Your diagnosis of the money objection is a little lacking. A campaign war chest isn't personal wealth, and while a popular politician can crowdfund a sustainable level of donations from Joe and Jane Democrat, ActBlue doesn't hand out lifetime sinecures to former politicians who raised a lot on the platform. Lobbyists representing wealthy corporations absolutely can offer somebody like Sinema a future position in exchange for services rendered while she has political power, and it's a category error to pretend that the criticism of her potential corruption reflect her campaign donations. If that criticism has merit, primarying her out of office in three years isn't much of a threat.
Came on here to write this and could have put it better. Also worth noting that small donors can't offer you internships on their vineyards and all the other perks and flatteries that networks of corporate donors and lobbyists provide.
"the insanely unpopular idea of a carbon tax" polls at +33 across 15 polls (all the ones I could find). It polls better than raising the corporate tax as a revenue raiser for infrastructure, and the 7 polls that return revenue as a dividend (as Democrats would do) show +38 net favorability. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m0df6TflVv0v_tux1hGl2xSzxtigbl4y_SWxSrShnTM
"I have never, and would never, agree to any bargain that would hold one piece of legislation hostage to another," she said. "Good-faith negotiations, however, require trust."
Is this naive? Untrue? Seems like the kind of legislator we need more of to me. Her bill is written, the other one is not.
I know this article is about Sinema, and she should definitely face - and lose - a primary challenge, but I have to come back to this comment:
> Democrats are lucky Manchin got re-elected in 2018, and realistically, it would take a miracle for him to win again in 2024.
In this light, his behavior makes even less sense. What possible benefit does he gain from spoiling the Democrats' legislative agenda if he won't even hold his seat? Clinging to the filibuster means even legislation he wrote himself (electoral reform) won't get a vote. It seems like stubbornness for its own sake.
He believes most legislation shouldn't pass the Senate with only a bare majority. He appears to value bipartisanship more than almost anything else. That being said, he's willing to pass a partisan reconciliation bill, just at a lower cost. I read somewhere that he told them a while ago that his number is $1.5T.
Matt and others have explained pretty thoroughly how getting rid of the filibuster would actually increase bipartisanism.
Does 1.5 trillion vs. 3.5 trillion, with no other details, really qualify as a principle? He's said nothing about what he does or doesn't want to do, what should be prioritized, how to do it. Negotiation via 20 questions is not a good way to run this country.
I don't like the filibuster either, but I'm not fully convinced by Matt's arguments. I think we really don't know for sure how it would play out. I would be very interested to find out, but I also don't think Manchin is a dummy if he disagrees with Matt's assessment.
With regards to the specifics of Manchin's wants, do we *really* know what's going on behind closed doors? Maybe I'm being too charitable, but he seems like an honest negotiator. Maybe he just doesn't care about the specifics as much as the price tag and wants to give the rest of them the freedom to prioritize as they see fit?
Glad to see the reference to Trump's low point in the polls being due to his tax cut. Not enough attention is paid to the unpopularity of his tax plan. As a Democratic pollster I tested dozens of messages against Trump during his presidency and the 2020 campaign, and despite all the crazy things he did, no negative message against him raised more concerns with swing voters than those about his tax plan.
Funny (to me, anyway): I think it would've been significantly more popular if the SALT tax change had been common knowledge. No one, other than Trump, had any reason to seek publicity about it at the time. It fits no one's narrative, not fully, other than Trump's.
ACA repeal/tax cuts being Trump's nadir gets ignored because a lot of liberals & conservatives want to return to pre-Trump ideological debates.
Bush Era Conservatives don't reference it for obvious reasons: they want GOP to return to tax cuts/entitlement reform. Remember Bush's privatization push for Social Security. Acknowledging that stuff is super unpopular strengthens the populists who want to run on social reaction/econ mismatch.
Liberals don't acknowledge it because many prefer to run on social issues as that is were their passion lies. They also think if public becomes convinced Trump's popularity collapse due to social reaction, GOP will move away from it.
I've lived in AZ for thirty years. Krysten Sinema is doing John McCain cosplay because she has calculated that a sufficient number of elderly white AZ voters still have a boner for him and that if she continues to be a democrat that owns the libs she can stay in office forever. Sort of the dem equivalent of Susan Collins. Whether or not that calculation is correct depends on how serious the national party is about a primary challenge (my guess: not very serious), what kind of republican clears the senate primary (my guess: a terrible one) and what kind of appetite AZ Dem voters have for booting an incumbent because of a fuck you ring and a cheeky thumbs down on a meaningless minimum wage vote (my guess: very little).
A reasonable question to ask voters: Do you want high taxes and the government provides you with lots of stuff or do you want low taxes and you buy more of your own stuff? In many European countries with extensive public social benefits, the voters made their choice and accept very high middle class taxes.
