Thursday, May 06, 2021

Joe Manchin's Vanity And Ego Will Destroy The Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders' Maturity Is Building The Party

SHORT TAKES: Biden Chooses People Over Big Pharma; DOL Guts Trump Mis-Classification Gambit; Clean Clothes Vision of a Decent Minimum Wage.

Jonathan Tasini

May 6

LONG TAKE

The other day I was interviewed by a political reporter about the prospects for the Democratic Party in the 2022 mid-terms. Here’s what ended up in the story:

Among congressional Democrats’ early accomplishments is a $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Biden has also put forward a sprawling infrastructure proposal that would touch nearly every part of the country. For Democrats, the hope is that 2022 could resemble the 1934 midterms, when Democrats expanded their House majority thanks to a prolific first two years of former President Franklin Roosevelt’s tenure in the White House.
“It’s almost incontestable that the economy is going to be roaring back by 2022. If you couple that historical rebound with these packages passed in their entirety, I will predict that the Democrats will expand their majorities,” said Jonathan Tasini, a progressive strategist and former national surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign.
“There’s no question that the Republican base will be motivated,” he added. “But what I feel confident about is that voters will turn out in 2022 and support the Democratic Party if the agenda that is now before us passes.” [the emphasis in bold is mine]

I don’t quibble at all with the accuracy of what was printed (I’ve spoken numerous times to this reporter and he’s unfailingly honest and quotes me accurately). What was left out—reporters make choices—was a larger context that would have given some nuance to what seems above to be my extremely optimistic take.

Namely:

Joe Manchin is a dangerous, petulant fool who, if allowed to hold sway because of his vanity and ego, will destroy the party in the midterms and beyond, and, more important, doom millions of people to hardship in the short term and for generations to come. And, by contrast, Bernie Sanders is acting as a grown-up, especially when he doesn’t get his way.

Some months ago, I wrote about Fifth Columnist Joe Manchin. Today, it’s important to add that the traditional media and elites should stop treating Manchin as some “maverick” (a moniker which never ends up matching actual voting records—see “John McCain”), a narrative Manchin wants to foster because it obscures hard facts: he doesn’t understand economics, either because he’s a dolt and/or he prefers to fall back on the most shallowest of talking points that he’s picked up while sitting in his, by West Virginia standards, waterfront mansion (huh, “mansion” and “manchin” are quite the cozy pair) because it fits with his world view…such as it is.

If you listen to Manchin—and, alas, I’ve been forced to do so as your loyal scribe—he sums up his objections to a whole slew of current policy ideas in one or two vanilla, knee-jerk tired points and, then, when he starts flailing about with nothing more to say, he falls back on a plea for “bi-partisanship”—which, as I wrote here, is a cancer, because, along with its mindless cousin “compromise”, the two ideas equal more injustice and even deeper economic despair that ends up costing lives.

Let’s be even more clear about “bi-partisanship”: like the “maverick” label, “bi-partisanship” is a media fetish held up as some higher calling and lofty principle to be lauded when, in fact, what the haze of “bi-partisanship” obscures is this: it’s a justification for continuing the gross, immoral class warfare and chasm of inequality in the country. “Bi-partisanship” is a code word for keeping taxes on the rich and on big corporations obscenely low—historically low—using as justification a disproven mish-mash of bullshit “economic theories”, not the least of which is “trickle down” economics.

You demand examples. Let’s go.

Taxes. Manchin has whined incessantly about Biden’s proposals to pay for the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan by:

Raising the top tax rates to 39.6 percent on people earning more than $400,000-a-year (I’ve said tax hikes should capture people at much lower six-figure levels as well) and;
Increasing the corporate tax from 21 percent to 28 percent and;
Increasing the capital gains rates from 20 percent to 39.6 percent for those earning over one million dollars.

Manchin repeats Republican talking points—that simply are not true based on the actual facts.

Here is what Biden said during the recent State of the Union address:

We’re going to reward work, not just wealth. We take the top tax bracket for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans — those making over $400,000 or more — back up to where it was when George W. Bush was President when he started: 39.6 percent. That’s where it was when George W. was President. [Tasini: when you are praising raising the top rate back to the W. days level, that’s when it’s clear that rate is TOO LOW]

We’re going to get rid of the loopholes that allow Americans who make more than a million dollars a year and pay a lower tax rate on their capital gains than Americans who receive a paycheck. We’re only going to affect three tenths of 1 percent of all Americans by that action. Three tenths of 1 percent.

…Look, the big tax cut of 2017 — remember, it was supposed to pay for itself — that was how it was sold — and generate vast economic growth. Instead, it added $2 trillion to the deficit. It was a huge windfall for corporate America and those at the very top.

In fact, the rates for top earners that Biden is proposing are not at all high by historical standards. In fact, they are low. Check out this chart from The New York Times and economist Gabriel Zucman:

What’s especially notable here is that rates were much higher for the extremely wealthy—the 0.01 percent—during the decades of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, which included multiple periods of prosperity; indeed, rates were relatively higher during the very post-WWII boom times that created the American middle class.

