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The Green New Deal's time has come – but where has Labour's radicalism gone? | Adam Tooze
What a difference power makes.The past 18 months saw political defeats for the left on both sides of the Atlantic. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party came to an end after a resounding Conservative victory. The Bernie Sanders campaign went down at the hands of the Democrat establishment. And yet the bitter irony of 2020 was that just as the political hopes of the left were dashed, the strategic analysis of the Green New Deal – the centrepiece of its policy vision – was spectacularly vindicated.The Green New Deal demanded that social and economic policy should be oriented towards the immediate planetary challenge of the environment. Its proponents, groups such as the Sunrise Movement, put a “just transition” front and centre; this means fairly managing the social harms such as unemployment that would arise from an accelerated shift away from fossil fuels. Then, as if on cue, the coronavirus arrived, and delivered a devastating “inequality shock” forcing even the likes of the Financial Times to talk about a new social contract.The Green New Deal’s politics emerged from a recognition of the fact that there was unfinished business from the financial crisis of 2008; climate activists warned that we were harnessed to a dangerous financial flywheel and demanded that finance be turned in a constructive direction. The thinking was based on the notion that the status quo was the one thing that we could not have: the events of 2020 confirmed precisely how dangerous and precarious our reality is.In the US, this feeling was compounded by Donald Trump’s terrifying antics and the killing of George Floyd. Even Joe Biden, as centrist as it gets, has been moved to speak of four converging crises – Covid-19, the economy, racial justice and the climate. Nor is this merely a rhetorical framing. The Biden administration has assimilated a large part of the Sanders agenda. The double stimulus programmes planned for 2021 are unprecedented. The administration is clearly serious about climate. It is forced, by the balance of power inside the Democratic party, to put race and environmental justice at the heart of its policies.This assimilation of the left programme into the centre is made possible by victory. It is based on a confidence that a broad-church progressive coalition can win a majority in the US. Furthermore, the Republicans have done the Democrats the favour of vacating the middle ground almost entirely.The contrast to the UK is painful. Reeling from its bitter defeat, languishing in the opinion polls, Keir Starmer’s Labour party diagnoses a polycrisis too, but it consists not of issues of global significance, but of Brexit, the collapse of the “red wall” and the question of Scotland. Questions of identity overshadow everything. Rather than seriously questioning what the nation might be, as the combination of Trump and Black Lives Matter is forcing liberal America to do, Labour appears to be content with trying to reclaim the union flag from the Conservative party.Starmer’s long-awaited “big speech” last month was an exercise in sophomoric national cliche. He managed to be sentimental even in the passages about British business. References to the blitz and 1945 formed the anchor. The climate crisis got a single line, with one other passing reference. The Mais lecture by the shadow chancellor, in January, was weightier. Unlike Starmer, Anneliese Dodds did in fact seriously discuss the climate emergency, but it is no longer the organising framework that it once was, no longer the pacesetter, the imperative to action. The only thing that matters is to convince some key voters that Labour is responsible enough to be trusted as a steward of the economy. Though “acceleration” was one of Dodds’s key terms – a reference to the way the pandemic has amplified pre-existing trends such as flexible working and digitalisation – she managed nevertheless to offer a curiously muted vision of the huge challenges facing the UK and the world economy.No doubt the pollsters have fine-tuned these messages with target segments of the electorate. But if you do not belong to that audience, if you understand your identity to be complex and multiple, if you have ever been on the bitter end of the politics of patriotism, then flag-waving repels. If a little thought about society and politics has taught you to regard “common sense” as the most dangerous of snares, you cannot but worry about a party so desperate to please the Daily Mail.Labour’s retreat from radicalism means that the initiative belongs to the Johnson government. Having done Brexit, it can look to the future. It leads even on climate. After destroying the miners union in the 1980s, the Tories may end up presiding over historic decarbonisation. After vaccines they will claim Britain’s hosting of Cop26 as a victory too. Ahead of the 2024 election, the Tories will no doubt pivot to “fiscal responsibility”, but as the budget makes clear, they are spending as the situation demands. Labour is left to harp on value for money.The independent Bank of England created by Gordon Brown is now merrily buying bonds to finance Rishi Sunak’s spending. Whereas experts aligned with the Labour party were once leading a global conversation about redefining central bank independence in a progressive direction, the shadow chancellor now proposes to treat its independence as inviolable. Not so the Tory chancellor, who has added climate to the bank’s mandate.No doubt the Corbynite left was too in love with its own radicalism. But the Green New Deal was not radicalism for its own sake. It was radical because reality demanded it. Faced with the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath, the