Party sticks to its guns on healthcare and says it’s willing to hold out – much to the delight of its progressive supporters
When he sat down to talk about the US government shutdown with reporters from a closely read political newsletter this week, Chuck Schumer sounded as if he was relishing his standoff with the Republicans.
“Every day gets better for us,” he told Punchbowl News. As the shutdown got under way, Schumer explained, the Republican part believed that Democrats would quickly fold and vote to reopen the government, but instead they had stuck to their guns for a week and a half, demanding an array of concessions on healthcare and other issues.
Outrage followed from Republicans, who printed out the Senate minority leader’s remark on posters and condemned it before press conferences. The shutdown has prompted federal agencies to close or curtail operations nationwide, and forced hundreds of thousands of employees to stay home without immediate pay. Schumer, Republicans argued, was being callous.
I think the Democratic leadership learned from the last debt ceiling debacle, where they did whatever the GOP and Trump wanted and got pelted with figurative rotten eggs by everyone who was paying attention.
The Obamacare subsidies are an easy hill to die on. They are available to anyone who makes less than a high middle class income, and for a great many Americans, they are the absolutely only way they can afford health insurance.
A self-declaredly populist movement like MAGA should know better than making health care unaffordable to millions to pay for billionaire tax cuts and corruption.
MAGA is a populist movement. Actually representing the will of the people is not required to meet the definition of “populist”.
It’s an astroturf effort, with vast resources being thrown into the process of manufacturing consent among the dimwitted.
No, they dont have the backing of a biased DNC anymore. So they’re trying to paint themselves as progressive warriors.
Newsom was the most noticable, but Schumer and Jeffries are doing the same thing. They realized they’re actually going to have competitive primaries, and that negotiating with trump virtually guarantees they lose their next primary.
It’s pure self preservation, they still need replaced. And we absolutely can not afford to keep them in office, let alone leadership positions.
I’d rather have them engaged in a futile struggle to save their useless asses than flat-out capitulating at the first hurdle as they usually do.
I’m not nearly that cynical about literally everything the Dems do, but I’m absolutely cool with replacing the 70 year olds. (Schumer is 74.)
Outside of Bernie, they relied on the DNC squashing primary challengers, then being the only option in the general.
That’s why all the big neoliberals are putting on these acts, they’re more scared of midterms than Republicans are. They need to suck up all the oxygen so real progressives don’t heard, and billionaire owned.media is happy to help.
Quick edit:
And for the record, Bernie needs primaried too, everyone does. Healthy primaries is how we make sure we win generals.
@manxu @MicroWave
The thing about this “populist” movement is, they are liars.
Billionaire owned media will never call an actual populist a populist…
They want to keep it a dirty word, when it literally just means putting the average citizen’s needs above the needs of the wealthiest.
If we don’t have populism, the alternative is an oligarchy. Those are the two ends of the scale, we can get something near the middle, but it at least has to be fair.
If the wealthiest have an advantage, they’ll never stop accumulating wealth.
And wealth is finite, for them to accumulate more, they got to take it from someone else.