June 26, 2021

Friday Talking Points -- The Art Of The Deal

Call it true irony. The man who had a book ghost-written for him called "The Art Of The Deal" could never actually manage to strike any kind of deal. So the man who replaced him ran on his own dealmaking skills, in a time where pretty much everyone in Washington considered the idea too old-fashioned to ever work. But President Joe Biden just got his first big deal, this week. A bipartisan infrastructure plan is now going to move forward in the United States Senate and has what can only be called a better-than-average chance of passing.

Biden doesn't just value bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake, of course. He truly does believe in the concept and really would prefer Congress return to the days of yore when bipartisanship was actually pretty common (always hard-fought, but mostly achieved). But at the same time, Biden is a politician and knows full well what this will mean for him, personally.

Now, Biden is savvy enough not to say this until after he signs the bill, because he knows how fragile the applecart is right now, and how there are many things which could still upset it before it does arrive on his desk. But immediately after he does sign it, he will quite likely say something along the lines of: "Cynical people thought it wasn't even possible to bring the politicians from both sides of the aisle together to get something done. I never believed that. I think America works best when we work together, and I have always believed that. I promised bipartisanship during my campaign, and many in my own party scoffed at the idea. But here we are, with the proof that -- with leadership and support -- it is still possible."

Biden's polite enough not to put it this way, but others will: "Biden singlehandedly brought bipartisanship back to Washington." Moving forward, this is going to be seen as one of his crowning achievements. If he decides to run for a second term, this will be a central theme of his campaign: "They said it was impossible, but I got it done." And it won't be that much of an overstatement, either.

Of course, as we said, nothing is guaranteed at this point. Republicans still have to actually vote for it in the Senate for it to become reality. And already some of them seem to already be formulating an excuse for why they can't. Their excuse is absolute tommyrot, because what they are now saying is: "We won't vote for this if President Biden is going to pass any other bill for the rest of his term with just Democrats." The bill they are so worried about is the companion bill to the infrastructure package, containing all the things that -- according to Republicans, mind you -- are not infrastructure. Before, they threatened to vote no because they only wanted to vote on infrastructure items, and now they are threatening to vote no because Democrats might pass some non-infrastructure items in another bill. Which is just laughable, since these very same Republicans have never had a problem passing anything they wished on purely partisan lines in the past.

It's also ludicrous because they are acting so shocked -- shocked! -- that Democrats are going to do exactly what they've been saying they're going to do all along. The second bill was no secret. It was not some closely-held strategy within the Democratic caucus. They admitted the whole plan to anyone who would ask, sometimes even unprompted. So all the GOP handkerchief-clutching now is just absurd.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is collectively losing their minds. Pretty much ever since I've been alive, the Republicans have painted themselves as having two absolute, bedrock core virtues: they were the "law and order" party, and they supported the U.S. military no matter what. The first was an attempt to pin every crime ever committed anywhere on the Democratic Party, and the second goes back decades, to (at a minimum) the Vietnam War. Republicans were for cops and our fighting men in uniform (back then, this would now read: "our fighting men and women," of course). Without reserve. Unquestioningly.

Boy, those were the days, eh?

This week, a member of the Republican Party in the House who is under investigation by federal authorities for child sex trafficking tweeted out: "If Democrats want to defund the police, they should start with the FBI." Donald Trump routinely excoriated the F.B.I. and any other federal law enforcement for daring to investigate him, his family, his henchmen, or really any Republican anywhere for any reason.

Earlier, many Republicans showed their open contempt for the Capitol Police -- the people who defended Congress with their lives during the insurrection, mind you. But many Republicans refused to honor them with medals for doing so, and one wouldn't even shake an officer's hand in an elevator. So it's not just the F.B.I. -- Republicans don't seem to support any federal law enforcement, these days. And now the GOP seems like it is on the brink of turning on the military, too.

That same congressman (we refuse to say his name this week, because we are just not in the mood for giving him any publicity whatsoever) grilled the highest-ranking Pentagon officers about the supposed sins of allowing the military to become "woke" and being infiltrated by "critical race theorists" (a term that has never before existed, before very recently). This is all part of their newfound Critical Race Theory Derangement Syndrome (but more on that in a moment).

General Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the absolute highest-ranked military officer serving, responded, and what he said is worth watching (it's only a minute and a half long) or at least reading:

It's rare to see Republican anti-education idiocy be put down so brutally, which is why it's such a refreshing video to watch. He wasn't the only one, either, as General Lloyd Austin also expressed how offended he was by what the Republican congressman was trying to insinuate. So what was the conservative reaction to all this? Let's check in over on Fox News. Here is Laura Ingraham, to begin with:



Meaning Republicans are actually flirting with defunding the military after making lots of political hay over Democrats who supported the idea of defunding the police. There weren't a whole lot of Democrats who actually did endorse that idea fully, which means it is equally as fair now for Democrats now to paint all conservatives with the same brush that Ingraham just used. But she wasn't the only one:



Got that? A stupid pig. The highest-ranking military officer in existence. Salon had the pithiest comment on how far down the rabbit hole conservatives have now gone:



That's an excellent way to put it. Remember when it was liberals who called law enforcement officers and members of the military "pigs"? Yeah, that coin has now completely flipped. As, seemingly, have at least a few fringe members of the Republican Party -- they've just completely flipped out, in fact.

That's where we now are, folks. Welcome to Bizarro World!

We end with one amusing footnote from last weekend, which involved a Republican venturing out into the real world (instead of GOP Bizarro World) and getting told in no uncertain terms what people thought of him.

Senator Ron Johnson -- a man who singlehandedly stopped Juneteenth from becoming a holiday last year, mind you -- finally realized the unpopularity of his stance (or perhaps just the fact that nobody stood with him, even in his own party) this year and the holiday was added to the federal schedule. Just in time for Juneteenth to actually be celebrated!

Senator Johnson decided it'd be a lark to go down to the very first "official federal holiday" celebration in his home state, in the hopes that nobody would notice his political pandering. Unfortunately for him, people did:



Talk about clueless. Seriously, what did he think was going to happen?





We have two Honorable Mention awards to hand out before we get to the main one.

The first goes to a big upset candidate in a local mayor's race:



That's pretty impressive, we have to admit. Our second Honorable Mention goes to President Joe Biden, for pulling off the seemingly impossible by getting Republican senators to agree to a deal, without giving in on his dealbreaker insistence that no taxes be raised on families making less than $400,000 a year (which, astonishingly, Republicans were proposing to do). We would have considered Biden for the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award but for one important point: it's not a done deal quite yet. When he signs it, we'll give him full credit, but not before.

Instead, our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who came up with a very elegant and brilliant solution for what could have been an intractable problem.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that progressive Democrats simply do not trust Joe Manchin to vote for the second bill. All along, Biden knew he'd have to pass his economic agenda in two parts -- one he might be able to get Republican votes on and one that raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans that would never get any GOP support. The first one is now being drafted, but there's no guarantee Manchin isn't going to suddenly decide, after the first one passes, that he somehow can't vote for the second one. So progressive Democrats were in a bind, and wanted some sort of iron-clad promise out of him (and all the other moderate Democrats).

Pelosi, however, just solved the whole problem in one fell swoop.



In other words, Pelosi's going to "pull a McConnell" -- and just sit on the bipartisan bill the Senate sends over until there is a companion bill to it, completing Biden's entire economic agenda. If no second bill appears, then the bipartisan bill will just gather dust. This is hardball, but more importantly, it makes everything a very simple equation. Progressive senators no longer have to worry, because unless the reconciliation bill does pass, nothing is going to get to Biden's desk.

Pelosi had a good week all around, in fact. Earlier she made news by announcing that the House will form a select committee to investigate the 1/6 insurrection attempt, now that Republicans have decided they don't want a bipartisan commission to do so. This is a necessary step, in other words, and Pelosi just got that ball rolling. And now that Democrats are in complete control of the process, they won't have to put up with any stalling or obstructionism from Republicans, either.

For both announcing this select committee and for coming up with an elegant solution to a thorny political problem over in the Senate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on her official contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





Our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award is going to a different candidate for a different New York mayor's race. The Democratic primary election for mayor of New York City was held this week, but the final results won't be known for a while (due to the newly-instituted ranked choice voting system). But while we don't know who won, at this, point, we do know at least one candidate who lost -- Andrew Yang.

Yang placed fourth (out of over a dozen names on the ballot), and, being a math guy, quickly realized he had no chance of winning:



This was an extremely disappointing finish for his supporters, and a somewhat-surprising result for those who had been watching the race. Yang dominated the polling early on, but this was likely just due to name recognition (which, for Yang, was pretty high after his failed presidential bid). But he spent a whopping $8 million on a race that he couldn't even manage to crack the top three.

