The Biden-Harris Era

[Sabin]

Already got my Doomsday-ing in. Here's a more nuanced thread about why McAuliffe lost:

https://twitter.com/caitlinfxbg/status/ ... 3900604422

[Big Magilla]

This the problem in a nutshell:

WHITE WOMEN COLLEGE GRADS
VA 2020 - 58% BIDEN, 41% TRUMP
VA 2021 - 62% McAULIFFE, 38% YOUNGKIN

WHITE WOMEN NON-COLLEGE
VA 2020 - 56% TRUMP, 44% BIDEN
VA 2021 75% YOUNGKINM 25% McAULIFFE

[OscarGuy]

CRT is a red herring. CRT isn't taught in any lower educational institutions and is barely even taught in colleges. It's just a bugaboo the right can harp on that doesn't actually exist. What I think is worse is the concept of "Defund the Police." Most people are literalists. They don't understand the concept is actually "Reform the Policy." That messaging is far more dangerous than CRT is and I think mandates are fading as a rallying point. As I was reading today, NYC police unions claimed that 10,000 police officers could resign as a result of the citywide mandate. How many did? I think it was either 34 or 64, I forget now.

I hate to think what would happen if Roe v Wade were torn down, but it's about the only thing on the left that galvanizes support like no other. Sure, there's Tax the Rich, but that is being stymied by Krysten Sinema. Can you imagine how much we could accomplish if we could two actual Dems in instead of Manchin and Sinema? We can't get anything done and we're being punished for it. It's simple as that.

[Sabin]

Oh heck. I'll say one more thing.

Sonic Youth wrote
We believe they're marginal. We call them idiots. Then we lose another election. Which begs the question: who are the REAL idiots?

It's us. But it can still be them. This video was taken in an Arizona Chandler School Board, not far from where I grew up. She says what we're all REALLY thinking.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/1 ... use-For-It

[Sabin]

I'll say two things:
1) The most endearing thing about Joe Biden's Presidency so far -- for me -- is how Joe Biden refuses to soften his language about anti-vaxers. He just gets up there, stays on point, and shits on anti-vaxers for refusing to get vaccinated. You can tell he's pissed at them. I'm struggling to think of anyone else who could get away with it. I have no idea if it's counter-productive or not, but I really like it. I wish he pursued his legislative agenda with the same forcefulness instead of foolishly assuming that we out here truly care about the temperature in Washington and want more legislation passed with bipartisan support. Nobody thinks that.

2) I think the two most unpopular things in our country right now are mandates and CRT. I don't have a friend outside of California who doesn't send me emails about CRT on a weekly basis. I miss the days of Birther shit and Sharia Law coming to the White House. I am not suggesting that this country shouldn't push mandates nor am I suggesting that we don't include some anti-racist education for our middle-school and high schoolers, but I think Democrats have made a huge mistake in failing to recognize that both of these issues are capable of mobilizing moderates and independent back to the Republican Party. Is this the same thing as the coalition that voted for Obama and then joined the Tea Party after the bailouts, "Death Panel" fear-mongering, and Birther shit? Maybe. I'm too young to speak to the Republican Revolution of 1994 so I won't try. But I suspect that mandates and CRT feel closer to people than all those other factors, and thus more threatening. That concerns me because we're not going to have a cosmically talented President running for reelection in four years nor are we going to have a cosmically untalented opponent.

We'll see what kind of chess Joe Biden is playing. I'll be the first to admit if I'm wrong. But I suspect Joe Biden's hypothesis that once Trump is gone the country will cool down is mistaken. I think we live in a hot country, social media is only making things hotter, and a dangerous number of Americans would prefer Dr. Evil and his mean tweets to the non-existent threat of CRT.

[Big Magilla]

Yep. That about sums it up.

