The GOP has placed money over people since at least Reagan. It's their defining issue. Cutting taxes on the rich while immiserating the poor is what gets the GOP out of bed in the morning.
Trump is a lifelong grifter, but he's only part of the longer trend of grifters in the Right Wing Echo Chamber.
Covid has provided another venue for the Rightist Elite to enrich themselves off the rubes. It's disgusting, it's sad and it's par for the course.
After yesterday thinking Manchin would come around with a compromise number, Manchin may have blown the whole thing up. Or maybe he's simply staking out a new position? Or maybe he's venting?
There is zero reason why Manchinema can't come to some sort of number. Again, I can't see what Sinema thinks her plan is. Manchin's motivations make at least a little sense - though I think he misreads the state of the country.
The fact that they won't get together and come up with a number is incredibly frustrating. It certainly makes them look like people more interested in the attention than in solving the impasse, but Sinema doesn't seem to even want the spotlight. She has shied away from press appearances.
In the end, passing both bills makes too much sense for all parties. I think Progressives could swallow a $2.5T bill, providing there are certain things in there like Child Tax Credits, raising taxes on the rich and negotiating drug prices. I think they'd be willing to swallow some means testing and reductions in other areas if it meant getting their top line items.
Who really knows what Manchinema's topline items are?
The nature of power relationships between Senators and party leadership is transactional. It is not coercive, because Senators - and House members for that matter - are elected by unique constituencies and only slightly beholden to party structures. Sure, you want to win the primary, but individual popularity can override party desires, especially party leadership. May I remind you of Joe Fucking Lieberman?
Manchin's grandstanding is a little bit of a mystery, because he's 74 and has to know that he's unlikely to win in WV unless these bills pass. In fact, he's unlikely to win in WV because of entrenched partisanship. However, Manchin is no fool. He understands that transactional nature of legislating. It's unclear at the moment what he's trying to hold out for, but I have to think that Manchin and the Gottheimer Nine have at least SOME demands that leadership are working to address. My guess is that this will result with a BBB bill that is unsatisfactory to a lot of people, but ultimately makes real progress on a lot of issues.
A lot of people on my Twitter feed are saying that Manchin is "corrupt." Maybe, certainly in the Whiggish since of moral rot. If he getting direct kickbacks? I doubt it. If he was, he'd be a lot easier to get on board. Just offer better bribes!
Krysten Sinema does not seem to have any of these concerns. Her objections seem to be entirely optical. She has made no demands from leadership; she has simply said she won't vote for the bill.
There is some evidence that she thinks she's a Democratic John McCain and therefore needs to fuck over her party leadership. That is SUCH a profound misreading of this historical moment.
Legislating is called sausage-making for a reason. In the age of constant news coverage and social media shitstorms, legislating has become even harder. In days past, Manchin would have made his deal in return for something shady or special for WV and we would be moving on. Unfortunately, we are negotiating in public, which forces prima donnas like Manchin and Sinema to stake out public positions and then stick to them.
I have a general idea of what Manchin might be doing, but I have zero clue what Sinema's game is.
Interesting argument for means testing the Child Tax Credit in order to make it permanent. As the authors acknowledge, means testing sucks. However, a permanent plan targeted at the poorest Americans would be better than an loaded revolver left to go off in 2025, even if it covers fewer kids. They note that targeted programs actually poll well.
I'd go a bit further. Establish a means tested permanent program and then expand it over the years as it proves to be popular.
It seems as if McConnell's strategy, if we can call it that, is to allow for a continuing resolution that keeps the government operating, but not allow a vote on the debt ceiling. That's...odd.
My guess is that McConnell is hoping to accelerate the time line of the budget reconciliation bill that is currently being negotiated within the Democratic Caucus. With Manchinema and several House members gumming up the works, McConnell's plan seems to be to force a quick conclusion to the reconciliation bill, by forcing Democrats to include the debt ceiling in that reconciliation bill.
Frankly, it's time for brass knuckles.
First, Democrats should absolutely take the GOP up on its offer to decouple the CR from the reconciliation bill. Keep the lights on.
Then, once that is done, they need to work to take this ticking time bomb out of our government. But it will require Manchinema to get on board.
The Byrd Rule allows budget measures to pass with only a normal majority of votes, unlike regular legislation that "requires" 60 votes. But the filibuster can be ended for anything with 50 votes. Manchinema and others have said they will not vote to weaken the filibuster.
BUT! The debt ceiling is about debt already appropriated by Congress. The debt, in other words, was accrued under the Byrd Rule requiring only 50 votes. The Senate should basically pass a rule saying that ANY legislation surrounding the debt ceiling is covered under the Byrd Rule. If the Parliamentarian rules against them, simply overrule her with a 50+1 vote. Obviously, that requires Democratic unity, which has been hard to come by. However, this is not "ending the filibuster." You could make an solid argument that it is not even tweaking the filibuster, because it's really just taking the Byrd Rule to its logical conclusion: debt falls under budgeting which falls under the Byrd Rule.
Getting rid of the debt ceiling entirely would be a good thing, since McConnell and the GOP have demonstrated that they will absolutely torpedo the American economy for partisan gain. However, it will require that Manchinema sign off on using their bare majority to end this stupidity.
I would bet Manchin will do it, but I have no idea what Sinema is up to. I do know the business community hates this needless drama, so hopefully they will release their chokeholds on these two to do what's right.
Josh Marshall lays out the plans for those who intend to steal the 2024 election. Basically, it's a given among most Republicans right now that majority rule is illegitimate. Some of them crouch this in theoretical language about the US being a "republic not a democracy." Others rely on the Palin/Trump frame of "real Muricans" live in the country and all those urban hipsters don't count.
As an aside, I'm sick of "do something" Twitter that decries how Democrats don't practice brass knuckled politics like Republicans. Democrats have the support of the majority of the country. Period. Their policies are popular. People want Democrats to run things. But we are in thrall to a series of 18th century ideas about government, namely Montesquieu's ideas about divided government preventing tyranny and the overrepresentation of rural populations in the Senate and Electoral College. Those are structural and functionally impossible to change. Grow up. We live in the real world, not the imaginary world of you and your Twitter Feed.
