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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Did the Dems punk McConnell and Republicans?

Did the Dems punk McConnell and Republicans?

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It sure looks like it. From TPM:

While Senator Schumer and the White House were trying to revive some skinny version of the BBB and climate legislation with Joe Manchin Senator McConnell tried to scuttle those talks with a threat. He would pull GOP support from the China competition/CHIPs bill if the Democrats did not drop those negotiations. As it happened, Manchin scuttled the deal so the threat became moot. Then the CHIPs bill passed the Senate yesterday and then within like an hour – voila – the Manchin deal was back and somehow finalized. Senate Republicans were clearly pissed but the bill had already passed the Senate.

It certainly seems like Senate Democrats pulled a fast one on their Republican colleagues. As surprising as it may seem, it’s hard to see how Manchin wasn’t in on it at some level. House Republicans certainly seem to think so. They’ve now switched to whipping members to vote against the bill. Notwithstanding the fact that it actually has broad bipartisan support, as well as strong support from the semiconductor industry and the foreign policy and national security community. But the House isn’t the Senate. Democrats don’t need Republicans to break a filibuster. They probably don’t need Republicans at all.

The Republicans hope to scuttle the CHIPs bill by getting House progressives to follow Bernie Sanders’ lead and vote against it on the grounds that it’s too corporate friendly. But Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal probably has her members on board. We won’t know until the votes are counted, but the House Progressive Caucus are team players, so it’s likely to pass.

Valued commenter Jim, Foolish Literalist shared a link to this epic self-womp in the thread downstairs:

Ha! Open thread.

Reader Interactions

109Comments

  7. 7.

    Cameron

    Democrats best watch out – an enraged turtle has been unleashed!  Isn’t the senator quoted above the faux-Cletus from Louisiana?

  10. 10.

    Dangerman

    It’s about time they tasted what a shit sandwich tastes like. Mitch has been serving them up for years.

  12. 12.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: We’ll see how it all turns out, but I could see Schumer having a talk with Manchin about punking McConnell.  “Joe, you just do what you’ve been doing and this time it really fucks with McConnell.”  No one likes McConnell.

  13. 13.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) via  Betty Cracker  @ Top:

    “They sucked Republican votes up like a Hoover Deluxe and then got their votes [on CHIPS] and then bam, announced this new tax increase…We look like a bunch of – well, I’m not going to say what we look like.”

    If you weren’t such sore fucking losers, Kennedy, you’d look like a party that knows when to compromise for the good of the country.

    Instead, because you and your peers can’t stop whining whenever Democrats succeed at helping the country, you look like whinging jackasses complaining about losing an opportunity to screw the country and getting cheated out of your own cheating.

  15. 15.

    Alce_e_ardillo

     “They sucked Republican votes up like a Hoover Deluxe and then got their votes [on CHIPS] and then bam, announced this new tax increase…We look like a bunch of – well, I’m not going to say what we look like.”

    He won’t say but I will– they look like gullilble assholes– which they are.

  17. 17.

    WaterGirl

    Betty, I just put up a post for Biden’s LIVE speech at noon, but I don’t expect anyone to head over there until noon, so hopefully this is okay.

  23. 23.

    Geminid

    It’s fun to see Schumer change from Hapless Charlie Brown to Clever Chuck.

    I believe the House will vote on the Chip bill today. I’m interested in seeing how many Republicans cross their crack leadership team of McCarthy, Scalise and Stephanik and vote Yea. I think a few will.

  24. 24.

    piratedan

    will await the breathless commentary of our collective media betters who will point out this scandalous behavior of Senate Democrats in voting for legislation that the majority wants without giving the minority the control over the legislation as the time honored tradition that is the accepted norm when Democrats are nominally in control.

  25. 25.

    Ken

    I don’t suppose this will cause the Republican Senate caucus to re-consider their leadership.

  27. 27.

    Roger Moore

    It would be nice if they punked Republicans this way, but it would have been better to hold the vote in the House before springing it.  Unless they’ve already counted the votes, know it can pass, and want to be able to use the Republicans’ “No” votes against them in November.  That would be 11-D chess.

  29. 29.

    Geminid

    @Ken: Republicans don’t have anyone who can do better than McConnell. They just have a bad strategy: basically “if we can’t govern no one can.” They can’t make it stick, though, without help from our side.

    There could be a change after the midterms if Democrats hold the Senate. McConnell might tell his colleagues, “All right, you lazy fucks. One of you has to work now.”

  30. 30.

    J R in WV

    Our power went off in a mighty violent thunderstorm last night, so we’ve been wet and running the Generac for electric. It isn’t strong enough to run the A/C but it’s still only about 74 inside…  also no power next door to the network center, so no internet at all.