world historic presence of China, Trump, the escalating climate crisis, and an unprecedented global pandemic, what more is needed to demonstrate this point? A politics that does not want to mobilise around these challenges, which prefers to deal in patriotic pastiche, forfeits any claim to be progressive.The disinhibited politics of the new global right recognises this radical reality, though in the form of fantasy, denial and conspiracy. Global capital is swinging full tilt behind its own version of a Green New Deal. Hundreds of billions is now sloshing into renewable energy. The restructuring and job losses about to happen in the global automotive industry will put every previous reorganisation in the shade.In the age of the great acceleration, Corbyn’s politics at least rose to the challenge of recognising that the future would be different. Labour’s new look – the Little Britain to come – promises a nostalgic road back to the future. It is, in reality, a dangerous dead end. More
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The best way for Democrats to weaken the far right? Build up the labor movement | Brendan O'Connor
The election and inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris does not represent the defeat of the far right, as even the most mainstream Democrats must rhetorically acknowledge. The more critical question, however, is whether those same Democrats are willing to support the changes necessary to actually achieve this victory: not through the introduction of new domestic terror legislation and the expansion of the security state, but through passing laws that allow poor and working people to build power for themselves, in their own organizations and institutions, on their own terms.The incoming administration has already signaled its sensitivity to the urgency of the moment: within hours of taking office, Biden signed a slew of executive orders on the pandemic, immigration, and the climate that began the work of undoing some of what the Trump administration was able to accomplish without congressional involvement. But many of these orders only return federal policy to the pre-Trump status quo, which was already insufficient; those that go beyond that previous status quo do so in the most minimal or superficial of ways. If the Biden administration is serious about legislating towards a more just and equitable society, it must not only pursue reforms to the way that Congress itself works – abolishing the filibuster, for example – but it must prioritize structural reforms like the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would open the door to a transformation of the US labor movement.Mostly overshadowed by the storming of the US Capitol, the second impeachment of Donald Trump, and the inauguration of Joe Biden, a slew of worker struggles in the United States are entering critical phases. On Martin Luther King Day in New York, in two very different parts of the city, the New York police department descended upon peaceful demonstrators who had taken to the streets in support of separate, but related causes: in an encore of their performance this summer, hundreds of cops beat and arrested dozens of Black Lives Matter protesters marching through downtown Manhattan, near city hall; 11 miles and an hour’s subway ride away, in the Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood, hundreds more NYPD cops swarmed a picket line of workers on strike for a $1-an-hour raise, arresting six. The co-op that runs the market has reportedly hired a private security firm to keep fruits and vegetables moving, with help from the NYPD. Six workers at the market, mostly members of the striking Teamsters Local 202, have died since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.Without a robust labor movement, the sole bulwark against far-right violence will be the stateThis month alone, in addition to the workers who keep New York supplied with fresh produce going on strike, white-collar workers at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced the formation of a union, which grew from 225 members to more than 700 within a week. Elsewhere in California, gig workers, supported by the Service Employees International Union, are suing to overturn a ballot measure stripping them of their rights as workers that platform companies like Uber and Lyft spent $200m to get passed last year. Chicago’s formidable teachers’ union is threatening to strike over school reopenings. And a union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama is headed to a vote beginning next month. Nearly half a million unionized essential workers’ contracts will be up for renegotiation this year, Luis Feliz Leon reports in the New Republic, setting the stage for a potential strike wave.Victory is not only necessary to improve the conditions of the workers engaged in these particular struggles, but because an organized working class that can fight (and win) is our only hope to defeat an increasingly militant far right. Without a robust labor movement, guided by the principles of anti-fascism and anti-racism, the sole bulwark against far-right violence will be the state – specifically, the law enforcement agencies whose repressive power has grown exponentially in the last few decades, and is inevitably turned against workers, the poor, the racialized and the left.In the weeks and months since the election, Washington’s liberal establishment dissuaded anyone from counter-demonstrating against the fascists who repeatedly marched through the city to protest Donald Trump’s election loss. The momentum those fascists were able to build carried them up the steps of the US Capitol, leaving five dead; consequently, tens of thousands of national guards members and police were ordered into DC.