But there’s also two fights going on. Win the one where they’re trying to shoot you first, but don’t ignore the one where they’re poisoning you slowly over the course of several years.
You continue to labor under the illusion that cutting Manchin loose will somehow win Dem votes/seats in 2022 or 2024 in W.V.
I agree, the voting bill is hugely important. I agree it’s too bad we don’t have the votes to pass it. But not passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill doesn’t get us any closer to getting a good voting bill. (and, probably, makes it more difficult to get a bigger majority next year to really get something accomplished)
I also agree that after the last 5 years we shouldn’t view the situation as “politics as usual.” However, the subject of this thread, “should the progressive hold out” seems to be related to the infrastructure bill. IMO, the “progressives” should support any bill that moves us in the right direction, even if only to a modest degree. I can’t see a better path forward that involves torpedoing the bill.
We’re not just talking about West Virginia. People all over the country are watching the Dems cave into this asshole’s demands, and don’t you think that might just possibly have an impact on how (or even if) they vote?
And, once again, this bill is popular in West Virginia. Gee, maybe it’s just barely possible that an actual Democrat could unseat him, if that majority of people in West Virginia saw the Dems actually producing something they want?
Or you could just give up, whatever, maybe I’m just some idiot who still thinks that people can change their minds when they see actual improvements in their lives.
I’M NOT SAYING DON’T PASS THE BILL! TRY ACTUALLY READING MY POSTS!
Goddamn, maybe Americans really are too stupid to run a democracy…
Maybe I’m misreading this. But if “we’re done with these two senators” doesn’t that mean we’re less likely to get anything done.
People in other states don’t influence whether Manchin wins or looses in his own state.
Manchin won in his state BEFORE all this talk of massive spending bills. He did not win by running on a progressive platform. Let’s grant him the benefit of the doubt that he knows his state and constituents.
Following up on this. What does it mean “make clear you’re done with these two senators?” Primary them? If either one of them loose their seat, we get zero more Biden appointed judges. We can marginalize them if, and only if, we get two or three good senators from other states.
To be fair, your position is a little bit confusing.
I think it’s:
(1) Pass whatever bill you can get Manchin/Sinema to agree to, along with the infrastructure bill
(2) Then publicly call them both out as personas-non-grata in the party. And possibly try to primary them. Or at least run against them as foils in other states.
I’m not sure I agree with step 2, but I do agree that it should be a large part of the campaign for the Democratic nominee in every Senate race to point out that electing them would make it easier to get the popular things that get left out of BBB done because you won’t need Manchin’s vote anymore.
I give Manchin about a 5% chance of getting reelected no matter what happens. He’s up again in 2024 and do you really see him winning WV during a Presidential campaign? Hell no. The last time he ran during a presidential year was 2012. Prior that he won in a special election for Byrd’s seat in 2010. That was a very different time in politics. Appalachian Democrats were still a thing.
In 2018 he fell from 60% of the vote down to just under 50%. I would put the odds of him not running as a Democrat in 2024 higher than the odds of him winning as a Democrat.
If bills like this were actually popular with the majority of voters in WV, then the other WV senator would also be a Democrat.
ETA. And Joe Manchin would have lost his primary back in 2018 to a liberal Democrat, who would then have gone on to win the general election.
The fact that these two things aren’t the case shows that the WV electorate aren’t actually in favor of the sorts of positions held by mainstream Democrats. The problem isn’t Joe Manchin, it’s the WV electorate, and the electorate of all the other states with Republican senators. Bashing Joe Manchin isn’t going to convince those voters to change their minds.
I’ll just repost this, then.
Pretty much anything that happened prior to 2020 tells us very little about what will happen in 2022. This is the moment when everything is up for grabs, and playing it safe is a bad strategy. The Dems have it in their hands to win it big, but they’ve go to go big if they want that.
This situation is not normal, and treating it as if it is normal is a huge mistake.
Hail Marys only work in Rom-Coms and YA story lines.
