Every other headline these days is about Joe Biden's disastrous approval rating and the chaotic shape of the Democratic Party. How could Democrats have done this? What's wrong with them?
Let's cut the crap and acknowledge the obvious answer. First off, the progressive wing of the party insisted on pushing voting rights laws that had zero chance of passing. Biden knew this from the start and said so. Then Bernie Sanders insisted on an insane BBB bill that would have been unprecedented in the history of the country—and doubly unprecedented with a 50-50 Senate. But he insisted, and every time it got cut back it gave progressives another chance to moan about how they were being betrayed. Eventually it died.
For some reason, after an election that was razor close, progressives managed to delude themselves into thinking we were on the cusp of a revolution. How they did this is as big a mystery as how millions of people deluded themselves into thinking that Donald Trump really won the election. It's inexplicable.
But that's what happened.
They were looking to 2022 & 2024 and recognized that average voters wouldn't have a sophisticated understanding of what happened in the first 18 months. They also figured that if they didn't get broadly popular legislation passed when all the news outlets were saying the Dems controlled congress they would get blamed for being incompetent. This is not new. This has been the R strategy whenever they don't have the trifecta: they make sure nothing gets done and then blame the other party. Of course, in reality, the Dems don't control the Senate; it takes 60 to control the Senate unless all you want to do is block all legislation. So they tried like crazy to pass stuff that voters would like, as their only strategy for preventing R takeovers of House and Senate in 2022 and Exec in 2024.
In any case the lessons from the last election clearly haven't been learned. Democrats, whether progressive or centrist, should frankly be overjoyed that they are in a position to do anything at all. We should all be astounded and frankly thankful at what Stacey Abrams and her voter outreach efforts achieved in Georgia, without which Democrats wouldn't be in this position. Instead of passively complaining about how little can be achieved when governing with a 50+1 majority, the main lesson should rather be the importance of expanding that majority so that more can be done. But no, that would mean making phone calls and knocking on doors -- actually doing something to increase Dem winning chances -- rather than just sitting on their collective butts and whining. I suppose that's also all too human.
Both of these answers are correct and that's Democrats dilemma. Blaming Bernie Sanders for being Bernie Sanders is a bit disingenuous and doing nothing legislatively even with a tiny majority while the country is the midst of crisis is simply not an option. But Progressive whining is typical and as I stated in an earlier post, the more apocalyptic they become, the less typical and more dangerous it becomes.
-1 American Reinvestment Act
-1 Infrastructure Week*
*Picture Ron Paul excitedly waving his arms, as "it's happening".
You know, it was a good try. I think it was a good idea to let Bernie take his best shot. We don't know what the negotiations looked like, I don't really trust public statements all that much.
AND, what matters going into the elections is what happens THIS year. Nobody will remember last year in 11 months. I'm not sure just what is coming down the road, but I'll bet Biden, Pelosi and Schumer have a better idea than I do.
It hurts when Bernie loudly proclaims that the Democratic Party has turned its back on the working class like he did last week.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/10/bernie-sanders-democrats-failing-working-class-interview
And it really doesn’t help that some voting rights groups boycotted Biden and Harris’s voting rights rally in Georgia.
The only good thing is that the media is so busy obsessing about inflation its been to busy to make a big deal out of this story — so far.
Both the left and the media act like little kids who believe that Mommy can magically solve all their problems in a flash. The media has accepted Republican obstruction as normal, not anti-democracy so they don’t even bother to blame them for not voting to support voting rights. In contrast they treat Biden and the rest of the Democrats like they are the ones to blame when only two are obstructing such critical legislation.
Biden clearly thought he would be stronger if he got the American Rescue Act and the infrastructure bills passed first. And we needed them to happen as quickly as possible. Why liberals think he could have gotten their voting rights bills passed if only he had done that first is beyond my understanding.
+1
The Cabo Caucus are the Capos of the Black Holocaust.
Ignore the likes of Jemele Hill & La Tosha Brown as they speak only for their own wallets.
