Writing for the New York Review of Books, the Irish writer Fintan O’Toole, whose eloquence has caught my attention previously, explores the dilemma of congressional Democrats, with their barest of bare and not-completely-united majority, trying to figure out how to govern, and whether there is any way to form a functional coalition with reasonable, moderate Republicans to get stuff done that is worth doing before the next election.
You can’t get the full piece (“To Hell With Unity”) without a subscription. But the first few paragraphs include this wry, realistic assessment of the luck Democrats have had appealing for Republican help or compromise:
“There surely comes a time when repeated declarations of unrequited love look less like fidelity and more like madness, a time to see the bonds of affection tying party to party as bonds in the other sense, chains that shackle the democratic majority to the will of a fiercely intractable minority.”
This link will get you the opening of the piece, including the paragraph above. To get more, you’ll need to subscribe. But I thought that paragraph alone was worth passing along as an eloquent summary of where congressional bipartisanship stands at the moment.
A bit of an outlier
The whole topic reminds us that the U.S. system of politics and government is a bit of an outlier compared to democracies around the world.
The more common system is some form of parliamentarianism, in which the leader of the executive branch is chosen by a majority in the “leading” house of Parliament. He or she is either the leader of a party that controls a majority of the House of Commons, or is chosen by a coalition of parties that make up a majority.
One of the basic ideas is to have a government that can govern, which means pass laws. And when it can’t govern (pass laws), that triggers a new election, to allow the electorate to weigh in, leading to the formation of a new governing party or coalition that can govern.
The U.S. system not only has no such mechanism, but requires a majority of both houses of the legislative branch to agree on a bill, and then for the executive to sign it and then be in charge of administering it. It’s sort of a recipe for gridlock.
Lack of Democratic unity
In the United States, we very often don’t have the House, the Senate and the White House controlled by a single party. At the moment, we do have a majority of the same party in control of both legislative Houses and the executive branch. But the least enthusiastic members of the majority (Sen. Joe Manchin, for example, who is perhaps the least liberal member of the Democratic coalition, which governs by a one-vote-majority in the Senate) can scuttle the whole deal.
I’m sure there are arguments, pro and con, for the various systems. But if you want a government that can govern, our system is one of the worst.
Eric is really both-sidesing hard today.
Let’s make the undemocratic Senate an advisory body.
“[W]hether there is any way to form a functional coalition with reasonable, moderate Republicans . . .”
Step one: find Republicans who are reasonable or moderate, preferably both. Step two: give them all rides on a flying unicorn.
Not all Republicans drink the Trump-ade. Alot of us wish that he would just go away. But, as sensationalism sells newspapers or online subscriptions, reasonable and moderate Republicans, like reasonable and moderate Democrats, don’t get elected or are able to get their points across. You only get elected if you can make the most noise, even if it is wrong.
If they can’t get elected, talking about bringing them into some grand coalition is moot.
The extreme right has a greater sway over the Republican Party than the extreme left has over the Democrats. Believing in some kind of equivalence there is its own form of Kool Aid drinking.
They are governing. Walz and Biden are providing fine leadership, despite constant Republican obstruction.
It’s often attributed to Albert Einstein (apparently incorrectly), but no matter the author, this line immediately springs to mind when Democrats contemplate forming a coalition with the modern Republican Party: “Madness consists of doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.” When the only Republican response to a proposal is “no,” or “only if we get to determine how it’s going to work,” eventually, a different path has to be chosen. The increasingly-deranged Republican Party has demonstrated repeatedly over the past decade and more that actual governing is not one of its priorities, except in the sense that it seeks to impose a particular ideologically-inspired, and in recent years, increasingly authoritarian, view of the world on the majority of the country’s population – people who did not vote Republican.
As Eric suggested, there comes a point when courtship is futile, and pleading not only works no better, but starts to look sad and desperate. That’s the point where Democrats need to just forge ahead and do what needs to be done, whether Republicans like it or not. When someone blocks them, whether named McCarthy, McConnell, or Mancin, there’s nothing wrong – and much right – with pointing fingers at the people who have purposely prevented sensible policy from being implemented. The political minority has already had far too much influence on policy this century.
