August 27, 2022

Friday Talking Points -- Biden Helps 43 Million Americans

President Joe Biden keeps coming out with summer hit after summer hit. This week, he forgave up to $20,000 in student loan debt for 43 million Americans. That's a big win, even if some are desperately trying to convince parents across the country that it's somehow a bad thing that their son or daughter just had their student debt wiped out. Good luck with that, guys. Most Americans see this as a huge relief, even if they don't personally benefit. And most Americans see Republicans complaining about it as being seriously out of touch.

The media is going along for this ride, cheerfully pointing out the very few Democrats who spoke out against Biden's move, and repeating all of the Republican talking points about how it'll absolutely doom the economy to allow students to be free of debt earlier in life. But for once, not only Democrats but the White House itself is pushing back hard.

The Twitter account "The White House" smacked down several GOP politicians who were badmouthing the student loan forgiveness. The Republicans' refrain went something like: "Everyone should pay their debts and not take out loans if they can't repay them." Except for, you know, history. The White House took aim at Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had complained: "For our government just to say ok your debt is completely forgiven... it's completely unfair." The White House responded: "Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven." She wasn't the only one to get this reminder, either. It seems it is just fine with Republicans when debts for business owners are forgiven in the middle of a pandemic, but they go apoplectic when the beneficiaries are students. That is an excellent pushback message, it is impossible to deny, and it strips bare the hypocrisy coming from Republicans who are all for government money flowing to the wealthy -- but who are horrified when the money goes to the not-wealthy.

Republicans are also somehow trying to tie the debt forgiveness to inflation, but this effort is falling flat as well. As Biden pointed out when he rolled it all out, there will only be one more extension of the payment moratorium on student loans (which has been in place for the duration of the COVID-19 emergency), so everyone is going to have to resume payments in January. This will offset the money forgiven for the student loans, meaning the impact on the economy as a whole will be balanced out and could even prove to be a little deflationary. So that GOP argument doesn't really hold water either.

The details of the debt forgiveness plan have mostly been brushed aside in this big argument, but they are worth paying attention to. Biden has been criticized for taking an inordinately long time to make this move, but they did come up with a rather interesting way to construct it. Everyone had been expecting the figure $10,000 -- which was only a small portion of what some progressives wanted. Way back in the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, Bernie Sanders was arguing for forgiving all student debt. Then the suggestion of $50,000 got a big push. Biden was always more incremental, and committed to the $10,000 figure. So that's what everyone expected.

The announcement that students who had received Pell grants (which are means-tested to help the lowest-income families afford college) would get $20,000 came as a complete surprise. But it is brilliant because it blunts the edge of those complaining that all this money is going to "rich kids." It isn't -- only people making $125,000 a year or less get their loans forgiven. And now those who came from families at the bottom end of the income scale will get double.

But there's one aspect that hasn't gotten enough attention, even though it should. All students paying back undergraduate loans will see their monthly payments capped at only five percent of their discretionary income -- down from 10 percent. This will be a gigantic and ongoing help to tens of millions of students who don't get their full debt wiped out. Ask someone fresh out of college what a difference that will make in their budget -- they'll tell you. And for many, they'll have their remaining loan forgiven after 10 years of making payments, which is down from the current 20 years. Ask a twentysomething what that extra decade will mean to them.

Joe Biden is helping 43 million Americans afford college. Republicans' only response is to try to get people to begrudge them this relief. To resent them for it. Which is why it is so helpful that the White House is pointing out the enormous sums of debt that were previously forgiven for all those business owners. Because what is the difference, really? Only who gets the relief. Did any of the Republicans weep and wail about "socialism" or predict inflation would doom us all when they had their hands in the federal till? They did not. So why are they so worked up about it now?

