The Republican Party is in chaos. Defeated former President Donald Trump remains the dominant figure in the party he remade in his own image, despite the fact that polls show 68 percent of Americans don’t want him to remain a major figure in American politics. Worse yet, Trump is threatening to use his popularity with the GOP base to punish Republican members of Congress and state officials who refuse to go along with his Big Lie claims about the 2020 election. So, all in all, these should be the best of times for Democrats.
Yet, even as President Biden and his congressional allies secured passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act last week, they couldn’t deliver on the party’s historic promise to guarantee a living wage for working Americans. Why? Because eight members of the Senate Democratic Caucus sided with Republicans in opposition to an amendment by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour—the below-the-poverty-line figure at which it has been stuck since 2009—to $15 an hour.
Read more at The Nation.