Since the Beltway press is such a maddeningly unreliable narrator, I figured I’d go straight to the horses’ mouths this morning to try to suss out what happened on Capitol Hill during Biden’s visit yesterday.
First, an excerpt from Speaker Pelosi’s newsroom page:
Today, President Biden honored us with his first in-person visit to our Caucus. He received a hero’s welcome! His presentation on the values of the Biden vision was warmly and enthusiastically received. We look forward to a successful enactment of the Build Back Better Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.
While great progress has been made in the negotiations to develop a House, Senate and White House agreement on the Build Back Better Act, more time is needed to complete the task. Our priority to create jobs in the health care, family and climate agendas is a shared value. Our Chairs are still working for clarity and consensus. Clearly, the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill will pass once we have agreement on the reconciliation bill…
Interesting — Pelosi and Biden are sticking to the original agreement, i.e., a tandem strategy for passing both bills. Well done, Mr. President and Madam Speaker! This is how negotiations are supposed to work.
Now, let’s take a peek at the spittle-flecked statement from Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who organized a handful of fellow conservative clowns in our otherwise united Dem caucus to blow up that agreement:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, October 1, 2021, U.S. Congressman Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5) released the following statement:
“It’s deeply regrettable that Speaker Pelosi breached her firm, public commitment to Members of Congress and the American people to hold a vote and to pass the once-in-a-century bipartisan infrastructure bill on or before September 27…
Along with a group of Members, I’ve been working around-the-clock to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, legislation we helped craft back in April with my Senate colleagues. But a small far left faction of the House of Representatives undermined that agreement and blocked a critical vote on the President’s historic bipartisan infrastructure bill…
I’m particularly savoring the part about the “small far left faction” undermining the bipartisan agreement because in fact it was Gottheimer who led a truly tiny faction on the starboard fringe of the caucus to renege on the tandem agreement. And all he has to show for it so far is the stylish sling-back the Speaker herself wedged up his ass.
Open thread!
Baud
Gottheimer is trying to save face. Just get it done.
What I like about this time is that we know who the villains are by name.
MomSense
I think we are going to see some cool new visits by MVP and POTUS to talk with voters about childcare and free community college. I bet they will go to places like West Virginia and Arizona.
Frankensteinbeck
Since I missed the Alex Jones thread, my opinion on that: Jones was willing to face serious penalties to avoid turning over his documents. I think it was more than asshole obstruction. I think they contained evidence of crimes, such that nothing he could suffer from civil court would be as bad as the trouble he’d be in if anyone saw what he admitted to.
eclare
@MomSense: I would also stress dental care for seniors. A lot of retirees in AZ!
Kirk
Characterizing this as “reneg[ing]” is highly disingenuous bc the Blue Dogs never agreed to a tandem strategy. Biden just unilaterally declared it so, perhaps hoping he could manifest it through the power of positive thoughts a la “the Secret.”
MomSense
@eclare:
Exactly – chompers are a BFD!
MomSense
@Frankensteinbeck:
He’s definitely got some criminal exposure given the real world crimes that resulted from the dangerous lies he spread.
Ken
@eclare: I thought the main rreason they lived in Arizona was so they could go to Mexico for their dental care.
Derelict
@MomSense: We can only hope. Sinema needs to be gone yesterday. I keep hearing that Manchin is just doing what he has to do to hang on in WVa, because the state would just flip Republican otherwise. Frankly, I’d love to have Biden help front a genuine Democrat to run for Manchin’s seat, and make that run all about “look: A government that actually functions for YOU, citizens of West Virginia, is one that makes sure you have jobs, healthcare, safe homes, and security against life’s catastrophes. One that helps you educate your children and care for your parents.”
Lapassionara
@Frankensteinbeck: I think he is planning on filing for bankruptcy once the court enters a money judgment. I doubt he has many assets, or if he did, he has spent the last few years putting them out of reach of creditors. So, he saved on legal fees by not responding to discovery. I doubt the families will ever see any compensation. This is enraging, and a healthy society would have shunned him years ago.
MomSense
I think what angers me as much as fucking Manchinemaheimer’s bullshit is the way the media, who have 24/7 opportunities for reporting, complain that Dems aren’t talking about what is in the bills. Democrats need to brand them they need to stop referring to them as the dollar amounts, need to tell the American people what is in them, all while the media personalities fail to discuss what is in the bills, refer to them by infrastructure or build back better, and focus solely on the dollar amounts.
Also too we keep hearing tales of yore about Tip O’Neill and RayGun negotiating and compromising as the ideal of American politics. Democrats negotiating with each other (because the other party is now a batshit crazy death cult) is characterized as infighting.
I don’t think we can have nice things with this media.
Geminid
@eclare: The reconciliation bill represents investments in our nation’s human capital that will pay off in future economic strength. I am hoping Democrats can get people to understand this. There is a general skepticism and cynicism towards government, so it may take passing the programs and implementing them for many people to appreciate their value. Even then ideology and tribalism will blind some to reality. But I think most Americans are not that ideological and tribal, and just want to see things work.
