While we may have secured a win on the Debt fight,

[Eko]

and not Defaulting while keeping most of what we wanted could be considered a win its a case of we may have won the battle but we sure didn't win the war. Every time we have a Democratic President and the other side holds a house of congress they will do this. We have to figure this out. They have a weapon that we don't have because we are not nihilist assholes and we cant let them keep doing this.
Eko.

[Wishful-Thinking]

1. Agree wholeheartedly!

Are you the Eko from Higher Octave Music days?

[Eko]

2. No, but that was pretty cool.

I am a musician but more of a guitarist. Thanks for turning me on to that.

[Silent Type]

3. I get it. But, feel it's a victory for compromise/bipartisanship/sanity and

will help us in long run. But, I get any disagreement.

[Eko]

5. I get that and mostly agree.

Its just how many times are we going to have to go through this. Obviously we cant default, but we also cant let them keep doing this and our solution cant be holding the presidency and both houses of congress. We need to think long term to fix this. How I am not sure, but we need to figure it out.

[no_hypocrisy]

19. A #Zen master says to his pupils:

"If you say this stick is real, I will beat you. If you say this stick is not real, I will beat you. If you say nothing, I will beat you." There seems to be no way out. One pupil, however, found a solution by changing the level of communication. He walked up to the teacher, grabbed the stick, and broke it.

Take away the necessity of voting to raise the Debt Limit.

[Demsrule86]

24. We should do that, but we need the votes. And we didn't have them.

[CousinIT]

29. People who vote R love it. Non-voters need to vote (many or most are D)

Democrats need a FULL HOUSE, SENATE AND EXECUTIVE MAJORITY to abolish or modify the debt ceiling.

To get THAT a whole lot more people need to VOTE. Same with the American Taliban Abortion Bans. People don't bother voting ("Ohhhhh, I don't like my choicesss!" "Ohhhh, I hate Hillaryyyy" "Ohhhh but the Dem candidate isn't perfeeeect!" "But they're all the saaaaame!&quot .

Honestly, people - especially the younger more idealistic (unrealistic) ones, need to grow up and get over that shit.

[betsuni]

26. And then the master beat the guy with half a stick and made him clean all the temple toilets.

[PJMcK]

30. The master used both halves

One in each hand.

The student learned a lesson that day.

(wink)

[Demsrule86]

25. We will go through this until we elect more Democrats.

[Indykatie]

4. There's An Easy Fix For This - Elect More Dems

Do you have a different idea for a solution?

[Eko]

6. See post 5.

Thanks for commenting!
Eko.

[Bobstandard]

7. This was not a win!

You said it yourself, we didn’t win the war. As you observed, this hostage taking only occurs when Democrats hold the Presidency. What have we learned? We’ve learned that Democrats will always cave. Three Democratic Presidencies in a row have demonstrated this.

Republicans have decided that a debt default isn’t just ok, they’ve decided it’s good for them. They think any economic disaster that results will help them in 2024. And Democratic leadership has decided they’re right but I don’t think so. People have been watching the Republican Party get so extreme that they look dangerous. Dangerous to the economy, to personal freedom, to women’s health issues, on and on. There appears to be about 30% of the voting public that backs the extreme right no matter what. But that leaves a majority who reject that bullshit. We’ve seen that majority assert themselves repeatedly recently. And what is it that motivates the majority to get out and vote? Hard stands against Republican extremism.

Note what wasn’t negotiated during these talks. Repeal of tax cuts on the wealthy. New taxes on the wealthy. Why? Because Republicans refused to negotiate those at all. They were non starters. But stuff that hurts the poor? Oh sure. We can talk about them

I’m as Dem as it gets but I can see how our proclivity to fold to Republican threats weakens us. That’s not a win.

[Eko]

9. Do you think we should have just let us default?

Because if you are expecting the Republicans to be the sane party that's not going to happen. They would just let us default and then our hurt would be exponentially more than our compromise did. Guessing where the electorate would be placing the blame is just that, a guess. Way beyond that would be the damage it would do to our country and the world.