After watching the last year, I’m not optimistic about what the three have planned for this year. And it will take a lot to overcome the self-enforced errors of the last couple years.
This is exactly write. But it doesn’t list all of the ways in which the far left has destroyed any chance of of something other than a GOP landslide this year.
“Defund the police” anyone?
What progressives fail to recognize is that 2020 was not a pro-progressive result. At the top of the ticket, it was entirely anti-Trump. Everywhere else the GOP did just fine.
James Clyburn has said the same — very forcefully. John Lewis agreed with him.
Defund the police has to be the dumbest slogan ever. I couldn’t believe proponent were defending it by saying we didn’t literally mean that! Calling themselves socialist is equally as stupid. The dictionary definition of socialism from Merriam Webster:
:a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies
None of them advocate government ownership of all major industries. What they want is a social democracy but even that label is likely to confuse a lot of voters. There are much better ways to say that, such as strengthening the social safety net.
I have another pet peeve about labels. I don’t think the left should be able to co-opt the term progressive. I think anyone who shared progressive goals is a progressive even if they disagree about the best way to achieve those goals. For example someone who advocates a universal, affordable health care system based on the German model is just as progressive as someone who prefers Canada’s single payer model. Germany’s model has been successfully adopted by the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan and all of those countries have high quality, affordable health care. Belgium and Japan actually have lower per capita costs than Canada does.
On the left, we make a lot of noise of how unified in opposition the GOP is, that not a single Republican will support the voting rights bill, or universal health care, or … the list goes in.
Why should any Republican break from that unified front when so many Dems demonstrate such stupidity on a regular basis. Just stay strong for a couple of years and they’ll be back in power.
"on the left" ROFL. In America, "on the left" means the same as what "somewhat right of center" means in the rest of the world.
When discussing American politics, it is the nomenclature of American politics that is relevant.
Agree on all points, and would like to add that the path to a German-model system of universal care from ACA is straightforward. It could be ‘ratcheted’ in a series of steps, none of which would look like a ‘government takeover’ of medical care.
Write right. Same thing.
Wright!
Righto!!!
Write is kind of the alt-right, amirite?
You cracked the code!!!
That's write! A military response to non-military problems is always the most appropriate solution.
The Republican wing of the Democratic Party blew it.
Not to mention the Trumpublican wing of the Trumpublican Party. Remember when we all assumed that elected representatives would "vote their conscience" or "vote to help their constituents, their states, their country"? Good times.
The agenda was Biden's not AOC's, and the things in it are almost all popular if they can be divorced from a political context. The progressives actually have been willing to compromise on practically everything when it came down to it, although maybe Biden himself insisted on certain things. And BBB in a large form would be very close to passing, apparently lacking only the votes of Manchin and Sinema.
If progressives had been ignored or had been silent and Manchin and Sinema been allowed to write a bill, would they actually have done so? How do we know that one or other would not have just said no dice? They did not do so from the beginning because they get attention by dragging things out. Progressive legislators are not responsible for the presence of Manchin and Sinema in the Senate.
The idea that progressives are responsible for failure of BBB just does not accord with what has actually happened (if it actually does fail).
As for electoral reform, the need for this is is not an invention of progressives. As Kevin himself has said there needs to be some way of preventing state legislators from hijacking the vote among other things. But to do this the filibuster would have to be overturned and again Manchin and Sinema are blocking this, although some other Democrats might do so as well. How can this blocking be blamed on progressives? Some people blame Biden for not acting sooner on this, but there is no reason to think that Manchin and Sinema would have changed their vote in that case.
+1
I see Kevin's getting started with the hippy-punching ahead of things. So let me be the first with the proper reply: fuck you.
You have a lot of writing: point me at your contemporaneous alternative plan or sit down.
I prefer to think of Mr D's "provocative" posts as being a conversation starter. Which has definitely worked in this case.
Kevin Drum is the Lama of Third Way Democrats, & Conor Friedersdorf is his anointed successor.
