So the rotating villain is when the democratic party doesn’t want to pass a bill, but they also don’t want their base to be mad at them. So they find a way to pretend they want to pass it, knowing someone else will block it. Then that person takes all the blame and they can con their voters into thinking the democratic party really wanted to pass it.
Recently this came up with the government shutdown. In the senate, the democrats got a lot of senators who aren’t up for reelection or who won’t run until 2028 or later to vote to end the shutdown, knowing that voters will have forgotten by 2028. It lets all the other democratic politicians avoid accountability despite them actually supporting ending the shutdown.
Sinema and Manchin under Biden did this too. I think the build back better act was an example of this. Manchin and Sinema were opposed to it, and all the heat got directed at them and not at all the other democrats who pretended to support it, but secretly knew it wouldn’t pass so they didn’t have to face the wrath of their voters at home.
Or the ACA with Joe Lieberman. Lieberman blocked the public option. The public option can be passed at any time with reconciliation and 50 votes in the senate, but Lieberman took the blame because the democrats had no interest in a public option.
But sometimes the ‘rotating villian’ isn’t a democrat, its a republican who they know will block it.
Like in 2007 when democrats controlled congress and George W Bush was president. The democrats had no problem passing the employee free choice act through congress since they knew Bush would veto it. THe EFCA made it easier to join a union. However in 2009/2010 when democrats expanded their congressional majorities and Obama had the presidency, the democrats couldn’t pass the EFCA anymore. In fact several democratic senators who voted for the EFCA when they knew Bush would veto it said they wouldn’t vote to pass it again when Obama was president.
Or single payer healthcare in California. When democrats controlled congress and Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, the democratic congress could pass single payer on the state level since they knew the republican governor would veto it. But now that the democrats have a much larger majority in the CA state legislature and a democratic governor, they can’t pass single payer health care anymore.
This seems like the left wing equivalent of the idea that Trump is playing 12D chess. Do you have any evidence in all those cases that it was in fact the evil conniving Democrat overlords who were behind it all and ordered the rebels to do their bidding? Rather than the Democrats just being ineffectual at two party politics as usual?
I think your interpretation of the Sinema and Manchin situation is somewhat far fetched. If those two went along I think the Dems would have been happy to pass it all. And it would have been fine with the Democratic base.
I’m extremely skeptical idea that all those things were the democratic leadership being conniving and getting something they wanted achieved without the bad PR of doing it openly, as opposed to the Democrats just being crap.
It definitely reminds me of people claiming the lastest demented incoherent rant by Trump is actually sophisticated strategy on his part, that his opponents just don’t get.
I’m a democratic voter. I just feel the democratic party is trying to manage a progressive base with the fact that we live in a plutocracy. On one hand, they want to pretend to try to pass progressive legislation so their base will be happy, but on the other hand they don’t actually want to pass progressive legislation since it makes the rich and powerful upset. So they are walking a tightrope of trying to figure out how to pretend they want progressive legislation (single payer, the EFCA, a public option, etc) without actually having to pass those things.
In 2007 the following democratic senators voted for cloture on the employee free choice act, which made joining a labor union easier.
Blanche Lincoln (AR)
Arlen Specter (D-PA) (yeah I know, not that anyone expected better from him)
Ben Nelson (NE)
Mark Pryor (AR)
Dianne Feinstein (CA)
Thomas Carper (DE)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
All 7 voted for cloture on the EFCA in 2007 when they knew George W Bush would veto any bill.
But when 2009 came and the democrats had 59-60 seats, the first 4 senators listed said they’d join a republican filibuster of the same bill. The final 3 senators said the bill needed massive reform before being passed.
So you have 7 democratic senators on record voting for the EFCA when they knew it’d never pass into law, who then either said they’d join a GOP filibuster or that the bill needed massive changes once they actually had the power to pass it.
In 2008, governor Schwarzenegger vetoed a single payer bill passed by democrats in the CA legislature.
In 2008, California democrats had 25/40 state senate seats and 51/80 state assembly seats
In 2024 for example, California democrats had 30/40 state senate seats and 60/80 state assembly seats
So why did the current governor Newsom, who ran on single payer, not find himself able to pass it now that the democrats have larger majorities in the CA state legislature than they did in 2008 when they got it passed in state congress?
