Chuck Schumer got it done while you were busy bashing Chuck Schumer
If we’re to understand the narrative – anyone but Chuck Schumer should be the majority leader, because they’d somehow magically pass voting rights, healthcare for all, firing all the SCOTUS justices we don’t like, and locking up the former guy and his cronies.
While we’re at it, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are secretly allied with Mitch McConnell who’s an evil supervillain genius and they’re always on the verge of sabotaging us at every turn just for fun. Of course, in the real world, none of this is true at all and there’s a much larger picture to consider with everything that happens, but the media has largely used this as their default storyline when covering pretty much anything.
Once you look beyond it – for obvious reasons like why senators vote the way they do – it quickly begins to fall apart, as it should. Unfortunately, there are those who feel that they need to cling to this narrative and speculate on ridiculous nonsense that might happen despite Democrats having come to an agreement on Build Back Better. How about we focus on what’s actually in the bill instead – that Democrats will be able to run on in 2022? This is a bill that helps meet climate change goals by reducing carbon emissions by 40% and also works to reduce the deficit by $300 billion, while also raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations, as President Biden vowed to do when he ran for president.
As much as you might not like Joe Manchin, he did his part – and he managed to fool Mitch McConnell by reviving reconciliation hours after voting for a bipartisan bill that will make the US more economically competitive. If you like winning, you need to accept that wins don’t happen every day – and you need to shut out the narrative by everyone who thinks they know better.
There’s a real story here that the media is missing – and that is that Manchin outwitted McConnell, whose evil genius skills were clearly lacking here – and in doing so, Democrats succeeded in getting some pretty progressive legislation done. If you want winning messaging, this is it.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making