All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Amadeus Arkham]

How this Manchin guy who’s been in the politics game for so long is being this naive and unrealistic about the Republicans is beyond me....

[Joker]

This post is too accurate.

Trump also doesn’t know how to creat anything because everything’s been handed to him his whole life. His name, his money, his “empire”. Trump has never built anything himself.

[numberthirty]

...

How this Manchin guy who’s been in the politics game for so long is being this naive and unrealistic about the Republicans is beyond me....

You are assuming that he is indeed naive/unrealistic/both.

Seems a lot more likely that he just looking out for Joe Manchin.

[PwrdOn]

How this Manchin guy who’s been in the politics game for so long is being this naive and unrealistic about the Republicans is beyond me....

Of course nuking the filibuster would undoubtedly make Manchin the most powerful man in the Senate as he would be the swing vote on basically every single bill, so if he's going to sacrifice both his own party AND his own personal self interest, not to mention the good of the country, just to defend the GOP, then I just give up trying to understand politics.

[ShutUpLutz]

Really sweet. Thank you for sharing this.

There was a tweet from someone a couple of months ago who said back when they were in med school they saw Fauci give a talk and on a whim sent him one of their papers, never dreaming he'd hear ANYTHING.

Fauci wrote him back with a thoughtful encouraging critique of the paper, pointing out where things could have been worded better and wishing them luck in their career and life.

He's worked his ENTIRE life trying to heal people and make the world a better and safer place and done it with grace and courtesy and good humor. He is also famous for never making his associates and underlings do anything he wouldn't do, including putting on haz-mat suits and going into Level 5 medical/research suites.

[Tendrin]

Welp.

Got one for you, WBE, though you may have already seen him.

Hawaii
Hawaii Proud Boy Charged By DOJ After Raiding US Capitol
75
Nicholas Ochs, a state House candidate and outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump, was an “easy target” for the feds, his attorney says.


WASHINGTON — Nicholas Ochs, the founder of the Hawaii chapter of the Proud Boys who boasted on social media about storming the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday was arrested and charged by the federal government for taking part in the riot.

Ochs was charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., but was arrested Thursday night at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu.

https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/01/ha...ng-us-capitol/

He ran for the Hawaii state house in 2020 and got 32% of the vote. An actual $#$$ing Proud Boy.

https://ballotpedia.org/Nicholas_Ochs

[Tendrin]

Of course nuking the filibuster would undoubtedly make Manchin the most powerful man in the Senate as he would be the swing vote on basically every single bill, so if he's going to sacrifice both his own party AND his own personal self interest, not to mention the good of the country, just to defend the GOP, then I just give up trying to understand politics.

Manchin is, unfortunately, *very* good at politics. Setting aside what I think of his positions on the issue, he pretty clearly knows what he's doing.

[Gray Lensman]

Manchin is, unfortunately, *very* good at politics. Setting aside what I think of his positions on the issue, he pretty clearly knows what he's doing.

2 things also affect this. This doesn't prevent the thin majority from nuking things and redoing everything if McConnell abuses the filibuster enough to break through Manchin and Sinema's reluctance to get rid of it. The agreement has slightly more weight than any other supposed moral stance McConnell has staked out himself - next to none. The second is Sanders has already stated he will not hold back from using the reconciliation process if McConnell just decides to filibuster anything and everything.

[Tendrin]

2 things also affect this. This doesn't prevent the thin majority from nuking things and redoing everything if McConnell abuses the filibuster enough to break through Manchin and Sinema's reluctance to get rid of it. The agreement has slightly more weight than any other supposed moral stance McConnell has staked out himself - next to none. The second is Sanders has already stated he will not hold back from using the reconciliation process if McConnell just decides to filibuster anything and everything.

Yep. I think Manchin was offering McConnel a fig leaf to back down so they could get on with it. Leaving your opponent a way out can be important.

[PwrdOn]

Manchin is, unfortunately, *very* good at politics. Setting aside what I think of his positions on the issue, he pretty clearly knows what he's doing.