[GenThePerservering]

11. Good gawd - if it's not perfect, it's no good?

We need to get rid of this purity doctrine Democrats seem to cling to - it's why the party keeps going down under GOP onslaught - we're on the side of right, but we NEVER pull together, there's always the squabbling and hair splitting.

[PortTack]

15. ☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️

[betsuni]

16. The populist All or Nothing purity test. Compromise and incrementalism, how government works

(unless one party has very large majorities in Congress and the presidency) is seen as immoral and proof of corruption. Nothing is preferable to a compromise because The People will see the pure righteous fighting spirit and start the revolution/movement.

[Axelrods_Typewriter]

20. I've never seen it put so succintly. Bravo!

The "all or nothing" approach almost always gets you nothing. Even still, to the practitioners of such an approach, the "all" is often not enough.

[lapucelle]

28. Democrats in NYS secured the $15/hr minimum wage and free community college and state university

years ago, and we did it incrementally, starting in 2015. By 2020, it was fully implemented.

Meanwhile, many of the purists who have been screaming "I want it all, NOW, NOW, NOW!" for the past 8 years still have nothing.

[betsuni]

31. Seattle passed a $15 incremental minimum wage increase in 2014.

Life is incremental. Me Me Me Me is all I see with the purity tests guaranteeing nothing, how luxurious. We have a society.

[PortTack]

12. Folding to the republicans?? Oh pleazzz. This is politics 101. As far as how many times are we

Going to do this? As many times as it takes, and that is absolutely a winning message!

[W_HAMILTON]

14. You do realize there is no alternative, right? Well, other than voting Republicans the fuck out.

Because Republicans will happily let our nation default, which will not only hurt many, many more Americans than anything agreed to in this deal, but also many citizens around the world due to how big of an impact we have on the global economy and reliance on USD.

Why?

Because Republicans know they can get away with it. They have their own conservative echo chamber that will blame Democrats and you know that the rest of the media -- the """both sides""" types -- will put the blame on Biden and the Democrats just as much as they will Republicans. The end result? Our easily duped American populace believing that it is the Democrats' fault since Biden is president, even though anyone with even an iota of knowledge on the subject knows that is not the case. But most Americans are not that politically aware. So, Republicans will hurt Americans and then reap the rewards at the ballot box because of Americans blaming Biden and other Democrats for the resulting disaster.

The only short-term solution to this is VOTE THE FUCKING REPUBLICANS OUT AND KEEP THEM OUT TO PREVENT THIS SHIT FROM HAPPENING.

If we retain control of the presidency and Senate in 2024 and retake the House, this debt ceiling shit will almost assuredly be eliminated entirely because we most likely will have won the Senate without Sinema/Manchin, two thorns in our side when it comes to situations like these. The main reason we didn't have this dealt with in the lame duck session is because Manchin, in particular, didn't want to "go it alone" with just Democrats, he wanted it to be bipartisan, and of course Republicans were never going to work with Democrats to do that because they knew this was always an option: push the country to the brink of default and win concessions or crash our economy and watch as conservative AND so-called """liberal""" media blame Biden for it.

[betsuni]

18. +1

[Demsrule86]

22. Without Manchin, I don't see how we keep the Senate honestly. Who will replace him? A

Democrat other than Manchin will not win in WV.

[W_HAMILTON]

35. We don't need Manchin to keep the Senate.

We need Gallego (in AZ) to keep the Senate.

We can currently afford to lose one Democratic Senator and still maintain control, assuming Biden/Harris win reelection. We'll basically just be going back to where we were before Fetterman was elected. Except in that case, we would essentially have Fetterman/Gallego replacing Sinema/Manchin.

Imagine what we could have accomplished those first two years if we had those two instead.

So, yes, sign me up for that.

[Demsrule86]

36. And that is dicey too...you assume we hold everywere else. What about Tester in Montana?

Sherrod Brown is up too (Ohio). Look at the Senate map. Also, Sinema is likely to run as an independent which will hurt our chances.

[W_HAMILTON]

38. Both of them have far greater prospects at winning reelection than Manchin does.

And if we lose Tester and Brown, Manchin still doesn't matter since even if he were to pull off a miracle and win, we would still have lost the Senate.

