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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDemocratic senator raises concerns over Biden's agenda
"Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said he is concerned by the amount of potential spending involved with President Joe Biden's sweeping progressive agenda."
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/04/29/senator-joe-manchin-joe-biden-progressive-agenda-raju-ath-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/
Video in link.
JohnSJ
(92,422 posts)regnaD kciN
(26,045 posts)...and, given the historical tendency of the opposition to gain seats in midterms during peacetime (plus the reapportionment of seats to red states due to the census), I think it very unlikely that we will be able to hold the House in two year's time, even if we pick up Senate seats. In short, I think Biden needs to grab whatever he can between now and 2022, because I'm guessing we'll be in for sheer gridlock thereafter.
JohnSJ
(92,422 posts)former9thward
(32,082 posts)Up to 55 seats.
Democrats are favored to win the Senate
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/senate/
Amishman
(5,559 posts)I am convinced we wouldn't have carried both seats if it wasn't for Trump, Giuliani, and Wood jumping the shark over fraud nonsense. Wood was even telling the loons to stay home and not vote, I can't think of what more he could have done to help us if he tried.
The Pubs smashed expectations in the house and betting markets are heavily favoring the Pubs to take the house in 2022. PredictIt has our keeping it at just 32/100. (I think that is a bit low, and just threw some money at it, but it still doesn't paint a rosey picture).
All it would take is another round of rioting next summer and we could find ourselves losing congress completely. Our current advantage is far more precarious than most here seem to realize.
regnaD kciN
(26,045 posts)CaliforniaPeggy
(149,719 posts)Good to see you!
Jose Garcia
(2,605 posts)Perhaps WV Democratic voters aren't Democrats?
He's voted with Biden on every vote taken. More then can be said for a lot of the "progressives"
Link to tweet
/photo/2
Hassin Bin Sober
(26,344 posts)Dont pretend like votes taken is the only metric in this razor thin Senate control by Democrats.
BGBD
(3,282 posts)Things that never happened? Why can't progressives always support Biden on actual things that happen?
Celerity
(43,545 posts)the progs whom you and others constantly attack, ever do with their non impactful protest votes.
If Manchin and Sinema do not cave and back meaningful filibuster modifications that actual allow for cloture to be achieved, then all of our non-reconciliation-eligible bills are dead in the ditch, including all of the voter rights bills, which very likely seals our doom more than likely in 2022, 2024 ,and beyond.
In addition, there is a real chance Manchin and Sinema go full shenanigans on the 2 reconciliation packages as well, and end up slicing 1, 2, even 2.5 trillion off the 4 trillion total Biden is trying to pass.
Manchin also just shut down any chance we had to make DC a state, and used a falsehood (falsely claiming a constitutional amendment is needed) to justify his sabotage of yet another massive part of our Party's agenda.
If Sanders or a bloc of House progs were doing one tenth, one twentieth, of what Manchin and Sinema have done, are threatening to do, and likely will do, I would hear the howls of rage emanating from certian corners from across the Atlantic, all the way to here in Stockholm.
BGBD
(3,282 posts)A political price to pay for ending the filibuster? You think ANY of the changes you makes won't just be reversed immediately with the same procedures the moment Republicans regain power, which they inevitably will.
If ending the filibuster is so important...why hasn't anyone done it in 250 years? Republicans didn't do in from 2017 to 2018 when it was the Democrats only tool to restrain Trump.
Celerity
(43,545 posts)I personally think it should be binned in its entirety, as it almost always fucks us, not the Rethugs, but I was only speaking of modifications in regards to Manchin and Sinema.
Manchin has so far ruled out every potential meaningful, impactful modifications. Sinema wants (madness) a 60 vote threshold on ALL Senate action, and the two mini-mike exceptions repealed, which would mean a Dem POTUS would never get even a vote on most judges (SCOTUS for sure) and most appointments ever again in a Rethug-controlled Senate.
Without any modifications (let alone full binning of it), all non reconciliation-eligible parts of our agenda are dead in water, which is going to be disastrous for us, for the nation, and for democracy in general, as the Rethugs are steamrollering though hundreds of voter suppression bills and regulation at state and smaller levels across the fruited plain, as we speak.
Almost all the rest of the Dems (Sinema aside) are well aware that we have to get these bills passed. You are taking a stance that is against the will of almost all of our Party now.
250 years? The constitution is only 232 years old, AND the action (the removal of the previous motion question) that made the filibuster possible was not done (and then was done by mistake) until 1806. One of the biggest myths out there is that the founding fathers intended the Senate to NOT be a majoritarian body at the end of the day. That is simply false, as evidenced by the way it was constituted from the beginning. They simply wanted it to be more deliberative than the House, not to cut off the will of the majority in its entirety.