Of course, this is just the primary election, but in New York City the general election is going to be a formality, as the Democratic candidate will crush whatever hapless Republican is on the ballot.

For Yang's dismal performance at the polls after attracting so many supporters to his cause, he has to be seen as this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

[Andrew Yang is now a private citizen once again, and it is our blanket policy not to provide contact information for such persons, so you'll have to search it out yourselves.]




Volume 624 (6/25/21)

We have to begin this week with a few odds and ends. The first is to give early warning to everyone that this column will be taking a summer break in two weeks, on July 9th. We'll put a re-run column up but will not be writing a new Friday Talking Points, so consider yourselves duly warned.

The second is a bit of sad news, as we send our condolences to America's First Family on the loss of the elder of their two dogs. Sadly, First Dog Champ Biden passed away earlier in the week, and it has always been our policy to support First Pets without regard to political party. Animals simply aren't political (although politicians sure can be animals, at times).

Requiescat In Pace

You will be missed.

And finally, we have to at least smirk at one of the Supreme Court decisions this week. Well, we do actually support the ruling (which was an astonishing 8-1), as it upholds First Amendment protections for high school students -- a cause we have strongly believed in since we ourselves were in high school, lo these many years ago.

It's just the way this one will be remember that is amusing (and also sort of takes us back to our teenage sense of humor). The previous case in this realm will forever be known as the "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" ruling, but this case involved a girl who was denied a spot on the cheerleading squad and responded (off school property, on social media): "Fuck school, fuck softball, fuck cheer, fuck everything." She was then punished for her free speech, which the Supreme Court just affirmed is simply not constitutional in any way. Perhaps this one will be shortened to the "Fuck cheer" Supreme Court case? One does wonder (heh).



Biden got it done

There was truly only one reason why Joe Biden spent so much time on his bipartisan deal, seeing as how everything that got cut is quite likely to pass in another bill (with just Democrats voting for it) anyway. So what was the real point? Biden being able to check this box from his list of campaign promises, that's what. So beat this drum right along with him, he deserves it.

"Joe Biden campaigned on a promise many thought was unrealistic in today's Congress -- to achieve major change with bipartisan support. And now he has gotten it done. He did what both Donald Trump and Barack Obama never really achieved. Because of his determination to bring a new spirit of cooperation and comity back to his beloved Senate, a very historic investment in the infrastructure of our country is now looking eminently possible with significant Republican support. Joe made a promise, and he is delivering on that promise. Biden got it done."



Defund the Pentagon?

This one is just too, too easy.

"Voices on the right are now demanding that Republicans defund the Pentagon. They didn't get the answer they expected to their ridiculous claims, and so in a snit some conservatives have decided to threaten the Pentagon to change its ways by just cancelling their budget. Laura Ingraham explicitly begged Congress to tell the Pentagon: 'Nothing. This is my offer to you: nothing.' Tucker Carlson called the highest-ranking military officer in America both a 'pig' and 'stupid' this week, as well. Such disrespect is jaw-dropping, and one can only wonder what right-wing media would say if any Democrat ever said anything remotely like that. Well, it's a good thing Democrats are in control, since defunding the Pentagon is such an insane concept. Boy, I remember back when Republicans used to beat up on Democrats in politics for being anti-military and calling people 'pigs.' How times have changed, eh?"



C.R.T.D.S.

Republicans now have a second thing they're going to run on. No, really....

"The Republican Party now stands for, by my count, two things. They used to also be against all taxes, but they tried to fund their infrastructure bill with a gas tax hike that would have hit drivers across the country, so that one's no longer really operative anymore. The entire 2021 GOP campaign platform seems to now be, one, make it as hard as possible for as many Democrats as possible to vote; and, two, terrify White parents that their kids' schools are teaching them to hate all White people. Of course, if you asked most Republican politicians what the 'critical race theory' they are demonizing actually is, they cannot answer because they haven't bothered to find out. They have what I call C.R.T.D.S. -- Critical Race Theory Derangement Syndrome. And they're going to use it to try to whip up White fear from now until Election Day. Republicans' entire answer to what America should do to solve today's problems is to make it hard to vote and to terrify suburban White parents into coming back to the GOP fold over baseless fears. That's really all they've got left to offer, folks."



Power should rest where Republicans can still win elections, period

More GOP hypocrisy to point out.

"Republicans used to have this grand article of faith -- that government was always a bad thing, but the closer you got to having local control of it, the better. The local school board, for instance, was more virtuous than the U.S. Congress or the state legislature. But now they're passing laws reversing what used to be a tenet of their political religion. Many red states are now passing laws limiting the power of counties and cities to pass local ordinances. They're restricting mayors on voting procedures, pandemic response laws, and even local laws concerning drilling or fracking. The problem, from the Republican point of view, is that more and more cities are solid Democratic districts, which allowed them to pass very sane laws -- mandating mask use during a worldwide medical emergency, for instance. So now Republicans aren't for local control anymore. They're for giving all the government power to whatever parts of government they alone still control. I mean, it's just so blatantly about power -- makes you wonder whether any of that high-minded preaching about the wonderfulness of local control was ever sincere, doesn't it?"



Superspreader!

Look! [cough, cough] Out on the links! [cough! cough! cough!] It's a giant rabid flamingo... it's an orange dirigible... no... it's Superspreader!

"The Secret Service is a much healthier place to work now that Donald Trump is gone. Trump disdained all measures to combat COVID-19, and then when he caught it himself and had to go to the hospital, he forced Secret Service agents to ride with him in a hermetically-sealed car just so he could wave to a very small crowd of people. The callous indifference was plain to see -- Trump could care less who else he infected, even the men and women who have dedicated their lives to presidential security. While Trump was in office, almost 900 Secret Service agents tested positive for COVID. So, since Trump loves superlatives applied to himself, we now have a new one to add: Donald Trump, Superspreader!"



Some sane Republicans still left

This is certainly worth celebrating, right?

"Yet again, a group of Republicans at the state level have bravely stood up for the truth. A Michigan state senate committee just released a report on all the conspiracy theories swirling around the 2020 election, and in excruciating detail the report dismantles every single one of them. Overall, it concludes: 'This committee found no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud in Michigan's prosecution of the 2020 election.' They went even further, and publicly rebuked those who are making quite a bit of money fanning the flames of one particular baseless conspiracy theory about one particular county, suggesting an open investigation into: 'those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends.' So not only did the three Republicans and one Democrat on the committee debunk all the insane Trumpian Big Lie theories, but they also took to task those grifters fleecing people on the right and turning the whole conspiracy theory idea into a growing industry. Good for them! We need more Republicans like this, and we are thankful for the ones who bravely insist that they still live in the real world."



Maybe he'll give another presser at Four Seasons Total Landscaping?

Granted, the wheels of the justice system turn slow, but finally some people are starting to actually pay a price for what they did to support Donald Trump's Big Lie. And one of the first such consequences contained the most delicious schadenfreude imaginable. Rudy Giuliani just got his law license yanked. Well, technically just suspended at this point, until a final decision is reached, but the language of the decision is definitely worth quoting (which is why we saved it for last).






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

June 19, 2021

Friday Talking Points -- America Is Back

President Joe Biden had a pretty good week all around. He began the week in Europe, where he met with the leaders of NATO, the European Union, the G7, a few royals (just to mix things up), and Vladimir Putin. That's a pretty packed schedule, but Biden seemed to manage just fine. The Europeans were both visibly thrilled and massively relieved to be visited by a United States president who was, once again, a sane adult (and not a petulant little child-man). They heaped praise upon Biden -- mostly just for being "President Not-Trump." You may laugh, but please recall President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize solely for being "President Not-Dubya," years earlier. But more seriously, Europe announced some deals with Biden (including, notably, a truce being called on the subsidy war over Boeing and Airbus airplanes). Not only were personal relationships either reaffirmed or begun, tangible diplomatic progress was made. Europe stood as one with the United States over the contentious issues of Russia and China, which only strengthened Biden's position for his meeting with Putin. The Putin summit didn't produce a whole lot in the way of tangible deliverables, but then again it didn't produce an American president willing to believe Russia's ex-K.G.B. leader over his own intelligence services either, so it has to be chalked up as a major improvement. Throughout it all, Biden stuck to one very simple slogan that summed up what his trip was supposed to be showcasing to the world: "America is back."

