Biden Thread

[Pannonian]

Are there any areas where Manchin votes with the Democrats against the Republicans?

[Montmorency]

Are there any areas where Manchin votes with the Democrats against the Republicans?

He's voted to accede most of Biden's judicial and administrative nominations, the son of a son. Without him we would have nothing at all, is the reality of life on the legislative edge. And we almost certainly lose his seat in the 2024 election regardless.

But Manchin is a stock character in bourgeois democracy. The fundamental problem is that people can't get the sense to vote better elsewhere, or even in sheer recognition of the collapsing state of the country and the depredations upon it. Also, this excerpt from Levitz on Manchin recently:

Democrats had hoped the enhanced CTC’s impending expiration would work as a forcing mechanism for Build Back Better’s passage. After all, the whole “do many temporary programs” strategy is premised on the idea that Congress simply cannot resist extending social benefits once they’re in place. Faced with a choice between acceding to the leadership’s demands or allowing West Virginia families to lose their monthly benefits, Manchin would feel compelled to cave.

But this doesn’t seem to be the case. On the contrary, Manchin reportedly sees the enhanced CTC’s expiration as a feature, not a bug. And the senator’s indifference to extending the program doesn’t just reflect his own peculiar ideological hang-ups. It’s also indicative of the fact that overwhelming public support for the policy has failed to materialize. Democrats have been sending hundreds of dollars every month to each of the roughly 40 percent of U.S. households that have kids under 18, yet in an NPR/Marist poll released last week, only 17 percent of voters said their family had ever received a monthly payment. Roughly half of the enhanced CTC’s beneficiaries don’t even know they have been benefiting from the program. But Democrats are counting on this constituency to be so politically powerful and mobilized that a future Republican Congress would have no choice but to extend the enhanced CTC. If direct monthly payments have failed to create a self-sustaining constituency, there is little basis for believing that less universal (and/or more dysfunctional) programs like the Democrats’ current child-care and paid-leave plans will do so.

I've been on this beat throughout 2021. We can't aspire to a self-governing polity when so many people don't even understand enough to vote themselves the treasury.

[Montmorency]

Good summary of Manchin's 2021.

Sometimes it's funny enough to bring you to tears:

In recent months, Manchin has told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, according to two sources familiar with the senator’s comments.

Continuing the child tax credit for another year is a core part of the Build Back Better legislation that Democrats had hoped to pass by the end of the year. The policy has already cut child poverty by nearly 30%.

Manchin’s private comments shocked several senators, who saw it as an unfair assault on his own constituents and those struggling to raise children in poverty.

Manchin has also told colleagues he believes that Americans would fraudulently use the proposed paid sick leave policy, specifically saying people would feign being sick and go on hunting trips, a source familiar with his comments told HuffPost.

@Seamus Fermanagh

I don't have great respect for the rural White myself, but this is altogether too much.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I don't have great respect for the rural White myself, but this is altogether too much.

A culturally vexing group. As an aggregate, they represent many of the best qualities of US culture -- and simultaneously champion and exemplify many of the worst aspects of our culture.

[Montmorency]

A culturally vexing group. As an aggregate, they represent many of the best qualities of US culture -- and simultaneously champion and exemplify many of the worst aspects of our culture.

Well, yes, such as lacking the resources to, or outright refusing to, categorize Covid deaths as Covid deaths, but Manchin's level of reflexive prejudice is still appalling. "Americans would fraudulently use the proposed paid sick leave policy... people would feign being sick and go on hunting trips" sounds like a remark that would come from Donald Trump. Then again, he and Manchin do share a class.

[Montmorency]

1 year anniversary of the Republican beta for 2024.

The cartoonist Garrison is widely appreciated among the Left for his pure uncut doublethink and surrealism.

[Montmorency]

Like Illinois and Oregon's, the New York Democrats appear to be stepping up gerrymanders. Fair enough.




In 2019, the Supreme Court was asked to disallow extreme partisan and racial gerrymandering on constitutional and legal grounds. John Roberts replied " you."*

For at least the past 4 years - most recently last December - Congressional Democratic leadership has been asking Republicans to join them in passing federal prohibition of gerrymandering. Mitch McConnell replied " you."

When Democrats turn and respond, "No, YOU," they can at least impose some little measure of consequence.

As the redistricting process comes closer to a conclusion, it turns out that the imbalance is less severe than once feared. With Republican states having mostly maximized gerrymandering back in 2011-2, and many GOP incumbents now prioritizing the reinforcement of their safer districts over the dilution of liberal ones, increased gerrymandering in some Democratic states leaves the national Republican advantage only somewhat more than it previously was. That's appallingly bad, but not as bad as it could have been. Republicans are likelier to take only a modest majority in the House.

*Some on the Org heartily approved.