Sometimes it’s considered a feature, not a defect, that our system is prone to gridlock. And, indeed, in the hands of those who wish to govern, that might be true. However, when a sizeable minority does not wish to govern, particularly not wishing to compromise, our system is an utter disaster.
When politicians are willing to work together in good faith to solve common problems, the system works well enough. But without that, it’s entirely disfunctional.
Except it’s not really gridlock. It’s more like a ratchet: politics moves in one direction, rightward. When democrats control the organs of power, rather than moving left, they really just hold things in place. Until republicans take control again, and then we ratchet further rightward.
Yup.
The left is the direction of distributed private power. The Right is the direction of concentrated private power. The fundamental dynamic that augurs doom for any human society is that as private power becomes unevenly distributed, all the modes by which power is exercised – the economy, political governance, technology, media framing of public discourse and, most consequentially in a formal democracy, how voters believe they see the world – are more decisively captured by power to be deployed to its advantage.
One more area where the ordinary citizenry is in comparative deficit to concentrated private power is the ability to exercise vigilance. Private power has no occupation or purpose other than to extend itself. Without anyone’s conscious intention, it relentlessly does so into every social interstice. The movement of power in society isn’t a pendulum, it’s a tug of war. In the tug of war, the left can hold the line, but at each moment of inattention, or momentary loss of footing, the rope gets tugged further to the Right. And eventually all the ordinary folk are pulled down and scattered in the mud.
Our system is strange which is why other countries rarely adopt it. It’s a checks and balances system which tends to mean that it elevates process over substance. It’s not just a majoritarian system, it requires a consensus to get anything done, and not just a consensus of legislators, of the underlying political political interests the legislators represent. At the best of times it has barely worked at all, and at the worst of times, it couldn’t stop a Civil War. In my view, after centuries of inadequacy, it has stopped working altogether. We see this every day, in some of the weirdest political anomalies. We see politicians one day condemning an insurrectionist president and barely a few days later, a conditional endorsement of second term for that very same president. How is it possible to even explain that? What would De Toqueville have said?
The checks and balances aren’t the problem. Instead, or two party system is too coarse & does not well represent the full spectrum of political thought. There used to be nuance within the parties, but now – primarily on the right – the strictest idealogues are controlling the agenda & kicking apostates out of the party. This started with the Hastert rule requiring “a majority of the majority” to pass anything in the house. Then the Tea partiers led the charge of removing insufficiently pure republicans in primaries. There essentially aren’t any moderate Rs left.
Or moderate democrats
The point is that there’s far more diversity of opinion among dem politicians than republicans. More specifically in the Trump Republican party there is zero tolerance for crossing Trump.
There are several features of our failed system which are going to prevent the Dems from governing, and which will cause a catastrophic loss of the House in 2022. First is the lockstep and endemic obstruction of the Repub party, which is a political party that is now based entirely misrepresentations and zombie-fied recalcitrance. After decades of consuming enormous doses of “conservative” claptrap, its base does not actually want government, and instead turns on every single elected Repub that dares attempt to work with a Dem majority. This base is openly hostile to “compromise”; indeed, polls indicate it despises the very word. So every Dem is needed for every piece of proposed legislation (such as minimum wage increases) in every legislature in the country (assuming the body is not already controlled by Repubs).
Second, the procedural rule of the “filibuster” prevents any meaningful legislation in the senate unless it can be thrown into a “reconciliation” bill. The filibuster has been egregiously misused by Gravedigger of Democracy McConnell since Obama’s wave election in 2008 and has brought the senate to a standstill. This was done to scuttle the Obama presidency in its entirety after the Dems lost their 60 vote majority early in 2009. The filibuster essentially cements our system of rural minority rule in place. It is an add-on to the (unjustifiable) power rural states have simply as a result of the “equal representation” problem, which is the basis of the senate’s (failed) existence. Of course, getting rid of it would have caused the country to have been catastrophically destroyed by Trumpolini/McConnell/Ryan in 2016.
