The Manchin Democratic Dilemma + Send Us Your Questions!

Hi Hackaroos,

Well, the January 6th committee is having a reboot of sorts thanks to the Mark Meadows document dump this week proving just how damaging this could get for the Trumpist, truth-denying wing of the GOP. But first, Biden says the Build Back Better plan needs “weeks” of negotiations with Sen. Joe Manchin before it will be ready for the Senate to vote on…

Don’t forget to send us your questions for our Tuesday special edition of the newsletter next week. We’re ready to answer anything you want to talk about, so leave them in the comments section to get us all in the holiday spirit!

Let’s begin…

Murphy:

Well another big seismic tremor in Washington is, as we predicted in our last issue, that the Democrats’ last ditch effort to pass their Build Back Better By Billions plan is not going to happen before next year. It's widely reported — make that leaked — that the Biden-Manchin negotiations have become frosty. Both sides are leaking anger, which while part of the negotiation process, is not a sign of speed or progress. So Biden has to determine how much he wants to smash up against the rocks on this one, or accept a lower number on his spending plan. Gibbs, how would you untangle this thing if you were advising Biden?

Gibbs:

Murphy, I'd start by redoing my Christmas wish list in my letter to Santa, canceling that new iPhone and asking for the Build Back Better plan to get done.

Murphy:

Really, I thought you were on the lifetime hall of coal list!?

Gibbs:

Murphy, I’m a green energy guy! And, short of reindeer and elves delivering the goods, I don't know that there's really any other way out of continuing to negotiate this throughout the holidays and into the new year. I still believe that Manchin and Sinema want to and will get to something they can accept, but it’s going to take even longer. In reality, this Christmas deadline was never all that likely to produce a vote let alone a victory. The point you make is just how much of a bad taste that leaves in the mouths of other Democrats with this news of delay to 2022. Regrettably, I don't think there is another real way out of this jam but to hash it out, meaning this bill is likely to look quite a bit different when it does eventually get through the Senate. I hate to tell readers this, but I do have 2009-2010 healthcare flashbacks watching and reading a lot of the goings on and I don't think there's a magic way to solve this even with a prominent North Pole inhabitant intervening. So, they’ve got to continue to negotiate. What's also not helping the backdrop of this is there are still a lot of unanswered questions sitting in the Senate. There's the state and local tax provisions and there’s no bill text at the moment. The Senate parliamentarian dealt another blow to this fragile coalition by knocking out (albeit not all that surprisingly), the immigration provisions, a must have for several House members, who will have to approve whatever the Senate can send back their way. This is messy and it’s demoralizing. For all the big stuff this Congress has done, it will leave for Christmas with a very big item on its “to do” list for next year. But as we predicted, I am not surprised this is where we are and my fear is this isn’t getting solved in the first couple of weeks of 2022 and could drag on for a while.

Murphy:

I think Democrats have to get hardheaded and choose between two outcomes. One, they lose the House and the Senate or two they lose the House and barely get control of the Senate. The difference between the two is substantial, since the first is a total shutdown on most issues, while the second outcome gives them something to work with; a way to confirm judges, appointees, etc. So, Dr. Murphy's prescription for the D’s next year is to totally change up the plan. Break Build Back Better into two simple pieces: the childcare and a few other popular chunks, which you can do now and with Manchin for $1B or so, and then take the other popular stuff and go on offense against the Do Nothing Republican Senate and run on it in the midterms. Meanwhile triangulate a bit against the Squad and the other lefty anchors around Biden’s next with most voters. And by all means punt on the Voting Rights stuff; don’t force a losing vote on it now and continue a bad weakness narrative. If you can’t get the Manchin version in a compromise, use it as a hammer and run on it and other popular stuff per above. Fight on that and a few other popular chunks that people can — unlike Build Back Better But Barely Understood — actually comprehend. It’s an election year, so act like it! The Dems had better find a path to that kind of offense, if they want to avoid what's looking more and more like a very unhappy midterm election night in both the House and Senate.

Gibbs:

Yeah, some good and interesting advice there, Murphy. To get this over the finish line it certainly seems (and has for some time) they’re going to have to make more difficult decisions on what to move forward and what to drop from this bill and use in a campaign. It’s strange how politics works, my friend. We started the year talking about the rampant spread of COVID, the ghastly images of the insurrection at the Capitol, and the challenges of a closely divided Senate. Surprise, surprise, we end the year talking largely about three of those things. Will be interesting to see what 2022 will bring for both parties.