The way I see it, either he doesn't want to be put on the spot for every vote and forced to choose between party loyalty or placating his constituents when the GOP inevitably tries to pin every single policy on his shoulders during the next election, or he's following in the grand old American tradition of playing at being reluctant to grasp at power, possibly to extract more concessions from the caucus before he finally folds. But the Democrats really can't mess around with this, because this is going to single handedly stymie their entire agenda for the next four years, the party needs to make it clear to Manchin that he needs to get in line on this or they will ruin him politically.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Manchin is the only state-wide elected official from WV that's a Democrat and he's held power and his post despite the redness of his state. So annoying as it is for Dems to rely so much on him (I tend to find Jon Tester more agreeable among the Red State Dem Senators), dude's formidable and you need to acknowledge and respect the fact that he could have tacked red in WV and occupied a fiefdom like many red state senators who don't care to do their job and basically bask as feudal lords feeding their constitutency MAGAt fantasies. Being blue in West Virginia is the harder thing since Manchin has to constantly fight. So Manchin is not without his courage and annoying as he is, and often flat out wrong as he is, let's not pretend he's the same as McConnell or anything.

Look, obviously this isn't the ideal trifecta and yeah the Green New Deal and other stuff won't be coming to the floor on vote in the next two years, but still important and vital stuff can get done.

Manchin is open on DC and Puerto Rican statehood for one thing. If the Dems get one of those two states confirmed in the next two years, it will be terrific.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/202...d-PR-statehood

[Tendrin]

The way I see it, either he doesn't want to be put on the spot for every vote and forced to choose between party loyalty or placating his constituents when the GOP inevitably tries to pin every single policy on his shoulders during the next election, or he's following in the grand old American tradition of playing at being reluctant to grasp at power, possibly to extract more concessions from the caucus before he finally folds. But the Democrats really can't mess around with this, because this is going to single handedly stymie their entire agenda for the next four years, the party needs to make it clear to Manchin that he needs to get in line on this or they will ruin him politically.

I think you're deeply overestimating your own political acumen with this take. As RJ notes above, a lot of important work can still get done, and Manchin will back it.

[ShutUpLutz]

There have been a few stories over the past few days that "officials" who are of course unnamed because they are fucking cowards are arguing that the number of people who will end up being charged and prosecuted for their part in the events of Jan 6 at the US Capitol should be limited because otherwise they 'threaten to overwhelm the District of Columbia's court system.'

**** THAT.

I don't give a damn if it take 10 years to prosecute these fuckers EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM must be held accountable and answer for their actions.

[ShutUpLutz]

Manchin is the only state-wide elected official from WV that's a Democrat and he's held power and his post despite the redness of his state. So annoying as it is for Dems to rely so much on him (I tend to find Jon Tester more agreeable among the Red State Dem Senators), dude's formidable and you need to acknowledge and respect the fact that he could have tacked red in WV and occupied a fiefdom like many red state senators who don't care to do their job and basically bask as feudal lords feeding their constitutency MAGAt fantasies. Being blue in West Virginia is the harder thing since Manchin has to constantly fight. So Manchin is not without his courage and annoying as he is, and often flat out wrong as he is, let's not pretend he's the same as McConnell or anything.

Look, obviously this isn't the ideal trifecta and yeah the Green New Deal and other stuff won't be coming to the floor on vote in the next two years, but still important and vital stuff can get done.

Manchin is open on DC and Puerto Rican statehood for one thing. If the Dems get one of those two states confirmed in the next two years, it will be terrific.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/202...d-PR-statehood

What's kind of astonishing is how quickly WV went from VERY solidly Blue Democratic to VERY solidly RED Republican/Trumpian.

[PwrdOn]

I think you're deeply overestimating your own political acumen with this take. As RJ notes above, a lot of important work can still get done, and Manchin will back it.

Yeah but with the filibuster in place, that won't matter right? You only get one shot at budget reconciliation every year and since there's no way that the Dems are ever going to get 10 GOP senators to side with them on anything, pretty much nothing else will get passed.

What's kind of astonishing is how quickly WV went from VERY solidly Blue Democratic to VERY solidly RED Republican/Trumpian.

WV was only a blue state to begin with because it was part of FDR's New Deal coalition, demographically it's largely rural, white, poor, and uneducated, not exactly ripe territory to push progressive politics. Most people there are single issue voters for coal, so ever since the GOP positioned itself as the pro-coal party they've pretty much dominated. Manchin still is able to win just based on his personal reputation and connections within the state, which means he's pretty much safe from any type of primary challenge since no other Democrat could possibly win there. But if he's going to just side with the Republicans on everything anyway, what difference does it really make?