“Their America has always done this elsewhere,” the writer and army veteran Matt Gallagher told the Guardian, speaking of the young troops occupying the city. “Now it’s happening here.” Even though leftwing organizations weren’t actively targeted, leftwing organizing efforts were disrupted as a result, with mutual-aid networks disrupted by blockades and checkpoints.The point is not to attempt to win over people who would take up arms to oppose a multiracial, socially equitable democracy; the point is to build a movement that can fight for a society where the appeal of such ideologies is obviated. The more successful any fascist or far-right populist movement is, the more working-class people will be absorbed into it, won over by its subversiveness, its superficial anti-capitalism, and its appeals to blood and soil. But at their core, these movements are not for working people and the poor; they are based in the reactionary middle classes: the heirs to suburban fortunes; the cops and prison guards and border patrol agents; the serial entrepreneurs who never have to suffer the consequences of their failures.The struggle against fascism does not begin or end with fighting fascists in the street. In fact, the most successful antifascist mobilization is not one in which the fascists get beaten up, but one that is so well-organized, publicized, and receives such popular support that the fascists never show up at all. Admittedly, this does not make for dramatic photography or videos. It deprives journalists of the spectacle of violence, but it also keeps people safe.Sustaining such mobilization over time will not be possible without a dynamic, vital labor movement, freed to experiment with new organizational forms that reach new layers of the American working class – a movement that can also lead the fight against climate change, police violence and mass incarceration, and against the capitalist order that, when in crisis, gives rise to fascism in the first place. More
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Senate minimum wage battle could play out in midterm elections
Sara Fearrington, a North Carolina waitress, joined the Fight for $15 campaign two years ago. A server at a Durham Waffle House, her take-home pay fluctuates between $350 and $450 a week, leaving her struggling to pay bills every month. She voted for Joe Biden, who had pledged to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. It was the first time Fearrington, who is 44, had ever voted in a presidential election.“It would mean everything. It would create stability for my household,” she said of the impact that a higher wage could have on her and her family of five, which includes her husband, who suffers from a rare lung condition, and a granddaughter who has asthma.The Democrats will need her support for their US Senate nominee next year if they are to maintain and strengthen their tenuous hold on the upper chamber. Some of 2022’s hotly contested Senate races are expected to play out in low-wage regions like Fearrington’s home state.The purple states of North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have rock-bottom minimum wages of just $7.25 per hour – the current federal minimum. Georgia, where the Democrat Raphael Warnock will fight to hold on to the Senate seat he wrested from the Republican senator Kelly Loeffler in November, abides by the federal minimum wage, even though the one it has on the books is $5.15. Recent polling suggests Republicans could gain a seat in New Hampshire, another low-minimum-wage state, where the Democratic senator Maggie Hassan is facing a potential challenge from the state’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu.The federal minimum wage has not increased from $7.25 since 2009, and for 21 states in the country the minimum wage law that governs employers is no higher than the federal minimum. Fearrington earns an hourly wage of just $3.10 an hour as a tipped worker, making her income unpredictable.Biden had hoped to include a $15-an-hour minimum wage increase in his $1.9tn economic stimulus package, which is expected to pass this week, and would also gradually phase out the sub-minimum wages for tipped workers like Fearrington. But prospects for the minimum wage provision evaporated after the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the wage hike could not remain in the budget reconciliation bill where Democrats had placed it in order to avoid a Republican-led filibuster they lacked the votes to override.Progressives inside and outside Congress pressured Senate Democrats and the Biden administration to override the parliamentarian and take the matter to a vote.“Then, at least, it’s a public conversation, where people are fighting for what they said they were going to fight for, for the poor and low-income people who turned out in record numbers in this past election,” said the Rev Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the National Poor People’s Campaign.Whether such a conversation ever takes place is a growing concern to progressives and a source of discord within the coalition that brought Biden to the White House – at a moment when the battered US economy stands at a crossroads. On Friday, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders made an 11th-hour effort to reinsert the provision into the stimulus package. Eight Democrats crossed over to vote it down, including two senators from his neighboring state, New Hampshire.Delivering a minimum wage increase before the midterm elections would give bragging rights to Democratic senatorial candidates in low-minimum-wage states. In North Carolina, 33% of workers would experience an increase in wages. Once the raise was fully implemented, the average annual benefit to a North Carolina worker who works year round would be $4,065, according to Capital & Main’s analysis of data released by the non-profit Economic Policy Institute in a recent study. Workers in other states would reap similar benefits.The ruling by the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, prompted online protests by liberal swing-state candidates in Pennsylvania, including the lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, who is seeking the US Senate seat occupied by retiring the Republican Pat Toomey.