Thread by @LarryGlickman

I'm so glad that the Times is finally putting the infrastructure talks in the context of the GOP bait-and-switch of 2009, but the claim that "few could fault the so-called Gang of Six," gives that group way too much credit. nytimes.com/2021/06/04/us/…

According to Grassley, when the president asked him if he'd be willing to sign on the bill, he said, "two or three Republicans does not make a bipartisan bill.” Rather than analyzing this remarkable statement, Jonathan Weissman just leaves it there.

Moreover, quoting Snowe and Grassley claiming that the fact that they "met 31 times over the course of those months" is proof of their seriousness does not allow for the possibility that they knew that delay would harm the chance of the bill's passage, as it, in fact, did.

It would also have been helpful to interrogate the source of the "anger" that Grassley observed, and what he meant by his statement that, “You kind of got the feeling that people were waking up.”

Weisman (name misspelled above; sorry) tells us that the Tea Party was driven by "populist anger over Wall Street bailouts." Might there be more to this story? Many scholars and analysts have suggested that racism played a role too.
vox.com/2016/2/10/1094…

And the both sides framing--"in Washington these days, nothing is easy. Republicans and Democrats cannot even agree on a common definition of infrastructure"--strikes me as an attempt to be fair, but it winds up being inaccurate.

Democrats supported Covid relief under Trump in bipartisan fashion. Republicans unanimously rejected Biden's much-needed Covid relief package. It's ok to point that out along with McConnell's promise to devote all of his energy to stopping the Biden administration.

As I've pointed out before, the "Washington is broken" slogan adopted here is partisan framing that helps Republicans, who do everything in their power to break it. When reporters write this, it allows the GOP to say, "I told you so."