Finally, the Trumpified courts are already daily handing out preposterous rulings intent on hamstringing the new Dem admin of Biden. These “conservative” courts are dedicated to the idea that “Government by Dem” is per se illegitimate.
None of these problems can be easily rectified absent massive changes to the “system”. So the idea that the US of A can have an effective central government going forward is essentially wishful thinking at this point in American history. One has to wonder if a majority of Americans even want such a thing. As other nations have found (and as we saw as a result of Trump’s Pandemic), government would come in handy when things finally collapse, but by then it will be too late.
These conversations that assume “unity” is synonymous with “bipartisanship” are fundamentally incoherent. You cannot establish unity with a group or an individual that is dedicated to “disunity”. The question was never whether or not Democrats could invite Republican buy-in, that’s an inherently dysfunctional model. The question is who will formulate effective policy and unite the American people behind the progress that successful policy promotes? If you have the votes you move forward whether the Republicans participate or not… Republican intransigence doesn’t preclude national unity. In fact, more than likely if our nation is to “unite”, it will have to reject and marginalize the Republican party to do so.
Oddly enough, Republicans get this… they win, they pursue their agenda with or without Democrats. Democrats construct an artificial dilemma when they win and refuse to pursue their agenda without Republican participation. The whole point of democracy and governance is to establish a functioning government that promotes a more perfect union.
To the extent that Democrats now move forward without Republican participation the ARE governing, perhaps for the first time in decades. The object here is not to be bipartisan, bipartisanship may or may not happen, but it’s NOT a necessary condition of governance, this why democracies have elections and discover majorities. If a political party rejects the concept of democracy, and cultivates disunity and division as primary vehicle towards power, a demand for bipartisan governance is literally a suicidal impulse. Ask the guys who thought they could “share” power with Nazis.
Listen, this “partisan divide” narrative is obviously extremely popular among our media and has been all along, but you have to understand that this narrative emerges from a status quo comfort zone more than any national reality. The status quo comfort zone established a shared power structure ( i.e. “bipartisan”) not because it delivered the most effective government, but because it empowered the nation’s elite. This grief over the loss of bipartisanship doesn’t reflect a descent into chaos, but it DOES reflect a possible power shift that threatens the dominance of a status quo that served the elite, regardless of party affiliation.
Take Medicare For All for instance, or the Green New Deal, living wages, etc. etc. For decades neoliberal/status quo media orientation routinely dismissed these proposals (and their champions) out of hand. These dismissals were never “rational”, but they preserved the existing elite structures, i.e. private insurance, corporate welfare, fossil fuels, etc. etc. The demand or expectation of bipartisan cooperation simply provided convenient excuse for the status quo preservation of power, privilege, and influence. Some of us called this a duopoly because it was bipartisan agreement to exclude and marginalize any movement for progress that threatened the elite status quo.
All this media hand wringing now about the absence or loss of bipartisanship has nothing to do with effective governance. This anxiety is a reflection of the fact that the bipartisan “cooperation” that served the elite has collapsed, and any party that want’s to survive may actually have to serve the majority rather than the special interests. Meanwhile we have to recognize the fact that our media has essentially been in denial for decades attempting to preserve an illusion of bipartisan cooperation that actually collapsed when Newt launched his “revolution” back in the 90’s.
The problem for the elite, and media that has supported them, is that the nation is pursuing a course of unity regardless of bipartisanship. For decades neoliberal/moderate/centrist Democrats and “liberals” used the excuse of partisan discord as an excuse to marginalize popular proposals and policy. The nation isn’t divided, it’s uniting around cluster of demands that the duopoly was able to ignore for decades. The bipartisan accord was NEVER a reflection of national unity, it was merely a power structure that excluded the majority.
