Dems divided on how hard to push Biden agenda amid disaster polls: report

Get the latest BPR news delivered free to your inbox daily. SIGN UP HERE


Congressional Democrats face a challenging conundrum going into the November elections as they squabble among themselves over how to proceed.

“Democratic lawmakers are growing increasingly pessimistic about scoring a big legislative victory and are split over whether it makes sense to force so-called messaging votes on the Senate floor to draw contrasts with Republicans on key issues, such as expanded access to child care, programs to fight climate change and prescription drug reform,” according to The Hill.

“Some say those votes have value, while others wonder if they need to worry more about saving their imperiled Senate majority. Right now, political handicappers expect Republicans to flip the House.”

The question, therefore, is whether Democrats should double down on their policy proposals that have already cost them so much in polling and that they know won’t make it through Congress, or whether they should pivot toward a new direction.

Top Democrats, for their part, appear to prefer doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down, even if doing so means the Democrat Party drowning in disapproval. But vulnerable Democrats, not so much.

“Here’s the tension: You have folks who think democracy works best if senators have to take a position [by voting on proposals] and then you have folks who are deeply aware that we have five colleagues in very challenging races and we should listen to them about whether they want to take show votes that make their world much harder,” an anonymous Democrat senator told The Hill.

This comes as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is itching to pass a reconciliation package that would raise taxes on all Americans. Why? Because he believes removing more money from the already struggling American people’s pockets would somehow fix inflation.

“Reconciliation is very, very important. If you want to get rid of inflation, the only way to do it is to undo a lot of the Trump tax cuts and raise rates. No Republican is ever going to do that. So the only way to get rid of inflation is through reconciliation,” he said Tuesday.

According to The Hill, the anonymous lawmaker “noted there is little appetite among vulnerable incumbents such as Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) to take tough votes on bills that are likely to fail because of Republican opposition or divided Democratic support.”

The same applies to reconciliation bills.

“There are about a thousand ideas about what pieces can we move [in such a bill]. Can we do drugs by itself? Can we do drugs with climate? Can we do drugs, climate and child care? And it all depends on the same person. It’s like we go around in circles,” the anonymous lawmaker said.

By “same person,” the lawmaker reportedly meant West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who’s often been the make it or break it vote. But luckily for Schumer, Manchin appears to be interested in hiking taxes.

“Key holdout Senator Joe Manchin said Tuesday he discussed a tax increase and deficit reduction bill with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer as a way to reduce soaring inflation,” Bloomberg reported earlier this week.

“The West Virginia Democrat said he is open to using the fast-track budget process to bypass Republicans and ram corporate and individual tax increases through the Senate given that the GOP wants to ‘keep things the way they are’ in the tax code.”

However, the anonymous lawmaker forgot about the other person — Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

Sinema “has been adamant in her opposition to increasing” the corporate tax rate, according to Bloomberg.

And then there’s Massachusetts Rep. Elizabeth Warren, a far-leftist who’s “leading the call for Schumer to bring bold legislative proposals to the floor to either pass them or show voters that Republicans are against popular reforms,” as noted by The Hill.

Writing for The New York Times earlier this month, she called for Democrats to quadruple down on the party’s most radical policy proposals just for show.

“It’s no secret that I believe we should abolish the filibuster. But if Republicans want to use it to block policies that Americans broadly support, we should also force them to take those votes in plain view,” she wrote.

It’s not clear that Republicans would have a problem with this, given as these votes would help them greatly in producing strong midterm ads, not that they don’t already have plenty to work with …

Vivek Saxena

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

Latest Articles