There are two easy ways to fail as a Democratic politician. The first is to listen to the bobbleheads in the media, and the second is to listen to the online left on twitter and elsewhere. The Biden campaign famously ignored both of them, including yours truly, who consistently lobbied for him to not run. So when you see the Politico writing that Biden and Harris fucked up by having Harris speak to West Virginians, or you see the dumbest man in American politics call it a mistake, ignore it.
There is a reason VP Harris spoke directly to West Virginians, as I noted the other day, and here you have the fruits of that labor:
“Well, first and foremost, I wish we’d all come together,” Justice responded. “But, on the flip side of that, we’ve got a lot of people in West Virginia that are still struggling with paying their power bill because they got laid off because this pandemic just swept their job away from them.”
Justice continued: “What we need to do is we need to understand that trying to be, per se, fiscally responsible at this point in time, with what we’ve got going on in this country, if we actually throw away some money right now, so what?”
The governor added that “we have really got to move and get people taken care of and get people back on balance. I want to work with the Biden administration, just like I worked with the Trump administration, and I want us to move forward.
That was Republican governor Jim Justice, when asked by the state’s biggest political radio guy, Hoppy Kerchival, whether or not the COVID stimulus needs to be bipartisan. The only people who give a fuck about Joe Manchin and whether or not this was a mistake by the Biden team are Joe Manchin and the beltway morons. Governor Justice and the people don’t give a fuck about process or procedure or whose feelings were hurt, they want results. They don’t give a shit about bipartisanship or Rand Paul’s feels about the budget, they want to feed the kids and keep the power on and make sure grams doesn’t die from the ‘rona.
And for those of you who are unaware how much of a big deal this is, Jim Justice was a Republicans who switched to Democrat and was Manchin’s hand picked successor to run, blunting a challenge from the left with Democrats Booth Goodwin and Jeff Kessler, eventually defeating Republican Bill Cole (no relation) in the general election. So this is Manchin’s boy ignoring him.
And you know what? Pelosi and Schumer just did this:
As President Joe Biden attempts to pass his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief proposal with Republican support, Senate Democrats are working to move ahead without the GOP using an obscure, but powerful, procedural tool known as reconciliation.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Monday that they have filed a joint budget resolution — the first step to potentially enacting a budget reconciliation bill.
“It makes no sense to pinch pennies when so many Americans are suffering,” Schumer said in floor remarks Monday. “The risk of doing too little is far greater than the risk of doing too much.”
Pelosi and Schumer would not do this if they did not have the votes, so what you can bank on right now is that Manchin is one of those 51 votes in the Senate. So no, Biden and Harris didn’t fuck up by going directly to the people of WV and Arizona. They got Manchin and Sinema in line.
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