Turley says that Mamdani has said that he favors the government “seizing the means of production,” but he acknowledges that Mamdani does not propose this on his candidate for mayor website.

But Turley argues that Mamdani believes governments in the United States, presumably at the federal as well as state and local level, should seize the means of production.

It is important to distinguish what candidates believe from what policies they promote.

If Mamdani is not proposing that the City of New York seize the means of production — basically take over all business — then it does not make sense to call him a socialist because nationalization of the means of production is the defining feature of socialism.

It is still an interesting and important question if Mamdani thinks that New York City and the country overall should seize the means of production someday. For now, though, it really does not make sense for anyone to insist that Mamdani is a Marxist or for Mamdani himself to say that he is a socialist if none of his policies distinguish him from a progressive Democrat.

The same can be said of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist (as does Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), but he really is not a socialist in any interesting sense of the term either. His views align more with social democracies in the Nordic countries, whose economies have core capitalist components.

The attention given to whether Mamdani is a socialist of some kind is a wake-up call to observers and citizens to look more carefully at questions about political economy and the language that is used by candidates, the media and pundits.

The media, in general, has for decades used cartoon language to identify our economy and the economy of other countries. For one, the nonstop identification of our economy as “capitalist” is a serious oversimplification.

For over one hundred years, the U.S. economy has involved considerable government intervention in the economy itself, starting in the Progressive Era and running through the New Deal Era and the Great Society Era.

There can be no doubt that we have a “mixed economy,” namely a society in which the government plays a major role regulating the economy and redistributing both wealth and income. Yet it is a rare day when a politician or a member of the media says that we have a “mixed economy,” even though middle school students learn about laissez-faire economies, mixed economies and socialist economies.

Calling ourselves capitalists just sets us up in opposition to communist states — of which there are very few in the post-Cold War world. Moreover, it creates the misleading impression that the two main economies in the world are traditional capitalism (which we had in 1890) and Marxist-Stalinist Russia and Maoist China from the 1950s and 1960s.

For years we have needed a debate between advocates of a progressive mixed economy and advocates of a conservative mixed economy. That is what we actually have now. But no one calls it that, and the capitalist and socialist labels generate extremist reactions on both sides.

Even the Big Beautiful Bill is nothing close to a defense of a laissez-faire capitalist economy. The cut to Medicaid is about 10% a year over the course of 10 years — namely $1 trillion. It is nothing close to a cut of the entire program, which would inch us closer to a laissez-faire economy.

With Medicare and Social Security barely touched — and that is about $2.5 trillion of our annual $7 trillion federal budget — the point stands that the Ds and Rs are fighting over what kind of mixed economy to have and not whether to have a socialist economy or a laissez-faire capitalist economy.

Pundits and the media in general and certainly our education system need to work with politicians to get us to a space where we stop using language to distort both the left and the right and, in the process, a reasonable centrist middle position.

The debates we are having today in New York City and around the country are about very important issues, but they are not about fundamentally moving outside of the mixed economy framework.

Dave Anderson (dmamaryland@gmail.com) has taught political philosophy at five colleges and universities, is editor of the interdisciplinary volume “Leveraging,” and ran for Congress as a Democrat in Maryland in 2016. 

Still, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York Democratic primary for mayor illuminates a major tension in American politics.

The tension actually concerns independents and not the Democratic Party, although there is much to learn about the Democratic Party from the election.

There are approximately 1 million voters who are registered as independents in New York City. There are approximately 3.5 million registered Democrats and approximately half a million registered Republicans.

Since New York City has closed primaries, the independent voters were prohibited from voting in either the Democratic or Republican (uncontested) primary. There is a quite decent chance that Andrew Cuomo would have won the primary if the city and/or state had open primaries or semi-closed primaries. He lost by about 115,000 votes, and thus moderate independents could easily have given him a victory.