There is virtually no rationale economic argument, with data, that shows that at any time in recent U.S. history—say, the last century!—higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations have had any negative effect on the economy. None. Zero. Nada.

But, you all know that. Rich people squeal like pigs when it comes to paying higher taxes because…they are greedy. They do not want to pay more. So, it has been very convenient to embrace bogus anti-tax political rhetoric that has a lot of traction among regular folks for the very reasons Biden cited in his speech: rich people have absconded with huge amounts of wealth, either legally or illegally, leaving a disproportionate tax burden to be shouldered by working people—which has given the golden opportunity, over many decades, for rich people and their political enablers to tear down the basic idea of paying taxes to create a functioning society.

Capital Gains: A simple test would be revealing, if it could be done: inject truth serum into the veins of every billionaire over the past 30 years and, then, do a confidential poll with one question—would you have not started your company if you knew you’d have to pay a capital gains rates equal to regular income tax rates if you also knew you would end up with more money than anyone can spend in 100 lifetimes? You know the answer each one would give.

And speaking of Capital Gains taxes: West Virginia ranks last (tied with three other states) at 0.1 percent of the “Share of Taxpayers Subject to Income Tax Rate Increase on Capital Gains and Dividends Under President's Proposal in 2022”, according to a just-released analysis by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (as in released in the last hour as I write this and provided earlier to yours truly on background). In other words, Manchin is not speaking for the burden of average people; he’s shilling for rich people, his donors.

I think it’s important to see who Manchin, a millionaire himself, speaks for. It isn’t the average person in West Virginia—it’s all about his rich individual and corporate donors.

Facts about the average person in West Virginia, per 2020 data via the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy [The emphasis in bold is mine]:

An estimated 278,734 West Virginians lived in poverty in 2019, for a total poverty rate of 16.0 percent. While poverty declined by 1.8 percentage points from 2018, West Virginia’s poverty rate is still 3.7 percentage points higher than the national average, making it the 6th highest rate among the 50 states.

And:

The poverty and income data from the Census Bureau do not reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. More current data from this summer show a sharp rise in hardship across West Virginia:
11.8 percent of adults reported that their household sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat in the last seven days.
17.0 percent of adults with children reported that their kids sometimes or often didn’t eat enough in the last seven days because they couldn’t afford to.
19.0 percent of adults who live in rental housing reported that they were behind on rent, and 6.0 percent are behind on their mortgage payments.
And 29.0 percent of all children in West Virginia live in a family that is either not getting enough to eat or is behind on housing payments.

And:

West Virginia’s child poverty rate in 2019 was 19.6 percent, with 67,507 children living in poverty. West Virginia had the 7th highest child poverty rate among the 50 states.
Poverty remains a more serious problem for Black West Virginians due to historic and current inequities. The state’s Black poverty rate was 26.9 percent in 2019.
Seniors in West Virginia are less likely to be in poverty than the rest of the state. The state’s senior poverty rate in 2019 was 9.3 percent.
Poverty rates decrease for adults with higher levels of education. In 2019, the poverty rate for West Virginians with at least a bachelor’s degree was 4.1 percent, while it was 15.9 percent for those with just a high school diploma. Poverty was highest among those who did not graduate from high school, at 28.7 percent.
Women in West Virginia face higher poverty rates than men. In 2019, West Virginia’s poverty rate for women was 18.0 percent, compared to 14.0 percent for men.

Minimum Wage: You wonder why the poverty rates are so high? The state minimum wage is stuck at $8.75-per-hour—which means a person in West Virginia working themselves to exhaustion at that rate over 52 weeks a year, 40 hours a week would earn $18,200. That is a level that puts a family of just three (parents and one child) BELOW the federal poverty line (which, as an aside, doesn’t give the full picture—undercounts—what it costs today to actually pay the bills).

When Bernie Sanders proposed (along with others) to raise the federal minimum wage to $15-an-hour as part of the most recent COVID-19 relief bill, Manchin trotted out the right-wing, corporate trope that the federal minimum wage rate shouldn’t be a “one-size fits all” rate. Which is the propaganda line used by the Chamber of Commerce to continue to rob workers of the productivity gains over the last four decades—because the federal minimum wage rate should actually be about $22-an-hour.

There, in a nutshell, my friends, is the Manchin “philosophy”: keep the people poor and stop them from earning a grand “windfall” of…$31,200 a year (the annual income at the $15-an-hour rate working 52 weeks a year, 40 hours a week).

On the other hand, Manchin’s corporate donors are plentiful. Having already raised $638,000 for his 2024 re-election kitty, “Much of that cash came from PACs affiliated with oil and natural gas companies including Valero Energy Corporation, National Fuel Gas Company and DTE Energy, which have long supported Manchin’s political career”, according to Open Secrets, the pre-eminent source for money in politics. And that has a long history, as Open Secrets documents:

Since 2010, the American Gas Association’s PAC has donated $15,000 to Manchin according to the FEC. In the same time frame, Exxon Mobil’s corporate PAC contributed $12,500 and the American Petroleum Institute contributed $10,000. PACs and individuals affiliated with FirstEnergy Corp are together one of Manchin’s biggest contributors, and have given the senator $147,950 since 2009. The American Chemistry Council, whose members include companies like Shell and Exxon, spent $200,000 to support Manchin in his 2018 campaign.
Manchin has received more support from the mining industry, which employs 2 percent of West Virginia’s workforce, more than any other Democratic lawmaker. Only two industries — securities and investment and lawyers and law firms — contributed more to Manchin throughout his career.