“Since the Senate parliamentarian won’t allow a $15 minimum wage to go through reconciliation, then it’s time to end the filibuster and raise the minimum wage,” Fetterman said in a statement. Biden, who generally supports the traditions of the Senate, is coming under increasing pressure to end the filibuster in order to deliver on his agenda.Delivering a minimum wage hike to voters – or at least fighting tooth and nail to get it passed – may also be key to keeping Biden’s fragile coalition together heading into the midterms. The failure to do so could also make for some fractious Democratic primaries. “Every single Dem who voted against a $15 minimum wage should be primaried,” said Krystal Ball, host of HillTV’s Rising.Polls show strong support for a $15 minimum wage, especially among Democrats and independents. And a recent poll by the non-profit National Employment Law Project found that two-thirds of voters in battleground congressional districts supported gradually raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, including 84% of Biden voters and 63% of non-college-educated white people.The popularity of a minimum wage increase led to Republicans floating watered-down (and, mostly likely, doomed) proposals to hike the country’s base wage. Senator Mitt Romney and Senator Tom Cotton proposed a plan to increase the minimum wage to $10 an hour over four years that is tied to stepped-up immigration enforcement. On Friday, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, proposed a $15-an- hour minimum wage plan that would apply to businesses with annual revenue in excess of $1bn. Taxpayers, not the employer, would foot the bill for Hawley’s proposed increase.Opponents of the proposed gradual increase to $15 an hour over five years – like the Business Roundtable, which represents chief executives of major US companies – have argued that wage increases should be calibrated to regional differences in the cost of living. But Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, says $15 an hour makes sense as a wage floor and is even low when the cost of living is taken into account. In addition, the minimum wage would jump to $9.50 in the first year, well below its 1968 peak of just over $12 (when accounting for inflation).“In 2021, virtually anywhere in the country, a single adult will need to be working at least full time and earn at least $16 an hour in order to meet their family budget,” says Zipperer.Jim Wertz, chair of the Erie County Democratic party in Pennsylvania, argues that the Senate’s failure to pass the $15-an-hour minimum wage should push people to vote for more Democrats, not keep them from the polls.“The reason we can’t get it done is because of a couple of centrist or right-leaning Democrats,” he said, referring to the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona who have said they do not support such a large increase in the minimum wage and voted against Sanders’ failed attempt to restore the minimum wage hike to the stimulus bill.Fearrington is not paying close attention to the byzantine rules of Congress or its politics. She lost two members of her extended family to Covid-19 this year, and to protect vulnerable members of her family, she spent Christmas and her birthday in isolation after she contracted the virus.Still, she’s undeterred in her determination to vote in next year’s Senate race regardless of the outcome of this latest battle in DC. The Republican senator Richard Burr, who voted to convict Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, is retiring, leaving the seat open.“I’m going to go for the Senate seat that’s going to listen to the mass majority of people that are saying we need this to help our society, our community and our economy – blue or red,” she said.This article is published in partnership with the award-winning not-for-profit publication Capital and Main More
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Joe Biden might be in the White House, but Joe Manchin runs the presidency | David Sirota
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.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 effectWe 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.Meanwhile, the Biden’s White House is signaling that it will ignore pleas from civil rights leaders and not support Kamala Harris to use her power as the Senate presiding officer to advance a $15 minimum wage. Even though there is ample precedent for the vice-president to do this, White House officials do not support this maneuver – presumably because they fear Manchin and the conservative senator Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, would oppose it.The reason Manchin has become the legislative center of gravity is obvious if unstated: the implicit threat is that if he doesn’t get exactly what he wants, he will cast a decisive vote against the final bill, killing it in one fell swoop because there will almost certainly be zero Republican votes for final passage, no matter what is in the legislation.Manchin, in other words, seems to have all the power and is more than happy to wield it.By contrast, Biden, the most powerful man on the planet, appears to be refusing to wield power. He doesn’t seem to have lifted a finger to try to change the Senate dynamic. He reportedly hasn’t even pushed Manchin on minimum wage at all, which suggests the president is either cartoonishly lazy, believes such an effort