Sanders has become a regular on the Sunday morning television interview programs, where he can usually be counted on to deliver a soporific restatement of the latest press releases from the White House or Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, long known as the “senator from Wall Street.”
Last weekend, however, was an exception to this rule, as the erstwhile “democratic socialist” suddenly rediscovered the evils of big money dominating the US political system and lashed out against Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Given his close ties with the coal, oil and gas industries, which he represents and even personifies, since his family’s million-dollar fortune is based entirely on coal industry holdings, Manchin’s identifier should be (D-fossil fuels) rather than (D-WV).
Appearing Sunday on ABC’s This Week, Sanders delivered a tirade against Manchin after the right-wing Democrat delivered the coup de grâce to Biden’s last pretense of significant action on climate change and on taxing the wealthy, among the most popular items in the Democratic Party program on which he ran in the 2020 election.
Manchin reneged after months of protracted negotiations with Schumer and the White House on reviving Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation in some scaled-back version, limited to improvements in subsidies for those receiving Medicaid, authorizing Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate lower drug prices and taking some minimal actions on reducing fossil fuel emissions, the main contributor to climate change.
“Scaled back” is actually something of a misnomer, like calling a mud puddle a scaled-back version of a swimming pool. Even that comparison would grossly exaggerate the significance of Biden’s original plan: perhaps the proposed Manchin-Biden deal was a spoonful of sludge compared to a bucketful of the same noxious material.
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