Primary these motherfuckers. I never want to see their faces again.
I didn’t expect much of Biden, to be honest, but the constant failure of the Democrats to put up much of a fight for anything is depressing. I know, we’re going to hear it’s all Manchin and Sinema’s fault (and I agree, they are both colossal fuckwitted blockheads), but at some point you have to stand up and declare that there are core principles to being part of the party, and that the apparatus of the party is going to actively fuck up your re-election chances if you don’t cooperate. What I suspect, though, is that the bidness Democrats are secretly grateful that they’ve got Manchin/Sinema around as an excuse to instead fuck over their electorate.
So now the Democrats plan to kill family leave and Medicare/Medicaid expansion from their budget, all because a few convenient die-hards are resisting the idea of supporting Democratic voters. I note that the right-wing hates the idea of health care and actually supporting families, so this is basically caving in to the Republicans. If I wanted to vote for Republican policies, I would have voted for a Republican, you know.
The damning thing about this strategy is that it is so short-sighted. By ditching their principles and the only reason to vote for a Democrat — other than that they aren’t openly maniacal, perverse monsters — they are damaging their own chances in the next election cycle.
The House Democrats at most risk of losing their seats in the 2022 midterm elections are urging their colleagues not to jettison a set of popular programs from President Biden’s economic and social spending package, warning that failing to deliver on these promises to voters could pave the way for Republicans to regain control of Congress.
These vulnerable Democrats argue that expanding Medicaid into certain states, allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices, expanding Medicare coverage and providing for paid family leave are key to both motivating Democrats to vote in the midterm elections and to winning over the small but key group of independent voters who could otherwise back their Republican challengers.
“No normal person can understand why we can’t negotiate for drug prices,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said. “So what they see when we can’t pass that year after year is greed, and I have no problem saying I’m frustrated with the other side of the aisle, but in this case, my own party because that one is just a simple thing we could do.”
All four policies are at risk of being left out of the final bill due to opposition from centrist Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), whose votes are key on every issue given the 50-50 Senate, as well as a small group of Democrats in both chambers opposed to giving Medicare too much authority to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.
I am so, so tired of hearing about Manchin/Sinema, two parasites profiting from their intransigence with the reward of tremendous amounts of attention…and not enough of it is negative. I am also tired of watching Biden mumble placid centrist excuses for doing as little as possible.
I ask again, as I do in every election, what positive reason do I have for supporting Democrats? Is it really going to be just “they aren’t Trump” forevermore?
America desperately needs an overhaul of its electoral system. Of course, such a change has to come from the same people who are winning under the current system, so how likely is that?
Pretty much. America is stuck between a do-nothing rock and the cultural equivalent of a guy with Taco Bell diarrhea.
I’m looking on the bright side — this will be the most sweeping set of progressive advances since the ACA (if not since Medicare), and will have been achieved with the barest of Senate majorities. I wish we would get all of what Biden campaigned on (or better yet, what Warren campaigned on), but with 50 Senators, including a Senator from one of the Trumpiest states in the country, WV, this will be a remarkable political achievement.
Our system sucks, but this will probably be about the best we can get at this time in this system. The best bet going forward is to elect as many Democrats as possible. If we had won the Maine and NC Senate seats, and/or WI and FL in ’18 and ’16, then we probably wouldn’t be needing to rely on big-money coal Democrats like Manchin and idiot wannabe “mavericks” like Sinema.
Much recommended. From The Guardian:
“The 2009 financial crisis taught us hard lessons. Have Democrats learned them?” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/28/financial-crisis-2009-meltdown-joe-biden-democrats
My comment: -No they absolutely have not.
Another country with useless / corrupt politicians:
“NASA can see Brexit fuckup from space” https://www.newsbiscuit.com/post/nasa-can-see-brexit-f-ckup-from-space
Also:
If it’s bad it’s your problem, explains government https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/if-its-bad-its-your-problem-explains-government-20211021213385
There is room for a diversity of political thought and opinion, and a fractious, riotous political process is a good process. There is not, however, room for the Republicans. They offer nothing, they exist to oppose the basic processes of democratic governance, and to resist or delay anything that might make things slightly better for their constituents. They’re a nihilistic engine of suffering, and must be eradicated.
