GOP of course, will add in the $700 billion or so already projected for infrastructure over the next 10 years (prior bills plus parts of the yearly DoT, DoE, etc., budgets) and claim they are passing a one trillion dollar infrastructure bill but that’s not what this whole discussion has been about. I mean, I will consider 10% better than 0% but I won’t pretend it’s a good outcome.
Second, extending pre-clearance to all 50 states will not pass Constitutional muster under the Shelby County case. Manchin seems to have interpreted Shelby County as saying the feds cannot target the designated states b/c that’s discriminatory, but what Shelby County really said was that the feds cannot target the designated states b/c the feds didn’t have good current evidence of state level voter discrimination on the basis of race. If the Supreme Court felt the evidence was insufficient for the designated states, all of whom had serious histories of overt legalized state-level voter discrimination, there’s no way in hell the Supreme Court is going to find evidence sufficient to target all 50 states. (The issue in Shelby County was that the Supreme Court held that for the feds to intrude that deeply into a state, they needed to invoke the 15th Amendment, which requires that the state actually be discriminating against voters, denying or abridging the right to vote on the basis of race. Specifically, Shelby County says the federal Congress does not have the power to override state election laws unless it invokes specific parts of the Constitution, based on sufficient evidence. The Supreme Court in Shelby County held that the factual evidence the feds were relying on was not sufficient. That’s going to be what happens to any effort to extend pre-clearance to all 50 states.) This idea is a bad idea based on a misunderstanding of Shelby County. (Another way to conceptualize Manchin’s understanding is to imagine a scenario where a court says “you can’t search these individuals b/c you don’t have probable cause” and then the government says “OK then we’ll just search EVERYBODY!! Woooo!!”. Manchin is a tool for misunderstanding this case the way he apparently does.
Is there such a thing as social media equivalent of butt-dialing with speech recognition?
Yeah, and I wonder why the Feds couldn’t find current evidence of voter suppression/discrimination in the “usual suspect” states at the time of the Shelby case. BECAUSE OF THE VERY PRE-CLEARANCE REQUIREMENTS OF (or pursuant to) THE VRA OF 1965 THAT YOU DECLARED UNCONSTITUTIONAL, JUSTICE ROBERTS ET AL.!
There are not enough facepalm GIFs. Or ones of Sam Kinison yelling.
First mini-bellwether tonight: Virginia Democratic Primary is today. Virginia’s state-wide elections are in November.
For all the amazing things about Virginia that I love about living here, one of the things I actively despise is the commonwealth’s stupid one-and-done term limitation on governors. Thankfully, it’s consecutive terms, so not necessarily “done”, if you want to run again. And since the state’s Lt. Governor has a whole lot of credible sexual assault/harassment accusations hanging over him, good ol’ Terry McAuliffe (governor from 2013-2017) is running again. And very, very likely to be the Democratic nominee again.
If McAuliffe should somehow lose tonight, hoo-boy that’ll be a scramble to try to figure out what that means.
I braved the cicadas at 6 in the morning to add my vote for McAuliffe. I wonder if not having a GOP primary this year is gonna sway the numbers either way.
A wise man once said that it takes a lot of courage to stand up to your enemies but that it takes even more courage up to stand up to your friends,” Ted Ellis, the director of coalitions for Americans for Prosperity’s government affairs team, told the audience. “And that’s what Joe Manchin is doing right now. He’s displaying, I think, a lot of courage and we should applaud that.”
Ah, courage. Yes, that’s what courage looks like.
From 2017 - apparently he gives a shit now if he’s buckling to Americans for Prosperity.
“I don’t give a shit, you understand? I just don’t give a shit,” Manchin told the Charleston Gazette-Mail on Sunday. “Don’t care if I get elected, don’t care if I get defeated, how about that."
And before anyone chimes in yet again “without Manchin Dems don’t control the Senate,” everyone knows that. That doesn’t obviate him from criticism (which of course is entirely irrelevant but whatever.)
If Manchin truly didn’t care about re-election he’d be supporting Schumer and Biden a lot more. He has at least one scruple because he didn’t flip parties to save his hide.
I think his calculus is he needs to stay around so the dems have a shot at 50.
We’d be better off supporting Senate candidates in WI/PA/NC/FL and Kelly (who Manchin is probably giving cover to)
Timex
2898
I feel like folks are ignoring what I think is actually a real possibility:
Joe Manchin legitimately thinks that the filibuster is good, in that it’s bad to have the majority pass laws with zero buyin from the minority.
And I think there’s actually a case to be made for that.
The ACA provides an example of a law that was passed with zero GOP buyin, and then the GOP just dedicated themselves to destroying it. They had absolutely nothing invested in its success. It wasn’t good.
At the same time, I don’t know what the answer is if the GOP is dead set on doing nothing. If their goal is to prevent progress and effective legislation, then you CAN’T get their support. At that point, the minority actually has more power than the majority, and requiring bipartisan support effectively amounts to ceding the field to the minority.
KevinC
2899
Or maybe he would be more of a fit in a conservative party but can’t win a primary in the Republican party, so remains a Democrat despite not agreeing with the party on a lot of issues.
He drives me nuts but WV is even redder than Utah. If someone offered me Romney caucusing with the Democrats even if none of his politics changed, I’d take it. There’s 0 chance of an actual Democrat winning a senate seat here, just like there isn’t in WV.
That’s how I view Manchin. A Republican who for political reasons caucuses with the Democrats. I don’t expect anything more than that.
