“Democrats Hit Major Political Wall in Efforts to Close Gender Pay Gap, Raise Minimum Wage,” announced a Washington Post headline (6/9/21) yesterday.
The first paragraph in the piece, by reporter Tony Romm, laid out the situation for readers:
President Biden and Democrats in Congress suffered another setback in their push to boost millions of Americans’ paychecks, after the Senate on Tuesday opted against taking up a bill that supporters said aimed to ensure that women in the workforce earn the same as their male counterparts.
Sure, Republicans were mentioned in the subhead and in later paragraphs. But headlines and leads frame the news—and are often all people read of it. So the takeaway from the Post‘s version of the killing of equal pay for women is that the killer was…a “wall.” Or the Senate. Read as: Washington politics, in which no one and everyone is to blame for “opting against” getting things done.
It’s actually not that hard to cover this properly, as most of the Post‘s competitors showed. “Republican Filibuster Blocks Pay Equity Bill in the Senate,” declared the New York Times (6/8/21). “Senate Republicans Block Bill Targeting Gender Pay Gap,” wrote Politico (6/8/21). Even the Wall Street Journal (6/8/21) managed to pinpoint the culprit: “Gender Wage Gap Legislation Blocked by Senate Republicans.”
But Romm continued the blame-shifting euphemisms later in the piece:
Democrats possess only a tie-breaking majority, not the 60 votes required to avoid political headwinds altogether—forcing them to consider uncomfortable compromises to advance their agenda.
In Postlandia, the political culprits are inanimate objects: a wall, a wind. The problem is that Democrats “only” have a tie-breaking majority, and mysterious political headwinds in our democracy force uncomfortable compromises on those with a tie-breaking majority.
Alternatively, one might formulate that problem as being that our political system is highly undemocratic, and that Senate Republicans—who represent 43.5% of the population, and haven’t represented a majority since 1996—are brazenly abusing that system to block the majority from doing much of anything.
If it were spelled out that way, though, the solution would be obvious: Change the system. Which is exactly why the GOP no doubt cackles with delight at coverage like this, which deflects blame away from them and the undemocratic institutions they exploit, and thereby props up that system.
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Featured image: The Wall Street Journal (6/8/21) illustrated its story about Senate Republicans blocking the Paycheck Fairness Act with a photo of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
Hippo Dave
If the Democratic Party wanted to pass legislation, they would eliminate the filibuster and pass bills which the President would sign, and which would then become law. That is how the legislative system works in the United States.
Maybe you’ve witnessed this when the GOP is in charge. They tend to use their power to make such laws, rather than whining about not having a super-supermajority, or whining about the mean Democrats stopping them.
The Democrats are 100% [if we assume Angus King and Bernie Sanders can be counted as virtual members] responsible for their failure to pass law. Or more likely– their refusal to do so because they don’t want to.
Sinema and Manchin block things? As long as they aren’t kicked out of the party, they’re still Democrats. Ergo the Democratic Party is 100% responsible for not passing legislation. PERIOD.
It’s bizarre that your criticism of the cited articles is about them not placing enough blame on Republicans. Republicans DO NOT MATTER if the DEMOCRATS want to pass legislation. There is NO WAY for REPUBLICANS to prevent passing legislation.
Plenty of ways for Democrats to pretend to want to do stuff but aren’t “able”. Parliamentarian. Filibuster that they refuse to quash. Manchin. Sinema. Schumer. Pelosi. And the other rotating cast of villains. But this is 100% a problem with the Democratic Party. Nothing whatsoever to do with Republicans. At. All.
Joshua
Hippo:
Sorry, but pretending that Republicans voting in lock-step to prevent something from happening, by pointing out that there are 2 Democrats preventing a fundamental change of the system, and therefore it is solely THEIR fault, sounds kinda like victim blaming.
Also, when Republicans WERE in charge, they had similar problems and didn’t vote to remove the filibuster. Facts matter, and those are the facts.
Now, the fact that they could do 90% of what they wanted without changing the filibuster rules, has a lot to do with WHY they didn’t remove it.
As for the “rotating cast of villains”, it is just Manchin & Sinema that are unwilling to change the rules. It should be noted that there are more than 10 Republicans whose constituents WANT this bill passed, and a majority of Americans want it passed.
So, that being the case, the responsible thing for the papers of record would be to focus on making sure those Senators’ constituents KNOW that their Senators are ignoring what the people want.
As this article points out, when you remove the Republicans from the conversation, it give them cover to continue not doing what their people elected them to do.
That is bad democracy.
Fritz
Democrats are victims? Bwahahahaha…. The corporate pacs are giving them so much money….but, they’re all victims!
Hippo Dave
Manchin and Sinema are Democrats, period.
Republicans could vote in lockstep on every single bill and by themselves couldn’t prevent any of them from passing. 50 < 51. This is simple logic and math.
Again, as long as Sinema and Manchins are members of the Democratic Party, then the Democratic Party is entirely to blame. Republicans are irrelevant. Own it, admit it, deal with it instead of apologizing for your favored clique. Making excuses for their failures is as pathetic as they are.
sasq
Nope. If there are 51 votes against, 50 Republican and one Democrat, then the Republicans are 50/51 responsible. Each and every Senator, regardless of party, is equally responsible for his or her own vote.
Remember when the attempt to kill Obamacare failed because McCain voted “no”. That doesn’t mean the Republicans are wholly responsible for preserving Obamacare.
Hippo Dave
These freaks would be making excuses if there were 100 Dem Senators, 435 Dem Congresspeople, 9 Dem-appointed SCOTUS Justices.
“Oh but let’s not give all American’s health care, it might cost us next election”, with our 100% current in-charge nature.
Your math is obviously wrong by the way. There wouldn’t be “51 votes against” in this case. There are 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats, 2 Dem-leaning Independents, and the tie-breaker vice-president Kamala Harris.
And yeah, I remember McCain being a performative bitch. What does that have to do with literally anything?
Remember when McCain sucked and Obama sucked and Trump sucked and Biden sucked? And they were each 100% responsible for sucking?
Christ. And using “Obamacare” as if a sacred thing to be defended.
Uh, more to the point: Julie Hollar has a good eye for bad journalism and bad newsmongers, but she also exhibits a laughably insane Trump Derangement Syndrome. Which, was so 2020, yet Julie Hollar continues it to this day. I misclicked a button so can’t check right now, but when next wakening I’ll check whether Julie Hollar has yet written an article in 2021 that hasn’t mentioned Donald Trump.
John MacLean
Julie, Sarah Anderson and others get into how to “change the system” here: https://inequality.org/great-divide/pumped-up-ceo-pay-pandemic/ . There is a report and a video discussion through this link.
John MacLean
The Sarah Anderson report seems focused on CEO pay. I haven’t gotten around to it yet. In watching the video discussion, at the bottom, I was surprised to hear Dan Price mention how the minimum wage could be $25 or even $35 an hour, and he also mentions how Democrats can be some of the “worst offenders” in regard to wage issues. The stuff about how the country could see itself as a “union” was interesting too.
WonderingWoman
When some in the Congress decide to give themselves another raise—let’s see how Congress acts on that
Does Marjorie Taylor Green get paid if the only work she has seems to focus on harassing Dems?
And too, how do many in Congress expect America to thrive, when minimum wage is so low that many can’t even afford the rise in rent rates? Having a serf economy for the many, doesn’t help any nation to succeed .
It might be fun to have a pop quiz, every now and then–too see how many in Congress have even read the Constitution.