What follows is an exercise in armchair speculation. My speculation concerns the Joe Manchin problem. To keep this short I am going to assume that my blog readers understand what I mean by this phrase.
Let us begin by recognizing how extraordinary it is that Joe
Manchin is in the Senate at all. He represents West Virginia, which went for
Trump in 2020 by just under 40 points. If he were not in the Senate, the
brilliant extraordinary victories of John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock would not
have given the Democrats the control of the Senate that they now enjoy. So let
us keep that in mind. There is no point beating up on poor Joe because he is
not Bernie Sanders. If he were even a
moderate Democrat, he would not be a senator at all. The only question worth
asking, it seems to me, is this: assuming that Joe Biden has a strategy for
getting Manchin to agree in at least some cases to abrogate the filibuster,
what is it?
There seem to me to be essentially three answers to my
question and I really have no idea which one is correct. The first answer,
which I passionately hope is wrong, is that Joe Biden is caught in a time warp
and actually thinks that if he reaches out repeatedly to Republican senators
and relies on his life of experience in that body, he can bring enough of them
around so that he does not need to abrogate the filibuster. If Biden believes that, we are all screwed, but
his behavior thus far does not seem to suggest that he is genuinely in the grip
of that fantasy.
The second answer, for which I think there is some
significant evidence, is that Biden believes he can lead the Democrats to
victory in 2022 and again in 2024 by delivering enough bread-and-butter
legislation to win over large numbers of independents and moderate
Republicans, thereby overcoming the voting obstacles that Republican
legislatures are now putting in place to enable them to retain power with
minority support in the electorate. This
is not a stupid belief on his part but I fear that it is wrong and I am
apprehensive that that may be what explains his behavior with regard to
Manchin.
The third answer is that he is playing a deep, complicated
long game that goes something like this: he makes a great show of trying to
work across the aisle on things like infrastructure, giving Manchin every
opportunity to see such a strategy fail, patiently losing a series of
legislative fights in the Senate, such as the inability to get 10 senators to
agree to the establishment of a January 6 commission, until finally Manchin becomes
exasperated with his good Republican friends, at which point Biden asks Manchin to agree to abrogate the filibuster for the voting rights and protection act,
arguing that it is needed to preserve the possibility of the sort of bipartisan
legislative work that Manchin cherishes.
If this is what Biden is doing – if the third answer is
correct – then I think that may be our best chance to avoid the destruction of
democracy that I fear.
As I say, I have absolutely no idea what is going on in
Biden’s mind. I am convinced that he is not a fool. If the correct answer is
the second then I am dismayed, because I fear that even success in passing
extremely popular bread-and-butter legislation may not be enough to counteract
the attempts now being made by the Republicans to dramatically suppress the
Democratic vote. If the third answer is correct, then we can only wait and hope
that his elaborate game with Manchin is successful.
In the meantime, the only thing that I and others like me
can actually do as opposed to say is to give money and offer other forms of
concrete support to local efforts to elect or reelect Democratic members of the
House and Senate.
Manchin is just the most visible, and there are said to be significant others like him in the senate who are not speaking out so as to not antagonize their base, like in the purple states. Progressives need to realize this and accommodate that part of the Democratic party...somehow. But I hope you are correct and that your third point is his intent.
ReplyDelete2 thoughts: 1), It's not obvious to me that voter suppression tactics like limiting early voting, requiring ID to vote, limiting voting by mail, etc. will actually effect electoral outcomes. Old people vote Republican, and they're effected by all of these things as much as any reliable Democratic voter. Making it harder to vote is certainly unjust, but I'm not sure it ushers in permanent minority rule. The far more important trend is in making it easier for state legislatures to overturn local elections. If Republican state legislatures can simply vote for their preferred slate of electors and ignore what votes were actually cast all together, they will. A lot of these voting laws make situations like that quite plausible. 2), Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema don't deserve all of the focus for the harm they're doing to American democracy. There is a lot of leverage that could be used against them by leadership in the senate that simply isn't being used. Why do Manchin and Sinema have any committee assignments anymore? Why do they have any access to voter email lists, donor contacts, DSCC funding, etc.? Manchin and Sinema have chosen the filibuster over democracy, but it looks to me like Schumer and Durbin have chosen these other institutional niceties over democracy.
ReplyDeleteI think your third point is correct. I'd also add (always the optimist!) that Manchin has to play a game with West Virginia. Whether he truly believes that bipartisanship is possible or not,he has to be seen as trying for it at every opportunity, and he has to find issues on which he can vote against Biden just to prevent a future opponent from charging him with voting with Biden most of the time.
ReplyDeleteIt's a combination of two and three. Biden likely realizes that Obama's strategy was a disaster and he has to actually deliver dollars and jobs.
ReplyDeleteSinema will cave if Manchin changes his mind and a road or so in WV gets literally paved with gold. That and a come to Jesus moment in which Manchin realizes that he is in his mid-seventies, has had a long political career, will have been in the Senate fourteen years in 2024 and would be in his eighties at the end of his next term should he be re-elected which his Republican "friends" will do everything to prevent and how does he want to go down in history anyway. Also a factor will be Biden pointing out that his window of relevancy is rapidly closing. If the Dems for whatever reasons manage to pick up seats in the Senate in 2022, he becomes irrelevant. If the Reps regain the majority he becomes irrelevant and then, when the Reps take him out in WV in 2024, looks stupid besides. If anyone can do this conversion, Biden can.
