US Politics: Roe, Roe, Roe you’re gone? (Hope not)

[DireWolfSpirit]

Manchin better be glad a Frank Underwood isn't after him with all the dirty double dealing he's pulling.

[ThinkerX]

A listing of Manchin's changing demands on the reconciliation bill and the concessions he extracted to this point. Right now, a lot of the social and energy items are watered down to the point to where somebody like Murkowski could *almost* go for it, if say given free reign with ANWAR and it wasn't an election year. Worth a shot to approach her and maybe one or two other R senators? At this point the D's wouldn't have anything to lose by making the offer.

 

What Manchin wanted, rejected and got in Biden's $2T bill (msn.com)

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

Kind of sucks to have a dude who makes all his money of fossil fuels in the Senate.

[DMC]

37 minutes ago, 1066 Larry said:

Kind of sucks to have a dude who makes all his money of fossil fuels in the Senate.

Yeah I suspect if the Dems cave to him on the CTC, the next thing he'd turn to in his now 6-month long stalling strategy will be the climate change provisions.  And then the child care funding.  And then the affordable housing.  Maybe he'd eventually be on board with the healthcare provisions, which makes up about..$315 billion of the bill.  Yay?

But even then I doubt we'll ever find out.  Since Biden and Schumer are still unwilling to take the gloves off with him after he flip-flopped on the CTC agreement, it's hard to see them ever doing so.  Which means there's no reason to think Manchin's stalling strategy won't continue to work, which will inevitably result in nothing.  Unless Manchin changes his mind again - which of course is still a possibility.

[Kalbear]

23 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah I suspect if the Dems cave to him on the CTC, the next thing he'd turn to in his now 6-month long stalling strategy will be the climate change provisions.  And then the child care funding.  And then the affordable housing.  Maybe he'd eventually be on board with the healthcare provisions, which makes up about..$315 billion of the bill.  Yay?

But even then I doubt we'll ever find out.  Since Biden and Schumer are still unwilling to take the gloves off with him after he flip-flopped on the CTC agreement, it's hard to see them ever doing so.  Which means there's no reason to think Manchin's stalling strategy won't continue to work, which will inevitably result in nothing.  Unless Manchin changes his mind again - which of course is still a possibility.

Again, the only sane strategy is to ask exactly what Manchin wants and then do it. Then present that and get the others on board, or at least see if you can. 

Because anything else will take too long and not get anything done. And if you're not going to get this done, well, there's likely other reconciliation things that the Dems COULD do that Manchin would get on board with, and time is running out to get it done at all. 

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Kalsandra said:

Again, the only sane strategy is to ask exactly what Manchin wants and then do it.

This assumes he actually wants to do anything.  It's quite possible he doesn't.  ETA:  It also assumes he's honestly tell them exactly what he wants.  He hasn't done that yet.  Or if he has, he's since changed his mind.

4 minutes ago, Kalsandra said:

there's likely other reconciliation things that the Dems COULD do that Manchin would get on board with, and time is running out to get it done at all. 

I honestly don't know what else there is that isn't already in the bill or Manchin's already forced them to cut out of it.  I guess they could just pass the tax hikes on the wealthy.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

This assumes he actually wants to do anything.  It's quite possible he doesn't.

Sure, and that's what I suspect too! But at least this makes him shit or get off the pot, instead of this constant fucking around with him and having him run out the clock. 

1 minute ago, DMC said:

I honestly don't know what else there is that isn't already in the bill or Manchin's already forced them to cut out of it.  I guess they could just pass the tax hikes on the wealthy.

Dunno. Maybe immigration, maybe voting rights stuff. But right now all the air in the room is being used on this, and the end result is nothing is getting done. 

Hell, do something good for me and get the bill passed to give WA state permanent daylight saving time. 

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, Kalsandra said:

Sure, and that's what I suspect too! But at least this makes him shit or get off the pot, instead of this constant fucking around with him and having him run out the clock.

I mean, I certainly agree that Biden and leadership should make clear that he's the only obstacle to an agreement - that's what I meant by taking the gloves off.  But the only thing he's consistently said that he wants is to observe a "strategic pause" on the bill - he reiterated this as recently as ten days ago.  It's hard to stop someone from stalling when all he apparently wants is to continue to stall.

11 minutes ago, Kalsandra said:

Dunno. Maybe immigration, maybe voting rights stuff.

MacDonough just struck down their third attempt to get some type of immigration reform through reconciliation.  It's basically a foregone conclusion she'd strike down the voting rights stuff too.  If they wanna pursue overruling/ignoring the parliamentarian I suppose they could, but that's something that might engender more Dem opposition than just Manchin.

One thing I thought of I guess they could do is instead of playing shutdown brinksmanship with the GOP on the next CR in February is to just simply pass a budget via reconciliation.  That's what it was created for after all.

[IheartIheartTesla]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/19/joe-manchin-biden-build-back-better-no-fox-news

Quote

The West Virginia senator Joe Manchin dealt a huge blow to Joe Biden on Sunday by saying he was a “no” on the administration’s $1.75tn Build Back Better domestic spending plan.

“I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,” Manchin said. “I just can’t. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there.”

The host, Bret Baier, said: “You’re done? This is a no?”