Republicans (being Republicans) badmouthed Biden for all they were worth, back home. So much for that whole "politics ends at the water's edge" tradition, but truth be told that has been fading for the past few decades anyway, so this wasn't a total surprise. In fact (and astonishingly enough) the only Republican quote we heard this week that was exactly what an opposition party leader should say about a president abroad came from none other than Donald Trump. He actually said, of Biden: "I think the election was unbelievably unfair, but I want this guy to go out and do well for our country." Again, this used to be a fairly normal sort of comment ("If the president succeeds, then America succeeds, so of course I hope he does well" ) for these sorts of situations, but it was actually pretty extraordinary because, as mentioned: (1) it was the only one like it we heard, and (2) it came from Donald Trump, of all people.

In fact, there was an even-more-astonishing quote from Trump, in the same phone-in interview with Sean Hannity: "We got them by surprise in '16, and in '20 we did much better than we did in '16. Shockingly, we were supposed to win easily at 64 million votes and we got 75 million votes. We didn't win, but let's see what happens on that. The whole thing was shocking." Did you catch that? "We didn't win." That is the first time since the election that Trump has actually admitted that Joe Biden won the election, and he lost. It only took him seven-and-a-half months, but many (us included) expected Trump never to actually admit it in such plain language -- so it was a welcome surprise as well.

As for Biden's "America is back" tour, Republicans have been having a hard time complaining about such obvious success. They half-heartedly tried to claim Biden was somehow saying "We're taking America backwards, not forwards," but they quickly dropped this tactic when it gained zero traction. There was the usual vitriol over Biden gaffes (real and imagined), and lots of downright bizarre championing of Vladimir Putin's opinions, but they really didn't have much to work with -- and it showed. Other than Trump, the GOP has now sunk to the level where they will actually side with the leader of Russia over an American president (if you walk by Ronald Reagan's grave and listen closely, you will hear some very rapid spinning sounds). They also tried to somehow say that the summit happening at all was a gigantic mistake by Biden ("don't reward Putin!" ), which completely ignores the fact that they cheered Trump's Putin summits on wholeheartedly. They also, laughably, tried to suggest Biden should somehow have "gotten tougher" on Putin, again hoping everyone would just conveniently forget all those times when Trump absolutely fawned over Putin, without getting a thing in return.

Back home, Republican messaging idiocy has been on full display over the lightning-fast passage of a bill to make Juneteenth (6/19) a federal holiday. The right-wing media is trying to somehow morph this into "they're cancelling Independence Day!" but not with any noticeable success. But much more on Republican idiocy later in the program.

Biden's old boss got a big win this week, when the Supreme Court threw out the latest nonsense court case trying to declare Obamacare unconstitutional. The vote, astonishingly, was 7-2, and this makes the record for such cases at this level now 0-3. We're hoping (to mix a few metaphors) that this doesn't represent the "third strike" against rabid GOP Obamacare opposition, but in fact that it has now "gone down for the third time" and will peacefully sink beneath the political waves, never to bother us all again. One can hope, at any rate.

Let's see, what else? More and more abuses of power by Trump and his henchmen are coming to light, as Democrats continue to investigate. This week, it was memos from the Justice Department showing some of the political pressure that was applied to the department between the election and the inauguration. No real surprise, just confirmation of what everyone already assumed, really.

Infrastructure efforts keep chugging along. There's a new bipartisan group with an oh-so-slightly-higher offer (higher than the last Republican offer) on the table, but so far Biden hasn't indicated what he really thinks of it. The White House did warn that they'd only continue trying the bipartisan route for another week or so, and that the reconciliation train is now boarding at the station. So things could develop next week on this front.

Mitch McConnell just keeps proving (and ourtight admitting) over and over again that he wouldn't join a bipartisan effort if his life depended on it, which really should help Democrats to convince Joe Manchin that it's time to do something about the filibuster (more on Manchin in a moment).

And we close with some COVID news. It looks like Biden's goal of "70 percent of American adults getting at least their first vaccine shot" by the Fourth of July is going to fall somewhat short (but not by a whole lot, no matter what the actual number winds up being, it'll be in the high 60s, which is pretty close). And the Washington Post did a data dive that produced a story which can be filed under "Duh" -- COVID infection rates are dropping in the parts of America where more of the public has been vaccinated, while the rates are rising in the areas with fewer vaccinated. What few in the mainstream media have pointed out is just going to become more and more obvious as time goes by: vaccination is a political issue, and the stubborn refusal of many Republicans to get vaccinated is going to directly cause more deaths in red states in the very near future. Or, to put it another way: yes, the Republican Party has indeed become a death cult, folks.





We have a few minor awards to hand out before the big one this week.

First up for an Honorable Mention are the Texas Democrats who all came to Washington this week to lobby Congress. These are the brave folks who denied the Texas Republicans a quorum to pass severe voting restrictions in their state. The governor is going to call them all back for a special session, though, so this will probably just postpone the inevitable.

Which was their message: Pass the For The People Act in Congress, to preclude such voter-suppression efforts at the state level. They deserve continued applause not just for their stunt, but for using the national political leverage they gained by it in the best possible way.

Also from Texas, House member Lloyd Doggett also deserves an Honorable Mention for his new idea on how to improve Obamacare. Since there are several diehard Republican states that still refuse to expand Medicaid, Doggett's bill would make it possible for individual cities and counties to independently buy in to the Medicaid expansion. This would avoid waiting for their state to do it, and is an absolutely brilliant solution to a seemingly-intractable problem. It could wind up getting millions more people heath insurance, which is a worthy goal indeed.

And we've got to be fair and also hand an Honorable Mention to Senator Joe Manchin for releasing a very detailed list of exactly what he can and cannot support in the effort to pass voting rights legislation. Manchin laid out his priorities for both the For The People Act and the upcoming John Lewis Civil Rights Act, and while his priorities list is a lot shorter than what's in the bill (and even includes some rather Republican ideas), the mere fact that he's being so detailed about what he wants is impressive enough, at this point. Up until now, his only public stance had been that any such bill had to be at least a little bipartisan, and that was it (we did write about this in more detail yesterday, if anyone's interested).

Stacy Abrams also deserves an Honorable Mention for almost immediately throwing her considerable support behind Manchin's new memo.

But we have to admit, there was indeed a clear winner of the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week, and it was President Joe Biden.

Biden's Europe trip did indeed show the world that "America is back." He accomplished that goal, hands down. Foreign policy has returned to normal (meaning "sane" ). The world breathed a gigantic sigh of relief. Praise was heaped upon Biden by his peers from the biggest of our allies. Biden met with Putin, and conducted himself well. All around, America was indeed back.

There's one more thing to add that kind of got lost in the fray this week, too. The Biden administration unveiled a policy that is approximately 20 or 25 years overdue. Ever since the Oklahoma City bombing, in fact.

Since that point, there has been an ongoing refusal to allow federal law enforcement to take seriously the threat of right-wing political violence in this country. Report after report showed that right-wing domestic terrorists were the biggest internal threat this country faced, and yet there was a political refusal to really do much of anything about it.

As Joe Biden tells the story, he decided to enter the race to beat Trump when he saw the response to the deadly Charlottesville white supremacist rally. That one event was the deciding factor for Biden -- that's why he ran. So this may not have been his biggest campaign promise, but it certainly was his most personal. And now he has followed through and the federal government can finally treat the threat with the seriousness (and resources) it has been demanding all along.

So for achievements both foreign and domestic this week, President Joe Biden is the clear choice for Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

[Congratulate President Joe Biden on the White House official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





We're going to have to punt on this one. We have one incident which was disappointing, but it somehow didn't seem to qualify for the main MDDOTW award.

So instead we'll give Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer a (Dis-)Honorable Mention for slipping up and using a very outdated term this week. In an interview, Schumer said the following:

This used to actually be the accepted and standard term, and Chuck is old enough to have learned it when it was contemporary. But it has been seen as a slur and has been removed from polite (and political) conversation for at least the past few decades. So Schumer really should have known better.

To his credit, he immediately apologized, saying he was "sincerely sorry for his use of the outdated and hurtful language."

Which is, in part, why we decided it only really merited a (Dis-)Honorable Mention instead of the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.

And as always, if anyone's got any suggestion for a nominee that we overlooked this week, please let us know about it in the comments.




Volume 623 (6/18/21)

As we are sometimes wont to do, we decided it was a good week for a rant. This is a subject we've long been annoyed about, but the lack of proper Democratic outrage for everything that is happening today is not just regrettable, it is fast becoming political malpractice.

We are in a very fragile and momentous period. It is getting more fragile by the day, as Republicans continue to attack and undermine pretty much every institutional norm in all of government. They have been exposed for being morally and ideologically bankrupt, and caring solely about getting and retaining power. That's it. That's really all the party stands for, anymore.