would prove fruitless, or actually doesn’t want to deliver on his promises and has found the perfect excuse in the West Virginia senator. Frankly, it is probably some combination of all of those things.The White House insists that it will still continue fighting for a $15 minimum wage in the future. But the reality is that if nothing changes right now, then the likelihood of a significant minimum wage increase in the next few years is incredibly slim.Any standalone, substantial minimum wage bill will face a filibuster requiring 60 votes to overcome it. Despite the White House fantasizing that Republicans might support a serious minimum wage increase, there probably are not 10 GOP Senate votes to break such a filibuster.Meanwhile, if Democrats try to attach a minimum wage increase to a bill that Republicans actually really want to vote for – say, the National Defense Authorization Act – Republicans could move to simply strike it out of that underlying bill, which enough conservative Democrats might agree to, and then the GOP would vote en masse for final passage of the stripped-down legislation.Everyone in Washington knows this script, so a move to attach a minimum wage to a bill like this would likely be a performative gesture, but not a legislative victory.The key: must-pass bills that the Republicans will not vote forThis situation spotlights the central point: must-pass Democratic legislation that has no chance to secure any Republican votes at all may be the foundation of the current Manchin presidency, but they can also be the foundation of a long-overdue progressive realignment in Congress.Manchin’s threat of voting down Democratic legislation is only able to disproportionately determine policy outcomes because there is not a serious ideological threat on the other side serving as a counterweight. Put another way, Manchin is this powerful because he’s willing to wield power and his purported ideological opponents are not.Amazingly, Manchin remains unchecked even though there are enough progressives in Congress to create this necessary countervailing power.In a narrowly divided House in which no Republicans will vote for a Covid relief bill, it would only take somewhere between six and 10 Democratic congresspeople to join together as a bloc and make a game-changing declaration that they will not vote for final passage of a Senate-passed Covid relief bill that does not include a minimum wage increase.Similarly, in the Senate, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or Ed Markey could pull their own version of Manchin and make the same declaration, saying they would not vote yes on final passage unless the legislation includes Sanders’ amendment to increase the minimum wage.The relief bill is a must-pass for all Democrats. If Manchin can threaten to withhold his vote, so can Elizabeth, Bernie, and the Squad+They should wield their power. Make the bill better, for the substance and the politics.— Ady Barkan (@AdyBarkan) March 3, 2021
Such declarations would trigger a political earthquake, tectonically shifting the power structure and the assumptions built into legislative debates.Suddenly, Manchin would not be the political solar system’s sun whose gravity forces everyone to revolve around him – he would be one of two poles, forcing the Biden administration to try to find compromise between them, and pressuring Manchin to move.Suddenly, the Biden White House, the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and majority leader, Chuck Schumer, would have to carefully weigh how much to give up to Manchin for fear of losing the other bloc of lawmakers on the other side of him. And they would have to do that knowing they can’t triangulate, simply ignore the progressives and replace them with some Republican votes.Suddenly, House progressives’ demand for Harris to ignore the parliamentarian and advance the minimum wage wouldn’t just be rhetoric. With a real threat of progressives voting down a minimum-wage-less Covid bill in final passage, ignoring the parliamentarian would become crucial for Biden himself. He would need to support doing this and use his power to actually pressure Manchin, because he would need to get that minimum wage attached to the bill.With no Republican votes available, progressives would be making clear that would be the only way Biden could hope to pass the Covid relief legislation on which he’s staking his entire presidency.At the table, rather than on the menuIf this would work, then why hasn’t it happened? Almost certainly because congressional progressives are more moral than Manchin – as Representative Ro Khanna articulated in Thursday night’s Daily Poster live chat, they genuinely do not want to delay desperately necessary legislation to help millions of people and extend federal unemployment benefits expiring in 10 days, and the assumption is that Manchin would be more than OK with doing that.But whether from the film Back to the Future or from the experience of the last four years of Donald Trump, we’ve learned over and over again that the only way to defeat bullies is to stand up to them. Congressional progressives must be willing to be as strong, clear and unwavering as Manchin is villainous.They must be willing to follow through on a promise to not just cast votes against a bill Biden wants, but cast decisive votes when there are no Republicans for Biden to peel off – votes that actually take down the legislation unless progressives’ eminently reasonable demands are met.Yes, the Covid relief bill must pass. It includes desperately needed help for Americans who are struggling. And yes, progressives who actually take a stand would be falsely accused of killing the legislation and trampling their own honorable principles of harm reduction that typically leads them to support inadequate legislation because it