At the same time, anti-establishment independents would have been disillusioned by an old guard, scandal-plagued, disgraced former governor’s victory. This would have provided a setback for an independent movement and the potential for what I have called tripartisanship to emerge as our new political goal.

With a tripartisan rather than bipartisan ideal — namely a third force of a small group of independents on Capitol Hill, especially in the Senate — the two-party duopoly would be transformed into a system with three and not two main voices in American politics.

This is the tension: Some independents are happy or would be happy to vote in either Democratic or Republican primaries; other independents are, as Thom Reilly, Jaqueline Salit, and Omar Ali argue in “The Independent Voter,” anti-establishment.

They want to vote for independent or third-party candidates who buck the system, whether they are creative new centrists determined to overcome our deeply polarized political system or more progressive than progressive Democrats or more conservative than most Republicans or just libertarian.

In short, of the over 40% of Americans who Gallup reports do not identify as Democrats or Republicans, many want to be included in the establishment and many are opposed to the establishment. This makes up about 60 million voters.

There are another 80 million Americans who are eligible to vote but who are not registered. About 30 million of them are independents, too.

Mamdani has not won the general election yet, and he may be running against Cuomo again, this time as an independent. He is definitely running against current Mayor Eric Adams, who is an independent now, although he was elected as a Democrat.

Like Michael Bloomberg who has been a Republican, a Democrat and an independent, Adams is not wedded to any political party or movement.

In any case, the November election, which will not have ranked choice voting like the primary, could be a circus. It is really unclear who is going to win, although Assemblyman Mamdani is surely the front runner at this point.

For independents, the Democratic primary does reveal a stark battle between the establishment and anti-establishment independents. Anti-establishment independents lost out if they are broadly moderates or creative centrists of some sort — Mamdani is a far-left Democrat.

Since he says he is a democratic socialist, he is not really a Democrat anyway. Indeed, he does not support the defining feature of democratic socialism and socialism in general, namely the public ownership of industry and the means of production.

Supporting free buses and free child care and freezing rent does not make you a socialist. Progressive Democrats can support these policies.

Leaving the question aside of how to even identify Mamdani, many anti-establishment moderate independents must be very upset that Mamdani won the primary, whereas there also are many independents who must be very happy because they are left-wing independents.

The upshot is that an open primary may well have generated a Cuomo victory in the Democratic primary, and this victory would definitely have been disillusioning to anti-establishment independents.

Independents, therefore are as a group, pulled in different directions.

There is no easy way out of this dynamic as it is just reality that independents are not all the same. Reflecting on the dramatic victory for Mamdani in the primary is instructive, not only for New York City but for the United States overall.

Dave Anderson (dmamaryland@gmail.com) has taught political philosophy at five colleges and universities, is editor of the interdisciplinary volume “Leveraging,” and ran for Congress as a Democrat in Maryland in 2016. 

The narrative is basically correct, but it can be articulated with more precision and more illuminating categories.

The standard debate in Western ethical theory is one that involves three points of view. Two points of view dominated 20th-century ethical theory until 1958 when a series of articles appeared, notably by British Catholic philosophers Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe, that rejuvenated the ethical theory of Aristotle: virtue theory.

Virtue theory, which revolves around the character of moral agents rather than actions moral agents should take or rules they should follow, was opposed to deontological duty-based ethical theory, which is related to rights theory, and consequentialist theory which is associated with utilitarian ethical and political theory.

To tell the story of Jimmy Carter is to explain how in many ways he was a synthesis of the chief features of the three leading ethical theories of the Anglo-American, even Western, tradition.

First, Carter was a man of extraordinary character. He entered the White House having campaigned on the theme “I’ll never lie to you.” Having experienced President Richard Nixon for more than five years, Americans needed a president they could trust. If ever there was a man in the White House who exuded the virtue of honesty, it was Jimmy Carter.