Of course they did not remove it, as it blocks us, not them, in terms of what what each party actually does.
The filibuster hurts only Senate Democrats -- and Mitch McConnell knows that. The numbers don't lie.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/filibuster-hurts-only-senate-democrats-mitch-mcconnell-knows-n1255787
snip
Cutting off debate in the Senate so legislation can be voted on is done through a procedure called "cloture," which requires three-fifths of the Senate or 60 votes to pass. I went through the Senate's cloture votes for the last dozen years from the 109th Congress until now, tracking how many of them failed because they didn't hit 60 votes. It's not a perfect method of tracking filibusters, but it's as close as we can get. It's clear that Republicans have been much more willing and able to tangle up the Senate's proceedings than Democrats. More important, the filibuster was almost no impediment to Republican goals in the Senate during the Trump administration. Until 2007, the number of cloture votes taken every year was relatively low, as the Senate's use of unanimous consent agreements skipped the need to round up supporters. While a lot of the cloture motions did fail, it was still rare to jump that hurdle at all and even then, a lot of the motions were still agreed to through unanimous consent. That changed when Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 and McConnell first became minority leader. The number of cloture motions filed doubled compared to the previous year, from 68 to 139.
Things only got more dire as the Obama administration kicked off in 2009, with Democrats in control of the House, the Senate and the White House. Of the 91 cloture votes taken during the first two years of President Barack Obama's first term, 28 or 30 percent failed. All but three failed despite having majority support. The next Congress was much worse after the GOP took control of the House: McConnell's minority blocked 43 percent of all cloture votes taken from passing. Things were looking to be on the same course at the start of Obama's second term. By November 2013, 27 percent of cloture votes had failed even though they had majority support. After months of simmering outrage over blocked nominees grew, Senate Democrats triggered the so-called nuclear option, dropping the number of votes needed for cloture to a majority for most presidential nominees, including Cabinet positions and judgeships. The next year, Republicans took over the Senate with Obama still in office. By pure numbers, the use of the filibuster rules skyrocketed under the Democratic minority: 63 of 123 cloture votes failed, or 51 percent. But there's a catch: Nothing that was being voted on was covered by the new filibuster rules. McConnell had almost entirely stopped bringing Obama's judicial nominees to the floor, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
McConnell defended the filibuster on the Senate floor last week, reminding his counterparts of their dependence on it during President Donald Trump's term. "Democrats used it constantly, as they had every right to," he said. "They were happy to insist on a 60-vote threshold for practically every measure or bill I took up." Except, if anything, use of the filibuster plummeted those four years. There are two main reasons: First, and foremost, the amount of in-party squabbling during the Trump years prevented any sort of coordinated legislative push from materializing. Second, there wasn't actually all that much the Republicans wanted that needed to get past the filibuster in its reduced state after the 2013 rule change. McConnell's strategy of withholding federal judgeships from Obama nominees paid off in spades, letting him spend four years stuffing the courts with conservatives. And when Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was filibustered, McConnell didn't hesitate to change the rules again. Trump's more controversial nominees also sailed to confirmation without any Democratic votes. Legislatively, there were only two things Republicans really wanted: tax cuts and repeal of Obamacare. The Trump tax cuts they managed through budget reconciliation, a process that allows budget bills to pass through the Senate with just a majority vote.
Republicans tried to do the same for health care in 2017 to avoid the filibuster, failing only during the final vote, when Sen. John McCain's "no" vote denied them a majority. The repeal wouldn't have gone through even if the filibuster had already been in the grave. As a result, the number of successful filibusters plummeted: Over the last four years, an average of 7 percent of all cloture motions failed. In the last Congress, 298 cloture votes were taken, a record. Only 26 failed. Almost all of the votes that passed were on nominees to the federal bench or the executive branch. In fact, if you stripped out the nominations considered in the first two years of Trump's term, the rate of failure would be closer to 15 percent but on only 70 total votes. There just wasn't all that much for Democrats to get in the way of with the filibuster, which is why we didn't hear much complaining from Republicans. Today's Democrats aren't in the same boat. Almost all of the big-ticket items President Joe Biden wants to move forward require both houses of Congress to agree. And given McConnell's previous success in smothering Obama's agenda for political gain, his warnings about the lack of "concern and comity" that Democrats are trying to usher in ring hollow. In actuality, his warnings of "wait until you're in the minority again" shouldn't inspire concern from Democrats. So long as it applies only to legislation, the filibuster is a Republicans-only weapon. There's nothing left, it seems, for the GOP to fear from it aside from its eventual demise.
snip
Senate Filibuster Was Created By Mistake (in 1805/1806)
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2013/11/20/senate-filibuster-was-created-by-mistake/
In 2010, Brookings Senior Fellow Sarah Binder, an expert on Congress and congressional history, testified to the Senate that the filibuster was created by mistake. We have many received wisdoms about the filibuster. However, most of them are not true. The most persistent myth is that the filibuster was part of the founding fathers constitutional vision for the Senate: It is said that the upper chamber was designed to be a slow-moving, deliberative body that cherished minority rights. In this version of history, the filibuster was a critical part of the framers Senate.
