The Coordinated Con Behind Manchin’s and Sinema’s Dickery

It’s easy to rationalize Manchin’s and Sinema’s regressive, obstructionist behavior as them being sellouts who’ve made their careers whoring themselves to pharmaceutical and fossil fuel companies and the obscenely wealthy. And that’s certainly the case, but it may not be the whole story. It’s probable that in addition to servicing their ecocidal, genocidal fat-pocketed johns, they’re also serving their party.

Of course the story is that Manchin and Sinema, scum that they are, are acting against their party, that they’re actively working against their comrades, as well as their constituents, the country, and life on Earth, and they are the isolated villains of the Democratic party, but this could be exactly what the Democrats want.

That’s not speaking for all Democrats. A small handful of Democrats are at least halfway decent. But as an organization, with its leadership and business ties, it is a despicable pack of classical conservatives and neoliberals whose progressive words and posturing are belied by their actions. Much like the Republicans lie and pretend to actually give a shit about poor whites and Christianity and puritanical morality standards, Democrats lie and pretend to actually give a shit about everyone else and justice and equality. Both ultimately serve at the altars of capitalism, money, and the market economy.

The actual do-gooders with consciences, souls, and positive intentions are outliers. The prevailing will and function of the party is to maintain the status quo. Anything but minor tweaks are unacceptable. Radical change is forbidden. Even when radical change is what’s needed to be a halfway decent country and prevent the Earth from being a completely toxic and chaotic ball of death and misery. That is where obstructionist shitrags like Manchin and Sinema come in. They’re helping keep the party from going too far towards doing something of true substance and benefit for the country and world.

Using the “moderate” misnomer, they sabotage the party’s agenda from within, which then gives the Democratic leadership the chance to say, “Well, we tried, but this pair of knuckleheaded douches got in the way, so, oh well, that’s politics.” Manchin and Sinema allow the rest of the party, including its rich, antiquated, and impotent leadership, to look good, to look progressive, to look like they’re really trying to get things done, when in fact Manchin’s and Sinema’s stances may be coordinated with, or at least are done with the approval of, party leadership. It’s possible that they were directed to take the hit, to play the villain role and make the rest of the party look good by comparison in exchange for some favor.

Even if Manchin and Sinema aren’t doing their dickery at the direction of Democratic leadership, their intractability isn’t the insurmountable challenge that Biden and other party leaders make it out to be. There are ways to punish uncooperative senators if one is willing and the party is united. The president himself has a lot of power, especially over his own party. If threats and pressure fail, they could be convinced. There has to be something they want more than to be the kidney stones stuck in the dick that is the Democratic party.

It certainly makes Biden look bad, that he hasn’t convinced them to get on board. He was, after all, sold as a great consensus builder. A mythology was spun, in which he was a uniting figure, a champion of compromise who would convince the Republicans into coming around and cooperating on the important parts of his agenda, the ones meant to make headway on saving the fucking country and world. That was a lie and has been an utter failure. The Republicans are united in opposition to even discussing the possibility of compromise. It’s laughable that Biden could convince them to come around to reason when he can’t even convince members of his own party.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter to him, that he can’t convince them, that because of them he won’t have a productive, progressive legacy to be proud of. Perhaps he doesn’t care, and neither do they. Perhaps he’s fine with failing and they’re fine with being the cause of failure, because that isn’t even how any of them will be remembered. People always say how poorly history will remember political figures, that their faults and crimes will stick to them in death, but there’s little evidence of that. When Reagan or Bush Sr or Rumsfeld or Powel died, whatever political figure, however horrible, their lives were sanitized by the media and their fellow politicians. The day any war criminal dies is the day their legacy is wiped cleaned and beautified. Unless their evil and insanity rise to the level of a Hitler or at least a McCarthy, their legacies will be sanitized, the truth of their depravity minimized. So Biden’s failure and Manchin’s and Sinema’s disgusting selling out won’t be remembered. Not prominently in the historical record. Not really in a way that matters beyond a handful of us. They’ll leave office and die and be thanked for their service in glowing tributes on CNN and MSNBC.