The oil industry has been utterly corrupt. And they own the US politicians.
Fwd: ” What Big Oil knew about climate change, in its own words” https://phys.org/news/2021-10-big-oil-knew-climate-words.html
Primary them out. That’s what republicans do when they are not satisfied with their politicians. But that would deprive us of our favorite past time, complaining about democrats.
at some point you have to stand up and declare that there are core principles to being part of the party, and that the apparatus of the party is going to actively fuck up your re-election chances if you don’t cooperate.
This has already happened. Sinema has multiple well-financed opponents for the next cycle and her polling is in the toilet. She’s toast. She doesn’t care, though. Manchin has his own apparatus and the less support he appears to get from the national party the better for him, anyways, so there is no leverage there.
I am also tired of watching Biden mumble placid centrist excuses for doing as little as possible.
I have no idea what the fuck this is about. Biden has been holding their feet to the fire publicly for weeks. What do you want him to do?
in my inexpert opinion, this is a symptom of the fractioning of the two-party system. There is a tiny but vocal minority of ‘moderates’ in both parties that in some policy stances more resemble ‘the other’ party vs their own. Machin and Sinema and a few others acting more like GOPers in corporate protection/tax stance, “establishment” vs “trumpian” republicans ( where most don’t want to state where there are), and outliers like Kinzinger and Cheney behaving like? Honestly I don’t know how tom label them, “sane republicans”? seems like an oxymoron.
what I am hoping for is counter to the conventional wisdom. I’m hoping for lots of voter turnout in a ‘mid-term’ election- and almost always when more people vote, more dems win- a senate with 52 or 54 dems can have functional factions without the gridlock of one or two folks being the spanner in the gears – maybe even some cross-aisle coalitions on some issues . I think part of what we are seeing now is the dems trying to get a long long list policies in one super-bill (which I get is entirely for pragmatic reasons – it’s an artifact of the filibuster- which should be killed by now)
@1
It’s more than just the electoral system.
It’s taken Dems (and their electorate) to paint themselves into this corner. The leaders are under siege. From what I’m hearing the solution is to tell them to just stop being under siege so they can go out and properly take care of business?
We may have to face up to a reality where we wake up one morning and realize that American democracy has failed and is gone for good.
No easy answers here.
Apropos of nothin’ in particular, Sinema:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/27/kyrsten-sinema-ambition-loyalty-517224?
@10
Manchin has already hinted that he’s open to run as an independent next time – and the climate in WV is such that a ‘more processive’ dem has little chance of winning
durn spell check “MORE PROGRESSIVE”
Me @ 12
Damn damn damn.
That should read as “decades,” as in
“It’s taken Dems (and their electorate) decades to paint themselves into this corner.”
Anyone who think a different Democratic president, or any president for that matter, could have gotten more than Biden will end up with in this bill doesn’t understand how US government works. Or what the situation is at the present time. Or is simply divorced from reality.
iiandyiiii, #3:
Not even sure what you think that means….
Is that supposed to be before or after all of them have been gutted?
Are you making some kind of sick joke about the ACA, since the paid leave provisions (e.g.) would be a total mess (and neither sweeping nor progressive)?
Manchin doesn’t give a fuck what his WV constituents want or need. He’s just a corporatist asshole.
I think it means universal pre-K and pre-school for 3-4 year olds; extending the child tax credit that gives poor and working families thousands per year; covering millions more with health insurance; significant childcare subsidies for poor and working families; subsidies and rebates for clean energy; construction of more than a million affordable homes; expanding Pell grants; off the top of my head (there’s more). Read about it below.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LaOCEOdrCOGHWzAWCxHf1YU_TpClk_M-/view
I’m one of those progressive Democrats who cheers when Democrats do good and progressive things. I know bashing Democrats is hugely popular, both on the right and left, but I want to look on the bright side, praise them for doing good things, while at the same time urging them to do more, and working to elect more Democrats (and more progressive Democrats in particular).