Repubs imperiously and proudly ignore “bipartisanship” when in the majority, then piously demand it as an essential component of governmental “legitimacy” when returned to the minority. It’s a clever scheme!
Curiously, the same rule apples to the reporting of the corporate media…
Yeah, I think the last of vestige of real bipartisan cooperation was the Republican vote to impeach Nixon. The lesson Republicans learned from that was never do anything like again. Democrats spend the next 4 decades talking about their fiends on the other side of the isled while Republicans sank deeper into the clutches of Fascism.
Another observation we can make is that this illusion bipartisan cooperation or rather the pretense of bipartisan participation as a necessary condition of governance really just reflected a conservative shift within the Democratic Party. The demand for bipartisan cooperation among Democrats really hit it’s stride when the New Democrats (neoliberals) took over the Party in the 80’s. Neoliberal Democrats didn’t stop rejecting liberal proposals because they couldn’t get Republican vote, they rejected them because they themselves weren’t liberals and didn’t believe in liberal proposals. This why Al Gore and Bill Clinton launched the single greatest privatization of Federal agencies in US history (They called it “reinventing government”). They didn’t do that because it was the only thing Republicans would agree to do, they didn’t it because they believed in it, it was THEIR choice, THEIR program. Likewise Hillary Clinton’s decision to dig up a Heritage Foundation health care plan wasn’t driven by bipartisan realities (nor was Obama’s later attempt), they reached out to the conservative models because that’s what conservative do.
The irony was that despite claiming some kind of bipartisan appeal for market driven reform, they STILL couldn’t get Republican votes. No one seems to mention the fact that Democrats pursued these market driven/conservative approaches despite the obvious fact that Republicans wouldn’t vote for them. Obviously the claim of possible bipartisan support was just a smoke screen for advancing their own conservative policy. Does anyone REALLY think that Obama expected to get Republican votes? Democrats didn’t pass Obamacare to get Republican votes, they passed it because it was the neoliberal market regime THEY wanted to implement. Obviously Democrats passed Obamacare because it was what THEY wanted to pass… not because it was the only plan Republicans would vote for.
Instead, or two party system is too coarse & does not well represent the full spectrum of political thought.
There aren’t many thoughts that don’t find a home somewhere in our two political parties. The challenge in a democracy is always to put together people with disparate views together into a governing majority. In our particular version of democracy, the challenge is increased in that to do anything at all, not just a majority but a consensus has to be reached. Historically, you need not just 51 votes in the senate to get things done, but 60 votes. While that requirement is changing, the need for a consensus is still there. That’s because the senate isn’t gerrymandered which means that, unlike the House, senators represent diverse and divided constituencies.
What to do about this? I have suggestions. One idea is to reapportion the states every ten years just like we do with house districts. Redraw the lines so each state has the same population. This would bring the states in compliance with the equal protection clause of the constitution.
Another suggestion I have is to move the government out of Washington DC for, let’s say, two months out of every year. Put the president, the Supreme Court and Congress in somewhere like Bismarck, North Dakota, away DC and it’s distractions. Make their return to the Nation’s Capital contingent on actually getting something done.
You don’t NEED consensus, you need a majority. The expectation of “consensus” simply provides a smoke behind which a elite status quo can hide. Boy, we sure wish we could do something but this lack of consensus just has us trapped in gridlock… to bad so sad. Bushwa!
Our democracy is actually organized around majority approval. None of our elected officials get’s into office via consensus of any kind, the get elected by majority vote, 50+1. We protect minorities from persecution or exclusion, but we don’t grant them to right to veto any policies the majority supports. The demand for consensus is just an excuse to marginalize and ignore the majority, it’s exclusivity masquerading inclusivity. You never have policies, or ideas, or proposals that EVERYONE agrees with. This just ends up being an excuse to serve an elite minority and no one else, under the pretense of trying to serve everyone. Yet somehow despite a lack of consensus, billionaires get their stadiums and millionaires get their tax breaks, and private insurance retains it’s death grip on our health care system. We wish we could do something but our hands are tied… Bushwa!
