We need to talk about 'moderate' Democrats
September 24, 2021 4:44 AM   Subscribe

Why Are Moderates Trying to Blow Up Biden's Centrist Economic Plan? [ungated] - "In attacking the Build Back Better Act, they are working against their own purported aims."

"This is why America as an experiment -- the building of a society that is both diverse and free -- is so important. Without that experiment, the story of America would be just another boring example of conquest and ethnonationalism. I believe that this, ultimately, is the source of America's fundamental divide. The question of whether this nation is an ethnostate whose right to existence is based on nothing but the legacy of brute force, or whether it is a creedal nation that stands for something greater."[1] --@Noahpinion
Over the past few weeks, however, centrists in Mr. Biden’s own party have been chiseling away at his signature legislative proposal, the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act, to the point where the bill’s future is in jeopardy. It is not unheard-of for politicians to disagree with members of their own party, but the recent Democratic attacks on the plan have been remarkable for their incoherence.

The president’s critics have explained their opposition by invoking the supposed sanctity of arcane House procedure, telling constituents that their votes for or against certain parts of the plan are meaningless and issuing economic critiques that make no sense. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia upbraided Democratic leadership for running up the “crippling” national debt — even though Mr. Biden has said that the plan will include enough tax increases to make it budget neutral.

This is not to say Mr. Biden’s agenda lacks ambition. It seeks to refit the American economy as an engine of green growth, reassert American geopolitical leadership and support families who want to work. These are lofty aims, but they constitute a thoroughly centrist agenda. None of the left’s priorities from the 2020 presidential primary — Medicare for All, decriminalized border crossings, a tax on wealth — appear in Mr. Biden’s plan. Nor has the president embraced any of the structural reforms that progressive Democrats have been calling for, such as eliminating the Electoral College, reforming the filibuster or expanding the number of seats on the Supreme Court. Mr. Biden is offering recovery and reform in lieu of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont’s political revolution.

Mr. Manchin’s critique demands particular attention. In addition to his phantom debt fears, Mr. Manchin has accused his Democratic colleagues of using the bill to fan the flames of an “overheating” economy that he insists is already imposing “a costly ‘inflation tax’” on working families.

It’s true that prices have increased unexpectedly this year, and true again that policymakers should be taking reasonable precautions against further increases. But in attacking the Build Back Better plan, Mr. Manchin is working against his purported aims. The law is designed not only to support employment but also to reduce inflationary pressure.

Anyone worried about inflation covertly “taxing” household income — an idea developed by Keynes, incidentally — should be looking for ways to reduce the cost of major items in family budgets. Americans pay far more for prescription drugs than people in many other developed nations, and a key plank of Mr. Biden’s program would allow Medicare to negotiate lower costs with pharmaceutical companies.

And yet last week, Democratic Representatives Kurt Schrader, Scott Peters and Kathleen Rice teamed up with Republicans to scuttle that plan. (House leadership can reintroduce the prescription drug overhaul later in the legislative process, but every Democratic senator will eventually have to approve the deal for it to be enacted.) In a letter explaining her vote, Ms. Rice claimed to have concerns about the “fiscal responsibility” of Build Back Better — but allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug companies reduces the government’s costs.
FDR Needed Two Global Crises to Reshape the Economy. Will Biden? - "Centrist Democrats threatened FDR's transformative agenda until WWII came along. Social unrest and China weigh in the balance if Biden can't crush a similar revolt."
Like FDR, Biden came into office in the middle of a crisis and immediately launched into a flurry of activity. And like FDR, his approach focused both on combatting the threat of the moment and on transforming the U.S. economy in ways that were long overdue. The U.S. needs bold action to transition to clean energy, and it needs to curb inequality and economic insecurity in order to tamp down social unrest. It also needs industrial policy to meet the competitive threat from China — something that so far has only been pursued to a very modest degree.[*]

Biden’s agenda would accomplish all of these things. His Covid relief bill largely continued the approach that had been taken in 2020 under Donald Trump, while adding a large child tax credit that, if made permanent, would change the U.S. welfare state into something simpler and more efficient. Biden then crafted a bipartisan infrastructure bill with many smart and forward-looking provisions, such as cleaning up lead pipes and building electric-vehicle charging stations.

But if Biden has made progress on his campaign pledge to persuade Republicans, he’s having trouble managing the same trick with some Democrats. The powerful West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has declared that he will only support $1.5 trillion in a reconciliation bill — far less than the $3.5 trillion now being proposed. Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema has also stated her opposition. Various provisions of the bill are already being killed by concerted pockets of Democratic opposition, including a proposal to repeal the step-up basis for estate tax. Sinema is attempting to axe Biden’s plan to allow Medicare to negotiate down drug prices.

If centrists like Manchin and Sinema manage to block Biden’s agenda this year, it’s likely that any hope of a transformative Biden presidency will be dashed. The GOP is favored to take back at least one of Congress’ two chambers in the 2022 midterms, after which they’re unlikely to give Biden any big legislative victories. The possibility of Democrats regaining unified control would come after the urgency imparted by the Covid pandemic has passed. In other words, the U.S. could now be looking at another decade or more of gridlock and business-as-usual...

But there’s one major difference between this Democratic revolt and the one against FDR. The latter came in the President’s second term, when the New Deal had already unleashed major transformations on the American economy, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, financial regulation, labor law and rural electrification. If Biden’s agenda is halted, it will be in his first term. A Covid relief bill and a bipartisan infrastructure package, while very welcome, will not yet add up to a major transformation of the economy.

