Terrible WATB

 Josh Marshall is, again, correct here. When news came out that Manchin and Schumer have a deal on climate, health care and deficit reduction, McConnell and the Very Serious Susan Collins said that future deals with Democrats were off the table, notably codifying same-sex marriage.

It is perfectly fine to vote against measures you genuinely do not support or that your constituents oppose wholesale. That's why you join a party and get into politics. If you really believe that same-sex marriage is bad, by all means, vote against it. You're a bigot and all, but you do you.

The idea that the GOP got outmaneuvered on the CHIPs bill and then Manchin's deal should not predicate your support for bills that you otherwise support. When Susan Collins says she won't support protecting same sex marriage because the Democrats were smarter than her party...what the actual fuck? Are you an adult? Is your entire personality tantrum based?

The GOP as a party is simply opposed to the job of running a government. This was true before Trump mainlined outright authoritarianism and it remains true of the "Thoughtful Conservatives" like Susan Fucking Collins.

(By the way, thanks a fucking lot, Maine.)

A Deal Is In The Works

 Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have agreed, apparently, on a reconciliation bill that will make huge inroads on climate and raise taxes. I think it also allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices. 

Because of the cheaper energy, tax increases and lowered drug prices, this can plausibly be considered anti-inflationary and that is the way Manchin is selling it. Frankly, every Democrat should be calling it the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, not only to puff up Manchin's ego, but because that's actually a great thing to call it!

What really tickles me is a little is a note towards the end of Lemieux's rundown: there was a separate bill to subsidize making computer chips in the US - for supply chain and national security issues, I guess. Here is the sequence of events:

-McConnell said he would hold up the bill as long as Dems tried to pass a huge reconciliation bill. 

-Manchin says he can't support the huge reconciliation bill. Progressives scream bloody murder.

-Senate passes the computer chip bill.

-Manchin suddenly supports the (slightly less) huge reconciliation bill.

There is no direct evidence that Schumer used Manchin's penchant for flakiness against McConnell, but damn if it sure doesn't look that way.

Nuke It From Orbit

 TPM has been doing a good job getting Democratic Senators to publicly commit to what they are calling Roe and Reform. Basically, will a Democratic Senator promise to repeal the filibuster to bring a version of Roe to a majority vote in the Senate. The argument - and it's solid enough - is that Democrats can run on "Give us the House and X numbers of seats in the Senate, and we will make Roe law." This crystalizes your message both to your base and that mushy middle. There are two clear holdouts in Manchinema. Angus King and Mark Warner are currently holding out, but with enough pressure, they could flip. Then there are others who haven't commented...anyway, you can look at the list,

Marshall goes on to make a more important point that I think is really solid: the filibuster empowers the authoritarian forces in American political life. By requiring a super-majority to pass any substantive legislation (aside from taxation and confirming judges), the filibuster crushes the motivation for voters to engage in politics. If you want, say, a broad criminal justice reform bill, you won't get it, because it will never come to an up or down vote.

It's possible, as Marshall notes, that we will get a federal bill legalizing same sex marriage, before the Assembly of Religious Experts gets a chance to gut it. We might also get a bill passed to make a repeat of January 6th much, much harder. What's odd is that this is so freaking rare! We rarely only pass what we can pass through reconciliation, which limits the scope of federal legislation considerably.

Why engage in with politics if Washington (namely the Senate) is so fundamentally broken?

Marshall dispenses with most of the arguments in favor of the filibuster, but there have been two institutions slowly crushed by the GOP's decades long assault on the basic idea of governing: the professional civil service and the Congress. The latter is a direct result of the GOP's neo-Calhoun position of minority nullification in the Senate. 

Congress should be central to every aspect of governing, but it isn't because it can't function. It can't function because of the Senate filibuster.

Health Care

 Yglesias takes on why US health outcomes are generally bad, despite being a wealthy country with excellent doctors. There are a couple of problems with simply looking at life expectancy, which is that it doesn't explain WHY American outcomes are lower and it seems to be pretty much two reasons.

One is clearly the unavailability of health insurance to many of the poor. This manifests mostly in people not accessing regular medical check-ups and care.