So you want gerrymander states, and move the capitol to Republican strongholds. Next!
“There aren’t many thoughts that don’t find a home somewhere in our two political parties.”
Many people find the greivance driven iteration of the Republican party distasteful. Where is the home for small government conservatives who believe in personal accountability & morality? Nationwide Republicans are censuring the few house republicans who voted to convict Trump. This is not a “big tent” party that welcomes broad views.
“One idea is to reapportion the states every ten years just like we do with house districts. ”
You forget that the federal government was created by the states, not vice versa.
That was only true till the Constitution was adopted and ratified by the existing states. Then, the federal government created territories, which then became states. There are far more states that were created by the fed (via Congress) than the other way around.
I’ll just say one more thing and then I’ll be quiet. I just wonder if I’m the only one who finds a little humor in all of these neoliberal/Democrat realizations that they system is broken? All of the sudden the US Constitution doesn’t make sense anymore, and we need to start moving the Nation’s Capitol around, and expand the magnitude of gerrymandering, not to mention the Electoral College… my God the Electoral College!
Yet for some reason among all the possible measures we need to take to stave off the collapse of democracy it doesn’t seem to occur to Democrats that they should just start winning a bunch of elections? For some reason the idea of populating their party with popular candidates that most people want to vote for completely escapes them. They’ve become soooo accustomed to narrow margins and simply trading places with Republicans that the idea of being an honest to God popular party that represents and energizes a significant majority of Americans is beyond their comprehension.
Maybe before we start playing around with the oldest surviving Constitution in the world, Democrats could just try to win elections and be a popular party that represents a majority of voters? Instead of labeling popular candidates that energize voters and try to significantly improve lives, infrastructures, and equity, as “Leftist” or “Populists”… to be kept off ballots almost any cost, you could put them on the ballot and help them win. Maybe instead of complaining about being “woke”… Democrats could wake up?
Democrats actually have historic opportunity in front of them, the Republicans Party is imploding, the nation is fed up with the status quo and it’s permanent crises, and a clear liberal majority is starting to emerge (even if it’s not “bipartisan”). Whatever you do… don’t take advantage of this scenario.
The dems have never figured that out on a national level. Too many that are too far (way too far actually) left to even have an understanding of the “average” American and what they want and need.
I’m old enough to have seen the times when, at least at the Federal level, there was a true desire to do the common good. There was trading back and forth, nobody insisted that their way was the only way, and thing actually got things done. I’m not sure that will ever be like that again.
I consider myself pretty average…worked since I’ve been 12, don’t rely on government handouts, expect other people don’t try to tell me what to believe or do and I will do the same for them. Let me do what is right for me and just stay the F out of my life.
” Too many that are too far left to even have an understanding of the “average” American and what they want and need.”
Hogwash. Fair pay for a fair day’s work is a pretty universal need. Access to affordable healthcare is a universal need. Equality of opportunity is a universal need. Government staying the F out of our lives is a universal need. Freedom from others’ oppressive religious beliefs is a universal need.
We should be able to agree on such things, but apparently some find these ideas out of step with the “average” american. As if there is such a person.
If we are governed by majorities, why do we have presidents who lose the popular vote. Why is the Supreme Court whose consent is needed for the enactment of any significant piece to become law controlled by the minority party? Why at a time when Democrats had super majorities of both houses of Congress, was it only possible to enact a Republican form of health care?
Our system of government is gerrymandered to ensure that a minority has a stronge role in government. The minority can both provide and deny the consensus support needed for governance. This gerrymandering takes a variety of forms in our government. We see it most directly in the apportionment of Congrssional districts, many of which actually do like reptiles with the head of a 19th century Massachusetts politician. But there are other forms of gerrymandering which can be lest direct but even more permanent, and more powerful in the impact on our politics and history. The way state lines are drawn permanently give more power in the election of senators to residents of some state than others. In same cases the disparity of voting power is vast, for really no reason at all. This gerrymandering of Congress flows like a river through the rest of our federal government. Since the electoral college is based on the way Congress is organized, a gerrymandered Congress results in a gerrymandered presidency. The presidential gerrymandering influences the Supreme Court resulting in a body that isn’t even remotely representative of America.