Murphy:

Well, Gibbsie, Lady Liberty is smiling today because the bipartisan January 6 committee is finally starting to draw a little blood. Finally! Those scuffed up wingtips you see swinging in the air belong to former Trump chief of staff and Freedom Caucus crank Congressman Mark Meadows who's now strung up and looking down at a baying mob of press and Congressional investigators after a very incriminating series of emails and texts showing White House involvement and culpability during the seditionist acts on January 6 have now emerged from the massive document dump Meadows had earlier given the committee. (I’m sorry for the run on sentence, but January 6 makes my blood boil!) I’m delighted that the House Committee on Jan 6 is starting to uncover the damning things that many of us suspected were there. It’s front page news and while I'm not sure it'll break our Hellish tribal deadlock in politics, it's pretty damnable evidence that ought to make the treason adjacent (at best) behavior of the core Trump apparat more and more clear.

Gibbs:

Yeah, as I wrote about in the last newsletter, there are not many things that get revealed in Washington that are truly a surprise and I think this week the January 6 committee really did just that. Reading those texts and emails was a bit of a jaw dropping moment. We've now had Congressman Jim Jordan come out and say that he was the author of one of the texts that was read. So, this is something that is going to continue to give real headaches to all of those who were involved. And my guess is that the tangled web is is going to reach much, much further even than a lot of people thought. What we know are only the documents that Mark Meadows voluntarily handed over, as he now tries to use the the weak sauce of executive privilege to prevent more from coming out. If this is what he gave the committee and the public to see, what he's hiding has to be damning by a magnitude of 10. The idea that the Trumpers didn't know what was happening, weren't involved in it and somehow thought that this was a group of people not connected to them, is now far out in the window after reading the texts of the Fox News hosts and Don Jr., imploring Trump to pull back his own supporters. As you said, this breaths some real fresh new life into a committee that started with quite a bit of fanfare, but predictably melted a little bit into the background given all the to and fro in Washington on any given day. They've now assumed a role in the forefront. And they’re far from done.

Murphy:

I agree, it’s never a shocker when you can prove that Bozo indeed wears big red clown shoes, but there's blood on the carpet now, and that will accelerate things. I know many analysts will say yes, just more right versus left noise and that swing voters no longer exist, but the Committee’s investigation is finding really culpable people. Next I predict we’ll see evidence that some of the worst kook GOP Members and offices were involved in Jan 6 as well as top WH people. As the facts get worse I think Trump will freak out even more over all this and do the once thought impossible and crank up the Trump craziness dial to 11 or 12. His obsession with the election results is not to be under-estimated. That’ll make him even more of a load for his hand-picked candidates next year when they leave the safe confines of Republican primaries. In a few key Senate races, the impact of an even more delusional Trump howling at the moon added to a possible overturning of Roe would give the Democrats — facing bad Biden numbers and dire inflation numbers — something to work with in the suburbs of NH, PA, NV and other key states.

Gibbs:

It’s hard to imagine Trump world could get crazier, Murphy! And, let us not forget that, in many ways, Leader McCarthy unleashed a lot of this particularly in alienating Liz Cheney to the point of making her a continued star of this committee. I don't think it was lost on anybody that the role she played the other night was to read those texts aloud. I've got to think that as happy as the Republicans are with the broader political environment, and the cards they hold in it, this is clearly a BIG wild card that they don't want disrupting the hand they have to play between now and 2022. Lots, lots more on this to come. Who knows exactly how this will play outside of Washington, but some recent focus groups show how seriously voters are taking this.

Gibbs:

For all of the castigating that we, in this newsletter, have given Congress about the inability to make deadlines, I for one am still surprised, gladly so, that President Biden signed an extension of the debt ceiling into law. Both parties understood that the hostages they thought they had and could negotiate a better position for didn't really exist. Without the heated rhetoric or watching the stock market and our financial markets swing up and down, as we approached the deadline, cooler, steadier heads instead prevailed, and normalcy returned. Kudos to the leaders in Congress and the President for allowing common sense to take over and giving themselves the space to figure out an answer that a lot of people didn't think was going to come and certainly didn't think was going to come as easily and as timely as it did.

Murphy:

Gibbsie, you’ve been seized by the Christmas spirit of generosity, but I agree, the truth is you take infrastructure and the resolution of the debt ceiling into the scoring mix and indeed they did a little better than normal. I give some credit to Leader McConnell, who's under fire from the Trumpers for doing the right thing. Same for the ghost of Bob Dole, whose passing might have sparked a small outbreak of old school Senate deal-making.

If you’ve made it this far into the newsletter (thank you!), here’s another friendly reminder to send in your questions in the comments section so we can answer them for Tuesday. See you then!

Murphy and Gibbs