includes some good stuff (and I have no doubt that for even writing this essay, the Guardian will be instantly – and falsely – accused of not caring about the plight of people struggling though the economic crisis, even though we’ve spent months holding Democrats accountable to their promise of immediate aid).But those arguments don’t fly here. If, as they assert, progressive lawmakers were predicating their votes for the Covid relief bill on an eminently reasonable demand like a long overdue, much-promised raise of the country’s starvation wage, then the legislation’s momentary delay would be the fault of the party and president that refuses to deliver on that promise. It is not the fault of the party’s rank-and-file progressive lawmakers who themselves were elected on the same minimum wage promise and who are simply taking legitimate, reasonable steps to make sure they deliver on the pledge right now.Additionally, precisely because the bill is so desperately needed and a must-pass initiative, there is absolutely no reason to believe it would permanently die. If a Covid relief bill with no minimum wage is voted down in the House, lawmakers can immediately go back and revise the legislation and bring it right back up. We’ve seen that happen before, most prominently during the financial crisis when the Bush administration’s initial bank rescue bill was voted down and then quickly revised and passed.For those who rightly demand a serious minimum wage increase, this is the way to have a real shot at making it happen right now. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that “the entire negotiations of this package, for a lot of people, were predicated on the $15 minimum wage”. The way to actually make that wage increase happen is to follow through and make clear no bill will pass unless it is included. Otherwise, progressives’ votes weren’t actually predicated on the $15 minimum wage at all.This isn’t rocket science. This is game theory 101. This is the ancient idea of countervailing power – and however difficult and scary it may be for progressive legislators, it is the only strategy to end the Manchin presidency before it takes over politics, eliminates the prospect of fundamental change, and delivers an electoral disaster to Democrats in 2022 and 2024.Such opportunities do not come around very often. It is incredibly rare for there to be truly must-pass legislation that no Republicans are willing to sell their vote for. Congressional progressives must be willing to use such an opportunity to make a threat and follow through, knowing that even if they momentarily delay legislation like the Covid relief bill, their party’s leaders will be instantly forced back to the negotiating table to revise it.At that point, progressives would finally be at that table, rather than on the menu – which would at last provide a chance to materially improve millions of Americans’ lives.David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor at large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter More - in US Politics
Cuomo suffers major blow as top New York Democrats say governor must go
Andrew Cuomo suffered a major blow on Sunday in his attempt to stay as governor of New York in the face of allegations of sexual harassment and workplace bullying and a scandal over nursing home deaths under Covid. The majority leader of the senate and the speaker of the assembly, two of the most powerful Democrats in the state, said it was time for Cuomo to go.“We need to govern without daily distraction,” the majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, said. “For the good of the state, Governor Cuomo must resign.”Assembly speaker Carl Heastie backed Cousins, calling the allegations “disturbing” and saying Cuomo should “seriously consider whether he can effectively meet the needs of the people of New York”.Five women have accused Cuomo of sexual harassment, accusations he denies. On Saturday the Washington Post published new claims of bullying. One former aide claiming Cuomo ran “a systemic, intentional, hostile, toxic workplace environment”.Other lawmakers have called for Cuomo to quit over allegations that his administration misled the public about coronavirus fatalities in nursing homes.Cuomo told reporters earlier on Sunday he would not resign because he was elected by people not politicians and the system depended on due process.The premise of resigning because of allegations is actually anti-democratic“I’m not going to resign because of allegations,” the governor said. “The premise of resigning because of allegations is actually anti-democratic.”Prominent national Democrats including the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who is from New York, and the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, expressed support for the women who allege harassment and for an investigation run by the state attorney general, Letitita James.But Cousins went further.“Every day there is another account that is drawing away from the business of government,” she said. “We have allegations about sexual harassment, a toxic work environment, the loss of credibility surrounding the Covid-19 nursing home data and questions about the construction of a major infrastructure project.“New York is still in the midst of this pandemic and is still facing the societal health and economic impacts of it. We need to govern without daily distraction for the good of the state, Governor Cuomo must resign.”Speaking to CNN, Whitmer, who has discussed her own experience of sexual assault, said she had “the same gut-wrenching reaction that a lot of women in America did” when she heard one of five women who say Cuomo sexually harassed them describe her alleged experiences.But like other senior Democrats, Whitmer stopped short of saying Cuomo should resign, despite comparisons to recent cases in which powerful men, among them the former Minnesota senator Al Franken, were swiftly forced to step down.