I’m tired of the framing that Manchin and Sinema are centrists. They’re not centrists. They aren’t doing anything to pull conservatives towards the center, they are only bullying people even a tiny bit to the left. You aren’t a centrist if the only direction you pull people is to the right. They aren’t negotiating with Republicans to agree to anything, they’re collaborating with Republicans to figure out how they can get more Democrats to either agree with or concede to Republicans. They are hard right-wingers, pure and simple.
Manchin sucks, but his value over replacement Senator is immense. Sinema sucks equally, but her value over replacement Senator is shit. I hope Manchin keeps running in WV, since he’s the only chance we have of a Democratic Senator from that state, but Sinema sucks and I hope she’s primaried.
No. There will be other scary media-manufactured monsters in the future. They’ll be issues and humans. There will always be exactly two possibilities presented in whichever of two media stories you consume. And you will always vote for the lesser of two evils because that’s what you do. Because you think third parties are not viable. Or worse, they can be Ralph Nader!
How much of that do you think will be in the actual, signed legislation? Are you really claiming all of this will be there? Or is the accomplishment supposed to be that somebody can write down a list somewhere, you take it all at face value, and then they don’t pass any of it?
That’s what’s in the framework that appears to be on the path to passage, just announced within the last few hours.
Maybe all of it will get stripped out and we’ll get nothing. Right now, by my reading, it’s on a path to passage. If it happens, then the Democrats will have accomplished something very good and worthy of praise.
Unbelievable. He’s no good and not helping anyone. But all you see is a “(D)” next to his name, and somehow that does it all for you.
Months ago, you could’ve at least claimed (not persuasively) that the party would have an easier time getting him on board to advance its agenda, compared to some other asshole with an “(R)” next to their name. It was risible bullshit then, but now, anybody who’s been paying any attention knows for a fact that it’s simply wrong.
The value he adds is just that there’s a “(D)” next to his name and not an “(R).” What’s supposed to be so fucking important about the chances of getting that?
As said above, Sinema is gone. Which is good, in that the next D candidate for senator will be much more willing to vote for a progressive agenda, having seen what happened to Sinema.
Manchin is about to leave the party: he’s whining that “he doesn’t know what party that he belongs to”. That report that he was going to go Independant, and that republicans were approaching him every day to join them, is right. The next election he has, I’ll bet he switches to independent before the campaign. Why not? He can still vote any way he likes, and get in better with his right-wing constituents. He can threaten the D party to help him campaign if they want him to caucus with them.
But, I think that the democrats will pick up two senate seats these midterms, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (unless the elections are fixed, highly possible). That might keep them one ahead. It better: if the house and senate go majority republican, Biden and Harris will both be impeached and removed. Then we get President McCarthy or even President Trump (he’ll make himself speaker of the house, you don’t have to be in the house to be speaker.) Very dangerous times.
It means that Schumer is majority leader, not McConnell. It means that the vast majority of Biden’s nominees are voted in rather than held up or rejected. It means that a SCOTUS vacancy will probably be filled, if it occurs under Biden, rather than being vacant until McConnell gets a Republican he likes. It’s a big, big deal, and a huge difference. Without Manchin, we would have no chance of any progressive victories at all. With Manchin, we might get many, though far from all.
Dem “leadership” demands progressives embrace failure and pretend they won.
Absolutely Republican levels of honesty, and I say that in the most pejorative way conceivable.
Democratic political leaders try to play up accomplishments and de-emphasize failures! Film at 11!
Is it really going to be just “they aren’t Trump” forevermore?
No. Only until:
1. The Republicans convince everyone that there’s no difference between them and the Democrats even though the Republicans are literal fascists and they win. After which, there are no more contested elections and we no longer have to vote for Democrat Not Trump.