Citizen Alan
@Lapassionara: The problem with that is that getting through a bankruptcy requires a far more thorough disclosure of financial affairs than he would be comfortable with. And unlike the civil suit, it would bring those financial affairs to to the attention of the Justice department in a way that the civil suit would not have.
PenAndKey
@Kirk: Bullshit. The only reason the Infrastructure bill passed the Senate was because there was, and is, an agreement that it would be voted for first in the Senate and the reconciliation bill would be voted on first in the House. He’s not House majority leader. He doesn’t set the schedule, which was set after literal months of negotiation. His time to complain about that schedule was before the if senate infrastructure vote.
Geminid
@Baud: Gottheimer knows that pinning the blame on a few far left members is bullshit. The Progressive Caucus has had the implicit support of the White House in this matter, and Gottheimer is aware of this. I read that Gottheimer tried to get others to sign yesterday’s letter and had no takers. He might just as well threaten to hold his breath until he turns blue.
Geminid
@Geminid: Now I read in the thread above that the 19 member Blue Dog Caucus issued a letter lamenting the lack of a stand alone vote on the physical infrastructure bill. But it was just a complaint, and implied no action.
Betty Cracker
Redacted because PenAndKey said it better at #14.
MomSense
@Derelict:
One if the things I found interesting about Manchin’s exchange with the kayakers was how he is so used to not being challenged on his statements. He tried to counter the comparison with defense spending by pointing out how much Medicare and Social Security cost at which point the kayakers reinforced the necessity to tax the rich. Clearly this was not a connection the Senator wanted them to make. Like the Republicans, his starting point is always taxes won’t increase to pay for spending.
Mallard Filmore
the rich must never be asked to give up their free ride.
HinTN
@Betty Cracker:
Your high quality snark always delights.
different-church-lady
There’s a small irony in the fact that even some normies have probably heard of the Squad, but outside of NJ nobody has any idea who Gottheimer is.
MomSense
@Geminid:
They conveniently neglect to mention that Bi part of the bipartisan is not there. If there were Republican support for the bill in the House they wouldn’t need the progressive vote.
His entire complaint is bullshit and he knows it.
germy
I think the beltway press is purposely unreliable. They’re narrating what they’re told to narrate.
raven
Go Dawgs!!
germy
Meanwhile, in upstate NY:
brendancalling
@PenAndKey: I’d love to belt that balloon-headed gobshite right in his giant balloon head.
“Gottheimer.” More like “Gobshiter.”
germy
Almost Heaven
germy
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
It pains me that even MSNBC, with a few notable exceptions, has been resorting to “Dems in Disarray”/“Biden’s Legacy is Blown” framing.
It is piss-offing.
Joe Falco
@raven:
They’ll need to make sure not to get lazy after playing Vandy last week. Arkansas is not going to let the Dawgs run up the score 60 – 0.
Uncle Cosmo
IOW, you’d like one less more-often-than-not reliable Democratic vote (specifically including that for Majority Leader) in the U.S. Senate. You could run Jesus H. Christ His Own Self as a Democrat in WV and He’d be lucky to lose by lest than 20% in the general to Lucifer Incarnate, no matter how many sick he healed or dead he raised or loaves and fishes he handed out at rallies. Even among the so-called Christians.
Forget about Manchin. Bust your butt to expand the ranks of Democratic Senators next year and let’s see if we have the luxury of jettisoning him (and that seat with him) in 2024. Who knows, he may make it a moot point by declining to run for re-election.
MomSense
@SiubhanDuinne:
Mind if I reverse that? Off-pissing could really come in handy. I’m here are many times when something unpleasant also makes me angry.
Geminid
@MomSense: There were at least ten Republican Senators who voted for the physical infrastructure bill, so it is bipartisan in that sense. And if there had been a stand alone vote there might well have been some Republican House members voting yes. The U.S Chamber of Commerce was putting pressure on Republican “Problem Solvers Caucus” members to that end. Minority Leader McCarthy has little control of his caucus members, who don’t respect him.
I think the two bills will still get separate votes, and there could be a few Republicans who vote for the physical infrastructure bill. In less polarized times, there would be dozens.
As Republicans have shown, those who vote no will still claim credit for projects in their districts anyway, and it will be up to Democrats to shout, “You lie!”
