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  1. #11
    Coffee farmer extraordinaire Member spmetla's Avatar
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    Default Re: Biden Thread

    You pass that bill first, you've lost all leverage to get anything else, and the Biden presidency is effectively over...
    It would mean that perhaps the ability to pass legislation without republicans may be over. I know the R leadership are dug in as just opposition but surely there's a handful that could be brought over a few issues.

    Not passing either bill and possibly defaulting on our debt will certainly end his presidency and who knows what else for the US as a superpower.

    The fundamental problem remains that if Manchinema won't like green eggs and ham in a stone soup, they won't like it in 12 convenient, easy-to-prepare, weekly home-delivered meals. With an omnibus, compromise is as simple as submitting an amendment - the size of a bill doesn't preclude that, as we have seen amply demonstrated over the summer negotiatons. So it's not even that there is no difference - with your strategy literally nothing passes, except maybe the one exact microbill that Sinemanchin would personally author (such as Manchin's just-released version of a voting rights bill, which can't run through reconciliation anyway).
    Manchin has been a known issue for months and his lack of clarity as to his demands has led us to this point. Letting him hold up the government with two minute to midnight issues is of course ridiculous but if you need his vote then perhaps you'll have to cave to his whims sooner than later. Which is exactly why I'd want the infrastructure bill passed without it being held hostage.

    Perhaps if B3 bill was broken up you could win over a vote or two from the few centrist Republicans by trying to make a few of the issues they agree with separate bills.

    Yeah, we'll have to have more nonsense pork in whatever passes but if that keeps the government rolling allows for some progress then so be it.

    We don't have 50 years to pass a minimum wage or subsidize community college. Turtledove's lizard race we're not, if that means anything to you.
    Those being the only two major things in the B3 plan that I'm against that'd be fine with me.

    Now, this discovery is fucking terrifying for the entire broad Left to the extent it is descriptive, and upends most of our longstanding assumptions of political action: If we can deliver any sort of benefit but gain no political benefit in turn, nor increase public consciousness of politics and policy, then aren't we all just doomed? Maybe all that remains to us is strenuously attempt to implement as much good government as possible, while we can, not because anyone will reward us for it, but because it helps people and it's the right thing to do...
    The the actual policies of the Left aren't winning people over then perhaps that's not the major issue. I think you and I can agree that the Republican Party as it stands now is not a policy based party but really just a mush of reactionary forces in the US from fear of immigration, to fear of 'socialism', to fear of 'woke culture' and political correctness. Half the country support a yahoo like Trump despite his completely incoherent policies and complete disconnect from one day to the next on what he says or does. A third of the country refuses free vaccines for the stupidest of reasons and that's with looniest on both ends of the political spectrum.
    As we've seen the stupid radical elements of the right are more frequently resorting to violence too. Perhaps addressing these ridiculous fears somehow might be worth it.

    My dad and my brother are both closet-racists yet both voted for Obama because they wanted 'change' even though both could not describe what that was to them specifically. They both also voted for Trump over Hillary somehow. My dad actually watches the news too, he enjoys Rachel Maddow and the Cuomo Report yet somehow was pro-Trump until about a month into his presidency. Same with one of my coffee milling client, he's a anarchist farmer doing the organic thing and selling weed. Yet he too wanted Trump instead of the establishment candidate that was Hillary or Biden.

    There's some deep underlying dissatisfaction with the government and woeful ignorance of how the government works at any level from the county to the federal level. Perhaps trying to hold the corrupt in check and make the current government more functional and accountable to the people that fund it would be worth while.
    Discounting this weird undefined dissatisfaction as just idiots to be ignored though is probably needed but they need to at least be soothed in some manner, no clue how.

    I think you both have good ideas about what the US needs and the Democrats are for the most part working toward that. Perhaps though we should also figure out what the majority of Americans actually want from their government too as the last twenty years has made it far from clear where we're going as a nation and what that means to the average joe.
    Last edited by spmetla; 10-02-2021 at 23:16.

    "Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
    -Abraham Lincoln


    Four stage strategy from Yes, Minister:
    Stage one we say nothing is going to happen.
    Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
    Stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.
    Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.

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