When a political party achieves the majority in the United States Senate, it acquires not only the ability to win all votes (that don’t require a 60% majority), but to appoint committee chairs and set the legislative agenda. It is an event of enormous significance for the party, the government and the people. Parties strive to achieve the majority, usually, by putting forth an agenda of things they would do if only.
In 2020 the Democratic Party won not only the presidency and vice presidency, but the senate, by virtue of winning two special elections in Georgia after the presidential election. Actual membership in the senate is an equal split of 50-50, but since the vice president chairs the Senate, and she is a Democrat, her party is the majority.
The election was conducted in the depths of what may well be the worst public health crisis in the nation’s history; in a country more savagely divided between left and right, and between rich and poor, than at any time in living memory; and in the midst of many existential threats to health and welfare, such as global climate change accompanied by ferocious storms, wildfires, heat waves and droughts. To win the presidency and the senate, the Democrats promised to deal with them all. Most explicitly, in the Georgia races, the senate candidates backed up by then president-elect Biden promised if elected to approve $2,000-per-person stimulus checks.
Now the president has been inaugurated, the Senate has been reorganized, and Democrats are engaged in delivering on their promises. Enter Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia. He has suddenly been labelled by the mainstream media as “the most powerful man in Washington” because he has the ability to deny passage of any Democratic initiative with his single vote. Of course, that applies to each and every Democratic Senator in an equally divided Senate. Nevertheless it is Senator Machin who has been anointed as power-broker-in-chief.
It’s hard to say how that happened. He claims to have had nothing to do with the fact that he is suddenly on every TV channel, website, newspaper and radio station, opining on the Biden/Democrat agenda. Probably just a coincidence.
He has been consistent. With respect to those $2,000 COVID payments his response was, to paraphrase slightly, “Nope.” And just like that, the payments morphed into $1400 payments (well, if you add the $600 that Trump sent you, you get $2,000) to be paid only to people making less than $50,000 a year. They plan to use 1919 payroll data, which means that people laid off a year ago, whose benefits have expired, who are facing eviction and hunger, will not qualify.
Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour was another plank in the platform on which the Democrats won. But Joe Manchin says, “Nope,” and you can barely see the bubbles where it sank without a trace.
Under pressure from the progressive wing of the party, President Biden has adopted a more aggressive stance toward climate change than has been seen before from any president. Never mind that they are largely cosmetic — rejoining the Paris Climate Accords, for example, already pretty much out of date, and “mandating” the elimination of fossil fuels from electricity generation, transportation and industry at some future date. These things have all the impact of your average New Year’s resolution, but Joe Manchin says, “Nope.” No penalties on coal,natural gas or oil while he’s chairing the Energy and Natural Resources Committee (a position he gained by virtue of the victories of Democrats who promised vigorous action on climate change — he did not run in 2020).
For all their victories, Democrats were disappointed by the 2020 elections. They expected to widen their majority in the house, instead it was narrowed, and they expected to win more senate seats than they did. Senator Manchin says progressive Democrats scared voters such as his constituents with their “socialst talk” about such issues as Medicare for All (to which he also says, “Nope”), free higher education (“Nope”) and a Green New Deal (“Nope”). All of these issues, I should note, are wildly popular with American voters.
Solid political legacies, and solid partisan majorities, are built on accomplishments. Senator Manchin seems bent on establishing a reputation for preventing accomplishments. Do I think this will turn out well for him?
Nope.
1919 payroll data? A few people will be left out.
The last I checked the poling, 93% of registered Democrats want Medicare for All.
93 effen percent! That’s what I call, a consensus!
Unfortunately, not a single Democratic Rep in the House is in favor of it (nope, not one, ultra – wink, wink – progressive AOC for instance won’t even force a vote to put it up for “discussion and rejection”), and obviously, no member of the House of Lords (aka the Senate) will ever vote yea for anything that might prove a net benefit to people of the United States.
Our Lords don’t work for us, or for any particular country don’t you know. That’s not their job.
Democracy? Not even close. Rule by corporations is what we have here in my country, and there’s a name for it, but I can’t think what it is. Starts with f maybe? I’m going to Google it.
I think Manchin will be just fine. The rest of the Democratic Party that couldn’t deliver on their promises? Not so much.
Manchin may be the ugly face of intransigence the Democrats use to deflect attention away from themselves and onto him, but make no mistake: the agenda items listed are neither true intentions nor within Democrats’ power to accomplish. They’re far worse than failed New Year’s resolutions in that such agendas, while extremely popular among the populace, are mere pretense to get legislators into office and/or stay there. Stimulus checks to the people are a short-term fix that actually help some people (if only a little bit, since need is often far greater than a couple grand). Others are all long-term fixes that cannot and will never happen. Geophysical reality guarantees that the Paris Climate Accords and Green New Deal are just fantasies. (Yeah, just try legislating chemistry like it’s alchemy …) The only prospect with a prayer of actually happening is nationalized single-payer healthcare enjoyed by the rest of the developed world. Opposition by for-profit entities within the related industries will be so fierce, however, that something truly unprecedented would need to occur.
Agreed. Obama took single payer off the table during his primaries and Biden did likewise during his. The Democratic establishment is relentlessly opposed, and when they finished off Bernie last year the last best hope of ever getting it, in my view, flickered out. (The point of M4A is not to save us, but, like hospice, to make the end a little more comfortable.)
The point of M4A is not to save us, but, like hospice, to make the end a little more comfortable.
Perfect.