Joe Biden and the Democrats keep getting good things done, against all odds. Each time they do, they undermine the Republican political argument a bit further. Republicans are trying to convince voters that Joe Biden's presidency has been some modern-day hellscape, with nothing but bad everywhere you look. Meanwhile, in the real world, 20 million students just had their debt obligation wiped out, while more than 20 million more will see either $10,000 or $20,000 lopped off what they owe. That's a lot of voters, especially when you take into account their extended families. Infrastructure reform projects are starting to get going -- the infrastructure reform that Trump promised for four years and never delivered. A plan is in place to bring down the cost of prescription drugs. We're going to build semiconductor fabrication plants in America so we don't have to rely on foreign countries for crucial components of just about everything we buy. The first gun regulation law passed in a generation. Climate change is finally being addressed. Jobs continue to be plentiful and wages keep going up. Unemployment is at a 50-year low. COVID-19 has faded into the background as a new school year begins. Veterans exposed to toxic burn pits now have proper care. Inflation is starting to come down. And -- best of all -- gas prices have fallen over $1.20 from their peak at the start of the summer. After Labor Day, prices generally go down, so this trend is likely to continue at least in the short term.

Hellscape? Hardly. Maybe all of that is why Democratic hopes for the midterms have been rising. Or maybe it's all the lunatics the Republicans have nominated to run against them. Or perhaps there's one single issue which has turned the entire political landscape around.

Republicans, ever since the Supreme Court jettisoned Roe v. Wade have been like the dog who finally caught a car -- they don't know what to do with it. All of a sudden all their extreme positions are becoming reality for tens of millions of women, and that is outraging voters across the country. They are fired up, and they are motivated to get to the polls and register their disapproval.

We got evidence of this this week when Democrat Pat Ryan won a special House election in the Hudson Valley of New York state. He was widely expected to lose -- the district had only voted for Joe Biden by 1.5 points in 2020 and seemed a prime pickup for Republicans. But Ryan leaned in hard on the abortion issue. And the Republican didn't know what to do about it, plain and simple. Democratic turnout was way up, and Ryan unexpectedly won.

This has sent a shiver of fear down many Republicans' spines. We now have proof of the potency of the abortion issue to drive turnout among highly-motivated voters. And Republicans know their party's position is not popular at all. So they've been trying to ignore the issue in the hopes that it won't be that big a deal to voters. But now Democrats running for office across the country have learned that leaning in on abortion helps. So there will no doubt be a flood of post-Labor Day ads from Democrats reminding people that they are for women's freedoms while Republicans want to take them away nationwide. That's a winning argument. New voter registrations from women are outpacing men in state after state. There's a big reason for that, and Democrats are perfectly positioned to take advantage of it. No wonder Republicans are getting scared.

Republicans are also trapped in defending Donald Trump's increasingly blatant lawbreaking. They just can't move on from him. But doing so takes a lot of their energy, which has left the opposition to all of the Biden agenda policy wins rather anemic and weak. The pushback against the student loan forgiveness is probably going to follow the same path, too. Republicans desperately flail around for a few days trying to come up with some reasonable position opposing Biden, but then they fail, because Biden's doing things that are quite popular (like lowering prescription drug prices and fighting climate change). After a halfhearted week or two, Republicans then drop the issue, usually because they have to defend some new jaw-dropping revelation about Trump. Trump is sapping their energy.

Case in point, today the affidavit was partially released (heavily-redacted, in other words) that justified the search warrant served on Trump's golf club in Florida. It was just as damning as all the other revelations about this search. Earlier, we learned, a whopping 184 classified documents were turned over to the National Archives -- none of which Trump should ever have had. When you add them all up, Trump kept over 300 such classified documents -- over 700 pages total -- in a basement room at a golf club with no security at all. Some of these documents contained "national defense information" and some were classified at the highest, most-restrictive levels.

The basic story has not changed, though. Donald Trump took dozens of boxes of paperwork with him when he left the White House. He had absolutely no valid reason to keep any of these documents. None of these documents were his property. They all belong to the American people. They are presidential records and there are laws about what is supposed to happen to them. Trump ignored these laws, and broke these laws. When he was asked politely to give the documents back, he balked. He finally did allow 15 boxes to be returned (which contained 184 classified documents), but he hung on to a bunch more of them. They were subpoenaed, but Trump still didn't turn them all over. His lawyer signed a promise that all the proper documents had already been turned over -- which was a lie. Finally the F.B.I. got tired of Trump's lies and stalling and got a search warrant from a federal judge. Dozens more boxes were seized, with more top secret documents.

