Democrats definitely have a messaging problem. They also have policy issues they need to clean up. But on the messaging, which I believe is the point of the thread, yes they are getting their rear-ends handed to them. Don't even see how that's a debate. Why is that the case? A lot of reasons, but a main one is they don't have top down unity in the party. Joe says, "fund the police". If this was the Republican party with Trump saying that, every single one of them would fall in line, with Fox and the other conservative friendly outlets as well. So Joe says "fund the police" and you have AOC or Joy Reid out there completely out of line with the messaging. You have Joe saying "let's do stimulus" with Manchin and Sinema out there torpedoing the bills literally using conservative talking points. You had a rebuttal to the State of the Union address given by a member of the Democratic party for goodness sakes. So yes, they absolutely have a messaging problem, a unity problem, a policy problem. They're screwed.
VIDEO: (
Psaki Asked About Manchin & Sinema On Filibuster) "But they have said...they're not changing? Jan 15, 2022
https://youtu.be/PJ4YHcYDVC4?t=5
Does Your Member Of Congress Vote With Or Against Biden?
An updating tally of how often every member of the House and the Senate votes with or against the president. 117th Congress (2021-22), Democratic senator for Arizona: How often Sinema votes in line with Biden’s position 97.7%
FiveThirtyEight UPDATED Jan. 14, 2022, at 9:46 AM
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-congress-votes/kyrsten-sinema/
An updating tally of how often every member of the House and the Senate votes with or against the president. 117th Congress (2021-22), Democratic senator for West Virginia:
How often Manchin votes in line with Biden’s position 95.5%
FiveThirtyEight UPDATED Jan. 14, 2022, at 9:46 AM
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-congress-votes/joe-manchin/
FACT CHECK: Don Lemon stated on September 29, 2021 in an exchange between CNN hosts:
Says Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema “are Republicans … Just look at the way they vote.”
According to the latest tracking by FiveThirtyEight, they vote with President Joe Biden virtually all the time. For Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, 100% of his votes align with Biden and the Democrats. That includes razor-thin party-line votes on a $3.5 trillion budget resolution (50-49), expanding voting rights (50-50) and $1.9 trillion for COVID-19 relief (50-49)....Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has a similar record. The one exception is that Sinema didn’t cast a vote on establishing a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol....Both of them have voted with the Democrats essentially 100% of the time...But they have broken with their party over the immediate effort to pass a multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation bill, a top Democratic priority. And so far, they have opposed changes in the Senate filibuster rule, another key roadblock to the Democratic agenda. We rate this claim Mostly False.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/sep/30/don-lemon/no-manchin-and-sinema-dont-vote-republicans/
Direct Headline:
CNN labels Kyrsten Sinema a Republican in on-air graphic
During Wednesday night's installment of "Anderson Cooper: 360," an on-air graphic showed an "R" next to her name instead of a "D."
IMAGE - SINEMA LISTED AS (R)
https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2022/01/1862/1048/Screen-Shot-2022-01-14-at-8.11.55-PM.png?ve=1&tl=1
By Joseph A. Wulfsohn 1/15/22
https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-kyrsten-sinema-republican-graphic-senate
Measure Number: H.R. 3233 (
National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex Act )
Roll Call Vote 117th Congress - 1st Session Vote Date: May 28, 2021, 11:24 AM
Required For Majority: 3/5 Vote Result: Cloture Motion Rejected
Manchin (D-WV), Yea
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=117&session=1&vote=00218
Direct Headline: Kyrsten Sinema Is Confounding Her Own Party. But … Why?
Sinema’s resistance to core pieces of her party’s agenda may seem puzzling from an electoral perspective.... But it’s also possible that she’s striking the ideal strategic balance between primary and general election electability....The conventional wisdom is that Sinema rushed toward the center for electoral reasons, as she moved from representing a solidly blue electorate to purpler ones. Former President Obama carried her state legislative seat by 26 percentage points in 2008... but Obama carried her congressional seat by less than 5 points in 2012....If Sinema is acting moderate for electoral reasons, she clearly disagrees with the conventional wisdom about how moderate a swing-state senator needs to be....Sinema is presumably betting that Democrats who dislike her will vote for her regardless, and that at least some Republicans who like her will vote for her, too. It’s not an outlandish notion: Those liberal Democrats, as frustrated as they are at Sinema, will probably find her Republican opponent more odious, and while there aren’t a lot of voters who can be persuaded to cross party lines, they do exist....It may be her donors. In a September report, liberal group Accountable.US found that Sinema raised at least $923,065 from business interests that opposed Biden’s budget reconciliation plan, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a longtime Sinema ally....
By Nathaniel Rakich Oct. 11, 2021, at 6:00 AM
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/kyrsten-sinema-is-confounding-her-own-party-but-why/
******
I find it completely hilarious that
you are using very common Team Blue failed messaging ( i.e. the lack of "Party unity") to try to cover for bad policy and/or just plain bad logistical politics.
Sinema and Manchin have literally voted in lockstep with Joe Biden with everything. Except the opposed BBB and the filibuster.
Sinema is in Arizona, there is a lot of Team Red in Arizona, she's thinking about her own personal political survival, campaign fundraising and reelection. And it's more than clear since the Southern Border was breached like a swinging gate, that Arizona will look to push hard Red in the 2022 Mid Terms and the 2024 general cycle. Why would Sinema want to slam head first into that on the wrong side at the cost of her own political career and future?
Manchin is in West Virginia, which is heavy Team Red. He voted for Kavanaugh, the only Democrat to do so. Then again he voted for the J6 commission. Because it was politically expedient/good for fundraising for his political survival to do so both times despite the decisions inciting both sides of the aisle against him. BBB had problems implied with the coal industry, which hurts WV and then by proxy would hurt the support base for Manchin. Sinema took a lot of campaign dollars from local interests that opposed BBB themselves.
So what does the Biden Administration do? Send Psaki out to just run consistent hit pieces of Manchin and Sinema. Then the activist complicit left leaning woke CNN chimes in and outright lies, saying Manchin and Sinema keep voting Republican on everything. Even the cooked left leaning fact checkers can't hold this story up.
How do you show Party unity when someone votes for you over 95 percent of the time and then they are smeared as a "Republican" in on air graphics and by complicit political pundits in the MSM?
Do Manchin and Sinema lack "Party unity"?
Or did they just look out for their own political survival, LIKE EVERY OTHER DAMN POLITICIAN ON THE ENTIRE PLANET. What did Biden and his administration do to offer something in trade to make it worth it to Manchin and Sinema to vote his way at the cost of likely losing their Congressional seats?
You are literally repeating inept cooked leftist messaging to try to wipe out the real problem no one wants to discuss - Biden and the establishment Democrats needed to win more Congressional seats than they actually did to overcome that they could not rely on the Manchin/Sinema votes. Or they needed to flip more Republicans, by trading something of value to them, for them to change their positions.
Here's a crazy thought, you won't get two people in Congress to change their minds if all you offer them is zero to eat the loss of their own careers and then proceed to relentlessly attack them in the national daily media cycle over and over again.
That Biden or his handlers could not or would not or were too incompetent to sell some kind of deal that appealed to Manchin and Sinema is not about "Party unity" It's also not about "bad messaging" about BBB or the failures of the Biden regime.
Not getting Manchin and Sinema to fall in line was the byproduct of direct incompetent political failure by Biden and his handlers. Not some purity test about "Part unity" and not over some failure to explain the total incompetence in some entirely different way to the American public.