    So this morning I read a Travis McGee novel for the first time in a long time. I’m into the second one just long enough for a good friend of McGee to be murdered by knife, the victim was involved with solid gold pre-Colombian objects, mostly stolen from him. So that one sounds good too. We have almost all MacDonald’s McGee novels, and spent time in FLA where John D MacDonald lived so can relate to his bitter view of FLA. Also learned MacDonald had an MBA from Hahvahd Bidness school!

    Thanks, everyone, for keeping the Intertubes full while we were off-line!!! Now to catch up on things before leaving for Wife’s P T later on.

  32. 32.

    rikyrah


    Makes me smile everytime I read it.

    No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) tweeted at 6:19 PM on Wed, Jul 27, 2022:
    McConnell said Republicans wouldn’t let the CHIPS bill pass if Democrats try to pass a lower drug price/climate bill.

    Rs ultimately let CHIPS pass—minutes later, Dems announced a deal with Manchin on lower drug prices/climate.

    Democrats may have just out-McConnelled McConnell.
    (https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1552433558580502531?t=JN-K5KVphXwmsTfNao643A&s=03)

  33. 33.

    Jackie

    @germy shoemangler: Yes, he did! Schumer and Manchin (along with Biden, I bet) set The Turtle up perfectly! I’m still chuckling – and awaiting McConnell’s response. I doubt he’ll be gracious enough to say *touche!

  35. 35.

    SiubhanDuinne

    There’s an opinion piece in the WaPo titled “Most Third Parties Have Failed. Here’s Why Ours Won’t.” Its authors are Christine Todd Whitman, David Jolly, and Andrew Yang, and the piece is every bit as bad as you imagine. Straw men everywhere and the worst kinds of Broderesque false equivalency and whataboutism. WaPo should — but won’t — be ashamed of itself.

  38. 38.

    RandomMonster

    This is really made my day. I’m hoping this isn’t a single ratfuck for Republicans, but a Willard-movie horde of flesh-eating rats.

  41. 41.

    JML

    Pelosi and her team know how to count. (It’s the single most important job in leadership in either chamber) they’ll know exactly how many votes they have in the bank and will release members of the Progressive Caucus only as needed. And the progressives are smart enough to not demand 100% fidelity in order to get things that they want out of the Senate.

    It’s not everything we would have wanted, but a) it will make a difference, b) it’s on the right path, and c) it’s a success that we can talk about on the campaign trail. Pass them both, and flip Moscow Mitch the double birds as you walk past his office.

  43. 43.

    WereBear

    @J R in WV:  Love Travis McGee. He was ahead of his time.

    New girlfriend every book, yes. But they were career women of some sort who were as equal as they could be back then.

    And they varied in both looks and talents. They were real people who had a good relationship.

  44. 44.

    Jinchi

    The Republicans hope to scuttle the CHIPs bill by getting House progressives to follow Bernie Sanders’ lead and vote against it on the grounds that it’s too corporate friendly

    Wait. Did Sanders vote against it?  If so how did it pass?

  47. 47.

    Jinchi

    @Betty: I guess they felt they had to kick someone, so why not kick veterans?

    And now 25 Republicans have to explain voting against a popular bill they already voted yes on.

  50. 50.

    Jinchi

    @Baud: The Manchin-Schumer  deal?  They can’t complain that  they got punked if their own people are voting for it.

  52. 52.

    J R in WV

    How can you love the Veterans if you keep letting them die of horrible exposure to government created toxic chemistry?? No one should take the Theocratic Fascists seriously when they say they love the Veterans!!

    They don’t love the military either, but like to steal money from the bloated defense budget, which is why the Navy warships keep hitting freighters at 2 am. The mid-watch is the worst time of day on any Navy ship!

  53. 53.

    trollhattan

    @SiubhanDuinne: “How to win as a third party: be more like George Wallace.”

    Andrew Yang’s sell-by date is long, long past but people continue pointing cameras at him anyway.

  55. 55.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jinchi: The CHIPs bill is bipartisan, but McConnell was holding it up because he didn’t want Dems to pass a reconciliation bill with climate change provisions. After Manchin (seemingly?) blew up negotiations with Schumer recently and it looked like there wasn’t going to be a reconciliation bill, McConnell allowed Republicans to support CHIPs. Then Schumer and Manchin announced agreement on a reconciliation bill that has spending on climate.

    Manchin is a liar who has damaged Biden’s presidency, IMO, so it’s hard to believe he was in on this trickery. But I guess he had to be? The timing is just too perfect for it to be otherwise. Maybe he hates McConnell even more than he hates his own party.

  61. 61.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Fingers crossed that this actually passes and gets signed, but maybe, just maybe Schumer has never been the naive dope that many portrayed him to be, all along.

