The Democrats were furious Monday over eight senators who caved to support a deal to end the government shutdown that does not include the Affordable Care Act subsidies their party had spent weeks fighting for.
The offending lawmakers include Democratic Senators Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine, Jacky Rosen, John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen, and independent Senator Angus King, who claimed that they’d ensured a Senate vote on extending the tax credits. Their capitulation comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted for weeks that he wouldn’t promise them a vote on anything, and even if he does follow through with a vote, it’s unlikely such a measure will pass the House.
Democratic lawmakers slammed their colleagues for forfeiting health care coverage for an estimated 5.1 million Americans by 2034 and increasing premiums across the marketplace.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders railed against the deal while speaking before the Senate Sunday. “If this vote succeeds, over 20 million Americans are gonna see at least a doubling in their premiums in the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “For certain groups of people, it will be a tripling and a quadrupling of their premiums. There are people who will now be paying 50 percent of their limited incomes for health care. Does anybody in the world think that makes sense?”
I think your interpretation about Schumer’s actions just doesn’t match reality. Presumably he doesn’t control those eight people, but he does have inside knowledge, and he could have framed things differently. If the Democrats had gone public with several plans first and then they caved, then it might have been understandable. If Schumer is a leader with any power whatsoever, he should have set that up when he realized that he was going to lose support from those 8 senators. Or if he’s a leader without any power, then he’s not actually a leader and he needs to remove himself from that position.
I think we know exactly what he was doing because we’ve seen him act this way before. so if it looks like he’s flaking out again then probably that’s what happened. Of course our intuition is not proof, but we don’t need proof.
What interpretation about Schumer’s actions? My point is not that I trust Schumer. It’s that I trust Ro Kahnna even less because I know who controls him.
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I don’t know why else Kahnna would be ready to go on a 24 hour press junket calling for Schumer to be ousted immediately after it was publicly announced Democrats had caved. And I don’t know why one of the earliest Democrats who turned, and helped draft the deal with Republicans, would then go on Fox News first thing this morning to claim Schumer was in on it the whole time.
I don’t give a fuck what moral high ground anyone wants to take regarding what Schumer has done. I’m not denying he needs to be replaced, but I don’t trust the way it’s happening. Using the press to manipulate the public and orchestrate a coup is the go to playbook of the same opportunist who recently publicly stated we all just need to accept that an authoritarian surveillance state may be inevitable in order for the U.S. to beat China in the AI race.
If Thiel has decided Schumer needs to be removed so suddenly, it’s not because he wants to help the democratic party and replace him with a more progressive leader.