Anyway, back to Republicans.
As Marshall notes, there were a few key figures who refused to go along with Trump's efforts to end American electoral democracy, notably Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger. However, if Trump had managed to steal Georgia's electoral votes, Biden still becomes president. Importantly, Georgia will elect a new Secretary of State in 2022. Raffensberger will lose the primary, but if a Democrat can be dragged over the finish line and become SoS, those are the sort of bulwarks that can be erected against efforts to steal the 2024 election.
This also goes for the House and Senate elections next fall. My optimism, such as it is, is that the GOP has gerrymandered as much as they possibly can and there are fewer options to automatically pick up seats, outside of Montana. Plus, Democrats ARE looking at doing their own gerrymandering, which might be lamentable in other contexts, but right now it's an emergency to preserve even a narrow House majority.
I'm also hopeful that much of the GOP assault on democracy backfires. We won't really know until next November, but hopefully the nature of January 6th, combined with the GOP Death Cult on Covid, combined with the continued nihilism of the GOP will lead the suburban voters (who vote reliably in midterms) to continue their migration to the Democratic party. I also think the voter suppression efforts will backfire and motivate minority voters to come to the polls.
All of this seems rather pollyannish, given the situation. And I don't mean to undercut the urgency of fighting GOP anti-democracy efforts. Just the opposite.
I do worry that the hair-on-fire nature of much of the discourse might depress Democrats. It's urgent, yes, but not quite dire.
This piece on Haitian immigration and US policy lays everything at the feet of American racism. It's pretty typical of Vox's journalism of finding an academic sympathetic to your position and then quoting that person exclusively.
First, yes, American policy towards Haiti has been steeped in racism since Haitian independence in 1803. American policymakers, especially in the South, were repelled by an independence movement made up of rebelling slaves, and America made active efforts to undermine Haiti throughout the 19th century.
However, there is a reason why America enforces its borders and there is a reason why America has been historically reluctant to admit large numbers of Haitian refugees.
First, every country enforces its borders. That's literally the definition of a state: an entity with sovereignty within its borders. This "open borders" bullshit is actually more politically inept a slogan than "defund the police." As the piece sort of notes, Mexico has a large detention center in the south of its country to detain migrants from Central America. This is, of course, laid at the feet of the US, because there is no reason for Mexico to want to enforce its own borders. And as we know Lopez Obrador is a lackey for the US. (Narrator: He is not, in fact, fond if the US.)
So, yes, America does not have to let anyone into its country that it does not want to let in. And, yes, America needs much better immigration LAWS to let more people in. It's inexcusable that the DREAMERs are still in limbo. We can and should be welcoming many more people from around the world who want to come and work in the US.
The interviewer makes the point that America accepts Cuban migrants and not Haitian migrants and posits that it's because of skin color (a lot of Cubans are what we would call black) and not because American immigration law was written to favor Cuban refugees from Castro's regime.
The reason why we have not been as accepting of Haitians has definite racist beliefs, but there is also the reality of Haiti itself. Haiti is the Western Hemisphere's poster child for failed statehood. As Guatemala becomes a nearly failed state, Colombia moves away from being a failed state. Meanwhile, for decade after decade, Haiti teeters constantly on the edge of state failure.
Naturally, for many people the fault lies with the incredibly wealthy nation to the north, based on the atrocious way Haiti was treated in the 19th century. The reality is that the "international community" (whatever that means) has made a large contributions to Haiti. After the 2010 earthquake, around $13B in aid money flowed to a country with an annual GDP of $14B. Haiti has been unable to create any sort of political stability that lasts for more than a few months here, maybe a year there.
If America opened its borders to Haitians, Haitians would flood the US. Their country is mired in cascading calamities of bad governance, ecological and geological disasters and a cycle of poverty that has proven impervious to outside efforts to help. This has led many people to say that the Global North is simply doing aid wrong, whereas it seems more likely that Haiti's problems cannot be solved by infusions of foreign cash and that it seems to reinforce Haiti's cycles of authoritarian rule.
America can have a better immigration policy towards Haitians. But that would require America to have a better immigration policy towards everyone, and that will not pass this Congress. The idea that America's legacy of racism is why we won't take more Haitians seems simplistic and deterministic. Too often, we blame circumstances on malevolent actions, when sometimes things are just shitty.
Things in Haiti are shitty. They have been a long, long time and they seem to get worse just as they try and get better. It's tragic. However, America is no longer trying to squash Haitian democracy the way we were 150 years ago. We would very much like a stable, democratic and prosperous Haiti and have tried to make that happen.
Our failure to do so has to be shared with Haiti. It's their country.
I hope we can find a way to make our immigration system more humane and accept more people via legal channels. But simply saying we should take in Haitians will only lead to more Haitians trying to reach this country without going through legal channels. So we are negotiating our way through an imperfect world with imperfect laws and systems. That's not exclusively some racist plot against Haitians.
Nancy Pelosi is the most impressive and powerful Speaker since at least Newt Gingrich, if not Tip O'Neill. Apparently she has a plan for this week that is going to be a return to Nancy Smash. Yes, the Senate and Manchinema will remain the problem, but Democrats have to corral votes in the House, too. As Pelosi says, she never brings a bill to the floor without the votes.
I can't help but wonder if McConnell's irresponsible conduct on the debt ceiling isn't unifying Democrats in ways that Democrats couldn't do themselves.
Michael Lewis wrote a book called The Fifth Risk. It's a breezy little tome at about 250 pages that tells the narrative of the evisceration of expertise in the government. David von Drehle picks up this thread and explains (without actually doing it explicitly) why much of the Democratic agenda fails to resonate politically.