The second is basically mental health. Yglesias focuses on land use driving more people to drive further, which leads to more automobile deaths. If you die at 30 in a car accident, that really doesn't say much about our health care delivery. Same goes with being murdered or committing suicide. But it does have a major impact on overall life expectancy. Most especially, overdose death tend to effect those that are younger.

When someone in their 20s is murdered or commits suicide or overdoses, that has a measurable impact on life expectancy.

Then there is obesity. Americans are overweight and usually have high levels of bad body fat. Why? Because eating shitty foods make us feel good. When I'm bummed out, I'm much more likely to drink alcohol - itself a source of bad calories distinct from the drug effects - and eat crappy foods. Sure, "food desserts" contribute to this, but the hectic pace of American life - which helps make us richer - also prioritizes picking up "bad" food that it quick and easy.

There is little doubt to me that America is having a broad mental health crisis that precedes the Covid pandemic. What's more, mental health is almost never covered by health insurance. I have no solutions, but I would guess that improving the overall happiness of Americans would go a long way to extending their lives.

Trumpism In 2022

 Josh Marshall points out that Trumpism had now completely and probably irrevocably divorced itself from any policy agenda. The GOP had already been tilting towards a post-policy party when they failed to even publish a platform in 2020, but that process is now centralized around Trump's grievances. Quick, name a positive GOP policy that they agree on. Something that is a positive step to improve the lives of Americans. Sure, the old cut taxes and regulations agenda is around the edges there, but those actions are, by definition, negative. 

Dubya Bush ran on expanding Medicare drug coverage and immigration reform. Even Trump ran on the "big beautiful wall" and a hand-waving gesture at "national greatness." Instead, now all they stand for is the screaming id of American politics, the pulsing spleen of outrage and anger. Which works to win votes, I guess.

The GOP always seems happier as an opposition party, since they have the luxury of doing what they do best: sit on the sides and whine and complain. Trump is a perfect symbol of that decline.

Could This Pass

 Eight Senate Republicans have signed on to reform the Electoral Count Act. It was this law that (sorta but not really) formed the platform that Trump launched his coup attempt from. Basically it removes any temptation for Vice Presidents or Members of Congress to interfere with the Electoral College certification and increases penalties for intimidating election officials.

Of course, eight Republicans is not ten Republicans. Currently there is Collins, Murkowski and Romney of course. Portman is retiring so he's in. Sasse is young enough to think he can be there for the post-Trump GOP. The others are interesting. First off...Lindsay Graham?! Maybe he's feeling the heat from those impending indictments from Georgia, but that's a real WTF. Thom Tillis isn't that far gone, but still a surprise. I barely remember that Shelley Moore Capito and Todd Young exist, so...yay?

Who else can you get? 

I would think Pat Toomey is a natural. He's retiring, voted to convict and has no reason not to try and undo what Trump did to our institutions on January 6th. Bill Cassidy voted to convict Trump at the second impeachment, so he should be on board.

If you get Toomey and Cassidy on board, that gets you to 60. Could any additional Senators grow a conscience? Could Tim Scott follow Graham's lead? Could Chuck Grassley or Marco Rubio feel pressure from their challengers to move to the center?

Regardless, I think they have 60 votes. I just hope the House doesn't try and fuck it up to make a point about... something.

This Is Interesting

 I don't always agree with Erik Loomis, as sometimes I find him a bit one-note in his analysis of things. (I adore his "Erik Visits An American Grave" Series.)

However, Loomis flags a really interesting analysis of the rise of neoliberalism. Thankfully, he repudiates the idea that neoliberalism is "anything I don't like that Democrats do" and focuses more on the economic and legal theories that ascended from the 1970s through today. 

In it, he talks about how the neoliberal view prioritized a sort of hyper-individualism. I had always put some of this at the feet of the instantaneousness of the internet. If you want something, you're a click away. Want to watch a show? Stream it. The idea of waiting until 11:25 to get the baseball scores from your local news is insane today. 

We are excellent consumers but poor citizens, because we have been trained to be excellent consumers and poor citizens. This is an interesting idea about how far back this trend goes.

Legacy Laws

 The Dobbs decision did not outlaw abortion. It threw the issue of abortion back to the states. Many states have anti-abortion laws on the books, so they simply snapped back into place. Other states are feverishly working on truly draconian laws that are perhaps even more restrictive than the laws that existed before Roe.

