America’s most ridiculous senator announces search for the real killers of Biden’s agenda
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It is very bad when Democrats promise things and fail to deliver them, says…Kyrtsen Sinema:
However, she will criticize her party for its complicity in setting unachievable, sky-high expectations, just like the Republicans who promised to repeal Obamacare under former President Donald Trump. A $3.5 trillion social spending bill, sweeping elections reform, a $15 minimum wage and changes to the filibuster rules were always a long shot with Sinema and Manchin as the definitive Democratic votes in the Senate.
“You’re either honest or you’re not honest. So just tell the truth and be honest and deliver that which you can deliver,” Sinema said. “There’s this growing trend of people in both political parties who promise things that cannot be delivered, in order to get the short-term political gain. And I believe that it damages the long-term health of our democracy.”
It’s not really a structural constraint when you, a person with agency, are the constraint. As Chait says:
It’s true that when Joe Biden runs on a promise to raise taxes on the rich and let Medicare negotiate down the price of drugs, and then fails to accomplish those things when elected, people get cynical about democracy. Sinema herself campaigned on letting Medicare negotiate drug prices, before changing her mind — but deciding, after hearing from powerful lobbyists, that you don’t want to follow through on your campaign promise is not what Sinema has in mind as an example of damaging people’s faith in democracy.
Obviously, any elected official needs to account for political reality. If Sinema wants to argue that, say, Bernie Sanders should vote for the shrunken version of Build Back Better on the grounds that it’s better than nothing, that’s a good argument. But it’s not a good defense of the people who are responsible for shrinking the bill.
Sinema’s passive-voice phrase “things that cannot be delivered” obscures her agency. Biden can’t deliver on the agenda he campaigned on not because it is inherently undeliverable, but because a handful of members of Congress, Sinema most prominent among them, refuses to deliver it.
And it’s particularly infuriating given that the New Deal/Great Society model of passing half-baked implementations of good ideas and gradually making them more generous and equitable is basically dead; this is the only bite at the apple Democrats are going to have for a long time. Sinema is sabotaging the party while openly admitting it’s bad politics and while also failing to articulate any actual substantive reasons for it, and then blaming everyone else.