Consensus government just to survive requires comity and mutual respect among the various groups that comprise it. Over our history those things have risen and fallen, sometimes disappearing altogether. We are now in a time where they have mostly disappeared, and the signs of that are increasingly visible.
“If we are governed by majorities, why do we have presidents who lose the popular vote. Why is the Supreme Court whose consent is needed for the enactment of any significant piece to become law controlled by the minority party? Why at a time when Democrats had super majorities of both houses of Congress, was it only possible to enact a Republican form of health care?”
Those are all good questions Hiram, but none of them establish “consensus” as primary feature of American democracy. If you’re claiming that the Electoral College, or SCOTUS appointments reflect some kind of national “consensus” I’m afraid you need to study some basic political science texts, or maybe take a class of some kind.
You COULD claim that the nation has been governed by a form of elite consensus, I described that in my discussion of the duopoly. However THAT consensus, to the extent that “governs”, has clearly failed, and is clearly not an ideal form of governance that most people would support. When THAT consensus, to the degree it exists, is exposed, it tends to provoke rebellion rather than support or participation.
So yes, I guess one way of looking at my observation is that an elite consensus that has failed to govern has been exposed and may be collapsing. “Moderate/centrist” Democrats and Republicans, along with their media support structure are trying to restore that “consensus”, but that attempt may be doomed because it’s a consensus that always excluded the vast majority of Americans and voters.
So in your mind, the “minority”, as in the 2020 election, was 70 million people, don’t matter?
Now more than ever it is so important that Senate is there.
BTW, not sure Eric just likes to stir the pot or is he really like he comes off?
“So in your mind, the “minority”, as in the 2020 election, was 70 million people, don’t matter?”
You make a good point. Do our politicians consider all the people they represent, or only those who vote for them? I dare say the prior administration took the former view. Which is not to say that two wrongs make a right, but that all politicians should try to balance all their constituents’ needs with their own preferences.
More amusing to me, is that Trump supporters love pointing out the millions who voted for him – while ignoring the millions more who voted for Biden (or Hillary).
And while you yearn for the senate to now act as a brake on the Biden admin, you’re seeming to ignore that the 50 Republican Senators were elected by far fewer people – by the millions – than the 50 Democrats. It is a bit jarring that Republicans & Conservatives only seem to care about the minority when they are in it.
“So in your mind, the “minority”, as in the 2020 election, was 70 million people, don’t matter?”
As we seem to be saying now, I’m old enough to remember when a favorite taunt of Republicans was “elections have consequences.”
Those are all good questions Hiram, but none of them establish “consensus” as primary feature of American democracy.
the point is our constitution gives minorities a big often decisive voice in how we are governed. Minorities often win elections, and they get enough support to block the agenda of the majority when they lose elections.
The best example, and really one of the few legislative achievements so far this century, is Obamacare. Health care legislation could never be enacted, not because people were opposed to it, but because no one could put together enough support to get any version of that passed. When that rarest of phenomenon occurred, Democrats had a governing majority in both houses of Congress, only a Republican version of health care could pass, because only a Republican health care plan could secure support from Republican constituencies if not from Republican legislators.
Democrats have a nominal majority in both houses of Congress now, but that is more illusion in reality at least in terms of policy implementation. Joe Manchin, from a heavily Republican state, is himself a borderline Republican. It wouldn’t take much, in fact, for him to switch parties. What that means is that if Biden and the Democrats are going to get anything done, they will need Republican support to do it. Indeed, they will have to have it in the next two years because Republicans, with their safely regerrymandered districts will sure control one or both houses of Congress in 2023.
