5905

But that’s not what’s happening here.

Again, it’s not laughing at the progressive loss, but rather pointing out how the expectations that were set made no sense, and how those mistaken expectations led to essentially only inflicting self harm with no real gain.

There was this idea that somehow they were going to force Manchin and Sinema to do something, but they really had no leverage. There was this IDEA that they had leverage, but this belief was based upon mistaken/nonsensical ideas.

Their only “levergage”, meaning the only action they could take to affect things directly, was the ability to prevent legislation from passing… but it wasn’t stuff that ONLY Manchin and Sinema wanted. Indeed, it was stuff that you could argue progressives wanted even more. So their “leverage” was an illusion. Their only option was to essentially harm themselves, and doing so really didn’t force any progress. And yet the progressive base actually wanted them to do this, because they imagined, without reason, that doing so would miraculously result in a victory for them.

But there was no logical path to that victory. It was a fiction. So next time, progressives should not embrace poor plans, without having some concrete idea for how it will get to the end they want, not just underpants gnome style plans.

5906

  1. I’m extremely skeptical that progressives have “harmed” themselves here. Certainly they’re heroes to progressive voters.

  2. As someone who has vehemently argued for a multi-trillion dollar investment in nuclear energy, I’d think you’d be sympathetic to people’s investment in a probably futile, but worth cause.

5907

I think what’s been happening in the last few posts are logic vs emotion. I don’t think @timex or anyone else wants Progressives or BBB to fail. But he is pointing out that the methods employed didn’t work and my point above was that it made the Party look like a bunch of buffoons as a whole. It doesn’t mean I disagree with the content of BBB.

5908

The idea that it made them look like a bunch of buffoons, though, seems like a strictly personal point of view with very little behind it. I don’t really think many people on the left, or even many Democrats, think that progressive Democrats are wrong to try to pass what are actually the very broadly popular social measures they wanted in the BBB bill.

I don’t know why trying and failing is bad, or makes them look bad, or is to be mocked. And beyond that, it isn’t entirely clear that they have failed. I don’t think Manchinema will come on board with anything substantial after the new year, but they might.

5909

I apologize, my point was unclear. I don’t think attempting to pass BBB made them look like a bunch of buffoons, I meant that holding back votes on the BIP did. We had bipartisan legislation ready to go and it would have been an early win. By the time it got through, no one really even noticed.

5910

But there are actually lots of coherent plans by which you could implement a national nuclear power strategy. We’ve actually done that before.

In contrast, there was no actual way that the tactics being used by progressives would have worked. They weren’t even trying to figure out a way for it to work. Their actions didn’t have any coherent linkage to the actions they were trying to influence.

It was basically:

  1. Refuse to pass infrastructure plan
  2. ???
  3. BBB plan passes

That was the problem… there was some idea that by delaying things, the mere act of delay would somehow make what they wanted happen. But no one was ever able to articulate HOW or WHY that would happen.

Again, we can imagine actual linkages that could exist, but didn’t in this case. In a situation where your opponent in the negotiation is going to lose more than you if you refuse to take a given action? Then that means your action has leverage. But that wasn’t the case here. Delaying the BIP didn’t hurt Manchin or Sinema more. Making it a fight between the progressives and Manchin/Sinema was beneficial to Manchin/Sinema, because their constituents don’t actually like the progressives.

When you think it through, you can consider different ways it could have played out… If the progressives had just refused to ever pass the BIP? Ok, so they basically just fucked themselves, arguably MORE than they fucked Manchin/Sinema, but at least equally. So that’s pretty much a bad plan. And then what’s the other option? Delay for some period of time… but there’s nothing in that delay that forces a different outcome. And the delay itself is purely bad.

It wasn’t simply that the methods didn’t work… it’s that there’s no logical mechanism by which they COULD have worked. It was just underpants gnomes. There was some idea the threat of killing the BIP was helping the progressives, but I don’t see how.

If you eliminate the idea that the Progressives would actually just sabotage everything (because doing so would just harm them), then you’re left in a situation where they the delay isn’t actually benefitting them… doing so isn’t giving them any additional negotiation leverage. Any kind of negotation with Manchin/Sinema they could engage in, they could do so without that empty threat.

They could have just passed the BIP, and then pushed for the BBB exactly as they would do otherwise, and as they’re going to do now.

5911

Yes, I understand. I’m saying that’s your opinion, and there isn’t any reason to believe that a whole lot of people share that opinion. Unless you’ve seen some polling that makes you think large numbers of people deplore the tactics progressives used to try to create support for the bill? Or some polling that suggests that people have the wrong attitude about, the wrong level of appreciation for, the bipartisan bill because of the way it was used for leverage, rather than simply because people never really credit good legislation for very long after it is passed?

He’s a conservative. He thinks that progressives are naive, stupid buffoons, so it isn’t surprising that he looks at how it played out and decides that, sure enough, they are naive, stupid buffoons.