Other laws are being highlighted now that the extraordinary misogyny of forced birth is being resurrected. Take this law in Missouri. How the hell is this a thing in 2022?

I was born after the Civil Rights Act of '64 and the Voting Rights Act of '65, but the legacy of Jim Crow still hovered around the early years of my life. What was still in place were laws in many places that forbade a woman from having her own checking account without her husband's approval. Divorce in many places was still a challenge.

In my youth, most of these measures faded away, but it's pretty clear that - having taken us back before 1973 on abortion - the Christianist Right wants to resurrect the restrictions on women that extend beyond abortion.

I want to think that the GOP support for awful laws will cost them dearly in November, but gas is expensive, so whatever, I guess we're Gilead now.

Coalitional Politics

 Good piece from Josh Marshall on how the Democratic Party is - by necessity - much less homogenous than the Republican Party, making it harder to sustain coalitional politics. We see this all the time with niche issues like student debt forgiveness. That appeals to part of the Democratic Base, but not all of it and it probably alienates middle-of-the-road voters.

And Democrats are really dependent on middle-of-the-road voters. We don't have a built in reservoir of authoritarian-leaning Christianists to depend on. 

The whole tedious "Bernie Would've Won" crowd assumes that Clinton lost because she wasn't radical enough. (In fact, she went pretty far left on cultural issues.) Very, very few Americans are consistently radical in their politics. They might rail against the "status quo" but many of them are reactionaries, wishing to drag us back to a time when we didn't have to tolerate gays, Blacks and uppity women.

Biden won, in large part, because he wasn't radical. He was the safest possible bet. Democrats need to meet this moment by presenting universalist positions that had broad support, because the Republicans are running on christofacism. 

I Was Wrong

 They are coming for Obergfell and Lawrence. While I'm not 100% sure they will get five votes to overturn marriage equality and the right to private sexual acts, I am absolutely certain they will try. Thomas and Alito voted against it the first time and will again. Roberts voted against Obergfell but wasn't on the Court for Lawrence. If I had to guess, he would be the 5th vote to preserve, but would vote to overturn it if there were already five votes against, similar to his precedent in Dobbs.

I don't think Kavanaugh would overturn Obergfell, but that's really not based on anything. For same vague reasons, I bet Gorsuch would overturn. Comey Barrett? No clue. But I think there are clearly at least three if not four votes to overturn marriage equality.

With abortion, as I mentioned yesterday, there has been egregious moving of the goalposts. Scott Lemieux adds to the literature cataloguing how they are saying basically, "Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?" We will see the same arguments made about Obergfell: "Oh, they won't really overturn marriage equality, they will just refer it back to the states." This, of course, means that theocrats in broad swaths of the country will immediately strip a right away from millions of Americans.

I thought that the Assembly of Religious Experts would not touch marriage equality as a fundamental right, because there was no money in it. The fundamental purpose of the Federalist Six is to transfer wealth upwards, or so I thought. Dobbs - and in particular Roberts' joining the majority - has convinced me that I was wrong.

These Goalposts Won't Move

 "Moderate" Republicans or people who lean Republican have tried to keep moving the goalposts on abortion. "The laws don't really say what people say they say," or words to that effect. "These bans aren't that draconian." 

In fact, they are routinely more draconian than laws that existed before Roe v Wade. Recently, the Biden Administration issued a ruling that women with life threatening conditions caused by their pregnancies should be given emergency medical care - including abortions - to address their emergent health needs.

Texas has sued to stop it.

The idea that a woman who might be hemorrhaging or suffering from an ectopic pregnancy should be denied an abortion and therefore directly imperiling the life of the woman is as clear a statement of contempt for women that I can recall a major elected official make. Basically, the Texas GOP (and every other reactionary theocratic state regime in the country) is going to hide behind meaningless arguments about the "Tenth Amendment" and such, and they can be reasonably sure that the theocrats on the Court will back them.

And women will die.

We have already seen this fandango with the 10 year old rape victim from Ohio. First, the story was a lie. Then it wasn't a lie, but she shouldn't have to leave the state. Then she did have to leave the state, but the Indiana doctor committed a crime. Then the Indiana doctor did not commit a crime, but...I dunno, Megan McCardle was Twitter's Main Character yesterday for saying that 10 year old rape victims getting pregnant was enough a statistical outlier that we shouldn't even care about it. Or something, I'll be damned if I'll read her screeds.