The basic issue should be incontrovertible at this point: The "Reagan Revolution" sought to - in the words of Grover Norquist - shrink government small enough so that you could drown it in a bathtub. Charming. The result of 40 years of this thinking is a government that struggles to fulfill the tasks handed to it. As von Drehle notes, this is addressed, if that's the right word, by Democrats simply throwing money at it. What is usually NOT done is the slow and patient work of building up bureaucratic capacity to actually translate policy goals into tangible public good.
Von Drehle notes the program that was created to provide rent relief during the pandemic. Much of the money is still there, undistributed, because finding a way to disperse is tricky. Anyone who has dealt with a phone tree or a government website knows how clunky and inefficient they can be. Add in the natural disposition towards inaction rather than action, and you have a well-intentioned, potentially politically popular measure that lands with a thud.
Americans have had a fraught relationship with the idea of bureaucracy. We tend to be suspicious of the state, and that goes a million times more for the radical right wing fringe that makes up a quarter of the population and think wearing a facemask is the same as being sent to Auschwitz. However, we need a functional state. The world is big and complicated.
I was optimistic that Biden "got this." Of course, Manchinema may make that insight moot.
The latest step towards self-immolation that the anti-vax/Covid is fake crowd has embraced is to avoid going to the hospital. Since all doctors are part of the "medical-industrial complex" if you go to the ER, they might put you on Remdesivir or steroids rather than horse dewormer. And we can't have that.
Honestly...go ahead. At this point, my withering hatred of these people has overwhelmed my feelings of compassion and humanity. Stay at home. Take your horse paste and nebulized hydrogen peroxide. And if you die, I'll feel bad for those of you around you who loved you and tried to save you.
At this point, though, removing you from the polity is a plus. I'm done.
Josh Marshall has done yeoman's work trying to figure out what the hell is going on with Krysten Sinema. Joe Manchin's positions make a certain amount of sense for a septuagenarian from West Virginia. Sinema is a young, ambitious politician from a purpling state. Why is she taking positions that would seem to alienate herself from her party base?
As Marshall notes, her support - as measured by favorability - is cratering with Democrats and Independents. She has high favorables from Republicans. If she thinks she can convert that Republican favorability into Republican votes, she's dumber than a box of rocks. Republicans will vote for Republicans. Right now, her favorables are high, because Republicans like the fact that she is making it impossible for Joe Biden and Democrats to pass a popular legislative agenda. Come the next election, though, they will vote for the Republican.
Her decision making seems to be a re-hash of what we had to go through with Joe Lieberman here in Connecticut. Now, Connecticut is much bluer than Arizona, so maybe this strategy works. But partisanship continues to grow, regardless of where you are.
I've wondered these past couple of months where Sinema's primary challenger was. True, she's not up for re-election until 2024, but having a primary challenger who racks up major donations on ActBlue and presents a consequence for her obstreperousness might nudge her back into the fold.
My only guess is that Democratic Party officials worry that a primary challenger will push her over towards the GOP entirely. It seems pretty clear that Sinema has no deeply held convictions beyond the fact that Krysten Sinema is awesome and should be a Senator. While Lieberman was the same way, he did have core beliefs, though many of them were odious.
Every once in a while, I think about the 2020 election in Maine. Joe Biden won 53.1% of the vote and yet Susan Collins won 51%. Every one of those Mainiacs who voted for Biden and then voted for Susan Collins...fuck y'all. You're dumb. If you wanted to end Trumpism, you cannot split your votes. Also, I really wish Cal Cunningham had kept it in his pants. Having 50 votes is better than having 49, but man...
Apparently the media doesn't care, because there's another missing white girl.
Events, however, are beginning to accelerate. We have the leaks from Bob Woodward's book, including the Eastman Memo. By any reasonable standards, the disclosure of this memo, which lays out how Pence could basically end elective democracy in America, should be the leading news story in every newspaper in the country. Eastman should be arrested, or at least dragged before the Committee (I presume he will be).
The House Select Committee has subpoenaed Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino and Kash Patel. These three stooges will invoke executive privilege, but they will not be supported by the existing White House. Technically, this should place them in contempt of Congress. I would love to see them placed in jail for this. It's not Bob Barr running the DOJ, but Merrick Garland - of all people - still seems to think that this is 1990 and we can all just defer to existing norms.
Like many, I've been impatient for perp walks beyond the cluelessly moronic MAGAts who have been arrested for storming the Capitol. It's not OK for these marginal and marginalized bumpkins to bear the consequences of Trump and his lackeys' attempts to end American Democracy.
I also realize that indicting Trump is unprecedented in American history. If you're going to do this, how do you find an impartial jury? Maybe it would be better to just get him on tax fraud...but that doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
If you're going to bring a case against Trump, you'd better have all the t's crossed and all the i's dotted. I get that. And ideally, the trial of Donald Trump and Mark Meadows and Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes and Lauren Boebert and - how the hell is he not already in jail - Matt Gaetz will be the dominant story from December through next fall, after Democrats find some way to pass their legislative agenda this fall.
I get that justice grinds slow, but we've been waiting for four years for Trump to face justice for his many crimes before and after he claimed the presidency.
Throw us a bone.
There is a saying that while history does not, in fact, repeat itself, it does rhyme. However, I see a lot of takes like this one, saying Democrats could lose the support of Black voters because Republicans used to win the Black vote and then they didn't. While the author lays out WHY Republicans lost and Democrats won support from African Americans, the suggestion that Republicans could somehow win support from Blacks is to create an imaginary Republican Party that is entirely different from the one that actually exists.
I've seen a lot of takes like this one that reference the Russian Revolution of 1905 - really a mutiny by the armed forces - and the Munich Putsch and comparisons to January 6th. There is no doubt that democracy in America is under attack. However, I would doubt it will be overthrown by some form of coercive violence. Parallels to Russia or Weimar Germany miss the weakness of those governments. While our government is "weak," in the sense that it struggles to pass new legislation, it's not weak and illegitimate in the ways those governments were. We ARE getting there, though, with the Trumpenproletariat. That's very worrisome.
If democracy erodes in America it will be in a uniquely American way.