  62. 62.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Betty Cracker:

    What do you make of this, Betty?

    Huge story coming on a DOJ National Security Division investigation linked to the Executive Office of Ron DeSantis.

    The official press secretary to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is risking significant, even criminal penalties, according to a legal expert.

    Florida Gov. DeSantis’ spokeswoman Christina Pushaw registered as a foreign agent on June 6th, 2022, under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

    But when she did register, public records prove conclusively that she materially omitted a significant amount of her past foreign lobbying activities when belatedly registering with the United States Department of Justice’s National Security Division last month.

  63. 63.

    sdhays

    @Betty Cracker: He’s a liar, but it seems this time he was lying for us instead of to us. I don’t know why he seems to like lying so much, but apparently Schumer has figured out how to channel that fetish for good.

  64. 64.

    Baud

    @satby:

    I wonder if the Dems will try to add it back to the Defense Authorization Act.  That’s usually considered must pass.

  65. 65.

    Betty Cracker

    @SiubhanDuinne: I read that this morning. What a bunch of dopes. Luckily, they’re such low-wattage personalities that they’re not likely to cause a great deal of damage, but who knows? Yang attracted attention in 2020 with the UBI proposal, but now that he’s yoked himself to center-right numpties Whitman and Jolly, he probably won’t come up with another gimmick like that.

  66. 66.

    Leto

    @HumboldtBlue: At this point, I’ll be more shocked when I learn that Republicans aren’t wholly funded by foreign subsidiaries, nor all their “advisors” aren’t foreign agents.

  67. 67.

    sdhays

    @HumboldtBlue: That is quite a story. Is it politically problematic for your spokesperson to be a foreign agent who neglected to disclose the fact for several years? And what else is there under this particular rug?

  68. 68.

    eachother

    @J R in WV: OT: Is your generator at least 30 amps?  Possibly more?  Is your air conditioner 30 amps?  Hopefully not more.
    In other words, the generator may be big enough to run the air. Some circuit management may be required. While daylight, turn off what you don’t need providing almost all its output for refer and air.
    Depends on gen electrical output, air electrical load etc.
    Is the air circuit connected to the gen?  May not be. Keep refer closed if you are stealing its circuit for air.

  69. 69.

    Betty Cracker

    @HumboldtBlue: I hope there’s something to it because there are few people more loathsome than Ron DeSantis’s FL taxpayer supported Twitter troll Christina Pushaw. But I am skeptical of anything hyped by Occupy Democrats. They, along with outfits like Palmer Report (I think? I muted it ages ago so many be misremembering the account name) are always raising “this time we got ’em” scenarios that fail to pan out.

  70. 70.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Leto: @sdhays:

    At this point I’m convinced the GOP is run by the Russians, I think they’re all compromised.

    @Betty Cracker:

    I didn’t realize Stern was with  Occupy, that does dampen the mood a bit.

  71. 71.

    Betty Cracker

    From the WSJ, describing the reaction of Democrats to Schumer’s announcement:

    The announcement caught many other Democrats off guard.

    “What’s going on?” Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.), a centrist Democrat who has been pivotal to Democrats’ legislative ambitions, asked on the Senate floor. Other Democrats said they didn’t know anything about the deal before it was announced.

    So Princess Sparkle Pony wasn’t in the loop. I hope that doesn’t inspire mischief.

  73. 73.

    OGLiberal

    @germy shoemangler: Both Lousiana Senators were Democrats well into their adulthood, with Kennedy switching as recent as 2007.  Wonder what made them switch?  Hmmmm…….

  76. 76.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: IIRC, there are corporate tax hikes in the agreement, which have the same effect on Sinema that garlic has on Dracula, but the same is generally true of Manchin, and the tax components were fairly tame, so hopefully she’ll go along.

  78. 78.

    horatius

    Let’s just say I’m digging the method acting of Joe Manchin, at least for the time being.

  79. 79.

    Roger Moore

    @J R in WV:

    How can you love the Veterans if you keep letting them die of horrible exposure to government created toxic chemistry?

    It’s 100% typical of Republicans.  They love veterans- and troops, babies, etc.- only as abstract concepts that can be used for campaign slogans.  They don’t give a damn about the actual human beings.

  82. 82.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Baud:

    This is from the HE Wolf link above.

    Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ): Sinema was not involved in the negotiations for the bill, as she does not take much interest in sausage-making. In fact, like most members of the Senate, she was caught by surprise when the draft bill was announced. So, she’s had no comment so far. We have consistently taken the view that she’s willing to be one of two wrenches in the gears, along with Manchin, but that she wouldn’t be willing to singlehandedly torpedo a bill. We may soon find out if we were right about that.

    @Betty Cracker:

    Perfect!