Indeed, he was probably too honest to have been a great president since politics is such a hard ball sport that it is very difficult to stay so close to the truth all of the time. “Honest Abe,” according to the late Harvard historian David Herbert Donald, was a “pragmatist” in the tradition of John Dewey and nothing close to a man of pure honesty.

Honesty was not Carter’s only virtue. Aristotle distinguished the moral and intellectual virtues, and President Carter excelled in many of them. Among his outstanding moral virtues were courage, justice and compassion; among his outstanding intellectual virtues were wisdom and prudence.

Carter also was a man who gave central attention in his presidency to promoting human rights. Thus when he promoted policies that concerned American women, poor people or helpless people abroad, he talked in terms of human rights.

In ethics and political philosophy, only one group of philosophers talks about human rights as basic to ethics, notably English philosophers like John Locke.

Our dignity as individuals needs to be protected by basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — and indeed those denied voting and employment rights for generations, including black people, women and the disabled, need special rights to overcome the institutional forces against them.

Carter, along with President Gerald Ford, restored truth and honesty to the White House after Nixon blasphemed the White House with his corruption, his manipulation and his devious ways. But he also gave new meaning to the concept of human rights in domestic and foreign affairs.

Although Carter was not a man who spoke regularly about the need to maximize the general welfare or the greatest good via right actions and just institutions, in an important sense everything that Carter, a man of faith, did seemed designed to have great consequences on human life. He was determined, day in and day out, in every nail he hit, to live a life of consequence — a moral life to the nth degree.

By embodying the core concepts of the virtue tradition, the rights tradition and the consequentialist tradition, Carter’s life and work help to illustrate how academic schools of thought at odds with each other can exaggerate the divides that exist in real life, since a person does not have to follow only one tradition of thought.

Carter’s life and work — creating the Department of Energy and the Department of Education, crafting the peace between Israel and Egypt, wrestling with brutal economic and energy crises handed to him, building over 4,000 houses via Habits of Humanity with Rosalynn and colleagues and actively pursuing peace in many foreign lands — show he was more than a not-great president with a great post-presidency.

Jimmy Carter was a moral hero, clearly one of the greatest Americans in our history.

Dave Anderson (dmamaryland@gmail.com) has taught ethics and political philosophy at five colleges and universities and is editor of the interdisciplinary volume Leveraging: A Political, Economic, and Societal Framework (Springer, 2014).

Having said that, there are several things that stand out for discussion from last week’s election.

First and foremost, President Joe Biden, although he served his country with integrity the first three years of his presidency, not to mention 36 years in the U.S. Senate, made a colossal error in deciding to run for a second term. Moreover, his staff and the leaders of the Democratic Party all did a poor job of trying to convince Biden to step aside.

Biden and the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made the same mistake. They stayed in the game too long and thought too much about what they, as individuals, wanted to do. Even though they both were presumably focused on what they thought was best for the country, they obviously did not think hard enough.

Had Ginsburg stepped aside while Barack Obama was still in office, Obama would have had the opportunity to appoint a Democrat in her place. As it turned out, Ginsburg died while Donald Trump was in office, and he appointed a conservative justice, Amy Coney Barrett.

Biden made the same error. He wrongly thought that he was the only person who could beat Trump, when in reality, given his mental and physical state, even a year out, he most probably would have lost to Trump.

In Ginsburg’s case, the situation was different. She was diagnosed with early-stage pancreatic cancer in 2009 and could have stepped aside before the end of Obama’s first or certainly second term. Her mind was fine. The question was whether she might die in office while a Republican was president, which is exactly what happened.

She died in 2020 at age 87, which is very old to be a Supreme Court justice.

In Jewish studies, there is an old question that asks why God did not let Moses enter the Promised Land. A standard answer is that it is because he killed an Egyptian soldier. An answer more in line with good management theory and various traditions of political thought is that Moses’ function was to lead the Jewish people to Canaan but not to then enter it with them and be their leader.

