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**AUGUST 12, 2021**

Meyerson on TAP

It's Manchin, Sinema, Gottheimer, et al. Against

**Biden**-Not Against Progressives

The right wing of congressional Democrats is making a lot of noise about
the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that contains the centerpieces
of Joe Biden's agenda. While all Senate Democrats voted to approve the
budget allowing the reconciliation bill to be considered, a handful of
right-wing House Democrats, spearheaded by New Jersey's Josh
Gottheimer, now say they won't vote to approve that budget resolution

unless they can decouple the infrastructure bill from
reconciliation-voting to approve it right away, which would give their
right-wing Democratic counterparts in the Senate carte blanche to pare
the reconciliation bill down to a bare nubbin.

By so doing, Gottheimer & Ilk aren't really attacking the
progressives' priorities, which were embodied in the $6 trillion
reconciliation package that Bernie Sanders introduced, before he
accepted the compromise level of $3.5 trillion. They're attacking the
programs and processes put forth by Speaker Pelosi, Leader Schumer, and,
yes, President Biden, who vowed to sign either both bills or neither
before Republican rumbling compelled him to make a rhetorical retreat.
They're attacking the near-consensus positions of the entire
party-to expand Medicare and child care, create paid sick leave and
child-raising supports, make community college tuition-free, enact
universal pre-K, and bring into being a number of programs to fight the
climate crisis.

They are every bit as at odds with mainstream Democratic beliefs as the
Dixiecrats were in 1964 and 1965, when that mainstream enacted the
landmark civil rights and Great Society programs over the Dixiecrats'
opposition.

So it's time for our neo-Dixiecrats to be forthright about what and
whom they're opposing. Their war isn't against Bernie and AOC.
It's against Good Moderate Joe. If Gottheimer et al. mean what they
say, at least one of them should announce his or her intent to run
against Biden in the 2024 Democratic primaries. That's what their
opposition is really about.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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Infrastructure Summer: Will Biden's Agenda Survive the Senate Finance
Committee?

Testing Ron Wyden's willingness to challenge the rich and powerful BY
ALEXANDER SAMMON

Classroom Segregation Endures in North Carolina

New legislation would raise awareness about educational disparities
across the state. But first the state must address the stratification
within schools. BY JULIA KNOERR

Biden's Oil-Friendly Appointees

The newly installed State Department energy adviser joins a group of
administration officials who appear wedded to fossil fuels. BY MAX
MORAN

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