“That is up to Joe Manchin, but he is clearly not welcome on that side of the aisle.”
22 thoughts on “Darth McConnell asks Senator Skywalker to join the dark side”
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“That is up to Joe Manchin, but he is clearly not welcome on that side of the aisle.”
Comments are closed.
The White House probably felt they needed to blast Joe Manchin for the same reason Joe Biden reversed his promise not to extend the pause on student loan repayment past January. He is trying to make the left wing of his party happy, or at least less angry. I have no idea what Joe Manchin told the White House in private, but in public interviews, Manchin said he could go as high as $1.7 trillion, so long as there were no budget gimmicks. They reworked the bill to get the overall official cost down to $1.7 trillion. But they did that by having nearly every program sunset after one year. That’s a gimmick because they are counting on those programs being renewed. When it is assumed the programs would continue, it turns out it would add $3 trillion to the deficit. It seems like the White House wasn’t willing to bring the real number down and Manchin decided to just rip off the band-aid. Remember when John McCain did almost the exact same thing when the GOP was getting rid of Obamacare? A lot of the same people heaped praise or scorn on McCain, except the sides have flipped
If Manchin gets angry enough, he might switch sides, but it’s unlikely. If he were going to switch parties he would have done it years ago. I don’t know if he is planning to run again, but he would not lose a Democratic primary. He would probably lose a GOP primary because there are a lot of idiots in the GOP these days. Given the way he has stood up to both the president and the Senate, I think he is a pretty safe bet in the general election as well. If Manchin decides to switch, McConnell will welcome him. But I think, given the general Washington dysfunction, the GOP is probably better not controlling the Senate, at least until after next year’s elections. That way they can blame everything on the Democrats without accepting responsibility for any of the problems in the country.
He should become an Independent who caucuses with the Dems. He’d have the same power without the cries of treason. I would love someone to tell me what’s in the BBB plan that actually helps every day Americans. I’m not interested in paying for your child to go to preschool, or your child to go to community college, or for giving up the leverage we have with fossil fuels which is a limited commodity. We should be drilling everywhere and tap into our enormous reserves in order to turbocharge the economy while fossil fuel still has value. At some point it will run out or become obsolete but to not use it to our advantage is foolishness. Technology will continue to advance. We are throwing away a winning hand for optics while China doubles down.
Wow Steveo this is a real dog’s breakfast, even by your standards. It almost defies unsnarling, but I like a challenge and the liquor stores aren’t open yet. Leaving Manchin aside (because he bores me), you start by pretending to care about every day Americans. Why, after your long history of being proudly selfish, do you even bother? Then you rattle off a few BBB things that actually would help every day Americans, only to point out that you’re not into it. Your pimping for big oil is on-brand but clueless. If we build a post-oil economy we can tell the Chinese (and the Arabs) to take their oil and go fuck themselves – that’s the power move here.
The turd cherry on top of this shit sundae is your use of “optics” to mean “appearances”. I know, every idiot is doing it for some reason, but that makes it no less inaccurate and asinine.
Merry Christmas!
Couldn’t care less about every day Americans but I always assumed that was the purpose of this legislation. When did I say we shouldn’t build a post-oil economy? I said technology will continue to advance. As one of the largest oil producers in the world, it’s in our best interest to milk it while it has value. And the entire point is to tell China to go fuck themselves now and to go fuck themselves later. That’s Chinas plan. Trump had us energy independent. Biden gave that up. Why? To help the environment? That’s the optics because it won’t make any difference on a global scale without participation from China and India. For some reasons liberals hate using leverage. It’s almost as if there is shame for being more powerful and wealthier than other countries. Letting any other country in the world truly believe they can do anything without our permission is hilarious. It’s as if liberals actually believe that Frances opinion on something actually matters. But they will spend months negotiating meaningless climate agreements that accomplish nothing. And I always love when liberals start correcting grammar. I have a real degree that has earned me real money. Not some liberal arts fart smelling degree for which you then complain that you don’t get enough of the pie so you attempt to legislate more for you because you preferred reading 18th century Russian poetry. But sure, let’s listen to advice from people who have never accomplished anything. Go make 100m dollars and then I’ll value your thoughts on economics.
Just to pick one: “Trump had us energy independent. ” ?
Jesus you’re as dim as him.
Make 100m yet? No? Your opinion still doesnt matter. The only thing I want to hear out of you and your freeloader buddies is “thank you so much Steverino for funding our society so we can be free and have opportunity. Thank you for covering Medicaid and welfare. Thank you for employing people. Thank you for all your philanthropic donations. Thank you”.
Unless I hear that, all I hear is “I’m so jealous that people like Steverino have succeeded. The system must be rigged because I have a phd in Gender studies and that makes me important. I’m special too. We have to change the rules so I can succeed because the more free the markets, the less chance I have”.
Like I said, I get why you’re a liberal. It’s either that or accept your failures. You have no choice.
And so you do think I should pay for your kid to go to preschool? And your kid to go to college? Because you (or whoever) wasn’t able to pay for their own kids. Fuck you. That’s my money for my kids.
