There are 269 members of the Democratic caucuses in Congress at the moment, including two independents on the Senate side. Two of them hold a veto over what the rest of the caucus and the president want passed. The press depicts this as Democrats in disaray. Meanwhile, in one of those tweets that got refreshed away before I could grab it, a reporter said in all the years of covering Washington, she (or he) has never seen Democrats more unified.
Fighting for what you want is important even if you fail to achieve it. But you have to be seen to be fighting. From one of my posts on Saturday:
“If we are running on policy appeals and they are running on identity appeals, we are going to lose that battle,” Obama White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said. “But identity isn’t just race and gender; it’s who you are fighting for and who you are fighting against.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is still fighting for paid family leave. The principle obstacle to including it in the President Biden’s still-unvoted spending package is one of the two members standing, each separately, against the other 267 and the president (Washington Post):
The New York Democrat targeted the chief objector to the program, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). She hit the phones Friday and fired off a flurry of texts to her moderate-leaning colleague that continued into the weekend, saying she would be even willing to “meet him in D.C. or anywhere in the country” to make the case for the benefits, she said in an interview.
Yet Manchin refused to relent, Gillibrand said, resisting her latest entreaties much as he had the many alternatives that Democrats had presented to him in recent weeks.
Still, Gillibrand remained undeterred. “It’s not over until it’s over,” she said.
The burst of activity from Gillibrand reflected what some reluctantly have acknowledged is a last-gasp attempt to salvage one of their most popular policy promises. With the House set to vote on a sweeping spending measure as soon as Tuesday, it marked a new test as to whether Democrats, largely led by women in the House and Senate, could sway Manchin and deliver the help they long have promised to millions of Americans.
The paid-leave plan that Democrats originally envisioned would have provided 12 weeks of aid for Americans who fall ill, need to care for a sick loved one or are tending to the birth of a new child. Tens of millions of workers don’t have access to some or all of these benefits now through their employers, according to federal estimates, resulting in a gap that has hit low-income families and women the hardest.
Manchin may not budge. The other holdout, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, is a cypher. On Thursday, the Post reports, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pledged she was not done fighting “for the babies.”
A day earlier, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) hammered Manchin indirectly, stressing that Democrats are “not going to let one man tell all the women in this country that they can’t have paid leave.” And a wide array of lawmakers, including Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), have placed calls to Manchin directly about the issue, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
For his part, Manchin, a seasoned politician, seems to be deliberately not understanding how the program would work and be funded. He has variously complained about the possibility of fraud, about the impacts on small businesses, and about work requirements “even though employment is a condition for one to take leave in the first place,” sources told the Post.
The $1.75 trillion compromise under negotiation, half the original proposal, leaves out a lot of programs people want and need, including more climate-related spending. Some activists will portray whatever is left in the final package as a betrayal by “the Democrats.” But in fact, it is only two blocking the full $3.5 trillion package and forcing the compromise.
It is easy for progressives to be angry at “the Democrats.” Democrats are the only ones in Congress with the power to disappoint them because left-activists expect better of them. They expect nothing of Republicans. Republicans are “in array” against women and “the babies” and the environment and voting rights and everything else Democrats want to improve Americans’ lives. But it is Democrats who get vilified as feckless or useless or corporate sellouts, etc.
With the narrowest of congressional majorities that leave no room for defections in the Senate, any one member of the 50 in the caucus can obstruct the rest, not only on the spending package but on revising or revoking the filibuster rule that might give Democrats more leeway for passing voting rights legislation. But short of sending the two naysayers off to Guantanamo for persuasion, it’s not clear what critics expect the other 267 to do.
In crafting “Via Dolorosa,” playwright David Hare examined the intractable Israeli–Palestinian conflict close up. He visits settlers Danny and Sarah who live in a Spielberg-esque subdivision built on occupied territory. They discuss the Oslo framework for peace which the pair consider a betrayal of their interests. Hare tries to tease out what they think is a better solution.
“Not pieces of paper call Oslo,” says Sarah.
“No I know what you think the way forward isn’t,” Hare replies. “I’m asking what the way forward is.”
“I look at my children and I want them to leave in peace I never had,” says Sarah.
“But how is it to come about?’
“I don’t know.”
And I don’t know what can be done to get everything passed that needs to be passed by a sharply divided Congress with no room for error.