From now until election day, women are going to die from these draconian abortion rules and brave doctors will be arrested for performing life-saving abortions. And everything the GOP will tell you that the facts in front of you are not the facts in front of you. 

And fuck if it might not work.

UPDATE: And they are going after other rights as well.

The Senate Is Important

 Conventional wisdom is that Republicans will benefit from a wave election tied to Biden's poor approval numbers. However, we are seeing shades of 2012 play out in the Senate races. Republicans, tied to Trump, have nominated some truly egregious candidates in places like PA, AZ and GA, where Democrats nominated people who have run state-wide races. In NV and NH, reasonably popular incumbents enjoy the advantages of office, too. 

Then there is the politics of abortion, and there is no doubt that this could scramble the "fundamentals" of the race for both the House and Senate. Democrats have difficult holds in GA, AZ and NV, possibly NH and CO, though I don't buy it. If they hold those seats, then they can work to build their majority. Seats in PA and WI seem really winnable, but I wouldn't sleep on NC, OH and FL because of abortion. I would've considered those reaches but OH Republicans nominated JD Vance, who's a total shitbird and Tim Ryan has exactly the same sort of appeal that Sherrod Brown has. Chuck Grassley is a million years old and facing a strong challenger in IA. Even MO could be in play, because the GOP nominated an absolute sewer of a human being in Eric Greitens.

Democrats need to expand their majority by about 3-4 seats for three reasons. The first is get rid of the filibuster. If Democrats lose the House, then this could be irrelevant for the short term, but getting rid of the filibuster is a critical long term need for democratic rule in Congress.

Secondly, in 2024, Democrats will have to defend WV, OH and MT. Those states are trending away from Democrats at warp speed. Winning those would require a second round of Trumpist nominees and a Democratic wave, perhaps engendered by Trump's run for the presidency. There aren't many opportunities to pick up Senate seats in 2024, outside of Texas and Florida and those two states exist primarily to break Democrats' hearts.

Finally, a Democratic Senate majority allows for Biden to appoint judges at his convenience. The long task of undoing the Federalist Society's radical alteration of the nation's courts can't be done in two years. 

Relying on the GOP to nominate horrible people isn't the worst bet in the world, but it's not a sustainable strategy in the long run. Winning 6 year Senate terms when we can is essential.

Counterfactual History

 Yglesias takes on a few counterfactuals in his latest "mailbag." It demonstrates some of his weaknesses as a thinker.

My understanding is the Yglesias was a philosophy major, not a history major, and it shows. His idea that changing a single event could dramatically reshape history seems flawed. He cites For All Mankind as an example. Now, I too enjoy the show. It's fun. But it's shit history. It's a fun parlor game to imagine that a single pivot point could reshape everything, but the name of his damned blog is Slow Boring. That's a reference to Max Weber's quote about politics being the slow boring of hard boards. Change happens slowly for multiple reasons. 

For instance, the coming of the Civil War was broadly about the expansion of slavery into western territories, but it also touched on the radicalization of the South and then the North over the Fugitive Slave Act and Dred Scott. It was also caused by specific acts of violence like the Caning of Sumner that heralded a broad breakdown in political life. And it was also the many other things that the Republican Party stood for in 1860: homesteads, a transcontinental railroad with a terminus in the North, higher tariffs and a central bank. So, if you were to say, "What if Lincoln weren't elected in 1860?" you are proposing that only Lincoln's election caused the Civil War.  That's nonsense.

This fascination with "one weird trick" comes up when Yglesias talks about policy. He assumes that policy - especially the policies he likes - will unlock some sort of easy majority for center-left politics. People, in fact, vote for a myriad of different reasons. If they are strictly policy voters, they've largely made up their minds years ago. The policies of the two parties are pretty different. He points to Trump not pushing the Paul Ryan fiscal austerity model as somehow unlocking a bunch of voters who were convinced that Trump wouldn't cut Social Security benefits. This accounts for him winning 2,000,000 more votes than Romney.