This is all illegal. There is no legal argument that any of it was somehow covered by "executive privilege." They are the property of the American people, period. Trump stole them. The F.B.I. recovered them -- after Trump refused to turn them over, lied about them, and ignored a subpoena. That's it in a nutshell. It's actually pretty simple. And no matter what Trump says, it does not matter whether the documents were declassified or not. Because classified or declassified, they are still the property of the American people -- not Donald Trump. Trump has never quite grasped this basic fact, despite being told numerous times, and now he has filed a laughable lawsuit which might be summed up as: "Gimme my stuff back! It's mine!" This lawsuit is expected to fail, spectacularly.

The release of the affidavit seems to be the end of this segment of the story, at any rate. The documents were recovered, Trump is throwing a tantrum, but we'll all have to wait and see what the next chapter will bring. Trump is likely to keep bringing it up, but each time he does he just reminds everyone that he has been spitting in the face of the law since he left office. Republicans will be reduced to somehow trying to explain why Donald Trump can break any law he wishes, and somehow that's supposed to be a good thing. Again: good luck with that, guys.

It is shocking to realize it, but Democrats are now the party of law and order, and Republicans are openly threatening federal agents. They created a lie that the Inflation Reduction Act somehow meant 87,000 new armed I.R.S. agents that will soon be breaking down doors and shooting average Americans (none of which is true), and now the I.R.S. is having to review security at all its offices around the country -- because of the increasing threat of right-wing attacks. This follows Republicans demonizing (and calling for the defunding of) the F.B.I. A Republican candidate for the Florida legislature just went whole hog and called for people to "shoot FBI, IRS, ATF and all other feds on sight."

This is today's Republican Party, folks. This is why "threats to democracy" just topped one poll of voters' biggest concerns right now. Joe Biden just gave a speech in which he called the "extreme MAGA philosophy" nothing short of "semi-fascism." Even that was polite, there's not much "semi-" about it, really.

We'll leave you with one excerpt of this speech, because this message really needs to get out more:

We've got a lot of contenders for the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week, so let's dive in.

First we've got two Honorable Mention awards, both for candidates who won in Tuesday's round of elections.

The first is Maxwell Frost, who is quite likely to become the first of "Generation Z" to hold office in Congress. He is 25 years old -- just barely old enough to serve in the House -- and he beat out two former members of Congress (Corrine Brown and Alan Grayson) to win the Democratic nomination in Florida's 10th district. It's a solid blue district, so this win will almost certainly propel him to the House of Representatives -- the first of his generation to make it there.

He'll probably even join the ranks of The Squad, if his platform is any indication:



He got into politics at age 15, working against gun violence. He became the national organizing director of March For Our Lives, the group formed by students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after their massacre. He has also worked for the A.C.L.U. in Florida. David Hogg, the co-founder of March For Our Lives, summed up the power behind Frost: "Never underestimate the power of pissed-off young people."

The next Honorable Mention recipient is Pat Ryan, who pulled off the surprise victory in New York. He has shown all other Democrats the power and potency of the abortion issue in a big way. He made it central to his campaign while his Republican opponent didn't want to talk about it. That was enough. Plenty of other Democratic candidates will be following the path he just proved can work, which might just be enough to fend off that predicted "red wave" in November.

But we have two winners this week for the MIDOTW award, one well-known and one anonymous. The well-known one is President Biden who, with the stroke of a pen, wiped out the student debts of 20 million people, and helped over 20 million more by reducing their debt significantly.

Biden campaigned on this issue rather reluctantly (it was one of the issues that Bernie Sanders pushed hard on, so Biden had to stake out some sort of position on it), and it has been over a year and a half since Biden took office. So this wasn't exactly one of those "We'll get this done on Day One!" sorts of things for him, obviously.