“The best example, and really one of the few legislative achievements so far this century, is Obamacare. Health care legislation could never be enacted, not because people were opposed to it, but because no one could put together enough support to get any version of that passed.”
You’re just arguing in circles at this point. While the ACA finally addressed a few obvious and long over-due reforms, it has clearly been a fail in the sense that it left us with a health care crises mostly in tact. Affordable health care and access to health care remain at the forefront of American concerns and anxieties, we wouldn’t still be talking about a health care crises if ACA had “worked”.
Sure, the ACA was product of consensus among conservative congress people who swept the most popular options off the table, but you can’t claim that this was a failure or product of national consensus. This just an example of Democrats marginalizing or ignoring the most popular proposals in favor of the least popular proposal and then claiming it was the best they could do. Democrats couldn’t get support for a better plan because they didn’t try, they ruled out the best ideas and then claim it was the best they could do.
You just keep circling back to the fact that Democrats can only pass bills that Democrats will vote for, as if the bills they vote for are the best bills they could pass. This analysis collapses once you realize that Democrats limit their proposals to those they think Republicans will vote for, rather than popular plans that deliver the best results. Sure, you can claim this reflects some kind of consensus, but it’s a consensus that it’s better to fail on behalf of an elite status quo, than succeed on behalf of constituents. When you routinely take the most popular options that would attract the largest national consensus off the table, you can’t claim to be ruling by consensus, you’re just creating a ruling elite. The thing about consensus is, you have to decide who’s consensus you looking for and why? YOUR notion of consensus limited to a small elite that has produced one failed policy after another for decades while leaving multiple crises unmolested by common sense proposals. You achieve the narrowest of possible consensus because that’s the only consensus you try to achieve, not because it the only possible consensus.
Clearly your notion that minorities somehow block or determine outcomes is based on distorted observations. Are you really telling us that congress is paralyzed by people of color, women, emigrants, Native Americans and other minorities who are routinely steam rolled and ignored by both Parties? The 60 vote requirement in Congress isn’t a force of nature, or even a Constitutional requirement, it’s a purely manufactured and artificial obstacle designed to prevent legislation beyond certain status quo parameters.
This is only an intractable political problem so long as Democrats seek narrow consensus at the expense of popular appeal. Once you recognize the fact that popular polices supported by enthusiastic majorities exist, reality assumes it’s place at the center of policy discussions and you have a path towards electoral success. So long as you hew to an artificially narrow path determined by the pursuit of “Republican” votes, you condemn yourself to narrow margins and the political impotency those narrow margins provide.
You just keep circling back to the fact that Democrats can only pass bills that Democrats will vote for, as if the bills they vote for are the best bills they could pass.
Just barely. And with Manchin and Sinema they can’t even count on that. They are hardly the best bills possible. Better bills in Democratic terms aren’t passable at all. They couldn’t even get majority support.
And just like that… Hiram and I agree. Who says consensus is impossible! The question is whether or not Manchin is the new Lieberman? And after that question is whether or not Democrats try to settle in their mythical “middle” again or push further out into expanded popularity?
I don’t know where Biden et al found Jen Psaki, but she’s brilliant. Reporters tried to hang her on the horns of the “unity” and/or Bipartisan dilemma yesterday and she gave the best response I’ve heard yet, she said (something like this):
“When WE talk about unity and bipartisanship, we’re looking beyond congress rather than focusing on congress. The majority of Americans in both Parties support the stimulus relief package, and that’s why we’re pushing this through. The question is why Republicans in Congress are sooooo out of step with their own constituents?”
Exactly right. I wish I’d thought of that, I’ve been writing for three days and she nailed it one 20 second paragraph.
This bill is an mostly unnecessary gift to liberal special interests. 1.9 trillion is about 1.4 trillion more than targeted, relevant aid would require. But the leftists can’t be accused of wasting this crisis to pay off their base.
Democrats couldn’t even be bothered to prevent prisoners and people here illegally from getting stimulus checks.