As a result, Congress did not include the public option in the bill passed under reconciliation. The public option was later supported by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party in the 2016 and 2020 elections and multiple other Democratic candidates, including the later President Joe Biden.[3][4] However, Joe Biden made no attempt to implement a public option in his four years as President.[5]
Biden ran on a public option in 2020, but made no efforts to pass it in reconciliation with 50 votes plus Harris as tie breaker when democrats controlled the senate.
It’s because many Democratic senators genuinely think that shutting down the government does not further their aims. The party that generally wants less government activity is the GOP. And when shutdown has an aspect that Trump really does not like, he brazenly violates the law to do what he wants. So it’s mostly Senators who fear being primaried, or voted out of leadership, who favor a shutdown.
As for legislators who very much want to be reelected, they are in a bind because winning primaries requires saying you are going to fight, something impractical when you are in the minority.
Today’s congressional minority isn’t totally powerless because they can often block measures with a Senate filibuster. If the filibuster is eliminated, the Democrats won’t even have the highly dubious shutdown tactic available to show their base that they are fighting. it may then be the only way for the minority to have an impact will be a physical brawl, like in the Taiwan legislature. At a minimum, insults hurled on the House and Senate floor will become more common and vehement.
Sinema, a moderate freshman lawmaker, has hindered the Senate’s ability to enact Biden’s progressive agenda through objections to amending the filibuster. Her resistance has prevented the passage of legislation to protect voting rights and tackle climate change.
“Separately,” Axios continued in its synopsis, “Sinema told colleagues five or six other Senate Dem moderates were ‘hiding behind my skirt’ as she pushed back on the left.”
In 2022, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson publicly admitted that if Roe was actually overturned, the “trigger” law he had signed would lead to “heartbreaking circumstances” that he personally disagreed with.
The Democrats have a minority in both houses. They can NOT pass any bills.
The voters were tired of the shut down. At first the GOP was blamed for it, but then as time went on the voting public started blaming the Dems. And the Filibuster wasnt doing anything, other than making the public aware that it was the GOP that was cutting ACA. Once the Public was aware of that, and the polls started turning against them, it was time to stop.
They tried and failed in 2022. But in order to do it, they really need a Federal waiver- which aint happening. And it is no use ONE state passing UHC. It also would cost too much-
(Kalra proposed a series of taxes on businesses and high-earning households to fund the single-payer system, estimated by legislative analysts to cost between $314 billion and $391 billion annually.)
The entire annual budget for CA is $321B.
Please also note that CA does not have a 'congress" it was a “legislature”.
Right, the Dems can not afford to abuse the Filibuster.
Based on what you wrote, Sinema was the source of that information. It really doesn’t matter who wrote the book. And even if what she claimed was true, how does this translate to a high level Democratic Party strategy?
No true scotsman it is. The politics bureau chief at politico is not credible. Also none of the other things I pointed out count for anything.
Jonathan Martin is the politics bureau chief and senior political columnist at POLITICO, where he writes a reported column on policy, politics, and campaigns. Prior to starting his column in 2022, Martin was the national political correspondent for The New York Times, serving as the publication’s top political reporter for nearly a decade. Before that, he was the senior political writer for POLITICO, where he was among the company’s first hires.
Within the Democratic Party, there are a handful of senators who come up again and again as the ones dragging their feet—or outright blocking—a progressive agenda. This includes issues pertaining to the climate crisis, budget reconciliation, the filibuster, minimum wage, and student debt. In 2010, Glenn Greenwald dubbed this phenomenon “Villain Rotation,” where Democratic politicians are willing to “support” progressive legislation as long as it doesn’t stand a chance of passing. When it comes time to kill the initiative, the lead senator doing the deed shifts, so nobody gets full blame. (Ironically, Greenwald was writing at the time about another West Virginia senator, Jay Rockefeller, who also opposed breaking the filibuster.)
As the focus remains on Manchin, the “rotating villain” theory has changed. Unlike other moderate Democrats, Manchin is exceptionally vocal on his stances. As a result, his boisterousness casts a large shadow for the handful of moderate Senate Democrats to hide behind. Instead of an equal distribution of press and criticism on moderate Democrats from the left, there’s been a hyper-concentration on just one man. Instead of a rotating villain, Manchin is a scapegoat, with a small and mighty group quietly backing him.
