In the wake of the most recent SC rulings on both abortion access in Texas and the eviction moratorium, the general talking points and/or criticisms of leftists/journos/academics I follow emphasize the fact that democrats literally control house/senate/presidency and should take action **right now. ** Blow up the filibuster, pack the courts, etc.
Although I fully agree, it's hard to overlook both ghouls Manchin/Sinema being an immediate wrench in the process of actually doing something. Even more so if we believe the reporting that Manchin/Sinema are essentially fall guys for like 15+ other reactionary dems who don't want to enact progressive policies.
When pressed on this those same leftists/journos/academics sort of just say vague things like "well if Trump could rally for x,y,z with slim majority so should Biden", or don't provide any actual tactics.
I wanna know some like actual fucking tactics Biden could use to whip the dem congress in line. One I've heard is for Biden to essentially weaponize the DOJ to investigate Manchins daughter for price gouging on EpiPens which netted her like $19 million - scare his ass into line.
**For the wonks out there who understand the unfortunate yet real levers of congressional maneuvers - what are some actual tactics Biden can actually do to fucking get things done? **
NOTE: I understand these all require a spine which Biden/Dems don't have nor does Biden even want to eliminate the filibuster. Consider this a thought experiment in the marketplace of idears.
Other posters have brought up targeting individual Senators, but that's hard to follow through on given the weak party structure in the US. Even in a dream scenario, getting the Senate to fall in line would require a lot of political theater and could backfire pretty easily (i.e. Manchin could just switch parties lol). Therefore, combating this the Right Way™ through legislation is a nonstarter. So this relies entirely on Biden being willing to dump the checks and balances and use his extraordinary powers (mostly military, tbh).
If I was consulting Biden on this situation I would suggest something like declaring a state of emergency over the healthcare of women in the south, and using this as justification for deploying troops to affected areas to staff and maintain abortion clinics. Since the new Texas law also allows people to sue anyone who assists a person having an abortion (including shit like transportation), soldiers will have to run and maintain the surrounding infrastructure to reach out to and bring people to the clinics. The State Department could declare any group aiding and abetting the crackdown on abortions as terrorists and have them subject to sanctions (or maybe even military action under the AUMF, lol). Texas would obviously pursue a legal route to declare this unconstitutional, and SCOTUS would probably rule with them, but fuck it we're doing "let Roberts enforce it" anyway.
But yeah in reality, the US political system is built on separation of powers in order to stop any sort of progressive or populist agenda by having several backstops in place. The only electoral solution is for "progressives" to occupy majorities in every branch simultaneously, otherwise reactionaries will continue to thrive.