Oh sure. Compared to the American right wing, which boarders on fascism, he’s liberal as fuck. Talk about clearing the low bar.
Well, that is the Spectrum- Trump as far right, Sanders as far left, makes Biden left of center.
But yeah- for a Democrat- he is a moderate- which makes him a liberal.
Well, I wonder how you are feeling about this today, a year later. Right now, at least from my perspective, the Progressives are (for reasons that seem good to them) halting the infrastructure spending bill to try and squeeze moderate Democrats to agree to another large spending bill that they are, obviously, uncomfortable with. This is causing (again, IMHO) a weakening of Biden’s presidency at a time when he really doesn’t need that, at a time when he needs to be getting wins on the local (US) level so he can use those in his international policy initiatives. It’s also pretty necessary to get this infrastructure bill in asap, especially with how things are going right now…IMHO, we are on track to go sideways fairly soon wrt the economy, supply chain, etc etc. This is the time for stimulus spending on things like infrastructure…I don’t think it’s the time for large new social spending programs, even though this is the time when the Progressives actually have a chance to do it. I get that they want to do this now, while they can, but it is, again IMHO, jeopardizing the current Biden administration, as well as potentially giving the Republicans a chance to come back strong in the mid-terms…as well as making the US’s international position and Biden’s international initiatives more tenuous and less likely to succeed.
To my mind, both parties need the cooperation, at least at some level, of the other in order to get anything done. But I guess we shall see…if the Progressives are able to force the few moderate Democratic holdouts to cave in on the spending the Progressives want by holding the infrastructure spending bill over their head then they can push through what they want without the Republicans. And they will. And when the Republicans get back in control they will work to roll all that back, which they won’t be able to do, merely partially gutting those programs and making a further mess that will be with us for a long time. This is the result of cramming it down the other party’s throat and doing it on your own…just like how the Republicans have done in the past and the Dems have worked to roll those things back.
It’s really interesting that you seem to be putting the blame on progressives here, when it’s literally every Democratic senator except Manchin and Sinema who want it to happen. Is it progressives, or is it a tiny handful of “moderates”, who are weakening Biden for their own idiosyncratic purposes?
It sure looks to me like it’s the latter, especially since the agenda being pushed by progressives has so much public support. Biden would be much stronger if he’s seen shepherding a strong agenda.
Well, of course, I am…I’m more sympathetic to the moderate Dems than the Progressives. I also think the infrastructure bill is much more important…and immediately important…and I can see it’s being used as leverage by the Progressives to get their way. Finally, while you are correct that all the other Dems have shown support for what the Progressives are pushing, it’s also true that most of them are on board cutting/scaling back what the Progressives were asking for (in fact, they have been multiple-scale backs already)…but it’s the small, hard core of Progressives who are digging in their heels on further scale backs and have resisted scaling back each time.
I think Biden would be stronger if the party was fully behind him and fully in agreement itself with what they should do. And I think this infrastructure bill is the most important thing Biden has put out so far…and it’s stalled because Progressives want to use it as a bargaining chip to force the very few Moderates to toe the line. But, as I said, I’m biased…I don’t like Progressives and I sympathize with Moderates. I also voted for Biden and I don’t want a Republican’s resurgence…and what I’m seeing is making me worry. YMMV of course.
Biden is only as strong as the support he can get from Manchin and Sinema. He barely has it now. Having an even more aggressive progressive agenda would be a non-starter. Progressives never seem to tire of attempting to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The same can be said of the progressives – Biden is only as strong as the support he can get from them. He needs all the Democrats onboard, since the margin is so tiny. From the latest news, all of them seem to be onboard with the framework just put out there. If this holds, then the progressives were right to put pressure on and hold out for what they could get – if they hadn’t, there likely would have been no reconciliation bill.
Manchin and Sinema have far less to lose in their respective constituencies if these two bills go down in flames.
The reporting I heard this morning on PBS is that Jaypal & Co. are trying to force M & S hands by bundling the two bills into one vote. Pelosi postponed the vote yesterday because it lacked support. I don’t think this is a winning move by the progressives. I suspect more will be carved out from the two bills in order to get M & S on board.
The progressives just want to know M&S position. They know that M&S could torpedo the reconciliation bill if they don’t get a commitment. Why wouldn’t they wait for such a commitment? From what I can tell you’re advocating, that would result in the BIF bill passing, and then the reconciliation bill would probably be totally abandoned because M&S would no longer have any pressure on them to support it.
Exactly. They’re the ones weakening Biden, using their peculiar leverage to drastically water down what the rest of their caucus wants. They have power not due to any especial significance, but due to a quirk of politics. No matter: they’re using that power for all they’re worth to weaken the president.
