Remember when Obama had a supermajority in both houses of congress
@kate It's not quite that simple - Manchin and Sinema have proven they're not actually Dems. They've blocked a lot of progress. 😖
@cobflaith @kate bullshit
if Biden actually wanted something done, he’d use the power of the Presidency to coerce them to get it fucking done—there’s a reason Teddy Roosevelt called the office a “bully pulpit”
@cobflaith @kate there are a whole lot of levers of power that dems categorically refuse to use, and we know that because the Republicans have no hesitation about using them when they have even partial control. Manchin and Sinema are contemptible but they aren't stopping the rest of the caucus combined, they're giving an excuse for a lot of their colleagues to mouth support for progressive policy without any danger that it might be enacted
@robotcarsley @kate I agree with nearly all of that, but I'm talking about the party that's straight-up numbers - as we know, if none of the conservatives cross over on a vote we need those two to pass. That's all. Even if everyone else were truly unified, it still doesn't work without them.
@cobflaith @kate my point isn't don't hate those two, it's don't let everyone else off the hook. Very few elected Democrats actually want to do the things the party claims to stand for, as evidenced by the fact that they never actually fight very hard to try to do them.
@kate Hm, it’s maybe not appropriate for an European to correct you on this, but don’t have the Democrats some quasi-Republicans in their rows and absolutely no spare vote on top of the Congress majority?
@kate and they couldn't even pass a public option lmfao
Btw they control the presidency and both houses of Congress *right now*. If they don’t pass a law it’s because they don’t fucking want to