Which would be very bad news, because the status quo isn’t working. Excessive costs for health care and construction are still weighing the economy down, exacerbating the housing shortage and crippling the health insurance system. Climate change is starting to unleash its effects, and decarbonization is not proceeding quickly enough. Inequality and social unrest remain at high levels. And the U.S. doesn’t yet appear to be recovering the competitive ground it lost to China over the past 20 years. Doing nothing, and muddling along with a slightly modified version of the status quo, is simply not an option; the U.S. needs a new FDR, not another four or 10 or 20 years of the same old, same old.
Our Best Tool For Predicting Midterm Elections Doesn't Show A Republican Wave — But History Is On The GOP's Side - "So, if Republicans outperform their early polling to a similar degree as they did in 2010 and 2014, they could win the House popular vote by 5 to 7 percentage points, which would very likely hand them control of the House (and probably the Senate too, since almost everyone votes a straight party-line ticket these days). Of course, though, that's a big if; there has been a lot of variability in these historical trends, so a wide range of outcomes is still possible. But even if Republicans only improve their standing a little bit — something that is likely to happen, if history is any guide — it would probably still be enough to flip the House, considering that their control of the redistricting process in a plurality of states is likely to reinforce the GOP's structural advantage in House races. Past trends don't always hold true, but the smart money, at this point, remains on the president's party losing control of Congress next year."

Covering Congress right now: This $5 trillion debate 'deals with every issue under the sun' - "What's at stake? 'Just about everything'... Lawmakers are grappling with a government funding deadline, multiple infrastructure bill votes, a debt ceiling fight that shouldn't be a fight at all, and more. If you're anything like me, you're wondering, 'What the heck is going on?'" Democrats Are at War Over Joe Biden's Agenda. Here's One Big Idea That Could Save It. - " When it comes to climate, Democrats should concentrate less on spending and more on lending and investing. Lawmakers ought to think of themselves less like parents trying to cram everything they want into a family budget and more like financiers trying to leverage up their cash." (UK's first green gilt draws record $137 billion demand) another way?
Modern Monetary Theory Has a New Friend in Congress [ungated] - "John Yarmuth is a big fiscal deal. He says we should be open to deficit spending."
If you happened to be watching C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” on June 17, you saw a remarkable display of Modern Monetary Theory’s political influence. Representative John Yarmuth, Democrat of Kentucky, who is the chair of the House Budget Committee, gave a full-throated defense of the deficit-friendly theory to Washington’s sometimes skeptical viewership.

“Historically, what we have done is said, ‘What can we afford to do?’ The right question is, ‘What do the American people need us to do?’” he said. He added, “If we relied on taxation, purely on taxation, to fund the government, then a lot of people would suffer very seriously, because we could not provide nearly the services that the American people want us to provide.”

I am surprised that Yarmuth’s appearance hasn’t gotten more attention. He is not some anonymous backbencher. He runs the House committee that, in collaboration with its counterpart in the Senate, prepares an annual framework for the federal government’s revenue and spending levels. He is a big fiscal deal and he is on board with Stephanie Kelton, a Stony Brook University economics and public policy professor who has become a leading voice for Modern Monetary Theory. She told me that Yarmuth’s C-SPAN appearance was “pretty remarkable.”

...

Yarmuth said his conversion began in 2010 when Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, was the ranking member of the Budget Committee. (Ryan later became chairman and eventually House speaker and a candidate for vice president.) “He would come up with all these same things” that deficit hawks are talking about now, Yarmuth says, such as that federal budget deficits would consume national savings and crowd out investment by the private sector. “And yadda yadda yadda. I realized as time went by that none of the things he predicted were happening.”

Congress has tried to tie its hands on deficits by requiring that new legislation not increase the federal budget. The rule is honored more in the breach than the observance, and Yarmuth is not a big fan of it. “Paygo,” as it’s called, “is a scam anyway,” he told me. He called it “kind of fraudulent.”

...

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, has spoken positively about M.M.T., as have several of her fellow House progressives. Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, has also expressed sympathy with Modern Monetary Theory and its cousin, the Green New Deal. The Times has reported that Kelton has been a regular participant in conference calls on pandemic relief organized by Senate majority leader Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York.
more re: MMT, SRW on MMT stabilization policy — some comments & critiques[2] and a proper accounting: Translating “net financial assets”[3] :P

oh and: "To be short of money when there's work to get done is like not having enough inches to build a house. We have the materials, the tools, the space, the time, the skills and the intent to build... but we have no inches today? Why be short of inches? Why be short of money?"

the memory bank:
The idea of money as a source of social memory was also crucial for John Locke who figures prominently in our story as the philosopher who inaugurated the modern age of democratic revolutions. Locke was obsessed with money's role both in establishing a progressive social order and in subverting it as its criminal antithesis. Indeed he believed that money launched humanity from the state of nature onto the road to civil government. As long as men’s possessions were limited to perishable products, the scope for property was restricted. Money, by offering a durable store of value convertible against all useful things, unleashed the potential for property accumulation and for the intergenerational transmission of inequality. For Locke then, money was indispensable to that development of cultural memory on which civilisation depends.
also btw!
Who Needs the Government Securities Market?
The sheer quantity of bond purchases necessary to stabilize the Treasury market in early 2020 (along with the ongoing QE purchases thereafter) led to a common complaint in the financial sector that the “the church-and-state separation” between fiscal and monetary policy had broken down. The hallowed institution of central bank independence was crumbling as the Fed experimented with “debt monetization”—“printing money” to finance government deficits, rather than allowing the forces of supply and demand in the bond market to keep deficits in check.

What this (possibly disingenuous) line of criticism glosses over, however, is the fact that the debt was already monetized well before the crisis, whether it was on the Fed’s balance sheet or not. Indeed, one reason it was so crucial for the Fed to perform the equivalence of Treasuries and cash in March 2020 is that Treasury securities of all maturities have functioned for decades as a kind of money in the shadow banking system. Much as commercial banks operate by issuing short-term deposit liabilities against long-term assets, shadow banks today finance Treasury holdings by posting them as collateral in short-term repurchase agreements. Because of this, even long-term Treasury bonds have effectively become a money market instrument, a form of shadow money that circulates among financial institutions. So when the Fed rescued the government securities market, it was not simply bailing out the fiscal state. Rather, it was stabilizing the architecture of the shadow banking sector—a sector which cannot function without an implicit (now explicit) guarantee that Treasury bonds will remain convertible to short-term cash in repo markets...

