One of the few things that Bernie would've been good for, beyond Executive Orders, was that he was very open about being willing to support primary opponents of people who weren't going to get in line with his platform. Him winning would have resulted in a line in the sand for the future of the democratic party; Either support a progressive, socdem platform in more than just words, or the president of the united states was going to campaign for your primary opponent. That would have been some serious energy towards actual change. No fucking way would Biden do that, but that's also why Bernie would never have been allowed to win.

TBH it's hard to discipline American politicians they're basically free agents. You can't expel them from the party and really the only consequence is not giving them a position on a committee. I think the only way if Biden had the spine is if he used his bully pulpit to basically primary manchin and sinema as well as the other dozen or so dem bottom feeders

Politicians can do literally anything to get what they want. Think of all the corrupt stuff they're already doing. The president could use their power to openly harass politicians, political parties, capitalists, whoever, into doing what they want. You can organize protests and sit-ins. Start economically destroying American companies with self-sanctions until they comply. Ignore whatever "rules" are in place and just implement whatever policy you want anyways without waiting for a response. Trump did that a bit (but he was on the side of the ruling class obviously). Just ignore courts, use every stalling tactic. That's how people who actually want something behave. Problem is as you already know, nobody in power wants anything different than what they've already implemented. Everything is working exactly as it should but Americans are so easy to convince otherwise.

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.

Seems it's been a while but do senators just not crash their private planes anymore?

(might consider crossposting to c/electoralism too)

paging virgil texas

There are a lot of things that Biden et al could do to play hardball that they absolutely will not do because almost none of them actually give a shit about this (abortion will always be available for the elites) and there is no systemic means with teeth until:

1. Dual power exists or
2. Popular demand of voting blocs gets near the amount needed for a constitutional amendment

The Roe v. Wade regime depended heavily on the court system that just reversed it in an underhanded way. The new normal will be state-by-state abortion policies. Liberals are (largely) already happy to condemn everyone in a state to deprivation if it usually votes Republican so there's an uphill empathy battle that will need to be overcome before anything else can happen.

In lieu of power structures that can be collectively leveraged, the best thing right now is probably mutual aid. There are orgs out there that will fly people who need abortions (usually those without the money to fund an out of state trip themselves) out to your area. You then chauffeur them around as necessary. Get in contact with local pro-abortion activist groups and see if you can pitch in. Generally, you just need to do an interview so they know you're not a creep and can give you instructions on how best to communicate with the people you're helping.

(LIB ELECTORALISM WARNING)

So this is actually a pretty tough question, because you have to consider who a congressperson or Senator is actually accountable to. A President has some leverage, but it varies greatly depending on the President's popularity, the popularity of the thing the President is trying to get the congressperson to do, and what state/district the congressperson represents. There's a thing in political science called the "Green Lantern Theory" - basically it's the (incorrect) idea that the President is like the Green Lantern and can just use his superpowers to get Congress to do what he wants. Biden doesn't have absolute leverage over his party, neither would any other Democratic president including Bernie.

An important thing to remember is this: congresspeople actually get more popular when they buck their own party or show "bipartisanship" or independence. That's why Susan Collins won by near-double digits in Maine last year even though Biden won Maine by a similar margin. It's how people like Manchin can win in West Virginia in the first place when Trump won it by 40 points. Both moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans win in unfavorable states by getting people who normally vote for the other party to vote for them. At least 1/3 of Manchin's voters are Trumpers. Probably at least 25% of Manchin's voters think the Earth is 6,000 years old and that the 2020 election was stolen. I bet nearly half are committed anti-abortionists. If you took just Manchin's voters and asked Biden's approval rating among them, it would be bad. Probably like 30 or 40 percent. Manchin cannot afford to lose a single one of these voters if he hopes to win in 2024 (which he won't, regardless, but that's a different discussion).

Because of this, Biden actually has very little leverage over Joe Manchin. If Biden tells Manchin "I'll go after you if you don't vote for my bills", Manchin will literally take Biden's words and stick them in a campaign ad touting his "independence" and "willingness to work with both parties." And it will be effective. It's not the fun, sexy answer people want to hear, but the fact is Biden does not have a lot of leverage over Congress. And remember, Manchin represents a state so red and is so conservative that he could threaten to switch parties. This is unlikely since Manchin voted to convict Trump, but don't count out the power of backroom dealmaking.

So, if Biden doesn't have a lot of leverage over Joe Manchin, who does? Three groups, really: his voters, his donors, and special interest groups that support him. Why did Joe Manchin come around on the PRO Act? Becuase the United Mine Workers threatened to withhold support from him if he didn't do so. Why does Manchin oppose Medicare for All? Because his donors in the insurance industry don't like it. Other groups, like the DSCC (Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, basically the groups that run fundraising for Dem Senate campaigns) can threaten to withhold funding too. And Manchin will bend to that pressure. But he won't bend to pressure from Biden, because Biden can't actually touch him.

Yes, Biden could threaten a primary challenge but Manchin knows that's an empty threat becuase whoever primaries Manchin will lose the general. Manchin is the only Democrat in West Virginia who could seriously win a general election there. I guess if Manchin felt seriously threatened by a primary he'd move left, but that would have to come from the grassroots more so than Biden.

Kyrsten Sinema is a different story. She does not represent a state nearly as red as West Virginia and I legitimately think she's playing with fire with regards to a primary challenge. I wouldn't be surprised if one popped up, although primarying an incumbent Senator is extremely difficult. Very few ever lose. This is why Sinema is so bold about telling her own party to eat shit. She's making the (historically, pretty safe) bet she won't lose a primary.

You might be thinking, now, "so how did Trump rally for all these things with slim Congressional majorities?" The answer is he didn't. Every time Trump directly challenged Congress, Trump lost. Seriously. Look at the government shutdown in 2019 - the longest government shutdown in US history. It was because Trump shut the government down over the lack of border wall funding which Congress didn't have the votes for. Trump exerted maximum leverage over Congress to pass it, threatening primary challenges and literally withholding troop pay, and Trump completely and totally lost. Look at the stimulus check battle in 2020-21. Trump demanded $2000 stimulus checks in the relief bill. McConnell only okayed $600. Trump threatened a veto, McConnell told Trump to fuck off and McConnell won and Trump lost. This is because Trump did not actually have that much leverage.

deleted by creator

Historically a strong leader in the party is the one who had the bully pulpit. The last great the Dems had was LBJ. He had the social influence in the chamber to get folks to vote how he wanted, because what he wanted was what the people wanted. This is the weakness with Bernie, he's officially not in the party so he can't impose the party platform on anyone. It requires a Schumer or Pelosi, who's hand actually feeds the other officials committees, campaign funds, and allies. We will never see a picture of the party leaders whipping votes like you saw historically, it's not in their interest.