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Tom Rinaldo

(22,911 posts)
Thu Jun 10, 2021, 11:58 AM Jun 2021

Joe Biden doesn't negotiate in public. Not with Netanyahu, not with Manchin either.

We can guess what is being said between Biden and Manchin, but we can't know. Here are some things that we do know however. First and foremost, we know that Joe Biden is an accomplished politician well versed in the legislative process. The same is true for the current Democratic leadership in Congress. We know that Joe Manchin is far from an unknown quantity to top Democrats. From all reports he enjoys a positive personal relationship with both Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden. That's all I need to know to realize that top Democrats don't need advice from me, and certainly not my approval, to cobble together a strategy best designed to accomplish as much of President Biden's agenda as possible during the current legislative session. The path to so doing runs directly through Joe Manchin's office.

Like it or not that is simply a fact. It almost wasn't so. Democrats came perilously close to being in the minority in the Senate this year. Had that happened, the path toward salvaging any of President Biden's agenda would have run through the offices of Lisa Murkowsky, Susan Collins, and Mitt Romney instead. Had Donald Trump just woken from his Fox news stupor long enough to actually engage in last Fall's negotiations around that session's Covid relief bill, and insisted to Republican's in Congress that they issue $2,000 stimulus checks (under his signature) to tens of millions of Americans rather than the $600 checks that they agreed among themselves to back, likely Republicans would have held onto their two Senate seats in Georgia. Instead of counting on a trio of so called moderate Republicans to pass anything meaningful through the Senate, even using reconciliation, thanks to Georgia, Biden now counts on the support of moderate to conservative Democratic Senators like Joe Manchin to accomplish almost anything.

There aren't ten Republican votes in the Senate to back any bill that will make Joe Biden and the Democrats look good to American voters prior to the mid term election. An endless negotiation strategy is destined to lead nowhere, later rather than sooner. There simply aren't enough Republican Senators like Susan Collins who actually need to occasionally burnish their so called moderate credentials with their voters back home. Biden is more than smart enough to know this, so why is he engaging in the charade? Simply put, because he doesn't have the votes to do otherwise. Not yet anyway. Biden may seem to be negotiating with Republicans but actually he's bargaining with the Democratic center instead. Knowing Joe Biden, taking him at his word, the real grit of that bargaining is happening behind closed doors.

I have a long personal track record of being a tad cynical about just how hard leading Democrats have in the past been willing to fight for working class Americans against the counter interests of corporate America. You may or may not have held similar views. I say this only to underline that I do not automatically fall behind the views of a Democratic President simply because he or she is a Democratic President, but Joe Biden has earned my support and trust. His sponsorship and passage of the 1.9 Trillion dollar American Rescue Plan, with the plethora of progressive initiatives it embraces, by itself is more than enough to win him my loyalty for the foreseeable future (which admittedly isn't as long a time horizon as it once was.)

As noted above, I'm not privy to Joe Biden's game plan but I know this: When you don't have the votes to win you don't call for an immediate vote, not unless your intent is to score political points by losing, which is a very poor substitute for winning instead. Many have already opined that the most effective strategy for getting a moderate to conservative Democratic Senator (which is a grouping larger than just Joe Manchin) to abandon their publicly stated commitment to pursuing bipartisan solutions for our nation's problems, is to go the extra mile in attempting just that -- even if common sense dictates that any such effort is doomed to failure. This is especially true when there is precious little political leverage available to otherwise compel cooperation from a Senator who runs over 40 points ahead of the National Democratic ticket inside of his own home state.

Here is something else that we unfortunately understand: Just because something is deemed essential doesn't guarantee it can be done. It was essential for the French army to defend Paris against invading Nazi's early in WWII, but that didn't stop the Nazis. Eventually however Paris was retaken and today it again is free. I don't know how much of President Biden's agenda can pass through Congress this year, but more of it already has been accomplished than would be true had Democrats fallen short in Georgia. I am confident that more good work will still be accomplished toward that end, though I can only guess at how much. I strongly suspect that there's a lot more going on now behind the scenes than currently meets the eye. We are only about five months into Joe Biden's presidency. We have not run out of runway yet for this session of Congress, and when it breaks for the Fall as it always does it will reconvene in January with a renewed chance for making essential progress prior to the 2022 midterm elections. If "bipartisanship" goes nowhere in the intervening months that will strengthen the case for go it lone Democratic initiatives come January instead. Hopefully we won't have to wait that long .

You might think from what I've written above that I am explicitly or implicitly criticizing progressive Democrats in Congress for being impatient with the pace of change, or that I fear them becoming more apart of the problem now than the cure. No, I don't. A senator such as Joe Manchin needs to know that real pressure on Joe Biden is real and growing from the left. I honestly believe that Joe Manchin does not want to fatally undermine Biden's presidency. He wants to shape it, sure, and he (pretty much like all of those in politics) wants to point to his fingerprints and on its accomplishments, but not to destroy it. In football terms, we are still in the middle of the first quarter, and while half time is a more significant marker in a presidential term than it is in a football game, there are a lot of plays yet to be run befor then. If the left (which I consider myself a part of) oversteps it's bounds now and starts accusing the Biden Administration of ineptness in it's dealings with congressional Republicans, or worse yet of capitulation to the Republican political agenda, that will NOT be helpful. Acute expressions of frustration and the articulation of a sense of real urgency however do serve a positive function. It provides a backdrop for President Biden to convey to the likes of Manchin, during his private undisclosed negotiations, that he doesn't have unlimited rope to work with, an end game is rapidly approaching less his Democratic coalition ultimately fall apart.

None of this is easy, and nothing is guaranteed to succeed. We chose our leadership team and it is a good one. They have their work cut out for them. Like with any expert medical or legal team, victory can never be assured. But we have the right people on the job and I am inclined to trust in their ultimate expertise and judgement to accomplish as much as can be accomplished, under the present circumstances..



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Joe Biden doesn't negotiate in public. Not with Netanyahu, not with Manchin either. (Original Post) Tom Rinaldo Jun 2021 OP
Excellent post pandr32 Jun 2021 #1
You are very welcome. Thank you. n/t Tom Rinaldo Jun 2021 #2
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