After watching the last year, I’m not optimistic about what the three have planned for this year. And it will take a lot to overcome the self-enforced errors of the last couple years.
Such a mature way to say you’re all in on progressive dreams that don’t have a snowball’s chance in America.
Apparently Kevin thinks that Democrats should have just not tried to do anything - they should have just said "We have the Presidency and Congress now but we're just going to go along with what Republicans and Manchin and Sinema want. Tough luck for all the people who voted for us expecting something different."
But most people in the country are dissatisfied with Congress because it doesn't actually do much, except pass tax cuts for rich people. Most people want many things that are in the BBB bill, but some things that they want, like controlling prescription drug prices and raising tax rates on corporations and the rich, were stripped or blocked by the big-money Democrats, not progressives.
That’s not actually what he is saying.
What's holding down Biden's approval ratings is not any of this inside baseball stuff but that simple fact that Covid is still raging. And the fact that it is raging as much as it is is primarily down to the GOP strategy of allowing the disease to spread as much as possible, and kill as many Americans as possible, in order to make Joe Biden look bad. Depressing as it is to admit, this frankly evil strategy is mostly working for them.
If by some stroke of luck we do get over this latest surge and things start to look more promising on the Covid front, then there may finally be more focus on the fundamentals of a strongly recovering economy. Then Biden's numbers would have nowhere to go but up. Fingers crossed.
+1
Indeed.
If a year from a bloody insurrection and widespread efforts to curtail voting and democracy, the party forcefully resisting these malignant trends is considered to have "blown it," then perhaps we should reexamine our notion of "not blowing it."
Quite frankly, this "argument" does not get better with repetition. First of all BBB was what Biden ran on (with some details modified since the campaign), it was not a Bernie brain fart.
Second: The situation post-Trump is radically different from any other in all our life times: The country is on its way to an authoritarian, anti-majoritarian strong man regime. If we lose in 2022 there is no way a Democrat "wins" in 2024. Either the Republican wins or the GOP cheats to make him win (it's not going to be a woman), And the Supreme Court will "certify" the cheat. We have seen enough of the new court to know that (even the much more moderate court in 2000 stole the election, remember?).
After that we have a one-party system with a token opposition. And things will tighten from there. You may be surprised (I won't be) how fast the GOP will abandon individual rights once they interfere with their power. Those rights--in their eyes--are for them, not for everyone.
Given this situation it is maddening how quickly and unthinkingly the Kevins of this world blame the progressives. Kevin in particular has sung this melody for quite some time now.
So why not blame the two imbeciles who have been sabotaging the whole thing? Both of them are vain, uninterested in policy and frankly remind me of nobody more than of Joe Lieberman (who did the same thing to Obama out of hurt vanity--albeit less consistently and with somewhat less extreme consequences.
Nancy Pelosi recently said about the danger we are in that "it won't happen". Why? "Because this is the United States of America". I have an awful lot of respect for Pelosi but this is braindead. But it apparently is what Kevin believes too.
At least the "progressives" (48 out of 50 senators are "progressive" apparently) thy to do something about the situation. But not only do they lose (it happens if you try something ambitious) they have to listen to misguided criticisms like this one. And the whole main stream media toots the same horn--even the outfits (like CNN) that are in fact fully aware of the critical situation we are in.
Lets look at the track record of the moderates. After all the have been in firm control of the Democratic party throughout the recent decades (at least since 1900). Result: With the exception of Obamacare the Dem achievements are: Fixing the deficits every time a GOP administration overspent. That's it. In the mean time the GOP has become less and less committed to democratic governance and the rule of law (Bush v. Gore is now 20 years ago; the trend started before that and was then so entrenched that Gore was forced to abandon his candidacy).
So what has all this moderation bought us? Nothing, at least nothing in terms of securing the American form of government. We have been backsliding for years while the "moderates" have dilly dallied all along the way.
+1
Lol, when capitalism is collapsing, you better believe in "winning". Capital markets will destroy Republican legislators with bankruptcy. You still don't get it. Maybe a nostril rip will serve you well.