Yglesias writes about how the median voter is a 50 year white person. Now, median is different from average, but his point still stands: there are a lot of voters who are not young, urban and college educated and most Democratic politics is done by people who are young, urban and college educated.
I think about this whenever I read Erik Loomis embrace some dumbass position like "abolish the Border Patrol". Defund the police was another one, but let's focus on "open borders" in the wake of the horrific images of Border Patrol agents on horses whipping Haitian refugees with their reins. The maximalist position of "defund the police" or "abolish the Border Patrol" fits in nicely with that "young, urban, college educated" class of people, but it's really not very popular with the median voter. There's pretty good evidence that "defund the police" hurt Biden - who never supported it - among some working class Black and especially Hispanic voters. Open Borders are not a hit with Hispanic voters, who feel - rightly or wrongly - that they came here "the right way."
Yglesias makes the seemingly self-evident point that Democrats should publicly embrace popular ideas and not unpopular ideas. He also makes the case that maybe you should work on necessary unpopular ideas behind closed doors, which makes sense. He then goes on to properly criticize Krysten Sinema for publicly opposing popular measures like negotiating for lower drug prices via Medicare.
The Right in the United States has descended into madness by first enclosing themselves in an epistemological bubble where reality never intrudes. Biden is a Socialist. Obama was really born in Africa. Climate change is a hoax. Covid is just like the flu.
Democrats need to be wary - especially the activist and online groups - from falling into this same trap. In 1972, Pauline Kael said she didn't understand how Nixon won, none of her friends voted for him. This is the peril of epistemological closure.
The next two elections will determine whether America survives as a democracy, slides into authoritarianism or fractures. Now is not the time to trot out unpopular ideas.
Read this post to get a sense both of Republican recklessness on the debt ceiling and the fecklessness of reporting on it. Every headline on this issue should be some variation of "Republicans Threaten US Solvency."
This is a clear effort to sabotage the US economy in order to hurt Democratic efforts in the midterms next fall. It should be labeled as such.
Theoretically, Democrats could end the filibuster when it comes to the debt ceiling. I doubt Republicans would really mind, as they haven't really gotten anything by taking the economy hostage and it would allow them to make their stupid campaign commercials where they claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility, despite blowing a massive hole in the debt with their tax cuts for rich people. The debt ceiling is stupid and Democrats should pass a law making it moot and they should exempt that from the filibuster.
All that needs is the support of fucking Manchinema....<sigh>
There is news out of Oregon and New York that Democrats in those states are prepared to use their "trifecta" - control of both state houses and the governorship - to push through partisan gerrymanders.
In the abstract this is "bad" because partisan gerrymanders are bad. However, unilateral disarmament is also bad. Adam Silverman argues that partisan gerrymanders in TX, FL, GA and NC will basically hand the House to Republicans in 2022, unless Democrats counter with their own. I'm skeptical. North Carolina Courts have struck down some of the more absurd gerrymanders, and there is a Democratic governor, for instance.
Let's look at a few facts.
First, Republicans have already squeezed as many seats out of gerrymandering as they can. You reach a limit on how much you can gerrymander. The idea is to create a bunch of 80% Democratic districts and a bunch of 55% GOP districts, but eventually you do bump up against the remarkable unpopularity of the GOP and especially the declining support for the GOP in the suburbs and the declining population of rural America.
Ohio, for instance, is already very heavily gerrymandered, with weirdly shaped D districts around Columbus and Cleveland. Ohio is losing a seat and it will be very hard to find a way to pack Democrats into tinier districts. Meanwhile, they are guaranteed to lose a seat in West Virginia. So, that's -2 seats. If NY and OR respond with gerrymanders, you could add a seat in Oregon and New York could add a few as well.
Texas is a great example of the limits of gerrymandering. Texas gets two more seats, and those will likely come from movement into cities like Houston, Austin and Dallas. While there are some areas between San Antonio and the Rio Grande that could be picked off by Republicans, they are going to struggle to find ways to create safe districts for Republicans.
Look at Houston:
I mean, how messed up is that? Only TX-2, the red district naturally, is held by a Republican, Dan Crenshaw. Only TX7 was close with Democrat Lizzie Fletcher winning by 10,000 votes or 50.8-47.5. Every other Democrat won over 70% of the vote. Republicans might be able to get their two additional seats out of Texas, but not much more than that.
I hope that Republicans count on suburbanites returning to the fold when they make their maps. I think they will be unpleasantly surprised. And I hope that Democrats leverage their ability to make maps that inflict the same painful effects on Republicans in NY, OR, possibly Colorado and Illinois, too.
Republican control of the House means Marjorie Traitor Greene running hearings on Hunter Biden's laptop for two years. It can't be allowed.
The Senate Parliamentarian saying that you can't include an immigration proposal in a budget bill, because you've "set a precedent" that it could be overturned with a simple majority shows how absolutely fucking broken Senate Brain makes you.
Yes, it could be. That's the way it should work.
As soon as the filibuster can be killed once and for all, the better.
Places like Idaho have started rationing care and placing Covid patients on DNR lists, regardless of their wishes. Right now, the hardest hit places are the northern Mountain West and the Appalachians. I'm not sure if this is solely about vaccine hesitancy or whether cooler weather has anything to do with it. Or maybe it's just the migration of the Delta variant. Obviously, I'm very concerned about the coming winter chill and whether or not the pretty high vaccination rates we have here will protect us. Paul Campos is right that this is the worst public health crisis in our history.
I've been getting notices from my insurer about how much they paid for my hospitalization, and it comes to around $130,000 so far. I've paid almost nothing. However, insurance companies are starting to pass along costs to patients. This will lead to deeply unfair outcomes, as some people who were vaccinated will pay thousands of dollars and some who aren't will pay nothing, simply because of which insurance company or which state they live in.
Back in the spring of 2020, we were told to "flatten the curve" in order to preserve our national health care institutions. Today, in certain parts of the country, the health care providers are broken and the health insurance companies are breaking people.
