and also, is an illusion. it was demagogue hour over there in Romney’s office in february '21, stalling the incoming agenda like a good little soldier for moscow mitch, and his previous and subsequent votes prove it.
Those are the only two who “don’t want” BBB and the only two who are against nuking the filibuster for voting rights. There are a handful of other Dems who are against nuking the filibuster for legislation, which makes their BBB support suspect, at best.
Like, it’s very easy to say you’re for something that you’re against if you know you’re never going to have to vote for it as-is. Every Dem senator knew there was a 0.0% chance of the BBB as-is reaching the floor for a vote. So take their statements about it with the same grain of salt you take promises made on the presidential campaign trail.
I see you’ve moved from what Mitt Romney supports to what Mitt Romney has the political capital to do, which is basically all the evidence needed to say that the point has been made: eDems and Romney are close enough together economically that the differences between them are shades of gray.
i’ll just quote you right back, “Like, it’s very easy to say you’re for something that you’re against if you know you’re never going to have to vote for it as-is.” seems overwhelmingly likely that’s what romney was doing.
BBB would be reaching the floor as reconciliation. the filibuster carveout is over voting rights, not even full nuclear on cloture. picking apart what each dem said about which issue/carveout/filibuster is a hell of waste of time. everything i’ve read so far from negotiations with house progressives is that rest of senate democrat conference was FOR BBB and voting rights.
Like I know it’s a lot more comforting and fun to think the Democrats are lovable losers who gosh darn it are trying so hard and they just might learn their lesson this time and get it right next time, if they manage to get to a next time without losing our whole damn democracy… But the facts and reality that we’ve all witnessed over the last 10 years paint a much different picture. It’s a grim and depressing picture, to be sure, but it is what it is.
It’s not some crazy sinister secret plot, it’s not some well-hidden corruption. Citizens United was ruled on in 2010. We made it legal and easy for corporations to buy politicians, and whaddayknow, they bought a lot of them on both sides.
Of course, the one part he’s been wrong about so far is the part about Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Just our fucking luck.
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Why in the world would a conservative come out with a plan to give poor people money as a form of demagoguing??? His plan is unpopular to Republican voters. So unless you think Mitt is gearing up for a party change…
Put more stock in what actually happens when Democrats have power than you do in what you read about them saying in corporate media.
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What really divides right and left is beliefs about the role and size of government. Regardless of individual policy choices, Biden is clearly to the left of Romney when it comes to narratives about government. (Manchin is, too.)
E-Dems fail because they don’t have a clear, overarching narrative about what government is supposed to do, from which one can derive their likely policy preferences. They think of our form of government as a fixed thing, where all you have to do is put competent bureaucrats in place and the machine will run itself. They are, for the most part, well-meaning people who haven’t broken free of the conditioning of American exceptionalism, of the belief that this country’s history has been great because of its unique form of government. They understand that results can be better, but they lack the imagination to understand how the process can be changed.
Mitch knows the game, Mitt knows the game. they are experts in inserting the right proposal with little detail to score the compassionate fiscal conservative cable news points. Doing it during the least dangerous part of the election cycle, immediately after a change in power is what gives it away. It’s the pretense of bipartisanship, preempting Biden’s proposal to set the max for negotiations and then whittling it down before never voting for it anyway. fast forward to April, GOP conference was talking about overheating the economy with ARP.
i’m in Jayapal’s district, so i follow her directly. yeah, the things I want don’t all magically manifest themselves with president grandpa. ten years forward, if something more ambitious passes, it will be because of what happens from this as a starting point. modulo the risk of living under a fascist one-party rule in a decade of course.
This fails to account for corporations buying off politicians left and right. That probably described establishment Dems 10-15 years ago. Not anymore…
Ah yes, who could forget the usual early election cycle Mitch McConnell compassionate conservative news cycle? And why would anyone want to be credited as a compassionate conservative right now. Both McConnell and Romney are far more likely to lose a primary than a general election, and they’re far more likely to lose to a lunatic right winger who primaries them for being too moderate/compassionate/anti-trump.