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I wonder how Manchin and Synema’s donors feel about not raising, suspending, or eliminating the debt limit on time? If I were the progressive dems I’d think about adding that to the reconciliation bill and telling those donors of the aforementioned either get them on board or have fun with financial ruin along with the rest of us. Because the Republicans in the Senate are telling us the only way that limit gets raised is through reconciliation, and we only have one reconciliation bill ready to go, so either we get it into that bill or it doesn’t get done. And then, what happens is not going to be at all pleasant for anyone. It might even be worse for people with lot and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of money than it is for everyone else. I really don’t know who it would be worst for but I can’t imagine a massive devaluation of US securities is good for people who have parked vast fortunes in US securities.
germy
SiubhanDuinne
@MomSense:
Not at all! Well-honed anger can be a very useful tool.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I mean, it sounds like big pharma is bankrolling Synema…what happens to their profit margins if Medicare can’t make prescription drug payments? Seems like it would be really bad.
kindness
Funny how conservative Dems don’t have to obey politics 11th Commandment: Publicly speak no ill of your fellow party members. It’s particulary bad when that ‘Democrat’ is completely using Republican framing of his own party’s members. Screw that guy. No sharing campaign contributions with turncoat traitors.
germy
Geminid
@germy: trump sure was a trash magnet! He still is. He and his henchmen are backing some people in Republican primaries who are very strange, even for Republicans.
germy
@Geminid:
Most of them even look strange. Something about the eyes.
Raven
@Joe Falco: this place is bonkers today!!
HinTN
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: They’re selling short right now.
Nelle
I’m jumping in without reading comments to vent a bit of steam. My daughter is (was) a freelance journalist. She may need to hang onto that, though it wasn’t paying the bills. But for now, she has a short-term research contract paying decently and has no extra time.
I don’t have permission to share this on a wider forum and yet, this is so ridiculous that I’m spilling. Last week, as I mentioned on an earlier thread, she got a request from TFNYT to find Trump voters to react to the AZ audit. Now, she has a long list of Trump supporter contacts, first from covering the Trump rallies in 2016 and then the last five years of being asked by the TFNYT to contact Trump supporters for comment. Never mind the experience of sitting in the press pen at the Trump rallies and having Trump rail against the press and then having the attending crowd and revile her to the point that she had escort away and to her car. Last week, she turned them down.
This week, she got a notable request to find women who had marched in 2017. Yay! A change! Not so fast. The “thesis” – their words, not my daughter’s, is that enthusiasm has flagged. Why has it flagged? Basically, are they disappointed in Biden?
First of all, if they are reporting the news, why are they going out with a thesis and then looking, it seems, for confirmation? Second, there is a damn pandemic going on. If we aren’t willing to be in crowds during a pandemic, does that imply that we are okay with the ban on abortion?
She turned them down. I was hesitant to go to the march as the positivity rate in my county is 13.84%. But I’m going. I’ll be at the edge of the crowd, ready to bolt if I’m uncomfortable. But I’m going. FTFNYT.
Nelle
@Geminid: I could go for that.
Jinchi
@Derelict:
I think people ascribe the wrong motivations to Manchin. He is genuinely conservative for a Democrat, and he makes a fortune in coal – so he doesn’t the BBBA especially anything to do with the Green New Deal. Manchin would be a holdout even if West Virginia were a D+5 state.
That said, he is probably the best Democrats can expect in a state Trump won twice by 40 points.
Sinema is a different case. She pretends that it’s a sign of integrity that she refuses to tell anyone what she actually wants in the bill, and has an utter contempt for her own voters. It’s pretty clear that she’s just selling her votes to the highest bidders and probably thinks raking in $5,000 a plate from Republicans at her fundraisers is proof that she’s a maverick instead of bought and paid for.
germy
@Nelle:
The Sulzberger family does NOT want higher taxes for the wealthy.
Betty Cracker
@Nelle: So the NYT politics desk comes up with an anti-Dem thesis and has journalists fan out to cherry-pick quotes that support it. Man, talk about bass-ackwards. Kudos to your daughter for declining to be involved in the scam.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Nelle: Good for you and your daughter. To quote The Boss, “Hold tight to your anger/ Don’t fall to your fears.”
debbie
@germy:
I really, really hope that the victims’ families sees this. East Coasters are always pissed, but when given a reason to be really pissed, look out!
debbie
@Nelle:
TFNYT could have just waited until Sunday morning and had their answer.
debbie
@germy:
I wish someone with a good grip on this stuff would break out the spending by state, by year, and by sector (health, education, physical infrastructure, etc.). I think plenty of people would be surprised at the reasonableness of the legislation. Repeating “3.5 trillion dollars” over and over only reinforces the misperception that Dems are hogs at the trough.
germy
@debbie:
Reporters seem more preoccupied with the personal drama between lawmakers than the actual content of the laws, at least the ones I see on TV and my local news media.
Danielx
@germy:
Deranged lunacy from a Trump advisor?
Say it ain’t so!
Geminid
@Uncle Cosmo: Manchin may well be the last Democratic Senator elected from West Virginia in this century. But he voted to make Chuck Schumer Majority Leader, and I’m glad of that.
In terms of electoral politics in other states, Manchin is useless as a type. Democrats looking to expand their Senate Majority would do well to look at the examples of John Tester and Sherrod Brown, Democrats who have won reelections in red states, and purple state winners like Tammy Baldwin and Bob Casey Jr.
