Tag Archives: Joe Manchin

Political Rants

We have met the enemy, and s/he is you know who

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We live in an age of miracles, my friend. Well … minor miracles, anyway. Just this week a neighbor’s cat who disappeared ten days ago turned up. That almost never happens. Then, of course, there are the elections. As always, it was a night of many disappointments and few surprises. Elections always give me heartburn, frankly.

The thing is, there are only a few institutions in modern society that are even nominally responsive to the public will. The most important of these is government. And while government has become increasingly unresponsive to the concerns of the people over the past few decades, that fact is partly a reflection of our lack of interest or participation.

Through a mirror darkly

The last thing I want to do is sound like the morning-after prognosticators on MSNBC. But I will say that complaining about Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema is something like displacement. Yes, they are tremendous assholes doing valuable service to capital. Yes, in the most proximate sense, it is their fault that we can’t have good things.

But, again, the Senate is a reflection of the voters, albeit in its very undemocratic way. If people are frustrated with the lack of progress in Congress, they need to work harder at getting progressives elected to the Senate. As a nation, we delivered a 50:50 split in that body, and you can see the result – we’ve basically empowered every senator to be a potential deal-breaker. The fact is, we need more votes … and we won’t get them until we organize more voters.

I wish I weren’t in Dixie

Of course, we’re dealing with some real challenges. We have a center-left party that is dysfunctional and shot through with corporate cash. In the other corner, we have a proto-autocratic party fueled by racism, misogyny, and other bad impulses. The clash between those two organizations was on full display this past Tuesday, particularly in Virginia.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that race-baiting still works in the heart of the old Confederacy. And as someone who knows the history of the PR industry, I also shouldn’t be surprised that propaganda is so effective. The thing they call “Critical Race Theory” is so vaguely defined that it could literally include anything. It’s just the most recent label the Republicans have slapped onto the perennial project of scaring white voters with stories about black people. So, not a departure.

Running the numbers

I haven’t seen the exit polling or any official results from the 2021 elections, but I have heard some comments from people who have. (I will try to dig into this data at some point soon.) From what I have heard, in Virginia, the Republican candidate for governor garnered about 80% of the votes that Trump received last year, while McAuliffe only received about 60% of the votes Biden got.

Since Youngkin only won by about 2%, this underlines the notion that the Virginia race was a turnout election. Republicans motivated their voters, while Democrats failed to do so sufficiently. The blame lies with the flat-footed candidate, but it is the citizens of Virginia who will pay the price for this failure, particularly the most vulnerable. That is what voters on the left need to bear in mind.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

There’s nothing new under the gun

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There’s a real sense of frustration in center-left circles in the United States. It’s understandable why. The president has proposed a massive bill that will fund a host of badly needed programs. These are priorities the progressive wing of the party has long championed, so in that respect alone, the very fact of this reconciliation bill is a kind of victory.

Now passage of this landmark legislation depends on approval by a 50-50 Senate, which means somehow convincing the likes of Joe Manchin and Kirsten Synema to vote for it. It is aggravating to watch two self-aggrandizing senators block a bill that has the support of a vast majority of Americans. But that aggravation is nothing new. And I think, despite the drawbacks, we have come a long way over the decades.

The majority that wasn’t

It’s best to remember that we’ve been in worse places before. Back in January 2009, when the financial crisis was in full swing, the Democrats had just sworn-in huge majorities in both houses of Congress. They had a filibuster-proof 60 Senators (for a brief time) and 255 members of the House. So, the sky was the limit, right?

Wrong. Somehow they managed to negotiate the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act down to a ridiculously small size, even though they needed not a single Republican vote to pass it. The final bill was nearly 1/3 tax cuts and far smaller than was needed to put the economy back on track. In other words, they negotiated themselves out of an effective stimulus and reconstruction package.

Barry and the half-nelson

Then there was the Affordable Care Act marathon. That was thousands of hours of committee work, whittling down the legislation to meet an arbitrary cost standard set by the GOP. So the best we could do on health care was whatever policy we could squeeze through the little tin horn that was Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, the Joe Manchin of his day.

Now, you may ask yourself, with 60 or near-60 votes in the Senate, why did they need to observe these restrictions? I think the answer is pretty simple: the Democratic Party was a lot farther to the right in those days, on balance. They and their president were happy to settle for glorified RomneyCare. They were happy to contemplate a “Grand Bargain” that would have gutted Social Security.

The new way to be

Honestly, the overwhelmingly Democratic 111th Congress would never have even contemplated some of the provisions in the current Reconciliation bill. Opposition to the Child Tax Credit, paid family leave, etc., would have been larger than two senators. That’s because progressives have, in essence, won many of these arguments, thanks to the determined efforts of Senator Sanders and others on the inside, and movements like Occupy Wall Street, BLM, and others on the outside.

Think about it: we are really just a whisker away from some of the most progressive policy changes since the start of the neoliberal era. The whole thing could still go up in smoke, but this is closer than we’ve ever been, and it’s not only tremendously popular but backed by 96% of the Democratic caucus AND the president.

So, we’re making progress. Slower than we like, but progress none the less.

lu u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Closing the circle.

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Confirmation hearings for President Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee began this week, and while it’s clear that there is strong resistance to the idea of a lifetime appointment for Bret Kavanaugh, it is also clear that there is little we can do about it beyond making noise, pushing our senators, and demanding justice. I credit people in that hearing room for giving it a try. Linda Sarsour and many others were dragged out and arrested for raising their voices up against an extremist appointment by an illegitimate president and a confirmation process that has lost all credibility since the blocking of Obama’s appointee Merritt Garland in 2016. Why the Republicans on the senate judiciary committee are bothering to run through this pantomime is beyond me. They have nothing but contempt for the process, so why not go straight to the vote?

Kavanaugh counts how many anti-choice votes there will be on SCOTUSThe sad fact is, as Matt said in his song “See For Yourself,” we have nothing to defend with, as we on the left have failed to turn the issue of Supreme Court appointments into one that lights a fire under progressive voters. When Democrats lost the Senate in 2014, we lost the ability to confirm or deny Supreme Court appointments without the cooperation of the GOP, which simply is not a possibility. We  expend all of our energy trying to convince Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to vote against this nominee, while attempting to keep red state Democrats like Joe Manchin, Joe Donnelly, and others in line a few weeks before they face an election. Perhaps we can delay the proceedings until after the mid-terms, but that seems doubtful without the requisite votes.

Make no mistake about how consequential this appointment will be. This amounts to closing the circle on the Republican project that has been underway full-bore since the George W. Bush administration, when party leaders were focused on building a permanent majority. With five solid reactionary votes on the Supreme Court, the Republicans will have a veto over any progressive policies that may come to pass in the coming years. Even if we manage to wrest control of a gerrymandered House and a lopsidedly unrepresentative Senate from the GOP, even if we then win the presidency, there will be severe limits on what can be accomplished. Legal challenges to, say, single payer health coverage will almost certainly find success before a Supreme Court with Judge Kavanaugh on board.

Once again, elections matter. Whatever else you do, go out and vote, and encourage friends and strangers alike to do the same. We neglect this right at our peril, as the current catastrophe clearly demonstrates.

luv u,

jp