Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema Are the Thorns in Democrats’ Side
But there’s a way for Chuck Schumer and Kamala Harris to neutralize the two heterodox senators
I spent my teenage years in Pine Bluff, a sleepy town in south-central Arkansas. Across the street from our house was the Pine Bluff Commercial, the town’s newspaper. Behind the paper’s brick building was a large grassy piece of land that the newspaper owners allowed the neighborhood kids to use for sandlot sporting events.
We always had plenty of players to field two teams, but we never seemed to have enough equipment to go around. Not everyone had a baseball glove, and we didn’t always have a decent baseball for our games.
Fortunately for us, there was Corey, a kid who lived a few streets over. One summer, when I was 14 or 15, Corey seemed to have an unlimited amount of athletic equipment. He had an assortment of baseball bats — wooden and aluminum — along with several baseball gloves and balls. Whenever we saw Corey walking through the alley behind our house, a large duffel bag over his shoulder, we knew we had enough equipment to go around, and this way, we could pick sides and proceed with a few innings of baseball.
But there was a problem. Somewhere along the way, Corey realized all that equipment gave him enormous power over our games and whether we could play at all. If Corey’s team started to lose or if a close call didn’t go his way, he’d snatch up his bats, balls, and gloves and go home — leaving the rest of us standing there, unable to continue our game. The guy was an idiom playing out in real life.
As a result, we went out of our way to appease Corey. We knew if he didn’t get his way, he had the power to grind everything to a screeching halt. And even though we were just kids, we knew if we ever wanted to play a regular baseball game, we had to figure out some way to take Corey’s power away.
When the Covid-19 relief bill passed the House and headed for the Senate, I couldn’t help but think of my situation with Corey back in the day.