2. The Republicans manage to go back to being simply an authoritarian business toadying party. Then the Democrats may be able to swing left again.
3. A viable third party comes into existence, preferably to the left, allowing the Democrats to admit that they’re now the party of fiscal conservatism. (As opposed to the fascists, which are the Republicans.)
@ #25
“if the house and senate go majority republican, Biden and Harris will both be impeached and removed“.
You do know that it requires a 2/3 vote in the Senate to remove them, right?
kome @ 19
What gets me is when they are referred to as “moderates.” Their positioning is not moderate, it’s rightwing obstructionism pure and simple.
However if you buy into the current Overton window, then you could make a case that they are on average “centrist.” Or maybe I’m being pedantic.
I’m thinking now it’s worth reading this take on Sinema
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/27/kyrsten-sinema-ambition-loyalty-517224?
if for no other reason than if one is going to tar her with epithets, then might as well make them accurate.
It doesn’t matter who’s gone because the clock has run out. Sadly (and this is painful) the Democrats lack “The Hammer,” the Tom DeLay enforcer of old. Someone who had a closet full of other people’s skeletons and secrets, someone with a file and photographs. Someone who could scare the bajeebus out of Sinema and Manchin to knock them in line.
These two knuckleheads have taken down the entire Biden agenda. One for money, that’s Manchin who rakes in a cool $million a year from his coal “brokerage.” And Sinema because she has to be the It Girl, Look at Me, I’m Cute (and she’s getting a ton of affection from corporate lobbyists and Republicans).
Manchin had it right when he told the press, “If Democrats want to pursue these social agendas then they need to elect more Democrats,” presumably to make Manchin irrelevant.
Face it, as a country we might as well go home, because we’re never, ever going to be able to do something big.
@garnetstar
It is not mathematically possible for there to be enough votes to remove Biden, Harris prior to 2024. Even if every single Democratic senator goes down in 2022-and this includes such safe seats as CA and NY-there would only be 64 GOPers in the senate and thus 3 votes shy to remove. (No party will ever remove their own president; the 2nd Trump impeachment has rendered impeachment a dead letter) even if you throw in Sinema and Manchin you are still a vote shy for removing.
Biden will be impeached once the GOP retakes the house but that is neither here nor there as it is pure theatre.
Sinema is far more annoying than Manchin. Manchin has legitimate electoral pressure on him to not play ball with the rest of the caucus.
@consciousness razor
Manchin’s WV constituents primary desire is too see Biden/Dems fail even if they get hurt in the process.
This is why in general I tell Ds they can buy my vote but not my enthusiasm. I intend to terrify Ds as much as I can.
Not Sinema. There must be consequences.
To me the Biden administration was always going to be a placeholder. There are good Democrats but the time when their coalition has legitimate power is at least a generation away no matter how many Americans agree with their policies. It’s depressing as hell knowing the best I can vote for is too kill fewer Americans but yeah… I’m in triage mode.
@David Klopotoski 36: If it makes you feel any better, I’ve seen analyses that suggest that Democrats also kill fewer non-Americans. (Caveat: I can’t remember the source or details so can’t really say this is a certain statement.)
@1 “America desperately needs an overhaul of its electoral system. Of course, such a change has to come from the same people who are winning under the current system, so how likely is that?”
Join the club ,over here in GB ,we have the FPTP racket ,first past the post .
https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/first-past-the-post
The bastard tories won’t change it ,and Labour at their recent conference voted down a motion to look into it .Or something like that.
The greens ,and those bastard Lib-Dems ,(not quite as big a bunch of bastards as the tories ) ,are in favour of it
At the last GE in Dec 2019 ,they got less that half the votes ,yet they got an 80 seat majority .
You vote Democratic you vote 1950s Republicans. Have since Clinton. Bummer.
@stroppy #12
Believe me, I know. My first draft of that comment had a list of other things, but I decided it was too clunky. I focused on elections, because if that gets fixed, you’ll have a much easier time fixing the other stuff.
