The responsibility of finding 10 Republican votes on everything

A couple years ago while doing genealogy research on my own family I came across a book documenting the genealogy of Prince Charles of England. As expected, the book is well researched, showing many lines of ancestry, some going back about a millennium. For my own family I had created an ancestral fan chart, though in my version I didn’t bother with the names, instead I drew lines showing how far back we had information on each ancestral line. Some go back quite a ways. That’s where I learned about pedigree collapse. When cousins marry an ancestor (or ancestral couple) is part of two lines, or two lines collapse into one. My own fan chart shows a few, including the great grandson of one ancestor’s first wife married the granddaughter of his second wife. The news this morning featured the story that Prince Phillip, husband of Elizabeth II of Britain, had died at the age of 99. Some of the stories pointed out the Phillip and Elizabeth were “distantly related” as third cousins (they have common great great grandparents). Back when I had the book I used my program to create a fan chart for Prince Charles, though keeping it to eight generations. I displayed it again today. Yes, both Phillip and Elizabeth have Victoria and Albert as a common ancestor. But that’s not the only way they are related. Another common ancestor is King Christian IX of Denmark (for Elizabeth through the wife of Edward VII). Looking at my chart I count seven ways Phillip and Elizabeth are 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th cousins. That’s what happens when the daughter of one king is sent to be the wife of another and a couple generations later they return the favor. The fan chart of Charles is quite a tangle. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted Ezra Klein of the New York Times. Klein wrote about Democrats in Congress chasing after Republican votes. That affected the Affordable Care Act, the stimulus bill of 2009, and several other big bills. Then Moscow Mitch refused to confirm Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court, following that with super speed to seat Amy Coney Barrett. Democrats saw that Mitch was not a good faith actor. Klein wrote:

The result is that Obama, Biden, the key political strategists who advise Biden and almost the entire Democratic congressional caucus simply stopped believing Republicans would ever vote for major Democratic bills. They listened to McConnell when he said that “the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan.” And so Democrats stopped devising compromised bills in a bid to win Republican votes.

Joan McCarter of Kos discussed the latest pronouncements of Joe Manchin on the filibuster. Manchin, the senator from West Virginia, is one of two Democrats that don’t want to get rid of the filibuster, the other is Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. But with the filibuster in place much of what Biden and the Democrats want to do won’t get the needed 10 GOP votes to stop debate (see above). There is discussion that the Senate should go back to the talking filibuster, where senators actually have to hold the floor. McCarter wrote that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer can already make that change. And perhaps a few more. But Schumer can’t eliminate the filibuster without 50 votes (plus VP Harris). At the moment he has only 48. McCarter wrote, quoting Manchin:

"There is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster," he blusters. "The time has come to end these political games, and to usher a new era of bipartisanship where we find common ground on the major policy debates facing our nation." Because he's got the power to make Mitch McConnell go away? It's hard to know what's going on here. Is Manchin so absolutely oblivious to what's been going on around him for the entirety of his time in the Senate, or does he have such a huge ego that he thinks he can declare a new era of bipartisanship and not get laughed off the Senate floor? ... What is shining through in all of this op-ed is that Manchin has not done his homework and that he has not seriously considered his position. The other thing that is striking is the degree to which he is setting himself up to take on sole responsibility for gridlock. ... But every time Manchin puts himself forward as the keeper of bipartisanship and insisting that there must be a 60-vote majority for everything, he's taking on the responsibility of finding 10 Republican votes on everything. When that doesn't work, what? Does he relent and finally allow filibuster reform? There aren't 10 Republican votes for anything that matters and Manchin is revealing just how unserious he is in pretending otherwise.

Ari Berman of Mother Jones tweeted:

Joe Manchin represents a state that is 1/22 the population of California & 92% white yet he can singlehandedly block policies supported by 70-80% of Americans. This is why the US Senate is so broken. ... After Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 Manchin wrote bipartisan legislation requiring background checks for gun sales. It was supported by 86% of Americans & 54 senators but blocked by 46 senators representing just 38% of country. This is the consequence of the filibuster Manchin supports.

It is good to see Biden is trying to change the debate on gun violence. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported on the president’s latest pronouncements and actions. Good. Alas, what he can do without Congress is limited. Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader, has already lied in describing what Biden is doing: “Today, President Biden announced his attempts to trample over our constitutional Second Amendment rights by executive fiat.” So, nope, the GOP position has not changed. Joe Manchin, are you paying attention? Mark Sumner of Kos reported that America has contracts for enough vaccine for 750 million people. Since this more than twice the population of America, we’ll have a lot left over. Sumner has already suggested that America give away those doses to help protect the rest of the world. A fine idea. One problem. The contracts, written by the nasty guy’s team, say we can’t share surpluses with the rest of the world. From the vaccine maker’s point of view, this is good. They don’t want to compete with free doses of their own product. Sumner wrote:

The situation is frustrating because President Joe Biden would like to do more than just give away the existing vaccine surplus. He would like to contract with manufacturers to distribute discounted vaccine around the world, as well as making a $4 billion contribution to vaccine administration. But unless the language left behind by Trump—which goes beyond “American first” to “America only”—can be eliminated, doing the right thing is going to be a lot more difficult. And the world is going to be able to say, rightly, that the U.S. is hoarding unneeded vaccine.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included bits of late night commentary, and most of it was about Rep. Matt Gaetz:

Here's the craziest part of this story to me: a sitting congressman is accused of child trafficking, and the QAnon people are suddenly like, 'Nah, I need more evidence.' That was your whole thing! Think about it: Matt Gaetz's girlfriend was allegedly 17. The 17th letter is Q. It all adds up! What are you waiting for? The storm is finally here and QAnon is like, You can't believe everything you read on the internet." —Colin Jost, SNL