The Biden Administration (No Lago)

[deaddmwalking]

It is real funny that Biden is going with 1400 dollars. Like on what planet is 'that' the political move you want to make? Haha yea I 'said' 2k very clearly and sure this isn't 2k but but but if you add it up~ you will see that it is 2k.

Is this even a serious question?

Biden says "$2k". Congress passes $600.

Biden says, "I said $2k, let's give them rest". Biden proposes $1400.

[Kaelik]

It is real funny that Biden is going with 1400 dollars. Like on what planet is 'that' the political move you want to make? Haha yea I 'said' 2k very clearly and sure this isn't 2k but but but if you add it up~ you will see that it is 2k.

Is this even a serious question?

Biden says "$2k". Congress passes $600.

Biden says, "I said $2k, let's give them rest". Biden proposes $1400.

Factually biden promised 2k long after congress passed the 600.

But I think its absolutely amazing that democrats will promise 2k checks like 500 times use little graphics of a check with 2k on it (again after the 600 was passed and even after people have received 600) and then come out with 1400 and piss a bunch of people off who expected 2k checks. And then the first thing that some people have to do is defend the political efficacy of pissing off a bunch of people by giving them less than they expected.

Maybe the fact that a bunch of people are pissed off and you have to spend your time telling everyone that they should have just known that the a democrats promise is always less than the literal words of the promise is a sign that this was not in fact politically efficacious.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Clearly they meant you get $2000 checks for the whole pandemic. Already got some money? Take it out of the $2000!
Economics is easy. People get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this? Biden should hire me.

[Kaelik]

Well it's funny because there are a lot of ways to say "$2000 total" besides "$2000 checks". We know this because while Biden was promising $2000 checks as late as January 10th, long after many people received $600, now he is using different language.

So if "$2000 checks" "meant" $1400 checks on January 10th, then surely it would also be correct to use that now. But of course, now Biden won't say "$2000 checks." The change in language recognizes that the previous language was a promise to do something different than $1400 checks.

[MGuy]

It is real funny that Biden is going with 1400 dollars. Like on what planet is 'that' the political move you want to make? Haha yea I 'said' 2k very clearly and sure this isn't 2k but but but if you add it up~ you will see that it is 2k.

Is this even a serious question?

Biden says "$2k". Congress passes $600.

Biden says, "I said $2k, let's give them rest". Biden proposes $1400.

Well it was already funny that Biden and his people pulled this move. It is more funny that there are people who exist that actually look at it and are completely uncritical of it. The most hilarious part is you don't even answer the question you quote and imply criticism of. I asked why would that be the political move you'd want to make and you just... repeat the joke I made about it. I wonder if you thought about this before you posted it at all. I wonder if you actually believe that when Biden said he would give everyone 2k checks that Americans intuited that the 600 dollars Congress already passed without him was a part of that. If you actually believe that this is the case I'll just log it as another instance of you being out of touch and you can ignore this next bit. However, if you're not actually an idiot, and you know that's not how people would interpret it, then please tell me how this move is actually good politically.

I mean honestly I actually did really think they had to go through with the 2k because I mean... why would you set yourself up for failure? Why would the Dems put out the message and then go back on it? But damn. Not only was I apparently giving Biden too much credit but even given the low bar I had set in my mind this is the strangest way to fall short of it. Considering that people like dead exist to reliably vote in people who want to pull this kind of fuckery over and over again I guess they don't have to worry about taking a real hit.

[Kaelik]

Apparently the very likely head of DOJ antitrust under Biden is someone, Renata Hesse, who has been working for Amazon and Google. In case you were wondering how much the DOJ antitrust was going to continue to follow the 40 year pattern of saying AntiTrust means targeting unions and ignoring monopolists.

[Kaelik]

Biden announced his plan to end the Keystone XL pipeline on day 1......

This isn't 1/1000000th of what we actually need to address climate change, but it's a thing that I did not expect from the guy deep in climate denial picking Oil execs to run his climate policy.

Gentlebeings.... It's good!

[Kaelik]

Hahahahahhaahahhhhahhaa

Schumer and mcconnell working out a power sharing system where they get equal numbers on committees so that democrats cant even do anything with the senate committees to go with not being able to do anything with the general chamber.