Who benefits from this arrangement? To be sure, the global reputation of the U.S. dollar is probably enhanced by maintaining the appearance (however misleading) that the private sector, and not the Fed, is the ultimate wellspring of demand for Treasury debt. And most mainstream economists would likely point out that depth and liquidity of the government securities is a boon for the U.S. taxpayer, as the high liquidity premium on Treasuries makes for lower financing costs. Still, once you read a bit of Modern Monetary Theory, these arguments start to ring hollow. Yes, there is a liquidity premium on Treasury bonds. But there is much higher liquidity premium on actual cash. If fiscal deficits were monetized directly, say with a trillion-dollar coin, the idea of liquidity premia marginally reducing yields becomes moot.

Much more directly than it benefits “the taxpayer,” guaranteed liquidity in government security markets benefits finance capital, and—to risk redundancy—the very, very wealthy.[4] In the 2010s, the top 1% of U.S. households owned 55% of the domestic household share of public debt. The domestic corporate share of public debt, for its part, has long been dominated by the financial sector, which has held roughly 97% since the 1980s. Older generations might still have an image of lower- and middle-income Americans stashing savings bonds in filing cabinets or safe-deposit boxes. But today, the humble and relatively egalitarian savings bond accounts for an ever-diminishing fraction of the public debt. The lion’s share is in the form of marketable securities, traded among Wall Street firms and high net worth individuals. (This is all documented in Sandy Brian Hager’s excellent book on the subject)...

Perhaps there is another way. For the past 70 years, since the Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord of 1951, the institution of central bank independence in the United States has been defined by the Federal Reserve’s informal mandate to “minimize the monetization of the public debt.” Today, the new standing repo facilities make clear that the Fed is more committed than ever to keeping the debt monetized—not necessarily to provide cheap financing to the Treasury, but rather to maintain private sector financial stability. So, what if, instead of keeping monetization behind the scenes for the purpose of backstopping shadow banks and financial elites, the Fed publicly embraced debt monetization and channeled it to a broader public purpose?

One idea is mandating that the Fed provide accessible, interest-bearing checking accounts (“FedAccounts”) for the general public.[5] This would involve a huge expansion of Federal Reserve liabilities as it opened new checking accounts for millions of Americans, and correspondingly huge purchases of Treasury securities. Aside from eliminating banking deserts, streamlining the payments system, and putting predatory check cashing services out of business, one benefit of the FedAccounts proposal is that it would displace the engine of private debt monetization that propels much of the shadow banking sector. Consider government money market funds (MMFs), for example. This is a $4 trillion sector whose sole purpose is to convert U.S. Treasuries (and Treasury repo) into cash equivalents. Why should private firms be allowed to profit from this activity when the Fed is already guaranteeing the moneyness of Treasuries? What service do they provide? FedAccounts would displace these funds by offering to pay all depositors the same rate of interest that the Fed currently pays to commercial banks—known as the interest-on-reserves, or IOR, rate. At 0.15%, the current IOR rate is significantly higher than the 0.01% average return on government MMFs over the past year. What’s more, where MMFs issue cash equivalents (technically equity shares whose value is stabilized at $1), FedAccounts would offer fully guaranteed government money. Essentially, they would cut out the middleman, delivering higher yields directly to consumers.

More ambitiously, the Federal Reserve could leverage its debt monetization powers to fuel a green transition. The legal scholar Saule Omarova has proposed the creation of a National Investment Authority—a kind of public asset manager whose sole purpose would be directing investment capital toward green development. Omarova suggests that the Fed could support the liquidity of debt issued by the NIA in the same way that it currently supports the liquidity of Treasury and Agency securities. Building on Omarova’s proposal, we could imagine the Fed promoting widespread participation in such a National Investment Authority by marketing investment accounts to consumers that offered higher yields than FedAccounts but had more time restrictions or penalties for withdrawals. To incentivize participation, these public investment accounts could be made risk-free—guaranteed against nominal loss—much as the possibility of redemption guarantees holders of savings bonds against nominal capital loss today.

These are just a few of the more developed and (with a bit of political imagination) eminently attainable reform programs. But the main thing I want to elicit here is a sense of possibility. There is no law mandating that the Treasury and Federal Reserve coordinate to provide interest-bearing, high-denomination money for the shadow banking sector. Nor, as Nathan Tankus points out, is there any necessary financing purpose to the Treasury issuing a range of maturities paying different interest rates. Issuing and stabilizing Treasury bonds is subsidizing private finance. The clearer we can make that, the better we can demand that the Fed subsidize the things that really matter.
The Economic Mistake the Left Is Finally Confronting [ungted] - "The left needs to think as much about supply as it does about demand."

The Exponential Age will transform economics forever - "It's hard for us to fathom exponential change – but our inability to do so could tear apart businesses, economies and the fabric of society."

The Stacey Abrams tour - "Stacey Abrams this week launched an ambitious national tour that will stretch across months and many swing states ahead of the 2022 midterms — and potentially elevate her standing in the Democratic Party in the process. Abrams kicked off the tour Tuesday in San Antonio, where she told one local journalist 'unequivocally, yes' she'd like to run for president one day."

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[*] China's high-tech push seeks to reassert global factory dominance - "Beijing's pivot puts the focus on advanced manufacturing, rather than the services sector, to steer the world's second-largest economy past the so-called 'middle income trap', where countries lose productivity and stagnate in lower-value economic output... Manufacturing's share of China's GDP fell to 26.2% in 2020 from 32.5% in 2006, while the services sector has lifted its contribution to 54.5% from 41.8%, according to the World Bank. Officials worry too rapid a shift towards services, which employs more people but is less productive than manufacturing, could undermine long-term growth, as it did in some Latin American economies. Beijing does not want manufacturing to dip below 25% of GDP, roughly in line with South Korea's economic profile, government advisers said... From 2021 to 2025, China aims to boost R&D spending by over 7% annually, focusing on 'frontier' technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and semi-conductors. The plan, which broadly supersedes 'Made In China 2025' initiative from 2015, targets nine emerging industries: new-generation information technology, biotech, new energy, new materials, high-end equipment, new-energy vehicles, environmental protection, aerospace and marine equipment. The central bank has channelled more credit into manufacturing, especially high-tech firms, at the expense of the property sector, which faces fresh curbs against speculative investment."

