Matson Inc (MATX) Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Matson Inc (MATX) Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript
Motley Fool Transcribers, The Motley Fool
·53 min read

MATX earnings call for the period ending December 31, 2020.

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The key: must-pass bills that the Republicans will not vote for This situation spotlights the central point: must-pass Democratic legislation that has no chance to secure any Republican votes at all may be the foundation of the current Manchin presidency, but they can also be the foundation of a long-overdue progressive realignment in Congress. Manchin’s threat of voting down Democratic legislation is only able to disproportionately determine policy outcomes because there is not a serious ideological threat on the other side serving as a counterweight. Put another way, Manchin is this powerful because he’s willing to wield power and his purported ideological opponents are not. Amazingly, Manchin remains unchecked even though there are enough progressives in Congress to create this necessary countervailing power. In a narrowly divided House in which no Republicans will vote for a Covid relief bill, it would only take somewhere between six and 10 Democratic congresspeople to join together as a bloc and make a game-changing declaration that they will not vote for final passage of a Senate-passed Covid relief bill that does not include a minimum wage increase. Similarly, in the Senate, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or Ed Markey could pull their own version of Manchin and make the same declaration, saying they would not vote yes on final passage unless the legislation includes Sanders’ amendment to increase the minimum wage. The relief bill is a must-pass for all Democrats. If Manchin can threaten to withhold his vote, so can Elizabeth, Bernie, and the Squad+They should wield their power. Make the bill better, for the substance and the politics.— Ady Barkan (@AdyBarkan) March 3, 2021 Such declarations would trigger a political earthquake, tectonically shifting the power structure and the assumptions built into legislative debates. Suddenly, Manchin would not be the political solar system’s sun whose gravity forces everyone to revolve around him – he would be one of two poles, forcing the Biden administration to try to find compromise between them, and pressuring Manchin to move. Suddenly, the Biden White House, the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and majority leader, Chuck Schumer, would have to carefully weigh how much to give up to Manchin for fear of losing the other bloc of lawmakers on the other side of him. And they would have to do that knowing they can’t triangulate, simply ignore the progressives and replace them with some Republican votes. Suddenly, House progressives’ demand for Harris to ignore the parliamentarian and advance the minimum wage wouldn’t just be rhetoric. With a real threat of progressives voting down a minimum-wage-less Covid bill in final passage, ignoring the parliamentarian would become crucial for Biden himself. He would need to support doing this and use his power to actually pressure Manchin, because he would need to get that minimum wage attached to the bill. With no Republican votes available, progressives would be making clear that would be the only way Biden could hope to pass the Covid relief legislation on which he’s staking his entire presidency. At the table, rather than on the menu If this would work, then why hasn’t it happened? Almost certainly because congressional progressives are more moral than Manchin – as Representative Ro Khanna articulated in Thursday night’s Daily Poster live chat, they genuinely do not want to delay desperately necessary legislation to help millions of people and extend federal unemployment benefits expiring in 10 days, and the assumption is that Manchin would be more than OK with doing that. But whether from the film Back to the Future or from the experience of the last four years of Donald Trump, we’ve learned over and over again that the only way to defeat bullies is to stand up to them. Congressional progressives must be willing to be as strong, clear and unwavering as Manchin is villainous. They must be willing to follow through on a promise to not just cast votes against a bill Biden wants, but cast decisive votes when there are no Republicans for Biden to peel off – votes that actually take down the legislation unless progressives’ eminently reasonable demands are met. Yes, the Covid relief bill must pass. It includes desperately needed help for Americans who are struggling. And yes, progressives who actually take a stand would be falsely accused of killing the legislation and trampling their own honorable principles of harm reduction that typically leads them to support inadequate legislation because it includes some good stuff (and I have no doubt that for even writing this essay, the Guardian will be instantly – and falsely – accused of not caring about the plight of people struggling though the economic crisis, even though we’ve spent months holding Democrats accountable to their promise of immediate aid). But those arguments don’t fly here. If, as they assert, progressive lawmakers were predicating their votes for the Covid relief bill on an eminently reasonable demand like a long overdue, much-promised raise of the country’s starvation wage, then the legislation’s momentary delay would be the fault of the party and president that refuses to deliver on that promise. It is not the fault of the party’s rank-and-file progressive lawmakers who themselves were elected on the same minimum wage promise and who are simply taking legitimate, reasonable steps to make sure they deliver on the pledge right now. Additionally, precisely because the bill is so desperately needed and a must-pass initiative, there is absolutely no reason to believe it would permanently die. If a Covid relief bill with no minimum wage is voted down in the House, lawmakers can immediately go back and revise the legislation and bring it right back up. We’ve seen that happen before, most prominently during the financial crisis when the Bush administration’s initial bank rescue bill was voted down and then quickly revised and passed. For those who rightly demand a serious minimum wage increase, this is the way to have a real shot at making it happen right now. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that “the entire negotiations of this package, for a lot of people, were predicated on the $15 minimum wage”. The way to actually make that wage increase happen is to follow through and make clear no bill will pass unless it is included. Otherwise, progressives’ votes weren’t actually predicated on the $15 minimum wage at all. This isn’t rocket science. This is game theory 101. This is the ancient idea of countervailing power – and however difficult and scary it may be for progressive legislators, it is the only strategy to end the Manchin presidency before it takes over politics, eliminates the prospect of fundamental change, and delivers an electoral disaster to Democrats in 2022 and 2024. Such opportunities do not come around very often. It is incredibly rare for there to be truly must-pass legislation that no Republicans are willing to sell their vote for. Congressional progressives must be willing to use such an opportunity to make a threat and follow through, knowing that even if they momentarily delay legislation like the Covid relief bill, their party’s leaders will be instantly forced back to the negotiating table to revise it. At that point, progressives would finally be at that table, rather than on the menu – which would at last provide a chance to materially improve millions of Americans’ lives. David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor at large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter

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