“I think the allegations here are very serious,” she said, “and I do think that an impartial thorough independent investigation is merited and appropriate. And if [the allegations are] accurate and true, I think we have to take action.”Last year, Whitmer was one of many prominent Democrats to back Joe Biden when he denied an accusation, telling CNN: “Just because you’re a survivor doesn’t mean that every claim is equal. It means we give them the ability to make their case. And then to make a judgment that is informed.”This week, former Cuomo aide Charlotte Bennett told CBS how she says Cuomo behaved.“I thought, ‘He’s trying to sleep with me,’” she said. “‘The governor is trying to sleep with me and I’m deeply uncomfortable. And I have to get out of this room as soon as possible.’”Whitmer was asked how she felt while watching Bennett’s interview.“I think that there are a lot of American women who have felt how she felt,” she said. “And I think that’s something that resonates and why we need to take this seriously, and why there needs to be a full investigation, and whatever is appropriate in terms of accountability should follow.“I wouldn’t help anyone for me to prejudge where this is headed, but I had the same gut-wrenching reaction that I’m sure a lot of women in America did.”Lindsey Boylan, a former Cuomo adviser, has said the governor made inappropriate comments, kissed her on the lips and suggested a game of strip poker on a plane.Anna Ruch, who did not work for Cuomo, has described him putting his hands on her face and asking if he could kiss her when they met at a wedding.Ana Liss told the Wall Street Journal that when she was a policy aide, Cuomo called her “sweetheart”, kissed her hand and asked personal questions, including whether she had a boyfriend. She said he sometimes greeted her with a hug and kisses on both cheeks.Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, told the Journal: “Reporters and photographers have covered the governor for 14 years watching him kiss men and women and posing for pictures. At the public open-house mansion reception, there are hundreds of people, and he poses for hundreds of pictures. That’s what people in politics do.”The Washington Post, meanwhile, published a claim by Karen Hinton, a press aide to Cuomo when he was US housing secretary under Bill Clinton. She told the Post he “summoned her to his dimly lit hotel room and embraced her after a work event in 2000”.Peter Ajemian, Cuomo’s director of communications, told the paper: “This did not happen. Karen Hinton is a known antagonist of the governor’s who is attempting to take advantage of this moment to score cheap points with made-up allegations from 21 years ago.”Of the accusations of bullying, Ajemian said: “The governor is direct with employees if their work is sub-par because the people of New York deserve nothing short of excellence.”Earlier this week, Cuomo denied touching anyone inappropriately. But he also apologised for behaving in a way he said he now realised upset women.“I understand sensitivities have changed,” Cuomo said. “Behavior has changed. I get it and I’m going to learn from it.” More
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Biden officials visit US-Mexico border to monitor increase in crossings
The new US secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, led a visit by Biden administration officials to the border with Mexico on Saturday, amid a growing number of border crossings and criticism by Republicans that a crisis is brewing.Joe Biden has sought to reverse rigid immigration polices set up by his predecessor as president, Donald Trump, whose presidency was dominated by efforts to build a border wall and reduce the number of legal and illegal migrants.Biden has faced criticism from immigration activists who say unaccompanied children and families are being held too long in detention centers instead of being released while asylum applications are considered.The White House said last week Biden had asked senior members of his staff to travel to the border and report back about the influx of unaccompanied minors. It declined at the time to release details about the trip, citing security and privacy concerns.Mayorkas and officials including domestic policy adviser Susan Rice visited a border patrol facility and a refugee resettlement facility, the White House said on Sunday.“They discussed capacity needs given the number of unaccompanied children and families arriving at our border,” a statement said, “the complex challenges with rebuilding our gutted border infrastructure and immigration system, as well as improvements that must be made in order to restore safe and efficient procedures to process, shelter, and place unaccompanied children with family or sponsors.“Officials also discussed ways to ensure the fair and humane treatment of immigrants, the safety of the workforce, and the wellbeing of communities nearby in the face of a global pandemic.”An influx of people seeking to cross the border is likely to be a big issue in the 2022 midterm elections. Trump may use it to rally his base against Biden and lay the groundwork for a potential return as a presidential candidate in 2024 or as a way to boost a successor.“The border is breaking down as I speak,” Republican South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, told Fox News on Sunday. “Immigration in 2022 will be a bigger issue than it was in 2016.” More
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Joe Manchin's stimulus stand exposes dangerous fissures in Democratic ranks
