New Developments III

[Sabin]

Big Magilla wrote

Sabin wrote
Sanders hoped the prospect of voting against $15/hr might persuade the Senators to change their minds. It didn’t work. I know many people who appreciate the attempt. Let’s be honest, this measure doesn’t directly affect you like it does many, many people in this country so you might not understand. But the push also made it clear online just how passionately so many people feel about this. I also hoped that might be a tipping point, but alas, no.

What the fuck does that even mean? Of course I "understand" the need to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour. What I don't understand is why Sanders and other thought it had to be attached to the COVID bill when all evidence was to the contrary that it could pass.

Again: I don't know. I'm just guessing. His hope was that the prospect of publicly voting against the $15/hr and having that on their record would disencourage Simena and Manchin from voting against it. And he thought it was worth a Hail Mary vs. using it as a carrot for 2024. Didn't work. Too bad.

[Big Magilla]

Big Magilla wrote
Sorry, I'm not getting this one. On Feb 25, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that a plan to gradually increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 does not fit the complicated rules that govern budget bills in the Senate. Schumer agreed to remove it from the bill but press on with separate legislation on the minimum wage. Why did Sanders even bring it up? It only wasted more precious time.

Sanders hoped the prospect of voting against $15/hr might persuade the Senators to change their minds. It didn’t work. I know many people who appreciate the attempt. Let’s be honest, this measure doesn’t directly affect you like it does many, many people in this country so you might not understand. But the push also made it clear online just how passionately so many people feel about this. I also hoped that might be a tipping point, but alas, no.

What the fuck does that even mean? Of course I "understand" the need to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour. What I don't understand is why Sanders and other thought it had to be attached to the COVID bill when all evidence was to the contrary that it could pass.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
Yes, it's a miracle having a Senate seat in WV at this point, so, rather than cursing Manchin for his prima donna moments, we need to thank him every day for making Chuck Schumer Majority Leader.

And in terms of "we only have to deal with him..." -- should Dems pick up some of the available seats in 2022 (PA, NC, WI) without losing many, Manchin would no longer be the sole deciding vote, which could make things easier in Biden's second two years.

To your first point, I can do both.

To your second, I’ve made that point elsewhere. I totally agree. Our ‘22 Senate Map is very good. All those Senators who won with Trump in ‘16 can lose with him now.

All we have to do is defend our six seats, which is a scary prospect. But we have mail-in ballots and a newly-winning get out the vote strategy.

[Mister Tee]

Big Magilla wrote
The bigger concern with Manchin is that he has said over and over that he will never vote to kill the filibuster, emphasis on never.

Well, we only have to deal with him for four more years. I mistakenly said earlier that Manchin was up for re-election in 2022. I was mistaken. It’s 2024. Don’t get me wrong. It’s very good we have a seat in West Virginia. But the last time he was up in 2018, he defended his seat by 2%. The days of Robert Byrd’s hold over West Virginia are over a decade gone. It’s astonishing we have a presence in that state at all.

There's a lot of murmur about at least adjusting standards for the filibuster -- forcing the filibustering side to remain on the floor a la Mr. Smith, rather than, as now, essentially requiring 60 votes for passage of anything whatsoever. I can see Manchin getting behind that.

Yes, it's a miracle having a Senate seat in WV at this point, so, rather than cursing Manchin for his prima donna moments, we need to thank him every day for making Chuck Schumer Majority Leader.

And in terms of "we only have to deal with him..." -- should Dems pick up some of the available seats in 2022 (PA, NC, WI) without losing many, Manchin would no longer be the sole deciding vote, which could make things easier in Biden's second two years.

[Sabin]

Big Magilla wrote
Sorry, I'm not getting this one. On Feb 25, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that a plan to gradually increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 does not fit the complicated rules that govern budget bills in the Senate. Schumer agreed to remove it from the bill but press on with separate legislation on the minimum wage. Why did Sanders even bring it up? It only wasted more precious time.

Sanders hoped the prospect of voting against $15/hr might persuade the Senators to change their minds. It didn’t work. I know many people who appreciate the attempt. Let’s be honest, this measure doesn’t directly affect you like it does many, many people in this country so you might not understand. But the push also made it clear online just how passionately so many people feel about this. I also hoped that might be a tipping point, but alas, no.

Big Magilla wrote
The bigger concern with Manchin is that he has said over and over that he will never vote to kill the filibuster, emphasis on never.

Well, we only have to deal with him for four more years. I mistakenly said earlier that Manchin was up for re-election in 2022. I was mistaken. It’s 2024. Don’t get me wrong. It’s very good we have a seat in West Virginia. But the last time he was up in 2018, he defended his seat by 2%. The days of Robert Byrd’s hold over West Virginia are over a decade gone. It’s astonishing we have a presence in that state at all.

[Big Magilla]

Sorry, I'm not getting this one. On Feb 25, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that a plan to gradually increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 does not fit the complicated rules that govern budget bills in the Senate. Schumer agreed to remove it from the bill but press on with separate legislation on the minimum wage. Why did Sanders even bring it up? It only wasted more precious time.