But Biden’s “Build Back Better” claims that you don’t have to choose. You can have all these benefits and not pay for them. We will borrow the money, we will print the money and we will pile taxes on the wealthy and big business as if those financing methods have no negative consequences that will bounce back and hurt everyone else. When business investments don’t get made, and higher corporate taxes result in some combination of lower wages and higher prices and when the world finally calls BS on the dollar as the “reserve currency”, we will see how well this all works out.
Some government programs are pure redistribution, like Social Security or the CTC. It's basically a scheme to rob the rich and pay the poor, and then the poor can buy their own stuff. There's certainly a cost to imposing taxes on the rich, but there's also a material benefit to redistributing money, which is that the poor are more likely to make good investments in their own human capital with their marginal dollar.
"Sinema isn’t blocking popular progressive ideas because she’s getting corporate money; she’s getting corporate money because she’s blocking popular progressive ideas, and businesses want their key ally to succeed and prosper." This has to be the stupidest thing Matt has ever said.
Except that it seems totally right. If she wanted money, she would be imitating the people who have raised the most money in recent years. Instead, she seems to be giving her heartfelt support to unpopular interests, and getting lower fundraising as a result.
By the time I got done reading this, all I could see what McConnell as Emperor Palpatine saying "use your aggressive feelings boy, let the hate flow through you"
Maybe this is just bias on my part, but I want to distinguish being anti-populist because (the decision maker thinks) voters are mistaken about the results of policy (opposing free trade and immigration reform, taxation of net CO2 emissions) vs being anti-populist by refusing to redistributing from higher to lower income groups (ACA, CTC) because (the decision maker thinks) the taxes will slow growth. And I’d distinguish both from using popular mis-conceptions on the first group to gain power in order to avoid redistribution downward or event to advance redistribution upward.
My one contribution, as an upper middle class self-employed guy who benefits from the Trump pass-through tax cuts- they're total nonsense. My understanding (I'm not doing my taxes myself) is that either as an LLC or an S Corp, I can deduct 20% off my gross taxable income for the year right off the top- because reasons. Then I get all of my other deductions after that. I'm not even clear if there's a supposed policy reason that pass-through corps should be treated this way.
I have the absolute most unpopular politics in America- taxes probably need to be increased for everyone, including myself, including even the middle class, and also including a national VAT. That's what being a deficit hawk means in every other country in the world! I believe the Tories in the UK recently raised taxes, if I'm not mistaken.....
My overall (not marginal) rate at six figures of income was in the very low 20 percent range. Frankly, I should be paying more, and so should everyone else at my level
I share your view of taxes (US needs a VAT, for sure). But the MMT-ish side of me (I'm far from an actual MMTer, but I admit they've expanded my horizons a bit on the issue of public sector spending) says that, in a perfect world, we would simply pass big spending bills and then wait for inflation to pick up before we decide how much to raise taxes.
The problem with government spending isn't the deficits, or inflation - the problem's it crowding out more productive things. They're going to spend quite a lot of money, inevitably increase taxes, and we'll be stuck spending on unproductive things like yet more Amtrak and the like.
I'm concerned that global financial markets would lose confidence in US Treasuries as the world's premiere risk-free bond before inflation started to pick up. There are some indications that this is already happening
I'm not too worried about this. Inflation was pretty high in the 70s, and the dollar didn't cease to be the world's premier reserve currency (it's just that holders of dollars naturally wanted to be protected from heightened inflation risk with higher interest rates). The risk of a default is a far graver danger (from the perspective of dollar credibility) in my view than a pickup in inflation.
The truth of the matter is there isn't a hell of a lot of difference between Justin Trudeau and Kyrsten Sinema. People aren't going to want to hear it here but it is true. Trudeau hasn't raised corporate income taxes and only raised to a small degree personal income taxes in the highest bracket back when he first came into office. Like Sinema Trudeau is mostly interested in style instead of substance. Trudeau also like Sinema likes hanging around with wealthy friends like the Aga Khan, Bronfman family heirs, and SNC Lavalin executives. Trudeau's Liberal Party of Canada is in fact the model of what Matt claims to not want the US Democrats to become. The difference is the Canadian electoral system has the opposite effect of the US of basically tilting the playing field to the upscale urban and suburban ridings(there form of districts) of Canada.
The difference is that Sinema seems to be intent on making a name for herself by *denying* her party wins, while Trudeau seems to be intent on making a name for himself by *getting* wins for his party (whether or not he does a good job of that).
Your diagnosis of the money objection is a little lacking. A campaign war chest isn't personal wealth, and while a popular politician can crowdfund a sustainable level of donations from Joe and Jane Democrat, ActBlue doesn't hand out lifetime sinecures to former politicians who raised a lot on the platform. Lobbyists representing wealthy corporations absolutely can offer somebody like Sinema a future position in exchange for services rendered while she has political power, and it's a category error to pretend that the criticism of her potential corruption reflect her campaign donations. If that criticism has merit, primarying her out of office in three years isn't much of a threat.
