These people are unbelievable
Even if Dems had 100 senate seats they'd just find 51 Manchins to oppose anything half-decent.
They had 60 and the old Manchin was Lieberman
Dysfunctional system? No
They don't want to deliver and use it as an excuse
Exactly. If they cared back then, they would have excoriated him and thrown him to the wolves.
That he got his way and Manchin will probably get his is testament to how this is by design, not accident.
This is really all that I say when I talk to chud friends about COVID - that the US system itself is unable to handle any challenge that can't be solved by bombing shit. These are people who think the US constitution is literally perfect. I explain how it's an anchor that will eventually lead to the collapse of the US. Because throughout history, the one thing that collapses societies is an inability to rise to new challenges.
They usually just respond by saying COVID is way overblown by the media and the Dems...
I explain how it’s an anchor that will eventually lead to the collapse of the US.
Literally already did this once before
The fight for $15 began in 2012. $15 in 2012 is over $17 today, so just by time passing, we've lost ground in the negotiation.
Might be worth noting that $15/hr wage is already getting phased in across numerous large-pop states into 2023. The current federal proposal won't have any impact on those areas, as it lags behind the state curve.
Arizona already has a $12/hr minimum right now (with Flagstaff and Phoenix doing $15). Even fucking Arkansas bumped their wage to the Manchin-approved $11/hr this year.
Meanwhile, prevailing cost-of-living in the US averages around $16/hr. Simple supply/demand forces wages up to the $15/hr level in many parts of the country, as you cannot afford to cover the price to live where you work without it. Corners of North Dakota were paying $20-25/hr for service sector work due to the incredibly low supply of human beings to do labor in a corner of the country that was O&G rich and infrastructure poor.
Manchin's plan appears to be to set the wage rate so low that no business actually notices the increase. And Democrats are going to cave to his demand, because they think he'd rather spike the entire stimulus than rubber-stamp what will amount to nominal prevailing wage rates in his own state in the next five years.
If only we could get people to understand that a bicameral legislature was a cool idea in the 18th century that ultimately has been shown to be a bad design for actual governance, and that the Senate ought to be abolished and the House of Representatives to be expanded by gutting the apportionment act. But no, I'd wager that 40% of Americans think that the constitution was divinely inspired and therefore immoral to change.
I also just noticed that the commenter isn't saying "Vote out Manchin". They just say that the Dems should look to gain ground elsewhere so that they can ignore him. The implications of that are hilarious and pathetic; they cannot bring themselves to say that they should rid themselves of this jackass that is saying aid should be means tested and that minimum wage should barely go up, because what if a Republican won?? Unthinkable, for that Republican would oppose a minimum wage hike and M4A and checks for TOTALLY different reasons than Manchin opposes those same policies.
I rarely use it, but what a cucked bunch.
I also just noticed that the commenter isn’t saying “Vote out Manchin”. They just say that the Dems should look to gain ground elsewhere so that they can ignore him.
"We will never win an election in West Virginia again, because the state is notoriously hostile to expansion of health care, higher wages, and job security through the public sector" is a thing that would get you laughed out of the room back in the 1990s.
What changed, I wonder?
If you're still in line to vote, stay in line. They have to let you vote.
Didn't they downgrade the USA to "flawed democracy" or something? Imagine there's still people in line to vote for the 2020 presidential election.
Look our democracy is flawed but it's better than the alternative and better than a lot of places in the world.
Our flawed democracy that's helplessly in the grips of oligarchy and a kleptocratic government is waaay better than your socialist state.
I mean, are we really shocked that /r/politics thinks that engagement begins and ends with voting? They live to :vote:
They literally spent the entire election cycle salivating at the thought of getting to be less engaged, and now that the dems are negotiating themselves out of any wins, they’re just opening the same playbook to page one and running it again. It is a little surprising that there’s not even a little pushback.
DJTHatesPuertoRicans
You're always in for a treat when you come across a r*dditor whose username is some variation of "Donald Trump is a poopyhead".
Hey, that's unfair to Beatnik. ("Nik", of course, was Trump's nickname back when he was running casinos in Atlantic City. Nik is slang for a courtesy or free chip, which Trump was famous for handing out to people walking past. So the name "Beatnik" or "Beat Nik" is another way of saying "Beat Trump!")