Manchin said: “This is a no on this piece of legislation. I have tried everything I know to do.”

Very classy, going on Fox News to make this announcement. Just boot him from the party so no one has to try to convince him of anything anymore.

[Larry of the Lawn]

We're all getting coal for christmas

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 minute ago, The Great Unwashed said:

It fundamentally came down to Manchin only wanted to kill the bill, but knew he needed an excuse to do so. So, just stall and wait for some bad news to happen and then rely on the useful idiots in corporate media to regurgitate his bullshit verbatim, including blaming progressives for the lack of progress.

 This is exactly the kind of shit progressives were saying. Negotiate how? He never wanted to negotiate; he just wanted to get his bullshit bipartisan giveaway to corporations & then kill any kind of social spending.

It was obvious this was the final conclusion from the day they talked about splitting the bills. How does anyone expect progressives to ever negotiate in good faith with moderates when moderates won’t have the common goddamn sense to do the same?

Fucking madness.

In hindsight maybe it was obvious.  Everyone was saying that Manchin you could at least negotiate with and that it was Sinema who was just stalling and had no interest in passing anything.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

16 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

It’s quite clear by now that Democratic leadership is incapable of meeting the moment.

Now? Has it not been obvious for several months?

[SpaceChampion]

15 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

What Manchin wanted, rejected and got in Biden's $2T bill (msn.com)

I heard he just wants one more change:  that the Child Tax Credit be paid in one lump sum, on Christmas, in coal.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

It’s been obvious to some. If it’s not obvious to all by now then there are some problems.

And the painful truth is that every leader has failed.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

True - progressives never should have given up leverage over the infrastructure bill. Never trust a moderate Democratic legislator to do the right thing.

If this is your takeaway you've learned the wrong lesson. Holding the line likely just means nothing was passed, and make no mistake that infrastructure package was long overdue. I still maintain progressives should have cut a quick deal when it would have been a lot easier, which is the argument I made back in August. 

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I still maintain progressives should have cut a quick deal when it would have been a lot easier, which is the argument I made back in August. 

This was never possible.  Manchin was never going to cut a deal in August, and now we know he never wanted to at all.  We know this because Manchin has said so, publicly, ad nauseam.  He's published op-eds on it.  He even specified he didn't want to bring the bill up for debate until October in his secret agreement with Schumer.  Your continued unwillingness to accept this reality has reached QAnon levels of delusion.

[Ghjhero]

I for one applaud Manchin for sticking to his guns and doing what the voters of his state want him to do and not be bullied into submission by urban core progressives. In an age where both parties are keen to ostracize their members if they stray from the party line, it’s quite refreshing to see him put the desires of his constituents above any supposed national interest. In a time where inflation is at a 40 year high and Dems hold the narrowest majorities possible in Congress, it’s good to see that Manchin got the memo that those are not numbers that support unilateral partisan sweeping changes. Each party is acting as if this is the last election they will ever hold power and their reckless ambition causes the very blowback that returns them to the minority. If the parties could negotiate and find pieces of legislation that could actually stand a chance of passing with 60+ Senate votes, such as IIJA did, the country would be in a much better place. We need more members like Manchin if we are to get the country back on the right path. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

This was never possible.  Manchin was never going to cut a deal in August, and now we know he never wanted to at all.  We know this because Manchin has said so, publicly, ad nauseam.  He's published op-eds on it.  He even specified he didn't want to bring the bill up for debate until October in his secret agreement with Schumer.  Your continued unwillingness to accept this reality has reached QAnon levels of delusion.

Lol. And why do you think he wanted to bring it up in October? Because he wanted to negotiate it over the summer. Schumer did nothing in response until late September. File your complaint with the correct party. 

And if you're going to compare me to QAnon, I think people really should go back and read the positions you took, many of which are comical in hindsight. 

10 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

There was no fucking deal to be cut man! Jesus fucking Christ! And progressives get called the naive ones?!?!

There was no deal because leadership never brokered one. Schumer knew he had a rouge legislator to deal with and did nothing about it until the last minute.  Full stop. That's what needs to be addressed first and foremost. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Which has fuck-all to do with the strategic choices progressives should have made. In fact, since Schumer has been getting rolled since day 1, in my mind it shows even more need for progressives to exert leverage over the infrastructure bill. 

Progressives leaders wouldn't meet with Manchin until October. What was strategic about that? Instead they opted to snipe him in the press somehow thinking that would get what they wanted, which is baffling. 

And as a friendly reminder, they never had any leverage. It's delusional at this point to think that they did. Their only threat was to sink everything, and that was never actually in play unless they were really willing to burn it all down if they didn't get their way.

Quote

It was obvious as soon as the bills were split up that moderates never had any intention of letting the other track pass. Progressives should have saved the party from itself.

Probably, but that was a risk that had to be taken. But once you split the bills you shouldn't play hardball unless failure is an option for you. And progressives saving the party from itself on your terms appears to be passing nothing, which doesn't save the party at all. 

[A True Kaniggit]

If you have relatives who don’t really follow politics but received the Child Tax Credit every month, it may be a good idea to let them know it won’t be showing up in January. So they aren’t caught by surprise.