Kevin, nothing was getting passed that wasn't graft. Nothing got passed that wasn't graft.
What do progressives have to do with nonsensical demands by Manchin and Sinema? They don't have positions. Just like conservatives, they just want the appearance of saying no. It doesn't matter what was in the bills.
You got it in one, Crissa! Nothing whatsoever to do with 'progressives' who also, incidentally, had the content Manchinema's character from the get-go and knew exactly what would happen if the House caved in to their demands to move on BIL business before finishing up BBB, pledges of good faith notwithstanding.
Progressives acted like the 2020 was a mandate election for progressive ideas. It wasn’t.
Uh, no, no they didn't. Did you see what I did there? Think about it for a bit before you reply.
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2022/01/were-well-on-our-way-to-big-strong.html
“Americans are unhappy about inflation, supply-chain problems, and the persistence of COVID -- but they don't see Democrats defending themselves, or criticizing Republicans apart from Trump (and occasionally Marjorie Taylor Greene). They see Democrats defending Republicans. Yes, Nancy Pelosi is arguing in this clip that the GOP has been hijacked, but she's also implying that good, decent Republicans could take the party back if they had the will, because they're really the majority of the party.”
“Democrats don't assert that Democrats have better ideas. Republicans assert that Democrats are maniacal freedom-hating extremists. Democrats root for Republicans. Republicans root for themselves.
This would be a tough moment for Democrats no matter what -- high gas prices, Omicron -- but they're not helping themselves. They're helping the other guys.”
Again, missing the point... in their daily lives people are affected by wokeness and gender bending. You can't get away from it, and the Republicans are the ones who realize this. It doesn't help that the government is perceived to be run by a power-hungry public health official.
You guys can keep claiming it's because something's wrong with the other side, but you need to consider that you can't keep calling the other side racist and expect to win.
in their daily lives people are affected by wokeness and gender bending.
I've read dumber things on the internet, but they were usually written by children.
+1
So many here are assuming that elections are won by candidates who support policies and programs that poll well. If that were the case, Democrats would have done far better on the down-ballot in 2020. So forget the search for culprits - let’s look at what worked: we got two Democratic Senators elected in a state that Biden narrowly won. The credit goes to the registration-drive and get-out-the-vote volunteers and staffs, and to TFG for attacking his own party officials. Let’s build on that for 2022 - bigger and more widespread efforts for D turnout, and all the prodding we can do to either split the Republican Party, or induce it to coalesce around the unpopular Trump. Badger every Republican candidate to take a position on January 6 and the Big Lie, call them wusses if they won’t, stand back and let them attack each other if they do. Remind voters constantly that their votes, everyone’s votes, could be thrown out if Republicans don’t like the outcome.
+1
I imagine centrists back on Bloody Sunday bitched that Black leaders and the far left had gone too far in their demand for comprehensive voting and civil rights.
Isn't BBB just a slimmed down version of the platform Biden ran on? I'm not sure what "progressive" means, but the programs in BBB are all structured the usual Clintonian way--through means testing and tax incentives--rather than universal programs and nationalization. Maybe I'm wrong, but I suggest Kevin go back to Biden's campaign promises and compare them to what's in BBB before blaming the 5 leftists in Congress for setting expectations too high.
Poor Joe Biden! Became president just as the unitary executive dissolved into the powerless executive.
How dare the progressives actually try to pass the things Biden ran on and declared his 'agenda'. So far, they seem to be the ones trying to do so.
? the progressive wing of the progressive party blew it by asking for nice things we all know we can't have instead of settling for nothing and got nothing. Wow, what a big fuck up.
2 votes denied by 2 bad faith actors.
The dems were there, except for 2. So lets blame the dems and not the coal baron or the performance artist, look at her dance for campaign cash!
Ironic that you post this right above your post about anger.
Totally fucking wrong, but hey not unexpected.
3.5 million vs 1.6 Manchin wanted. Even Sanders was pissed. You need a pinkie snap. This is what Drum is talking about.
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