I think Josh Marshall is right that the French reaction to Australia's decision to buy American subs instead of French ones is a part of France refusing to acknowledge that they are no longer a great power. Some of this wedges into Macron's desire to create a European Defense Force separate from the American led NATO. He will use Afghanistan (for some reason) and this deal (makes sense) to argue that Europe should have defensive capabilities separate from the US.
The problem, of course, is that the reason Australia is buying US subs is because they are much better and actually cheaper. It would be like agreeing with the auto dealer to buy a bunch of Hyundais, then find out they will only come it in next year and the price will double. And then Tesla agrees to sell you a car for half the price. If Europe wants a defense force, it will have to subsidize a massive increase in military technology that the US currently dominates the world in.
As Marshall notes, France stopped being a "Great Power" in the 1950s, but they - like the British - don't accept that. Poking Uncle Sam in the eye is a great vote getter.
Frankly, if I'm Biden, I agree to buy the French subs to salve French pride. Then - once you've gotten them - give them to Mexico and (in a move to mess with the French) Vietnam. Those are also strategic partners against China, plus it's hilarious.
As I said yesterday, there really isn't anything Biden can do to move Manchin off his position. He might move Manchin a little bit, but Manchin (and Sinema) can't move too far, because they've staked out high profile positions.
As Josh Marshall points out, this was almost always going to be the result, and framing it otherwise, was folly and really, really bad politics.
French whining about the US-Australia-Britain submarine deal feels like the ghost of Charles DeGaulle. DeGaulle was - I guess - a French hero during WWII, he was certainly a symbol of French resistance. He rose to power by constantly sticking a thumb in the eyes of Britain and the US, the two countries that liberated his own country and carried Free French troops back to France. He famously kept Britain out the European Common Market - ironically - because he thought Britain was a stalking horse for US hegemony.
The US-UK-AUK deal has been accompanied by caterwauling from France, but it's really a process of French incompetence. Australia wanted to buy diesel submarines from France, but the French have not been able to make the sale. The French-Australian deal if five years old and Australia has exactly zero submarines to show for it. The British and Americans have agreed to sell Australia nuclear powered - not nuclear armed - submarines. These are, obviously, better submarines and it's part of the pivot to Asia by the US.
If France really wanted to avoid being sniped by the US/UK, they probably should have finished building the subs they promised. As Andrew Gilland famously said, "A hit dog will holler." That's what France is doing now.
Matt Yglesias has a nice piece outlining the history of the debt ceiling and the how Mitch McConnell broke the process and appears to be sending us towards a cliff.
My solution? Pass a Joint Resolution of both Houses (50 votes in the Senate) pointing out the text of the Mighty Fourteenth Amendment seems to make the idea of a debt ceiling unconstitutional:
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
Yeah, yeah, the Courts. But I think the 14th is pretty damned clear and posturing over the debt ceiling is pretty stupid. Yglesias points out how Obama voted against it and then switched when expedient. Given the legislative and political nihilism of the GOP, simply removing this stupid, arcane loaded gun from the equation for all time seems like the best play.
Martin Longman is not one of the "Do Something" caucus or the "Bully Pulpit" cult. He understands that there is literally no lever that Biden can pull to make Joe Manchin or Krysten Sinema stop being a fucking prat and get with the program. His meetings with them today are therefore crucial to the fate of his legislative agenda.
If he can move this two drama llamas to stop begging for attention and to abandon outdated ideas of thinking about both the filibuster and the deficit, his agenda has a chance of becoming a reality. If not? The transformative opportunity that we have is lost until...who knows. The Senate map isn't terrible for Dems and the California recall suggests that Democrats are as or more motivated than Republicans in off-year elections. The House, however, could be a heavy lift. One thing that might save the day is if NY Democrats play the same game as the Republicans and gerrymander NY. I don't like gerrymandering, but I hate playing checkers while the other side if playing global nuclear war.
The failure of the GOP effort to recall Gavin Newsom seems ordained in retrospect, because after all...California. Having the alternative like nutjob Larry Elder didn't help the recall effort either.
Two things to take from this:
1) California needs to fix its screwed up recall system. There needs to be two separate votes, rather than the process now, where Newsome could've been recalled and Elder could've won with 25% of the vote. Just because Democrats hold the trifecta and a staggering lead in voter registration does not excuse a bad law.
2) Running on effective pandemic mitigation works. For all the caterwauling from the Spreadnecks and Legacy Teanderthals, running on masking and vaccines is popular. Trying to be DeSantis or Abbott isn't popular. Some of this is...California. But Newsom killed it among college educated Whites. Democrats need to lock up that demographic ahead of the 2022 midterms. College educated voters show up at midterms, and that is the key to Democrats maintaining control of the House.
Read this post about why Right Wing Media pushes their listeners away from the free vaccine towards Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine. There is no money to be made in a free vaccine, but RWM has been pushing quack cures for years. Covid isn't a pandemic to them, it's a marketing opportunity.
Fascinating animation of the waves of Covid washing over the country. You can see that first wave hitting NYC and the Northeast, plus the Navajo reservation. Then there is a Southern surge in the summer of 2020, as people went inside for air conditioning. Next up is the Northern Plains surge in October, which prefaces the nationwide surge of December 2020 through early February 2021.
There was a localized surge in NYC and especially Michigan in April of 2021, then the vaccines roll out. By July there are a few clusters seemingly focused on Branson and Lake of the Ozarks, but the country seems past it. Remember that? By late summer, the South and Pacific Northwest are peaking.
The thing that keeps me up at night is whether we will be able to prevent a Delta wave as the Northeast returns to schools and goes inside for the winter. How close are we to herd immunity? In Connecticut, about 75% have received at least the first dose and 67% are fully vaccinated. How many of the 25% are kids ineligible to be vaccinated? How many of the adults have some form of acquired immunity? All of our students, faculty and staff are vaccinated, but then so was I before I got Delta.
If the Winter Wave never happens, that will be huge for the country.
