Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Sausage Making, Sausage Eating

 It looks like we are getting closer to having an actual BBB plan. It will be - in the manner of all major legislation - a bundle of compromises. Today, ACA is considered a policy triumph, an effort to provide health insurance to millions of Americans. In 2010, it was considered a failure by progressive advocates who want a single payer system. Since 2010, ACA has been protected, expanded and improved upon.

A similar dynamic is at play here. BBB will be a major accomplishment, but the idea and plan for BBB was so expansive that any bill that survives Manchinema will seem like a letdown. 

It will not be.

The question is: How can Democrats - in an age of Internet Hot Takes and Purity Politics - sell a truly impressive expansion of benefits to a skeptical public?

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