Americans paying attention to politics have learned an important truth

For the last week, Americans paying attention to politics have learned an important truth: Joe Biden may live in the White House, but the conservative Democratic senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia is effectively president. This depressing reality can certainly be fixed, but only if progressive Democrats in Congress are willing to actually change the dynamic – and they have a rare opportunity to do that right now by using their power to raise the minimum wage.

But so far, they aren’t choosing to use their power – which is a huge structural problem not just now, but also for the foreseeable future.

Joe Biden might be in the White House, but Joe Manchin runs the presidency
David Sirota
In US politics today, the conservative Democratic senator seems to have all the power and is more than happy to wield it

Some have argued that the way to fix this situation is by ending the filibuster, but that’s a catch-22: it is absolutely a necessary reform, but President Manchin is pledging to veto it. Even if Democrats were to eliminate the filibuster, they would still need Manchin’s stamp of approval for virtually all legislation, given the Senate’s current 50-50 split.

The way to fix this dynamic is for a decisive number of House Democrats or Democratic senators to make clear, line-in-the-sand demands, and demonstrate they will vote down Democratic legislation that does not honor those demands. And they must do this specifically on must-pass legislation for which Biden can find zero Republican votes.

That is the way to force Biden to stop pretending he has no agency and instead motivate him to use the overwhelming power of the executive branch to press the conservative wing of the party to back down. It is also the way to get Manchin himself to negotiate – right now, he gets to operate with impunity because there is no counterforce.

The Covid relief bill provides progressives this game-changing opportunity, and in the process they can heroically deliver not on some unimportant issue or tangential agenda item – but instead on the crucial cause of delivering a desperately needed higher minimum wage to millions of Americans.

The debate over the legislation also gives the public a way to see whether self-identified progressive heroes are as serious about actually using power as President Manchin is.

The Covid-19 relief bill is a microcosm of the Manchin effect
We can see this opportunity in the current wrangling over a $1.9tn Covid relief package, where Manchin has successfully pressured the executive branch to support further limiting eligibility for survival checks, devising a phase-out policy so absurdly punitive that even reliably partisan Democratic pundits and centrist thinktank wonks can’t support it.

The payments – which are $1,400 instead of the $2,000 people were promised – will likely now go to 17 million fewer people than the last round of checks under Donald Trump, as a result of Manchin’s handiwork.

Though Biden depicted himself as a legislative master of the Senate during the 2020 presidential campaign, the result of his negotiation – or lack thereof – has been Manchin making austerity demands that position him to the right of his own state’s Republican governor.

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