The bigger concern with Manchin is that he has said over and over that he will never vote to kill the filibuster, emphasis on never.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
I can't vouch for the accuracy, but I've heard that Sinema is one of the most stringent COVID-avoiders in the Senate, and her friends say she wasn't meaning to be glib with her thumbs-down, merely to keep her distance.

Well, that explains her perceived glibness. Not her transformation from a Green Party candidate to someone who would vote against $15/hr minimum wage.

Mister Tee wrote
On the wider issue of the minimum wage: Keep in my mind that this wasn't a vote simply on the minimum wage, but on attaching the minimum wage debate to the COVID relief bill. There's a lot of evidence that the Biden team didn't think it was worth adding the minimum wage battle to the many, many other elements of the bill. It took 9 hours simply to resolve a small issue on unemployment insurance. Speed was of the essence here: Biden recalls from the Obama stimulus and health care votes that, the longer a bill lingers in Congress, the more it gets gutted. Biden wanted those checks -- and all the rest -- out before Republicans could get comfortable.

This doesn't mean minimum wage is dead. Rather, the opposite. Look at who else voted against it: Chris Coons. Biden's closest Senate ally, and a liberal's liberal -- I guarantee you, he didn't vote the way he did to kill the minimum wage; he did it to separate it from this vital piece of legislation.

Which is to say, let's wait to see if things are actually over before we make pronouncements about how badly they turned out. My bet is, Biden can build on his success with the COVID relief, and will get back to minimum wage before this Congress is done.

You might be right. I'm just amazed that we don't instantly have the votes to get it done in 2021. Again: it's $15/hr. I don't understand why Sinema is thinking. I do understand what Manchin is thinking. I'm only willing to meet them halfway enough to understand their fear that it could be perceived as a bloated bill for a secondary liberal agenda... but they're going to get attacked for the same stuff anyway. Manchin is up in two years but Sinema is up in four. It's stupid.

[Mister Tee]

But Sinema? I’m from Arizona. I have family who has met her and were deeply impressed with her — Phone-banked for her — in a state that is tilting blue. What a disappointment from someone who rose from humble roots, very poor for a time, grew through the AZ political machine IN THE GREEN PARTY, and vote thumbs down like that. I’m making sure I’m not reading too much into her thumbs down. I don’t want to assume it was done too flippantly, but I was so angry when I saw her do that. I have friends and former co-workers who could use that bump, truly.

Two things about this:

I can't vouch for the accuracy, but I've heard that Sinema is one of the most stringent COVID-avoiders in the Senate, and her friends say she wasn't meaning to be glib with her thumbs-down, merely to keep her distance.

On the wider issue of the minimum wage: Keep in my mind that this wasn't a vote simply on the minimum wage, but on attaching the minimum wage debate to the COVID relief bill. There's a lot of evidence that the Biden team didn't think it was worth adding the minimum wage battle to the many, many other elements of the bill. It took 9 hours simply to resolve a small issue on unemployment insurance. Speed was of the essence here: Biden recalls from the Obama stimulus and health care votes that, the longer a bill lingers in Congress, the more it gets gutted. Biden wanted those checks -- and all the rest -- out before Republicans could get comfortable.

This doesn't mean minimum wage is dead. Rather, the opposite. Look at who else voted against it: Chris Coons. Biden's closest Senate ally, and a liberal's liberal -- I guarantee you, he didn't vote the way he did to kill the minimum wage; he did it to separate it from this vital piece of legislation.

Which is to say, let's wait to see if things are actually over before we make pronouncements about how badly they turned out. My bet is, Biden can build on his success with the COVID relief, and will get back to minimum wage before this Congress is done.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
Amend that slightly, to his "thing" was posing asfiscal responsibility, deficit hawking, and generally framing GOP policies as urgently common sense, while in fact blowing up the deficit every chance he got by tossing money to rich people and pretending that was going to somehow pay for itself..

Yes. I didn’t really want to go that hard on criddic in one of his now-rare political posts. I’m intrigued where his head is at.

Mister Tee wrote
This isn't to say I think Manchin/Sinema are correct in their approach -- I think they wildly overestimate public enthusiasm for "give me less money." Still: for a Democratic majority that's the barest imaginable to achieve something so big and so important and so quickly...extraordinary.

Manchin, I understand. Even though he’s wrong. They’re going to hit him on being too liberal no matter what. He may as well get his voters paid more to sway their minds. It’s $15/hr. This has to be able to be spun politically even in West Virginia. It has to.

But Sinema? I’m from Arizona. I have family who has met her and were deeply impressed with her — Phone-banked for her — in a state that is tilting blue. What a disappointment from someone who rose from humble roots, very poor for a time, grew through the AZ political machine IN THE GREEN PARTY, and vote thumbs down like that. I’m making sure I’m not reading too much into her thumbs down. I don’t want to assume it was done too flippantly, but I was so angry when I saw her do that. I have friends and former co-workers who could use that bump, truly.