So, once again, the winning strategy is doing our best to get Gallego elected and secure our own seats, with Manchin being the last on that list in terms of priority. Any money used on Manchin would be better used on Tester/Brown/Gallego and I think there are one or two other Democratic Senators that might be vulnerable. Manchin is probably a goner regardless, but him being gone doesn't doom our chances in the Senate. Far from it, actually.

[Demsrule86]

23. No one caved. We need more Democrats. I wish folks would sit down and count votes.

President Biden did a good job.

[BumRushDaShow]

27. "Note what wasn't negotiated during these talks."

The GOP in the House passed -

H.R.2811 - Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023

which included items that were repeals of Democratic policies as well as taking control over Executive Branch regulatory authority, that they were NOT going to bargain away.

Yet they just did.

The irony here is that we have done a pendulum swing from a period where the "Unitary Executive" theory was promoted under Shrub, to one where both congressional GOPers AND a conservative SCOTUS, have moved to knee-cap the Executive Branch.

[rubbersole]

8. Oligarchs thrive on government stagnation.

[uponit7771]

13. +1,

[tirebiter]

10. Take back the House and keep taking it back.

[DFW]

17. It's not a war that will ever be won

We‘re never going to have a utopian society where Democrats win all elections, and even if we did, the absolute power would eventually indeed corrupt us absolutely.

Remember when W whined at his SOTU speech that he hadn‘t managed to privatize Social Security, and then immediately realized he was a jerk for bringing it up in a forum where Speaker Pelosi and every Democrat in the chamber suddenly stood up and applauded? We‘ve had some pretty fine moments when the shoe was on the other foot.

[Demsrule86]

21. The answer is enough senators who will get rid of the debt ceiling. We must elect more Democrats.

That is and always was the answer. There is not a damn thing we can do if they hold the House.

[Igel]

32. Debt limit fights haven't been nearly so "clean" as presented.

Although every time it happens the past is purged to make all the previous fights just vanish from the pages of time.

Pelosi played hard ball some years. At other times, Schumer did. In one case, (D) held all three components necessary for a bill (house, senate, white house) and Blue Dogs raised a ruckus.

Negotiations every time. Sometimes it led to larger things, sometimes not. And sometimes a "clean" bill was passed only after a second part of the deal was passed or locked in, so the bill in hindsight looks clean--like landing a sweet apt. looks clean two years later simply because nobody admits to noticing the bribe given to the landlord under the table to be put at the top of the rental list.

In 2019 a two-year deal was worked out after weeks of negotiations with Pelosi. Trump backed it, but (R) mostly didn't. Her support required increased spending for two years instead of the sequestration and reduction that would have been required in the absence of the "clean" deal with extensive strings attached. In other words, the future budget was linked to the debt deal and required revising previous legislation to "claw back" mandatory (but future) budget reductions.

My favorite was 2010, when all the dissent and negotiations were between (D). Fiscal conservative Blue Dogs were happy to hamstring things until they got at least part of what they wanted in exchange for supporting a "clean" bill (with preconditions and strings, redefining "clean" to mean "fairly dirty"--except the strings and preconditions were alongside and not inside the bill).

[Fiendish Thingy]

33. Apparently nothing that can't be undone once Dems hold majority again

Yes, many will suffer in meantime with work requirements, and budget won’t grow with inflation for next two years, but the debt ceiling won’t be an issue for the rest of Biden’s first term.

It could’ve been a lot worse.

I look forward to 2028, when President Whitmer will have a Manchin and Sinema-free senate, and Dem majorities who will hopefully support her in governing unhesitatingly as she has in MIchigan in just the first six month of this year, passing bill after bill of progressive policies protecting the rights of the people and spending money in ways that truly benefit hard working folks.

[pwb]

34. The voting booth will be the deciding battle.

Women and the young are forming up to vote against anything puke. IMO.

[Demsrule86]

37. The only we we win the war is by electing more Democrats to the House and the Senate.

There is nothing that can be done otherwise. Biden played the hand he was dealt and played it well. We could have won the midterm in the House if New York had not dropped the redistricting ball...and if the GOP will gerrymander, we need to do the same.