However, when we dig into the history of Congress, it seems that the filibuster was created by mistake. Let me explain. The House and Senate rulebooks in 1789 were nearly identical. Both rulebooks included what is known as the previous question motion. The House kept their motion, and today it empowers a simple majority to cut off debate. The Senate no longer has that rule on its books.
What happened to the Senates rule? In 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr was presiding over the Senate (freshly indicted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton), and he offered this advice. He said something like this. You are a great deliberative body. But a truly great Senate would have a cleaner rule book. Yours is a mess. You have lots of rules that do the same thing. And he singles out the previous question motion. Now, today, we know that a simple majority in the House can use the rule to cut off debate. But in 1805, neither chamber used the rule that way. Majorities were still experimenting with it. And so when Aaron Burr said, get rid of the previous question motion, the Senate didnt think twice. When they met in 1806, they dropped the motion from the Senate rule book.
Why? Not because senators in 1806 sought to protect minority rights and extended debate. They got rid of the rule by mistake: Because Aaron Burr told them to. Once the rule was gone, senators still did not filibuster. Deletion of the rule made possible the filibuster because the Senate no longer had a rule that could have empowered a simple majority to cut off debate. It took several decades until the minority exploited the lax limits on debate, leading to the first real-live filibuster in 1837.
snip
Bettie
(16,129 posts)recent memory?
Successfully.
The fact is, Moscow Mitch didn't bring anything to the floor that might result in one.
SheilaAnn
(9,710 posts)Response to regnaD kciN (Reply #2)
SheilaAnn This message was self-deleted by its author.
NewHendoLib
(60,022 posts)OhioChick
(23,218 posts)Might as well put on "R" next to his name.
Skittles
(153,199 posts)that would always be sickening but it is ESPECIALLY SICKENING right now
OhioChick
(23,218 posts)https://www.manchin.senate.gov/about/bipartisanship/legislation
vercetti2021
(10,156 posts)I'm absolutely sick of his dick swinging power. I wish Biden would pull him in for a fireside chat and figure out what the hell Manchin wants.
He's voted with Biden on every vote taken.
vercetti2021
(10,156 posts)Cuz he seems hell bent on preventing any progress. No voting rights, no DC statehood, not even fucking infrastructure
BGBD
(3,282 posts)Fiendish Thingy
(15,658 posts)BGBD
(3,282 posts)Fiendish Thingy
(15,658 posts)The American Rescue Plan and the anti-hate crime bill.
So what do all the other dots on the graph represent? Nominees? Manchin opposed one, dont know about Warren.
Its ludicrous to suggest Manchin supports Bidens agenda more strongly than Warren does, since Bidens agenda is more closely aligned with her own primary platform than Manchins positions.
There are dozens of bills that have passed congress that are stalled in the senate because of the filibuster, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and DC statehood, and not yet including the American Jobs bill and American Familes Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bills_in_the_117th_United_States_Congress
They are all stalled because of the obstruction by Joe-Fuckin-Jim-Crow Manchin.
Manchin gets 100% in the 538 graph because all the parts of Bidens agenda he opposes are blocked from coming to the floor for a vote, so theres no record of him opposing Bidens agenda.
If the stalled bills were allowed to come to an up or down floor vote in the senate, then wed see who really supports Bidens agenda. Manchin is using the filibuster to avoid accountability to his constituents, and more importantly, his donors, just like Republicans do.
BGBD
(3,282 posts)Fiendish Thingy
(15,658 posts)Focusing on Warren is a diversion that ignores the critical legislation pending in the senate. (exactly what did she oppose? Nothing of substance according to my source linked to previously)
Warren supports HR1
Warren supports the American Jobs Act (but would likely propose amendments to make it bigger and include her wealth tax) and supports using reconciliation to pass the bill.
Warren supports the American Families Act (but would likely propose amendments making it bigger)
Warren supports DC statehood.
Warren support abolishing the filibuster.
Manchin opposes ALL OF THOSE, With the possible exception of the American Families Act, which I dont believe he has taken a public position on.
BGBD
(3,282 posts)Doesn't support all agenda items that come to vote.
So, stop bashing the Democrat that does or start criticizing her for voting against Biden.
