Tim F

Hi everyone, I’m not dead yet. I really want to mobilize effective activism, but there isn’t much to say right now. Nancy is doing good work in the House. The bottleneck to what should be everyone’s number one priority, the election security bill H.R.1, is Joe Manchin. If you live in West Virginia then you need to call his office, just like you should do every day since Joe Biden took office. If you don’t live in West Virginia then I’m sorry to say that you are a passenger on this ride. Please don’t bother calling Manchin’s office, it just wastes your time and annoys the staff. His job is to answer to pepperoni roll-eating Mountaineers fans and only them. It doesn’t really matter how progressive or enlightened your Senator is, and Republicans are singularly useless all the way from Rand Paul to Mitt Romney. If you live in AZ of course you should call Kyrsten Sinema; personally I get the feeling that she won’t hold out if Manchin doesn’t but every bit counts.

On the Republican side, Lisa Murkowski is about the only ray of hope we’ve got. Mitt Romney loathes Trump but he doesn’t have much interest in Democrats succeeding either. I will keep poking Pat Toomey’s office but I think he’s already counting his post-Senate weekly checks from Americans for Prosperity.

Do you have better ideas? Dish! I could use them.

[EDIT]: Here’s a picture of an old dog playing tug with the leash. My discipline habits have gone to hell as we both get older.

What we should do right nowPost + Comments (21)

Folks, this proposal to drastically narrow the window of people who’d qualify for bailout checks is terrible. It is bad politics. It is bad policy. It just gives certain legislators a chance to peacock around for a tiny audience of lazy opinion writers who have no concept of policy as a thing that affects people in the real world.

Yes, call your Senators. If you live in West Virginia then call Joe Manchin twice. If you don’t live in West Virginia then please don’t; you’ll just waste time and annoy his staff. Tell them to just give everyone the damn money. The top 1% is by definition just 1% of the population, so it won’t do a thing to the bill’s bottom line to give them an equal share.

Help put a stop to this nonsensePost + Comments (57)

It would be great if someone who reads this blog and lives in West Virginia were to call up Joe Manchin’s office and get to know the staff a little. Yes I mean that he needs to hear about impeachment and changing his stance on the filibuster. But also in general, he seems like a (relatively) decent guy who represents a very Trumpy red state, so he has a lot of concerns to balance right now and it would be a good idea if someone could make contact and find out what his folks think we can do to help him do the right thing. His staff are Democrats and even if they’re not all on board with the “Green New Deal”, they all want to expand health insurance, expand collective bargaining rights and a raise the minimum wage to something people can live on. I’d like to know what they think we can do to help firm up the Democratic team and make those things happen.

The same applies to folks like Conor Lamb in PA. Like Manchin, he strikes me as a decent guy trying to both represent his red district and promote core Democratic priorities. If you live in his district, I’d like to hear back about what his people think we can do to help. That’s doubly important since it’s so critical we hold the House in 2022. Obviously Krysten Sinema needs attention too…she strikes me as a bit of a contrarian peacock in the old McCain/Lieberman mold, but that doesn’t mean she is immune to pressure from constituents.

Do you have a conservative Democrat who either needs some encouragement or might be vulnerable in two years? Get in touch with their team and let’s hear back what they think we can do for them.

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ETA: and of course this comes right after John wrote something along the same lines. Sorry John. Also, call your Senator.

We do what we must because we canPost + Comments (45)

Do you live in AZ? Call Kyrsten Sinema. She seems like a fine person but she may not know Mitch McConnell like Democrats who’ve had the misfortune of working with him know the guy. She could use a reminder that Democrats will get slaughtered if they roll over to McConnell’s endless bad faith obstruction and accomplish nothing in the next two years. He won’t compromise and if you offer him good faith he won’t reciprocate.

Sinema has […] made it clear that she will not go along with her Democratic colleagues. Her office said recently that she is “not open to changing her mind.”

A spokesperson for Sinema told the Post that the senator is “against eliminating the filibuster, and she is not open to changing her mind about eliminating the filibuster.”

This is suicide. If you live in AZ or know someone who does, please ask her office to reconsider.

Meanwhile, if you have a Republican Senator then let them know the party won’t recover until they cut Trump out of it. If that sounds like it contradicts what I just said, well yes, both things can be true at the same time. Pollyannish Charlie Brownism can cut the Democratic party’s achilles tendon before Biden ever gets a chance to govern, and Trumpism can permanently destroy the GOP’s credibility unless they act now to sever it and cauterize the stump. If someone’s going to make a mistake, I’d rather it be them than us.

Arizona on my mindPost + Comments (124)