Manchin and Sinema Are Playing a Game Democrats Forget to Play
By Joe Cunningham | Sep 30, 2021 9:00 AM ET
In 2008, the Democrats thought they had a mandate. They pushed through the Affordable Care Act, thinking they would have a permanent political majority. Once they tackled that, they began talking a lot about other things, like gun control and other progressive policies. But Obamacare and those policies were so unpopular that the voter backlash was consistently harsh. They lost the House, then the Senate, and then the White House.
They played a full-court press in order to regain political power. They threw everything against Donald Trump to see what would stick. At the end of Trump’s first term, with the help of the media, they took back power.
In decades past, the Democrats were better at playing the long game. They could push slowly, moving the football down the field. But in the last 12 years, they have sped their game up and started throwing a lot of Hail Marys. As a result, they are losing political power faster than they gained it. It took four years to reclaim two branches of government. In essence, it feels like they’ve lost it all again in one year.
Congress is at a stalemate, and while I figure we probably will get an infrastructure package, a bad reconciliation bill, and a raised debt ceiling, concessions to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin will neuter a lot of the progressive political agenda. This works in our favor now, but there isn’t some political dynamic shifting going on with those two. Sinema is not the “maverick” John McCain was. Shes’s just trying to establish a more permanent presence in the Senate.
more
https://redstate.com/joesquire/2021/09/30/manchin-and-sinema-are-playing-a-game-democrats-forget-to-play-n450139