[Sonic Youth]

It's the same, ongoing cycle. Republicans win elections. Businesses and institutions turn predatory, and the people bear the brunt of the party's mistakes and disasterous policies... the usual. Democrats assure us they would win if the American people weren't such idiots. They say, "people don't understand political realities. They don't understand how the system works. This is why they're so easily misled!" They blame the Republican party's dishonest, ruthless propaganda machine. Despite this, Democrats eventually have a successful election year. They take power. Then, a notion takes hold, in this case people believing CRT is indoctrinaing their children. We ask them what CRT is exactly, and where is it being taught. We get nothing but vague answers. And so we laugh at them. We wave them off, we think up funny jokes, we create devastating memes on Facebook, we post lots and lots of "Explainers". We believe they're marginal. We call them idiots. Then we lose another election. Which begs the question: who are the REAL idiots?

[Big Magilla]

New Jersey is closer than the polls had it, but not surprising.

If Murphy pulls it off, and it looks like he will, he will be the first Democrat elected to a second term as governor in New Jersey since 1977.

What is shocking is that, unlike McCauliffe, he made no mistakes. The guy he ran against is a nonentity. What the electorate thought he could or would do for them is beyond me.

The Democrats need to get their heads out of their asses and do something besides talk.

[Okri]

Well, Virginia is disappointing, but New Jersey being as tight as it is is legitimately shocking to me. How can there be so many good Democratic politicians yet so many that just don't understand.

[Big Magilla]

We should probably change the name of the thread to The Biden Era since Harris has had and will likely to continue to have little to do.

The smart thing to do if Manchin keeps looking and talking like a Republican would be to elect more Democratic senators in 2022 so we don't need his vote, but that can only happen if the country wakes up instead of falling further into the abyss.

Congress needs to pass the Build Back Better and Infrastructure bills now. They need to not only be signed into law but to take effect so that people realize the benefits. And, yes, the Democrats need to get a lot better with messaging. Even though not a single Republican will not have voted for them, they will take credit just as they did with earlier bills signed into law by Biden.

If Virginia regresses to red as it looks like it will, and other states follow suit next year, it will be what we deserve as a country for being one that is filled with idiots.

[Sabin]

Hey everyone! Today I was asking myself "I wonder why Americans are so quick to throw the new party under the bus following a Presidential election and then an interesting notion occurred to me: I think Presidential elections are king auditions for the American voters. Soaring rhetoric and the promise of change. Everything that happens afterwards reminds them that our system is complicated for a reason and that we have checks and balances to prevent against tyranny. They feel gaslit and become apathetic or frustration when the new king can't deliver or becomes victim of forces larger than him. It's a failure on the part of the American voter to understand the country they live in and the system they participate in. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the only time in the last thirty or forty years where an incumbent party gained in the midterms was following 9/11 both due to national tragedy and the country's embrace of George W. Bush's messianic language involving phraseology like "moral crusade" and "evil-doer."

Which is a long way of saying the Founding Fathers were right not to place a whole lot of trust in the American public.

Also, the Democratic Party has a lot of problems right now but to directly answer what's happening right now, this poll below says that 7/10 Americans know little to nothing about the Build Back Better program and 32% of voters think the programs would hurt them. I really think the Democratic Party does a lousy job with messaging. Maybe the people at the top at this point are just very far removed from the people they're trying help and keep falling back on a "First Do No Harm" strategy that has failed every administration of my life.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-d ... d=80877850

POST EDITED TO REFLECT SONIC YOUTH'S EDITED RESPONSE SO AS NOT TO APPEAR INSANE.

[Sonic Youth]

So, if you had the opportunity to read my steam-releasing rant in the past few hours, I hope you enjoyed it. Now that I've settled down, I noticed that it didn't read very coherently. If you missed it, sorry. Basically, I'm not hopeful for McAullife.

[Big Magilla]

It changes by the minute, could be back in by morning.

[Sabin]

Bye bye, paid family leave. What a disappointment.



https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrat ... 111a6036c1

Democrats Cut Paid Leave From Build Back Better Package

In recent days, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) turned on the paid leave proposal, likely forcing Democrats to cut the popular policy out of their final package.