Greg Sargent points out how the GOP is playing an anti-confidence game. They are casually talking about how "people" are distrustful of vaccines or elections results, while simultaneously and surreptitiously stoke those fears. It is a version of "some people say" as a way to inject horrible ideas into the public discourse.
I've written before about how the GOP project since Reagan has been to dismantle the ability of government to govern, but usually that was just to service great wealth. Now, they are trying to degrade the function of and trust in government so that more people will die of an increasingly preventable disease.
I take some issue with this piece in the WaPo.
Democrats should NOT want Trump "on the ballot" if it means him running for office in 2024. There are two reasons for this. First, under no circumstances can this country afford another 2016 election, whereby Trump draws to an inside straight in the electoral college. Second, Trump HAS shown he can mobilize a certain segment of voters who usually don't vote. They need to stay home.
Of course, as usual, most of the problems with this piece is the shitty, click-baity headline. The actual article argues that Dems want to run against Trumpism, which is largely true. However, running against Trumpism means running against the GOP, as the two are now inseparable.
So, yes, Democrats are running against the modern GOP, because that is literally their job.
It's the NFL season again, which means my destiny is to spend the next 18 weeks suffering through the misery of being a Falcons' fan.
Thank Dog, my son made me a Chelsea fan. At least one of my "football" clubs is decent.
Sadly, I went to Facebook last night and saw someone I care about say that Biden's vaccine mandate is a form of tyranny.
Ugh.
No.
It's not.
Vaccine mandates are obviously legal. If you want to go to school? You have to have a bunch of vaccines. Want to join the military? You have to have a bunch of vaccines.
In 1904, the Supreme Court ruled in Jacobsen v Massachusetts that vaccine mandates with a clear public health purpose were not infringements on personal freedom. This ruling was upheld in 1922 by Zucht v King. Even Amy Coney Barrett upheld a vaccine requirement issues by the University of Indiana. While it's tempting fate to call anything "settled law" under the increasingly ideological Court, I guarantee four Justices will uphold Jacobsen and Zucht, and I feel pretty good about it being 7-2 or 8-1.
Now, the argument that the GOP Death Cult will embrace is that Jacobsen referred only to state mandates and MUH FEDERALSIM! However, the Court's opinion - written by one of my favorite justices, John Marshall Harlan - does not seem to distinguish between state and federal mandates. As Harlan wrote:
There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good. On any other basis, organized society could not exist with safety to its members. Society based on the rule that each one is a law unto himself would soon be confronted with disorder and anarchy.
That is a broad argument for common purpose regardless of which level of government institutes it.
The sticking point could be that Biden has used an unusual workaround: OSHA. By making this a workplace safety issue rather than trying to pass a law through our wretched Senate, he could conceivably open the door for some Federalist Society hack to invalidate it. However, I could also see those same hacks slow roll their opposition for months on end in order to actually let the increase in vaccination rates get us out of the pandemic.
Working against this, though, is that this really isn't a vaccine mandate. First off, it's restricted to firms of over 100 employees. While that covers school districts and major corporations, it leave off almost all small businesses. Secondly, if you refuse to get a vaccine, you have to be tested weekly. Frankly, I think bi-weekly would be sounder policy, but whatever.
This "unprecedented power grab" is basically: If you work for a sufficiently large company, you either have to get the vaccine or by tested weekly. This is the clear recommendation from public health experts. Probably most important is guaranteeing sick days off if the vaccine knocks you on your ass for a day or two. Millions of Americans worried about this, now they don't have to.
Over 60% of Americans support this. We want our lives back and most of us realize that this comes from controlling the pandemic's spread. Vaccines and masks - combined with the millions of Americans who have already had it - is the way forward.
You know, I remember conservative voices a year ago confidently predicting that if Biden got elected, concerns from "Socialist Leftists" over the coronavirus would disappear. That it was all just a big plot to discredit Trump. Funny. I don't hear that now.
Biden's new tougher requirements for employers to stop the spread of Covid is clearly warranted on the medical end. Delta requires that we get more and more people vaccinated. Vaccine mandates work.
There's a second question of: what will the political impact be?
The usual mediots will rush to the nearest Ohio diner to interview guys in MAGA hats as to what they think about Biden's plan. Ignore them.
Covid is THE issue for 2022. Afghanistan will have faded into the background by then, unless the Taliban decide to attack us, which they won't, because they aren't idiots. No, the issue will be the recovery, both medical and economic from the pandemic.
Basically, Biden is counting on the 75% of adults and the larger percentage of suburban, college educated voters - the sort of people who vote in midterms - to support this policy. That's not a terrible gamble.
We are exhausted, and as Biden says, we've lost our patience with Spreadnecks.
Biden's decision to use OSHA to enforce mandate or testing requirements is low-key brilliant. It's a worker safety issue, like wearing a hard hat or controlling lead dust. Today's decision by the DOJ to sue Texas is a little more straightforward, but also welcome news.
There are, of course, the manic whiners of the "Do Something" faction that will either say it took too long or take credit for it finally happening. Biden and Garland both took the time to find a way that might actually work. Rather than spasm about in paroxysms of sputtering rage, they went through their options before lighting on the best ones.
I swear to Dog, the internet has broken our capacity for patience and perspective.
There is a term in political science called a "veto gate." Basically, as opposed to the public act of vetoing legislation by the president, a veto gate is something legislation or regulation must pass through before even getting to the president's desk.
The US has WAAAAAAAY too many veto gates. Having a Senate and House means that both houses must pass legislation that is exactly the same.
Adding the filibuster makes it much, much worse.
The filibuster should be abolished so that the government can work.
I'm not a huge proponent of the idea that if a thing is bipartisan, that makes it good. I also think 98% of the Republican caterwauling about electoral fraud is a bad faith effort to suppress the votes of those they don't want <cough> black people <cough> voting.
But there is one complaint by rank and file Republicans that does have a certain logic to it. You have to show ID for a bunch of reasons, why not voting?
Now, obviously, there are circumstances where you have to have an ID for legitimate reasons like proving you're of legal age or that you are actually who your say you are at the bank or doctor's office. You also have to show ID to fly in an airplane.
