Hustled By Spin
"No one got everything they wanted in the bill, including me," Joe Biden said Thursday, while unveiling a "framework" for his "Build Back Better" agenda.
It was an understatement. Months of tedious and, at times, acrimonious, negotiations between moderate Democrats and Progressives stripped Biden's cornerstone social spending plan of so many key elements that the final version is likely to be unrecognizable to the handful of people familiar with the original proposal.
Fortunately, recent polls
With the narrow majority it is remarkable they got anything done at all.
Agree with the last part.
Many voters don’t have the time to spend with their month old babies. If it’s a choice between spending time with my kids and reading lengthy pieces of proposed legislation, it’s no choice.
Yes and no. You can read blogs/sites like this one and get someone knowledgeable and smart like our host doing a fair chunk of the chewing for you. I don’t think an educated voting populace really means everyone regularly digesting 100s of pages of legalese. That’s indeed unrealistic.
Yes but if you’re not reading primary sources you are, in fact, vulnerable to spin. You’re at the continued mercy of your trusted secondary source.
Fair enough. Then again, that’s true for almost all aspects of our technological civilization. I have to trust my doctor, my architect, heck, I have to trust my plumber…
But reliable knowledgeable people who make it their life mission to popularize scientific/political/economical facts exist. They’re not all that hard to find. And the good ones will announce their biases and assumptions up front, to help the reader take that into account in his/her own Bayesian model of the world.
As with a doctor, architect, or plumber the best way to ensure the quality of your secondary info is to solicit multiple opinions. If my life, house, or kitchen sink weren’t in imminent danger I would likely forgo that lengthy and exhausting process. As many Americans do with politics…
I agree with @RIA – I am impressed that this much got agreed. It actually is quite a lot. Regardless, the Dems simply need to pass this social infrastructure, pass the physical infrastructure bill, and go home and tell their constituents how great it is and that there’s more in 2023 if you’ll just keep me in office, okay?
R&D for climate change apparently got the chop. Thanks, Manchin.
This is democracy? No wonder so many yearn for authoritarianism…
It’s democracy in that we elect the Reps & Senators, but what we really should be voting for, and what the Reps & Senators should be running on, is their slate of donors.
Each candidate for office should present the slate of their corporate donors – these are who we’re really electing.
I’ve seen a cartoon suggesting Manchin answers to “Big Coal”, but I haven’t heard anyone asking or answering the big question: what money is Manchin answering to? We’ve always been told: follow the money.
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/joe-manchin/contributors?cid=N00032838&cycle=CAREER
though, I don’t know if this includes SPACs and the like – so called dark money.
Democracy is far from perfect, but it is still way ahead of authoritarianism. Let’s be thankful for small mercies.
“The same widespread apathy, perceptions of incoherence and ineffective messaging that worked to undermine the legislation’s momentum, mean the public won’t view the stripped down version as the disappointment it almost surely will be.”
This is it. Manchin will get what he wants with little political damage and Biden will sell what he did get……hopefully dragging
Dems along in 2022.
Anyone that thought this country was capable of anything but incremental change, has not been paying attention.
Fortunately the change this cycle is moving forward and not taking us backwards again…..again.