Progressives face a delayed reckoning on deadline day

The Democratic showdown has been postponed for eight months during Biden’s president, and was mostly ignored for four years under Trump’s presidency before that.

Progressives face a delayed reckoning on deadline day

Except for the stakes, there’s nothing new about the Democrats’ moderate vs. progressive rift, and a little baseball diplomacy won’t change that. The House vote on the bipartisan infrastructure package, which was supposed to take place on Thursday, could be postponed again due to the doubt and suspicion that has spread across the party’s ideological spectrum. Progressives are calling for clarification of what a few — really only two — Senate moderates want, and the White House has joined the cause. However, it is what a much larger group of House progressives want that raises doubts about the $1.2 trillion deal that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated will be voted on this week. According to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, President Joe Biden sees his responsibility as “trying to unify Democrats,” despite allegations that he is concentrating his efforts on a small group of enigmatic senators. Progressives in the House, though, are trying to derail what would be a major Biden achievement. Biden was not their first choice in the presidential primaries; their prefered candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, is still not technically a Democrat, despite coming close to the nomination twice and now urging his House colleagues to vote against the bill he backed in the Senate.

When the Senate passed the infrastructure measure in early August, Biden hailed it as a vindication of his leadership style, saying, “We proved that democracy can still work.” But it can only succeed this week if Biden has complete control of the Democratic Party. In testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday, three congresswomen will reveal the specifics of their personal abortions. In the midst of an assault of restricted abortion legislation in states, the lawmakers are revealing highly personal stories. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), Cori Bush (D-Mo. ), and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) will share their personal abortion stories to highlight the necessity of reproductive health care access. Lee stated she will document her trip to a “back alley clinic in Mexico” to undergo the operation because her story predates Roe v. Wade. “I survived, and the reason it’s so essential for me to tell the story now is because I don’t want any woman to have to go through what I went through,” Lee told NBC News. “That back lane was familiar to me. That gloomy light was familiar to me… Right now, I see it. One of the fortunate ones is me.” After the passing of draconian abortion restrictions in places like Texas, the hearing on reproductive rights will focus on maintaining the right to abortion established by Supreme Court precedent. It also comes right before the Supreme Court’s conservative-leaning term begins in October. This fall, the nation’s highest court will hear arguments in a case involving Mississippi’s abortion legislation, setting up a high-stakes decision that might determine Roe v. Wade’s future. According to ABC station WMUR, a violent conflict between state officials and anti-vaccine mandate demonstrators at an executive council meeting in New Hampshire on Wednesday left government personnel fearful for their lives.

The situation deteriorated to the point where Gov. Chris Sununu had to postpone the meeting, calling the threats against state employees “very sad.” “After rowdy behaviour, state personnel had to be escorted to their automobiles by state police. This meeting has been postponed until our state employees are able to present themselves to the council in a safe and orderly way. Items on today’s agenda will be discussed at a later time “Following the incident, Sununu issued a statement. The demonstrators appeared to believe, according to the governor, that a scheduled vote by the council to allocate funds to promote COVID-19 vaccines would result in the state losing its vaccination decision-making authority. Sununu told WMUR that the claim was “false.” The governor slammed Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal workers last month, calling it “federal overreach.” Sununu is sure to face criticism from both sides of the aisle for his approach to vaccination promotion as one of only three Republicans in charge of states with blue-leaning electorates.