...was convincing the media to blame the Left for how fucked up everything is.
By now you may have noticed that "Liberals are gonna ruin the Biden presidency!" has become the official Beltway media party line. The GOP has been all but written out of the script as anything but an irrefutable law of nature which allows the Beltway media to settle comfortably back down into the same bullshit myth they've been picnicking on for decades.
And drafting along right next to them, thanks to the credibility and the cable media bustier that savvy Liberals handed them, are our trusted allies, the Never Trumpers. Right down the line, every Never Trumper with a microphone and a soap box has eagerly gone back into the hippie punching business in a big way.
But [you protest] surely not everyone's favorite cool, gay, hipster uncle, Tim Miller! Because he's so cool and hip! A real Coffee Achiever --
-- who drops in on virtually every MSNBC program (except "Lockup Marathon!" by the day is young) exuding man-bun, youth-pastor energy while holding your hand and sharing your shuddering contempt for Donald Trump! The guy who cuts together fun, four minute, quick-cut videos to reach Millennials who might be put off by the general octogenarian, Bill Buckley moth-ball reliquary reek of The Bulwark.
Surely not him too! Not all of them!
Yeah, him too.
In fact, because his videos are so short and because this one's purpose is to hammer home the Bulwark/Beltway party-line "Liberals are gonna doom the Biden presidency" message, Mr. Miller's smash-cut short is extremely helpful in that it's brevity forces it to excise all the verbal padding and meandering justifications that usually accompany this bullshit and instead cut straight to the bullshit.
You see, according to the Bulwark/Beltway party line, Democrats almost did a great thing. Passing a bipartisan infrastructure bill!
Video VO: Sounds great. It's exciting. It's exhilarating.
Yay!
But then, suddenly...
Miller But along came The Squad and their Squadlings. They're holding the bipartisan bill hostage unless they also get a human infrastructure bill. Shout out to the branding wizard who came up with that one! Thanks to human infrastructure, this 3.5 trillion dollar monster [Giant cartoon of Frankenstein's monster here] is a grab bag of liberal priorities -- not to mention it cost taxpayers five times as much as the Obama stimulus!
Out of context clip of Barack Obama: Politics is just a big mess.
That is very definitely not how any of this happened, but it makes a better Bulwark/Beltway story than what actually happened.
So what actually happened?
Put simply. this was always the deal.
Progressives agreed to to pass the infrastructure bill on the condition that their bill also be negotiated in good faith and that both bills pass in tandem.
Progressives have already cut their "ask" in half.
The Build Back Better bill is the Biden agenda.
The Build Back Better bill includes things that are every bit as vital to the health and well being of Americans as roads and bridges.
The Build Back Better bill has the support of the White House.
The Build Back Better bill has the support +90% of Democrats in congress.
The Build Back Better bill has the support of the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters.
The Build Back Better bill has the support of the overwhelming majority of the public.
And if it passes, Democrats will have a solid year to run on any or all of the terrific stuff that's in the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better bill.
But that isn't the story that former Republicans -- who have been hardwired to loathe the Left since Moses was in short pants -- are capable of telling.
Now I realize that Manchin's gonna Manchin and Sinema's gonna Sinema. They're going to listen to their donors, eyeball their statewide polls and do whatever they're going to do based on those factors and nothing that I or Tim Miller or Charlie Sykes or David Brooks say in this moment is going change that.
But while history will little note nor long remember what any of us say here, this moment does have great value in clarifying where the loyalties of our Never Trump "allies" really lie.
So let's get one thing straight. This shit we're in up to our chins? All of this is the fault of the GOP which Never Trumpers spent their adult lives building into the monster factory it is today.
It's because Never Trump Republicans refused to heed the warning signs that their party was going mad until it was decades too late that the Democratic Party is now the last fucking chopper out of Saigon. And guess what? The overwhelming majority of Democrats are Democrats. We have certain values and priorities that these former Republicans passionately hate and have spent most of their lives working against detriment of our democracy -- values and priorities that we believe in just as strongly as they believed in Rush Limbaugh, Paul Ryan, infinite tax cuts, bashing Welfare Queens and endless wars.
OK, fine. That's the grim where and why of things as they are now.
But fuck them all with a steam hammer for daring to suggest that the Democratic Party isn't serious about saving the democracy Republicans have imperiled because we won't shove the majority of our priorities, values and members out the door to accommodate the whims of Joe Manchine, Krysten Simena and the staff of The Bulwark.
These days there is rarely a that day that goes by when Charlie Sykes isn't on some cable news show or podcast saying some shit like this:
Sykes: If Democrats really believe that democracy faces a challenge and is in the midst of this rolling assault on the democracy, then Democrats need to act like it!
But what you will never hear Sykes say anywhere under any circumstances is something like this:
Sykes: If Democrats really believe that democracy faces a challenge and is in the midst of this rolling assault on the democracy, then Manchin and Sinema need to act like it!
Because hating the Left and blaming them for every problem under the sun is so deeply hardwired into these former Republicans, it is beyond their ability to imagine a reality in which they would use the media platforms they have been given to urge the tiny, contrarian minority -- 4% of the party -- to grit their teeth and get on board with the overwhelming majority of their own party.
So instead of hiking up their Big Boy pants and doing what every pragmatic Democrat already does -- gritting their teeth and getting behind the Not Crazy Party despite its flaws and limitation -- Never Trumpers would rather squat on their own tiny island of self-righteousness -- inflated by their massive over-representation in the media -- fingering their three-bead, Cheney/Sinema/Manchin rosary and pretending that they can somehow chivvy and nag the Democratic Party into becoming Romney 2012.
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