But even if it took him a while, and even if he might have been reluctant, Biden not only followed through on his promise in the end, he actually doubled the amount for Pell grant recipients. That is impressive.

Critics claim he is "buying votes." Well, so what? Politicians do that sort of thing all the time. We'll just have to see whether it works or not to judge how effective Biden will be at it. Youth turnout can change an entire election, since normally young voters just don't show up to midterm elections. When they do, they can provide the margin of victory in all sorts of unexpected places -- as they did in 2018. Having that much debt forgiven -- personally by Joe Biden -- would certainly motivate us to vote if we still had student loans. But we'll have to wait and see how it all turns out.

But to us, the really impressive winner this week was whoever is in charge of "The White House" Twitter feed. They headed the Republican hypocrisy off at the pass, in spectacular fashion. By pointing out several Republicans in Congress who were now badmouthing the concept of loan forgiveness as gigantic hypocrites for having their own personal businesses' loans forgiven completely during the pandemic, The White House Twitter feed accomplished something we don't believe has happened until now: a Biden White House tweet made some news.

OK, sure, Biden was elected to be the opposite of Trump -- calm instead of chaos, in other words. But you can take that sort of thing too far, and so far Joe Biden hasn't utilized social media in any noticeable way throughout his entire term in office. What other Biden tweet can you remember? We can't think of any....

So to whatever lowly worker in the White House communications office came up with the brilliant idea of just hitting the Republicans back where they live -- and doing so right away -- we have to say, we were incredibly impressed. The midterm campaign is underway. Biden's legacy is on the line. He's the leader of the Democratic Party, and as leader he should be showing everyone else how to counter GOP nonsense.

The White House Twitter feed did precisely that, this week. The guy or gal who came up with the idea truly deserves a raise, if not a promotion. This is how to fight back, folks! Let's hope we see a lot more of these snarky tweets emanating from Biden's White House in the very near future.

[Congratulate President Joe Biden (and by extension, the author of those tweets) on his White House contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





Paul Pelosi was sentenced for his drunk driving this week, but we don't count him as a public figure, so we consider him ineligible for any awards.

Instead, our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week is California Governor Gavin Newsom.

This week, Newsom vetoed a bill that would have allowed a few California cities to open supervised drug-injection sites, where addicts could safely inject illegal drugs. This was passed to try to alleviate the rising incidence of fatal overdoses. It would save lives, in other words.

Newsom professed to be supportive of the concept, but had worries that the law wasn't written well enough and needed "strong, engaged local leadership and well-documented, vetted, and thoughtful operational and sustainability plans." He told his head of health and human services to work with the cities to try to come up with such plans.

The bill doesn't have enough votes to overcome Newsom's veto, so the pilot project it approved is going to have to wait. But we have to agree that there were other calculations to Newsom's decision:



This unexpected timidity runs counter to his political persona -- that of a guy who does get out in front of contentious issues (like marijuana legalization and gay marriage, both of which he championed very early on). So it was indeed disappointing to see Newsom veto a project that he personally seems to support -- for what seem like entirely political reasons. Maybe he was right to, maybe it will help boost him if he does run for president one day (which he is itching to). But for now, Gavin Newsom is our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

[Contact California Governor Gavin Newsom on his official contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 674 (8/26/22)

Kind of a mixed and disjointed bag this week, we fully admit.

We even have a bonus talking point for you -- one we considered just a wee bit too snarky for Democratic politicians to actually use, but one that we found hilarious nonetheless. We can't claim credit for it, we saw it somewhere on Twitter or other social media, so we are unable to provide the credit it is due. But it is the funniest takedown of all the high-and-mighty Republicans trying to stoke resentment against all the students who will have loans forgiven:



As we said, the danger in actually using it for a politician is that you're equating Joe Biden with Jesus, which we find a bridge too far (to say the least), but we did have to share it just because it was so funny.

Amusements aside, though, let's get on with this week's talking points.