Didn’t McConnell’s party just go after 13 of their own republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill even going so far as to threaten stripping them of their cabinet posts? Pot meet kettle…
Right now Manchin would be an idiot to switch parties. He would go from being the most powerful man in the nation, to just another senator. There is nothing that the GOP can offer him that would equal having the power that he has now.
I agree with that. He’s sitting in the catbird’s seat, and I can’t see what McConnell could offer him that would be better.
But …
A lot of Democrats have been bad-mouthing him, so I guess it also hinges on how angry he is.
Repeating, Manchin ain’t switching regardless. He’ll retire first. Seriously, find a new talking point … or not.
I’m not sure how he’s in the catbird’s seat at this point. He doesn’t want to remove the filibuster, so the only influence he has is on budgetary items (unless he demands certain judges be appointed, which he doesn’t seem to have an interest in) and his sole concern on budget items seems to be to not have additional spending.
He had proposed $4 trillion total over 10 years going to ‘hard’ infrastructure spending before agreeing to the Covid relief package, and the Covid relief was for $1.9 trillion and the Infrastructure was $550 billion in ‘new’ spending, so that leaves about $1.5 trillion in total from his initial $4 trillion, but he seems to have backed off even that with the increase in inflation.
I certainly haven’t listened to all his pronouncements, but around the same time as the Senate passed the Infrastructure package, they also passed a $250 billion ‘compete with China’ package, which the U.S House has still not passed, and I don’t think he’s even mentioned that in at least a couple months.
I think you’re missing a trick there, Adam. The filibuster raises the stakes on reconciliation. That is, Manchin gets what he wants, if what he wants is to effectively kill things that other Dems want in the reconciliation bill, AKA, “Biden’s BBB”. You’ve proved there’s more to Manchin’s objections to BBB than the bare math of the top-line spending. I don’t think he’s terribly sly, but it’s clear his sleight-of-hand is fooling some people.
Or more briefly, take away the filibuster & Manchin would have to vote down all his hot button issues one by one.
It seems that on the BBB they can do this next year as they can make it part of the normal budget process. Both Finance Committee Chair Sanders and Majority Leader Schumer are already saying that they’re going to break down BBB to its component parts first thing next year and force Manchin (and all the Republicans) to vote against every single item.
I presume that would be done with Sanders and other Democrats writing new editorials in West Virginia newspapers explaining what Senator Manchin would be voting against.
This is one of the forms of hardball that some people here have advocated.
It seems the Democrats are also planning to force a filibuster vote on a number of pieces of legislation that the Republicans are filibustering.
It’s looking like the Democratic election strategy will be to raise the focus on Democratic legislation by doing things like that in part to raise pressure on Manchin and Sinema. That may cause Manchin to leave the Democrats, but all the evidence is he doesn’t want to do that, anyway. However:
1.It’s what many ‘progressive’ Democrats are demanding and them not voting in large numbers in 2022 would definitely result in a big loss in the elections.
2.It would highlight the legislation that the Democrats would then argue they would pass with more House members and Senators.
I have no idea if this strategy will be effective or not, but unlike all the self proclaimed pundits it seems, everywhere, I don’t pretend to be able to predict the future.
And a single GOP defection would be a reversal for Manchin. That’s a serious loss of leverage.
On the bright side, you’ve pushed me to a conclusion that among the Dems’ numerous blunders, probably the biggest one was taking Joe Manchin at his word. They thought they could just get the number down. It’s clear in hindsight that they’d have been wiser to do as one or two of us here have already advocated: prioritize. Pick winners. Fully fund the highest impact line items. Relegate lower priorities to separate tracks. Most of which won’t pass in the near future. Maybe not for years to come. Wisdom is in no way cheap.
If Dems do take that path to passage, they’ll have cover of having tried & failed the everyone-gets-some-of-what-they-want path.
It’s this simple: Manchin dragged his feet forever, saying he wanted this, that, and the other thing. Biden finally gave in and gave him everything he wanted. Then he said “sorry, I just can’t get there, it’s not happening” completely lying in public in bad faith having blatantly wasted everyone’s time.
Only thing for the Dems to do is throw him out of the party and refuse to speak to him. Declare him persona non grata. Doesn’t exist. Good luck with the Trumpies, Joe, tell us how West Virginia likes you now.
Call the bluff. Pull the trigger. They can’t lose him, they don’t have him. It’s clear he’s working for someone. The GOP, Trump, somebody is pulling his strings. He’s gaining nothing by negotiating in bad faith. Destroying his own party, his own president, does nothing for him or his state. He’s been bought.
So end him. Dethrone Emperor Manchin.
I don’t understand. If Manchin switches to or caucuses with the GOP, Mitch takes over the Senate again. If not & Manchin simply votes against Dems on every partisan-divided vote from here on out, the GOP would not set the agenda, but at least stymies the Dems.
Maybe if you were in Schumer’s shoes, but as it stands, I can’t see Dem leadership going out of their way to alienate Joe Manchin. I’m sure they already understand that he’s evil.
Indeed, he can screw his constituents better as a Dem. Regardless Mitch is not in charge of anything as Trump is still the titular head of the insurrection party. Yielding back the balance of my time …