So it would work against them, not for them.
i would wager against mcconnell/romney losing a primary. but even so, they only lose over actual loyalty to trmp, not over their so far successful plan of making biden waste time and legislative sessions. i guarantee no RWNJ challenger would even know that romney proposed something to repeal and replace the ctc.
right on cue, everyone’s favorite left of center except when it matter republican:
7 min ago
Romney praises Sinema and Manchin for their “political courage” tonight
From CNN’s Ali Zaslav
Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, said that after the vote concluded, he told his colleague Sen. Kyrsten Sinema: “I respect your strength and character. Congratulations”
“Each case was an act of an extraordinary political courage, the likes of which I have not seen in my political career,” the senator said of moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Sinema’s votes.
Explain to me how Mitt Romney proposing a child tax credit to the left of Joe Biden made Joe Biden waste time and legislative sessions.
Literally nobody has said he’s left of center. The entire premise of the point is that the eDems are right of center.
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he put out a proposal that shifted money around from one program to another, eliminating something that was pretty popular. it didn’t meaningfully improve on biden’s proposal and was insincere. generated some conservative talking points because it was billed as “debt neutral” and immediately made the claim that biden is ignoring gop’s effort to reach out.
i guess we also disagree where the center lies. a majority being right of center moves the center, no?
anyways this is pointless. you and i are closer on economics to each other, than romney and edems are right now. romney isn’t left on anything, especially economically. former bain capital partner to boot. 
Which caused Democrats to slow down in what way? Like as far as I recall, Romney’s proposal didn’t get into the mix. Democrats slowed themselves down for months on end with Manchin and Sinema, among others.
The center is in the middle of where 330M Americans views lie, or at least the adults. Or it’s in the middle of where 7.9 billion people’s views lie, but I’ll grant you just American and that America is a right of center country and that can be ignored for this discussion.
A majority of Americans support single payer. An overwhelming majority support reasonable/basic gun control, like background checks for mental health. 62% of Americans favor a $15 an hour minimum wage.
The center of this country is well left of the center of the establishment Democrats.
Literally nobody said he’s left of center. eDems are right of center.
As opposed to noted establishment Democrat Nancy Pelosi and her husband?
Like I vehemently argue with people who say both sides are the same on certain issues, but on this issue they pretty much are within shouting distance of each other - if that. Maybe more like loud whisper distance.
I actually don’t think that many politicians change their votes because of corporate money. Yes, someone like Sinema seems like a complete whore, but for the most part, politicians have been brainwashed by corporate media into thinking that the stock market is the economy. Corporations funnel money to support politicians who believe in capitalist myths, but these are politicians who have been raised in the capitalist religion and who instinctively vote that way. These mostly aren’t people who know better and are choosing to be evil for the money. These are well-meaning idiots who are useful tools for corporations.
In other words, money doesn’t turn them into establishment creatures; they get money because they are establishment creatures.
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I think that’s true in many, maybe most cases. The point remains: the corporations own enough of both sides to scuttle anything they want to scuttle.
I mean, how many establishment Dems from 10-15 years ago are still around in Congress today?
I was having a discussion with a buddy a few minutes ago about how hopeless it is to get to 60 in the Senate, so I looked to see the breakdown by state.
