How do "bipartisan" bills help us Democrats more than the rThugs?
If we only pass watered down bills that the Republicans are on board on, how does that help us in the midterms?
If we Democrats argue amongst ourselves that President Biden's 3.5T "Build Back Better" agenda is too expensive, as some Democrats are, isn't that writing the attack adds for the Republicans come the midterms?
Doesn't the danger really lie in doing too little to help people in the bottom half the American economy?
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for them. And a very solid majority want the Democratic and Republican legislators they elect to represent them (!) to work together to do a good job -- for them.
Bipartisan bills pass specifically because both sides know their voters WANT what they're intended to do.
Even if government could be mainly about taking care of people in trouble (really bad idea!), those in the bottom half vote less and tend to be somewhat more conservative overall. They don't elect Democratic majorities by themselves.
Representative government is supposed to serve the people, all the people through compromise and agreement. The zero-sum attitude that actions that bipartisan actions that benefit Republicans must be bad for Democrats is dysfunctional, inimical to democracy, and exactly how tRump's deranged brain works. But not our peoples'.
Politico reports that internal polling by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has them very worried. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chair of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, privately warned Democrats that they’d lose the House if the election were held today.
The internal DCCC poll found that only 42 percent of likely voters in more than four dozen House battleground districts and regions trust Democrats on the economy, according to Politico. There’s also this:
A growing number of battleground-district incumbents are privately alarmed by new data that showed the party struggling on bellwether issues such as the economy, despite their trillion-dollar pandemic rescue effort this year and Biden’s generally steady approval rating.
As a result, Politico reports, the DCCC chair is privately advising Democrats to get more aggressive in promoting President Biden’s economic agenda, whose individual items are still very popular in DCCC polling and in public polls.
The complication here appears to be that it’s unclear how much it means politically that Biden’s individual policies poll so well on paper. Either Democrats are not doing enough to communicate these particulars to voters, or their overall experiences of the recovery matter more than what they think of those policies, or some combination of the two.
The good news is that there may be an answer to both of those problems: It resides in passing Biden’s agenda. But this will require both communicating about it effectively once it’s passed and that it actually has a palpable impact on people’s lives.
A new memo from the Center for American Progress makes this case. It argues that Democrats should not be spooked by Republican fearmongering about government spending leading to inflation, which is meant to create the impression that Big Government liberalism has led Democrats to lose control of the economy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/03/democrats-are-worried-about-midterms-can-their-agenda-save-them/
Again, isn't the danger really doing too little to help struggling Americans by caving to Republican demands and allowing the rThugs to win in the midterms?
Sorry, but I actually think its better for America if Democrats control the House and Senate than the Republicans, so, yes, in that regard it IS a zero sum game. Otherwise, why are we even being politically active as Democrats if electing Republicans isn't such a bad thing?