"Real estate -- including construction, finance, and local government -- is the system by which China has redistributed the vast wealth created by its manufacturing success."[6,7] --@Noahpinion
posted by kliuless (54 comments total) 48 users marked this as a favorite
 
Jamelle Bouie: It’s All or Nothing for These Democrats, Even if That Means Biden Fails
[A]casual observer might assume that in the struggle to move President Biden’s agenda through Congress, the chief obstacle (beyond Republican opposition) is the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and its demands for bigger, more ambitious programs. Biden was, after all, not their first choice for president. Or their second. He won the Democratic presidential nomination over progressive opposition, and there was a sense on the left, throughout the campaign, that Biden was not (and would not be) ready to deal with the scale of challenges ahead of him or the country.

But that casual observer would be wrong. Progressives have been critical of Biden, especially on immigration and foreign affairs. On domestic policy, however, they’ve been strong team players, partners in pushing the president’s priorities through Congress. The reconciliation bill, for instance, is as much the work of Bernie Sanders as it is of the White House. As chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders guided the initial budget resolution through the chamber, compromising on his priorities in order to build consensus with other Democrats in the Senate.

Progressive Democrats want the bill to pass, even if it isn’t as large as they would like. They believe, correctly, that a win for Biden is a win for them. Moderate Democrats, however, seem to think that their success depends on their distance from the president and his progressive allies. Their obstruction might hurt Biden, but, they seem to believe, it won’t hurt them.

This is nonsense. Democrats will either rise together in next year’s elections or they’ll fall together. The best approach, given the strong relationship between presidential popularity and a party’s midterm performance, is to put as much of Biden’s agenda into law as possible by whatever means possible.

But this would demand a more unapologetically partisan approach, and that is where the real divide between moderates and progressives emerges. Moderate and centrist Democrats seem to value a bipartisan process more than they do any particular policy outcome or ideological goal.

The most charitable explanation is that they believe that their constituents value displays of bipartisanship more than any new law or benefit. A less charitable explanation is that they see bipartisanship as a way to clip the wings of Democratic Party ambition and save themselves from taking votes that might put them in conflict with either voters or donors.

What is true of both explanations is that they show the extent to which moderate Democrats have made a fetish of bipartisan displays and anti-partisan feeling. And in doing so, they reveal that they are most assuredly not the adults in the room of American politics.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 4:55 AM on September 24, 2021 [10 favorites]


Greg Sargent: Biden’s agenda is in trouble. It’s absolutely clear who is to blame.
As Democrats hurtle into the final stretch of negotiations over the multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation bill, centrists holding out against its spending levels are spinning a new narrative about how we got here.

Don’t let them get away with this rewrite. If President Biden’s agenda does implode — which seems at least possible — the centrists themselves will be the ones to blame.

This also should prompt a reconsideration of the mythology that centrists, unlike progressives, are distinguished by their steely, clear-eyed determination to make Washington “work,” and their refusal to let hard governing realities get obscured by gauzy ideological nebula clouds.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 4:59 AM on September 24, 2021 [17 favorites]


Which would be very bad news, because the status quo isn’t working.

Ah, but that's the rub; the status quo _is_ working for groups that have a vested financial interest in the status quo remaining as it is, who have no interest in sweeping change and reform that might disturb that, and who have paid for the privilege of having the ear of those in a position to control that.

the U.S. needs a new FDR

We have two viable parties in the U.S. One swears daily that the first FDR was the Antichrist and seeks to tear down any progress he made. The other is... well... troubled.
posted by delfin at 5:06 AM on September 24, 2021 [6 favorites]


I haven't read any of the posted information, in what is, just from my scanning it, a totally epic FPP, but I don't see how this can be about anything other than race. The thin white edge of the Democratic right is calling the shots due to the vanishingly thin margin Dems have in Congress, and all the giveaways and reductions in the size of the Biden sponsored legislation have been directly to the purpose of keeping them from bolting across the aisle. I'd be a lot more sanguine about it if someone would just come out and say it for what it is, instead of papering it over with talk of deficits, and other coded bullshit.
posted by hwestiii at 5:33 AM on September 24, 2021 [4 favorites]


Dems keep chasing the same mythical centrists they were chasing thirty years ago, and are consistently amazed when (1) there aren't enough of them to swing elections and (2) it alienates the progressive wing of the party, which is quickly overtaking the moderate bloc in both size and volume. Meanwhile, the GOP votes in lockstep, and votes against anything authored by a Dem, regardless of whether it actually aligns with their own goals, because pwning the libs is more important than doing any meaningful work. And the Dems keep moving further to the right, trying desperately to find the magic inflection point where they'll be able to get the GOP to embrace bipartisanship, and totally failing to grasp that they're trying to appease a room full of intransigent toddlers who have missed both their nap and their snack.

Plus ca change...
posted by Mayor West at 5:58 AM on September 24, 2021 [11 favorites]


If losing the House is a certainty next year, everything Democrats put in place now is going to take time for the GOP to undo later with the added benefit that some things might actually prove popular enough that Republicans either just leave it in place, or get sufficiently wounded repealing it that there's something for Democrats to run on during the next election.

Look how hard it was for Republicans to repeal the ACA. In the end, they couldn't do it, and all the time they spent trying was less time that they had to pursue their own agenda.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:03 AM on September 24, 2021 [9 favorites]


Dems keep chasing the same mythical centrists they were chasing thirty years ago…
This seems like an oversimplification and a somewhat dated one: it’s some Dems, notably not including the President or the significant progressive faction you described as overtaking the moderates. Where I see it the most true is less the old guard members but almost the entire press corps which continues to excuse Republican malfeasance and present stories using framings which haven’t been true for decades or which were invented by the GOP during the Obama era. How many of the debt ceiling stories even mention that the Republicans are filibustering attempts to solve it, or that these concerns about debt only arise when it’s being taken on to help people?
posted by adamsc at 6:05 AM on September 24, 2021 [10 favorites]