So where are the Democrats who are pointing this out, on a regular basis?



Where are our attack dogs?

Where are the Democratic attack dogs? Where are the people on our side who can get booked on nationally-televised political shows and show some fierce indignation and scorn for the Republican Party? Oh, sure, there's the Squad, but too many of their fellow Democrats are so frightened by the Republicans demonizing the Squad for them to be completely effective.

Granted, in general Democrats don't go in for the emotional side of politics nearly as much as Republicans do -- and that was true long before the rise of Trump and Trumpism. Democrats are more prone to rational debate and trying to build their case to the public with fact-based reasoning. But, really, who has time for that anymore? Who would watch that? When does a clip of any of that make the news and get seen by tens of millions?

Where is our version of a Ted Cruz? Or Lindsey Graham? Or even the governors of Florida or Texas? Where is the Democratic outrage towards the increasing insanity within the Republican Party? It's like the house is burning down and the Democrats are convening a hearing on the back lawn to soberly discuss the relative merits of different types of fire extinguisher, while the flames leap higher.

In fact, pointing out how insanely dangerous the Republican Party has gotten these days has really become pathetically easy, which is why I am so astonished that Democrats don't explicitly make that case, every time they get the chance.

Let's start at the top of the party, but because we'd be here all day discussing Donald Trump's craziness in full, we'll just limit ourselves to the past week. A respected New York Times journalist reported that, while watching President Biden meeting with Vladimir Putin, it finally sunk in for both Trump and those around him that: "Oh, someone else is president and not Donald Trump." Think about that for a moment. The election was almost eight months ago. Biden was sworn in to office in January. And Trump and his team are just now fully realizing that Biden is actually president. This is insanity, plain and simple.

But maybe you'll say: "Oh, well, that's just Trump." But it's not. Congress passed a bill this week to give every single Capitol Hill and other police office a Congressional Gold Medal for bravely defending the United States Capitol from insurgents hell-bent on a coup attempt. An astounding twenty-one Republicans in the House actually voted against the measure. So much for all that "defend the police" and "blue lives matter" talk, eh? In fact, Representative Andrew Clyde wouldn't even shake the hand of Officer Michael Fanone in an elevator this week. This story is just shameful -- or it should be, at least:



In a separate interview, Fanone used even more pointed language:



That is today's Republican Party, folks. What other Republican has denounced such disrespect? None that I am aware of. This is par for the course in the Republican Party today. This, mind you, from a Republican who was reportedly "screaming like a banshee" in the House while the mob attacked the doors to their chamber. Now just for one minute imagine how much loud and indignant political hay Republicans would make over such an incident if a Democrat had dared such a snub. It would last for months! And yet, I'm willing to bet many of you haven't even heard this story yet. That is the measure of the utter failure of Democrats to show the right and proper amount of indignation.

And remember -- he was just one of almost two dozen House Democrats to vote against honoring the cops who defended Congress with their lives. Where's the outrage for all of them?

Not only are House Republicans shamefully voting against cops, they're also shamefully voting against honoring the liberation of the last slaves in America. The Juneteenth holiday bill was unanimously passed by the Senate, but 14 Republicans in the House voted against it. At least, with that one, it makes a little more sense, sad to say.

Astoundingly, some right-wingers came out in ideological opposition to the new Juneteenth holiday because, according to them, it will create a second Independence Day, and "cancel" July Fourth, somehow. Again, where is the sustained and vocal outrage from Democrats?

Republicans just seem to be getting more and more unhinged these days. The divorce from reality is almost complete, folks. People like Jim Jordan are just unbelievably out of touch, and they show it on a regular basis. In a hearing which touched on the new revelations of abuses of power by Trump and all his minions, much of the discussion centered on the recent news that the Department of Justice had been ordered by Trump's chief of staff to investigate whether -- and you cannot make this stuff up, folks -- Italians had somehow hacked the 2020 election from satellites. This wasn't the only attempt to get the Justice Department to buy into crazy post-election conspiracy theories, either. Thankfully, the acting attorney general ("acting" because the previous one had quit suddenly, likely to avoid being caught up in this idiocy) refused all such pressure to turn the Justice Department into a personal attack dog for Donald Trump. Jordan was outraged (as he usually is), but not because of the blatant abuse of power, but because the Justice Department refused a presidential order. No, really -- here's how he put it: "That is a problem. When the chief of staff to the president of the United States asks someone in the executive branch to do something, and they basically give him the finger, I think that's the problem we should be looking into." Such an insane viewpoint "gives the finger" to the entire concept of the Justice Department being independent of political pressure, you'll note. Again, think of how Republicans would react if a Democrat had expressed such an outrageous opinion.

Sadly, he's not even the stupidest or craziest Republican around. Now we've got even-worse lunatics running for high office. In New Hampshire, a guy who didn't just storm the Capitol on January 6, but actually posted a video of himself chugging a bottle of wine he had just stolen, isn't even aware who he is running to replace. Here's the exchange between Jason Riddle and an NBC reporter, about him entering the race to replace Representative Ann Kuster:



Clueless! And he's not even the craziest! Down in Florida... no surprise, right?... a candidate running for the House of Representatives was recorded threatening one of his opponents, Anna Paulina Luna, with a foreign hit squad. Here are just a few excerpts of what William Braddock had to say to a Luna supporter he was trying to win over:



He even offered up more specifics about the hit squads:



Braddock now has restraining orders against him, but for some reason has not been arrested yet. And he was bragging about assassinating a fellow Republican.

Have you even heard about this? Has any Democrat expressed the opinion that the entire Republican Party is quickly advancing down a road where political violence -- an incredibly dangerous concept -- is actually no big deal? I certainly haven't heard any Republicans condemning this, have you?

You think this is overstating things? I don't. Marjorie Taylor Greene apparently went too far when she compared having to wear a mask to fight a global pandemic to the Holocaust, so she was forced by her party to go to the Holocaust Museum, where she gave a half-hearted apology (of sorts). But she has not retracted nor apologized for calling the Democratic Party Nazis, and Republicans seem to be fine allowing that one to slide by.

This is dangerous idiocy, folks. This normalization of what used to be considered fringe, tin-foil-hat lunacy is not going to end well unless it is opposed now and doesn't get any further out of control.

You really don't have to look very far in today's Republican Party to find opinions and positions that aren't just rotten to the core, but are downright insanely dangerous. The United States Capitol has already been attacked once. A coup was attempted, in broad daylight, and Republicans refuse to even agree to investigate it. A sitting U.S. president tried to steal an election and he was aided and abetted by far too many in his own party. They are now consumed with rigging all the state-level election laws in their favor so the next time around they will be able to just disregard whatever the voters think and install a Republican president no matter what. Do you think that a House of Representatives run by Kevin McCarthy is going to certify Joe Biden's re-election if he beats Donald Trump once again? I don't.

Again, this is dangerous stuff to even contemplate. And it should provoke outrage. But for some reason, Democrats keep calm and collected and refuse to make a big deal out of any of it.

Democrats can't even do a good job of tooting their own horn on the things they have managed to accomplish. Far too few voters are even aware that the COVID relief bill passed earlier this year was a completely Democratic effort. Far too few realize that the Republican Party voted en masse against those $1,400 relief checks. When checks start arriving in millions of parents' mailboxes this month for the new child tax credit refund, few will realize that those checks didn't get there by magic but because Democrats put them there.

So I ask once again: where are our attack dogs? Where are the prominent Democrats who can get just as wound up as Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan over the undermining of democracy that the Republican Party is now in the midst of? Where is the outrage? Where is the indignation? These are not normal times. Normal and calm political discourse is not what is called for here. A little high dudgeon would be nice to see instead. But I'm not exactly holding my breath waiting for it, if you know what I mean.




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

June 12, 2021

Friday Talking Points -- Making America Respected Again

President Biden is currently in Europe, in the midst of his first trip abroad since he took office. So the folks at Pew Research decided it was a good time to see how America is now viewed by the rest of the world (or the countries with advanced economies that were surveyed, at any rate). The answers are exactly what you'd expect them to be -- America's standing in the world has dramatically improved, now that a sane adult is in charge of the country once again (instead of an unstable and temperamental toddler).

Before we get to the numbers, though, a quick summary from Politico captures the feeling perfectly: "When we talk to European diplomats and officials, they all say the same thing -- the Biden presidency is a 'sigh of relief' after the 'near-death experience' of Trump." Of course, European diplomats are not the only ones who feel this way, as tens of millions of Americans have indeed had similar feelings since January. Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries (on a day-to-day basis) of this renewed respect for the United States are the American expatriates living in Europe and elsewhere around the world. No longer will they have to be regularly embarrassed by their own country's president. No longer will they have to hang their heads in shame when their friends ask how America could ever have elected such a buffoon to lead it. No longer will twentysomethings enjoying a Eurail Pass feel the need to sew Canadian flags on their backpacks and add "...eh?" to the end of all their sentences, to put it another way.