Betty Cracker
@Jinchi: I think you’ve pegged both accurately. Manchin is a known quantity, but it’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out for Sinema. I don’t know anything about AZ politics, but I do have a rudimentary understanding of how PR and branding work, and the placement of the Axios puff piece on Sinema tells me she and/or the person on her team who handles this bullshit realize she got way out over her skis during this process. It’s a squid cloud of mavericky ink to conceal her cratering support at home.
Baud
@Nelle:
Thanks for confirming what I have always suspected.
germy
@Danielx:
Incomprehensible.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@germy: Yeah that’s because they don’t actually have to do any actual work to cover the drama. It’s the same OMG did you hear what Trump just said! easy journalism they’ve become addicted to. They’re not willing to inform people when it’s far easier to cover the drama, because you don’t have to do any math, or marshal and describe any facts, to cover the drama.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Josh Marshall is all over Gottheimer
Nancy Jacobson is Mrs Mark Penn, and the head of No Labels
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You know what? Good on the other eight.
germy
MomSense
@Nelle:
FTFNYT. They are garbage.
Miss Bianca
@Nelle:
Yuck. Just yuck. As a very minor-league freelance journalist, I am offended on your daughter’s behalf.
Is she allowed to troll them by counter-offering an article with another narrative spin? Or just pointing them to DougJ’s NYT Pitchbot account and asking them where reality ends and parody begins?
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hahaha! That makes it even better, and yeah, kudos to the other blue pups who declined to co-sign that childish screed.
Redshift
@Geminid:
Not just in economic strength. Krugman wrote about how for a number of the provisions (child care, can’t remember which others) there’s solid economic research that the benefits will be multiple times the cost and will actually cost the government nothing in the long run. And that’s not even considering the vast amounts the climate change programs will save.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Raven:
Redshift
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That seems like a really positive sign for how the negotiations are going.
Baud
@Steeplejack (phone):
Heh.
Baud
@MomSense: ?
Another Scott
I’ll just post the link to what I said downstairs.
[ “we’re” should be “weren’t” – [sigh]]
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
Thread:
Sure Lurkalot
@Baud:
And good on the near 100 members of the progressive caucus. One may disdain elements of their platform but they stood firm behind it.
Fair Economist
@Nelle: What’s disturbing about that is that the FTNYT obviously considers it normal that their political “news” pieces are just opinion pieces supported by fake reporting, and due to the duopoly reporting we have now, journalists are coerced to go along or lose their jobs.
It *should* be a monster scandal, because newspaper reporting has become fake, but it’s not, because there’s nobody who can report it.
Ken
Virginia or West Virginia?
Eunicecycle
@debbie: and that figure is spending over 10 years. So $350 billion per year.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Ken:
¿Por qué no los—wait, no, I live in Virginia!
taumaturgo
@kindness: Remember when party “unity?” was constantly invoked by the corpocrats? It only applies to liberals lowering their expectations and doing as told. Like the tea party gained followers in the suburbs and countryside and began to elect their representatives, the liberal’s anti-corruption message among other popular policies ideas is gaining enough voters to increase their numbers in the House. Time will soon come for new leadership in the party that would flush out the Lieberman types from the party.
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott: What “Axios framing” are you warning us off of — the puff piece that Sinema’s operatives obviously placed in a laughable attempt to build the Legend of Big Mav after it became clear her support among Democrats in AZ had cratered? Have you read it? Good gravy.
Baud
@germy:
We get what we get. There’s no workaround to electing as many Democrats as we can.
germy
@Baud:
Maybe I’m too optimistic, but I’m hopeful individuals making small contributions can support Democratic candidates moving forward. Can we make the big donors irrelevant?
As we speak, Sinema is at some sort of PAC-funded resort. She got a bunch of small contributions when she ran, but she’s ignoring those, so maybe I’m being unrealistic.
Skepticat
Do you suppose he has any clue who actually pays for Medicare and Social Security? Or, for that matter, that he has a clue about much of anything at all?
Baud
@germy:
I think we’ve been moving in that direction for the last few years. ActBlue has really taken off.
Steeplejack (phone)
@SethCotlar:
Skepticat
@germy:
SPOT ON.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
Not so sure that Sherrod Brown’s model can be duplicated elsewhere. He has been in various offices in Ohio since the 70s. If he had been running statewide for the first time in 2018 I’m not sure he would have won.
Tester I know next to nothing about. Can’t hurt to try it out. We just lost a senate race with our Ivy League lawyer. But do we have more straight talking crewcut farmers to run in every state in the northern plains?
Ruckus
@Mallard Filmore:
The rich don’t have a free ride, they have a ride than pays them far more than their share.