Here are the Democratic senators in 2010:
Robert Byrd - WV
Ted Kennedy - MA
Daniel Inouye - HI
Joe Biden - DE
Patrick Leahy - VT
Max Baucus - MT
Carl Levin - MI
Chris Dodd - CT
Arlen Specter - PA
Jeff Bingaman - NM
John Kerry - MA
Tom Harkin - IA
Jay Rockefeller - WV
Barbara Mikulski - MD
Harry Ried - NV
Kent Conrad - ND
Herb Kohl - WI
Joe Lieberman - CT
Daniel Akaka - HI
Dianne Feinstein - CA
Byron Dorgan - ND
Barbara Boxer - CA
Russ Feingold - WI
Patty Murray - WA
Ron Wyden - OR
Dick Durbin - IL
Tim Johnson - SD
Jack Reed - RI
Mary Landrieu - LA
Chuck Schumer - NY
Blanche Lincoln - AR
Evan Bayh - IN
Bill Nelson - FL
Tom Carper - DE
Debbie Stabenow - MI
Maria Cantwell - WA
Ben Nelson - NE
Hillary Clinton - NY
Frank Lautenberg - NJ
Mark Pryor - AR
Ken Salazar - CO
Bob Menendez - NJ
Ben Cardin - MD
Bernie Sanders - VT
Sherrod Brown - OH
Bob Casey - PA
Jim Webb - VA
Claire McCaskill - MO
Amy Klobuchar - MN
Sheldon Whitehouse - RI
Jon Tester - MT
Mark Udall - CO
Tom Udall - NM
Jeanne Shaheen - NH
Mark Warner - VA
Kay Hagan - NC
Jeff Merkley - OR
Mark Begich - AK
Roland Burris - IL
Ted Kaufman - DE
Michael Bennett - CO
Kirsten Gillibrand - NY
Al Franken - MN
Paul Kirk - MA
Carte Goodwin - WV
Joe Manchin - WV (came in after Citizens United)
Chris Coons - DE (came in after Citizens United)
So by my count 20 of our 50 Democratic senators were around pre-Citizens United, and if you go down that list you’re not going to see many people too far from the right side of the party. Schumer, Feinstein and Carper are as corporate-friendly as it gets.
And if you want a real hoot, look at the states we held back then…
This is after 2010, so we didn’t even have 60 then…
This really underscores how much Dems have given away the ability to compete in a lot of states by moving away from being a pro-union, pro-labor, pro-working class party.
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i am not arguing that biden negotiated this well of course, but it created the environment where biden’s proposal was going to get compared to a debt-neutral “solution”. literally anything biden proposes goes to GAO, but nothing romney says is scrutinized like that. it signaled to whoever sinema and machin actually shill out for to start negotiating down to below those numbers, to make it even less palatable for all involved. in other words, it set the agenda. at the time when democracts were running around trying to impeach literally anyone, which was also important. just shows you can’t negotiate with republicans and expect good faith.
still 48 of the democrat conference were willing to do it. which is more than anytime since ~2012, or even before that.
Those numbers were higher than Biden’s, so they would have had to negotiate up to them.
What’s more, Manchin was okay raising taxes, but not ok increasing spending beyond what was paid for, and Sinema was ok spending more but not ok with raising corporate taxes.
So Biden’s proposal had to be paid for somehow anyway, and based on their contradictory terms, it was going to have to be by cutting spending.
Too bad we weren’t playing horseshoes or hand grenades… But also 48 said they were willing to do it. Also keep in mind a lot of those programs in BBB had sunset provisions after a year or two. Why? Because the establishment wasn’t willing to pass them and actually pay for them beyond that, they were going to pass them and see what happened and go from there.
Jessica Cisneros is a Justice Dem who challenged a very moderate establishment Democrat in TX-28, a very blue district. Her opponent, Henry Cuellar, ran unopposed in 2014, won 90% of the vote in 2016, and 84% in 2018. Party leadership threw its weight behind Cuellar, who is anti-choice and pro-gun. Pelosi showed up in his district to campaign for him anyway. He also had the support of the Chamber of Commerce and the Koch Brothers, in case you’re wondering how far right he is.
That establishment support was likely the difference, as he held Cisneros off by a margin of 3.6% (51.8 to 48.2). He’s gone on to be the fourth biggest recipient of oil and gas money in the entire House this cycle, and the biggest Democratic recipient of private prison campaign donations.
That’s ironic, because he might be in some legal trouble of his own.
LOL Democrats
LOL Pelosi
LOL Cuellar
Let’s go Cisneros! She already announced she was running several months back. Maybe the legal troubles will keep Pelosi from campaigning for this clown, and Cisneros can benefit.
Here’s the link to Cisneros’ site in case anyone wants to give money or volunteer leading up to the primary (March 2022).
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This makes it all the more tragic (and pathetic) it couldn’t get passed