Agreed. I think in the end they will scale back what the Progressives are asking for to the point where the Moderate Dem holdouts will vote for it all…reluctantly. But…when will that be? Each delay costs Biden et al a little bit. And right now, IIRC, he’s going to the G-20 without a substantial domestic win under his belt to talk about climate change and such when he doesn’t seem to get his own party to work together (a lot of his climate change stuff is in the infrastructure bill).
Maybe this will all be resolved soon and if so then the Progressives will have been right, as iiandyiiii said. But if this drags on to the end of the year or into next year before finally getting resolved…well, IMHO that will be bad all around. The Progressives will have delayed things and then probably settled for a compromise anyway (i.e. literally no Democrats will be happy), so the whole Democratic party will look weak and disjointed and at odds. That’s a bad thing going into the midterms.
I would be surprised if in these negotiations with M&S by the Biden Admin and Pelosi, did not have contingencies of support of the recon bill built in. This bundling tactic by the Progressive caucus is a game of chicken that did not need to happen.
I disagree. I don’t trust M&S without a firm and public commitment, and I don’t think the progressives should either. I think holding firm is probably the only way to have a good chance at any progressive priorities at all in the reconciliation bill.
We’ll find out soon enough. If it all goes down in flames, then I guess it was a mistake. But ISTM that the latest news is pretty uniformly good if one wants to see both bills passed in some form.
Disagree that they are the ones weakening Biden. The infrastructure bill is their baby and it would pass if it wasn’t for ‘a quirk of politics’. In fact, this actually has bipartisan support. Yet it’s stalled, even though it’s key to Biden’s agenda. This is all on the Progressives wanting to get their own agenda through…and the only way they can do that is using this as a bargaining chip. As you said, they are ‘using that power for all they’re worth’, and that’s how our system works and all, but trying to put the blame on the Moderates is really silly, IMHO. Clearly, it’s the Progressives who are doing this. They certainly have their reasons, which seem right and good to them, but it’s their efforts that have us where we are.
48 senators + vice president + the president + the house want the social spending bill to pass, and 2 senators are holding it up. It’s astonishing that you put the blame on progressive. I appreciate that you admit you just don’t like progressives and that that biases you, but I’m not sure you realize how thoroughly your distaste biases you.
“Where we are” is a very good chance at both bills passing, including a bunch of progressive priorities. If the progressives had agreed to the BIF without anything on the reconciliation bill, then the BIF would have passed but that’s it. There would be no reconciliation bill, or at least no progressive priorities in it.
Oh, I’m pretty aware that my biases, well, bias me. But you have biases as well. The infrastructure bill and the social spending bill don’t have to be tied together…in fact, they really aren’t. Except they are, as the Progressives are using it as a bargaining chip to force Moderates to vote for the social spending or else not get the infrastructure bill…a bill that WILL go through if the Dems allow it. As noted, it has bipartisan support, and it will be passed. A direct win for Biden. Yet, despite this, and despite the fact that Biden needs it, and despite the fact that there should be no tie between the two bills, you blame the Moderates. This is an example of the disconnect between the sides…you can’t see how I can possibly think what I think and to me, your position is just silly and illogical.
What I often run into in these threads is that, while I’m well aware of my own biases it seems to me that many (perhaps most) 'dopers don’t get that they are highly biased too. I always try and factor in my own known biases on stuff when I get into these discussions, but it seems like others don’t do that. In addition, a lot of these threads turn into us against them, if you don’t agree with me you are the enemy-type things that get really distasteful to me.
I blame the moderates because they’d agreed, months ago, that the two bills could and should be tied together. They hadn’t agreed to everything in the bill, but they had agreed to do them together. Then they backtracked a month or two ago.
Then it’s no issue, especially for the Progressives but more importantly for the Dems as a whole. Myself, I don’t think we need a bunch of new entitlement spending at this time. I think that spending on infrastructure and stimulus, right now, at this time, is what we badly need. Of course, I never think that a bunch of new entitlement spending is a good thing…if anything, you slowly do this as it puts the country on the hook for that spending going forward, so you need to balance it. But right now, we NEED things like the injection of capital for infrastructure and other stimulus-type things a lot more than we need more, new entitlements. You are probably correct though…we will get both, in the end. And if the time table is soon, then it’s all good.
I don’t think reconciliation would outright fail in any scenario but the progressive priorities being stripped out of it is the real risk.
We’re in aspot now where Manchin is saying " i need you to get rid of 8 these ten things" and we’re probably going to end up in a spot where we take out 6 and replace 1 or 2 with some kind of convoluted half-assed program.
Without the bipartisan bill as leverage, Manchinjust says “i need all10 of these things taken out ok fine leave in 1 and means test the crap out of it”