On voting rights today:

At issue in the Supreme Court today was whether restrictive voting laws in Arizona violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And a Republican Party lawyer defending the restrictions couldn’t have made his intentions clearer.

Tuesday’s oral arguments in two cases—Brnovich v. DNC and Arizona Republican Party v. DNC—concerned the legality of “ballot harvesting,” a practice in which community activists collect ballots to boost voter turnout. The arguments also discussed an Arizona law that disqualified ballots cast in the wrong precinct. There’s no evidence of the voting fraud that these laws purport to limit, and voting rights activists say that the laws disproportionately limit Black, Latino, and Native American voters’ access to the polls.

So Justice Amy Coney Barrett had a simple question for the lawyer defending the GOP-backed laws: “What’s the interest of the Arizona RNC here in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct ballot disqualification rules on the books?”

“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” the lawyer, Michael Carvin, responded. “Politics is a zero-sum game.”
2030 GOP: When the social inferiors refuse to make themselves available for slave labor it inflicts economic and moral damages to the virtuous classes. All laws thus unresponsive to our natural, God-given rights are therefore inapplicable.

An oldie on the reactionary Evangelical/neo-Calvinist mindset that came to dominate the Republican Party:

Maeve Reston reminds me of a conversation from 1993, reconstructed and reimagined from my memory, after an OEOB Ira Magaziner health care reform meeting:

Another Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary: "You've lived in California; Washington, DC; and Massachusetts. You don't really understand the rest of the country--you don't understand the South; you don't understand Texas."

Me: Half my extended family lives in Florida...

ATDAS: "That's not the South..."

Me: Three of my four grandparents come from Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri...

ATDAS: "The Midwest is not the South, or Texas..."

Me: One of my great-great-great grandfathers is buried in Wichita...

ATDAS: "And Wichita is not Texas.

Me: True...

ATDAS: "You don't understand the Republicans we have in the South, and in Texas. You know of Northeastern and Left Coast Republicans. Even Midwestern Republicans--especially Bob Dole--actually think that sick and disabled people, even if they are poor, should be able to get the health care that is good for them, without having to beg. That's not the case with Republicans down in Texas. Republicans in Texas think that if you can't pay the doctor out of what is in your pocket and from the insurance policy you bought, then you need to go beg at your church. And only after you have begged at your church, and begged sincerely and abjectly enough, might your church find itself paying for you out of Christian charity--the benefit of which is to save their souls, not your body!"

Me: But...

ATDAS: "They don't like Medicaid. They don't like Medicaid because it short-circuits this process. You get treated but you don't have to beg for it. The only reason they vote for Medicaid--and Texas only votes for grinchy Medicaid--is that the rich doctors of Dallas and Houston who contribute so much to the Republican Party think that Medicaid means that they don't have to dig into the pockets of their practices to support charity care."

Me: But what if you don't have a church!

ATDAS: "Then you should go join one, shouldn't you? That's a benefit..."

Quote Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name View Post
YOu yourself said it is a waste to be doing performative votes that accomplish nothing. So what is it Monty, pass Manchin approved bills or nothing? You can't act as if the ability to make $15/hr happen is actually there.
The idea being to try to get as much out of him as possible, not allow him to unilaterally set the agenda as he pleases. To use your discussion of inflation as an analogy, we're trying to find an optimal price point for the buyer (Manchin et al.), not just selling 25c patties because that's what Manchin would like to see.

What there is an ability to make happen is something that the leadership can discover, it's not something to be presumed in either direction. If, within limits of methods, Manchin will never ever budge on $15 minimum wage (and I'm not even sure that is the case), then we've found it out through the process.