David Boren
posted by wittgenstein at 6:11 AM on September 24, 2021


It's frustrating to me that it is EXTREMELY likely that, in the face of moderate Democrats preventing popular bills from passing, it's the left who will probably be blamed for losses. Between this and recent news on issues like immigration I know plenty of people who at minimum don't feel like it's worth voting for Democrats; I'm not a "both sides are the same" guy (although I am not huge on electoral politics) but stuff like this makes it really hard to generate enthusiasm for electing Democrats and I'm sick of the left being blamed for being less than excited to vote for people who are continuing many horrible policies and failing to implement good ones.
posted by an octopus IRL at 6:15 AM on September 24, 2021 [12 favorites]


Also - I'm sure all those voters in GA who worked hard to get two Democrats elected appreciate the Democrats in Congress throwing up their hands and claiming they can't pass Voting Reform.
posted by wittgenstein at 6:18 AM on September 24, 2021 [31 favorites]


Also - I'm sure all those voters in GA who worked hard to get two Democrats elected appreciate the Democrats in Congress throwing up their hands and claiming they can't pass Voting Reform.

Yeah this is a really good point, how incredibly frustrating and demoralizing for people in Georgia who worked really hard to vote and everyone who worked really hard to get others to vote (and to enable them to vote in the face of voter suppression); it's easy to see how next time they'd feel like it's just not worth it, especially as voting gets harder.
posted by an octopus IRL at 6:26 AM on September 24, 2021 [8 favorites]


Since Democrats controlled Congress for such long (1949-1995) time, I sometimes wonder if there's this perception among lawmakers who came of age during that period that there will come A Moment when the party is once again restored to near-permanent majority and only once that happens can all the big, monumental legislation be put forth.

I know I'm sometimes guilty of thinking that demographic trends will save us.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:33 AM on September 24, 2021 [5 favorites]


It's frustrating to me that it is EXTREMELY likely that, in the face of moderate Democrats preventing popular bills from passing, it's the left who will probably be blamed for losses.

At this point I would be surprised if they waited until the elections to start changing the narrative. I give it less than a week between the bills failing and a deluge of articles citing "sources within the Biden administration and Dem leadership" and poorly-researched op-eds that blame this all on the Green New Deal or whatever.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 6:36 AM on September 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


"We would really like to make some changes, honestly, but all these people calling for change are making change impossible! If they were nice and simply stopped asking for change, then we will get around to change. Pinky swear."
posted by Philipschall at 6:41 AM on September 24, 2021 [5 favorites]


And the Dems keep moving further to the right, trying desperately to find the magic inflection point where they'll be able to get the GOP to embrace bipartisanship, and totally failing to grasp that they're trying to appease a room full of intransigent toddlers who have missed both their nap and their snack.

But much of the FPP and several comments since point out that this theory isn't true at all. Joe Biden proposed big, ambitious spending programs -- and tax increases -- that might not be as big as progressives wanted but gained their support as a good first step. It's just a couple of centrists -- not "moderate", but "centrist", as in always defining themselves between mainstream Democrats and Republicans, which means steadily chasing the increasingly radicalized Republicans to the right -- that are holding things up.

And likely in ways that won't aid their re-election, though doubtless they perceive other potential benefits.
posted by Gelatin at 7:07 AM on September 24, 2021 [10 favorites]


Take this data point for what it's worth, but though the so-called "liberal media" certainly is terrible about lazily sticking with outdated framing and rewarding view-from-nowhere centrism, NPR, at least, has been pretty clear that a) it's Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema (no doubt running interference for other timid centrists who don't want their names in the news) standing in the way of Biden's agenda, and 2) that Republicans are lockstep in voting against the debt ceiling.

One possible hope is that brinksmanship in negotiations is a common, if dramatic, tactic, and no one has walked away from the table yet. The point of the FPP is valid -- Democrats are going to rise and fall together, so if Manchin blocks Biden's legislative priorities, this term is his last anyway, and no one wins but Mitch McConnell.
posted by Gelatin at 7:13 AM on September 24, 2021 [8 favorites]


Ah, but that's the rub; the status quo _is_ working for groups that have a vested financial interest in the status quo remaining as it is

I'm not convinced. It's working for billionaires, and they get a lot of votes in the matter. But a lot of the entrenched interests are just trying to hold a line that has been long since overrun. The characteristic thought process of the ruling class isn't an ideology, it's The Secret.
posted by wotsac at 7:25 AM on September 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


Manchin and Sinema must have a price... give them something for their districts to get them to vote in favor . LBJ knew how to play this game.

Personally I think Manchin is bought and paid for by someone because he only exists to get in the way of the left.
posted by kokaku at 7:29 AM on September 24, 2021 [9 favorites]


This is an easy answer - corruption and the system that encourages it.
posted by BigBrooklyn at 7:34 AM on September 24, 2021


I think the problem may be that Manchin and Sinema do not have a price. I don't think they care if they don't get re-elected. They already have something else lined up.
posted by wittgenstein at 7:44 AM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]


Manchin and Sinema must have a price

Dave Weigel:
One of the first big congressional fights I covered was Obamacare, so it's still surprising to watch conservative Dems get squeamish in the same way *without* any visible public opposition. Nobody flooding their town halls, no anti-reconciliation protests. Just some donor $$$. Dems got back from the August 2009 recess rattled about the political backlash to ACA. You aren't seeing a real (as opposed to astroturf) backlash to reconciliation. Instead you have stuff like Kathleen Rice killing a prescription drug proposal so popular she used to run on it.
And an addendum from Jamelle Bouie:
a combination of shameless corruption, poor instincts, and terminal political cowardice, and honestly, i would not mind the corruption so much if it were in service of actually accomplishing something. a little honest graft can make the gears turn. but this is just venal self-enrichment.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 7:51 AM on September 24, 2021 [18 favorites]


Wow, what a fabulous fpp!

