“I didn’t do anything intentionally whatsoever,” Manchin said. “I did everything I could to bring us together so we’d have more support, and the public would get the needed help, as needed. We have so many different ways that we’re helping the public with this piece of legislation.”
He’s a good story teller.
I guess bipartisan support for Joe is working across the aisle with democrats.
Only by the debased standards of political discourse resulting from 40+ years of neoliberal propaganda. There was a whole multi-generational period in the U.S. before the 1980s when moderates and centrists believed that helping citizens through difficult times was just something that government did rather than characterising it as a lefty partisan stance.
As I said above, I don’t think deliberately forcing Manchin and his ilk out in the short-term is the solution – that’s a longer-term plan involving transforming the party. However, as long as he’s there over the next two years we can’t expect to see the kind of legislation that’s needed to address the effects of global warming, growing economic inequality, racial injustice, and resurgent right-wing populist terrorism. Something toward those goals is better than nothing, but a conservative like Manchin will always ensure that the “something” is only slightly better than nothing.
And Manchin may force himself out if it fits into his power equations. There’s a not insignificant chance in the next two years that the Dems will insist that he vote for something he’s against: a strong defense against the anti-choice onslaught; expanded trans rights; stronger gun control; packing the SCOTUS; ending the filibuster in its current form; or a stronger response to the climate emergency. At that point, he’ll pull a Lieberman and leave “on principle”, handing the Senate back to the GOP. He won’t join the GOP (where he’d be one other conservative jerk amongst many) but will become an “independent” power broker. He may even see it as a prelude to a presidential run, which would likely hurt the Dems more than the GOP.
I’m not saying there’s any short-term solution to this. But constanly appeasing Manchin is not going to have a good outcome over the next two critical years, only a slightly better one than GOP control of the Senate.
Exactly. Just as the long road to racial justice transformed the Dems into a party where irredeemable white supremacists like Jesse Helms could no longer see themselves, the same has to happen so that future Manchins will stay away. It can and must and likely will happen, but given the complacency and incompetence of the Dem leadership and their resistance to change I’m left to conclude it won’t happen in time to address the existential problems facing the country.
[This has been another episode of managing expectations but carrying on regardless]
Key word being “may”.
Yep. That’s how guys like Manchin work. It’s even more effective with the Dem leadership, whose ability to recognize bad faith is at about the level of Neville Chamberlain’s.
the difference between then and now, of course, is race.
before the civil rights bill passed “supporting citizens” meant supporting white citizens. and that’s something both parties could get behind no problem.
the republican party is nearly whites only at this point ( 90% white now ) and im sure they’re still fine with bills that help whites at the expense of everyone else. ( they certainly are when it comes to giving money to wealthy whites and suppressing the votes of poc )
That’s precisely why the fascist takeover of the party that we’ve witnessed was inevitable. At a certain point during that same period, per Lee Atwater, the exclusion of non-whites could no longer be as explicitly acceptable and assumed as it had been before. There was a turbulent period in the 1960s and '70s as conservatives tried to puzzle it out, but the bipartisan moderate and centrist position about the role of government remained as I described above.
In the 1980s, the GOP hit upon their solution: entirely reject the basic idea that the government should help its citizens. Conservatives hid things behind the “rugged individualist” beard of “free”-market fundamentalism, while studiously ignoring the concept of pre-existing privilege (because race never stopped being a factor). At the tail end of the post-war economic anomaly ad then with the collapse of Communism, they could still claim that the idea that everyone was a rational agent of self interest and could prosper whatever their race or gender made sense, because the economy was chugging along.
Once the real unsustainability of that approach became apparent, once the post-war prosperity finally petered out, their pretense collapsed. And when huge crises like the sub-prime meltdown or the pandemic occurred and people actually needed the sort of large-scale demnad-side help that only government could provide, conservatives were left with no choice with going back to the old racial limits.
And thus we get MAGA, which means they’re fine with the state bailing people out, as long as they’re the “right” sort of people. Call it call it right-wing populism, call it national (read “ethnic/racial”) socialism, call it fascism, that’s where conservatism in the U.S. is at now.
It’s not unique to America, either. We see it with extreme-right ultra-nationalist parties like the AfD in Germany, which is fine with and proud of social welfare programmes as long as the only beneficiaries are “pure-born” citizens of the nation-state.
Today’s Democratic Party progressive?
In any other country without our fucked up two party system it would be the center-right party. The Republican Party over the past 60 years has simply pivoted so far right toward fascism that such extreme ideas like “help the needy”, “personal autonomy”, “don’t kill the planet”, “be good to your fellow humans”, and “don’t be a racist dick” have somehow become “radical leftism”.
Yeah, there’s a fair amount of scholarship about why the US doesn’t have the social safety net of other developed nations, and how welfare programs went from broadly popular among white people, when FDR was president, to unpopular today - because conservatives started working to link “welfare” to black people in the '60s. That work was already done by the '80s (witness all of Reagan’s shit about “welfare queens,” for example). Welfare programs that disproportionately, overwhelmingly benefit white people (e.g. farm subsidies, programs that benefit home buyers) don’t even get mentioned by Republicans, much less targeted for cuts, for a reason.
That’s unfair to Neville Chamberlain. My understanding is his public statements were calculated, as he recognized the bad faith but knew the UK was in no position to fight at that point, and so quietly oversaw a massive expansion of the British military with the expectation of a coming war. The Democrats, on the other hand, don’t seem to recognize the position they’re in, much less have they secretly organized to deal with bad faith Republicans, as right now would be exactly the time to enact those strategies if they existed.
And those that do recognize this are the ones that typically get drowned out and stomped on by the bipartisan “civility” outrage machine. Thank goodness for the outspoken members of Congress like Sanders, AoC, and others that don’t suffer fools gladly.
I don’t know if I’d give Chamberlain that much credit, even with the later release of formerly classified documents and the revisionist histories that resulted. He was an old-fashioned imperialist Tory who genuinely believed that war could be avoided entirely if only the gentlemen of the opposing parties could come to a civilised agreement. Appeasement wasn’t the only option available to him, but he convinced himself that Hitler was one of those “gentlemen” who could be trusted. Also, despite the fact that he was aware that the British military was ill-equipped to fight a war, I’ve seen no real evidence that he used Munich as a delaying action to build it up in preparation for another full-scale Continental conflict – white-on-white violence that he opposed as a matter of principle and didn’t want to happen at all.
This is off-topic, so I’ll bring it back around to this: Chamberlain shows us how an appeaser can – due to desperation if nothing else – simultaneously regard someone as an adversary but also as someone who can be negotiated with in good faith, with a disastrous outcome. The current Dem leadership will likely go down in history as acting in the same manner, in some ways coming out worse since they aren’t operating under the same level of duress that Chamberlain was.
Precisely where we are as a Nation at this absolute moment. People think everything is OK, going to get better, but the evidence of the past says the very opposite. Not until tanks/soldiers are rolling through the streets of American towns/cities will people wake up, then about too late. This political environment is setting the stepping stones of a horrendous future [see 500k dead as a starter and the lack of outrage].
To the bottom of my soul, I hope I’m wrong.
ça ne peut pas arriver ici [it can’t happen here] is the last written passage in my Father’s journal at the end of WWII/hostilities ceased as he had returned to his French village burned to the ground, all inhabitants/family murdered by the Nazis, it was in fact the last words said to him from his Father at the beginning of Europes’ WWII early 1930’s as he left for military training.
I recall enacting popular policies working out pretty well for FDR politically. I wish we could revisit that strategy.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
