Unsurprisingly, Saturday Night Live featured in-fighting among Democrats over President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda on its season premiere on Saturday night. And it’s arguable that SNL’s portrayal of this in-fighting was not only more entertaining but more comprehensible than any report in the mainstream media.
For the record, though, here is a little of the political dynamics that provided so much fodder for those SNL skits, courtesy of the September 30 edition of The Washington Post:
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House Democrats facing down tight deadlines and spiraling worries that President Biden’s agenda could soon fall apart are growing increasingly exasperated with a pair of Democratic senators whose votes are key but whose views are unclear when it comes to what they want out of legislation to expand the social safety net.
Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) have said Biden’s $3.5 trillion proposal [aka the human infrastructure bill] for expanding heath care access, boosting education programs and fighting climate change is too expensive, but they have been reluctant to engage in detailed discussions about how they want it changed.
‘We need to know what he’s a skeptic on so that we can have the conversation with him. There has been no clarity in what they actually want, both Sinema and Manchin,’ said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a member of the House Progressive Caucus.
Until they do, House liberals eager to enact the legislation say they are essentially banging their heads against the wall. House moderates, meanwhile, are wary of signing onto potentially politically fraught policies until they know whether they have the blessing of the senatorial pair and will make it into law.
‘Should all of this just hinge on those two? Absolutely not. Because the question becomes, or the question is, who is their priority? What is their priority?,’ Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said. …
House liberals don’t oppose that bill [the $1.2 infrastructure bill for bridges, roads, broadband, etc., which Manchin and Sinema favor] but say they won’t let it pass until their top priority, the social spending package [aka human infrastructure], is also on its way to becoming law.
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Of course, what Rep. Bush is insinuating is right. It is untenable and plainly absurd for the fate of over 100 million Americans to hinge on the political whims of two senators who represent less than 9 million, combined.
The problem is that Biden and congressional leaders knew or should have known for months that these dynamics would play out just like this. Therefore, you’d be forgiven the pessimistic view that all of their negotiations to pass these two bills have amounted to much ado about nothing. Frankly, it’s been like watching in helpless despair as children squabble over toys … in quicksand.
I need only cite the title to a commentary on point from way back in June to vindicate my cynical view of this process, namely “Every Dem Senator Can Play Kingmaker. But Manchin Is the Only One Playing It. Why?” June 9, 2021. Naturally, the same holds for Sinema. What’s more, everything I wrote back then remains equally relevant today.
This is why I shall suffice to add the following observations on Senators Manchin and Sinema, Speaker Pelosi, and the Republicans:
On Sen. Manchin
He clearly thinks he’s first among equals in the Democratic Caucus. But progressives in the House are showing how to disabuse him of his imperiousness by making even more principled but equally uncompromising demands.
I just wish it had occurred to Sen. Booker to extract an iron-clad guarantee from Manchin to agree to a filibuster exception for voting rights as his uncompromising demand for voting on the infrastructure bill. Because that would’ve exposed Manchin as a neo-Confederate who thinks preserving the way whites used the filibuster to stall voting rights (for Blacks) in the 20th century is more important than protecting voting rights (for Blacks) in the 21st century.
Apropos of which, Manchin is not helping himself by slurring his fellow Democrats with a Republican dog whistle about Democrats creating a “culture of entitlement”. After all, nothing has contributed to America’s culture of entitlement quite like the taxpayer subsidies and tax breaks he has helped carve out for his wealthy private-equity and coal-companies donors.
On Sen. Sinema
Pundits like Michael Smerconish of CNN have been falling over themselves to hail Sinema as the Democrats’ John McCain. This, because they are getting the concept of maverick politician all twisted. After all, McCain was a maverick with a cause. Sinema is a wannabe without one.
But no less an authority than Maureen Dowd of The New York Times conferred iconic status on Sinema by featuring her in a Sunday column titled, “Sinema Stars in Her Own Film”. But, forget McCain, because Dowd flatters her with allusions to the mythical Sphinx in a vain attempt to explain Sinema’s inscrutable celebrity and illusory power.
With all due respect to Dowd, however, she is giving Sinema too much credit. There is nothing “riddlesome” about her. As Sen. Bernie Sanders made clear, in his inimitable fashion, any senator can play the role Sinema is playing if they were as “disquietingly” irresponsible as she is.
Frankly, she’s the maverick equivalent of Paris Hilton wanting to be famous just for being famous. Or, to be more respectful, the politician she has most in common with is that QAnon kook Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – who seems to think her only reason for being in Congress is to troll and otherwise insult fellow members. That is what so befuddles and enrages Democrats about Sinema.
On Speaker Pelosi
Speaker Nancy Pelosi keeps setting deadlines for voting on these historic bills only to move them further away at the last minute. After doing so twice just last week, she has now set October 31 as her new drop-dead date to pass Biden’s Build Back Better bills.
But, in whiffing like this, I fear she is looking less like Nancy, the great vote-corralling legislator, and more like Lucy, the Peanuts character famous for continually moving the football away after promising Charlie Brown she would let him kick it.
No doubt, when all is said and done, Democrats will hail whatever eventually passes as a generational achievement. And, despite my informed cynicism, I have no doubt they will pass both bills in some commendable form, eventually.
On Republicans
The problem is that this in-fighting among Democrats has provided ample fodder for Republicans to cast their control of Congress as utterly dysfunctional, and Biden’s presidency as a complete failure.
Of course, Republicans remain doggedly opposed to helping Democrats do anything to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, or to prepare the country to meet the challenges of the 21st century. This, because they remain cultishly beholden to Trump’s dystopian politics.
Republicans do not care that obstructing Biden’s agenda risks turning America into a banana republic. They only care that doing so gives them a chance of becoming the monkeys ruling it after the next election cycle.
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