I still have yet to get through all the links, but right off the bat that quote from @Noahpinion is possibly the best distillation of the left/right divide — and explanation of why I find the “moral bullshit” from much of the right so damn infuriating — that I’ve seen.
posted by bjrubble at 8:12 AM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


Rotating villains? Nobody mentioned this? Huh.
posted by pepcorn at 8:18 AM on September 24, 2021


I'm no fan of Joe Manchin. But remember: He's the Senator from West Virginia, a state that went for Trump by 40 percentage points; the only more pro-Trump state was Wyoming. In contrast, Vermont (the bluest state) went for Biden by only 35 percentage points. Manchin managed to get elected (by 3 percent in 2018) because he knows his constituency and because his political beliefs match sufficiently with theirs.

Yes, I know that money has power and that voter preferences of poorer people are not appropriately represented and agree that's a problem and sometimes I despair for democracy, but still he got elected Senator from West Virginia and I didn't and you didn't so why are you acting so shocked?
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:53 AM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


I'm not convinced. It's working for billionaires, and they get a lot of votes in the matter. But a lot of the entrenched interests are just trying to hold a line that has been long since overrun. The characteristic thought process of the ruling class isn't an ideology, it's The Secret.

It's because the billionaires have aligned themselves with white supremacy and disgruntled whites. The billionaires promise racial solidarity and a reinstatement of the racial social totem pole where the white who is worst off is considered better than the best black. Then they pull away the economic part of that solidarity away like Lucy pulls the football from Charlie Brown as they use their power built off the back of white electorates to lower taxes and strip the services that would actually help those same electorates.

Why are they not afraid of social collapse in the United States? Because they've all got apocalypse homes ready in New Zealand. Collecting ever more money here and locking it away is simply sport to these fucks. Just tax the fucking wealth and put a major lid on future wealth accumulation.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:55 AM on September 24, 2021 [4 favorites]


so why are you acting so shocked?

Nobody's acting shocked here, we're mad at his (and other's) completely transparent greed and willingness to lie through the skin of his teeth.

Manchin managed to get elected (by 3 percent in 2018) because he knows his constituency and because his political beliefs match sufficiently with theirs.

If you're going to talk about Manchin's constituents, you should at least be aware that Manchin's favorability has been steadily falling since 2019, and even his numbers among Democrats are tepid. Seems to me more and more West Virginians want him to either shit or get off the pot.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 9:04 AM on September 24, 2021 [6 favorites]


Maybe WVa would have stayed Dem (presidential as recently as 96, both Senate seats until 2021, House until 2008) if the Dems actually worked proudly for their constituents instead of being embarssed for their beliefs.
posted by kokaku at 9:05 AM on September 24, 2021 [11 favorites]


There are plenty of things in the reconciliation bill that are VERY popular with West Virginians.
posted by Gadarene at 9:53 AM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


Moderate Democrats are gonna be real surprised and disappointed when the mob comes for them someday. "But I'm one of the *good* Democrats!"
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:14 AM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


More pushback on the "but they're doing it because their constituents want it" argument from Josh Marshall, this time on Sinema:

A Democrat Only Republicans Can Love
A pattern was starting to develop. Despite her public presentation of independence and push for bipartisanship Sinema wasn’t particularly popular [with] independents. It was Republicans who seemed to like her a lot, at least compared to other Democrats. A pretty straightforward conclusion is that they liked her not so much for being a ‘moderate’ but for her tendency to stick it to her own party.

That tendency was in even sharper relief six weeks later (June 17th to 23rd) in another poll from Bendixen & Amandi. By now Sinema’s approval among Democrats had barely budged. Just 47% of Dems approved her performance as Senator. Only 46% of independents approved. But she had a new superpower. Her approval among Republicans was an eye-popping 54%. Only 32% disapproved. In an era of polarization that’s an astonishing 22% net approval from the opposite party.

The notable thing is that Sinema had no great advantage with independents. Her ace in the hole was Republicans, Fox News viewers. She’d built a constituency of partisan Republicans who really like her because she’s constantly wrongfooting her own party.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 1:29 PM on September 24, 2021 [11 favorites]


The notable thing is that Sinema had no great advantage with independents. Her ace in the hole was Republicans, Fox News viewers. She’d built a constituency of partisan Republicans who really like her because she’s constantly wrongfooting her own party.

While, notably, self-proclaimed Republican "moderates" like Susan Collins reliably vote in lockstep with their party in every way that matters.
posted by Gelatin at 1:46 PM on September 24, 2021 [11 favorites]


Sinema's constituency is Republicans. Same for Manchin. That's the point you're supposed to notice when you realize that people who vote for Trump also, in large numbers, vote for them. They're not ignoring their voters and constituents - they're ignoring the party. It's up to the party to find someone who actually agrees with them and can get elected in these places.
posted by bashing rocks together at 3:39 PM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


Correct me if I'm wrong, but Arizona's other Democratic senator doesn't seem to act like Sinema.
posted by mollweide at 3:56 PM on September 24, 2021 [7 favorites]


Come on now, you don't really want me to comment on the fact that we elected center right democrats who feel it is there job to get nothing done, except perhaps make sure those damned leftists get nothing, NOTHING! And that I'm not talking about Manchin and Sinema (we used to call these people republicans back when we had an economy and 2 semi legitimate parties) I mean Biden, Harris, and a raft of democrats who wave their hands in pretend fear and anger but do absolutely nothing to fix the problem. We reap what we sow. I hope everybody will be happy with the fascist takeover.
posted by evilDoug at 4:06 PM on September 24, 2021 [1 favorite]


"This is why America as an experiment -- the building of a society that is both diverse and free -- is so important. Without that experiment, the story of America would be just another boring example of conquest and ethnonationalism. I believe that this, ultimately, is the source of America's fundamental divide. The question of whether this nation is an ethnostate whose right to existence is based on nothing but the legacy of brute force, or whether it is a creedal nation that stands for something greater."[1] --@Noahpinion

I think in context of the tweet ("macroeconomics of imperialism"), this position is naive and rather Steven Pinker-esque. America both historically and modernly is an "interesting experiment" in the brutalities of neoliberal consensus. Is America, and more broadly the West, relatively free and its people have opportunities to improve on that? Yes. But whether a country was a conqueror or a conqueree has little to do with, and cannot explain, the fundamental divide of classism/kyriarchy, a phenomenon that exists in countries all over the world, and is not exceptional to America, and indeed the story of desiring and working toward a democratic society is one that has occurred time and again in modern history in countries all over the world.
posted by polymodus at 4:57 PM on September 24, 2021


I disagree, polymodus —however far it’s fallen short, the US is one of the few nations in the world whose formal charter is an appeal to universal human rights rather than ethnicity, and this is worth defending.