Seeking to explain his part in dramatically prolonging marathon Senate proceedings before the passage of Joe Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill, Joe Manchin may only have succeeded in exposing a dangerous fissure in Democratic ranks.In winning controversial modifications to benefits for struggling Americans, the West Virginia senator said, he had tried to “make sure we were targeting where the help was needed” and to do “everything I could to bring us together”.The latter remark, on Sunday to ABC’s This Week, might have provoked hollow laughter on the left. As Manchin, a powerful centrist in a Senate divided 50-50, toured the talk shows, he also faced up to fierce criticism from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez over his opposition to a $15 minimum wage, a measure dropped from the stimulus bill.The progressive congresswoman from New York has attacked Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another opponent of the $15 wage, as “two people in this entire country that are holding back a complete transformation in working people’s lives”.“The $15 minimum wage never fit in this piece of reconciliation,” Manchin told CNN’s State of the Union. “Those are the rules of the Senate.” He also said he was in favour of raising the wage to $11 – a figure unacceptable to progressives and indeed the Republicans with whom Manchin insists he is willing to work.On Friday, Manchin mounted a late push to scale back unemployment benefits in the stimulus package, a huge and historic piece of legislation meant to help Americans struggling amid a pandemic which has cratered the US economy. His move prompted hours of negotiations, followed by a compromise and voting through the night.But Biden and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, refused to criticise Manchin, the senator slapping his podium and emphasising the need for “unity, unity, unity”, particularly as every Republican present voted agains the relief bill.Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont attempted to include the minimum wage rise in the stimulus bill under budget reconciliation, requiring a simple majority rather than the 60-vote threshold which applies to most major legislation. But the Senate parliamentarian ruled against Sanders – much to progressives’ anger.“I know they made a big issue about this,” Manchin told CNN, “and I understand. Everyone has their right. I respect where [Ocasio-Cortez] is coming from, I respect her input, we have a little different approach.“We come from two different areas of the country that have different social and cultural needs. One was that you have to respect everybody.”The stimulus bill now goes back to the House before heading to Biden’s desk. House leaders have promised smooth passage but five defections would sink the bill. On Sunday Kate Bedingfield, the White House communications director, was asked if she thought progressives would support it.She told CNN the “historic and transformational piece of legislation … is going to cut child poverty and half” and said the White House hoped the left would “make that judgment” based on “what their constituents need”.It seems clear a $15 minimum wage has no hope of clearing 60 votes in the Senate. That super-majority, known as the filibuster, is said by champions including Manchin to protect minority rights – though it came to prominence largely as a way for southern segregationists to oppose civil rights reform.The House has passed HR1, a sweeping voting rights bill meant to counter efforts by Republicans in the states to dramatically restrict voting by groups that favour Democrats. But HR1 seems doomed unless Senate Democrats scrap the filibuster.Even if they did, centrists like Manchin would enjoy immense power. Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, the senator cited his own stand on the relief bill.“If what you saw happen with that 50-vote swing and one vote, no matter who, it maybe can make a big difference in a tied Senate, can you imagine doing day-to-day operations this way? Can you imagine not having to sit down … with your colleagues on both sides and have their input?“…I’m willing to look at any way we can. But I’m not willing to take away the involvement of the minority.”He also said he did not favour using reconciliation for voting rights legislation.“I’m not going to change my mind on the filibuster,” he said, “[and] I’m not going to go [to reconciliation] until my Republican friends have the ability to have their say also.”On Fox News Sunday, Manchin said he did support making the filibuster “painful” again, meaning a return to the requirement senators physically hold the floor of the Senate in order to block legislation, a process famously depicted in the James Stewart movie Mr Smith Goes To Washington.Bedingfield confirmed that Biden is also against scrapping the filibuster.Manchin’s power in the Senate was the talk of Washington even before the drama of Friday and Saturday.“I didn’t lobby for this position,” he told ABC. “I’ve never changed. I’m the same person I have been all my life and since I’ve been in the public offices. I’ve been voting the same way for the last 10 years. I look for that moderate middle. The common sense that comes with the moderate middle is who I am. That’s what people expect.“…You’ve got to work a little bit harder when we have this toxic atmosphere and the divisions that we have and the tribal mentality. That’s not to be acceptable. You’ve got to work hard and fight that. Fight against those urges just to cloister in with your group and say, ‘Well, this is where I am.’”Progressives disagree. On Friday Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey tweeted: “I’m frankly disgusted … and question whether I can support this bill.” She also told USA Today she was “thinking very hard about making a statement” in the House.“As progressives,” she said, “we’re going to have to figure out where the line in the sand is.” More