First Lady Jill Biden is perhaps the best ambassador of this newfound feeling of goodwill. On the trip with her husband, she wore a jacket with the word "LOVE" prominently emblazoned on the back. Many were quick to compare this sartorial choice to Melania Trump's contemptuous jacket (which she wore while travelling to visit children separated from their parents at the border due to her husband's cruel policy) with the cold-hearted message: "I really don't care, do U?" displayed for all to see. Just to rub in the stark difference even more, Jill Biden released a photo of her poring over a thick briefing book in preparation for the trip, since neither one of the Trumps is exactly a noted reader of important information (and that's putting it mildly). Jill's message couldn't have been clearer, which she even reinforced to reporters: "I think that we're bringing love from America. This is a global conference and we are trying to bring unity across the globe and I think it's needed right now, that people feel a sense of unity from all the countries and feel a sense [of] hope after this year of the pandemic."

No wonder America's standing has improved so dramatically. How dramatically? From that poll:

More Biden/Trump numbers from the raw data, in head-to-head comparisons: 77 percent of people agreed that Joe Biden was "well qualified," while only 16 percent would say this about Trump. And only 14 percent called Biden "dangerous," while a whopping 72 percent applied the label to Trump. The biggest disconnect? Biden was called "arrogant" by only 13 percent of people surveyed, while an astounding 90 percent agreed that Trump was arrogant.

Biden is using "America is back!" as his message for the trip, but he could just as easily have claimed he was "making America respected again." That's probably closer to the truth of the matter.

Biden's message was ostensibly tailored for the Europeans, but it's also a pretty powerful one domestically as well. Before he departed on his trip, he wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post where he touted his own record so far:



Also announced right before the trip: 31 million Americans are now covered because of the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act -- another record-setting number.

Unlike Trump, who loved to brag about how superlative his presidency was (usually without anything to back up his empty braggadocio), Biden is already setting impressive records. Which is pretty worthy of respect no matter where in the world you live.

Let's see, what else is going on over on this side of the Atlantic? Right before Biden left for his Europe trip, he formally withdrew from the talks with Senator Shelley Moore Capito over a pie-in-the-sky bipartisan infrastructure bill. Another group of Republicans jumped in, in an attempt to waste even more time hunting the elusive bipartisan unicorn, and they even grandly announced they had a deal. Of course, there was no actual deal, since the two sides have irreconcilable differences over how any of it should be paid for. Republicans want to raise the gas tax while Democrats are adamant that no taxes be raised on anyone making less than $400,000 a year and instead want to tax only people making more than that, as well as giant corporations. This is the circle which cannot be squared in all of this bipartisan Kabuki, and it shows no signs of being resolved at any point. Reportedly, the Democrats are now moving forward on passing Biden's entire economic package using budget reconciliation rules which prohibit the filibuster, so at least they're not sitting around waiting on the non-existent bipartisan fantasy any more.

This is what bipartisanship gets you, in fact -- the Senate just released a report on the January 6th insurrection (which leaves plenty of enormous questions unanswered), but to get the Republicans on the committee to sign on to the report they had to not actually call it an insurrection. This is funny, after all the noise Republicans have been making of late over Democrats insisting on using "woke" inclusive language. It seems Republicans only get "woke" when they have to euphamize an insurrection attempt against Congress, the U. S. Capitol, and American democracy. What snowflakes!

We have two items for the "you just can't make up how stupid Republicans are, at times" files this week. The first was Louie Gohmert proving vying for the "stupidest member of Congress" title (a competition he regularly used to win, but now has to up his game since people like Marjorie Taylor Greene arrived to challenge him). In a hearing, Gohmert asked the supervisor of the National Forest Service the following question:



The astonished official managed not to laugh in Gohmert's face, and instead politely responded: "I would have to follow up with you on that one, Mr. Gohmert." She deserves a raise or at least a fat bonus for not blurting out: "Holy mackerel, are you really that stupid, Congressman?"

But these days, as we noted, the competition is fierce. Representative Mo Brooks is being sued by Representative Eric Swalwell for his key support for the 1/6 insurrectionists. Everyone else Swalwell is suing has accepted the lawsuit's existence, but Brooks has been doing a hide-and-seek routine for months, to avoid being served with the court papers. So Swalwell's process server served his wife instead. Brooks had a public hissy fit afterwards because apparently the process server walked into the (open) Brooks family garage to serve Mrs. Brooks with the court papers. Brooks tweeted out a photograph of his computer screen (not a screenshot, which was apparently too complicated for a member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies and Information Systems to manage), which was displaying the state criminal code entry on trespassing. The only problem was, Brooks forgot to take down notes taped to his screen which revealed a PIN and what appeared to be his email password. And it took him over 20 hours to realize it and take the photo down. So Gohmert's got all kinds of competition these days!

And we end this week's roundup with two amusing footnotes about what is bugging Biden on his trip to Europe. Literal bugs, in fact. First the press plane accompanying the president was delayed for seven hours after too many cicadas flew into the engines, and then Biden himself was attacked by a rogue cicada on the tarmac. Biden calmly brushed the huge insect off his neck, turned to the reporters and made a joke about it. Or, to put it another way, nothing really bugs Biden all that much -- even actual giant bugs!





We found two minor news items noteworthy this week, but didn't think either one of them rose to the level of the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. The first was the news out of Washington state, where the state government officially sanctioned a "Joints For Jabs" program that hands anyone who gets vaccinated on-site a free pre-rolled marijuana cigarette. Of course, we had to write about this one earlier in the week (with our apologies, once again, to Cheech and Chong), just because it was one of those things pretty close to the top of our "certainly never thought we'd live to see this" list: a governmental agency legally passing out free weed. We've come a long way, baby, as the (tobacco) cigarette ads used to say....

The second wasn't even on our list of highly-improbable things, but perhaps should have been. Here's the story, for those who may have missed such important political news this week:



Not exactly impressive, but was certainly worth pointing out, don't you think?

Sex (toys) and drugs aside, though, we do have a rather impressive collective winner of this week's MIDOTW award: the Texas Democratic Party. They are fighting back against the effort to pass Draconian voter-suppression laws in perhaps the best way possible: by putting their money into a massive voter registration drive. What is particularly notable about this effort -- which follows the admirable path Stacey Abrams laid down in Georgia -- is how early they are starting. This is not some last-minute thing a couple months before an election, this is instead much broader and more foundational. The New York Times had the full story:



Republicans are plotting to suppress Democratic votes? Then overwhelm them with so many votes it won't matter. The success Stacey Abrams managed in the two Georgia Senate races did not happen overnight, it was the direct result of years of hard work signing people up to vote. That's what it takes -- a sustained and very broad effort. And that is precisely what Texas Democrats are attempting.

Now, there are those who are pretty cynical about the perennial pipe dream of turning Texas blue, mostly because no matter how high people have gotten their hopes up in the past, it just never seems to materialize (over and over and over again).

But then, that's the way we all used to see Georgia, too. And Virginia, before that. And Arizona. And Colorado. It can work, in states with quickly-changing demographics. So it is not completely out of the question that it could eventually bear fruit in the Lone Star State as well.

For making such a monumental effort to do so -- for putting up an impressive amount of money, and for doing so early -- we have to give a group Most Impressive Democrats Of The Week award to the Democratic Party of Texas. Well done, and we all wish you luck in your effort!

[Congratulate the Texas Democratic Party on their official website, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]





There were some things that didn't exactly fill us with glee this week from the Democratic side of the aisle, but we're going to ignore all the minor ones to beat the same drum, once again.

Senator Joe Manchin wrote an opinion piece for a hometown newspaper this week where he explained his newfound love for the filibuster -- a love so deep it is now more important than several of the things he used to care quite a bit about.

His logic (if you can call it that, it's a lot closer to "magical thinking" ) is that protecting voting rights simply must be done in a bipartisan manner -- which totally ignores the fact that one of America's political parties is now fully dedicated to destroying voting rights in as many places as possible. These efforts, where successful, have all passed on strictly partisan lines, which only heightens the irony.

Manchin's piece has many "if I doesn't laugh, I thinks I'm a-gonna cry" lines in it, our favorite being: "our party labels can't prevent us from doing what is right." This, as he argues that doing what is right simply must have the correct party labels attached to it, or else it somehow shouldn't happen. If party labels don't matter, then who cares whether the vote is partisan or not partisan? Caring about this aspect is doing nothing short of making party labels the centerpiece, rather than "doing what's right," which is truly the important thing. This point flies far over Manchin's head, obviously.

