I ask because I personally don’t know. The infrastructure bill seems like a bad thing for the American people whom, I’m to believe, are paying for this, right? We want to keep taxing corporations the same amount as Trump decided?
Free Pre K survived, (I wonder why? Maybe so people can get back to work). We aren’t allowed to negotiate drug prices? They aren’t expanding Medicare. Are the climate provisions still in there? Or are they rolled back?
So, help me find out where I should stand here, by telling me where you stand.
That’s true, and I know a lot of progressives that feel that way. I also know a lot of progressives that are sick of the lesser of two evils, and empty promises. I don’t know.
I think a lot of people are pissed, and have a right to be pissed. Do I think we should take these crumbs? I’m leaning that way. But I understand why people are saying f- Biden, Manchin, and Sinema. I mean, good luck getting people to vote Democrat no matter what happens here.
I’m not sure anyone has “a right to be pissed.” We elected Biden to do the best he could to advance his agenda. He’s getting some of it enacted. He’ll keep trying. It’s naive to expect a complete victory on anything in politics. It happens once in a while, but generally we move in baby steps. The key is to hopefully move in the right direction.
In the last election we had a choice between Trump and Biden. If things are better with Biden in office, that’s a win. If we don’t like Sinema and Manchin holding things up, we need to give the progressives a bigger majority in the House and Senate. I disagree with them, but they have no obligation to do what I want them to. Let’s take what we can get and declare victory.
Who made promises? Did they promise lower Rx drug prices, or did they promise to include that goal in their agenda?
I assume most people understand the President can’t enact laws, and that promises he or she makes are simply promises to try to do something. We’d rather have a president trying to do good things, and we got one.
(and I say this as someone who would fully support the current “progressive agenda.”)
This is one thing Trump supporters seem to understand pretty well. Few seem to much care that he didn’t force Mexico (by invasion?) to pay.for the wall, didn’t build much wall, didn’t take Iraq’s oil, didn’t raise the minimum wage, or even try to, didn’t end birthright citizenship, didn’t lock up Hillary, and didn’t drop Sgt. Bergdahl out of an airplane without a parachute.
There is a problem, if you are a normal candidate who wants to be honest — voters like optimists. So they do act like their proposals have more chances of enactment than is the case.
I’m not quite following your line of thinking, but with regard to infrastructure, there are some very critical things that are badly overdue for overhaul and replacement, and particularly transportation and electrical distribution. The think about infrastructure is that it is like plumbing in your house; you don’t think about it but when shit gets backed up it becomes unlivable. And infrastructure, at least in broad strokes, should be apolitical because it underpins everything about whatever kind of economy you expect to have; regardless of whether you are are a hardcore button-down libertarian capitalist or a freaky tie-dyed anarcho-Marxist, you have to have working infrastructure to maintain any kind of economic system. (There is a persuasive argument that the thing that most undermined the Soviet Union wasn’t the NATO military buildup or Solidarity or Chernobyl or even its succession or mostly-dead leaders, but that its never adequate and poorly maintained infrastructure undermined any productivity it or the Warsaw Pact client states managed to eek out.).
The notion that ‘greening’ the infrastructure to make it more sustainable in the face of a potential global energy crisis and climate instability should be political, either, especially given the concern that the Department of Defense has long voiced over the impact of those same issues on national defense. Of course, infrastructure is mostly a benefit to businesses and especially large corporations that gain the most advantage due to scale, and thus, should be paying the lions share for it, but that is part and parcel of a much larger issue of the power of corporations to shield their tax liabilities in order to maximize “efficiency” as insensibly measured in terms of net profit.
As far as actual progressive issues, realize that “progressives”, despite being a wide array of diverse beliefs and opinions that are individually shared by a large portion of the population that would never want to fall under that umbrella because of the shameful associations, have very little political power (q.v. corporate power as discussed above) and so the ability of Biden to enact any part of that agenda is marginal at best even though much of it is practical, potentially beneficial, and even crucial to maintaining a competitive economy. Claims that Biden is “the most pro-labor President you’ve ever seen” have to be tempered by four decades of decidedly counter-labor Presidents (including, quite notably, Bill Clinton, who may have worn the banner of the Democratic party but carried through on promises made by Reagan and Bush The Elder), but he has certainly advocated for far more progressive positions and legislation than anyone could have reasonably expected.