None of these are fundamental rights. Voting is.
Still, "why should I have to show my ID to board a plane, but not when voting" is a superficially plausible argument. The Brennan Center points out that millions of Americans don't have government issued IDs, and those numbers are especially high amongst minority groups. It's unclear if the people without IDs are, in fact, voters. Tens of millions of Americans are not. It's also unclear if those numbers have moved any since they were accumulated prior to 2010.
But, OK. Voters should have photo IDs in order to vote, even if in-person voter fraud isn't a thing.
So, let's give everyone a government issued photo ID.
- For everyone who registers to vote, they get a voter ID card.
- For everyone who's already registered to vote, every effort will be made - including a mobile ID van - to get them a photo ID.
I realize engaging with bad faith arguments is a bad idea. The argument about photo ID is only partly in bad faith. There's a logic to it, even if it's unnecessary.
Remove the argument by getting everyone who's registered to vote a photo ID. Not only will it allow them to vote, they can also use it at banks, airports and wherever.
Marry the legislation with providing everyone with a photo ID to something else, like guaranteed in-person, no-questions-asked absentee voting. Or increased funding for secure voting machines (since it's likely to be Trumpists fucking with then security of the machines these days).
You aren't passing the John Lewis Act until you get over 55 Democratic Senators and a Democratic House. Find some common ground and pass SOMETHING to insure ballot access.
Even if it means engaging with shitty, cynical bullshit.
I've recently been visiting the website sorryantivaxxer.com. I don't do it out of morbid glee, and I take no pleasure over the deaths of people from Covid. It sucks, can confirm.
The reason I read it is to get a picture of why these people refused to get a free vaccine. We've all heard of the people who embrace bizarre conspiracy theories, like Bill Gates put a microchip in it or it makes men sterile (actually, that's Ivermectin).
No, what strikes me about so many of these people who are dying of Covid is that they have an understanding of "god" that is just bonkers. God does not cure Covid. OK. God does not improve your bank account. God does not "do things" to make things better for you. You want to know how I know that? Because childhood cancers exist. God - if they exist - may be a presence you can find psychological or emotional comfort in, but that's mostly you finding grace. It's not God saying, "Well, Suzy is having a bad day, I'd best go sit with her awhile."
Sorry, you aren't that important.
If God does exist, the argument is that they inspired doctors and scientists to invent vaccines. Or steroids. Or Remdesivir. The fact that you won't access the tools given you while waiting for Jesus to heal you suggests, as if we needed more evidence, that Christian fundamentalism is the greatest threat to American self-government. You cannot run a government based on enlightenment principles if a critical mass of citizens reject those principles.
In 1983, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States were as strained as they had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The USSR, in fact, was convinced that the US was planning a first strike nuclear attack. On September 1st, 1983, the USSR shot down a Korean Air Lines flight that strayed into Soviet airspace, thinking it might be part of a sneak attack by the US.
After Texas implemented (and the Courts refused to stop) it's bounty hunter anti-abortion bill, there were the usual cries of "Why won't Democrats do something? There's just as bad as Republicans." This is, of course, bullshit.
Among the criticisms I saw on social media was that AG Merrick Garland might well be Bill Barr for all he's done to prosecute Trump or protect women's rights.
Leaving aside that if you are going to prosecute a former president, you'd better have EVERYTHING perfect, prosecutions take time to build under the best circumstances. Cases take years to drag through the courts, even as "Q Shaman" has been sentenced to several years in prison. More will come.
On the Texas issue, the DOJ came out today saying they would use the FACE Act to stop implementation of the law. This is...stretching the law, which was created to protect reproductive clinics from violent threats and attacks. Here's the Wikipedia entry:
(1) the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or physical obstruction to intentionally injure, intimidate, interfere with or attempt to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person who is obtaining reproductive health services or providing reproductive health services (this portion of the law typically refers to abortion clinics), (2) the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or physical obstruction to intentionally injure, intimidate, interfere with or attempt to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person who is exercising or trying to exercise their First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship, (3) the intentional damage or destruction of a reproductive health care facility or a place of worship.
So, it's hard to see how this is "physical obstruction" or "force." The law does say you can't prevent someone from entering a clinic and you can't stalk clinic workers. That would seem to give them enough cover to stop some aspects of the law.
The nature of politics today is so very, very broken by social media's rush to judgment and immediate need for gratification that it's impossible to govern properly.
I enjoy Twitter and I like connecting with old friends on Facebook, but honest to Dog, if they disappeared tomorrow, the world would be a better place.
Look, this isn't solely a Red/Blue thing. Noted sexual creep Andrew Cuomo screwed around with the Covid deaths in nursing homes in the early days of the pandemic.
What Florida is doing is more overt. They are updating their death totals every week rather than daily. This has managed a bit to hide the impact of the epidemic. All the other states in the Covid Hot Zone publish their deaths daily. Their chart looks like an upward slope, Florida's looks like steps: flat for a week then a huge jump, then flat for a week.
Given what a mendacious shitbag Ron DeathSantis is, it's really hard not to think that he's screwing around with those death numbers. If you want an unhealthy dose of schadenfreude, check out the website that keeps track of the deaths of anti-vaxxers. LOTS of Florida on there.
The Post runs through the uneven nature of return to employment in these - hopefully - late stages of the pandemic.
Some sectors are basically back to normal, but others are struggled to hire. Certain places in the country are struggled more than others, as people wonder whether to risk returning to a shitty job when you might get Covid or bring it home to infect your 4 year old.
This isn't a new phenomenon. Most famously, the Black Death killed so many peasants that it upended feudalism as it shifted the negotiating power between serf and landowner. This event isn't nearly as calamitous, but it does raise questions about the nature of work. I know we lost several faculty members to retirement that had to be accelerated by the pandemic.
America has largely been gripped by the idea that workers should be grateful to have a job at all. That's...well...bullshit, but it is a prevalent idea. As many Americans work their way up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, they tend to reject the idea that they should risk their lives or the lives of their children to make $12 and hour asking someone if they want fries with that.