E.g. One small, but important change could be to actually let every vote count. In the current system, the votes for the loser are essentially ignored. Many European countries have a system where additional representatives are awarded based on the total national vote. That means minority parties can get representation without winning any individual head-to-head election and it means that most votes will actually achieve some representation.
@Doc Bill #32
Why isn’t that a standard procedure? If I were running a political party, I would definitely have a squad of private investigators checking into everything my opponents were doing. How can you even be in politics without that? It’s a no-brainer.
Yeah well that’s certainly one way to look at it (“what are the positive reasons to vote for a Democrat”?).
Another way is that they are not Republicans intent on destroying our Democracy and our planet.
Yes, it would be great if they could get more progressive and popular legislation done, but in the face of such coordinated, intransigent institutional opposition to positive changes, I think you’re holding them to an unachievable standard.
I have no problem continuing to be a passionate, vocal and financial supporter of Democrats EVEN IF the only benefit of electing them is to deny power to Republicans.
Manchin and Sinema are delivering this country to the fascists on a silver platter and, as such, the appropriate “C” word for them is not “centrists” but “collaborators.” For all Manchin’s blather about protecting democracy, he can’t possibly be stupid enough not to see that he’s killing it. He knows, he just doesn’t care. He and Sinema expect to be richly rewarded for their part in delivering us into the hands of a far-right dictator. Sinema can barely even be bothered to conceal it.
For those who are arguing that we’ll still get this or that out of the bills, remember that there is nothing stopping those two or their fellow Quislings in the House from opposing the bills after the next round of good things is cut out of it. They’ve already forced the rest of the Democrats to slash over half the good out of it, dropping the price from $3.5 trillion over ten years to $1.5 trillion- there’s no reason Manchin can’t come back tomorrow with an even lower “hard limit” that he’s pulled out of his ass. Why not $1 trillion? Why not $500 billion? Sure, the country will collapse, but that’s the plan. Manchin will just sail away on his fucking yacht if things get too ugly, and I’m sure there are plenty of private planes Sinema can bum a ride on, after all she’s done for the medical protection racket.
As much as I hated Biden in the primary, and as little as I trusted him coming in, I can’t really blame him for this. Maybe he’s secretly pleased about the way things are going, and maybe he’s even helping orchestrate this slow collapse of US democracy from behind the scenes, but in the absence of any hard evidence of either I have to go with what I see: Biden actually seems to be fighting for the progressive agenda. He’s failing, but that’s unfortunately the way the system works… until Republicans retake control starting in 2022, courtesy of Manchin and Sinema.
The Republicans will impeach Biden once they have control of the House again. They won’t be able to remove him, but they’ll probably impeach him several times as payback for impeaching Trump twice. They don’t really want to remove him, anyway. Aside from that, they’ll concentrate on eroding voting rights. We’ll still have an election in 2024, but it will be a sham. Republicans will ratfuck their way into total control of the government then, and that will be that. There will still be elections, but only Republican votes will really count. Every cruelty the Republicans can dream up, be it subtle or gross, will become law.
If nothing else, let us remember to thank Manchin and Sinema for that.
Ronald @39: Since Clinton? As opposed to, say, JF “Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis” Kennedy? Or how about FD “Concentration Camps” Roosevelt? Or LB “Vietnam War” Johnson? Face it, this was what they always were.
@vucodlak 42: I don’t agree that Manchin doesn’t care. I think he’s very deliberately trying to destroy democracy because he thinks he can get in with the winners by helping them. He is, almost certainly, wrong.
Manchin’s just a rich corporate politician. The idea that he’s some fascist mastermind is just silly. He’s exactly what he appears — a shitty, corporate, fossil-fuel loving Democrat, which is the best we’ll possibly get out of WV.
@vucodlak #42
Sadly, I suspect you’re right on that. It will probably include a bit of back and forth for a few years, but I think this was the chance, and I think the “centrists” effectively sabotaged it.
