Democrats, Who Have Already Sicced Their Stalker "Activists" On Manchin and Also Called Him a Racist Who Hates Poor Children, Say the Gloves Are Now Off and Now They're Ready to... Start... Pressuring Him

After calling him a racist who hates poor children you're going to start pressuring him?

How?

Here's a smattering of what Democrats have already done, before this "new" pressure campaign:

A black Congressman, Jamaal Bowman, accuses Joe Manchin of being a "white man," and if that isn't bad enough (and it's plenty bad already!), he then goes on to accuse him of the typical litany of hate crimes ascribed to Republicans: "It's an example of Joe Manchin, as a White man, showing that he doesn't care about Black people, he doesn't care about Latinos, he doesn't care about immigrants, he doesn't care about women, and he doesn't care about the poor."

Then the White House accused Manchin of being a liar, of having "promised" to vote for the Build Back Bolshevik bill before betraying the brain-dead angry puppet Brandon.

Then Joe Biden actually claimed that Manchin came before the liberal House caucus and... admitted he was a liar. And that Biden was doing everything right.

Shades of the Battle of Corn-Pop.

Then the White House was forced to admit, um, maybe Joe Biden's Brain Medicine wasn't performing at peak efficiency when he made that completely-false claim.

After Biden said today that Manchin "was speaking to a liberal caucus in the House and said 'Joe Biden didn't mislead you, I misled you,'" the White House follows up: "The President wanted to clarify that Senator Manchin did not characterize himself as having been 'misleading.'

-- Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn) December 21, 2021

It goes without saying that members of The Squoid had various angry, incoherent outbursts.

Donkey-Chompers, for example:

"Well, I think what Sen. Manchin did yesterday represents such an egregious breach of the trust of the president," she stated. "It's an outcome that we had warned about well over a month ago about needing to plan a contingency plan for it. It's why we insisted on having the bipartisan infrastructure plan coupled and passed together with the Build Back Better Act."

After noting that members of her party have "every right to be furious" with Manchin, AOC suggested the way to channel that anger was to put pressure on the Democratic leaders who "made the decision to get us to this juncture," saying that they have a "large number of tools at their disposal, the President particularly."

America's Sweetheart Ilan "Omar" Nur further ruined cursing for me by demonstrating my point about leftwingers cursing inappropriately to show they're "tough" and "authentically emotional."

Let's be clear: Manchin's excuse is bullshit. The people of West Virginia would directly benefit from childcare, pre-Medicare expansion, and long term care, just like Minnesotans.

This is exactly what we warned would happen if we separated Build Back Better from infrastructure. https://t.co/dhzcSk0qUV

-- Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) December 19, 2021

Go marry your gay brother and cheat on another husband, whore.

Minnesota Democrat Tina Smith called Manchin... "unpatriotic" for opposing a Marxist and dishonest spending bill.

"Failing to pass Build Back Better condemns us to higher energy prices, fewer jobs and a back seat to those that take action and lead on technology and innovation," said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.). Manchin's position "is downright unpatriotic, and it utterly fails to address the climate crisis," she said.

And one more thing, this speculated, credibly, by John Sexton: Manchin has been serially harassed by the leftwings' Stalker Brigades for months.

Sexton think that what broke it for Manchin was when Biden singled him out as the only hold out on Build Back Bolshevik -- he's not, Sinema's a no, too -- thus basically telling the Stalker Brigades to go all-in on Manchin.

Sounds plausible. Manchin did complain of what the White House "had put out there..." Which I misread as what the White House had "put in there," in the bill. But no, he was talking about a message the White House "put out" to the public.

So with that record of nasty attacks and, likely, calls for escalations in stalking and harassments established, the Democrats vow...now we're going to pressure Manchin.

He's had it too good for too long.

Senate Democrats are signaling they plan to take more of a hardball approach to pressuring Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to support their climate and social spending agenda after months of kid-glove treatment failed to deliver his vote.

Democrats are threatening to drive a wedge between Manchin and his many lower-income constituents who stand to reap billions of dollars in federal benefits if Build Back Better passes, including an enhanced child tax credit, lower Medicare-negotiated prescription drug prices and subsidies to cover the cost of child care.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday said Manchin will have to repeatedly defend his opposition to these popular programs by voting on the floor and took a subtle shot at his colleague for trying to dictate national policy through an appearance on "Fox News Sunday" over the weekend.

Um... not if he flips to Republican and the Republicans control which bills come to a floor vote.

Democratic aides say that Manchin can expect more tough treatment from Schumer and other Democratic lawmakers who are now under new pressure from the party's base for failing to deliver on the "big, bold" agenda they promised earlier this year.

"He has had absolutely no pressure," said one Democratic aide, citing Manchin's friendly meetings with the at the White House and at Biden's home in Delaware this fall that failed to produce results.

"Biden's got to grab him by the lapels and say, 'Listen, this ends now,' " the aide added, warning there's little prospect of passing another piece of major legislation before the 2022 midterms if Build Back Better fails to pass.

Democratic senators have said for months they were reluctant to apply too much pressure on Manchin for fear that it might backfire and only goad him to dig in his heels more firmly against progressive priorities such as major new investments for renewable energy and expanded Medicare benefits.

There was also the looming threat that Manchin might leave the caucus and declare himself an independent. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters before the break that he would love to have Manchin join his caucus, though he acknowledged it wasn't a likely possibility.

But now Biden, Schumer and other Democrats risk looking ineffective after Manchin flatly spurned their many entreaties with his bluntly stated opposition to Build Back Better on Fox News.

"He's going to blow up the president's agenda so I think you have to play hardball but there are different ways to play hardball," said Steve Jarding, a Democratic strategist who formerly advised the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

"He's making them looking ineffective," he added.