Perhaps. What’s the plan to “go big and win big” without Manchin and Sinema between now and next November’s election?
Should progressives hold out? Should Linus hold out hope that the Great Pumpkin will appear and reward him handsomely or should he go out trick-or-treating and take what goodies he can get? We all see what holding out gets Linus.
The art of politics as I see it is telling people what you want to give them and then giving them what you’re actually able to give them. Almost certainly what you can give them is much less than what you want to give them. You can either do what you can or you can sulk about not getting all you want.
We are talking about the state that went +40 for Trump, right? In 2018, Manchin won his Democratic primary against a progressive, Paula Jean Swearengin, 69% to 30%. In 2020, Swearengin ran for the other seat, held by far right Republican Shelly Moore Caputo. She lost 70% to 27%.
I think we’ve seen that Manchin is the best the Democrats can do in terms of representation in West Virginia. Making his views more irrelevant by winning more seats is better than freezing him out. What happens if he decides to retire or flip? You lose the seat to the GOP for at least 20 years.
Quite frankly, that ship has been floundering on the shoals of our ostensible “two-party” system for decades anyway. Although the GOP has been plowing a direct course toward authoritarianism for more on half a century anyway, both the ideological distance and practical policy distinctions between the mainline parties is so narrowed in the overall sense that in terms of voting you really only have distinct choices on vary specific hot-button issues like abortion rights, gun ownership, immigration, et cetera, and while these issues are not insignificant in and of themselves they are really ancillary to the erosion of civil liberties and a stable publicly-beneficial economic system as a whole. The fact that the broad spectrum of beliefs, ideals, and policy preferences of the national polity are not adequately reflected in elected representation undercuts the notion that the US is an effective democratic system.
When Liz Warren is branded a “radical Marxist” even within her own party for promoting some basic government responsibility in regulating corporations and providing essential financial, educational, and health services that are the fundamental norm for essentially all other developed democratic nations, your “voting rights” are essentially the distinction between voting for Lizard A or Lizard B. Not that the concerted Republican attack on voting access, and indeed the voters themselves, isn’t a clear sign of a complete undermining of democratic norms, but the need for “comprehensive voting rights legislation” begs the question of why we have to explicitly legislate a fundamental tenet of democracy at all, or how meaningful it would be even if statutorily defined. Or, in plainer terms, if you have to fight so hard to just have a level playing field, how likely is it that anyone is actually going to follow the rules even if they are written down?
Stranger
Serious question/issue that I have with the infrastructure bill: The plan to upgrade the mass transit systems across the country
I’m not opposed to those being upgraded, but should it be funded at the Federal level? Why should people that live in rural areas or in cities less than 1 million metropolitan population, pay for the upgrade of mass transit systems they are never going to use? IMHO, the states/cities that have these gaps should raise the taxes at the local level to fund these types of improvements.
You could probably say the same about all the infrastructure in the bill. There are bridges in Texas I’ll never cross, and airports in Mississippi I’ll never fly to.
The big problem, it seems to me, “this is a popular outlook and set of measures” and “pushing for those same outlooks and measures is popular” and “popular things are encouraged by voters” are statements that seem on their face to be completely reasonable that should all simultaneously be true, but in politics, it just isn’t, and that drives people (including me sometimes) nuts with cognitive dissonance.
People in those areas tend to be the net receivers of federal dollars already. NY, NJ, and Connecticut are some of the biggest net payers of federal taxes, and rural states are some of the biggest receivers. Why should we pay for their unprofitable electrical service, internet service, roads, medicare, medicaid, etc.? NJ, for example, has high taxes because we already pay for ourselves, and we also supplement WV, Mississippi, Alabama.
Also, lots of those mass transit systems go between states – they just broke ground on a new train tunnel between NY and NJ – seems like interstate travel is a federal concern.
Also, also big cities attract lots of tourists from all over the country. A great mass transit system benefits the tourists, too in multiple ways – it helps them get around the city and it relieves traffic when driving into or through a city.