Why bother voting for democrats at all if they are just going to put republicans in charge even if you give them a majority.

[MGuy]

I don't know the process for deciding who gets what Senate committee seat. Given that the Senate is going to be 50/50 even Ruth Harris being a tie breaker was there ever a real chance for Senate dems to deny an even split on the committees?

[Grek]

The actual rules say that the first thing the Senate has to do after swearing in its new members is to pass an 'organizing resolution' which decides (among other things) who gets to be on what committee. There's no strict requirements for this except that the resolution get passed by the Senate as a whole, a fact which has historically resulted in divvying up committee seats in proportion to senate seats, such that a 50/50 split in the Senate results in every committee getting equal numbers from each party. Technically Schumer could demand more committee seats for his party or even try to tell the Republicans to go fuck themselves and that they're not getting any committee seats this election, but that would require that he either convince 10 Republicans to agree to this resolution (good luck) or that he move to kill the filibuster and make it so Senate votes only need a simple majority to pass (he doesn't have the balls).

I'm honestly not sure what Kaelik was hoping for here other than exactly this.

[Kaelik]

I don't know the process for deciding who gets what Senate committee seat. Given that the Senate is going to be 50/50 even Ruth Harris being a tie breaker was there ever a real chance for Senate dems to deny an even split on the committees?

Yes. In fact, the organizing resolution that decides committee spots is decided by just voting it up or down. So they could in fact do the normal thing of granting the majority party more seats on each committee than the minority party.

The democrats, as much as they and all their supporters want to pretend they aren't, are the majority party and could just do that.

The actual rules say that the first thing the Senate has to do after swearing in its new members is to pass an 'organizing resolution' which decides (among other things) who gets to be on what committee. There's no strict requirements for this except that the resolution get passed by the Senate as a whole, a fact which has historically resulted in divvying up committee seats in proportion to senate seats, such that a 50/50 split in the Senate results in every committee getting equal numbers from each party. Technically Schumer could demand more committee seats for his party or even try to tell the Republicans to go fuck themselves and that they're not getting any committee seats this election, but that would require that he either convince 10 Republicans to agree to this resolution (good luck) or that he move to kill the filibuster and make it so Senate votes only need a simple majority to pass (he doesn't have the balls).

I'm honestly not sure what Kaelik was hoping for here other than exactly this.

The senate organizing resolution is passed unanimous consent every single fucking time that any us has been alive. In fact, 1953 was the last time it was filibustered. And this was just one dude who was mad about not getting the committee seats, not a party. So you don't actually need 60 votes which is a thing we know because republicans have never in our lifetimes had 60 senators and yet, have had a majority on committee seats with their fewer votes.

Democrats can just abolish the filibuster, a thing which every single democratic senator is a mass murderer if they do not do and should be fucking locked up in jail for life for the crime of mass murder if they do not do. But even if they were absolutely horrible monsters who are deliberately choosing to pass zero laws for the next two years, the Filibuster is only ever a BLUFF. You can call the bluff at any time! Just gather in a fucking room and do your job for as long as it takes to force them to give the fuck up. Anyone with the desire could break the filibuster at any time if they wanted. The point is they don't care enough about any laws to do it. But if they cared about the organizing resolution, they could just wait the fuckers out.

You can sleep on the senate floor and go to the bathroom in the senate bathrooms until 10 fucking republicans decide that slightly different committees are worth more than days of suffering.

If the "problem" is that republicans would straight up filibuster the organizing resolution then the solution is to give them zero seats and vote it through with Harris. Because if the problem is that they are the most obstructionist party that has ever existed in the history of the senate way worse than they were in 2011 and 2013, giving them the ability to tie a bunch of procedural votes in committees so you can't even run your own committees is not the solution.

What I expected is at least in the extremely narrow scope of advancing their own personal power democratic senate leadership would maybe once fucking ever treat republicans like the danger they are.

[Kaelik]

Sounds like we are absolutely going to see the success of Trump's killing the JCPOA because Biden and the Biden admin are too much american exceptionalists to ever admit that even Trump's actions could be wrong on the international stage.