Now, let’s turn to a grown up.

You don’t have to have been a supporter, ever, of Bernie Sanders to be able to evaluate him in this light: he ran twice for president and lost; he has confronted directly the elites within the Democratic Party; he took on the once-powerful (and, thankfully, no longer relevant) Clinton money and political machine; and he has pushed for progressive policies that rankle the party’s corporate donors and large slices of the party’s elected leaders.

And, yet, let’s look at what he has done in the past several months from his powerful perch as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee: He’s pushed hard, as I just said, to include in the most recent COVID-19 relief bill a hike in the federal minimum wage to $15-an-hour—he lost that battle (partly because of a procedural ruling by the Senate parliamentarian and, also, Manchin made it clear he would vote against the proposed $15-an-hour hike) but Sanders still voted for the entire bill because he understood there was a greater good to be accomplished and he was not going to hold millions of people, and his Democratic Party colleagues, hostage for the sake of his own beliefs.

In a way, I think that Sanders’ most avid supporters never really understood that he has never been about tearing the entire system down around him, no matter the cost. To be sure, he’s for deep systemic change and he will use every platform and every megaphone he is given to shout (his one-gear volume) to the rafters about Medicare for All and its ilk. BUT… he wants to, within reason, make deals and take victories where they can be notched without sacrificing his long-term goals. Which is a lesson a good slice of progressives should learn.

And, to circle back to my initial point, here is the delicious irony: Sanders, a self-described “independent”, who had the Democratic Party dead-enders endlessly hurling “he’s not a Democrat” at him during the 2016 and 2020 primaries, is doing an enormous amount to build support for certain good policies of the Democratic Party among voters while Joe Manchin’s view is an almost certain guaranteed path to losing one or both of the Democratic majorities in Congress, which would, then, spell hardship for millions of people.

The politics are relatively simple and obvious: when you strip away the mumbo-jumbo of policy names and acronyms, the two bills proposed—American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan—will put real money in the pockets of millions of people, whether that’s providing child care or paid leave, or passing the PRO Act (because union-bargained pay and benefits is, uncontestably, higher) or empowering Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies (duh)…pick any of the other initiatives. Yes, in many cases, it’s not good enough (the economic biggie being a refusal to embrace Medicare For All). We need a lot more—but, given the political numbers today, in real life (sorry, I do try to deal in reality), the fastest way to get dollars and cents into peoples’ pockets now is to push for these two plans.

And…these ideas are enormously popular.

Bernie Sanders is doing his best, like it or not, to help the Democratic Party by pushing for ideas that people like.

Follow Joe Manchin and the party will lose—and will deserve to lose by kowtowing to a mediocare mind and an even more mediocre person.

How do you know all this is popular? Part of it is polling—which we should always view skeptically because polling can be bloody ephemeral and shift decisively in the face of campaigns for or against something. Still:

The real “tell”, though, is not polling: it is Republicans flailing away trying to undercut broadly popular ideas with the singular attack of “socialism!”. I mean, if only!!! Some of these morons actually believe Biden is rolling out the red (!!!) carpet for socialism; others just believe it works well as red meat to gin up the base.

BOTTOM LINE:

Pass bits and pieces of the current proposed plans and let it be nitpicked to death—lose elections in 2022.

Pass it all—win elections in 2022.

Whoever kidnapped the Joe Biden of the past and substituted the new version, you can keep the old one... LOL... Just yesterday, Biden decided to support granting a temporary waiver for international patent protections for the COVID-19 vaccine.
This is, to channel, Biden—a big fucking deal.
I have written about this a bunch (including here) and also devoted a fair amount of time on my (on a slight hiatus) podcast (including here) but this will mean millions of people will not get sick and die, mainly in poorer countries because Big PHARMA will not be able to unilaterally control the technology and supply for the COVID-19 vaccines.
A walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time lesson for all progressives: we always need to keep pushing and fighting to win our agenda ***but*** elections along the way do matter to lots of people and we need to embrace victories along the way that come as a result of elections.
To wit: the Department of Labor is axing the Trumpsters-proposed rule that would have made it easier for corporations to rip off workers by mis-classifying workers as independent contracts...which would have screwed potentially millions of workers out of overtime and minimum wage protections (yes, the minimum wage sucks...). This matters in the pocketbooks of real people.

Speaking of a living wage…which even a $15-an-hour minimum wage is not—What’s a living wage? The Clean Clothes campaign has an easy-to-read vision document on what that means, laid out nicely in this graphic:
And the folks there, then, look at what it actually costs to live in each European country (the figure on the left in each square for each country) versus what the legal minimum wage is (the figure on the right) and what percentage that wage makes up in the costs.
This is easily applicable here: even a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage—the rallying cry across the nation—would only put a family of four slightly above the poverty line…and the poverty line is NOT how we should be measuring what a LIVING WAGE is.