The Biden Presidency

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wareyin said:
Yes, painting him as an impediment to the Democratic agenda will definitely motivate him. As that is what he already paints himself as, it will motivate him to continue impeding.

What can they threaten to take away? What can they promise him? This isn't specifics, this is vague pabulum that ignores the reality of the situation.



Other than his say so? What other evidence would you accept?
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Meanwhile, people who wanted a federal government that works could have voted to toss out, among others, Lindsay Graham, Moscow Mitch McConnell, Cornyn, Concerned Collins, and so forth. Maybe reelected Doug Jones as well, he was always a bit iffy.

But white peopleTM, the brand, keep voting against higher salaries, better health care access, education, improved policing, and so forth, soo...
 
Mumbles said:
Meanwhile, people who wanted a federal government that works could have voted to toss out, among others, Lindsay Graham, Moscow Mitch McConnell, Cornyn, Concerned Collins, and so forth. Maybe reelected Doug Jones as well, he was always a bit iffy.

But white peopleTM, the brand, keep voting against higher salaries, better health care access, education, improved policing, and so forth, soo...
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Yep. West Virginians are quite happy to have Manchin block a higher minimum wage, even if it would benefit them. Just so long as it hurts someone else more, they're content. West Virginia is 94% white.
 
Biden called the removal of mask mandates, "Neanderthal thinking". The cavemen in the Geico commercials were offended.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1367157767866380292

If Harris allows the Parliamentarian decision to stand, that's pretty much shutting the door on any chance of any min wage hike. It would be better to overrule the Parliamentarian and let the $15 wage fail to get 51 votes, because at least that leaves open the possibility of future passage through the reconciliation process.

If not, it's pretty much over. It's hard to imagine 10 Republican ghouls crossing the aisle to get to 60 votes, even if a lesser wage hike approved by Manchin were proposed.

If Harris allows the Parliamentarian ruling to stand, min wage increase is a dead issue.
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Not completely dead, as they have the chance to tack the minimum wage on to any old bill that has to pass in 2 years. Last two years of Biden, no chance.

Biden might run again, but I am not going to give it more than 50/50 chance that he runs.
 
Firestone said:
Republican president: "I have just signed an executive order abolishing the cancelling of Christmas."
Republican supporters: "Hail to the Chief! Eight more years!"

Democratic president: "Here's a $1.9T Covid relief bill, with payments of $1,400 to most individuals, a $400 per week unemployment supplement through Aug. 29, along with an extension of programs making millions more people eligible for jobless benefits, an expansion of the child tax credit to give families up to $3,600 per child over a year, $20 billion for Covid-19 vaccine distribution and $50 billion for testing and tracing efforts, $350 billion in state, local and tribal government relief, $25 billion for assistance in covering rent payments, $170 billion for K-12 schools and higher education institutions to cover reopening costs and aid to students."
Democratic supporters: "Traitor, it doesn't even include my pet proposal."
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There was a Covid relief bill during Trump's time with a Republican Senate, too. It sent those checks out to more people and offered a bigger unemployment benefit. What impression do you expect this to make on most people about which party is helping them more? (Hint: in some states surveys found a significant portion of Trump's 2020 voters who said they did so because his name was on the checks they were sent.)
 
Delvo said:
There was a Covid relief bill during Trump's time with a Republican Senate, too. It sent those checks out to more people and offered a bigger unemployment benefit. What impression do you expect this to make on most people about which party is helping them more? (Hint: in some states surveys found a significant portion of Trump's 2020 voters who said they did so because his name was on the checks they were sent.)
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I don't believe them.

But that's neither here nor there. I think Biden admin and Dems should work to make this succeed regardless.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
https://www.newsweek.com/aoc-questi...ys-majority-west-virginia-supports-it-1572450
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This is what I mean when I say that people can't just say "I support X", and have everyone say "Well, see, they support it."

Did they vote for Moscow Mitch and Joe Manchin? If so, they didn't actually support it at a national level, now did they? Are they pushing for some state or local minimum wage law? If the answer is "nothing" then they don't really support it at all.

If they want to say "I'm more worried about abortion//low taxes/black people getting to vote/the sanctity of the filibuster/whatever"...okay, that's the bargain they made, but then they *really* support those, and not the $15/hour minimum.

(I seriously can't think of anything good Moscow Mitch supports off the top of my head - the most I can come up with is abortion restrictions if one considers it to be "murdering babies" sincerely, which yeah, I understand but strongly disagree with, so I went with that)
 
A few weeks ago I ran across a survey finding that the average Republican voter doesn't know what Republican politicians have been actually working toward; they think they're voting for what they want and don't realize they're voting against it.
 
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Mumbles said:
This is what I mean when I say that people can't just say "I support X", and have everyone say "Well, see, they support it."

Did they vote for Moscow Mitch and Joe Manchin? If so, they didn't actually support it at a national level, now did they? Are they pushing for some state or local minimum wage law? If the answer is "nothing" then they don't really support it at all.

If they want to say "I'm more worried about abortion//low taxes/black people getting to vote/the sanctity of the filibuster/whatever"...okay, that's the bargain they made, but then they *really* support those, and not the $15/hour minimum.