“Damaging their own chances in the next election cycle”
Dunno, didn’t stop them last election cycle. Not even here on FreethoughtBlogs.
What will the Republicans impeach Biden for? His backing of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, The 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act ** and **The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005? I’d be on board with that if the outcome put Harris in the Oval Office. Oh wait, does she have skeletons too?
Asterisks are not your friends.
Shhh, PZ. You aren’t permitted to be dissatisfied with Democrats. You’ll make the tribalists angry. If you do it too soon after the election, you haven’t given them enough of a chance, even if they went hard right immediately after getting sworn in. If you do it after that, it’s not their fault — even if they deliberately tied themselves in knots to abandon their platform (like by not firing the Senate Parliamentarian for obstruction, a tactic for which there is already precedent set by the Republicans themselves) — it’s the Republican’s fault, even if it palpably isn’t. If you do it in the primaries and try to get a better candidate, it’s “purity testing”, which is somehow bad even though you would immediately trash anything else which failed a purity test. And once they’ve won their primary, which of course they will if nobody is permitted to object to the things they have done, then objecting is failing to show the mindless support which is demanded of Democrats via slogans like “blue no matter who”. (If everybody who ever unironically parroted that line were kidnapped by aliens, the country’s IQ would measurably increase. Same with the “purity testing” line.)
And that’s it, really — the modern Democratic Party hates enthusiasm. Five years back, they pushed hard for a dimwitted candidate with a long history of bad decisions and no record of winning outside heavily Blue states, hated by half the party and 90+% of the rest of the country, and if you didn’t like it, you were branded Putin’s puppet. (They didn’t even have to pick Sanders — just literally anybody other than Hillary Clinton and they would almost certainly have beaten Trump.) Last year, they pushed us into literally the single candidate whose own supporters had the least enthusiasm out of the largest field in decades. The more their candidates are hated, the narrower the margins are, the more they can claim that they’re just barely holding on and can’t do anything the public — let alone the base — wants. (And if they lose, even better — they can then throw up their hands and claim no responsibility, and pretend to be further to the left and snipe at Republicans until the next election cycle.) It’s all an act to fool the rubes. Democrats think Republicans vote against their own best interests — ha!
Don’t like Sinema? She got her nomination for the same reason Hillary Clinton got hers in 2016, and the same reason Pete Buttigieg was even slightly a contender: a scary number of Democrats don’t care how terrible a human being a candidate is, or how much their history shows they have the absolute worst judgement in the entire world, as long as they have the right kind of demographic background. Sinema didn’t run on policy, she ran on being a quirky bisexual, and it worked, just like the imbecile hawk Hillary Clinton was going to be our first woman president and the racist Buttigieg was touted as potentially the first openly gay one, and so then their history — which should have had them laughed out of the room immediately, if the average Democratic loyalist had a functioning brain cell — didn’t matter.
@#42, vucodlak:
“Centrist” has always been a euphemism for “traitor”; it did when the Centrist Clintons took over the party in the 90s and purged as many New Deal Democrats as possible, it did when the Centrist Obama refused to hold anybody responsible for the Iraq war or the financial meltdown (over 90% of all Americans, even Republicans, wanted Wall Street punished!), and it still does now that the right-of-center Biden is in office.
It says a lot about Democrats that you still think he’s not pleased with this.
Before there was any debate about it, he was telling governors that there would be no minimum wage increase. Even though we’ve withdrawn from Afghanistan, he requested not only an increase in military spending but $10 billion more than the Pentagon wanted. There are more “kids in cages” now than there were when Trump left office (and it’s funny how no Democrats seem to be worrying about that any more) and he’s deporting more immigrants than Trump did. He sided with patent-holders on coronavirus vaccines (despite promising not to) and made the pandemic worse worldwide. He has increased federal funding for police and the program which gives military equipment to police. His administration has offshore drilling licenses more often than Trump’s did, and he publicly asked OPEC to increase oil production. He refused to redo the Iran agreement Trump abandoned, and bombed them again. His DoJ is defending Trump and Trump’s team in multiple lawsuits.