You can say that this was just gaslighting by the (rich white slave-owning) drafters of that charter, and I wouldn’t disagree, but to me the solution is to keep fighting for the principles they claimed to uphold, rather than sink complacently back into the Hobbesian abyss.
posted by bjrubble at 5:39 PM on September 24, 2021 [9 favorites]


Hmm, on reflection that was probably a bit short and unfair to polymodus' post.

But I really feel like "bullshit" is the most useful prism for looking at this sort of thing. The insidious thing about bullshit is that it uses the language and tropes of rational inquiry to support positions that are diametrically opposed. (The apotheosis of which might be the notion that "tolerance requires that you tolerate intolerance.") The entire goal is to cast doubt on the notion that it's possible to seek something better than the shitty status quo, that since people aren't perfect we should be happy with a world where the powerful abuse the powerless and it's perfectly fine to return trust with a knife in the back.

I think Jesus Christ is a perfect encapsulation of this -- the shitty behavior of so-called "Christians" doesn't really mean that notions such as "turn the other cheek" aren't worthy moral principles, or that condemning Christianity as a whole is more laudable than earnestly asking its devotees to live their fucking creed.

(eta: sorry for profanity/inanity -- I've had Dave Barry's "4 to 7 beers" and might be a bit fighty at the moment.)
posted by bjrubble at 6:03 PM on September 24, 2021


Sinema's constituency is Republicans. Same for Manchin. That's the point you're supposed to notice when you realize that people who vote for Trump also, in large numbers, vote for them.

In 2018, Sinema got 12 percent of the Republican vote. She got 97 percent of the Democratic vote and 50 percent of the independent vote. That combination gave her 49.96% of the popular vote in her Senate election, allowing her to beat Martha McSally by a popular vote margin of 2.35%. She has actively spent her time since being elected taking actions which have increased her approval rating with Republicans and lowered same with Democrats and independents.

There is no world where her actions make sense from an electoral math standpoint. She is practically begging for a primary challenge at this point.

As for Manchin, his numbers are much the same: 85% of Democrats, 17% of Republicans, 50% of independents, for a win of 49.57% of the popular vote and by 3.31%. Even in WV, the math doesn't make sense.
posted by mightygodking at 6:15 PM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


If it wasn’t Manchin or Sinema, some other Democrats would step up to the plate.

That’s their job as a party. Finding excuses not to wield power.

They won’t abolish the filibuster. They won’t expand the Supreme Court. They won’t even appoint a Parliamentarian that doesn’t sabotage their agenda.

At a certain point you have to realise that no party can be this consistently clueless and stupid and incompetent. They are doing their jobs with perfect competence. It is a deliberate, almost completely transparent scam.
posted by moorooka at 7:06 PM on September 24, 2021 [16 favorites]


If it wasn’t Manchin or Sinema, some other Democrats would step up to the plate.

That’s very likely true. But a big part of the reason for that is that the rightmost 10% of Democrats are just to the left of the leftmost Republicans, not to say centrist independents, which is not actually very left wing at all. America has a hideous set of social priorities and from what I can see most places don’t have a substantial popular movement that supports things like a living wage or universal health care. In other words, the politicians you despise are actually doing a good job of representing their constituents’ wishes.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:59 AM on September 25, 2021


If centrists like Manchin and Sinema manage to block Biden’s agenda this year, it’s likely that any hope of a transformative Biden presidency will be dashed

Manchin and Sinema are on the short list of Democrats that Exxon Mobile call up when they need some fossil fuel friendly legislation passed or to block something that demands environmental responsibility. Their obstructionism is really that simple.
posted by subdee at 8:16 AM on September 25, 2021 [3 favorites]


In an undercover video, a lobbyist for ExxonMobil revealed his go-to list of senators for undermining climate action—and who he considers the “kingmaster.”

LIke you don't need to explain this in culture war terms, about "moderates" not wanting to be seen in the same room with the progressives, or whatever. It's capture by the oil companies and that's why they don't support an infrastructure bill that makes the US less depending on oil. Get those guys out of office and replace them with people who actually care about more than the personal political power they can accumulate by standing in the way.
posted by subdee at 8:21 AM on September 25, 2021 [3 favorites]


That’s their job as a party. Finding excuses not to wield power.

...but it's not their job, their job is to enact the will of their constituents. The simple problem is that they (Congress-people) are for sale, and the laws reinforce that. It's simultaneously complicated and simple (like health-care in the US: it's a for-profit system, and the patients carry the brunt - only country in the world with such a system - try and explain this to someone not from the US and you get called a liar/fabulist 'you have to be making that up, that's _insane_') - restrict the costs of election campaigns, restrict term limits and revolving-door positions... It makes a lot of people a lot of money though, so it's not going to change without some serious, calamitous impetus.

On the oil-company question - where are the oil exec's going to live when the effects of climate change really start fucking things up in 20+ years? Has anyone thought to ask them? They don't seem to realise they're shitting in the kitchen - not our kitchen or their kitchen, the only kitchen (to stretch a metaphor). I wish someone could get that simple fact across to them. The stupidity of it is tiring.
posted by From Bklyn at 9:01 AM on September 25, 2021 [3 favorites]


Climate change effects the poor more than the wealthy, that's the problem. We all have to share the earth but we don't share it equally.

The rich are plotting their escape
posted by subdee at 9:20 AM on September 25, 2021 [2 favorites]


The rich are plotting their escape

There was a good thread here about just this article.

of special note is this comment by Dee Xtrovert about living in Sarajevo during the siege.
posted by From Bklyn at 10:37 AM on September 25, 2021 [3 favorites]


As I see it, the “centrists” entire brand is based on not being Republican + opposing popular Democratic things. They’re flailing around looking for an opportunity to differentiate themselves from progressives but it’s not really possible because of the extremely tight margins in both houses. So they have to make a big fight over things that have already been decided, just so they can proudly declare how “centrist” they are.

