What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Admiral Yi]

They exist outside the clickbait media.

What does exploitation mean?

[Oexmelin]

To the surprise of no one, Democrats haven't succeeded in buying Manchin back from his owners.

[Eddie Teach]

West Virginians who are willing to vote for someone with a D after their name?

[HisMajestyBOB]

Providing a monthly child tax credit only to take it away right at the start of the midterm election year really is a masterstroke.

We are at a time when it is absolutely critical that the Democrats provide a solid alternative to the Republicans' policies of authoritarianism and Christian white nationalism, and all we got was some infrastructure spending. The Democrats couldn't even get voting rights safeguarded.

I don't know why we need to bother worrying about a GOP coup when they'll win fair and square and then lock the door behind them.

[DGuller]

This disaster was entirely predictable a year ago, when it became obvious that people really didn't want Trump, but they also really didn't want Democrats (we can all debate why, even if the answer is obvious).  Just getting to the point where Manchin is a king-maker already required a rare stroke of luck for Democrats.

[Berkut]

That is actually a good point. There was a time when it was assumed there was no chance the Dems would control the Senate at all.

[DGuller]

Let's not lose sight of the fact that Manchin only has power when every single GOP senator sticks with Mitch.  This is why it annoys me when some people act like there are still any good Republicans.  Mitt Romney may say the right things about Trump, but when it comes to voter suppression, no one even wonders for a second whether he'll do the right thing.  Of course he won't.

[garbon]

Let's not lose sight of the fact that Manchin only has power when every single GOP senator sticks with Mitch.  This is why it annoys me when some people act like there are still any good Republicans.  Mitt Romney may say the right things about Trump, but when it comes to voter suppression, no one even wonders for a second whether he'll do the right thing.  Of course he won't.

[alfred russel]

That is actually a good point. There was a time when it was assumed there was no chance the Dems would control the Senate at all.

That was assumed at no point in time at all...election night was a massive disappointment for house and senate democrat hopes: Greenfield was probably seen as a tossup to take the Iowa seat and an Emerson poll had her up 4 a few days before the election, Gideon was ahead of Collins in basically every poll ever conducted in Maine, and Cunningham was ahead of Tillis in North Carolina even after the texts came out that he was cheating on his wife with a California democratic consultant.

Earlier in the cycle, the polling was even more optimistic and democrats sent an all time record of funding to South Carolina because they thought they could get the seat there (and some polls did show them up).

After election night, when it became apparent that democrats would need both georgia seats to get control, they shifted to an underdog status, but at no point were written off: checking the odds they bottomed out at about 17% on betting sites and were up to almost 50-50 by election day.

[The Minsky Moment]

The 538 forecast was 51.5 seats, with an 80% chance of a range of 48 to 55.

That's about as close to on the money as you can get.

[OttoVonBismarck]

A lot of this Manchin debacle largely highlights to my mind how Democrats are just structurally bad at politics. I don't fully understand why, but we have a two-party system, one party seems to understand the basics of what levers you need to pull and strategies you need to use to maximize your ability to win elections and undermine the other party. The other party appears to understand none of this.

The only reason the Democrats are still in the fight is the Republicans have a toxic political coalition that is outright offensive to a large portion of the country (i.e. a majority of people who are NOT conservative white Christians.)

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't see the point in banging on about Manchin; he is what he is and nothing better is going to come out of WVa. You can say he's holding back legislation but at the same time he's also the only thing keeping Mitch from taking control of the Senate.

The dems are where they are because they didn't take more Senate seats.

[OttoVonBismarck]

That depends if you're literally talking about nothing more than BBB vs the broader political situation. The broader political situation is that Democrats are very bad at political messaging and playing functional politics.

To compare and contrast--Republicans have used any amount of power they have held for the past 10+ years to find ways to structurally entrench future Republican power. Democrats anytime they are in power do nothing to address this and prioritize social spending measures, many of which are through very complex, long-term vehicles that produce almost no immediate political benefits, such that when the benefits of these policies are felt most of the public don't even associate them with Democrats.

That's the functional political element.

The messaging element I think the Democrats are even worse--more Republicans are worried about Democrats overturning democracy (and thus justifying some sort of armed insurgent action) than Democrats are worried about America's eroding democracy. This is because Democrats seem to be stuck in the mindset of not wanting to go full in on blasting Republicans as dangerously anti-democratic fascists, carpeting major media outlets with this message, because it would seem "impolite." Meanwhile the GOP has been doing exactly this for decades to the Democrats--and shocker, shocker, it has gradually worked to the point a large portion of the Republican electorate genuinely believe that Democrats are a serious danger to the country and that our democratic freedoms are at serious risk of just being ended anytime a Democrat is in office. The fact that the party actually eroding our democratic freedoms is the one whose base is worried about the other party doing this, shows just how asymmetrically bad the Democrats are at messaging.

The Manchin situation highlights this mainly because it exposes that Democrats were stupidly rushing out a bunch of short-term social spending that would likely curry them almost no meaningful electoral favor and were relying on dodgy tactics to get it done. It's not just that the Democrats only have a 50 seat Senate, but that they shouldn't have been pushing this bill in the first place, this legislation would not meaningfully have improved Democratic electoral fortunes even had it passed.

[DGuller]

I agree with Otto completely.  The inability of Democrats to get it has been infuriating.  It may have been slightly excusable in 2009, when it was still possible for a reasonable person to not realize that they were fighting a total war against Republicans, but in 2021?  What's the point of spending your resources on building infrastructure when your opponent is spending his resources on building bombs and bombers?

[Eddie Teach]

Well, I disagree. Doing good things for the voters, actually governing is better than joining the culture war.