The “I am negotiating in good faith” banner on my yacht has many people asking questions already answered by my banner
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During his months-long stream of assurances that “of course he has cheese, this is a cheese shop,” Joe Manchin landed on a principle for negotiation that is, on its face, correct: it would be better to pass a few fully-funded programs than a bunch of half-assed ones that will almost certainly expire once their sunset clauses hit given the unlikelihood that the Dem trifecta will be operative after 2022. This has led to some wonky liberals urging Democrats to take the climate spending/ACA expansion/pre-K bill (despite the nuttiness of preferring pre-K to the child tax credit, because you think reducing child poverty is bad because the parents will just spend the money on crack.) And, as far as it goes, I would agree that this bill would be considerably better than nothing and worth passing.
All of this depends, however, on the assumption that Manchin is negotiating in good faith:
This is correct, but Manchin is the parents and the rest of the coalition is the unruly kids. https://t.co/JRsYq0NfMH— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 20, 2021
The are some pretty obvious problems with the “Joe Manchin is the adult in the room here” assumption:
- Joe Biden, who has been around the Senate since Methuselah had his baby teeth, clearly thinks that Manchin is no longer negotiating in good faith. Biden isn’t infallible and perhaps he’s wrong, but it’s certainly not a judgment inconsistent with the publicly known facts. And many other Dem senators have reached the same conclusion.
- Manchin going on the opposition’s propaganda network to announce that he was no longer interested in negotiations would seem to be a quite powerful data point in favor of Biden’s assessment.
- This is the anodyne statement from Biden Manchin is using as the pretext to defend his sudden appearance on Murdoch TV cutting off negotiations. Does this seem like the actions of someone sincerely interested in making a deal, or someone who was stringing people along Olympia Snowe-style? I think the question answers itself.
An additional point here is that while the argument that in an era of legislative gridlock it’s important to prioritize is sound, taking it seriously requires working within the general framework of the priorities of your coalition. Saying the party needs to prioritize while also insisting on your own highly idiosyncratic preference orderings is unlikely to work. At least, if you’re actually trying to make a deal in good faith rather than just deliberately wasting everybody’s time. Personally, I don’t think we’re going to be seeing any cheese here but we’ll see.