As White House officials weigh how much to give in to his demands, rift grows between president and senator from West Virginia
It’s worth leaving a comment to let the Biden Administration know that you want the greenhouse gas reduction measures in the Inflation Reduction Act preserved
well … he’s a Republican in all but name and the Democrats are perfectly happy to capitulate any chance they get …
It’s more that they’ve needed his vote in a lot of cases, and the Senate has rules letting individual Senators block nominations.
That’s their excuse, yes. In reality, though, they can do filibuster carveout exceptions for every bill (including one to remove the filibuster entirely) and appoint someone who’s NOT a coal baron fox to guard the energy and natural resources committee hen house.
They CHOOSE to let him get in the way of mitigating climate change.
You can’t do a filibuster carveout unless you’ve got 50 votes + 1 to do it. You can’t do it when you don’t have even that. Actually getting what we need means electing enough Democrats so that we can do stuff even when a few (Manchin, Sinema, maybe a couple others) are bought. That’s why it was so easy to act in the House and so hard in the Senate.
Another copout.
The most effective way to elect a lot of Democrats is to nominate a lot of candidates that Democrats and the usually ignored left are EXCITED about, rather than “well at least THIS corrupt enemy of progress doesn’t want to abolish the ACA and income taxes” shills.
That’s not the priority of the geriatric (and one young one acting like a typical boomer) leadership of the private corporation masquerading as a political party, though. They’re not trying to maximise the number of Democrats elected or the number of progressive policies passed.
They’re trying to maximise campaign donations and other legal bribes as well as clinging to their own power and money. Those are their true goals and Manchin is excellent for those things. That’s why they keep rewarding him for standing in the way of the things they pretend to want to do.
Then why aren’t they winning primaries left and right?
I think you severely underestimate how right-wing this country is. That’s the people’s fault, not the politicians’.
Because the leadership of their own party is fighting for establishment-friendly candidates against them tooth and nail with tens of millions of dollars every election cycle, a lot of gaslighting and the full force of the party apparatus behind them.
It’s frankly a herculean feat every time one of them overcome all that and even then, the leadership has been known to pull their support from the general election or even support the Republican candidate to avoid anyone from the left who might upset their corrupt status quo.
If they were that popular, no amount of campaign ads would defeat them. Campaign ads aren’t mind control. Dollars aren’t votes.
Americans vote for politicians who share their values, and let’s face it: most Americans’ values are firmly right-wing.
You clearly have no clue about how effective gaslighting and other propaganda can be or how shallow understanding of the candidates many voters have.
Progressive policy positions are almost universally more popular than gutless centrist ones, yet the centrist candidates backed by tens of millions worth of ads keep winning.
Do you really think that’s a coincidence? Do you really think that the two giant corporations masquerading as political parties would spend BILLIONS of dollars on ads every election cycle if they didn’t sway voters?
If so, you’re a bizarre combination of ludicrously naive and profoundly cynical 🤦
The structure of the US Senate inherently favors the Republicans; it was designed that way by admitting a bunch of low-population states in the late 1800s. Same for the House, where the gerrymandering favors Republicans.
That means that the actual path to power for Democrats means not just energizing their base, but making common cause with a bunch of low-information and moderate voters.
That’s why you see a real effort to win over moderates.
Nope. There are tens of millions more democrats and disenfranchised leftists than Republicans and disenfranchised nazis. Even in most of the “red” states.
It’s true that the deck is stacked in favor of Republicans, but not so much that a coalition of the “always votes, blue no matter who” groups and the neglected millions to their left wouldn’t have WAY more than the numbers needed to take 60-65% of both houses every. single. time.
The Dem leadership wouldn’t want that, though. They’d lose their main excuse for kowtowing to their owner donors. Might even have to enact real systemic change that benefits regular people more than the already rich and powerful! 😱
The way you address that is by working with groups like the Environmental Voter Project to turn non-voting environmentalists into voters or the DSA to get people who will do the right thing past the primary in left-leaning districts.
Mobilization isn’t some instant thing that’s going to happen on its own just because existing elected officials change thier tune
And it’s ESPECIALLY not some thing that’s working at all when existing officials both elected and unelected are working non stop as well as spending tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars each election cycle to retain the status quo by, amongst other things, rigging primaries against left-leaning candidates in all districts.
You keep saying to unrig the system by moving pieces belonging to the party leadership that rigs it on the board owned by the party leadership that rigs it, stubbornly refusing to admit the blindingly obvious fact that the status quo will continue until the corrupt people at the top have been removed from their positions.