Biden's reasoning

Let's start with President Biden's own words, from his student loan announcement, because Biden sums up exactly what he's trying to accomplish rather well:





No apology

Biden was asked about Republican resistance to his plan, and he didn't point out all the PPP loans Republican politicians had had forgiven, he took a different tack that was just as effective. He made it a question of the priorities of the two parties.





All the time

One Washington Post column summed up the counterargument brilliantly. Because this truly is no different than the federal government spending other money in the past (emphasis in original).





We need Democrats to be in charge

A state senator in Colorado, Kevin Priola, made some news this week by switching his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. He released a letter explaining why he was making this big change, and it was an absolute condemnation of today's Republican Party:





Who will speak for the trees? Well, maybe not Herschel....

Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker just keeps on saying bizarre things. Here he is trying to respond to the Inflation Reduction Act, proving once again he should never be sent to Washington by the voters of Georgia:





More voter fraud!

Hoo boy.

"The Republican nominee for state attorney general in Arizona -- the top legal office in the state -- seems to have admitted online that he committed voter fraud years ago. He's running now on the same whackadoodle 'rigged 2020 election' claims as Donald Trump, but it seems he himself knows a thing or two about voter fraud. When he was a teenager and not old enough to vote himself, he bragged online about changing his mother's absentee ballot to vote for a different candidate. Which is completely illegal. And now he wants to be the top lawyer in the state? It seems once again that if Republicans truly wanted to find voter fraud, all they'd have to do is look in the mirror."



Speaking of deadbeats...

This (obviously) plays into the whole student loan debate, in a big way.

"So Republicans are now telling everyone sanctimoniously that 'debts should be paid' and not forgiven. I wonder what Donald Trump has to say on that subject -- you know, the guy who serially declared bankruptcy to weasel out of all of his debts? Why is it peachy-fine for Trump to wipe out his debts using the courts but somehow some giant moral failing if Joe Biden forgives student loans for tens of millions of Americans? Trump has never paid his way in life -- ever. Ask anyone who has contracted for him, or done legal work for him, they'll tell you. In fact, right this very minute the company that hosts Trump's egocentric 'Truth Social' site is trying to get Trump to pay what he owes for the webhosting services. It seems Trump made a few monthly payments, but hasn't paid a dime since March. March! If I were in charge of that company, I'd dump Trump as fast as possible, because you just know they're never going to get the money they're owed. 'Debts should be paid'? Are you serious? You really want to try walking that high moral road when the leader of your party is the world's biggest deadbeat?"




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

August 20, 2022

Friday Talking Points -- Banana Republicans

President Joe Biden had a very good week the previous week, and he followed that up with another good week this week as well. A bill which is going to become one of the signature pieces of his presidential legacy passed the House last Friday, and on Tuesday Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Perhaps we should call it "Biden's Obamacare," because it really is just as impressive a piece of legislation.

We'll get to touting the individual reforms and new projects this bill will usher in later, though (down in the talking points), so we're only going to briefly mention it here at the top of the column. Biden -- wisely -- has scheduled a much bigger celebration of the new law for early September, after Labor Day and when more people are paying attention to the midterm campaign, so he'll have one more victory lap to take soon.

The news from Trumpland continued to spew forth this week, both fast and furious (in both senses of that word) -- so much news that we're going to just quickly run down this week's developments in shorthand fashion here:

House Democrats have sent a letter to the National Intelligence Director, asking for a briefing on just how serious the classified information Donald Trump was illegally hording actually was. This will be a closed-door briefing, but this would also be a critical piece of information for the public to learn (even in the abstract): how serious a breach in national security was this?

Trump is reportedly thinking about releasing the security footage from his golf resort during the execution of the search warrant, which may show F.B.I. agents' faces (and thus put them in danger from the violent wing of the MAGA crowd). So far, he has not done so, although Breitbart has already released a copy of the search warrant which showed agents' names (which had been redacted in the official public release of the document). Nothing like putting federal agents' lives at risk to gain a few political points, eh?