Again, Manchin actually admits this within his piece:



In other words, the Republicans are allowed to "seek partisan advantage" which will "destroy" our democracy -- but to combat this, a certain amount of Republicans simply must be on board with the effort or else everyone should just sit back and allow the republic to be divided and destroyed because to fight partisanship with partisanship is even worse. Worse than our democracy being destroyed, mind you.

Salon ran a very interesting article which explored what might actually be going on with Manchin, seeing as how he used to actually be for the bills he is now singlehandedly blocking:



That certainly makes a lot more sense than any reasons Manchin has offered up for his change of heart.

The best take on the situation we read this week didn't exactly pull punches in the language used:



Leprechauns indeed.

Manchin's fellow Democrats were also not exactly pulling punches, either, in their reaction to Manchin's article:



But Manchin did get some praise for his stance this week. From Donald Trump (who conveniently seems to have forgotten how hard he pushed Mitch McConnell to scrap the filibuster rule when he was in office). If the only person who agrees with your political position as a Democrat is Donald J. Trump, then (to state the obvious) perhaps it is time to rethink your position?

For his announcement that easily half of Joe Biden's agenda should now officially be considered dead, this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week was a no-brainer this week. And you can take that "no-brainer" remark any way you wish.

[Contact Senator Joe Manchin on his Senate contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 622 (6/11/21)

Another mixed bag this week, with a few Donald Trump items thrown in just for fun at the end. As always, enjoy responsibly.



Did I blink and miss it, or what?

Maybe he was trying a new career as a standup comedian? That's the only possible explanation we can think of....

"Mitch McConnell sanctimoniously declared this week that, quote, it's pretty clear the era of bipartisanship is over, unquote. To which I respond: um, excuse me? Mitch? Just when, exactly, did this golden era of bipartisanship begin? Because from what I can remember, Mitch McConnell has been actively destroying any vestige of bipartisanship for over the past decade, at a minimum. This is the same McConnell who forced every single piece of legislation to clear the 60-vote filibuster hurdle, in an unprecedented maximization of partisanship. The same McConnell who turned judicial confirmations into a partisan take-no-prisoners battleground -- remember when he refused to even hold hearings on a Supreme Court justice for a year, and then turned right around and hustled one through in weeks when his own party was in charge? Does anyone else remember that? Because I do. Remember when he swore a vow to do everything in his power to make Barack Obama a one-term president, no matter what that meant for the success of America? OK, that was a while ago, so let's instead remember just last month when he swore a new oath to devoting 'one-hundred percent of our focus... on stopping this new administration.' That's the same Mitch McConnell, right? Who just declared the 'era of bipartisanship' to be over? I'm sorry, Mitch, but I must have blinked and missed it, because if there was any actual era of bipartisanship it must have lasted about a nanosecond -- because for the last decade and more, you have been the absolute world champion at killing any hint of bipartisanship in the Senate stone cold dead. So please, spare us the gaslighting now, will you? Unless you're trying to make us laugh."



Tax the rich

An idea which just gets more and more popular over time.

"There was an exposé published this week which showed how little the wealthiest Americans paid in federal taxes -- a tiny, tiny percentage of what an average blue-collar worker pays. Some of these billionaires actually wound up paying zero income taxes at all in some years, while they went right on amassing fortunes worth billions of dollars. Democrats think this is wrong, and want to make them pay their fair share. They've wanted this for a while now, but now we have actual proof of why this is such an important goal. When a billionaire pays not only a lower tax rate but less absolute dollars in taxes than a nurse or a firefighter, then something is seriously wrong with the system. This is precisely why making billionaires pay a fair share is so wildly popular with the public. Stop the free ride for the one percent!"



Republicans want you to pay more for gas

This one is kind of tricky, because there are a lot of Democrats who think raising the gas tax is a good idea too. But let's make absolutely sure everyone understands who is now proposing it, and what the other option on the table is, because that puts it into some needed perspective.

"Don't believe all those reports you may hear about some sort of 'bipartisan infrastructure deal' being struck between Democratic and Republican senators. While they may be able to agree on how much to spend and what to spend it on, the two sides are as far apart as ever on how to pay for it all. Which brings up a big point the Republicans really don't want you to know. Democrats -- led by Joe Biden -- have insisted that taxes will not be raised on people making less than $400,000 per year. Democrats want to tax big business and the ultrawealthy to pay for infrastructure improvements. Republicans, on the other hand, have drawn a red line and say they simply cannot vote for increasing taxes one penny on billionaires or gigantic corporations. Instead, they want you to pay for the whole thing. They want to raise the tax on gasoline that we all pay at the pump. Of all the possible ways to raise money, that's the one they chose -- making you pay more for gas. Democrats are against this because it would hit the poorest drivers the hardest. Instead, Democrats want the wealthiest to pay more taxes, not the poorest. That's the difference between the two sides, and it doesn't seem to me to be a difference that either side is willing to budge on, no matter how they may promise they've got a deal. I'll believe it right after I see 60 senators vote for it, in other words."



Tax the rich, help American families

Democrats really need to stop allowing Republicans to even use this word with a straight face.

"Everyone calls Donald Trump a 'populist' and says that the Republican Party has somehow realigned itself to be a populist party now. This is utter hogwash. Republicans are the ones fighting hardest for the richest among us and they want to stick it to the average American family every chance they get. A study just out proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt. If Joe Biden's economic plans were enacted into law, it would dramatically hike taxes on only the tippy-top of the income scale, while it would cut thousands in taxes from the average American family -- especially those families with children. That is true economic populism, folks. Helping the little guy and making the fatcats pay. What could be more populist than that? And not a single Republican is for the idea, which only goes to prove they're about as far from real populism as you can get, ideologically. The GOP is the party of the elite, just as they've always been. Democrats are the true economic populists, and if the Biden agenda is passed we will prove it to every American family in the nation."



Wrong yardstick

Please point this out with every chance you get, because so many people are drawing erroneous conclusions from meaningless data.

"When you hear economic numbers for approximately the next year's time, please take them with a grain of salt. Because the normal way of measuring progress simply does not work right now. In normal times, one month's figures would be compared to the same month from the previous year. This would show the change, over time. But let's everyone please remember where we were one year ago -- in the grips of a pandemic, a lockdown, and the economic crisis it caused. Obviously, those numbers are pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things, when you're trying to measure inflation or any other economic marker. To get an accurate picture, you need to go back two years, and treat 2020 as the aberration it really was. Is inflation up last month from the same month in 2019? No, it really isn't. So stop fearmongering about the change since 2020, since it is the equivalent of Noah measuring how rainfall patterns have changed exactly one year after the Flood. It just makes no sense at all, in terms of understanding what is truly going on."



Trump's lies keeping insurrectionists in jail

The irony is so thick with this one you can cut it with a knife.

"Many of the people charged with participating in the January sixth insurrection against Congress are now trying to convince judges to let them out before their trial dates, rather than having to stay in jail. They are arguing that it was a one-time event that is not likely to be repeated in the future. But many judges are denying these motions for a rather astonishing reason -- because Donald Trump won't shut up about his Big Lie. Because Trump is out there still fanning the flames of revolt and refusing to accept the incontrovertible fact that he lost the election, the judges have decided that similar insurrectionist attempts are clearly possible in the near future. What this means is that these people probably would have been given the benefit of the doubt and let out before their trials but Trump himself is essentially keeping them locked up. The irony would be pretty amusing if this weren't such a serious subject."



Definitely on fire, that's for sure

Poor, poor, pitiful Trump.

"Donald Trump gave his first public speech in months last weekend, and it was the usual rant about his Big Lie and all his mountain of grievances against anyone who has ever said a bad word about him. In fact, it was a lot lower-energy than usual, for Trump. He barely raised his voice, which you've got to admit was pretty un-Trumpian. He looked downright sleepy, in fact. But that's not what anyone was talking about the next day, because the internet was consumed with the question of whether Trump had actually put his pants on backwards or not before his speech. And whether he was actually wearing an adult diaper or had just gained a whole lot more weight. Now, there were disagreements on both these points, but the one thing that everyone could agree on was while Trump's pants may or may not have been on backwards, as usual, his pants were definitely on fire throughout his entire speech."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

June 5, 2021

Friday Talking Points -- Bipartisan Kabuki's Last Act

The ushers are flashing the lights in the lobby. Intermission is over, and the last act of the "Bipartisan Infrastructure Kabuki" extravaganza is about to begin. Actually, truth be told, we were among those who thought this play would be over by now, but apparently a final act was hastily added at the last minute, for no real apparent reason.