I recognize this account from when I was a full blown russiagate crank.
Again demonstrating that incrementalist reform is entirely a shell game where they nudge the volume up by 1 so they don't have to do it again for literally a decade
HEY LET'S KICK THE CAN FURTHER DOWN AND MAYBE IN 2022 WE'LL FINALLY GET $15 AN HOUR WHEN INFLATION WILL MAKE IT SO WE REQUIRE $30 AN HOUR YOU GODDAMN GHOULS.
and the 2022 midterms will be an electoral bloodbath for the dems anyway
That's what they said about Republicans in 2002, back when Bush was a lame-duck walking into office and everyone predicted a Dem landslide in response.
Then 9/11 changed everything.
So... we'll see. The new Democratic Political Machine seems like it is gobbling up a lot of the old GOP infrastructure. If the Bloombergcrats and Meg Whitmancrats do finally drive a wedge far enough into the party that it splits off, we could see a Cuomo-o-cracy in our future.
Well, Bush won in 2000 and Dems expected to get the pendulum reactionary response in 2002.
Then 9/11 happened in 2001, Republicans got a huge boost in popularity, and Dems were massacred in the following election cycle.
That’s what they said about Republicans in 2002
Then 9/11 changed everything
my point is that this chronologically puts 2002 before 2001
EDIT: OHHH I see it can be read another way. I retract my comments sorry
sorry sorry I was reading it another way and you meant it differently my bad
This makes me legitimately angry. The Dems scored a massive win, flipping multiple red states and getting the best setup in a decade, and reddit liberals are already bringing up 2022, which will inevitably be worse. More delusional than the Bernie bros they mocked in the primaries lmao
When the election comes around and it turns out that the dem candidates in Florida and NC don't support a $15 minimum wage, the same person will tell you that you're basically a fascist if you don't vote for them
Yes but see if you vote for the blue guy who doesn't support minimum wage I can go to brunch and if you vote for the red guy who doesn't support minimum wage I can't. Won't you think of the brunch?
60% of Florida voted for a $15 min wage in a ballot proposition. The Dem candidates from there will support it
State min wage is not same as federal.
No reason to make big deal of supporting federal $15 if its already being moved to $15 by the state.
That also means a $15 fed wage would have no impact in Florida as they would already have that minimum wage. If anything, it would prevent other states from undercutting Florida.
Yea. But FL dem candidates will rely on campaign donors from outside the state who aren't high on federal $15. And there won't be a constituency in FL to hold them to it, since it's already "won" in the state.
I'm not saying its impossible that the FL candidate supports it, just that its not a given.
Elect more people who have the same positions as Manchin because the Democrats will tell you those are the only people who can win in purple states.
Luke Savage on Dems taking the politics out of politics. I think the below is a pretty good description of this phenomenon.
Lesser evilism has been an animating principle among American liberals for as long as I can remember, and it rather conveniently fails to disappear even after election seasons have concluded. Which is to say: Plouffe’s veil-of-ignorance approach may justify itself by invoking the exceptional danger of the Trump presidency, but the same exceptional danger was also said to be with us in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016. Democrats being preferable to Republicans, or so it follows, there’s little reason for the socially concerned person to ever do more than try and elect the former and dull any moral reservations about the kinds of things they regularly do when in office. Once this line of reasoning has been fully internalized, the whole enterprise of political and social activism as we know it becomes indistinguishable from unthinking partisanship for the Democratic Party and its leaders, the rank-and-file liberal reduced to little more than a campaign drone who blindly follows directives handed down from above. (Though there are many reasons centrist liberals have exhibited such a burning hatred for Bernie Sanders, his movement’s steadfast refusal to assume this hierarchical and deferential posture was undoubtedly among the most significant.)
This is the actual purpose of liberalism’s veil of ignorance: to subordinate policy, ideology, and even basic morality to the wider goal of pledging unthinking fealty to some Generic Democrat and keeping Republicans out of office. Tellingly, Plouffe’s supposed manual for a citizen’s crusade rarely even mentions actual issues and, when it does, it’s invariably in the service of helping elect said Generic Democrat regardless of their commitments or platform—which we do not know and in any case, we are told, do not matter (though the author did somehow know the Democratic nominee’s border and immigration policies in summer 2019, or more specifically what its necessary limits would be).