Neither Biden nor Ginsburg passed the function test. Neither could see that they had performed their function serving as president and Supreme Court justice with distinction. They each wanted more. Biden brought us forth from the horrible pandemic years. Ginsburg was a heroic figure on the court since 1993.

Neither knew that the time had come to step aside.

Is this a problem Democrats have more than Republicans? This is hard to say, especially since it is Democrats who are constantly accusing Republicans of being too self-centered, too individualistic and too narcissistic.

Nevertheless, there is a lesson here for the Democratic Party and its leaders. As you criticize the Republican Party for promoting ideals of individualism inimical to social, communitarian and other values, be careful not to fall victim to this destructive individualism regarding your own leadership.

It is ironic that this problem has arisen for Democrats with the rise of a Republican leader who is the epitome of self-centered, ultra-individualism.

It is true that Biden was doing his best to protect the American people from Trump, but his efforts were undermined by his own stubbornness and the complicity of his staff and the Democratic leadership.

Whoever was to run against Trump needed the full primary runway to lift their campaign plane off the ground. Vice President Kamala Harris did her best in the 107 days she had. In retrospect, it was unfair to place her — or anyone — in that position.

Biden did a fine job extricating us from the pandemic — from a political, economic, moral and emotional standpoint. Yet by failing to extricate himself from his own concerns and priorities, he failed his party and Harris.

Tragically, the same can be said of Justice Ginsburg.

In the years ahead, Democrats need to accept the monumental mistakes two of their greatest heroes made and cultivate leaders for the future who will know when it is time to step aside.

Dave Anderson (dmamaryland@gmail.com) taught political philosophy and ethics at the University of Cincinnati, Johns Hopkins University and George Washington University. He is editor of “Leveraging” (Springer, 2014).

The pundits and party leaders have been plotting out the potential roadmaps from here for several weeks. We are in uncharted waters, and we will all have to wait it out.

But whether the ticket features Vice President Harris and one of the exciting, accomplished Democratic governors — including Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan, Roy Cooper from North Carolina, Andy Beshear from Kentucky, Wes Moore from Maryland, or Tim Walz from Minnesota — or another Democrat wins the nomination, the Democrats must decide between two different paths they can take from here.

The first is the pro-democracy, anti-authoritarian path where the ticket asks voters to vote Democratic to avoid an authoritarian, right-wing strongman, Trump. This path is based heavily on fear and anxiety and paints a clear picture of the choice facing American voters: Vote for a candidate who will promote democratic values or vote for a candidate who will try to subvert democracy just as he did on Jan. 6, 2021.

The second path the Democratic ticket can take would address the theme of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, but it would not define the choice as one between democracy and autocracy. Instead, the second path focuses on what the Democrats will do if elected, especially concerning leading policy areas concerning Social Security and Medicare, jobs and the economy, immigration, climate change, childcare and paid parental leave, gun safety and foreign affairs, notably Ukraine and Israel.

The first path risks losing swing voters who are not decided between Trump and the Democrats. A recent Pew poll shows that 32% of Americans would actually like a strongman leader, so denouncing Trump as an authoritarian may be insufficient to build a winning coalition, even self-defeating when it comes to some undecided voters.

A wiser strategy with these swing voters is to focus on the strengths of the Democratic candidates and the weaknesses of the Republicans on core policy issues. These voters are more likely to respond to straight talk about the issues than histrionic talk about the death of American democracy, even if the fear is real.

In the context of American history, the choice facing the Democrats can be framed as one that places either unity and compromise or extremism and authoritarianism at the center of the campaign.

The unity and compromise campaign would be in the tradition of Henry Clay from Kentucky, who was idealized by fellow Kentuckian Abraham Lincoln. Clay served as a speaker of the House, senator and secretary of state. He is widely regarded as one of the most important members to have served in Congress in our history.