President Joe Biden called Senator Shelley Moore Caputo today, in what most view as the final negotiation attempt which will try to hammer together a compromise infrastructure package that 10 Republican senators will actually vote for. Biden is, in essence, making his final offer. It is eminently reasonable, considering where the two sides started from, but that doesn't mean it will have any chance of success, since Republicans are really just trying to run the clock out and stall for as long as they can get away with before they admit to the world that there simply is no infrastructure bill that 10 Republican senators are ever going to vote for -- at least not while a Democrat sits in the Oval Office.

President Joe Biden unveiled his American Jobs Plan in March, right after the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act. His opening bid was $2.3 trillion in new spending, all of which were solid investments in America's future. Republicans immediately insisted that they would vote for nothing they didn't include in their particular definition of "infrastructure," which equated to: "Can you drive your car on it, or not?" Sadly, this is not an exaggeration, although they later did relent a tiny bit on a few things that cars cannot actually drive upon.

Republicans took an entire month to come up with a counteroffer, which they touted as a $568 billion plan, but which actually contained less than $200 billion in new spending. Biden then dropped his offer by a half-trillion dollars, down to $1.7 trillion. Republicans countered with what they called a $928 billion plan, which actually only contained $257 billion in new spending. Again: all of Biden's proposals have been 100 percent new spending.

Originally, Memorial Day was supposed to be the end date for this process -- that's when Biden had said if he didn't see substantial progress, he was just going to walk away and pass his plan using budget reconciliation rules (which avoid the filibuster in the Senate). But he extended his timeline -- a clear victory for the GOP, which is only truly interested in stalling this exercise in futility for as long as humanly possible.

This week, Biden invited Senator Shelley Moore Caputo to a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office. She has become the chief GOP negotiator, which means that for once West Virginia's two senators jointly hold the fate of a presidential agenda in their hands. But more on Joe Manchin in a minute.

All along, Republicans have said that touching any part of their latest tax cut (passed with an entirely partisan vote, mind you) was a red line they would not cross. They wanted unspecified "user fees" (read: increased gas taxes) and a new tax on electric vehicle drivers (most of whom are assumably liberals) to pay for everything instead. Biden countered with a new idea that fell outside the Trump tax cut -- a new "global corporate minimum" tax of 15 percent, to ensure that American corporations pay at least something in taxes (55 of the largest U.S. corporations didn't pay a dime of taxes last year). And Biden insisted on two things: the plan had to be at least $1 trillion, and that meant $1 trillion in new spending -- no more gimmicks, in other words.

From a bargaining viewpoint, Republicans could conceivably chalk this up as a victory. Biden has come down more than half from his initial $2.3 trillion offer, while they would have only risen from zero to $1 trillion. Also, Biden was being entirely reasonable by splitting the remaining difference -- he would come down from $1.7 to $1.0 trillion, while Republicans would move up by roughly the same amount, from $257 billion. That's fair. This is reportedly what was in Biden's offer to the Republicans today.

However realistic though it may be, it is still completely unrealistic to think that such a number could be agreeable to any Republican senator, much less 10 of them. After all, that is four times as high as they have previously indicated they could go, and it would mean voting for a brand new corporate tax, which is anathema to Republicans in general. So there is every expectation that the Republicans will reject this offer.

The only remaining question is whether they will walk away from the table entirely or make some laughable counteroffer that Biden will then reject. Either way, though, the clock is ticking and if no deal is in hand on Monday, Democrats are going to immediately begin moving on "Plan B" -- passing all (or the lion's share, at least) of Biden's initial $2.3 trillion plan by reconciliation. Their only worry at this point will be what Joe Manchin will demand at the last minute, as he gets his name in the news once again.

Whatever happens, though, hopefully the curtain will fall on this Kabuki theater and we can all pretend it was done in good faith, so that Manchin can be comfortable voting for the bill using reconciliation. Unlike many other of Biden's priorities, this will not require reforming the filibuster rules at all, so it should be an easier sell with Manchin. But then, you just never know, with him.

Republicans will be able to pat themselves on the back for wasting, at a minimum, almost three months of Biden's term. They will not have one a single concession, they will have zero input into the bill, and their opposition votes will not block passage of the bill at all. So the wastage of time is their only consolation prize, but seeing as how it is precisely what they were aiming for all along, they'll still see the whole thing as worthwhile.

As long as Biden doesn't try to slip the deadline again, of course. This is still a danger -- there might be one more act of Kabuki to sit through, in other words.

Perhaps not, though. Joe Manchin isn't the only Democrat in the Senate, and the progressive wing is getting more and more fed up with all this delay just to assuage one man's insane fantasy that bipartisanship is somehow even possible in today's Senate. Manchin was reportedly shocked that the January 6th commission investigation didn't get enough bipartisan support to pass, and Chuck Schumer has lined up a whole roster of Democratic bills for the Senate to vote on in June -- none of which are expected to beat the filibuster -- just to prove to Manchin and a few others (notably Kyrsten Sinema) how futile it is to expect any sort of normal behavior from today's Trumpified Republican Party.

Even Biden himself is getting a little annoyed. In the midst of a very moving speech on race and how America is in a fight for democracy right now, Biden addressed both Manchin and Sinema (although not by name):

This wasn't entirely true, about their actual voting patterns, but it was a clear message nonetheless -- Biden's patience is not endless. And his frustration is growing. He is not alone, in that. No Democrat in the audience other than Manchin even wanted to see this final Kabuki act, after all. But here we are, waiting for it to begin.

President Biden has been getting a few things done in the meantime. His Tulsa Race Massacre speech was historic (he was the first president to visit for the anniversary, 100 years after it happened) and it showed a renewed sense of purpose on the issue of voting rights, where state-level Republicans continue to pass laws designed not only to suppress Democratic votes, but also to allow for partisan hacks to declare elections null and void after the fact as well. This is no less than a direct assault on American democracy, so it was good to hear Biden giving the issue the prominence it deserves. He also announced Vice President Kamala Harris will be taking the lead on passing federal laws that will rein in the worst of the state-level excesses Republicans are now so busy enacting. This effort will, in essence, boil down to convincing Sinema and Manchin to change the filibuster rules to allow for questions of constitutional rights to be passed with a simple majority vote, so it is unclear what the chances of it succeeding actually are, at this point.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Republicans continue their descent into madness. Think that's overstating the case? We don't. And we're not the only ones:



Some of us have thought that for a while, now. And it's not just Trump, either. Former lieutenant general and confessed felon Michael Flynn was asked, at a QAnon conspiracy convention this week: "I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can't happen here?" by a member of the audience who pronounced the country's name "Minnimar."

Flynn's answer? "No reason. I mean, it should happen. There's no reason."

Calls for the Pentagon to court martial Flynn to strip him of his pension went unheeded. Perhaps because he is not the only military official who seems to have gone around the bend these days -- so much so that the possibility of a military coup right here at home in the U.S.A. is now a tangible thing to be feared.

As we said: a descent into madness.

In Arizona, the continuing saga of having Looney Tunes characters conduct an election "audit" creeps forward once again, prompting the secretary of state (a Democrat) to set up a site where she posts all the disturbing things official observers have witnessed during the past few weeks of this circus, while the official county recorder (a Republican) of the county in question felt the need to write a piece for the conservative National Review entitled: "The Madness Of The Maricopa County Election Audit." In it, he asks the reader to think about being audited by the I.R.S.:



He then goes on to document the idiocy that is currently underway in his own county. He ends with a scathing denunciation of the company conducting the "audit."



OK, just a few random items left and then we'll move on to the awards. Trump's stupendous blog -- announced with much hoopla and fanfare one month ago -- just turned out the lights this week. It lasted all of 29 days (as many pointed out, this is not even three Scaramuccis!). But a special award for snarkiness goes to HuffPost, who ended their report on the blog's demise with some salient facts:



Late-breaking news, as well: Trump will remain banned from Facebook for at least two years. Whew!

Speaking of snark, or social commentary, or whatever you want to call it, we had to smile at the Florida punk rock promoter (for a night headlined by Teenage Bottlerocket, which we have to admit is a great band name!) who decided to make his own statement on vaccination by selling tickets to the show for $999.99 -- but with a discount price of only $18, available only if you can prove you've been vaccinated. Nicely done.

And finally, within a few days there will be an official report released by the federal government on the question of unidentified flying objects, which should certainly cause a media splash. Some already have the main scoop: the report essentially concludes "maybe... maybe not," by not ruling out extraterrestrials as the cause of some of these phenomena. So there's that for us all to look forward to!