In related news, the F.B.I. and Department of Justice issued a joint intelligence bulletin warning of "violent threats" against federal law enforcement officers, courts, and government personnel and facilities.

Many Republicans who hit Democrats hard for the "defund the police" idea have now fully embraced it as their own: "defund the F.B.I." merchandise is being peddled by some Republicans.

That's not far enough for one GOP House candidate, though, who suggested this week that Attorney General Merrick Garland "should not only be impeached, he probably should be executed." So much for the "law and order" party, eh?

A judge signalled he was inclined to release at least a redacted version of the affidavit that accompanied the search warrant, and has given the Department of Justice one week to come up with proposed redactions (which could be so extensive that little of the document is actually released).

Because he is Donald Trump, "there's a video for that." From his initial run for the presidency, a clip of Trump stating: "In my administration, I'm going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information" made the rounds this week. Promise made, promise broken! Lock him up!

One as-yet-unnamed Trump lawyer may be on the legal hot seat for signing a document stating that there were no more classified documents at Trump's golf resort... you know, except for those 27 boxes of stuff the F.B.I. hauled away.

Trump has, of course, continued to whine about everything and everybody being so mean to him, which has (also of course) meant his rubes have dug deep and are sending him millions of dollars once again on a daily basis. Hey, grifters gotta grift, right?

Trump floated a magic "get out of jail free" excuse for him having classified documents -- that he had some sort of "standing order" that anything he took outside the Oval Office was (hey presto!) somehow magically "declassified" just by him doing so.

Here is how a few Trump White House veterans reacted to such a farfetched notion:

On another legal front, Rudy Giuliani finally showed up to testify in Georgia, after claiming his health was simply too frail to fly down there. The judge rebuked Rudy, gave him one week to get his sorry butt down there, and Rudy meekly did so. Rudy, who is now an actual target of the investigation, reportedly testified for six hours before the grand jury looking into all the election tampering which happened in the state after the 2020 election, but no word has yet leaked on what he actually said. Oh, and then Rudy flew home to New York, because he lies like a rug.

More bad legal news for Trump -- Alan Weisselberg pleaded guilty to over a dozen felonies this week, all committed while he was the chief financial officer of the Trump organization. He reached a plea deal which will force him to testify against the Trump Organization in an upcoming trial, but he will not have to testify against Donald Trump himself. Just chalk him up as another criminal from Trump's inner circle.

Trump's not doing so well in the right-wing media echo chamber this week, as first Laura Ingraham speculated that the GOP voters (not her of course, just a hypothetical situation, you understand...) might be ready to move on: "The country I think is so exhausted. They're exhausted by the battle, the constant battle, that they may believe that, well, maybe it's time to turn the page if we can get someone who has all Trump's policies, who's not Trump."

If that was heresy in Trumpworld, this was outright blasphemy: Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, didn't mince words and just went ahead and dumped Trump, while throwing his weight behind Ron DeSantis: "We have someone who is better than Trump. Way better than Trump."

And one final media footnote to the Trumpian news this week:



Got that? "Our agent Trump." There it is, straight from the mouth of a Putin propagandist. Solovyov later wondered what would happen if Trump were to be declared a Russian spy: "Will we try to exchange him to bring Trump to Russia? Will they include Trump on the prisoner exchange list?"

You just can't make this stuff up, folks.

We're almost to the end of the primary season, and the outcome of this week's big race surprised exactly no one -- Liz Cheney went down in flames and got successfully primaried by a Trumpian acolyte. She read a fiery concession speech that instantly got everyone wondering if she's going to mount a 2024 run for the presidency.

There was some other big primary news as well, but we're going to save it for the awards portion of the show.

We'll finish with a hodgepodge of amusing and interesting stories that caught our eye this week, just for your amusement.

A Trump-endorsed (naturally) candidate for the House apparently is too stupid to understand a basic American political metaphor, which he proved when he just went ahead and opened his mouth and removed all doubt (while speaking about the search warrant served on Trump):



Hoo boy. Stupid is as stupid does... I guess you could call him a "banana Republican"?