In confirmation hearings Avril Haines is telling people that if Iran returns to complying with all the terms then and only then will Biden direct that the US start complying.

Because America is so perfect that we get to just break agreements, then blame other people for not following their end of an agreement that we broke. Then we demand that they show infinite faith and trust in our assorted cadre of liars because they are different liars than the last group of liars.

This is not even remotely how foreign policy works, and if Biden isn't willing to comply with the terms and remove all the sanctions then we just aren't going to get the JCPOA back and we are going to continue doing violence to Iran for the entire Biden presidency.

[Kaelik]

Biden's state pick saying the embassy will stay in Jerusalem.

We've heard repeatedly that Biden doesn't want to repeal the 2017 tax law because he thinks we should do tax cuts from 2016 rates that were too high. And his staff telling us that rolling back Trump border changes right away would be a mistake and we have to wait indefinitely.

I guess it would just be a lot more easing if the democratic presidency didn't take the position that Donald Trump is bad, but all the things Donald Trump did are good.

EDIT: while we are doing bipartisan consensus:

Marco Rubio: would you agree that we need to overthrow the elected leader of Venezuela?

Blinken: yes I would love to work with you to do coups. Those are good.

[MGuy]

Of l would pretty much always bet on Dems adhering to norms more than not. There's a strong argument for removing every sitting congressman who did and who still are playing into the stolen election bullshit. There are political and safety reasons to do so that would benefit them specifically but I doubt we're going to see it happen to the likes of Lindsey. I assumed the committees were always split based on relative numbers of Senate members. Finding out it is just a tradition probably means that you can bet that Republicans are going to be the first to break it as soon as they believe it is worth the cost of doing so.

[Kaelik]

Of l would pretty much always bet on Dems adhering to norms more than not. There's a strong argument for removing every sitting congressman who did and who still are playing into the stolen election bullshit. There are political and safety reasons to do so that would benefit them specifically but I doubt we're going to see it happen to the likes of Lindsey. I assumed the committees were always split based on relative numbers of Senate members. Finding out it is just a tradition probably means that you can bet that Republicans are going to be the first to break it as soon as they believe it is worth the cost of doing so.

Well that's the thing, they AREN'T split based on the proportion of the senators.

They are ALWAYS split with X for the minority party and X+1 for the Majority except once ever, in 2001.

The "tradition" for democratic majorities is significantly stronger than for splits, but democrats are of COURSE going to choose whatever disadvantages them the most because "unity" with the fascists is the driving impulse of all democratic actions.

But I mistakenly gave them literally any non zero amount of credit whatsoever, more the fool me.

[Grek]

Yes. In fact, the organizing resolution that decides committee spots is decided by just voting it up or down. So they could in fact do the normal thing of granting the majority party more seats on each committee than the minority party.

Historically, the VP tiebreaker hasn't counted toward this purpose and, surprise surprise, it wasn't counted this time either. Seriously, 2001 was the only other time that the Republicans and Democrats had an actual 50/50 split and guess what their solution was that time? Split everything down the middle, just like they're doing now. This should not be in any way a surprise to you.

The strong Senate norm against doing the exact thing you propose Schumer should have done is the only reason that the process of passing an organizing resolution doesn't turn into a massive biannual political shitstorm. He was never going to break with tradition by shitting on the metaphorical and literal Senate floor over a mere two years of legislative advantage, especially given that he's up for reelection immediately after that period is up. He'd basically be ending his career as a Senator while leaving a legacy of increased political brinkmanship for decades to come. It was never going to fucking happen and you getting performatively angry like this over him failing to do so is absurd.

[Kaelik]

What an incredibly dumb fucking post.

First off this "strong tradition" you are describing is an event that happened once ever in 2001. That isnt a strong tradition. That's literally just a thing that happened once. There are actually more 5050 (in percent) senates that didnt split than did.

I would like it if politicians that ostensibly represent me put entire seconds of even minutes of thought into whether they should value a "tradition" of an agreement reached once ever that had no binding precedent over the factual circumstances and reality of the current moment.