Came on here to write this and could have put it better. Also worth noting that small donors can't offer you internships on their vineyards and all the other perks and flatteries that networks of corporate donors and lobbyists provide.
(could NOT have put it better I meant!)
Has anyone considered that maybe Sinema is just not mentally sound?
Nothing she does makes sense. There is no common through-line. She is just wobbling from stance to stance.
"the insanely unpopular idea of a carbon tax" polls at +33 across 15 polls (all the ones I could find). It polls better than raising the corporate tax as a revenue raiser for infrastructure, and the 7 polls that return revenue as a dividend (as Democrats would do) show +38 net favorability. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m0df6TflVv0v_tux1hGl2xSzxtigbl4y_SWxSrShnTM
"I have never, and would never, agree to any bargain that would hold one piece of legislation hostage to another," she said. "Good-faith negotiations, however, require trust."
Is this naive? Untrue? Seems like the kind of legislator we need more of to me. Her bill is written, the other one is not.
I know this article is about Sinema, and she should definitely face - and lose - a primary challenge, but I have to come back to this comment:
> Democrats are lucky Manchin got re-elected in 2018, and realistically, it would take a miracle for him to win again in 2024.
In this light, his behavior makes even less sense. What possible benefit does he gain from spoiling the Democrats' legislative agenda if he won't even hold his seat? Clinging to the filibuster means even legislation he wrote himself (electoral reform) won't get a vote. It seems like stubbornness for its own sake.
You might not agree with his principles, but it's pretty clear he has them.
Is saying no to things a principle? Is obstructionism a principle? Who is he helping?
He believes most legislation shouldn't pass the Senate with only a bare majority. He appears to value bipartisanship more than almost anything else. That being said, he's willing to pass a partisan reconciliation bill, just at a lower cost. I read somewhere that he told them a while ago that his number is $1.5T.
Matt and others have explained pretty thoroughly how getting rid of the filibuster would actually increase bipartisanism.
Does 1.5 trillion vs. 3.5 trillion, with no other details, really qualify as a principle? He's said nothing about what he does or doesn't want to do, what should be prioritized, how to do it. Negotiation via 20 questions is not a good way to run this country.
I don't like the filibuster either, but I'm not fully convinced by Matt's arguments. I think we really don't know for sure how it would play out. I would be very interested to find out, but I also don't think Manchin is a dummy if he disagrees with Matt's assessment.
With regards to the specifics of Manchin's wants, do we *really* know what's going on behind closed doors? Maybe I'm being too charitable, but he seems like an honest negotiator. Maybe he just doesn't care about the specifics as much as the price tag and wants to give the rest of them the freedom to prioritize as they see fit?
"I am the furthest thing in the world from a DINO hunter…"
This article makes that difficult to believe.
Glad to see the reference to Trump's low point in the polls being due to his tax cut. Not enough attention is paid to the unpopularity of his tax plan. As a Democratic pollster I tested dozens of messages against Trump during his presidency and the 2020 campaign, and despite all the crazy things he did, no negative message against him raised more concerns with swing voters than those about his tax plan.
Funny (to me, anyway): I think it would've been significantly more popular if the SALT tax change had been common knowledge. No one, other than Trump, had any reason to seek publicity about it at the time. It fits no one's narrative, not fully, other than Trump's.
ACA repeal/tax cuts being Trump's nadir gets ignored because a lot of liberals & conservatives want to return to pre-Trump ideological debates.
Bush Era Conservatives don't reference it for obvious reasons: they want GOP to return to tax cuts/entitlement reform. Remember Bush's privatization push for Social Security. Acknowledging that stuff is super unpopular strengthens the populists who want to run on social reaction/econ mismatch.
Liberals don't acknowledge it because many prefer to run on social issues as that is were their passion lies. They also think if public becomes convinced Trump's popularity collapse due to social reaction, GOP will move away from it.
I've lived in AZ for thirty years. Krysten Sinema is doing John McCain cosplay because she has calculated that a sufficient number of elderly white AZ voters still have a boner for him and that if she continues to be a democrat that owns the libs she can stay in office forever. Sort of the dem equivalent of Susan Collins. Whether or not that calculation is correct depends on how serious the national party is about a primary challenge (my guess: not very serious), what kind of republican clears the senate primary (my guess: a terrible one) and what kind of appetite AZ Dem voters have for booting an incumbent because of a fuck you ring and a cheeky thumbs down on a meaningless minimum wage vote (my guess: very little).
A reasonable question to ask voters: Do you want high taxes and the government provides you with lots of stuff or do you want low taxes and you buy more of your own stuff? In many European countries with extensive public social benefits, the voters made their choice and accept very high middle class taxes.