If you want to contribute to the Ukrainian war effort, there's now a novel way to do so -- sponsor a bomb or artillery shell and you can get your own personalized message written on it before it is launched against the invading Russian army. Multiple munitions are available, with a sliding price scale!

Two cringeworthy items were worth mentioning, for different reasons. Jared Kushner's book got an unbelievably bad review ("Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one" ) in the New York Times this week. Here's the best paragraph:



Ouch. Tell us how you really felt!

And ex-jailbird (and ex-Illinois governor) Rod "Blaggy" Blagojevich is apparently having fun these days being an Elvis imitator. You just cannot make this stuff up, folks! Here is a thankfully-short clip of him singing "Jailhouse Rock" (because, of course), which is about as good as listening to drunken karaoke in a bowling alley's bar about 15 minutes before closing time (in other words: you have been warned!).

Much more enjoyable this week was watching Al Franken guest host for Jimmy Kimmel this week. The video of his whole monologue is worth watching (if you like Franken's style of humor), but here's a link that is cued up to perhaps the funniest part of it.

And finally, we are happy to report we are able to end on a feel-good story this week. This seems appropriate after listening to Trump whine about all the "witch hunts" against him over the past few years (which have actually caught a number of criminals -- here's a handy scorecard, in case you've forgotten).

A wonderful article by former eighth-grade student Sarina E. Miller appeared in the Washington Post today, in which the author recounts her North Andover Middle School civics class completing a project to get an official pardon from the state of Massachusetts for the only remaining unpardoned woman convicted of being an actual witch, in Salem, over 300 years ago. She wasn't executed for her "crime," which is why she wasn't included in a previously-successful attempt to exonerate all the legal records. So the eighth-graders sprang into action, stuck with it through bureaucratic swamps, persevered, and finally secured a full pardon for Elizabeth Johnson Junior, the last of the "Salem witches."

If that's not a feel-good story, we don't know what is. Here are the final two paragraphs from the article:







We have two standout candidates for the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award and we found we could not choose between them because we felt that both of their accomplishments were far too impressive for just an Honorable Mention.

The first one is highly amusing, which is pretty much par for the course in the campaign of John Fetterman. He's the Pennsylvania Democrat running for the Senate against Mehmet "Dr." Oz, an interloper from New Jersey. And Fetterman didn't just get crude in attacking Oz, he went full crudités.

Way back in April, someone on Team Oz decided it'd be a good idea to have the candidate do a "relatable" campaign ad. The ostensible purpose was to hit Joe Biden (and by extension Fetterman) on inflation and high prices, by showing Oz on an obviously-staged-and-bogus shopping trip for his wife. The only problem? Oz turned in the most cringeworthy "rich guy pretending to be an Average Joe without possessing a single clue of what that actually means" performance since Mitt Romney ran for president. Seriously, it was that bad.

In the first place, it is painfully obvious that Oz had never before been in a Pennsylvania supermarket (it's doubtful how long it has been since he ever set foot in any grocery store, in fact, which is understandable because most multimillionaires who live in palatial mansions rarely do their own shopping chores). He mangles the name of the store, mashing up two popular Pennsylvania markets (Wegmans and Redner's) and somehow coming up with "Wegner's." As Rick Perry might have said: "Oops."

Oz, determined to be average and normal (in order to relate to all the Joe and Jane Sixpacks in Pennsylvania), starts off by saying he's casually doing "some grocery shopping" for his wife... for crudités. He picks up some broccoli, asparagus, carrots, salsa, and guacamole, and pretends to be aghast at the prices. He ends, bizarrely, with: "Guys, that's $20 for crudités and that doesn't include the tequila." Um... tequila? Since when is tequila a required part of a crudités platter? Oz doesn't say. Also, as many have pointed out, you can't even buy liquor in a Pennsylvania grocery store -- something Oz would know, if he actually (1) lived in the state, and (2) had ever set foot in a grocery store with "vodka" on his list.

