5885

Well, other than making the Democrats look like a bunch of dumbasses who can’t agree to pass something that would benefit the entire country.

5886

Sure, but you can look at the entirety of the party for that, every day. It’s not unique to the progressives, and nothing they do or don’t do will remove that connotation from the party.

5887

But how does this actually work? This seems like you are busy ignoring the actual situation, and imagining that things are as you wish them to be.

So, you make noise about how Manchin and Sinema are preventing her from coming… Despite the fact that they already voted for and passed said help. It doesn’t even make sense on it’s face.

And again, those senators in particular don’t actually lose anything, electorally, from refusing to yield to the progressives. If anything, doing that actually helps them out with their constituents, so you aren’t effectively threatening them with anything.

You are basically just screwing yourself over, with the erroneous belief that somehow don’t so is going to screw Sinema and Manchin over now… But it doesn’t.

So instead, you delayed the passage of a law that you actually supported, got nothing, and damaged your own party’s overall position.

And doing that is itself only an effective bargaining tool of you think that Manchin and Sinema care more about the Democratic party’s overall success than you do.

But that’s not the case, right?

5888

Or you think there is some price they can be brought on board for.

Nobody knew with Sinema, who seems like an RNG in Instagrammers clothing, but Manchin seemed like he would have some price at which he could agree. The pressure was to make it a price acceptable to Manchin that didn’t also completely alienate progressives.

But you’ve had this explained before.

image

5889

They… didn’t? Unless you’re talking about BIP, which isn’t really material to the discussion of the negotiations around BBB. We’ve already gone around and around on how Manchinema agreed to put up both bills together and then reneged on it.

It doesn’t need to be a purely strategic, electoral negotiation. If you create the space for negotiations, you can make all kinds of appeals. You can appeal to their sense of electoral strategy and say it will help them get reelected, you can appeal to their sense of guilt and say they’re being obstructionist, or you can appeal to their sense of decency and say that bringing trillions in aid to your own citizens in a country ravaged by a pandemic is the right thing to do. Again, the chances were slim, but that’s the only out you have.

I mean, we know that’s not the case now. Now, we know that Manchin and Sinema are “fuck you, got mine” ghouls who are content to hobnob with the donor class while the rest of the country falls too fascism because they know they’re rich enough to be okay.

But five months ago, when they were putting up the illusion of bargaining in good faith, yeah, an appeal to party strategy and unity seemed like a decent tactic.

5890

Yeah, I assumed you were talking about the BIP…

If you are only talking about making noise about Manchin and Sinema not voting for the BBB, then… You can do that right now? You don’t need to delay the passage of another bill you support to do that.

It kind of does, man.

Personally, I think only one of those 3 tactics has a chance of working, and I don’t think that the actual political calculus works for you.

But even if we were to ignore that, if you are just going to try to appeal to those things… Adding in the component of you threatening to torpedo a law that you yourself want, doesn’t really add anything to your bargaining power.

Again, the tactic of delaying or preventing the passage of the BIP only gives you leverage if doing so actually hurts Manchin more that it hurts you… And I don’t think that’s actually true. That’s why it was never going to work.

5891

Yes, we can do that now! Because they torpedoed BBB. A huge human infrastructure bill that would have been the crowning achievement of this administration. They did the thing you’ve been shitting on progressives for maybe, possibly doing. And you still think the progressives are the bad guys here?

It was never going to work because it turns out that Manchin and Sinema would have never gone for it anyway, unless maybe there was a provision that each of them would get to immolate a poor person*. We know that now but I’m not convinced that we knew it for sure back then. Delaying the bill and trying these tactics created space for Manchin and Sinema to do the right thing. Sure, it was ultimately fruitless, but they had to take the shot.

*I mean, they’re going to sit back while the planet fries, so in a sense they actually are going to set many, many poor people on fire.

5892

It’s attitudes like this which make a lot of leftists think the right flank of the party hates them more than they hate the fascists.

5893

It’s a different bill though. It’s weird that you don’t get this part of it.

The BIP? You supported that. So passing it was smart for you.

The BBB? Apparently Manchin doesn’t support that. He doesn’t think his constituents want it.

See… That’s the really big difference. Progressives holding hostage a bill that they themselves wanted to pass, was dumb.

But this doesn’t make any sense, tactically.

Delaying the BIP didn’t create any space. It didn’t do anything useful at all. It just made progressives look bad, because they were delaying a bill that they all admitted was good and should pass.

If at that point in time you thought that Manchin could be convinced to support the BBB, then there was no real reason to threaten him with delay or prevention of the passage of the BIP. That tactic just didn’t make sense, because again, it only makes sense as a negotiation tactic of you think it hurts him more than you, and you are willing follow through on the threat. And I don’t think either of those things were true… Certainly the former wasn’t.

The reality is, I think you probably WILL actually get Manchin and Sinema to support something… But delaying the BIP won’t have actually contributed to that.