There was a West Wing segment that had Will Bailey explaining progressive taxation to staffers. It was very well done and explained clearly the concept. Those with more income pay a higher rate because they have far more income and far more benefit from a healthy economy and a reasonable tax process than the majority. In our current conservative culture the rich pay a far less rate on their total income than many people who work for a living. Many are wealthy far, far beyond anything they could ever realistically spend, and many of the rest of us have to work 2 or even 3 jobs just to eat and live in almost or actual squalor. Jeff Bezos is supposed to be worth $175-200 Billion. Just for owning an online store that sells stuff and crap from around the world. And meanwhile many of his employees make the equivalent of squat. Many, and I’m among them think that we can and should do better and that a better taxation of the wealthy would go a long way to make that possible. And those wealthy folks would still be wealthy, even if just a little bit less so. But the betterment of huge swaths of the population would make this a far, far better off country. Of course to think that you have to value lives over money, and that is the opposite of conservative thought.
Another Scott
@germy: (Nearly) Every congressperson and senator spends hours every day on fundraising. Every one of them.
It’s the system we have until we have substantial public financing of elections.
Singling her out doesn’t help us.
Cheers,
Scott.
James E Powell
@germy:
We’ve been trying since the early days of blogs, but it hasn’t really worked out the way we dreamed of.
Big factor is that while the incumbents don’t need the big donors’ money, they want to make sure their opponents don’t get it.
Ruckus
@germy:
When one gets a paycheck, one gets that for doing the job that the person “signing” the check wants done. It did for me when I signed paychecks every week and it does for people who “sign” thousands upon thousands of them. It has for me and everyone else for my 60 years of working for a living, except when I was the one signing them.
realbtl
Re: Jon Testor from here on the ground in MT. He’s about the best you will get here. Max Baucas was a Manchin-like Dem. There ain’t a lot of room for more progressive. Les than 50% vaccinated here will tell you something.
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: I meant the wine drinkery wine drinker who loves wine and worked at a winery as a wine intern tweets that AL has posted. I haven’t given them any clicks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kirk
@PenAndKey: The moderates never agreed. Biden and Pelosi said it should happen, but the moderates never agreed. Do I need to say it a fourth time? Don’t believe me? Then you should find a statement by Manchin et al agreeing to the linking of the two bills.
germy
@Skepticat:
I got (kneejerk) pushback from a commenter yesterday, after I mentioned the yacht: “Oh, so every boat is a yacht now?”
I guess boat owners need to represent in these reader comments.
Sure Lurkalot
@Another Scott: They all fund raise so they’re all the same?
Sinema doesn’t even support legislation that she sponsors. There’s a reason why we here can’t figure out what she stands for. Can you say the same about Sherrod Brown or AOC (agree with their politics or not)?
Another Scott
@Derelict: What “genuine Democrat” has a chance to win a senate seat in a state where the three congressional districts are R+17, R+19, and R+23 according to Cook’s PVI?
We need more and better Democrats. But we also need Manchin right now.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Kirk:
Doesn’t matter. They knew they score, then and now. If they didn’t want to go along, they shouldn’t have passed the first infrastructure bill in the Senate.
Geminid
@James E Powell: You can’t clone Sherrod Brown (although I bet Tim Ryan will emulate his example). I meant that there are lessons Democrats can draw from people like Brown, Tester, Baldwin and Casey as to policy and messaging, and appreciate which demographic groups they are making their majorities out of and how.
I guess what I am saying is that that Democrats looking to flip red- or purple-state Senate seats don’t need to reinvent any wheels.
germy
I agree. Unfortunately, Sinema’s campaign ads were misleading. She made promises she’s now breaking. If I lived in Ariz., I would have believed she was a better Democrat and I would have voted for her.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy:
at Eschaton, during Obama first two years, there was an eat-the-rich Obama’s-a-secret-Republican Naderite who was driven into a frothing rage by any suggestion of eliminating the mortgage interest deduction for second homes, because SPOILER ALERT she owned two homes and used said deduction
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s too funny.
MagdaInBlack
@Steeplejack (phone): Don’t I recall some discussion of this at the time? They all showed up too late to be tested or something along those lines
Eta: I see in the twitter comments someone mentioned them being late .
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
What we need is a Balloon-Juice colony in the Dakotas, Wyoming, or Montana. Then we could have our own two senators!
Geminid
@realbtl: Montana will get a second House seat next year. Do you think the Democrats have a chance for one? I think Steve Bullock lost his Senate race by less than 5 points. Maybe he’ll give the new House seat a shot.
gwangung
@Kirk: Sorry, not true. You follow the leadership of the party, plus there were agreements stating that at the beginning of this Congress. Something bout 80%/20%….
Tony Gerace
@Baud: goddamn Gottheimer. My “representative”. If his ass isn’t primaried in the spring I will lose my faith in a just God
Steeplejack (phone)
@MagdaInBlack:
Yes, it seemed sketchy at the time.
Wasn’t that also around the time they had the superspreader quinceañera for Amy Covid Barratry in the Rose Garden?
Ruckus
@germy:
The laws are well liked by many people. If they were explained properly and openly many conservative voters would like them. And they are necessary for the health of the country.