Your reasoning for why Democrats must always give republicans whatever they want is somehow even dumber than your argument for tradition. Schumer is a senator from NY. You are apparently proposing that NY will elect a republican ending his career if he should commit the heinous crime of doing the thing that democrats kept promising they would do if they won Georgia. Two democratic senators and the president elect kept promising that if they won democrats would control the chamber. Ny isnt going to suddenly feel betrayed and start electing republicans. This absolute naive as shit view of the inherent centrism of all voters is always dumb. The american people actually dont want power sharing agreements and literally no one is going to feel betrayed by not having one who isnt a current gop senator.

This power sharing agreement like all of Schumer's constant caving is the only actual threat to his career if nancy pelosi doesnt successfully break aocs will since he might be primaried.

Again nothing about this power sharing agreement preserves any senate norms or prevents any shitstorms because no matter what democrats do this two years every single fucking future time that a senate has a majority they are just going to pass a resolution and ignore the minority party if they object.

Just once ever I'd love if people would stop making the argument that it is bad if democrats had a fight with republicans because if they won they might have to fight them next time. First off, Republicans probably wouldnt object! Republicans probably arent keen to publicly lose a fight for no reason! But god if they did that would only be to the good. It wouldnt be a bad thing for the democrats to break republican intransigence on day 1 because we have two more fucking years for them to follow up by legislating and it would be a lot better if they spent it passing laws then refusing to pass laws because they might have to fight republicans.

[Grek]

It is as much a law of the universe as Gravity or Evolution that no Senate majority leader is ever going to do what you're suggesting they do simply because it would be the right thing to do. Water does not go uphill unless someone expends energy to pump it there. Genes which do not contribute more toward reproduction than their competition will not be carried on into the next generation. Politicians who are willing to put principles before politics cease to hold power as soon as an opponent can engineer a way to put their principles in the way of electoral victory. I'm open to (and would probably agree with) arguments as to how pushing every political norm to the limit in pursuit of justice and social reform would be the right thing to do. I'm even willing to entertain hypothetical scenarios where Schumer has a Phineas P. Gage-esque head injury which miraculously replaces his personality with that of an honest man. But absent any flying railroad spikes, we're not going to see Schumer (or any other Senate majority leader) pursue those sorts of aims, because a person simply cannot become Senate majority leader without first passing through trial after trial in which they must choose to do what is good for getting elected over every other option available. If Schumer were the sort of person to make any choice other than the one he is currently making, he would never have reached the position he is in now.

The majority of Senators want to take their seats with quiet dignity, allocate enough pork to their constituents and look good in front of enough cameras to get reelected without fanfare. A minority of Senators might be interested in making noise or taking symbolic actions in favour of particular causes supported by their electorate, and could be convinced to make horse trades to see those symbolic votes pass. A much smaller minority of Senators still retain a few scant shreds of moral conviction and are willing to spend a few terms fighting for actual change before inevitably being winnowed out as a direct result of our election cycle favouring those who will do what wins campaign contributions and media coverage over standing up for what is kind and fair. Asking why Schumer lacks the spine required to ginger the collective puckered assholes of the Senate by forcing them to actually fight for their jobs instead of unanimously agreeing that everyone gets awarded their favourite pick of the current vacancies is like asking why the tiger eating your goats doesn't become a vegetarian instead. He obviously lacks the moral capacity to do so, and if he had somehow possessed it, he would never have risen to your attention as someone worth complaining about to begin with.

(And yes, fixing this would be possible through electoral reform. But our Senators wouldn't be our Senators if they were suited to winning under better rules than the ones we currently have. You can hardly expect the Senate to vote toward rigging the game against themselves. If electoral change happens, it won't happen through our elected officials.)

[Kaelik]

There is no electoral benefit to sharing power with republicans. Only electoral detriment.

There is a winnowing process against doing literally anything to help literally anyone. But that winnowing process occurs exclusively when the democratic establishment thumbs the scales, not because refusing to do good things sways voters.

What schumer is doing is risking his own political future making himself less likely to remain in the senate and risking democratic majorities making it less likely for democrats to win generally in order to promote his ideological agenda of not doing anything.

[MGuy]

Schumer is one of the big dogs in the Senate. If he ushers himself out then at least we would have one more of these incompetent people out of the Senate.