There’s a heck of a lot more. Biden is just a polite version of Trump, and he’s not even very good at hiding the fact. Of course he’s thrilled that he has an excuse to abandon his own platform — as predicted by anybody with a brain, he never wanted the platform in the first place and intended to sabotage it from the start.
The Democrats managed to just squeak by, despite throwing away as much of the election as possible, largely because of black voters. Thanks to Biden’s consistent siding with racists and the murderous thugs we call police in this country, polls are increasingly showing that black people who voted for Biden and Democrats in 2020 now regret their votes, so 2022 and 2024 are going to be interesting for Democrats at the polls.
And we’re still pretending that it’s important to coddle Manchin because “nobody else could win in West Virginia”. Hey, every time Manchin gets his way, the Democrats lose some portion of voters everywhere else. They’re going to lose a lot of otherwise winnable elections because they wanted to hold onto Manchin’s seat, and end up in the minority anyway — but by continuing to let Manchin dictate policy, they won’t even look strong.
(And don’t give me that “Manchin would be willing to run as an Independent” nonsense. If he does, he’ll lose. The official Democratic candidate will split his vote, and the Republican will win, and that will be an end to his career in Congress, although he’ll undoubtedly go on to be a lobbyist for fossil fuels or pharmaceuticals. You know, on behalf of his children, whose interests should have had him recused from practically all the controversial decisions in which he’s been involved.)
@ dianne, #44
You’re probably right about that.
@ iiandyiiii, #45
Nope, sorry, in this political climate no member of the House or Senate gets to plead that they’re merely greedy and myopic. Not when actual fascists made an actual bloody coup attempt less than a year ago. Not when actual fascists in the House and Senate keep beating their chests and promising to do the coup over right next chance they get.
Manchin knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s made it clear that he thinks the most appropriate response to the people who tried to murder him and his colleagues is to give them everything they want, so that they will spare him (it goes without saying that this means letting them slaughter the vulnerable populations these fascists so despise, of which Manchin is not a member).
@ hemidactylus, #48
They’ll impeach Biden because Democrats impeached Trump. Whatever pretense they come up with to justify it will be just that: a pretense. It’s about petty revenge and destabilizing the system by further undermining the public trust in elected institutions, not principles.
@ The Vicar, #50
I don’t care if he loves it in his heart of hearts. You know what? I’m not disappointed in Biden, because I expected nothing from him. I didn’t even expect him to pretend to care and, really, why should he? He’s toast in 2024 (assuming he runs for reelection) if they don’t pass substantial voter protections and systemic reforms, and so is his “legacy.”
I’m tired of pretending that every politician is secretly an 11-dimensional chess player whose every statement or action contains meanings within meanings. Maybe it makes for good reading, but 99 times out of 100 that’s not the way the world works. What’s happening here is that it only takes one or two assholes in the wrong place to ruin everything.
Greed and short-sightedness explain most, if not all, of the behavior by the more recalcitrant (“moderate”) Democrats. It’s not 11th-dimensional chess — it’s the same greed, ambition, mundane human flaws, etc., it’s always been. The Republicans in office are much nastier and actively malevolent, but it’s not 11th dimensional chess for them either — it’s the same greed, ambition, etc., along with bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, etc. Mundane human flaws explains all of this, it seems to me. That’s no excuse, but it makes a lot more sense than Manchin wants to see Trump win, appease fascists, etc.
Congress and Biden have been screwing around with budget plans and trying out various and sundry compromises for months. A story about the budget negotiations that seems designed to annoy progressives and discourage voters comes out less than a week before the election. Almost as if that were the point. Well, it worked: the elections went largely to Republicans. What a surprise.
I expect a similar article or, rather, similar articles to be published in late October 2022 about events that will have been going on since at least summer 2022.