The very wealthy? Not quite as much give a damn if all you worry about is the amount of wealth that you have and the less you get taxed, than someone else.
If you spend all your employee’s time on not talking about the positives and only about the negatives (which on balance would be positives for everyone else) towards your selfish goals then many people will not understand or know about the bills and only hear $3.5 trillion. Notice none of them talk about that it’s over 10 yrs. It’s just a big number to scare those for whom the words billion and trillion have no actual meaning. They never even talk about it as a percentage of the federal budget or the cost to individual, normal taxpayers.
Uncle Cosmo
@brendancalling:
But would you have the guts to do it if you were standing right next to him? Would you? (I know what I think the answer is.)
…
FTR, I owe you thanks for reminding me of one of my father’s signature sayings, and nudging me to go a-googling to finally, finally find out what the hell he actually meant when he said,
(He said that a lot to me in the late 60s when we were up to our armpits in the FDR-democrat-vs-Baby-Bolshevik dynamic and bickering nightly across the dinner table…which only ended when Watergate cranked up & we gathered around the boob tube for the nightly nooze to rise as one body whenever Tricky Dick popped onto the screen, shaking our fists as one and snarling, They’re gonna get you, you sonofabitch! [Dad had hated Nixon since his first run for Congress – before I was born!])
Geminid
@Geminid: Correction: Steve Bullock lost to Daines by 10 points, not less than five. Maybe I was thinking of that nice doctor who ran in Kansas.
At least West Virginia is losing a House seat
MagdaInBlack
@Steeplejack (phone): Google tells me that party was end of October, after his miraculous recovery
I do like your description of the event ?
realbtl
@Geminid: I would say highly unlikely. (spit)
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott: An excerpt from the puff piece that doesn’t mention wine:
Maybe the reason people assumed she’d share liberals’ “woke politics” like serious action on climate, lowering RX prices, etc., is because she ran on those things.
Also, I disagree about the utility of singling out Sinema (and this applies to Manchin, Gottheimer, etc., too) for two reasons. 1) Bringing pressure to bear on recalcitrant politicians can work, and 2) It’s useful for the public to know that it’s a tiny handful of people in our caucus who are holding up legislation on the Biden agenda instead of blaming “the Democrats” as a group.
That said, obviously we need their votes, so talk about kicking them out of the party, etc., is just useless venting, IMO. But it sure looks like the pressure on Manchin and Sinema in particular has moved the needle. Manchin is finally talking specifics, and Sinema’s team is making it known she’s actively involved in negotiations.
Lulymay
@Ken: Not just Americans! I’m a Canadian and I used to get my teeth cleaned every year during the 3-4 months I stayed in AZ.
You should see the busloads of seniors, some of who travel from north of Las Vegas that make a day trip every 3 months for their meds as well. (This was at the border close to Yuma)
Geminid
@realbtl: Well, Brian Schweitzer, John Tester, and Steve Bullock have won seven statewide elections in Montana since 2004, so that new Congressional seat cannot be entirely out of reach.
MP
@Jinchi: I’ve found the simplest way for me to determine what Sinema and Manchin might do is to start with the premise that she has a fortune to make and he has a fortune to protect, and then proceed from there.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Boy howdy that deduction was a big deal when mortgage interest was in the 10+% range. The industry was built around it, essentially. I remember how pissed I was (as a perennial renter) when St. Ronny ditched the consumer interest rate deduction. Tax cut kabuki really got a foothold during that bastard’s administration.
germy
@MP:
As good an analysis as any.
Baud
I wonder if we can get Manchin’s vote by placing his home on the National Register of Official Houseboats Not Yachts.
germy
@Baud:
Are you officially floating this idea?
Baud
@germy:
Time to sink or swim on Biden’s agenda.
germy
@Baud:
Don’t drown me in the details.
Kropacetic
My buddy has a houseboat that he lives on, one much more modest that Manchin’s seems to be. There is a placard inside classifying it as a yacht
Sounds to me like a distinction without a difference.
M31
it’s not a Houseboat it’s a Doublewide-Singledeep!!!!!
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: Thanks. I would expect nothing less from their coverage of her.
Her (repost) campaign kickoff video (3:21) from 2017 was about the most position-free of any I’ve seen anywhere. Suzanne says she’s a known quantity in AZ – is known to have shifted her political center over years – and apparently she felt no need to run on issues.
“if you work really hard, you can make it” “lend a helping hand” “bootstraps” “story of America” “fix a broken Washington” “country over party” etc. (groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
No mention of the Democratic party.
I looked for quite a few minutes earlier to find an actual listing of the actual specific positions she ran on. She seems to have hidden them very well, if they ever existed. Even her listing at Votesmart is thin as she didn’t respond (so they inferred her answers from responses years earlier).