Clay was the master craftsman of the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850 as well as the founder of the Whig Party and the chief advocate of the “American System,” which called for creating a self-sufficient strong economy and strengthening public services including roads, canals and bridges. He was known in his time as the “Great Compromiser.”

Democrats must follow in Clay’s lead and pay heed to more moderate Americans’ concerns by talking about entitlement reform, reducing the number of migrants who come across the southern border and reducing the national debt. They should also not paint a picture of a polarized America. After all, a Gallup poll last month showed 51% of voters did not identify as Democrats or Republicans; they identified as independents.

Democrats can take a clear stand on abortion rights and gun safety, but these wedge issues should not define their campaign.

Trump and Vance will be strident and polarizing in their rhetoric. But the Democratic candidates can rise above their lies and distortions and run a campaign made less for the pundits and more for the public.

Dave Anderson (dmamaryland@gmail.com) has taught ethics and political philosophy at George Washington University, the University of Cincinnati and Johns Hopkins University and is editor of “Leveraging” (Springer, 2014).

President Joe Biden, according to many of his former staff, pundits and supporters inside and outside of politics, had a very bad night at Thursday’s debate. It’s been described as “horrific,” a “shipwreck,” an “unmitigated disaster.”

I beg to disagree. His performance was neither an F, D or even C. It was a B-, arguably a B. What the chorus of critics have said is based much more on their opinion about how his performance was and will be perceived, not what it really showed.

The president has a stutter. He stuttered considerably in the debate. So what are we to make of that? Nothing, really. Like Winston Churchill, whose greatest speeches included his stutter, Biden stuttered.

A stutter is not what we got from Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier or Katherine Hepburn — or FDR, Ronald Reagan or JFK. Yet it is what we got from Churchill, who was arguably a better speaker than any from that group. Stuttering is not incompatible with good or even great political speeches or performances during debates.

Biden spoke very fast almost the entire debate, just as fast as Trump. Far from appearing like a tired old man or someone who was drugged or drunk, the president, who has a stutter and also apparently had a cold, made point after point, argument after argument, pulling up facts and making moral arguments.

His discussion of the economy, climate change and NATO during Trump’s presidency was rooted in empirical facts.

Whether he memorized his talking points or thought on his feet, his mind was moving quickly. There were many times that his answers to moderator questions or responses to Trump’s criticisms of him were slowed down by his stutter.

Again: So? It is not appropriate to criticize a man for his impediment, be it a limp or stutter. Trump also spoke fast, but he sounded more like a used car salesman — exaggerating, misleading, lying — than a straight shooter like Biden.

The flaw in Biden’s performance was that he appeared confused at times. He sometimes failed to convey his thoughts, but those moments passed. No one is perfect.

The topics during the debate ranged from Ukraine to inflation, child care, Israel and Gaza, age, climate change, World War III and Jan. 6, 2021. Biden was Biden: hopeful, good on most of the facts, shocked at most of what his opponent said, determined, honest, showing love for this country.

The president may not be eloquent, but he is believable. He does not inspire, but he does, for many of us, instill confidence. He is an elderly statesman — fair, wise and soft-spoken, especially when he has a cold.

If Biden decides to step aside, it won’t be because he revealed himself as a stumbling old man who didn’t know what he was talking about. It will be because the spin doctors are going to kill him, even from his own party.

If he wants to stay in the race, he needs to give an address from the Oval Office in the next two weeks. He can explain the topics he did not explain well in the debate, and he can be more vigorous. He can also do the speech sitting down, which is how most presidential interactions take place.

This debate’s impact on the race may be significant, but it proved little about either of the candidates’ true fitness for the presidency.

Dave Anderson (dmamaryland@gmail.com) has taught moral and political philosophy at George Washington University, the University of Cincinnati and Johns Hopkins University. He is the editor of the interdisciplinary volume “Leveraging” (Springer, 2014). 

