Nina Turner: Progressive Dems should learn from Joe Manchin, do more with power
"We’ve got to throw caution to the wind and stand up [...] People like Sen. Joe Manchin are willing to do whatever it takes to get their way [...] We have to go just as hard on behalf of the poor..."
By DOUGLAS J HARDING
Candidate for U.S. Congress and former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner said Tuesday that progressive Democrats and the Biden Administration must be more willing to wield their power to pass life-saving policies and combat the influence of conservative Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin.
“We’ve got to throw caution to the wind and stand up,” Turner said during an interview on The Hill’s Rising. “People like Senator Joe Manchin are willing to do whatever it takes to get their way. He’s doing it now; he did it with the COVID relief bill, and he does it time and time again. We have to go just as hard on behalf of the poor, the working poor and the barely-middle-class in this country as they are for the donor class in this country.”
Turner was responding to a question from Rising co-host (and former MSNBC co-host & Democratic nominee for Congress in Virginia) Krystal Ball, in which Ball wonders what is stopping progressives in Congress—such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders—from using their power to influence policy with the same determination and success as Manchin.
“Here’s the thing that blows my mind,” Ball said. “Manchin is willing to go so hard—willing to blow up this whole thing—in order to give more to corporations and do something that (…) is really unpopular. Keeping the corporate tax rate low is not a popular policy. He’s willing to go to the mat for that. Why isn’t there a comparative level of hardball politics on the left? Why is it always the right-wing Democrats who are willing to throw all the way in to get the terrible things and neuter the bill and get the things they ultimately want for the donor class?”
Turner said it is important to give Democrats credit when they pass legislation that temporarily reduces some harm, but, ultimately, the Biden Administration must act much more boldly to meet the needs of suffering Americans--particularly in combatting conservative Democrats like Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (of Arizona) in their attempts to block the party from fulfilling major legislative priorities and campaign promises.
“We certainly can use [our] power more effectively,” Turner said. “I’m very disappointed in Senator Joe Manchin.”
Turner said Manchin has “a propensity for blocking what the Democrats are trying to do.”
“Even right now, he’s balking at the infrastructure bill President Biden is pushing through, saying that he does not support the increase in the corporate taxes,” she said. “Are you kidding me? As a matter of fact, Democrats should go back to pre-Trump levels [of corporate tax rates]. It was at 35 percent, and President Trump moved it to 21 percent. I do give President Biden some credit for trying to push it from 21 [percent] to 28 [percent] to fund his infrastructure bill, but let’s go on and go all the way.”
She said Democrats should repeal Bush-era tax cuts and raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 35%.
Turner said leftists and progressive Democrats must be willing to call out individuals within their party who stand in the way of popular legislation and structural change that would lift millions of Americans out of poverty.
“We asked the American people to give us the presidency: Check. We asked them to help the Democrats hold the House: Check. We asked them to give us the power of the U.S. Senate by way of Georgia: Check, check and check. So now it’s time for us to go ham in the paint on behalf of the working people of this nation,” Turner said. “People like Senator Joe Manchin and people like [Sen. Kyrsten] Sinema—You know, we’ve got to question whether or not these folks really want to serve the people who are suffering [such as] the poor, the working poor [and] the barely-middle-class, or if they are just answering to their donors [and] owners […] We have to go in hard, and we also have to get out among the American people, even if it’s virtually, and call these people out. Call them out by name, and let the American people know who’s standing in the way of changing their material conditions. We cannot endure in this fashion where the ultra-, ultra-, ultra-wealthy in this country get their way and everybody else suffers by extension. It’s untenable, immoral and unacceptable.”
A report published Monday in The Daily Poster explains how Manchin’s pushes to prevent increases to the corporate tax rate, even amid historic crises, may be motivated by the economic interests of his corporate campaign donors, as well as his own.
“Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Monday began raising objections to President Biden’s legislation to fund infrastructure investments by raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent,” the report states. “Derailing the tax hike would be a lucrative gift to both corporate CEOs in general, and to private equity giants whose executives bankrolled the lawmaker’s 2018 campaign and funded a super PAC that boosted his closely contested reelection bid.”
The Poster has published several articles in recent months detailing Manchin’s confusing determination to help the American people as little as possible, as well as the clear and obvious ways progressive Democrats and the Biden Administration can match and override the West Virginia senator’s exaggerated power to impact public policy.
A March 4 essay by David Sirota, headlined “How To Stop The Manchin Presidency And Raise The Minimum Wage,” argues progressive Democrats in Congress must be willing to, like Manchin, use their power to make firm policy demands on crucial pieces of legislation—such as the COVID relief bills—and vote as an organized bloc to combat Manchin’s current anti-democratic and outsized influence.
“For the last week, Americans paying attention to politics have learned an important truth: Joe Biden may live in the White House, but conservative Sen. Joe Manchin is effectively president,” Sirota wrote. “This depressing reality can certainly be fixed, but only if progressive Democrats in Congress are willing to actually change the dynamic (…) But so far, they aren’t choosing to use their power — which is a huge structural problem not just now, but also for the foreseeable future…
[…]
The way to fix this dynamic is for a decisive number of House Democrats or Democratic senators to make clear, line-in-the-sand demands, and demonstrate they will vote down Democratic legislation that does not honor those demands. And they must do this specifically on must-pass legislation for which Biden can find zero GOP votes.
That is the way to force Biden to stop pretending he has no agency and instead motivate him to use the overwhelming power of the executive branch to press the conservative wing of the party to back down. It is also the way to get Manchin himself to negotiate — right now, he gets to operate with impunity because there is no counterforce.”
The West Virginia Holler is an affiliate of The Tennessee Holler and is powered, in part, by West Virginia Can’t Wait.
Follow the Holler on Twitter @HollerWV and Instagram @WVHoller. We're on Facebook too! Follow writer Douglas J. Harding @douglasjharding.