Or maybe people just liked the celebrity "billionaire." Or didn't like Clinton, which was true, although Clinton won roughly the same number of votes as Obama in 2012.

My point is that world events are multicausal and ignoring that is a massive problem in your cognition of the world.

Horrible People

 The horrifying story that came out of Ohio/Indiana about a 10 year old girl who was raped and had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to terminate the pregnancy is the tip of a very ugly iceberg.

First, obviously, is the fact that a 10 year old girl was raped, allegedly by a 27 year old man. This should be the singular horror around which everything starts and end. However, conservative figures, including the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page, immediately cast doubt on the story, some calling it an outright fabrication. For them it was "too convenient" that immediately after Dobbs triggered Ohio's antiabortion law, the "perfect" example of keeping abortion legal - a child raped and impregnated - should happen to pop up.

Think about the cynicism. Think about the callous disregard for the victim - and doubtless the other victims that will come. For these cynical political operators and media figures, the "truth" is whatever you can get away with. "The election was stolen." "Tax cuts trickle down." "Dobbs won't really impact women." If that is your mindset then any story that contradicts your position is just another "whatever the Left can try and get away with." Every accusation is a confession, and what this story exemplifies is the cynical way that conservative figures make shit up to advance their goals.

What's more, conservatives have been trying to cast the Democratic Party as the party of pedophiles and "groomers" because Democrats tend to favor the right of gay people to exist as gay people. Yet her is a horrific example of actual child rape, but because it led to a very necessary abortion, they attacked the credibility of the story.

Incredibly there have been voices that have wondered if maybe she consented, as if a 10 year old could consent. By definition, her pregnancy was created by rape. The problem is that Republicans have crafted laws that require children to carry their rapist's child to term at great risk to their health. It's barbarism that even the Taliban would blanche at. So much of the handwaving that "respectable" members of the GOP have tried to advance about abortion access post-Dobbs is that events like this were outliers and weren't worth carving exceptions out from the extreme "pro-life" position.

It's only a matter of time before they shift their focus to the immigration status of the rapist. Some reptile at Fox or OANN will find out the child's name and create smears to suggest that she was somehow sexualized and adult. You can count on that, because these are horrible, horrible people.

As I've written several times here, one of the curses of being a bog standard liberal is that you carry the curse of Cassandra. Cassandra was cursed to be able to see the future, but no one would believe her. For decades, Democrats and liberals have warned and warned. "Invading Iraq is a terrible idea." "Climate change will create more extreme weather events." "The Supreme Court is on the ballot in 2016." 

"Women will be killed by Dobbs."

The screaming disregard for this outcome is going to come to our attention again and again. Women are going to die in states with terrible, regressive bans stripping women and their doctors of the autonomy to make medical decisions. 

When those stories start to come out - and they will start any tragic day now - you can expect conservative politicians and the Right Wing Media Wurlitzer to deflect and cast aspersions on every story, every victim.

These are horrible people.

I Think The DOJ Will Charge Trump

 Yesterday's testimony is basically part of a Grand Jury strategy pursued by the January 6th Commission. They are setting out several benchmarks.

First, it was not spontaneous. This was planned in December, in conjunction with groups like the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers and the 3%.

Second, Trump was not duped by the "Crazies." This was his plan. 

Third, the plan, hatching by Trump and those closest to him, was to overthrow the election that he knew he had lost.

Ideally, Trump goes to jail. Even more ideally, Trump has a narcissistic breakdown and splinters with the GOP, creating his own party - something he has threatened to do - and drags the Right out of power for the next two elections.

Hopefully, there will be indictments soon for Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell and Roger Stone. Stone has been at the center of electoral corruption for 50 years. His scalp would look good on the DOJ's wall, as they have already convicted him once (Trump commuted his sentence, because of course he did). Taking down "the Kraken" team would be a nice step towards legal accountability and it would tighten the noose on Trump.

As it is, the January 6th Committee appears to have a LOT of information, including encrypted communications. This could be devastating for Trump's defense.

I said months ago that the proper time to indict Trump was right after the midterms. Don't give his crazy cultists and excuse to flood the polls. Instead, indict everyone up to Trump, then indict him. 

However, Trump is clearly pursuing witness intimidation. They might not be able to wait.