That being said, I agree with Grek and while I wouldn't say repeating what happened one time in the past represents a 'strong' tradition Schumer deciding to do it despite the nature of politics having changed in the interim is 100% on brand for him and for a good deal of the party. I also don't think a move like this will cost 'him' personally. New York is decidedly blue and also home to some of the most corrupt democrats in office. Any neolib is going to see this move as reasonable. Regular folks don't pay attention to this stuff and I had assumed that this would be the way committees went from the get go. Standard Dem procedure is maintaining the system as is.

It seems that the deal is incomplete though. Last time I saw news on it McConnell was moving to try to preserve the fillibuster as part of these talks. The fact that McConnell feels comfortable enough to argue this if Schumer can just do whatever he'd want to is not a good sign to me.

[Mistborn]

Doesn't the Chairman break ties anyway? I don't see how this changes things fundamentally. Any defection from the majority party means the bill fails but the fact the chamber is 50-50 already means that is the case.

[Kaelik]

Doesn't the Chairman break ties anyway? I don't see how this changes things fundamentally. Any defection from the majority party means the bill fails but the fact the chamber is 50-50 already means that is the case.

There are different rules for ties for different things.

For example, advancing bills still happens on a tie, so republicans can advance whatever they want from committee.

Different committees have different rules about how most things work, and usually they just ignore the rules and all agree to do whatever. But presumably this arrangement in the course of actual conflicts would give republicans equal access to calling witnesses instead of being limited to one day as a minority party is.

[Grek]

The actual "if it's a 50/50 split in Senate seats, that means we do a 50/50 split on committee seats" agreement is indeed only a weak precedent. The actual line is drawn at turning the organizing resolution into an actual political fight. Doing like Kaelik suggests and announcing that the Republicans are all complicit with insurrection and deserve nothing, would obviously result in a political fight. But so would giving the Democrats 51% instead of 50%, since the Republicans would point to the (admittedly weak) precedent and force it to come to an actual vote, which would mean either backing down or getting rid of the filibuster. Since Schumer knows that he would back down if it came to that, he's not even going to make the attempt.

For similar reasons, I find the idea that McConnell is moving to 'preserve' the filibuster a little absurd. Why would Schumer want to get rid of the filibuster? The Democrats in the Senate like having it there to blame their chronic inaction on. "Oh, we really wanted to pass <mumble>. For sure. But going for The Nuclear Option? I don't know if we're ready to do that just yet." It's the perfect excuse. Sure, he might threaten to get rid of it as a bit of political theatre, or actually be forced into doing it if McConnell decides that this is his last term anyway and that he might as well die on Obstruction Hill. But absent any arm twisting from the White House, I don't see Schumer going for it.

[Kaelik]

The "preserving" is to remove any possibility of even the threat (not really of course, because like all senate rules it can be changed with 51 votes at any time).

He wants the resolution to commit to keeping the filibuster so he can call Schumer a liar if he even threatens it.

That said, prior to this extremely fucking stupid power sharing agreement I was pretty optimistic that in fact democrats would finally get rid of the filibuster.

There's only so much just sitting there not passing any laws you can handle and if the House passes HR 1, and then the Democratic senate sits on it, democrats really should just recognize they will never have a majority again for as long they live. Since republicans will never back down on voting rights, that means that absent just the absolute most callous stupid shit they would have to face the filibuster one way or another, even if that is just by forcing it to be a talking filibuster again (which is again, I cannot stress this enough, basically the same as removing it because the GOP are very happy to vote no on a move to bring it to the floor, but very unwilling to spend months not leaving the building).

While I appreciate that ideologically many democrats believe that no laws should ever be passed without unanimous consent because passing laws will make the american public feel entitled to a functioning government, as a practical matter their own private political interests in getting reelected and frustration at the GOP refusing unanimous consent on everything even things they think it "should" compromise one would eventually bring them to the point of passing laws.

I'm not pretending it wouldn't be a frustrating 6 months as they pass zero laws while begging republicans, but the eventual response seem(ed) very possible.

[Kaelik]

Nothing more american than the democratic party playing for the inauguration a communist revolutionary's song which is a communist folk song and cutting out several verses to hide the communism.

Democrats: The premises are good, but the conclusions, they are very bad.

Well new president. Time for everyone to go back to brunch.