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Here’s a brief update on this tussling over what to do about the minimum wage hike and the fact that the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that it shouldn’t be included in a reconciliation bill. Yesterday I wrote that it seemed like advocates were right when they claimed that Vice President Harris could reverse the decision in a way that required 60 senators to, in turn, overrule her. (It’s a bit convoluted; here’s the post from yesterday that walks through it.) Since I wrote that post I’ve found out some more information that suggests the 60 vote thing isn’t even real. Or rather that it would take 60 votes to overrule Harris and if that vote failed then they could vote again and on the second round would only need 51 votes, which would make the whole thing a mirage.
It’s notable that Senator Sanders, the person more out front on the policy question than anyone in the senate or maybe in the entire party isn’t pushing this gambit. I suspect that’s because it’s not real.
I’m still trying to nail down whether that is the case. But this brings me to a more general point which was lurking in the background in yesterday’s posts. There’s a recurring pattern in the permanent and mostly healthy pull and tug between more institutional/coalitional parts of the Democratic party and the left progressive wing of the party. That is that members of the latter group will claim that the solution to this or that problem is in fact easy, a slamdunk and a no brainer when in fact in many cases it won’t work at all or carries high, high risks.
This 60 vote gambit is an example. Assume the claim is accurate in itself. There’s still the fact that at least two Senate Democrats say they will vote against the whole COVID relief bill if Democrats go that route. That’s a problem. Are they bluffing? Who knows. Fuck around and find out, as the phrase goes. As I said, I think the whole thing probably turns out not even to be true. But even if it is the fact that Democrats don’t even have the votes for the bill itself is something you’re going to be thinking about a lot if you’re the one quarterbacking the whole legislative process – which is to say if your Joe Biden or Ron Klain or Chuck Schumer.
Pushing this hard is obviously a way of exerting pressure, which is unremarkable and totally what one would expect. The problem is that when you convince your supporters that something is easy and just sitting there waiting to be done and the folks in charge refuse to do it you send a crippling, demoralizing and fissiparous message. If this whole minimum wage thing is easily solvable and Joe Biden or Chuck Schumer refuse to solve it that must mean that they don’t care that much about it. Or maybe the whole show of an effort to try to hike the minimum is a ruse. Maybe the fix is in somehow. That’s obviously a very damaging message when you’re trying to keep a political coalition together, all the more so if it’s based, more or less, on lying to your supporters.
You might as well just drop a bomb in the middle of your political coalition. It’s not a good way to get any actual policy goal accomplished or to keep coalitions intact. It’s best at making you feel confident and cozy in your own righteousness and reassured that the only reason things aren’t getting done is because everyone else is a hack or a sell out or so feckless as to amount to the same.
Again, that can feel good. But misleading your supporters like this actually doesn’t generate policy successes and it breeds – or rather directly instills – a belief in the cynicism or bad faith of coalition partners that makes future successes far less likely.
