You sound angry for a Mesaba flowthrough? You're talking about an entirely different landscape for negotiations. At the legacy level, VX's pay affects you minimally because VX just isn't in the same scope/type of flying that Delta does. You got your new pilot contract recently despite VX's payrates. Also, VX did get a payraise, so that 6th year FO pay is now $90/hr. It's not the Delta level, but in the playing field (which would be Spirit, Frontier, Allegiant, and JetBlue) it's pretty much in the same ballpark.
Now compare that to the regional landscape, where all regionals are in the same ballpark: all of them fly RJs in the 50-76 seat range, all of them are approx 100-200 RJ quantity, and all of them are competing with the same owner (mothership/legacy airline) to get flying. It is the ultimate definition of a cutthroat environment. They are DIRECTLY competing against each other, whereas in your comparison, we are not. So when 9E Corp voluntarily accepts paycuts, it then puts downward pressure in section 6 negotiations for other regional airlines that are doing the exact same type of flying, in the same scope, in the same size. Now Delta can go to Skywest, ASA, Shuttle America, etc and tell them to do it at a certain cost that 9E has or else lose that flying. Now it could lead to an entire loss of flying, which directly affects the welfare of an entire pilot group. VX making what they have does not mean your A320 pilots at Delta will lose their flying. But on the regional level, that's exactly the implication. Even if you say 9E is within 10 dollars of others, that's still 10 less dollars that Delta can use to push a downward trend. We've already seen how Delta likes to play ball with Comair being the latest victim. Sorry, but your comparison of VX vs Delta is an entirely different (and irrelevant) argument when comparing the cutthroat environment of regionals undercutting each other to gain more flying, especially when those pilots voluntarily accept paycuts.