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

Monday, November 1, 2021

Voting Their Feels

 This "analysis" of Virginia voters on the eve of their gubernatorial election is both dumb and depressing. The idea that Biden could somehow end the pandemic while facing massive vaccine hesitancy is nuts. The bigger question about "what has Biden done" is infuriating.

Let's assume Manchin gets off his fucking hobby horse and we get a BBB in the neighborhood of $1.6T. Combine that with the pandemic relief plan and the infrastructure plan and it represents a massive set of spending priorities.

Manchinema's feckless fuckery has created a narrative that Democrats can't get things done. No one who isn't a political junkie cares about the fact that it's a 50 vote margin. No one cares that they are on the verge of a massive spending bill. All they know is the narrative, and Manchinema have made that narrative. This Twitter thread from Chris Murphy adds needed perspective.

So far, the Biden Administration has

- cut child poverty in half
- negotiated the largest infrastructure bill in history
- made the biggest investment in clean energy
- funding for 1,000,000 more housing units
- cut the cost of child care by $10,000
- funded universal pre-school

Chris Murphy is very good at Twitter, but the fact that September and October has been a daily case of Lucy and the Football with Manchinema is why we are in this state.

So, to recap: we have one political party that is on the verge of a massive investment in aid to families and green energy, but can't message its way out of a wet paper bag and another party that is currently making peace with their party leader trying to overthrow American democracy.

And the second party could win a reliably Democratic governor's seat.

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