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Brian Beutler Profile picture
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22 Sep, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Gotta disagree with Jeff here. The demand, implicit though clear as day, is that Dems walk away from Build Back Better.
Here for instance. They don’t seem to want to say it, perhaps because it’d reek of hostage taking, but they nearly all hold the view that they will allow the country to default unless Dems surrender the right to pass their agenda and govern as they promised.
Trump, of course, has no problem spelling it out explicitly. Republicans should destroy the country unless Democrats unconditionally surrender their governing agenda. So let’s be clear: This IS a hostage situation, and there IS a ransom demand.
This is important for two reasons: First, because reporters have avoided calling this extortionate, because Republicans (other than Trump) have been oblique about their demand. That should stop. Second, because it recasts centrist efforts to kill BBB as caving to hostage takers.
Again, again, they DO have a policy ask: The ask is that Democrats abandon Build Back Better. More here: mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi…
On this, by contrast, the pup is right.

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More from @brianbeutler

Brian Beutler Profile picture
20 Sep
Ever since centrists insisted on cleaving Build Back Better in half, the progressive position has been ‘ok you get your bill, we get ours.’ The centrists, in alignment with corporate interests, have been trying to figure out how to blow up the deal for weeks. All out in the open.
Plan A was to deny progressives any input into the bipartisan bill, while mangling the reconciliation bill beyond recognition. Plan B is to just walk away, and then blame progressives if they don’t then provide the decisive votes for the bipartisan bill in exchange for nothing.
Anyhow, we’re approaching a fork in the road between disaster and fulfilling at least some of the promises of the election. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi…
Read 4 tweets
Brian Beutler Profile picture
17 Sep
A common trope of Dem politics holds the party should heed centrists because of their deep insights into swing territory; but most of these members just win in waves then lose when the tide recedes. Letting them steer strategy leads to predictable fiascos. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi…
It’s not that heeding progressives would necessarily be a tremendous boon to Biden’s popularity, but the centrist approach has been a huge drag, all pundit canards about Afghanistan notwithstanding. crooked.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=88…
Contrast to the more recent, more confrontational Biden/Newsom approach to politics and governing, and it seems pretty clear we’d be better off if that had been the party-wide approach all along.
Read 4 tweets
Brian Beutler Profile picture
27 Aug
NEW: The VA and CA elections can serve as test cases for how congressional Democrats should run next year. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi…
I’ve come around to Newsom’s “no backup plan” strategy, high risk as it is, but now he’s gotta scorch the earth around Larry Elder. crooked.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=88…
Mapping the Newsom/McAuliffe approach on to midterms will require, among other things, fully exposing the plot to overturn the elections. Good signs there from the select committee, some troubling ones from the administration.
Read 4 tweets
Brian Beutler Profile picture
20 Aug
Botch, please… mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi…
Before zooming out to the larger political context and lessons, here’s how I’ve reasoned through the past week’s events and how others have characterized them. crooked.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=88…
Because it looks chaotic there’s a widespread assumption that there must be a better way, and then bad-faith critics who insist they would've pulled it off seamlessly. Given that backdrop, Biden is right to be unyielding.
Read 5 tweets
Brian Beutler Profile picture
12 Aug
My take on this is that our political system makes it impossible for popular liberal majorities to enact solutions to problems before they become crises, even when their leaders have power, so their only recourse is to get louder in various ways. slowboring.com/p/fake-crisis
Had we let the people with solutions govern after they won, the climate crisis would be a more manageable climate problem; minorities would not be allowed to govern in perpetuity. But we didn’t.
Now, after years of ignoring problems, they have metastasized into acute crises. And the response is to hope that a clean energy standard can survive reconciliation, consecutive minoritarian gerrymanders don’t cost us another decade, and the insurrection fizzles out. Not great!
Read 6 tweets
Brian Beutler Profile picture
6 Aug
Who is Viktor Orban’s Paul Manafort?
Yup, as Jeet writes, the sudden surge of commentary on and troll-farm like activity around Hungary doesn’t just stem from the American right’s natural affinity for a bigoted, corrupt autocrat. It’s also about $$$ — and just in time for elections there. jeetheer.substack.com/p/funding-a-cr…
Why are we witnessing an absurd discourse around the idea that Hungary is a better place than the U.S. in the middle of right-wing-junket-to-Hungary season? Who will crack this impenetrable mystery?
Read 4 tweets

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