Fiendish Thingy
(15,658 posts)She voted for the American Rescue Plan and for the anti-hate crime bill. NOTHING ELSE OF SIGNIFICANCE HAS COME TO THE SENATE FLOOR FOR A VOTE IN 2021.
The 538 graph is worthless without supporting data.
We know Warren supports Bidens agenda.
We also know that Jim Crow Joe Manchin opposes Bidens agenda and is blocking legislation from coming to a vote so there will be no record of his opposition in the form of no votes.
BGBD
(3,282 posts)If she's under 100 then she has voted against Biden.
Fiendish Thingy
(15,658 posts)If you could prove your assertion, you would link to votes where Warren actually opposed Bidens legislative agenda, and Manchin supported it. Name the bill, and the date she voted against it. You cant do it, because it doesnt exist.
You go ahead and keep on supporting Jim Crow Joes obstruction, with his on-the-record statements opposing all of Bidens pending legislative agenda, and Ill keep supporting Warren and Bidens actual legislative agenda.
BGBD
(3,282 posts)Is it Jim Crow Obama as well? I don't recall any new states being added during those years.
I'll also take that post as confirmation that you didn't read the chart because if you go to the link all of the data is available to you.
Joe Manchin didn't try to block a waiver to allow a vote on the first African American Secretary of Defense.... more than can be said about some people.
Manchin also has the highest Biden + score, which measures votes in support vsargin of victory in district, and by a lot.
Fiendish Thingy
(15,658 posts)You continue to justify your support for Jim Crow Joe Manchin by hiding behind the semantics of his 100% pro-Biden voting record, when, in reality, he is blocking passage of the following:
American Jobs Act
American Familes Plan
HR1/S1 voting rights bill
HR4 the John Lewis voting rights act
DC statehood
Sure, none of those have come to the floor for a vote in the senate because of Manchins obstruction, but you keep telling yourself he is a stronger supporter of Bidens agenda than Warren.
I dont believe that to be the truth.
...and some people still believe the election was stolen and that QAnon is real.
But I dont.
Polybius
(15,492 posts)Who cares if he votes for the actual bill? He waters down other bills like enhanced unemployment (was supposed to be $400 until October), stopped one nominee (Neera Tanden), and said he won't change the filibuster rules.
As if that wasn't enough, he's now said the infrastructure bill goes too far and yesterday he came out against DC statehood.
I'm not a Manchin hater at all, I get why we need him. He's the best we can do in WV. But lately he's been hard to deal with.
He was the only senator who wasn't going to vote for Tanden? Not even close. If it were 49-50 he'd have voted to confirm her.
There were many others, including Sanders who were dead set against her.
Polybius
(15,492 posts)He's derailed bills/nominees by himself this year. Sanders hasn't. Plus coming out against $400 a week till October for enhanced unemployment, not to mention against DC statehood, only his relatives or Republicans can still defend him.
Demsrule86
(68,696 posts)the ACA and a narrow majority. I am not always pleased with some of his words but thus far he has voted for us when it counted.
Fiendish Thingy
(15,658 posts)Americans voted for and support substantive change, and Manchin is obstructing it.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)with Manchin's vote.
Far worse, if WV had ditched Manchin in 2018, insurrectionist Republicans would be in charge of the senate right now. NOTHING we wanted would pass.
Instead, infuriating as he and others of his sort in our caucus are, we're going to accomplish a great deal.
Cha
(297,723 posts)any "concern over his agenda"?
subterranean
(3,427 posts)Mad_Machine76
(24,438 posts)DFW
(54,445 posts)NOT spending it.
Crunchy Frog
(26,647 posts)uponit7771
(90,364 posts)... something that she knows she's going to vote for.
Nanjeanne
(4,981 posts)because as a Republican, if he were to even win, he would just be one of many useless Republicans. As a "Democrat" but not supporting Democratic platform in the current Senate makeup - he wields so much power. It's his ego and nothing else. He does not represent the people of West Virginia who are desperately in need of the Biden agenda. I also think he doesn't want DC statehood because if there were 2 more Dem Senators, he would lose power and become a footnote to the Democrats. His only principle is his self-centered need for power. I wish Democrats when asked about Manchin - would ignore him and speak instead of West Virginia and how badly they are in need of the very policies he is standing against. Currently WVa ranks (out of 50 states) #47 on Healthcare; #45 on Education; #48 on Education; #50 on INFRASTRUCTURE. Every time I hear Democrats talking about bipartisanship on bills I scream at the TV . . . bipartisanship on bills isn't having 1 R Senator vote with you . . . it's having a good percentage of Republican citizens support the policies Dems want to pass. And with that as the criteria - the bills passed by the House and sitting in the Senate ARE bipartisan bills.