Manchin reportedly wanted to quit when his term was up in 2018. One has to wonder whether he cares about being reelected in 2024. Why not just give the party everything it wants now, if you’re going to call it quits in 2024 anyway and in all likelihood be replaced by a Republican? My guess is that he actually believes his own claptrap about bipartisanship, even though everyone now can see that that ship has sailed. Or maybe he is just concern trolling, and eventually will do the sensible thing and kill the filibuster. Time will tell.
ReplyDeleteAn outstanding question is what the Democrats’ messaging ought to be. As everyone says, they seem to be in a pretty good spot at the moment, with sunny economic forecasts and a likely quick end to the pandemic. Plus — a little overlooked fact — right about now tons of people are seeing drastic reductions in their out-of-pocket Obamacare premiums. Assuming Democrats can run on protecting those gains, we should be able to get our people to the polls. In addition to all that, however, I have been heartened to see that a sense of urgency is starting to rise up vis-a-vis the impending end to our democracy at the hands of the Trumpist GOP cult. I’ve noticed this in media commentary and among my social groups. Everyone seems to be living with this low-level anxiety. It very much feels like The Big Story of our times. Even Biden is starting to loudly proclaim the message. Which is good, because it means that the Capitol attack has yielded a proper backlash.
Of course, sadly we now live in a world where winning an election is no any guarantee that you will be certified as the winner. Getting people to the polls might not be enough if they’re just going to steal it anyway. In addition, surgery’s show about a ten-point enthusiasm deficit for Democratic versus Republican voters. I’m trying to be optimistic, but there’s plenty of cause for worry.
I imagine it will probably come across as a bit grouchy, and apologies for that, but I do find armchair politicking about as meaningful as armchair sports analysis and strategising. It doesn’t ever seem to get at what—a whole myriad of things—might well figure in the calculated political behaviour of actual politicians (or athletes). Yet it doesn’t seem to reach down to the level of trying to figure out what the politicians may actually be responding to both consciously and subconsciously. In other words, it doesn’t seem to me to rise to the level of policial analysis. It may be fun, or it may be dispiriting (as in the present instance), but it doesn’t raise those of us who engage in it to the condition of being politically active. It’s “voices off.”
ReplyDeleteBut perhaps I completely misunderstand what counts as meaningful political action in this electronic age. Sorry about that.
Is Manchin a fool or does he put his precarious Senate seat above the survival of our country? Either way, we lose. Unless he is just a narcissistic politician seeking attention and will do the right thing in the end. This I doubt.
ReplyDelete"In the meantime, the only thing that I and others like me can actually do as opposed to say is to give money and offer other forms of concrete support to local efforts to elect or reelect Democratic members of the House and Senate."
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. Currently I prefer to give money to organizations that are engaged in grassroots efforts to register people in their communities. Such organizations include Black Votes Matter, Navajo County Native Organizing Fund, Poder Latinx, the New Georgia Project, and so on.
My god, it just gets worse and worse on this blog.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: what's the difference between the Dem pearl-clutching going on here--sans any serious analysis of the sort given by any standard leftie outlet, but rather regurgitation of pure mainstream pablum--and that available in any standard liberal venue? Ah, right, here we are ritually given sprinkles of Marx and strenuous intonations of long experience and political wisdom.
What an incomprehesible failed attempt at critical thought.
Delete"It doesn’t ever seem to get at what—a whole myriad of things—might well figure in the calculated political behaviour of actual politicians (or athletes)."
ReplyDeleteCan't say for sports in general but if you want to begin to understand some of politics and all of what passes for that on the Right, you might watch some WWE on the TV. Understanding "kayfabe," "marks," "smarts," and " smarks" is much of what you need to know about where we are now. This may help:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/06/are-the-republican-audits-sic-of-the-2020-vote-works-or-shoots
Back in the 1990s I would watch from time to time and watching a Trump rally was deja vu.
3:40 pm anonymous,
ReplyDeleteWhat a weird thing to do. If you don't like a blog, you don't have to read it. To visit a blog often enough that you get a sense of its trajectory over time and can complain about how it just gets worse and worse is so silly. The internet is very big, so many places for you to get lost! Life is so short, I can't fathom spending any of it reading and commenting on a blog you think is so shallow and such a waste of time. It's a weird pathology that I just can't understand. Read a book, watch a movie, call up a friend and have a nice conversation, there are so many things you can do that would be a better use of your time than reading and commenting on a blog you don't like!
But also, online harassment has been a huge topic of discussion right here in domestic America over the past few years, and indeed, I think of 'those who need more information on a given topic but don't want to be caught seeking out that information', and it occurs to me that most people actually fall into this group without realizing it. How would you feel if every single question of yours was tied to your real-life identity? Online anonymity isn't just for those who are up to no good. Or maybe put it as a question, do I *believe*, that the internet should not be anonymous? I think it's a very interesting topic to debate.
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