We would like to award Melanie Stansbury an Honorable Mention this week, for winning a special House election in New Mexico. Stansbury will now represent Deb Haaland's old district, after Haaland was elevated to Biden's cabinet. It's a Democratic district, so the win itself wasn't particularly impressive, but the margin was.

Some were a bit nervous about this election, even though Biden won the district handily too. The Republican in the race tried to make the whole contest one of law-and-order Republicans versus defund-the-police Democrats. It didn't work. Stansbury fought back by stating her actual views and ran ads with cops telling the voters how much she had supported the police in the past.

The Cook Political Report was warning that a victory for Stansbury was likely, but if the margin was 10 points or less, it would mean dire things for Democrats in the 2022 midterms.

Stansbury won by almost 25 points. Well done, and welcome to the House of Representatives, Melanie Stansbury!

But the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award is a group one this week, since the choice was obvious. Last Sunday night, the Democratic delegation in the lower house of the Texas legislature just stood up and walked out. By doing so, they denied the Republicans a quorum, meaning their Draconian voter-suppression bill could not pass, since the legislative session turned into a pumpkin at midnight.

Here's the story:



They were brave for doing so, and making it so dramatic (nice touch, giving media interviews from the church), but they know that in the end their effort may be doomed to failure (the governor has already called for a special session of the legislature, and he's now threatening to veto the part of the budget that authorizes pay for the legislators). So they issued a rather pointed warning as well:



Some were even more direct in their pleas to national Democrats to do something:



So while it may only be temporary, for now these brave Democrats succeeded in stopping the grand Republican plan to make elections partisan (and Republican) in as many places as they can. Doing so easily earns them the thanks of the rest of the nation and our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award as well.

[Congratulate these Texas Democrats on their official contact pages, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]





We admit we've given Joe Manchin quite a few Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week awards of late, so we're going to give this week's MDDOTW to Senator Kyrsten Sinema, just so she doesn't feel left out or anything.

Sinema gave an interview this week where she doubled down on her support of the filibuster (which may be what prompted one of her biggest political supporters to disgree so strongly with her on the subject, later in the week). Sinema does not, to put it mildly, have the facts or history on her side in the fantastical arguments she makes:



The filibuster never "protected the democracy of our nation," period. It protects the ability of a few to thwart democracy, in fact. Her suggested "fix your behavior" is just downright delusional. What 10 Republicans does she think are ever going to "fix their behavior" on anything Democrats are for? Democrats could introduce a bill declaring that the sky is blue, and at least 41 Republicans would vote against it just because they could. It simply is not possible, which is why we used the word "fantastical." The filibuster was never about "comity" or bipartisanship. It has always been a partisan tool, period.

So for getting her facts and her history wrong, and for not coming up with any better defense of the indefensible, Kyrsten Sinema is this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

[Contact Senator Kyrsten Sinema on her Senate contact page, to let her know what you think of her actions.]




Volume 621 (6/4/21)

There's no cohesive theme to today's talking points, rather just a few little themelets. Enjoy, as always, and please use responsibly.



Forward, or backward? Make up your mind....

These first few of these are in reaction to last week's successful Republican filibuster of the January 6th commission bill, which would have opened a nonpartisan investigation into the insurrection and all its causes.

"So let me get this straight -- Republicans in the Senate, who never met a Benghazi investigation they didn't love no matter how many of them were launched, are now telling us we should 'move on' and 'look to the future' rather than closely examine what led up to an insurrection which besieged the United States Capitol and interfered with the formal process of electing a president. We're just supposed to sweep the most serious attack on the seat of American government since 1814 under the rug? Without knowing what the commander in chief was ordering the Pentagon to do -- or, more likely, not do -- that day? And yet, for all this talk of 'moving on' and the future, the Republicans are also supporting a months-long so-called 'audit' of one Arizona county's ballots from the 2020 election. Where's their 'move on' spirit when it comes to that one, and all the others around the country? We've got to hire some absolute yahoos who have never done any election-auditing work in the past to determine whether the ballot paper has bamboo particles in it? Are they serious? Sounds like somebody's getting bamboozled, that much is pretty plain."



Not backing the blue

The mother and longtime partner of Capitol Police offer Brian Sicknick, who died the day after defending the Capitol against the insurrectionists, had a few things to say about Republican senators who refused to vote for the commission. Sandra Garza, who had been with Sicknick for 11 years, was particularly scathing about these Republicans:





Stop the real steal now!

If Democrats were smart, they'd turn Trump's new favorite phrase around and use it against all the anti-democratic GOP plotting going on at the state level.

"Donald Trump's Big Lie is that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from him. Ever since he's been using the slogan 'Stop the steal!' to describe a free and fair election that was not, in fact, stolen from him. But all the laws Republicans are passing in red and purple states right now all have one real underlying intent -- to make it easier for Republicans to steal the next election, or any election they don't like the results of, really. They are changing their elections systems from ones run by dedicated professionals to ones controlled by their own party hacks. They are doing this for a purpose and that purpose is to make it harder for true democracy to prevail in future elections. So I would tell all Democrats and all Americans who care about the sanctity of fair elections to join with me in demanding: Stop the real steal -- because it is coming if we don't."



Save the filibuster or save democracy

This is crafted for an audience of two, obviously.

"Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have both been adamant about their support for the filibuster, proclaiming -- against all evidence -- that it somehow fosters bipartisanship and democracy. What it favors, in fact, is something Alexis de Tocqueville never dreamed about in his wildest nightmare -- the tyranny of the minority. This summer, Democrats have a clear choice. They can move their agenda for America's future forward or they can see all their bold ideas wither on the vine, as Mitch McConnell kills them one by one. If the filibuster is allowed to remain unchanged, then Democrats will have precious few legislative accomplishments to tell the voters about on the campaign trail, and they may wind up in the minority in Congress as a direct result. But far worse than just losing partisan control is what will happen if none of the voting rights bills make it to Biden's desk -- we could be looking at the end of the American democratic experiment as we slide into the dark swamp of fascism, White supremacy, and might-makes-right. Sinema and Manchin have a clear choice: they can save the filibuster, or they can save democracy. But they won't be able to do both, and the day they are going to have to make this choice is coming soon."



Our democracy is fundamentally at stake

Think that last one was overstated? We don't. In fact, over 100 scholars from some of the nation's most-prominent universities just released a letter this week, which lays out the stakes and then identifies the problem, in no uncertain terms. This excerpt is a little long to be an actual talking point, but any Democratic politician worth his or her salt should be able to pick a few key lines from this to quote. We are providing the beginning and end of this letter (which is well worth the time to read in full), as a public service:





Fighting for corporations to pay zero taxes

Biden brilliantly put the Republicans in a box with his most-recent offer. So Democrats should exploit it for all it is worth, the minute they turn down his offer.

"The Republican senators negotiating for a bipartisan infrastructure bill rejected Biden's first way of paying for the plan, which would have raised the corporate tax rate. They said they couldn't change the tax cut they passed a few years back, it was a red line for them. So Biden came up with a new way to pay for things -- a 15 percent 'global minimum' tax on corporations who use offshore post office boxes as addresses so they can avoid paying any tax to the United States. This is a very real problem -- 55 of the nation's biggest corporations paid zero taxes at all to the federal government last year. And it is no surprise because this happens each and every year. Biden is proposing a tax that forces them to pay their fair share. Republicans rejected it. Which means that Republicans are fighting hard for corporations like Amazon to pay zero taxes at all. There is just no other way to put it. They try to fool everyone into thinking they are somehow now some sort of populist party, but the truth is pretty plain to see. This is what they really stand for -- zero corporate taxes at all."



Please explain how this could be anti-fraud

Hit Republicans hard on the specifics of all these laws they are busily passing to change our election system into a complete partisan mess.

"So Republicans say that all their voter-suppression laws are all somehow targeting some mythical fraud that nobody's ever seen any proof of outside the deranged brain of their Dear Leader. That's the reason they cite, over and over again -- we've got to make elections safer, they tell us. So I would like them to explain how making it illegal for counties in Texas to hold early voting on Sunday mornings, while still allowing early voting on the same day, just after one o'clock in the afternoon. How does that fight fraud? How is a vote at the same polling place using the same method by the same person change from suspicious and possibly fraudulent to completely acceptable, depending on where the sun is in the sky? How is a vote cast at two in the afternoon somehow to be trusted when the same vote at ten in the morning is somehow suspect? Please, any Republicans who would care to, I'd like to hear the explanation for this. But I'm not exactly holding my breath, if you know what I mean."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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