5894

He was on board with passing it before the Senate passed the BIP. If he was someone who could be negotiated with, you would expect that you could reach agreement with him so that both bills could go through the process together, like he said he wanted to do.

I mean, I get that you think it was a bad move, but the progressives are the ones making an effort to enact Biden’s agenda. Manchin and Sinema aren’t working for the administration, their party, or even seemingly their constituents.

I’m convinced that Manchin and Sinema will never vote for a piece of meaningful legislation backed by the Biden administration ever again. Unless it comes with massive tax cuts for the wealthy or huge fossil fuel subsidies.

5895

They’re supporting part of what Biden wants to do. They don’t agree with all of it. That’s the reality you need to deal with.

Then you were dumb to have delayed other legislation you wanted, for no reason.

And if you thought previously that they were going to support it, how did delaying your own legislation help that?

The theory at the time was that it was some kind of great threat being used as leverage… But the threat never made sense.

5896

I mean, you’re doubting the political instincts of people who turned out to be right.

The progressives said that if they gave up their leverage over BIP, the moderates would kill BBB. And … that’s exactly what happened. That leverage was the only possible way we were ever going to get BBB. You believe it never was going to work, that’s fine. But it was literally the only play, and the progressives were the ones doing it.

But hey, bonus, now we’ll never get to be anything even remotely resembling a developed nation with reasonable human infrastructure. You and the other moderates won! You get to point and laugh at progressives who wanted to bring the US into the 21st century with silly things like childcare and healthcare. Thank god Manchin and Sinema protected our precious deficit and those billionaires from paying slightly more out of the money they’ll never be able to spend in a lifetime. Cheers to you, dude!

5897

That seems unfair. I thought this was a disagreement over strategy, not desired outcome.

5898

But they didn’t turn out to be right. You are making a logical error here.

So how exactly was that going to work? Why did it fail?

How, exactly, does it play out in a way that doesn’t fail? I don’t think there’s any way it plays out where that tactic doesn’t fail.

You are under the mistaken impression that you actually held leverage at some point, but you didn’t. Your only bargaining chip was that you… Might fuck yourself over?That wasn’t a strong position.

Essentially, the position the progressives were negotiating from was contingent upon the assumption that they themselves were the less responsible, bad guys. Their plan only worked if Manchin and Sinema we’re willing to be the adults in the room, and cared more about passing the infrastructure bill than the progressives did. It was simply a bad play, not only because it was logically doomed to failure, but it also played very poorly in the public eye.

Maybe? I think that there are lots of things that you can get, without getting everything you wanted in the current version of the BBB. That’s how legislation works in the real world. You don’t get everything you want. You don’t even get a guaranteed preventable of what you want.

You get what you can form a consensus around.

See, here’s your problem.

I’m not hoping that you lose.

I’m explaining to you WHY you are losing, so that you can stop making the same mistakes. Imagining that you have power when you don’t, is never going to turn out well. You need to set appropriate expectations, and get what you can.

5899

But the last time the court trashed the VRA they said it was because congress hadn’t refreshed the legislation, so to reject that legislation would be a transparent act of judicial partisanship that no supreme court could contemp… AHAHAHAHAHAHA I CANT KEEP A STRAIGHT FACE ANY MORE.

But joking about the SC aside I can’t see how they get any kind of voting rights act past a filibuster.

My argument was always that if they didn’t pass infrastructure things would be exactly the same except you wouldn’t have the infrastructure bill either. The disagreement was never over Manchin being unreliable, it was over the idea that the infrastructure bill constituted any kind of leverage. I don’t think there’s much point in discussing this further.

With which 60 senators are you going to pass that legislation? Or are you suggesting blowing up the filibuster mid session? (Which is super sketchy, and for once Manchin would be justified in not going for it).

The Squad went gunning for mainstream democrats hard from the beginning, and never fucking stopped. That’s their goal - to take over the party. The idea the mainstream shouldn’t fight back “because fascism” is farcial, and it’s just an attempt to smear anyone who gets in your way.

5900

Except the progressives did agree to pass something that benefited the country. It was the so-called moderates — Manchinema — who look like dumbasses.

5901

That’s not clear to me at all. I think some people wanted the infrastructure spending in the infrastructure bill, but not the social spending in the reconciliation bill — or at least they didn’t care much about that — and that’s the primary reason they were angry at the progressives for trying to get both.

5902

The response here is why pushing bills that are probably going to fail can be a bad idea.

The BBB was never going to pass once Manchin dropped anchor and demanded attention.

Basically from now on its Executive Orders until 2024.

5903

It may be helpful to remember that no one in this thread has had the power to actually affect anything at all with respect to these negotiations. And compounding a devastating legislative loss by pointing at people and going “neener neener neener” probably isn’t going to lead to constructive discussion.

5904

This, plus the very language (“I’m explaining why YOU are losing”) makes it clear it isn’t an unbiased assessment. We’re all losing if the BBB doesn’t pass, aren’t we?

I dunno, I feel like the whole reason for getting elected is to try to enact good legislation. And of course you’re going to fail sometimes.