Senate Democrats appear to have failed to convince Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to support a paid leave program, and told the House that it will likely have to be cut out of the Build Back Better spending and tax bill entirely.

Democrats were scrambling Wednesday to find a way to put some kind of national paid leave program in their budget bill, floating narrower policies that would leave protections for those who are sick themselves or caring for sick family members.

But in the end, Manchin didn’t look like he would bite, and Democrats sent out a signal that they were abandoning the push, according to a congressional aide briefed on the decision.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) who spearheaded the charge to win Manchin over on paid leave said Wednesday evening that she is still waiting to hear from the West Virginia Democrat on her suggested compromise. Gillibrand has not made details of that proposal public.

“I presented my idea, he’s researching what other countries do, he is looking into the details and he said he will remain open minded…it’s not out,” Gillibrand told HuffPost. “It’s not over till it’s over.”

Manchin, however, said this spending and tax package is not the place for paid leave.

“I’m looking at everything but to put this into a reconciliation bill— it’s a major policy— is not the place to do it,” Manchin told HuffPost Wednesday evening.

Paid leave has been under serious threat all week because of Manchin, who privately expressed concerns about the potential for fraud in the program, and the program’s cost.

“It doesn’t make sense to me. ... I just can’t do it,” Manchin told CNN on Wednesday about the proposal, citing its impact on the debt.

The United States is an outlier among industrialized countries in the world for not having any kind of paid leave mandate. Workers must rely on their employers to voluntarily decide whether they will offer paid leave for the birth of a new child or if a worker is sick or has to care for a sick family member.

Only 20% of workers in the private sector have access to paid family leave and roughly 42% have access to paid medical leave to recovery from illness or injury. Low-wage workers are the most likely to not have access to paid leave.

President Joe Biden’s original proposal was a national paid leave program with partial wage replacement that would phase in 12 weeks of paid leave over the course of 10 years. The House, led by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), separately put together a roughly $500 billion private-public proposal to provide 12 weeks of paid leave for Americans to care for a new child or a sick loved one, or to deal with a family death or the deployment of a military spouse.

The White House acknowledged Wednesday that such proposals did not have Manchin’s support, but there was a sliver of hope throughout the week that Manchin could accept some kind of compromise.

In recent weeks, paid leave advocates have grumbled that the White House didn’t throw enough weight behind paid leave. The policy was accidentally left out of a fact sheet on the Build Back Better plan, and supporters of the policy wanted to see the president or vice president promoting more stories that would elevate the policy.

“One wonders whether more emphasis from the White House on paid leave would have created more political will,” said Vicki Shabo, an expert on paid leave at the think tank New America.

There was hope the pandemic, which showed how unprotected workers are if they fall ill or must care for a sick family member, would serve as some momentum for a paid leave program in the United States.

Congress put in place a temporary federal paid leave mandate during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, followed by some financial incentives for companies to voluntarily offer paid time off to sick workers. When paid leave fell out of the American Rescue Plan, Democrats’ COVID-19 relief bill passed earlier this year, lawmakers vowed to get it included in this next package.

It’s a remarkably popular proposal, even with Republicans, polling above 70% in recent surveys. The last major gain in paid leave in the United States was under former President Donald Trump, who signed the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act into law, giving roughly 2 million federal workers access to 12 weeks of parental leave.

[Sabin]

Apparently, Krysten Sinema is teaching an ASU grad course on fundraising and cultivating donors. I'd share a link but the only thing I can find is The Intercept. Not really a fan. I'll happily retract if this is proven false.

I have a question: have we ever seen anything like Krysten Sinema before? I'm talking about one representative almost single-handedly standing in the way of her President's agenda, and just how brazen it is.

Joe Manchin is a bit different. Chalk it up to putting on a song and dance for his constituency or trying to hang onto power in a very red state. I certainly don't approve of what he's doing either. I have very limited sympathy for a 74 year old Senator pondering how a vote affects his reelection chances when he's 78.

But what Sinema is doing is just wacky. If she thinks she's safe on a college campus, she has another thing coming.