The fantastical myth of the Powerless President
Well we always knew that Biden is a conservative Democrat and that the Democrats in general are very conservative.
… we have seen Democratic senators prepare to surrender the $15 minimum wage their party promised by insisting they are powerless in the face of a non-binding advisory opinion of a parliamentarian they can ignore or fire.
That explanation is patently ridiculous and factually false, so Democratic apologists are starting to further justify the surrender by suggesting that even if the party kept a $15 minimum wage in the Covid relief bill, conservative Democrats such as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema would block it anyway.
So persuade them. Do the work.
And yet, whether you call this all deliberate deception or learned helplessness, this fantastical myth of the Powerless President will inevitably be used to shield Biden from criticism for abandoning his pledge to fight for a $15 minimum wage.
The apologism is particularly absurd because unlike his predecessor Barack Obama, who was a relative newcomer to politics, Biden’s major selling point was that he knows “how to make government work”. The guy explicitly pitched himself as the best Democratic presidential candidate by suggesting that in an era of gridlock, he knows how to make the Democratic agenda a reality and Get Things Done™, like master of the Senate Lyndon Baines Johnson.
…
…the White House continues to say it is “fighting our guts out” for Neera Tanden’s nomination, even though it might not have enough Senate votes for her confirmation. And yet, the same White House is simultaneously retreating on the minimum wage, seemingly unwilling to force a floor vote on the issue, even though presidential pressure, legislative brinkmanship, and negotiation could change the outcome.
So…confirming Neera Tanden is worth fighting for but a raise in the minimum wage isn’t?
The real story, then, is that Biden seems unwilling to use the same influence to push as hard as possible for a minimum wage increase that would boost the pay of millions of Americans during an economic emergency.
Pathetic.
I don’t buy the comparison.
“Fighting” for Neera Tanden costs nothing. Joe Manchin doesn’t mind casting that vote against her. Her nomination isn’t attached to a bigger bill or anything else at all. You can afford to go down swinging on that one. Every administration since Reagan has lost at least one nominee to a confirmation fight.
But if you insist on including the $15 minimum wage in the COVID relief bill, you will likely lose the entire bill. That means people aren’t getting those $1400 checks, state and local government aren’t getting relief, etc. It also would be an embarrassing political defeat to lose the key initiative of your first 100 days, and possibly your entire presidency, because you either don’t know how to count to 50 or because you’d rather “make a point” than actually help people.
Conversely, dropping the minimum wage provision from this COVID bill doesn’t lose it forever. You can bring a separate bill to raise the minimum wage. Sure, in order to get the 50 or 60 votes in the Senate, you’ll have to make compromises on the amount and/or the phase-in period, and/or giving some goodies to the GOP, but you were going to have to do that anyway. Either make those compromises and get something done, or go down swinging on your best proposal and then campaign on it for the next two years.
Winning those two Senate elections in Georgia was a really big deal. It makes a big difference having 50 senators — it means you control the committees and their oversight and other functions, and it means you control which bills even come up for a vote in the Senate, and it means getting most of your executive and judicial nominees through. But 50 isn’t as good as 51 or 52 or 53, because you’ve got to hold the entire “team” together or else pick up a Republican or two. And sometimes that just isn’t possible. If people want to say “the Democrats suck” because “only” 48 out of 50 of them support something good that 0 out of 50 Republicans support, then I just don’t know what to say to that.
It’s not like this only happens to Democrats. George W. Bush had a big Social Security privatization program, and his own party rebelled against it, so he let it die. Trump couldn’t get Obamacare repeal done. Democrats struggle with it a little more often because they’re more of a big tent party, and they have more things they want to get government to do these days.
Was the whole “I know how Washington works and I can get stuff done” talking point bullshit? Yeah, I’d say so. But it’s the kind of talking point that you have to use to win a presidential election, because “nobody can really make DC work, it’s going to be all executive orders and rule-by-judiciary other than the occasional must-pass bill” does not go over well with the persuadable voters.
Fair enough. Basically it just gets on my nerves that we’re so shit on everything to do with poverty compared to other prosperous countries.
What Screechy said. I don’t know why people are blaming the parliamentarian or the VP when the blame is more appropriately pinned on Manchin and Sinema. Maybe the administration doesn’t want to ostracize Manchin and Sinema, and so is taking the fallout?
It would be nice if a more progressive agenda could be pushed through, but that’s not happening. A gradual list of small victories is better than grand failures, I think.
Look for a smaller minimum wage hike bill soon. It might pass.
I’m actually kind of impressed that the Democrats have stuck together as much as they have. That group of Republican senators made a big production of how they were supposedly willing to work on a COVID relief bill, while offering peanuts. Biden apparently listened to them politely, and then said we’re too far apart, we’re going ahead with our bill, and his press secretary has repeatedly brushed aside the bleatings of the press who demand to know why Biden’s pledge to restore unity doesn’t require him to capitulate to GOP demands. And while the Manchins of the caucus have made noises about wanting this to be “bipartisan,” they began the process to pass the bill by reconciliation.
But yes, absolutely it’s sad that there aren’t 50+ votes in the Senate for a not terribly generous minimum wage proposal. I just don’t have a solution to offer other than “win more elections.”
No, neither do I, so I rant and whine instead.
I’m skeptical of the argument from consequences of potential failure, and not just because it can be made in nearly any situation and usually considers consequences selectively. It really looks like a loss-minimization algorithm of the greedy sort.
A greedy strategy of always locally maximizing gain or minimizing loss is all too often a strategy of slow, fossilizing death as we orbit pits, slip into bottomless chasms, or get locked in cycles. Over time, the risk-averse, greedy strategist can easily collect an arbitrarily long tally of small “victories” while getting further and further from winning the war.