I applaud the current effort. I ran for Congress in 2016 in Maryland’s 8th District on a campaign centered on a national family policy that would provide new families with paid parental leave, as well as other forms of support. Unfortunately, I didn’t win, and the national dialogue has not advanced much since that time. We remain the only industrialized country in the world that does not have a paid parental leave program.

But I believe the new bill has two flaws. First, a paid parental leave policy must be focused on the middle class, like Social Security and Medicare, while also addressing the needs of low-income families.  Giving too much emphasis to the latter group will dilute the effort to finally bring a family security program to all new families — middle class, working class and no-income class alike.

The program also is too narrow. It should provide a tax credit for stay-at-home parents beyond the proposed 12 weeks.  Such a tax credit, say for half of one’s wage until a child is 2 years old, speaks to the values of Republicans in particular. It would be both an extension of paid parental leave and an option that would be offered to young families instead of a large child-care subsidy.  For example, if new parents were offered $10,000 a year as a tax credit, they could instead take a $10,000 transfer payment for child-care expenses.

Indeed, by enlarging the program, the advocates would head off the massive debate about the “best way” to raise children or achieve work/family balance.  The country is fairly split on whether children should have a parent at home during the early years of the child’s life, or whether parents should have the opportunity to work.

Dwight Eisenhower frequently said that when he could not solve a problem he made it bigger.  The champions of paid parental leave would be wise to enlarge the problem they are trying to solve, in both moral and economic terms.  By doing so, more Republicans would probably come on board since keeping a parent at home for two years will be music to their ears.  A considerable number of Democrats would also come on board.

There is an obvious moral failing in our politics in not providing new parents with paid parental leave.  It is atrocious, embarrassing, irresponsible and disgraceful.  By injecting a second moral problem into the mix, ironically, it may be easier to solve the first problem.

The larger agenda would be more expensive, but when you finally address vitally important social needs that have strong moral arguments behind them, funding will have to be found for them.  Our annual budget is over $5 trillion, with a defense budget of close to $900 billion.  It is time to find $150 billion a year for a family security program that will begin to approach the cost and the value of the $1.5 trillion a year Social Security program.  The government of the United States takes care of its older Americans.  The time has come for it to take care of its young families.

Dave Anderson (dmamaryland@gmail.com) has taught moral and political philosophy at George Washington University, University of Cincinnati and Johns Hopkins University. He is the editor of the interdisciplinary volume “Leveraging” (Springer, 2014). 

It doesn’t matter how many horrid mass shootings we experience as a nation, even in schools where 19 fourth graders and two teachers are shot dead as they were in Uvalde, Texas. The U.S. Representatives, the Senators, and tens of millions of gun and rifle owners are motivated by fear of loss.

The NRA is also motivated by fear of loss — especially fear of loss of money.

Most Democrats in Washington over the last three decades have not addressed the issue of confiscation head on. Yet if Democrats ever hope to pass major gun safety legislation, they must tell the public that they are not interested in confiscating guns of law abiding citizens. Instead, they are interested in making it more difficult for citizens who are a threat to others from obtaining and using guns and assault rifles.

Democrats must come forth and defend the Second Amendment, just as they defend the First Amendment. And in the same way that the First Amendment has qualifications — you can’t yell “fire” in a theater, unless there is a fire, for example — the Second Amendment should, too.

If Democrats stand up and support the rights Americans have to purchase handguns in order to protect themselves and their families, they will have a chance of getting enough Republicans on board to pass major legislation. That legislation would presumably include expanded background check requirements, limits on the size of magazines that could be sold, red flag laws and a range of mental health programs. Ideally, assault-style rifles would also be banned or, at the least, the age to purchase them raised.

In other words, the more Democrats demonstrate respect for the Second Amendment, the more likely Republicans will agree to place limitations on gun access.

It is Psychology 101. If you threaten to take away what I love — in this instance, by scheming to round up tens of millions of the country’s 400 million handguns and assault rifles — then I will fight you. On the other hand, if you show respect for what I love, I may agree to some rules and regulations about oversight.

