Bipartisanship Through the Looking Glass
For Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Congressional Republicans, ‘Bipartisanship’ has become a euphemism for delay and, along with the filibuster, has become a primary or principle dilatory tactic of the Republican Party in running out the ‘legislative clock’ on what they perceive to be unwanted and undesirable legislation, thereby ensuring the failure of certain measures to gain congressional approval and passage.
Legislative bipartisanship is little more than a rabbit hole the exploration of which will accomplish nothing more than the waste of the time remaining on the legislative clock that will run out by the end of July.
The response of the Democratic Party should be to immediately abandon the quest for bipartisan support for its legislative agenda and deliver legislative activity through the reconciliation process on those budget measures that have wide public support.
Merrick Garland and the DOJ must find or develop constitutionally creative proactive means to thwart the attempts of state legislatures controlled by Republicans to suppress the casting of votes by black and brown people, and control and corrupt the process of counting ballots in order to ensure their desired results….
06/11/2021 @ 12:42 am
Without Manchin, there’s a lot the Democrats can’t do, and they don’t have him nearly enough.
06/11/2021 @ 7:24 am
Manchin is coming perilously close to switching parties.
It may well be that his long range plan to wait until Trump himself becomes politically irrelevant due to federal and state prosecutions.
If and or when Trump is found guilty of something, it would be deemed propitious and advantageous by Manchin to switch parties and make a run for the Presidency as a newly minted Republican convert.
The most telling comment he made re his posture re American democracy was the remark he uttered when asked whether he would support removal of the filibuster in order to achieve Biden’s legislative goals he said:
“It would destroy the government.”
06/14/2021 @ 12:44 am
As I’ve said on your post, Manchin would be insane to leave the Democratic Party. As long as he stays put he is in many ways the most powerful man in the Senate. If he switches parties he instead becomes just another Republican without Party seniority and too moderate for the Trumpists. He doesn’t have the charisma of a Trump to end-run the Party. And let’s look at how he gets elected in West Virginia: He gets a mixture of Democrats and moderate Republicans. If he switches parties he loses most of the Democrats and picks up no one because he’s not conservative enough for the Republican base. If he switches parties he’s screw himself, screw the country, and screw West Virginia, for whom he’s now in a position to get concessions.