Can we take the focus off of Manchin and Sinema?

Can we please stop referring to them as democrats?  And acknowledge the there's a 52-48 GOP majority?

At least it does put Schumer in the driver's seat more than Mitch, so at least it had some benefit.

Who else may be on the edge of leaning to the democrat side.  Cheney?  Romney would be a good one to shift over.  Sasse?


jamie said:

Can we please stop referring to them as democrats?  And acknowledge the there's a 52-48 GOP majority?

At least it does put Schumer in the driver's seat more than Mitch, so at least it had some benefit.

Who else may be on the edge of leaning to the democrat side.  Cheney?  Romney would be a good one to shift over.  Sasse?

 They're Democrats. They'll extract probabably about 1.5T pounds of flesh, but in the end will vote in favor of the reconciliation package. No Republican will.

Someone like Sasse is very conservative and not "gettable" on policy.

We have a strange political environment right now. The majority of the Republican party has abandoned regular politics and increasingly joined in support of the authoritarian anti-politics of Trump.

A very small number of Republicans have remained conservative (people like Sasse and Romney). They're not moderate, but they are still doing electoral politics, where elections and governance and all that count and you can't just send a mob to hang the opposition if you lose.

Then there's the Democratic party, which has had to expand to absorb everyone still trying to have a normal country and who's not as conservative as Romney. That's a very wide range and only makes sense because we have a two party system and one party has decided it doesn't believe in constitutional democracy anymore.


One of the Ben Sasse moments that I found infuriating is mentioned in this Salon piece. I was hoping to find a video clip but his mocking response is documented here. So I don't think he's changing teams.

"We saw this during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, widely believed to be the fifth vote to overturn Roe. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., reacted to the women protesting in the audience by sneering that they were exhibiting "hysteria" and claiming that there have been "screaming protesters saying, 'Women are going to die' at every hearing for decades," the clear implication being that these fears are just female dramatics that can be safely ignored."


the frustrating thing is that the bills being stymied by Manchin and Sinema are generally very popular with voters.  These are not "far left" bills by any stretch.


ml1 said:

the frustrating thing is that the bills being stymied by Manchin and Sinema are generally very popular with voters.  These are not "far left" bills by any stretch.

 I think the messaging on what exactly is in the bills is very poor. We are being told the numbers but they mean nothing to the average person. Someone suggested that it would sound better if they at least broke it down to the percentage increase, 2% each year for example.


Manchin I mostly get. He's a Democrat whose constituents are super Republican. As much as he irks me, I'm mostly amazed at his ability to be (just) on the blue side of the partisan line. Sinema I don't really understand at all.


Morganna said:

ml1 said:

the frustrating thing is that the bills being stymied by Manchin and Sinema are generally very popular with voters.  These are not "far left" bills by any stretch.

 I think the messaging on what exactly is in the bills is very poor. We are being told the numbers but they mean nothing to the average person. Someone suggested that it would sound better if they at least broke it down to the percentage increase, 2% each year for example.

 actually the messaging is quite good.  Otherwise the bills wouldn't be polling so well.  And you're right, the numbers are meaningless to regular people, so they don't actually care about the cost.  The only people who care about the cost are people inside the Beltway.



PVW said:

Manchin I mostly get. He's a Democrat whose constituents are super Republican. As much as he irks me, I'm mostly amazed at his ability to be (just) on the blue side of the partisan line. Sinema I don't really understand at all.

 but even his constituents are almost certainly in favor of the spending bill (pretty sure there's no polling in WV, but the bill is fairly popular even among conservatives).  And it will benefit them tremendously.  He's really on the side of the lobbyists, and not the people of West Virginia.

So I get Manchin too, at least to an extent.  


ml1 said:

 but even his constituents are almost certainly in favor of the spending bill (pretty sure there's no polling in WV, but the bill is fairly popular even among conservatives).  And it will benefit them tremendously.  He's really on the side of the lobbyists, and not the people of West Virginia.

So I get Manchin too, at least to an extent.  

 If a policy's polling levels translated to support, Republican voters would have been cheering the ACA rather than railing against Obamacare.

I'm not really sure how to do the calibration of polls to political support, but I'd put more money on Manchin's ability to read his constituents than my own.