So, I dunno. I’m not seeing that she ran for the Senate as a lefty and suddenly changed her stripes. Voters there picked her over the GQPer. I’m glad they did – we got the leadership in the Senate as a result. They had good reasons to do so, even if she isn’t/wasn’t willing to clearly state her positions on important issues.
FWIW.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
Via Reddit, Paris 1900
germy
@M31:
It’s the SS Bipartisanship. A place where Republicans gather to voice their objections to Democratic policy… and Manchin agrees.
germy
@Another Scott:
Some people on twitter are digging up her old campaign tweets, where she calls for low prescription drug prices, uniting against greedy corporations who need to pay their fair share, etc.
Lapassionara
@Baud: lovely. Thank you.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Arizona Democrats knew Sinema wasn’t a lefty when she ran for the Senate in 2018. Sinema spent her three Congressional terms as a member of the notorious Blue Dog Caucus.
I thought that commenter Suzanne’s most essential characterization of Sinema was, “social climber.”
germy
Another Scott
@germy: Yes, there is that tweet:
But there’s a LOT of wiggle room there. One could read that as she wants to go after insurance companies rather than drug companies. It’s not a specific proposal for, say, Medicare to negotiate most/all drug prices. There’s nothing specific in that tweet – by design.
I get that people are upset with her. I think she’s being too coy with her voters, myself. But if it weren’t her and Manchin, it would be someone else demanding their pound of flesh before the RB is passed. It’s a huge, must-pass, bill that will pass and with a 50-50 senate every senator has the best opportunity they will ever have to press for what they want (for reasons good or ill). It’s the way politics works when every single vote matters.
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty
@Baud: I don’t how to find it, but Manchin has said he knew that was the deal. Don’t know about the House or Sinema.
Kropacetic
The fact that Axios published that destroyed my opinion of them (which was vaguely positive but weak, based on two prior encounters with their work).
It wasn’t even an article. It was a bullet-pointed list full of banalities. Synema is the conventional person’s idea of a maverick as enacted by an especially lazy, conventionally thinking person.
eclare
@M31: LOL!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m a long-time Brian Beutler fan who has been annoyed for the last couple of years by his drift into Do Something!/DeMoCrAtS aRe DoInG iT wRoNg!-ism, but I think he’s on to something with this:
He’s arguing with Matt Yglesias and what it seems we are now calling popularism (and Yglesias is always at least half-trolling), but I think they’re really saying the same thing: Talk like a normal person. Biden sells his transformative agenda by calling it a bunch of common sense policies that helps regular folks!
The negative side of that coin (for us) is Susan Collins, arguably the most successful political fraud this side of trump itself. She’s as cynical and partisan as Mitch McConnell, but her wide-eyed, stammering idiot affect, along with the advantages of incumbency and a legendary constituent service, has kept her in office all these years.
Jim Appleton
@Ruckus: This is sounding like joining both meanings of progressive — tax rates and policy — and even owning a new “trickle down.” Tax the rich and everyone, including gazzilionairs, is much better off.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And she was born in Maine.
Michael Cain
If I might pick the collective memory here? My recollection is that the deal that was made back at the beginning of September was that (a) the conservatives would vote immediately for the $3.5T budget resolution so work could begin on the reconciliation bill, and (b) the progressives would vote for the infrastructure bill the week of Sep 27. The conservatives did vote for the resolution, the bill has been progressing, but is now hung up because the conservatives haven’t been able to strike a deal with Sens. Manchin and Sinema.
James E Powell
@Kirk:
@Betty:
In fact, it was Manchin himself who told NBC News in June, “It’s the only strategy we have — is two track.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: and she had a path cleared for her by Olympia Snowe and William Cohen, who after all his anti-trump bleating, after she said trump had “learned his lesson” from his first impeachment, endorsed her for re-election.
Omnes Omnibus
@germy: Feel free to name me next time.
cain
They are boring – like Republicans, it is the same playbook. You can go back to the Obama administration and get similar headlines about Democrats.
How much did the press give shit to the GOP about bipartisanship given that they stole two SCOTUS appointments? Everything is always done in a manner that gives GOP cover. The inconsistency is what really drives me crazy.
cain
You can’t rely on MSNBC or any 24 hour news organization. Market forces show that there needs a channel to market to left leaning voters. But ultimately, you can bet that the people inside the organization are likely as right wing as CNN and Fox News. eg there is no progressive channel.
You might as well support al-jazeera. Who I think is way more fair than any of the U.S. based media.
cain
@Betty Cracker:
It’s too bad that she can’t go to Pro Publica and run an expose about how major newspapers are scamming the public and the Democratic party by creating thesis and trying to prove them and manipulating the world because they also don’t want taxes on the rich.
Captain C
@germy: She got a bunch from me. That won’t be happening again, in 2024 or really ever again.
westyny
Josh, b’gone!