But Biden’s “Build Back Better” claims that you don’t have to choose. You can have all these benefits and not pay for them. We will borrow the money, we will print the money and we will pile taxes on the wealthy and big business as if those financing methods have no negative consequences that will bounce back and hurt everyone else. When business investments don’t get made, and higher corporate taxes result in some combination of lower wages and higher prices and when the world finally calls BS on the dollar as the “reserve currency”, we will see how well this all works out.
Some government programs are pure redistribution, like Social Security or the CTC. It's basically a scheme to rob the rich and pay the poor, and then the poor can buy their own stuff. There's certainly a cost to imposing taxes on the rich, but there's also a material benefit to redistributing money, which is that the poor are more likely to make good investments in their own human capital with their marginal dollar.
"Sinema isn’t blocking popular progressive ideas because she’s getting corporate money; she’s getting corporate money because she’s blocking popular progressive ideas, and businesses want their key ally to succeed and prosper." This has to be the stupidest thing Matt has ever said.
Except that it seems totally right. If she wanted money, she would be imitating the people who have raised the most money in recent years. Instead, she seems to be giving her heartfelt support to unpopular interests, and getting lower fundraising as a result.
By the time I got done reading this, all I could see what McConnell as Emperor Palpatine saying "use your aggressive feelings boy, let the hate flow through you"
Was McConnell - stupid auto correct.
And when Ruben Gallego loses his primary challenge by 30% because even Arizona Dems are not *that* blue and she is *the incumbent senator*, what then?
Maybe this is just bias on my part, but I want to distinguish being anti-populist because (the decision maker thinks) voters are mistaken about the results of policy (opposing free trade and immigration reform, taxation of net CO2 emissions) vs being anti-populist by refusing to redistributing from higher to lower income groups (ACA, CTC) because (the decision maker thinks) the taxes will slow growth. And I’d distinguish both from using popular mis-conceptions on the first group to gain power in order to avoid redistribution downward or event to advance redistribution upward.
My one contribution, as an upper middle class self-employed guy who benefits from the Trump pass-through tax cuts- they're total nonsense. My understanding (I'm not doing my taxes myself) is that either as an LLC or an S Corp, I can deduct 20% off my gross taxable income for the year right off the top- because reasons. Then I get all of my other deductions after that. I'm not even clear if there's a supposed policy reason that pass-through corps should be treated this way.
I have the absolute most unpopular politics in America- taxes probably need to be increased for everyone, including myself, including even the middle class, and also including a national VAT. That's what being a deficit hawk means in every other country in the world! I believe the Tories in the UK recently raised taxes, if I'm not mistaken.....
My overall (not marginal) rate at six figures of income was in the very low 20 percent range. Frankly, I should be paying more, and so should everyone else at my level
I share your view of taxes (US needs a VAT, for sure). But the MMT-ish side of me (I'm far from an actual MMTer, but I admit they've expanded my horizons a bit on the issue of public sector spending) says that, in a perfect world, we would simply pass big spending bills and then wait for inflation to pick up before we decide how much to raise taxes.
The problem with government spending isn't the deficits, or inflation - the problem's it crowding out more productive things. They're going to spend quite a lot of money, inevitably increase taxes, and we'll be stuck spending on unproductive things like yet more Amtrak and the like.
I'm concerned that global financial markets would lose confidence in US Treasuries as the world's premiere risk-free bond before inflation started to pick up. There are some indications that this is already happening
I'm not too worried about this. Inflation was pretty high in the 70s, and the dollar didn't cease to be the world's premier reserve currency (it's just that holders of dollars naturally wanted to be protected from heightened inflation risk with higher interest rates). The risk of a default is a far graver danger (from the perspective of dollar credibility) in my view than a pickup in inflation.
She’s the wyrst.
(Couldn’t help myself.)
The truth of the matter is there isn't a hell of a lot of difference between Justin Trudeau and Kyrsten Sinema. People aren't going to want to hear it here but it is true. Trudeau hasn't raised corporate income taxes and only raised to a small degree personal income taxes in the highest bracket back when he first came into office. Like Sinema Trudeau is mostly interested in style instead of substance. Trudeau also like Sinema likes hanging around with wealthy friends like the Aga Khan, Bronfman family heirs, and SNC Lavalin executives. Trudeau's Liberal Party of Canada is in fact the model of what Matt claims to not want the US Democrats to become. The difference is the Canadian electoral system has the opposite effect of the US of basically tilting the playing field to the upscale urban and suburban ridings(there form of districts) of Canada.
The difference is that Sinema seems to be intent on making a name for herself by *denying* her party wins, while Trudeau seems to be intent on making a name for himself by *getting* wins for his party (whether or not he does a good job of that).
Also forgot Trudeau's introduction of the politically poisonous carbon tax which he has now won two elections since introducing.