On Sunday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki released a blistering statement that took Manchin to task for backing out of a deal Biden thought he had agreed to in October.

She said Manchin would have to explain his opposition to the bill to "families paying $1,000 a month for insulin," to "two million women who would get the affordable day care they need to return to work" and to the "millions of children who have been lifted out of poverty, in part due to the Child Tax credit," which expired last week.

...

In a "Dear Colleague" letter circulated Monday, Schumer took at not-so-subtle jab at Manchin.

"Senators should be aware that the Senate will, in fact, consider the Build Back Better Act, very early in the new year so that every Member of this body has the opportunity to make their position known on the Senate floor, not just on television," Schumer vowed.

The Democratic leader warned that he would force Manchin to vote multiple times against Biden's top priorities to hammer home the message that the West Virginia centrist is standing in the way of reforms that are designed to help low-income people in his home state.

Another thing the Democrats have been accusing Manchin of -- this being a more polite way of saying "liar" and "betrayer" -- is "inconsistency."

They keep saying he is "inconsistent" in what he says. That he "promised" to vote for the Build Back Bolshevik bill's "framework" and "scope," for example, and then didn't.

I've covered why that's a lie already.

The analyst at Full Stack Economics point out that Manchin has been extremely consistent on both what he would vote for and what he would vote for.

The trouble is, he says, Manchin's "friends" in the Democrat Party refused to listen to him when he repeatedly said he would not vote for a bill that cost more than $1.5 trillion, and would not vote for a bill that blew up the deficit.

And also -- would not vote for a bill that was "frontloaded" with spending to disguise how much it blew up the deficit.

[I]f Democrats are serious about getting Manchin's vote, they are going to need to start listening to him.

Manchin has a concrete objection to the bill's structure

Manchin has had a concrete position on the bill’s structure for quite some time --that its revenues should run concurrently with its spending. That position has simply been ignored by Democratic leadership, who have pushed a bill that is extraordinarily front-loaded and laden with expiring programs.

This is a well-known budget trick I call the frontload gambit. The idea: if you set up a bunch of expiring provisions and use up your budget space as fast as possible, you can hope for them to be extended by a future Congress.

At the behest of House progressives, the current version of the Build Back Better bill this budgeting trick aggressively. Expansions to the child tax credit end after one year, improvements to the Affordable Care Act after four years, and subsidies for childcare after six.

The problem is that this trick isn't particularly subtle. Anyone who doesn't notice it is deliberately choosing not to notice it. But Manchin cares about it, and he sees it right there in the CBO score.

He supplies the below chart which illustrates this, year by year; the red lines indicate spending, the blue lines indicate incoming monies through increased taxes. Note that the redlines are all enormous in the early years and supposedly dwindle in later years, and also supposedly, the bigger tax increases only kick in in the out-years.

The plan, as written, increases deficits in early years, and pays for them only after programs at least nominally expire. This is, in fact, the very outcome that deficit hawks dislike: you run up deficits, and then you have to pay for it later. If you write this into your bill, you haven't addressed their concerns -- if anything, you've made the outcome they dislike explicit.

For their part, progressives aren't really trying to hide their true motives. Indeed, many acknowledge that it would be disastrous to start a new preschool or day care program and then shut it down a few years later. They are gambling that these programs will prove popular enough that Congress will extend them before their scheduled expiration date.

He then goes on to note the Democrats' constant false claim that Manchin is "inconsistent." He points out that Manchin's public statements have all been consistent on the points about the size and structure (pay as you go, no fakey-fake frontload gambits) of a bill he'd support.

Via John Sexton, the leftwing New York Magazine agrees that Manchin has been perfectly consistent on these points:

Manchin has made his outlook perfectly clear. In July, he laid out his conditions for supporting a social and climate spending package in a written document co-signed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Among other things, the senator asked for the bill to authorize no more than $1.5 trillion in spending and that all its welfare provisions be needs-based/means-tested. He also indicated that he wanted the bill to reduce the deficit by raising more revenue through tax increases than it doled out through spending.

In September, he told Politico that he believed "starting new programs that shut off a few years from now is akin to making them permanent" since "Congress will never be able to shut them off."

In October, Manchin reiterated this view, saying, "The thing that I'm very much committed to is if we're going to tell the people we're paying for something and the revenue is a ten-year revenue, then the program should be for ten years."

Manchin has been consistent. So have the leftwingers, and so has Biden in championing the leftwingers.

At least in this sense: the leftwingers have repeatedly offered Manchin the exact same bill with fake trimmings and gimmicks to make it look slightly different.

They accuse Manchin of not negotiating in good faith, but they themselves have not negotatiated in good faith: for six months Biden and the far left -- all in thrall to the leftwing Squad in the House -- have offered and counter-offered Machin the exact same bill over and over again with minor cosmetic changes which aren't, as Full Stack Economics notes, even really cosmetic -- they're not even laid on thick enough to hide what the leftwingers are doing.

They just keep offering Manchin the same bill, ignoring the clearly-announced parameters he's set out repeatedly in the past, and have used pressure tactics, including, possibly, the encouragement of leftwing Stalker Groups against him to get him to submit.

Meanwhile, McConnell isn't just asking Manchin to come over, he's plotting how to move Republicans around to give Manchin the leadership spot on the committee that would be his price of defection.

So yeah, guys, you start following him into the crapper and shouting at him at his house through bullhorns at night.

You do your worse.

Maybe at some point Manchin will think, "If I'm going to be treated like a Republican, I might as well see what the membership package looks like."

Now They're Ready to... Start... Pressuring Him&bodytext=After calling him a racist who hates poor children you're going to start pressuring him? How? Here's a smattering of what Democrats have already done, before this "new" pressure campaign: A black Congressman, Jamaal Bowman, accuses Joe Manchin of being...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 03:35 PM

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