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott: Nobody is saying Sinema ran as a lefty and changed her stripes, but she did run on Democratic priorities like lowering RX prices, addressing climate change, etc. She doesn’t get to punt on those issues now because she was vague about them in her ads.
sixthdoctor
At the Baltimore Women’s March; estimate crowd at 100-150 as most went to the big one in DC. Favorite sign: KEEP YOUR ROSARIES OFF MY OVARIES
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: also a forty-five year old Democrat from freaking Arizona who needs to be dragged to taking action on climate…. Has no one told her about the Colorado River, fercrissake
James E Powell
Watching Michigan @ Wisconsin (C’mon Badgers!) and I just saw an ad with a “doctor” telling an elderly patient that Democrats are defunding Medicare. Paraphrase: “First they defunded the police, now they’re coming for Medicare.”
Earlier today, saw this article in the WaPo explaining how Koch-funded and right-wing billionaire funded organizations are the ones doing the anti-mask, pro-COVID hysteria.
But none of this lying ever makes a big story. See also, the ACA hysteria.
I want all Republicans to die and I want the national press/media destroyed. Does that make me a bad person?
Another Scott
TheHill:
I take that to be an indication that the BIF and the RB will be passed on or before November 2 (as the short-term extension would have been longer if more time were needed).
Cheers,
Scott.
Sure Lurkalot
@Betty Cracker: To say nothing of her dear friend John Lewis whose legacy she is at the front of the line to destroy by her obstinate and wrong headed view of the filibuster.
Ruckus
@Jim Appleton:
That’s because it is exactly that.
The rich will still be wealthy, maybe not just as much. But if the companies they own have a more motivated workforce, a happier workforce, a more productive work force, they will still do very well. A problem is that a lot of wealthy seem to think their money all comes from them being so smart. They forget the thousands of people that it takes to earn those billions, that each one, or at least most of those workers work together to create that something, something that they do that brings in that money. I owned a business that required highly skilled labor. I fully understood that you had to pay well to get that and that you were never going to get 100% return on that payroll, but without those skills there was no way I could do the same work. (There were other things I could do, like have extremely high precision machines that could work 24 hrs a day without an operator and make me money but that’s not the same work as that which takes highly skilled labor.) And that work is a requirement in our modern society. And there are many businesses that have similar needs. Amazon is one, their main rational is that they can deliver a lot of product in a reasonable timeframe, cheaper. That takes vans and drivers, lots of them. The shipping facilities are a lot cheaper than mall stores, the computers/phones we have, and the internet remove the need for malls and sales people. Jeff doesn’t even need to pay for a lot of the inventory or store a lot of it.
Uncle Cosmo
@Geminid: FWIW, cosign your entire post, with oak leaves!
Kirk
@James E Powell: That article is pure political spin. Manchin said he supported the smaller bipartisan bill and also would support another larger bill to be negotiated later. That was his position in June and still his position today. At no point has Manchin ever said he supports linking support for the smaller to support for the larger. Pelosi and Biden said that, but the moderates never agreed.
Another Scott
She get’s her bipartisanery sound bite, and the opportunity to infuriate Democrats (who are silly enough to take the bait) in the process, but also says she’s working on the RB. We should ignore her antics – they’re for her state’s voters who aren’t paying much attention*.
She’ll (no doubt in my mind) vote for both when the time comes.
* – I’m reminded of living in Georgia in the late ’60s – early ’70s and hearing Democrats there trash Ted Kennedy. It didn’t bother him because he knew how the game is played. We should ignore her antics, too. We’re not the audience. What matters is her vote.
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@Another Scott:
Or it’s a signal she’s converting to the GOP. ??♀️
oatler
@germy:
I am the proud skipper of the Boaty McBoatface.
Another Scott
@debbie: She cannot win as a GQPer, and she might only be able to win as a blue-dog Democrat. Time will tell.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@germy:
I watched the AZ races closely, and contributed to Sinema’s campaign… Kelly too!! Now I want all that Sinema money back !!!!
Burnspbesq
The fine folks of the town where I grew up really need to kick that toxic narcissist Gottheimer to the curb.
artem1s
@MagdaInBlack:
This is a lie. They were NOT too late to be tested. They were all over at the Cleveland Clinic International hotel having a big fundraising party with the OH GOP. They infected the advance party that came the night before and likely dozens of hotel workers. They sauntered over to the Case Western Reserve Health Campus facility located within the Clinic campus late – but there was plenty of time between when they all arrived in CLE and the actual start of the debate. The family and their lackys were asked by multiple security people and a cardiologist to put on their FUCKING mask (the CWRU media releases to the public and campus assured us everyone would be required to mask up). They refused. Even Notre Dame didn’t want to hold it because they knew full well it would be a potential superspreader event. The Ohio Catholic Dioceses and OH GOP, and big conservative donors put the thumb screws to the outgoing CWRU President and the boards of the U and Clinic. The infection rate for the hotel workers was never revealed.
J R in WV
@James E Powell:
I saw that lying piece of shit ad too. R’s will stoop to any pile of shit lies won’t they?