  83. 83.

    Ruckus

    @Old Man Shadow:

    “After all the shit the GOP has done since the 80s, they can eat shit.”

    I think that may be too good for them…

    What’s below shit on the what they can eat scale?

  85. 85.

    Ruckus

    @Lacuna Synecdoche:

    If you weren’t such sore fucking losers, Kennedy, you’d look like a party that knows when to compromise for the good of the country.

    Instead, because you and your peers can’t stop whining whenever Democrats succeed at helping the country, you look like whinging jackasses complaining about losing an opportunity to screw the country and getting cheated out of your own cheating.

    That deserves a gold plaque somewhere in DC. 

  90. 90.

    Kevin

    Good news. However the term “whipping” for votes seems very thorny. How is that still in use? Or does it have another meaning I’m not familiar with?

  92. 92.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Kevin:

    The term is taken from the “whipper-in” during a hunt, who tries to prevent hounds from wandering away from a hunting pack. Additionally, the term “whip” may mean the voting instructions issued to legislators, or the status of a certain legislator in their party’s parliamentary grouping.

    @Baud:

    You mean this masterpiece?

  94. 94.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Hey everyone, please take a moment to support Biden’s proposed changes to Title IX to expand protections for Transgender people, by leaving a public comment.

    It is currently getting a ton of TERF (transphobic) bullshit.

    #TransRightsAreHumanRights #TransWomenAreWomen #ProtectTransKids

  97. 97.

    Ken

    @Baud: I look forward to the Baud!20XX replacement of that primitive means of compulsion with brain electrodes.

  99. 99.

    Ruckus

    @J R in WV:

    Fortunately there were always a few night owls like me on the DDG I served on so we never hit anything. Also they never let me steer the ship which I assume helped as well……

  100. 100.

    J R in WV

    @eachother: The genset is 22Kw, the a/c is 30 amps, so no way. It’s the largest air cooled model, which is really low maintenance compared to a water cooled unit.

  101. 101.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SiubhanDuinne:

     

    There’s an opinion piece in the WaPo titled “Most Third Parties Have Failed. Here’s Why Ours Won’t.” Its authors are Christine Todd Whitman, David Jolly, and Andrew Yang

    WaPo? Pretty sure this is from DougJ’s NYT Pitchbot account!

  103. 103.

    HumboldtBlue

    I just learned my West Virginia brother-in-law attended the hearing on the Veterans bill and got very angry and started yelling, and they told him to hush or leave. He was escorted out, but not before letting the GOP know how he felt.

    Very out of character for a man who is normally very sedate and calm.

  105. 105.

    JGreen

    It’s great to see the Democrats put one over on the GQP. but we should also remind everybody that the only reason Manchin is in a position to play such games is that the Republican shitheads can be counted on to vote against anything proposed by a Democrat unanimously, as sure as the sun will rise in the sky. But, unlike the sunrise, this is not a natural phenomenon; they do it consciously and deliberately to try to harm Democrats. That’s their only real reason despite the huge load of bullshit justifications they haul out when they are (infrequently) asked about it.

    And, of course, this has been going on since the Obama administration, but even though it’s automatic now, it still isn’t required or anything like that. They do it mindlessly (and so many of them don’t have much of a mind to begin with).

    It just should be mentioned as often as possible in hopes that we could chip away at this assumption that this is the natural order of things in US politics.

  106. 106.

    ColoradoGuy

    @J R in WV: 30 amps * 240 volts (2-phase power) = 7200 watts, or 7.2 kW. Start-up current for the A/C might be somewhat higher, both start-up and steady-state current draw will be on the plate for the unit. (3 ton = 36,000 BTU.)

    If your genset is really 22 kW and powers both phases, no problem with the A/C so long as you’re not using other current hogs, like an electric dryer or an electric stove. The fridge is probably well under a kilowatt.

  107. 107.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:

    “It’s 100% typical of Republicans.  They love veterans- and troops, babies, etc.- only as abstract concepts that can be used for campaign slogans.  They don’t give a damn about the actual human beings.”

    This deserves a repeat. Many repeats.

  108. 108.

    eachother

    @ColoradoGuy: Good info ColoradoGuy. The AC compressor start up load is calculated in the 20% derated 30 amp circuit, as you know, rated at 24 amps continuous load.
    The generator’s other load’s notwithstanding, AC power is available

    Hopefully, the AC wiring has been included in the transfer switch and just a matter of turning it on.
    As you mentioned, other loads connected to the generator need to be considered in total.  A bit of load management if necessary?
    And we be cool.

  109. 109.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @JML: My thoughts exactly. The Dems wouldn’t have sprung it on The Turtle before the House passed the bill without knowing for sure it could be passed.  Nancy knows what she is doing.

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