There is no one cause of mass shootings or individual shootings, including suicides by handguns. There are many causes, including more guns and rifles than citizens, weak background check laws and an ongoing crisis in mental health among young American males.

Democrats like Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut bemoan the sorry state of a Congress that refuses to legislate on the side of gun safety. Indeed, Senator Murphy continues to express his outrage, quite eloquently, at Republicans who are doing nothing to stop our children from being murdered. President Biden takes the same stance.

Yet it would help immensely if Senator Murphy and President Biden told the country that they want a compromise, one that rejects confiscation, respects the Second Amendment and establishes a set of regulations and programs that will help reduce the number of gun and rifle deaths in America.

Only compromise will work when it comes to guns. The purely progressive liberals will fail over and over again if they make no effort to see the problem as moderates and conservatives do. Gun politics is highly polarized even though the polls show that the vast majority of the public supports sensible safety regulations.

If Democrats show respect for the Second Amendment, compromise is possible. If they don’t, there will be no end to the slaughtering.

Dave Anderson (dmamaryland@gmail.com) has taught political philosophy at five universities in the Midwest, South and Northeast. He ran for Congress in Maryland’s 8th District in 2016.

First, the very idea of passing a $3.5 trillion bill that concerns Medicare expansion, climate change, pre-K, the child tax credit, free community college, parental leave and child care, along with a host of other working class and middle class provisions, is based on a flawed concept: The bill spans 10 years.

Who really plans their budget 10 years in advance? What business, what family?

What about five years? At five years the amount of that bill would be $1.75 trillion, rather than $3.5 trillion. This is close to the $1.5 trillion Senator Manchin said he is willing to spend.

Progressive critics will retort that the changes being called for are “generational changes” and a “commitment” is needed now by the federal government. Well, if they are generational changes why not make the commitment 30 years and make the bill $10.5 trillion?

Whatever is passed may be rescinded down the road if Republicans take control of both chambers and the White House. And for at least for the next five years, it doesn’t matter what the law says if Republicans are in a position to scale back or eliminate some or all of the proposed items.

Second, the whole discussion about the two bills is based on the erroneous assumption that these are President Joe Biden’s bills, as if Congress somehow is there for the sole purpose of giving the president what he asks for — or not. This is really a peculiar way of looking at the legislative process.

Congress makes laws, not the president.

It is true that the president makes a budgetary request of Congress. But both of these bills have essentially been campaigned on for years, especially the infrastructure bill, which Republicans also have supported.

The social services bill is as much Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ bill as it is President Biden’s, not to mention Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and the so-called “Squad.” Mr. Biden has actually been profoundly influenced by them.

In short, the social services bill is being pushed by the progressives and the president, but in the end it is going to be a bill passed by Democrats in the House and the Senate using reconciliation or not. By saying that it is Mr. Biden’s bill, the Democrats, and certainly the media, are distorting the legislative process and the job of the president.

The president has more power than anyone in Washington, true. But he also has to negotiate with more people than anyone. He must lead his party, as best he can, but these are not his bills.

Finally, given the power of the presidency, Mr. Biden needs to guide his party out of the realm of bargaining leverage with all of the positioning and posturing and threats that come with it. He needs to guide his party into the realm of resource leveraging, a kind of leveraging that enables you to be creative and imaginative and draw forth energy and strength from the various parties involved in a negotiation.

Bargaining leverage pits individuals (or groups) against each other and coerces individuals (or groups) to do what you want. Resource leveraging takes resources — economic, material, psychological, political — and breaks down walls and creates new products, new services, new brands, new relationships, new laws.

In this case, President Biden needs to leverage Camp David and bring 10 to 15 House and Senate Democratic leaders together to talk out the challenges they face passing both bills. Going to Capitol Hill, as Woodrow Wilson did, to give a speech is one thing. But it is also a 100-year-old strategy and still very top down. Going to Camp David to get AOC and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia to talk to each other under the trees and get to know each other is quite another.