5912

No, I’ll concede that’s my opinion and I haven’t really seen polling regarding it. I suppose I’m just going off the sheer amount of Press the whole standoff attracted. It’s just bad optics. Imagine if we’d just passed BIP without any real drama, and then set to work on BBB. Don’t you think the Democratic Party would look like they could get shit done? Next step, getting more shit done with BBB! Yay! Isn’t it possible that Biden’s ratings would be higher if he’d had that early win?

5913

The vast majority of people were paying no attention whatsoever to how the sausage was made. And in the end, the sausage was made! Shit got done, by the Democratic Party! They were Dems arrayed, but somehow we’re supposed to think the story was normal Dem disarray?

5914

Doubtful. It’s continued to fall after it was passed. The negative mainstream stories are the norm, the topic just turned from “why can’t they pass this bill” to “oh man, the inflation is terrible, how will people get by”. That would have just happened earlier.

5915

In fact, as gas prices have begun to fall, Biden’s approval rating has been improving. Imagine how much more it might have improved had the progressives secured the free moneys for all the peoples in the BBB bill?

5916

The democrats lost a close race in Virginia, and at the time polling was showing that Democrats were suffering from an image of not being able to get things done.

The real issue though, is that even if you want to ignore the negative consequences of wasting time in an environment where you need to pass bills to deliver on your promises, you’re still left with the fact that the delay didn’t have any real mechanism by which it could contribute favorably to the outcome.

There was this disconnect, where members of the progressive base believed that by passing the BIP all discussions would end, and they wouldn’t get their way… so, illogically, they assumed that taking the opposite action would naturally result in the opposite result… that refusing to pass the BIP would result in them getting their way. But the reality is that passage of the BBB was not causally linked to that decision to delay or pass the BIP.

There was also this additional cognitive disconnect among many progressives, and how negotiations actually work. For instance, some member of the progressive caucus was talking about the BBB no MSNBC last night, about how “They have already given up so much” to the negotations.

But they didn’t. They didn’t give up anything. Because they never had anything. If I go into negotiations to sell a car, for instance, and I say, “I’m gonna charge you a trillion dollars for the car”, and then I say, “Ok, I’m only going to charge you a billion dollars”, that’s not actually you giving up anything to the negotation.

There are two facets to this “negotiation” that need to be accounted for.
First, there is a bunch of stuff that the Progressives want, that Manchin wants, presumably. You should just pass this stuff, then you get stuff you want.

Now, if that’s not the case, or even after that, you’re left with a situation where you want stuff, and Manchin wants different, competing stuff. In that case, you need to actually find stuff that you don’t want, that he does, that you can trade for stuff you want, that he doesn’t.

5917

If this is the case, then their best bet of getting the most would be to show willingness to cause pain to centrist Dems, to force them into giving in.

In other words, start acting like the Tea Party.

5918

The passage of the BBB was many many times more likely than a switch to total nuclear power generation is.

I mean you’re probably right that there was never a way to get recalcitrant Senators on board, but holy Jesus it was certainly worth trying. There are no real optics here except success, so it makes sense to keep trying for success with whatever tools you’ve got. Your preference is clearly just for progressives to do nothing and go away, so your advice comes off as concern trolling. Also, too, no one here can effect policy or political strategy for progressive Democrats in Congress, so I’m not sure who you’re advising.

5919

Some version of BBB will pass the Senate but what happens next will be interesting.

Manchin gave a topline number last summer and said this is his number no games. Instead of limiting proposals and forcing folks to choose their favorite proposals, Dems hit the number but limiting number of years and start date. Which is exactly what Manchin said don’t do.

Since then, macroeconomic numbers have come in against the bill making it tough sledding. You also have some left leaning policy wonks saying some of these proposals are just bad and are going to cause problems.

I still think something passes the Senate but not sure what house lefties do as they will have to climb down.

Part of this is also fallout b/c ARPA has some bad targeting dollars which contributed to some inflationary pressures. But right now, there’s an attitude that Dems are going to get smoked in midterms so spend as much as you can because YOLO.

5920

What numbers are you talking about?

5921

inflation & LFPR.

5922

To what extent did the progressive caucus actually deliberately delay the bill? Obviously there were people on the fringes being very loud and they may have delayed the infrastructure bill, but it’s not clear to me that the caucus itself or its leaders ever really adopted the strategy you suggest they did - I might be wrong though!

In general I dislike the lumping together of mainstream progressives with the more extreme voices under a single “progressive” banner.

5923

But there’s a problem with this, in that what you want is to get stuff done.

The Tea Party’s approach uniquely worked for them, because their actual GOAL was to just fuck everything up.

You, as a progressive, don’t want to just fuck everything up. You want to actually get shit done… so threatening to not get anything done doesn’t actually work, because it hurts you as much as it hurts anyone else, if not more.

I think the progressive caucus very directly, and intentionally, delayed and prevented the passage of the BIP.

They explicitly stated that if the BIP was put up for a vote, that they would vote no on it and thus sink its passage, despite it containing only things they wanted.

5924

I’m not saying that there was no way to get them on board. I think you actually can, and will, get some compromise to achieve some of the goals of the BBB as it exists.

I’m saying that the actual tactics that were used, of delaying the BIP passage, had no actual way to do that.

The goal was good, the approach to trying to achieve it was bad and had zero chance of working.