Time will tell if we are seeing a fundamental change in the American workforce, but some changes would hardly be unwelcome.
I've seen so many takes similar to Paul Waldman's that I guess it deserves a response (again).
Yes, Republicans are naked and cynical in their use and abuse of power. There are no better examples of this than Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett having lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court, despite the flagrant power play to NOT confirm Merrick Garland and RUSHING to confirm Barrett.
The problem is that the logical end point of Republican nihilism is Trumpism. If Democrats becomes similarly abusive of precedent and norms, America will collapse into civil disorder. Someone described American politics in the 21st century this way, "We elect a bunch of arsonists, who burn everything down. So we elect fire marshals and construction guys to rebuild the house, only we get impatient with the process so we re-elect the arsonists."
Now, I have my doubts about whether we will return the arsonists to power in 2022, at least in the House. My feeling is that
A) The Republicans have squeezed every seat out of gerrymandering, and they will struggle to gain an additional advantage from the process.
B) Continued Republican anti-democratic practices - including the Texas abortion ban and their support of Trumpism and January 6th - will keep Democratic voters motivated for midterms in ways that typically aren't true for the incumbent party.
C) Trump will not be on the ballot and his cultists will struggle to summon the motivation to vote for people like Devin Nunes.
but most importantly
D) The suburbs - full of college educated voters - are switching to Democratic voting blocs. College educated voters are more likely to vote in midterms (see 2022, or even 2014), and their presence in suburbs will further complicate gerrymandering, which has taken GOP dominance of the suburbs for granted.
The reason D is most important is that if the Democrats violate norms, they will lose their advantage in those suburbs among those college educated voters. That was the folly of "Defund the Police," it eroded the inroads among a population that wants the police to be better, not "gone." Defunding the police sounds like eliminating the police, no matter what its advocates say, and that is a fundamental violation of American norms and practices. It's within spitting distance of anarchy.
There are certainly things I would like to see Democrats do that are more "hardball" than they are wont to. Frankly, I would like to see a mild gerrymander of New York and Illinois. I hate gerrymandering, because it's fundamentally undemocratic, but I don't believe in universal disarmament.
Having more "show votes" would help define Republican intransigence, especially over abortion, unemployment benefits or even Afghanistan. Have a vote resolving that America should stay in Afghanistan for 20 more years. Schedule it. See how it fares. Get Stephen Breyer to retire, the way Anthony Kennedy did.
The Senate - and Joe Fucking Manchin and Krysten Look At Me Sinema - remains a huge hurdle. If Democrats had only won Maine and North Carolina's Senate races, we wouldn't be in this mess. The Senate map is a bit friendlier in 2022, but it will be largely irrelevant if Dems don't hold the House.
There ARE ways Democrats can improve their political positions in the run-up to 2022. Being more like Republicans is a terrible way to do that.
Chief Justice John Roberts has tried to preserve the Supreme Court's legitimacy by trying to find middle ground. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg - and, yes, her decision not to retire when Obama could have replaced her - gave Trump the opportunity to remove Roberts from the fulcrum of Supreme Court decisions, as he was when reviewing the ACA. His efforts to try and resolve the Texas abortion law foundered.
If - as anticipated - the Court jettisons Roe in some way, except a major crisis of legitimacy for an institution that has at least two justices - Gorsuch and Barnett - who really should not be on it, except for a minority president and a minority Senate "majority."
Something will break.
Texas law SB8 effectively bans almost all abortions in Texas in the most Republican way ever. The state doesn't do anything, but private citizens can take a provider to court and get $10,000 if they can prove that a provider performed an abortion after 6 freaking weeks - a term before most women know they are pregnant.
Because the Supreme Court elected not to issue an injunction stopping the law, which is in direct contradiction to Roe v Wade and almost 50 years of settled president. As someone said, maybe we shouldn't let twice impeached, serial bankruptcy guy who lost the popular vote by 3 million voters get to appoint a third of our unelected philosopher kings.
Martin Longman makes a case that I think we will see more of. Generally speaking, significant majorities prefer that Roe be let alone. As we know, women have been trending towards the Democratic Party for decades, and Trump accelerated and solidified those gains. What happens, if this Texas bullshit moves about 400,000 of the Lone Star electorate of 11,000,000 away from the GOP? That puts Texas in play, a wet dream of Democratic strategists for 25 years. Without Texas, the GOP ceases to be a viable national party, especially if we operate under the assumption that Trump has a certain unique magnetic draw over a demographic of irregular voters.
The metaphor of the GQP being "the dog that caught the car" has a certain logic. Abortion is not a key issue for me personally. It is something I support as part of the Democratic coalition, but it's also something I largely take for granted. That is no longer true. If I was wondering about whether I really needed to vote in 2022 (I mean, I don't, but...) then something like this will be a huge motivator. Texas is gaining two House seats with redistricting, and the assumption is that those will be two GOP seats. But the districts around Houston, Dallas and Austin are already pretty heavily gerrymandered. There are four Democratic House members for the Houston area. Three of them win over 70% of the vote. For Dallas and Austin there are five Democrats and four of them win over 64% of the vote. It becomes hard to gerrymander more than that, even with the boost from geographic sorting. TX-10 was won by a Republican with 52.5%; TX-6 with 52.8%; TX-23 with 50.6%; TX-31 with 53.4%; TX-22 with 51.5%. Those become swing districts with enough angry women voting against the party that refuses to protect their children in schools, while demanding that women give birth to unwanted babies.
As my late father drifted into the GOP, as so many White Southern Democrats did, he was uninterested in the cultural wars, except as a cudgel against Democrats. He wanted to beat up Dems with gender stuff, but not have to defend anti-abortion zealots. The GOP can longer dance that dance. They know own the repeal of Roe in our second largest state.
Will Roe end or will this be the destruction of the GOP? My guess is that the Republican Supreme Court will be following that development more close than the idea of stare decsis.