W. Virginians are overwhelmingly Trumpists - impervious to reason and to understanding what's in their best interests.

Regardless, Manchin could try to lead rather than follow. But he's no leader.


drummerboy said:

W. Virginians are overwhelmingly Trumpists - impervious to reason and to understanding what's in their best interests.

Regardless, Manchin could try to lead rather than follow. But he's no leader.

 Do you really think that an “overwhelmingly Trumpist” constituency would follow that lead?


jimmurphy said:

drummerboy said:

W. Virginians are overwhelmingly Trumpists - impervious to reason and to understanding what's in their best interests.

Regardless, Manchin could try to lead rather than follow. But he's no leader.

 Do you really think that an “overwhelmingly Trumpist” constituency would follow that lead?

 You never know. BBB already polls well in WV, so why he's against it is not completely clear, other than that he's cow-towing  kowtowing to his corporate benefactors and he's got obsolete hawkish views on the deficit.


jimmurphy said:

 Do you really think that an “overwhelmingly Trumpist” constituency would follow that lead?

 after the money started rolling in they'd conveniently forget they were against it. And become convinced it was actually Trump's doing. 


DaveSchmidt said:

How they tow cows in West Virginia:

https://www.trailersinwestvirginia.com/all-inventory/livestock-trailers

 whoopsie!!

I guess that neuron got fried somehow.


Suggest you read Michelle Goldberg's column on Sinema in today's NY Times


Turns out that there is polling on the bill in WV.  And guess what?  It's got majority approval


ml1 said:

Turns out that there is polling on the bill in WV. And guess what? It's got majority approval.

With any links to the survey metadata, it’s impossible to confirm whether the net approval among 13 states comprises majority approval in each of those states. The ambiguously worded Hill article and the Building Back Together press releases don’t say.

https://buildingbacktogether.org/news/icymi-new-building-back-together-poll-build-back-better-agenda-remains-deeply-popular-across-key-states-members-of-congress-who-back-agenda-see-17-point-boost-in-support/

https://buildingbacktogether.org/news/bbt-polling-in-48-battleground-house-districts-shows-15-point-boost-for-members-who-support-the-build-back-better-agenda/


DaveSchmidt said:

ml1 said:

Turns out that there is polling on the bill in WV. And guess what? It's got majority approval.

With any links to the survey metadata, it’s impossible to confirm whether the net approval among 13 states comprises majority approval in each of those states. The ambiguously worded Hill article and the Building Back Together press releases don’t say.

https://buildingbacktogether.org/news/icymi-new-building-back-together-poll-build-back-better-agenda-remains-deeply-popular-across-key-states-members-of-congress-who-back-agenda-see-17-point-boost-in-support/

https://buildingbacktogether.org/news/bbt-polling-in-48-battleground-house-districts-shows-15-point-boost-for-members-who-support-the-build-back-better-agenda/

 I figured that would be your response.  Yes, I'm hanging my hat on this paragraph in the article, which might possibly not be correct.  But I'm assuming it is.

The survey by ALG Research, commissioned by Building Back Together, found that most registered voters supported the plan in 10 battleground states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — as well as Republican-leaning West Virginia and Democratic-leaning Virginia and Minnesota.

ml1 said:

I figured that would be your response.

Good, my care must be showing. When Building Back Together used its own words to describe the state results, it chose “net support,” which suggests to me that BBT is aware of at least one state where minority support was the finding.

It’s not that the Hill paragraph would be incorrect. It’s that it’s ambiguous, so it could be right in two different ways. One of those ways is that most registered voters overall supported the plan in 10 states as well as three others.

ETA: If you’re Build Back Together, you’re happy with that ambiguity, and are happy to quote it rather than risk saying it yourself.


DaveSchmidt said:

ml1 said:

I figured that would be your response.

Good, my care must be showing. When Building Back Together used its own words to describe the state results, it chose “net support,” which suggests to me that BBT is aware of at least one state where minority support was the finding.

It’s not that the Hill paragraph would be incorrect. It’s that it’s ambiguous, so it could be right in two different ways. One of those ways is that most registered voters overall supported the plan in 10 states, as well as three others.

 the "as well as" suggests it's not an aggregate, and if it's not, that's not just ambiguous, it's an error IMHO.

if it pleases everyone, we can go back to my earlier statement,


ml1
said:

but even his constituents are almost certainly in favor of the spending bill (pretty sure there's no polling in WV, but the bill is fairly popular even among conservatives). And it will benefit them tremendously. He's really on the side of the lobbyists, and not the people of West Virginia.

