Democrats have a lot of good ideas to help people fast, and visibly. They have good ideas for deepening democracy, like the "For The People Act." But if they let Senate Republicans filibuster everything, they will lose in 2022, and they will deserve it.

A lot of them understand this. “I’m going to do everything I can to bring people together,” Senator @RonWyden, who will chair the powerful Senate Finance Committee, told me. “but I’m not just going to stand around and do nothing while Mitch McConnell ties everyone up in knots.”
“This is a fight not just for the future of the Democratic Party or good policy,” Senator @BernieSanders told me. “It is literally a fight to restore faith in small-d democratic government.”
“I’ve said to the president-elect, ‘reach out across the aisle...But don’t let them stymie your program,’” @WhipClyburn told me. “You can’t allow the search for bipartisanship to ruin the mandate the American people gave you.’”
“It’s not a question of if the filibuster will be gone, but when it’ll be gone,” former Majority Leader Harry Reid said. “You cannot have a democratic body where it takes 60 percent of the vote to get anything done.”
What Democrats need to do is simple. They need to help people fast, and visibly. They need to deepen the democracy they speak so stirringly about. And they need to win in 2022, because the worst policy outcome is to lose to this Republican party.
And they need to recognize that frustration with paralyzed government feeds demagogic populists who claim they're the only ones who can make the system work. The party that believes in government needs to make government work, not meekly accept its failures.
This is going to come to a head fast. Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion rescue plan. It's a good plan that would help people, and because it will help people, it will help Democrats. Mitt Romney has already dismissed it as "not well-timed."
So it's not going to get the 10 Senate votes it needs to pass. What do Democrats do? Do they give up on their agenda, or do they give up on the filibuster?
Senate Democrats have said they will join House Democrats in pushing the democracy-expanding "For The People Act" as their first bill. But you can't use budget reconciliation for that. So do Democrats give up on democracy or listen to Obama and give up on the filibuster?
There's lots more in the piece, of course. But Democrats have too often preferred the false peace of decorum to the true progress of democracy. If they choose that path again, they will lose their majority in 2022, and they will deserve it. https://t.co/H7nnSykgwM

More from Ezra Klein

So I'd recommend reading this thread from Dave, but I thought about some of these policies, and how they fit into the whole, a lot, and want to offer a different interpretation.


I think California is world leading on progressivism that doesn't ask anyone to give anything up, or accept any major change, right now.

That's what I mean by symbolically progressive, operationally conservative.

Take the 100% renewable energy standard. As @leahstokes has written, these policies often fail in practice. I note our leadership on renewable energy in the piece, but the kind of politics we see on housing and transportation are going foil that if they don't change.

Creating a statewide consumer financial protection agency is great! But again, you're not asking most voters to give anything up or accept any actual changes.

I don't see that as balancing the scales on, say, high-speed rail.

CA is willing to vote for higher taxes, new agencies, etc. It was impressive when LA passed Measure H, a new sales tax to fund homeless shelters. And depressing to watch those same communities pour into the streets to protest shelters being placed near them. That's the rub.
This is a good @mattyglesias post about techno-politics but I want to quibble with the part of it that’s about my essay on the policy feedback loops you can build by Just Helping People Fast. Matt writes: https://t.co/MuBlgQV6LW


Over at Mischiefs of Faction, @Smotus makes a similar point:
https://t.co/al6fS5tZXP


I want to be clear here: I’m saying that the Affordable Care act was, from a political perspective, badly designed, and that *a different health care plan* might’ve led to a better Dem performance in 2010. But these arguments don't grapple with that.

To @Smotus’s point, Pelosi released those House Democrats at the end, not the beginning. Having covered the beginning of this, I can tell you a lot of those Democrats thought a bipartisan health care bill would be great politics for them!

But they didn’t get that.

This is key. The ACA was built on the political theory that:

1. Bipartisan policy is easier to pass — and more popular once passed.

2. Working off of the Heritage Foundation/Romney template could get you a bipartisan health bill.

1 was probably right. 2 was utterly wrong.
This is a piece I've been thinking about for a long time. One of the most dominant policy ideas in Washington is that policy should, always and everywhere, move parents into paid labor. But what if that's wrong?

My reporting here convinced me that there's no large effect in either direction on labor force participation from child allowances. Canada has a bigger one than either Romney or Biden are considering, and more labor force participation among women.

But what if that wasn't true?

Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor.

The problem is in the very language we use. If I left my job as a New York Times columnist to care for my 2-year-old son, I’d be described as leaving the labor force. But as much as I adore him, there is no doubt I’d be working harder. I wouldn't have stopped working!

I tried to render conservative objections here fairly. I appreciate that @swinshi talked with me, and I'm sorry I couldn't include everything he said. I'll say I believe I used his strongest arguments, not more speculative ones, in the piece.

More from For later read

How I created content in 2020

A thread...

Back in Aug 2016, I started creating content to share my experiences as an entrepreneur.
Over 3 years I had put out 1,200+ hours of content - posting every week without


Little did I know that something I started almost 4 years back would give my life an entirely new direction.

At the end of 2019, my biggest platform was LinkedIn with ~700K followers.

In Jan 2020, I decided to build a team that would help me with the content.

I ran a month long recruitment drive to hire a team of interns.

It comprised 4 detailed rounds - starting with my loved 20 questions, then an assignment, then a WhatsApp video round and finally F2F.

Through 1,200+ applications, I finally selected 6 profiles, starting March.

I am a firm believer in @peterthiel's one task, one person philosophy
So the team was structured such that everyone was responsible for ONLY one task

1. Content ideas
2. Videography
3. Video editing
4. LinkedIn (+TikTok) distribution
5. FB+IG distribution
6. YouTube distribution

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