I could be wrong. But if we end up with reconciliation passing with something close to $3.5T, we need to start ignoring the “centrists.” Even Manchin. I remember McConnell told Trump in 2017 something like, “Ignore him, he’ll always vote with the Dems when it counts.”
posted by Glibpaxman at 1:10 PM on September 25, 2021


But if we end up with reconciliation passing with something close to $3.5T[...]
We quite clearly won't.
posted by kickingtheground at 1:34 PM on September 25, 2021


The centrists keep acting like we don't print the damned money ourselves. You want to spend but feel bad about the cost? Tax the rich and cut the military. Problem solved.

So tired of the politics of this rotten country.
posted by kokaku at 1:57 PM on September 25, 2021 [6 favorites]


Like the WWF wrestling or Harlem Globe Trotters vs the Washington Generals; american politics is a performative show with much ad-libbing. Why wouldn't the wealthy and powerful run all the parties? why wouldnt they back both sides and the media and referees and the judges and tech company algorythms.

Any cartel or corporation or state actor worth their salt would be an idiot not to corrupt, infiltrate and disrupt all these open institutions.

You can't choose-your-own-adventure your way out of the book author's script.

In the 20th century our understanding of personal psychology, group sociology, marketing, memory and emotion became useful enough that we live "in the matrix" of a democracy while 1%ers literally rape steal murder and rocket-ship their way to our climate apocalypse while we are lifestyle slaves and debt slaves to BS job in a BS economy.

We spend our time talking to bots while they Tuttle-Buttle us to the gulags

Thank you for choosing Delta for your trip.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 2:18 AM on September 26, 2021 [4 favorites]


I would imagine these billionaires plotting their escape to Mars or whatever think their outer space sanctuary is going to be like Elysium, but it would be more like High Life.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:13 AM on September 27, 2021


NYT: As Sinema resists the budget bill, she is set to raise money from business groups that oppose it.
The planned event comes during a make-or-break week for President Biden’s agenda, when House Democrats are trying to pass a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that Ms. Sinema helped negotiate, and trying to nail down the details of a social policy and climate bill that could spend as much as $3.5 trillion over the next decade.

Ms. Sinema has said she cannot support a bill that large, and has privately told Senate Democratic colleagues that she is averse to the corporate and individual tax rate increases that both the House and Senate tax-writing committees had planned to use to help pay for the measure.

In both positions, she is likely to find a receptive audience at the fund-raiser. The S-Corp PAC, for instance, has told its members the rate increases in the package that passed the House Ways and Means Committee “would kneecap private companies” like theirs that pay taxes through the individual tax system, not the corporate tax system.

Eric Hoplin, the chief executive of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, which buy products from manufacturers at wholesale rates and distribute them to retailers, said in a statement earlier this month, “Passing the largest tax increase in U.S. history on the backs of America’s job creators as they recover from a global pandemic is the last thing Washington should be doing.”

In a lengthy message to members this month, Robert Yeakel, the director of government relations at the National Grocers Association, went over a “laundry list of tax hikes that Democrats are contemplating.”
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 4:59 PM on September 27, 2021


Welp, looks like Dem leadership and the White House are getting ready to throw the progressives under the bus:
In a private caucus meeting, Pelosi, D-Calif., said the party must "make difficult choices," because the dynamics have changed and Democrats have not yet agreed to a spending level, according to a source familiar with the meeting.

"I told all of you that we wouldn't go on to the [infrastructure bill until] we had the reconciliation bill passed by the Senate. We were right on schedule to do all of that, until 10 days ago, a week ago, when I heard the news that this number had to come down," Pelosi said, according to the source. "It all changed, so our approach had to change.

"We had to accommodate the changes that were being necessitated. And we cannot be ready to say until the Senate passed the bill we can't do BIF," she said, using a shorthand for Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, the source said.

The remarks represent a significant reversal for Pelosi, who vowed in June that the House "ain't" going to vote on the infrastructure bill until the mega-bill has passed the Senate.
Like the moderates, Pelosi apparently refuses to provide specifics or a hard number, just throws it out there that "something" changed last week. What happened? Who knows! But I guess we're just supposed to trust the same people who have spent the last several weeks spreading bald-faced lies and meeting with corporate slimeballs to sabotage their own party. If this is the case, they'll need to sell this line hard, so don't be at all surprised if we start to see Biden/Pelosi hype men like Hoyer or Clyburn show up on the news channels over the next few days, fulminating about how the real traitors here are the party's left flank.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 7:07 AM on September 28, 2021


and for what? for a little bit of money: same day[1]

@doctorow: "But as @HaroldMeyerson writes for @TheProspect, there's a high-stakes, high-risk gambit that would let the willing, principled Democrats pass the whole package - simply cut the programs' funding to four years, rather than a decade."

@mucha_carlos: "Well, they're getting closer to stumbling on the truth, yesterday @WhipClyburn said 5 yrs of funding, @haroldmeyerson says 4 yrs of funding today. Tomorrow, someone somewhere will say 3 yrs, to end one month before next presidential election (that's key part) then I'll find peace."

also btw...
I'm slowly becoming pilled on this idea: "Free payfor to anyone who needs one: If Congress stopped authorizing new T-Bonds or T-Notes & enacted Warren-Sanders wealth tax w/ rate chained to 3 mo T-Bill rate, it'd collect very little money & yet would cut net interest spending by $5T/10y or so."
posted by kliuless at 1:59 AM on September 29, 2021


@thrasherxy: "A catastrophic failure of US journalism and politics is that something like Biden's 10-year, $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill is not called a $350 billion annual bill...but the Pentagon's budget, which will exceed $7.5 trillion over a decade, is called a $750 billion annual bill. Manchin says he won't vote for a $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill. The US war budget doesn't go down, not even after we allegedly end wars. It was bigger than ever this year. $7.5 trillion is the floor for what it will be over the next decade—and Manchin voted for it."[1]
posted by kliuless at 9:56 PM on September 29, 2021 [4 favorites]


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