So I get Manchin too, at least to an extent.

whatever.

It appears the bill is pretty popular across the board in the U.S.  Let's leave at that then, so we don't get distracted from the larger point that there doesn't appear to be any data that suggests Manchin is in this for his constituents.


Here are two West Virginia polls from Democratic-affiliated groups that are less closely tied to Biden and the $3.5 trillion plan than Building Back Together and ALG Research. Both found voters in the state evenly divided on the package. One, however, was conducted nearly two months ago, Aug. 9-15; the other is less than a month old, Sept. 11-15.

https://americansfortaxfairness.org/wp-content/uploads/GSG-WV-Survey-Topline-F08.16.21.pdf

https://www.bluegreenalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/E-14134-BLUEGREEN-ALLIANCE-BBB-DECK.pdf (Page 8 for the West Virginia bar graph)


Fivethirtyeight asks "Kyrsten Sinema Is Confounding Her Own Party. But … Why?"

And they seem as perplexed as the rest of us. Maybe it's an unconventional, risky electoral strategy. Maybe it's the donors. Maybe she really believes in centrism for its own sake. Maybe we'll never know.


PVW said:

Fivethirtyeight asks "Kyrsten Sinema Is Confounding Her Own Party. But … Why?"

And they seem as perplexed as the rest of us. Maybe it's an unconventional, risky electoral strategy. Maybe it's the donors. Maybe she really believes in centrism for its own sake. Maybe we'll never know.

 I'll go with we'll never know, since it looks like she's never going to give us a clue.


drummerboy said:

 I'll go with we'll never know, since it looks like she's never going to give us a clue.

She may not have a clue.

When she voted against the $15 min wage that was something weird. Like bad performance art. Or something else. Here, common people, take that and eat that. Does she believe she's royalty?

She was a Green Party member and very liberal. Now there is a complete reversal.

Could she be suffering? Mental illness may have caused a profound personality change.


PVW said:

Fivethirtyeight asks "Kyrsten Sinema Is Confounding Her Own Party. But … Why?"

And they seem as perplexed as the rest of us. Maybe it's an unconventional, risky electoral strategy. Maybe it's the donors. Maybe she really believes in centrism for its own sake. Maybe we'll never know.

 I'm not going to waste any of my time reading Sinema's book, but that apparently holds the answer.  Sinema apparently believes in bipartisanship as an end unto itself.  So her actions are apparently intended solely to try to curry favor with the GOP.  Talk about foolish.  But it makes more sense than anything else.


So apparently Manchin is making noises about leaving the party and going independent if he doesn't "get his way" on BBB.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/10/senator-joe-manchin-democratic-party-exit-plan-biden-infrastructure-deal-exclusive/


Imagine if one man could have stopped the US from fighting the Germans in WWII.  We are facing an existential threat and Manchin is preventing us from dealing with it.  In that sense, Manchin himself is an existential threat.  

I keep waiting for a time traveler from the year 2300 to pop out of the void and "change" his mind for him.  Sadly, thus far, no luck.  Maybe time travel really is impossible or maybe we have no surviving descendants in the year 2300.... due to Joe Manchin.


Klinker said:

Imagine if one man could have stopped the US from fighting the Germans in WWII [emphasis added].  We are facing an existential threat and Manchin is preventing us from dealing with it.  In that sense, Manchin himself is an existential threat.  

I keep waiting for a time traveler from the year 2300 to pop out of the void and "change" his mind for him.  Sadly, thus far, no luck.  Maybe time travel really is impossible or maybe we have no surviving descendants in the year 2300.... due to Joe Manchin.

 Time travel, nazis winning WWII and a threat to our very existence are all components of Star Trek episode entitled "City on the Edge of Forever" (S1 E28).  Entire episode can be found on Hulu.  Alternatively, high points for this episode can be found on YT at the following location: 

This episode guest stars Joan Collins.  Collins plays the role of Edith Keeler (a pacifist social leader).  Keeler becomes Captain Kirk's love interest and the fulcrum/cause of the nazis winning WWII.  This episode is often cited as the best episode of the ST franchise.

If you enjoy time travel, alt history and Star Trek then this episode will likely entertain and also be thought provoking.


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