I support, believe in and defend my party. I don’t excoriate center left democrats who are well within the mainstream of thought within the Democratic Party, especially if they only have one viewpoint which I detest. I compare them to the republican alternative if they are in a red state or if the policy position they take is a politically necessary one in their state.
None of this, in my view, works for Senator Cinema. President Biden won Arizona; so, it is not a far right state. Raising the minimum wage is popular across the country and even among republicans. It was passed in the state.
It is not necessary or even helpful to her politically as far as I can see to attempt to please and be identified with Mitch McConnell, especially not on that issue. While Mitch can and does crush any Democratic Party opponent, he is not even popular in Kentucky. In Kentucky, he has an upside down approval rating. Elsewhere he is generally abhorred. Big conspiracy theorist Trumpers hate him on the right. He, as a party leader of a chamber of Congress is vilified (in his case rightly) by us in ads. That’s why Speaker Pelosi has an upside down approval rating across the country despite doing a tremendous job.
There is no upside to doing this. The popularity of increasing the minimum wage must be known to her as must the fact that the state raised it must be known to her. While I can’t come up with a defense for her, she has had ample opportunity to present a defense if one exists.
I can’t begin to understand how somebody can justify (and actually believe their justification) of having a minimum wage so low that people don’t even make $30,000 a year and still find themselves at or near or below the poverty level despite working full time. It is extremely unethical. The republican argument is bullshit in the same way that the claim that supply side tax cuts for the wealthy pay for themselves is. Only dishonest people make that (the republican argument) argument.
Therefore, I find this indefensible. Mitch McConnell is no better a person than Donald Trump who is well known to be a maniac and a narcissist and an extreme present hedonist. Mitch has no character and no integrity. In the past, perhaps it was possible to not be a terrible person and to believe elements of the republican platform if one didn’t think too much about it. They did at one point in time have certain principles that the party believed in and stood for. We are long past that time. Here is an incomplete list of the horrors that the Republican Party stands for today: Children in cages, bans on Muslims, ban on transgender people serving in the military, ugly bigotry, abandoning any attempt to protect the population from the pandemic, the Bible photo op, the bounty on the heads of American soldiers without consequence, removing health care from the population during a pandemic, abandoning NATO, fealty and subservience to Vladimir Putin, admiration of “strong men” thugs, and the removal of all elements of the party platform beyond fealty to Donald Trump, tolerance of and even promotion of QAnon, defending the incitement of the insurrection and even supporting the insurrection itself.
Look at Mitch’s priority of preventing President Obama from winning a second term instead of improving the economy. Look at the party’s complicity in Trump’s abandonment of the residents of this country to the pandemic and realize that Mitch led and leads the party. Look at his silence and the silence of the Republican Party regarding the conspiracy theory. Consider Mitch’s protection of Trump from being convicted despite knowing Trump’s guilt.
And she wanted to please Mitch McConnell? Is it better than wanting to please Donald Trump? I can’t say that it is. Who wants to please such a monster ? The vote against is bad enough. The unwillingness to override the parliamentarian is wrong. Defending voting against increasing the minimum wage because you oppose overruling the parliamentarian doesn’t work as a moral argument. If one supported increasing the minimum wage and overruling the parliamentarian but knew that if it passed, King Manchin would vote against the entire bill, then I can understand that argument and it’s a reasonable one. However, if a or the reason you opposed raising the minimum wage was because you yourself opposed overruling the parliamentarian, then I find that indefensible. Yet, at least one reason she opposed increasing the minimum wage in the American Rescue Plan is simply because an unelected parliamentarian declared it was against a set of rules that the other side doesn’t recognize or follow. That should not be considered a valid reason or argument for not supporting a moral imperative. That is especially true in the context of the US Constitution allowing a minority of the voters, not even a plurality, to dominate the federal government, both in its makeup and in its actions.
She made a show of her opposition to increasing the minimum wage and demonstrated a subservience to and an attempt to please one of the worst people in the country and the most powerful evil person in our federal government. The only defensible reason in my view for voting against increasing the minimum wage in the American Rescue Plan is because you know that if it passes, King Manchin will vote against the entire bill. That doesn’t appear to be her only reason for opposing increasing the minimum wage in the American Rescue Plan. Therefore, she opposed a very popular policy which would have lifted a huge number of people and families out of poverty not for a valid reason but rather in order to please the most powerful person in the federal government who is fully evil and she did that in a showy way which almost appears like it was intended to rejoice in hurting and disrespecting those of us who need the minimum wage increased.
And that is awful, disgusting and cannot be justified.