(I seriously can't think of anything good Moscow Mitch supports off the top of my head - the most I can come up with is abortion restrictions if one considers it to be "murdering babies" sincerely, which yeah, I understand but strongly disagree with, so I went with that)
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Sure, politics is complicated, people vote against their own interests all the time.

My point is simply that Manchin is not bulletproof on this issue. Conservatives, generally speaking, are vulnerable on the issue of minimum wage.

Even in deep red Florida a min wage hike passed by popular referendum, even though the Republican state government never would have passed such a thing into law through the normal process. This is an issue with the potential to cut through the partisan noise and appeal to people.

This is exactly the kind of wedge issue that conservatives can be attacked on. Manchin isn't invulnerable to this kind of thing.
 
This article more elegantly expresses what I was trying to go for in my comments generally. On the issue of Democrats means-testing the covid relief:

Democrats Are Pathologically Short-Changing America

There’s a simple logic behind this: that richer members of society shouldn’t get the same benefits as the poor. The process of deciding exactly how to define and administrate those boundaries even has a name, called “means-testing.”

Democrats absolutely love this process, because it allows them to sit merrily on the fence between actual social welfare and the made-up, GOP-pandering notion of “fiscal responsibility.” This is Joe Manchin’s entire political career in a nutshell, and it’s no surprise that he lobbied hard for these cuts. The end result, unfortunately, is that they pass bills and programs so laden with red-tape qualifications that thousands of people inevitably slip through the cracks. Aid makes its way to some people, but misses others. In this scenario alone — who’s to say that someone whose salary was technically above $80,000 on their last federal tax return doesn’t need the help?

And when you zoom out, the optics are equally terrible. Who actually wants this? Who actually cares if someone who makes a slightly better paycheck also gets a stimulus payment? In the worst possible future, it creates a situation where millions of American workers actually receive less under a Biden administration than they did under Trump.
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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/stimulus-check-2021-update-biden-1136201/

This is a losing strategy.
 
Delvo said:
A few weeks ago I ran across a survey finding that the average Republican voter doesn't know what Republican politicians have been actually working toward; they think they're voting for what they want and don't realize they're voting against it.
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That’s not surprising - the 2020 Republican Convention did not even put forward a party platform, something an informed voter can usually contrast with the Democratic platform, and weigh one against the other to see which best aligns with their positions. It was at that point, the idea that it was now just “the party of Trump” became fully realized.
 
Truly impressive how the Democratic party find ways to totally **** themselves. They are on the cutting edge of technology when it comes to making themselves totally unlikeable.

Moderate Democrats Strip Stimulus Checks From 12 Million Voters for No Reason

For weeks, a handful of moderate Democrats in the Senate have been fighting to prevent $1,400 COVID-relief checks from reaching their own upper-middle-class constituents. It has never been all that clear to the public — or, by all appearances, to the senators themselves — why they wanted to restrict eligibility for these relief payments so badly. It is not as though Joe Manchin or Jeanne Shaheen are opposed to welfare for the affluent in all forms. To the contrary, Shaheen has lambasted Republicans for restricting the state-and-local-income (SALT) deduction, a tax subsidy that primarily benefits well-off homeowners.

Nor could moderates claim to have the public on their side; the relief checks were overwhelmingly popular in their initially proposed form. And on this issue, one can’t attribute the moderates’ resistance to fealty to corporate interests; large retailers love stimulus checks.
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https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/1400-stimulus-checks-eligibility-democrats-covid-relief-bill.html?utm_source=tw&utm_campaign=nym&utm_medium=s1



12 million less Americans will receive stimulus checks under the new means testing language added to the bill. 12 million that received aid under Trump, but won't under Biden. All this to save 0.63% of the total cost of the package.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
My point is simply that Manchin is not bulletproof on this issue. Conservatives, generally speaking, are vulnerable on the issue of minimum wage... This is exactly the kind of wedge issue that conservatives can be attacked on. Manchin isn't invulnerable to this kind of thing.
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And even if he is completely immobile about it and does turn out to block a bill the other Democrats vote for (and he has been known to back down on some things before), look at the options the party had going in:

1. Try it anyway and have him do what he's going to do

or

2. Say "Oh well, nothing we can do, no point in ever even trying"

Which mindset would be more effective at creating the appearance for voters that it's what you ever actually even wanted in the first place? Which mindset makes you look like somebody the voters will feel good about voting for? Which mindset is the mindset of people who, after failing on one thing, still might keep trying on others? Which mindset at least has the possibility of ever succeeding on something, even if it is only a fraction of the time?

Remember to answer in terms of how people actually react to things, not how you think they should or they would if they were all you.
 
thaiboxerken said:
True, but that's easily mitigated by placing less polling stations in the cities and making it harder to vote.
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Manchin is a Democrat (nominally), I doubt he benefits from driving down city turnout. Maybe he faces primary challenges from the left, but if he's squaring off against a more conservative Republican I doubt low city turnout helps.

His last election he won 49-46.
 
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