I’m not sure what “progressives” should “hold out” for, but they should continue advocating for what they believe in a coherent and persuasive manner because there as certainly been a long entrenched trend away from any kind of social security net and regulation over corporate interests and wanton investment speculation (again, enabled in no small part by Bill Clinton) and effectively voicing policy measures to effect the change they want. That they don’t get everything—or even most—of what they want is, in part, the nature of democracy, and also they bullhorn that corporate interests have over government and broad public opinion. The trick isn’t to outshout such voices because Fox News is a 24 hour a day firehose of conservative propaganda fed directly into tens of millions of homes, but to show why alternatives are workable and preferable.
Let’s flip the question. Should the moderates hold out? Assume for a moment they are as driven by principle as the progressives.
I remember back in 2009-2010 a lot of people on this board were complaining about Obama giving ground to moderate Dems to get the Affordable Care Act through. The ACA is still flawed, and it’s still better than what we had before.
At the end of the day there is not a majority of progressive legislators so all you can pass is what the most conservative member of your coalition wants. Remember John McCain? All the Republicans could pass was what the most liberal wanted and so they couldn’t repeal Obamacare.
The Affordable Care Act is literally the least worst thing that they could have passed, and yet, is still Obama’s signature accomplishment due to eight years of concerted obstruction courtesy of Mitch McConnell et al.
They should go to the mat on medicare eligibility at 60 and climate. The moderates have a lot of leverage but the progressives have already shown they have more leverage than they’ve had in the party in a long time.
They’ve been forced into a position of having to negotiate down a huge amount of the rest of the bill. The real question on that at this point is if they do a few things long-term or a lot short-term.
I also think a wealth tax would be complicated even if it was well thought out, but the cocktail napkin version we may end up with will likely be much worse than just raising income tax on upper brackets. But apparently for some reason they need to do that to get this passed.
The problem with just raising the income tax on upper brackets is that for the very rich—those whose income is primarily in the form of dividends, divestments and compound speculation—can quite easily and legally shield themselves from that by effectively having no ‘income’ in the form of paychecks or personal revenue. Their personal ‘operating funds’ are all loans on which they owe interest, which can reduce net income to less than zero (although the interest is paid by taking out other loans), all of which are based on assets owned by trusts that exist primarily to provide them with access to capital without directly owning it. Very wealthy people are essentially ‘cash poor’ and may even be technically “asset poor” even though they control hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of what is de facto personal wealth, and can even use this status to qualify for entitlements in the form of government subsidies, guarantees, loans, incentives, tax rebates, et cetera that dwarf the ‘welfare’ reluctantly doled out to those below the poverty line, all benefits inaccessible to ‘working class’ or even upper middle class people whose primary assets are a few pieces of personally owned real estate, small business assets, and a healthy retirement fund.
Medicare at 60 is kind of a tepid start to something that should essentially be the default for a wealthy nation, and “climate” should be an apolitical issue that everyone should be concerned about, and especially all those Republicans in Florida living within five meters above mean sea level, but Fox News, Koch Brothers, et al have made science a political issue in ways unseen since the Catholic Church condemned Galileo for advocating his theory of heliocentricism.
As far as wealth goes, you’re right about the pros of a wealth tax, but the cons would be that the complexity of any practical implementation could be an issue. And we’re not going to have a very well thought out wealth tax proposal at this point. We’re going to have a hastily thrown together plan that I think will essentially be a tax on unrealized capital gains that may well end up creating more loopholes for the people it should be taxing than it closes. Income tax doesn’t work perfect but it works.
Generally, we knew going in we weren’t getting real universal healthcare out of this and we weren’t getting the complete climate overhaul we really need. The progressives need to pick a few battles they can win.
We’re discussing rearranging the deck chairs here. Without comprehensive voting rights legislation, the SS American Democracy is going to plow into that very large Iceberg of Authoritarianism and sink into the dustbin of history in short order. Enjoy your ride.
Yeah, this. The Democrats need to take the win they can get on these bills, because they won’t get anything at all otherwise. And they need to show at least some progress on issues that actually affect people in real life, if they want to improve their standing in Congress, which would make additional wins possible in the lead-up to 2024.
So, take the win, and then do everything they can to replace Sinema and Manchin with people who will actually help them, not oppose them.
This. Bernie, AOC, Ilhan Omar, etc. made promises, but they don’t have the numbers. Manchin and Sinema didn’t make those promises. They weren’t elected by liberals. In order to win, they had to get votes from some conservatives who voted Democratic. The correct strategy isn’t to try to keep forcing Sinema and Manchin to be someone they aren’t. The correct strategy is to win over the hearts and minds of the voters in states where Republicans currently hold senate seats and convince those voters to vote Democratic.