Any attempt to primary Manchin is insane. He’s the best we can do in that state. But Sinema...? I know Arizona. She didn’t have to do that. And now we’re stuck with her. I want to know more about how she got to that thumbs down. There have to be other donors out there.

[Mister Tee]

Just for the record, today is a pretty amazing day. Dems put forth a $1.9T COVID relief bill on January 14th, and, 51 days later, the bill is on the edge of being passed with very few significant changes. (Though Rose Twitter will spend most of its time searching for the dark cloud in this brightest of silver linings.)

This isn't to say I think Manchin/Sinema are correct in their approach -- I think they wildly overestimate public enthusiasm for "give me less money." Still: for a Democratic majority that's the barest imaginable to achieve something so big and so important and so quickly...extraordinary.

Thank you, thank you, voters of Georgia. Without you, Biden would have half as many cabinet members confirmed, McConnell would have already promised to block every judge, and the relief bill would, at best, have been a third of its size, which wouldn't have been close to enough to deal with our crises. Every vote counts, indeed.

[Mister Tee]

I'm not a fan of Paul Ryan but as far as I can tell, his "thing" was fiscal responsibility, deficit hawking, and generally framing GOP policies as urgently common sense.

Amend that slightly, to his "thing" was posing as fiscal responsibility, deficit hawking, and generally framing GOP policies as urgently common sense, while in fact blowing up the deficit every chance he got by tossing money to rich people and pretending that was going to somehow pay for itself..

[Sabin]

Democrats probably need Joe Manchin in West Virginia but as someone who grew up in Arizonan I have to believe they can do better than Kyrsten Sinema.

[Sabin]

criddic3 wrote
Becoming Speaker of the House was the worst thing that could have happened to Paul Ryan, and being Speaker in the Trump era made it worse for him. He didn't want the job, but the party pushed him into it. In the end it was a thankless task that got him nowhere. I really think he would still be in the House if he hadn't taken that position. As a former VP candidate with conservative credentials on budget committees, he might have stayed in the presidential conversation. He would have been on the Ways & Means committee, happily talking about deficits, but I do wonder where he would have sided on the Trump equation. Mitt Romney, who chose Ryan as his VP, clearly took an anti-Trump stance. However, most House Republicans have stayed loyal to Trump, so it's hard to figure out where he would have come down. Since he left largely due to the difficulty in keeping things focused on policy because of Trump, maybe he would've followed Romney's lead but who knows?

I'm not sure how Paul Ryan's tenure as House Speaker is going to be remembered. His best hope is that it was so short that he's just completely forgotten. But had he passed on the Speakership, I don't think there's much of a chance he does anything more than the average Republican in terms of standing up to Trump. He's not Mitt Romney. He wasn't out of office. He would've supported everything Trump stood for except for the mean tweets.

I think Ryan would still be around today but there's a chance he could've gotten defeated in 2018. It was a huge year for Democrats. Scott Walker lost that year, and Paul Ryan became a HUGE target for Trump's most indefensible policies which became the Democrats biggest winners (taking away the ACA, mega-tax breaks). If Paul Ryan survives it, I think he sticks around for a while but he's permanently a figure of the party's pre-Trump past.

I'm not a fan of Paul Ryan but as far as I can tell, his "thing" was fiscal responsibility, deficit hawking, and generally framing GOP policies as urgently common sense. I think he took off when he did in 2012 largely because after four years, every party is still generally figuring out their pecking order. Like "Are we into [fill in the blank] ? Maybe?" We can see this with the Democrats despite their win in 2020. Paul Ryan was like a "bro nerd" but I don't see that playing to the current base post-Trump. I think he would've just sort of hung around the place, maybe rose in the ranks, but his Presidential aspirations are probably shot.

[criddic3]

Okri wrote
1. I think I thought it was going to be Paul Ryan.

2. So... point proven. That said, I do think he's going to run again, if he's able.

1. People said it could be Paul Ryan up until March of 2016.
2. I think he could as well. I also think Candace Owens could.

Becoming Speaker of the House was the worst thing that could have happened to Paul Ryan, and being Speaker in the Trump era made it worse for him. He didn't want the job, but the party pushed him into it. In the end it was a thankless task that got him nowhere. I really think he would still be in the House if he hadn't taken that position. As a former VP candidate with conservative credentials on budget committees, he might have stayed in the presidential conversation. He would have been on the Ways & Means committee, happily talking about deficits, but I do wonder where he would have sided on the Trump equation. Mitt Romney, who chose Ryan as his VP, clearly took an anti-Trump stance. However, most House Republicans have stayed loyal to Trump, so it's hard to figure out where he would have come down. Since he left largely due to the difficulty in keeping things focused on policy because of Trump, maybe he would've fallowed Romney's lead but who knows?

[Sabin]

Okri wrote
1. I think I thought it was going to be Paul Ryan.

2. So... point proven. That said, I do think he's going to run again, if he's able.

1. People said it could be Paul Ryan up until March of 2016.
2. I think he could as well. I also think Candace Owens could.