The negotiations literally need to come out from behind closed doors, and all sides need to be in nature, outside of Washington. Camp David has been used for major negotiations in the past. It is time to leverage it again.

President Biden needs to leverage the presidency to pass two bills that he wants to see passed and that Democrats, with qualifications, want to see passed. There will be compromises, but the right space is needed for the negotiations to proceed.

Dave Anderson (dmamaryland@gmail.com) has taught ethics and political philosophy at five universities and is editor of Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework (Springer, 2014).

Due to his desire to seek a compromise with Senate Republicans, Senator Manchin has offered a modified set of voting rights bills — taking off from the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act — that are less, in a word, “liberal” than those written by his Senate Democratic colleagues.

Yet the chances that the Senate would pass any version of either of these bills with 60 votes, as required by the Senate filibuster rule, are basically nonexistent. The first attempt to get the 60 votes needed to pass a voting rights bill failed June 22, when the vote was split 50-50 along party lines. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has vowed that 60 votes will never happen, and Mitch frequently gets his way when he aims to obstruct something. He views the Democratic bills as “power grabs.”

When Senator Manchin reaches his fork, the choice will be crystal clear: Does he preserve what he believes to be an institution vital to the Senate and to democracy — namely the filibuster. Or does he agree to strike down the filibuster (or at least modify its use) for voting rights bills in order to save democracy itself?

Although it is difficult to predict the future when it concerns human decisions and actions, if 18 states are able to enforce newly passed election laws that make it harder to register or to vote, the odds suggest voter turnout would decline in 2022 and 2024, especially among African Americans, who are historically the most likely to vote for Democratic candidates.

On a parallel track, some states have already passed laws that would make it easier for legislators to overturn the results of an election that they find suspicious. Added together, this may be enough to flip the House and Senate in 2022. And then, in 2024, Mr. Trump or another Republican could waltz into the White House if our democratic electoral system remains in ruins.

Regarding the filibuster, Senator Manchin has insisted for months he will not budge.

Can truly nothing change his mind? Or does he want to pursue bipartisanship as far as possible, until it is clear that it just won’t work? If it’s the former, then it will look like Senator Manchin values the Senate (as well as his own job) more than the future of American democracy.

Senator Manchin would of course emphatically deny that this is the case. But what else could one conclude if he is willing to risk democracy to save the filibuster? And why preserve the filibuster to foster bipartisanship if the stated goal of the Republicans he is seeking compromise with is to strangle any voting rights legislation?

The Founding Fathers didn’t put the filibuster into the U.S. Constitution, nor is it in the Bill of Rights; it is not one of the 27 amendments either. Indeed, the filibuster has no constitutional residency. It was first used as a live doctrine in 1837, but Brookings Institution/George Washington University scholar Sarah Binder traced its origin to a mistake in 1806 when Aaron Burr was vice president.

And why does he think the filibuster is so critical to bipartisanship when it really only has power when one party controls the House, the Senate and the White House? It doesn’t matter what the Senate does if the president is going to veto the bill they pass, even if it has bipartisan support.

Senator Manchin might ask himself: What use will the filibuster or the Senate itself be in a permanent GOP-ruled government that will never allow itself to be voted out of power, which amounts to an electoral dictatorship?

Senator Manchin (and Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema) needs to look within and ask what matters most: the perceived importance of preserving the Senate as it now exists (which is anything but functional or bipartisan) or the outcome predicted by over 100 experts on democracy who issued a recent statement via New America claiming that, without some form of immediate intervention, democracy itself could be lost if the GOP returns to power?

In the end, the senator from West Virginia needs to ask himself what he values more: the United States Senate or the United States of America.

Dave Anderson has taught political philosophy and ethics at five universities and is editor of “Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework” (Springer, 2014). He can be reached at dmamaryland@gmail.com.