Sometime over the last few months, entreaties to Manchin or Sinema started to remind me of the parts in Exodus where Moses pleads to the pharaoh. At this point I can readily imagine either of the two carved into the side of some pyramid.
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Here is a start.
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How can parents say they love and cherish their children and still refuse to keep them safe by at least wearing masks.
It makes no sense to me at all! I just don’t understand this behavior that might lead to the children’s deaths or extended health issues.
I’d be so scared and worried. WTF is the matter with them?!
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Progs are going about the filibuster thing all wrong. The Senate will never give up the filibuster because it has utility for both sides. What they will do, however, is override the filibuster whenever required to meet a critical need of the base. Harry Reid did so to stop the McConnell’s abusive expansion of the filibuster to judges and executive appointments. McConnell overrode the filibuster to confirm the 3 justices who just gutted Roe v Wade, a key priority for the GOP base.
S1 is a key priority for Dems, and Black voters in particular. Black voters are the anchor of the Dem Party coalition. They are the functional analog of social conservative voters in the GOP. As a party, if we want to hold the majority we must meet that need.
Get the infra and reconciliation bills passed and then work Manchin over to get a filibuster exception. Make him the king of the bill. Ultimately, he will lose re-election in '24 and Biden can make him an offer to become the Energy Secretary in his second term if he helps the Dems keep the majority by passing S1.
In truth, S1 isn’t necessary for Dems to hold the House/Senate in '22. It will be in '24 if we lose key Governors races in '22, so that’s why it remains a high priority issue.
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Here’s the truth.
Charles Koch bought off Manchin and Sinema.
Both of them are doing to Joe what LIEberman did to Obama.
There is NO WAY around that.
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A filibuster carve-out might be the way forward, but Manchin is the last person we’d want as Energy Secretary as a reward, with his fossil fuel industry ties. Give him something else like a cushy Ambassador position if he loses his reelection. “Hey Joe, you ever been to France?”
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The trademarked one word answer is appropriate here. You know darned well they’ve done nothing about that. 
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And the worst part is, for the most ardent GQP’ers, they’ll put the worst of the worst up.
And with voter suppression enacted in enough States, the worst of the worst will win.
Many GQP’ers are trying to out-do T****, so that’s what their ‘best’ candidate will look like.
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Agreed! It’s completely and totally nerve-wracking, yet probably necessary.
Yes! Promise him a position in the next administration/term. I don’t know that I’d pick Energy Secretary, but whatever, give him a position so he can retire from the Senate without facing an embarrassing and crushing re-election bid. And rename S1, The Joe Manchin For The People Act.
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I just hate rewarding bad action, but at this point, we need all the help we can get.
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The
is that they think they’re special. That they’re entitled. Their sense of community is restricted to those like them, those who look and believe in the same things as them.
I think that they haven’t paid close attention to these lyrics.
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Sure, offer to make him Energy Secretary if Biden wins a second term. Appoint him if Biden wins and Manchin loses his Senate seat. And the Biden watches Manchin like a hawk and fires him the minute he does anything to interfere with the administration’s energy and environmental policies.
Also, I like the idea of bribing Manchin with $50 billion for infrastructure money to be spent on anything he wants in West Virginia–including cash handouts to every West Virginia coal miner who loses his job, so he can spend the boodle on a retirement home on Alabama’s Redneck Riviera.
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I don’t like it either, but we’re faced with an existential crisis like no other, and saving democracy is more important than punishing bad behavior. Plus, even though it’s highly likely Manchin would lose in 2024, nothing is written in stone and he could eke out another victory. Then we’d be stuck with him for another six years. Getting him out of the Senate, should we hold the majority, is probably best for all our sanity.
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Unfortunately there just may not be anything that Biden can do. He can’t threaten Manchin and Sinema, they have all the aces, and they know it. They clearly want to kill Biden’s infrastructure bill, and this may be the price they extract for voting reform. Maybe they’re just waiting for Biden to cave.
How different things might have been, if the voters of Maine, who like to preen their “centrism,” had not fallen for Susan Collins’ schtick one more time.
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Racing to the bottom.
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It’s weird how the further north you go in Maine the redder it gets and the further south you go in Florida the bluer it gets.
WUWT?
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The existence of a bicameral legislative system, with one house in effect based on states rights (or territory irrespective of population), bolstered by the filibuster system in that house, is part of the bulwark of American capitalism. Protecting a minority-dominated economic system structurally against the majority “rabble” is foundational to the politics of capitalist democracy (most everywhere).
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I can’t answer for Maine but I was born and spent most of my life in Miami. We used to joke that the Mason-Dixon line started at the northern border of Broward County. Everywhere north of that was the Deep South. Even the accents tracked that, or at least used to.
The southeastern end is still largely Blue because the conservatives from the Midwest who keep retiring to Florida don’t like hearing all that Spanish being spoken down there. So they retire to the west coast, Orlando, and coastal panhandle. Miami-Dade is really more Caribbean than typical America.
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My understanding is that Maine has plenty of the “Let’s keep the politics out of politics” crowd that, out of their ignorance and complacency, is allowing this country to slide towards civil war.
If anyone thinks that is hyperbole, wait until a state legislature in 2024 votes to nullify the popular vote for the Presidency in that state and appoint its own electors.
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Uh, Texas, Florida, South Dakota…
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