For some reason, even though this ad dropped back in April, it went viral this week. Fetterman gleefully mocked the cluelessness of his opponent in several tweets: "In PA we call this a veggie tray." He helpfully showed what a Pennsylvanian would pick up if one were actually shopping for such a thing. He then proceeded to raise over half a million bucks off the fiasco, in part by selling stickers from "Wegners" which read: "Let Them Eat Crudités."

The internet, of course, had an absolute field day. Best comment we saw: "Clean up on Aisle Oz." But, hands down, the funniest reaction was from a Chicago comedian, who posted a video of herself dressed in a grocery-store employee smock, pretending to be helpful to a bizarre customer while the Oz soundtrack runs in the background (example: "Do you need a basket or anything?" ). It is absolutely hilarious, and we highly recommend you take a look.

There's already a fake Twitter account for the non-existent "Wegners" which proudly proclaimed the comic was their new "Employee of the Month."

Sure, the whole thing was funny. As we said, Oz exhibits a truly Romneyesque level of being out-of-touch with average voters' lives. But the whole point is that Fetterman saw the weakness and then just hammered it home, with glee. This is not just a Democrat having fun on the campaign trail and bringing the fight directly to a clueless Republican, this is an effective Democrat.

Oz is dropping like a stone in the polls, every time Fetterman points out what a Hollywood carpetbagger he truly is. In fact, the polling in the Keystone State is so good now -- Fetterman is consistently and healthily up by double digits -- that the pundits are moving this Senate race from "tossup" to "leans Democrat." This seat would be a pickup for Democrats, which is why it is so important. Republicans are even pulling millions of dollars of ad support out of Pennsylvania, because they're already realizing it is a doomed effort to try to get this television snake-oil salesman over the finish line.

And that is impressive. Which is why John Fetterman is one of our winners of the MIDOTW award this week. We look forward to him taking his seat in the Senate, and we look forward to him schooling other Democrats on how to effectively campaign in a swing state.

Our other winner this week is a Native Alaskan (Yup'ik) woman who turned in a rather astounding performance in two races for the same House seat this week. Mary Peltola was running against Sarah Palin, and she beat her. At least, for now.

We wrote about this extensively both before the primary election took place and afterwards (because we were so stunned at the outcome), but the upshot is that Peltola got more votes than two prominent Republicans in two separate races. One is for the full term of the House seat (which is Alaska's only seat, it is a statewide "at-large" race), and one is to fill in the final months of this year's term, since the guy who had held this office for 50 years suddenly died earlier in the year.

In the primary, Peltola was in first place, which guarantees her a spot on the November ballot (with the other top-4 finishers). But in the special election (which had had a primary earlier), Peltola was up 6 points on Palin and the final outcome (under Alaska's new ranked-choice voting system) will depend on the second choices of the voters who voted for the third-place guy (another Republican).

Peltola will need roughly one-third of the votes that went for the non-Palin Republican, so it is anyone's guess what is going to happen. Will GOP voters who couldn't stand to vote for Palin actually choose a Democrat over a Palin vote? Or will they put party first and give Sarah their second-choice vote? We won't know until next week at the earliest, and perhaps not until the end of the month.

But the stunning (and more than a little impressive) thing is that a Democrat has a chance of winning the race. Against Sarah Palin, no less.

The national political media were rather slow on picking up on this astonishing result (they were more interested in Liz Cheney and Lisa Murkowski), but they did finally get around to spotlighting Peltola.

We certainly don't know how the race will turn out, but while we are indeed hoping Peltola pulls off this stunning upset, the fact that she made it this far -- out in front of two Republicans at this writing -- is beyond impressive. So we had to award her a Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award too. Well done, to both Peltola and Fetterman!

[Congratulate Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman on his official state contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts. Mary Peltola is a private citizen running for office, and it is our standing policy not to link to campaign websites, so you'll have to search her contact information out for yourself.]





We had one candidate for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award who is a repeat offender here, but even the news that Senator Kyrsten Sinema has been (of course!) raking in donations from hedge fund managers and their ilk, all of whom Sinema went to bat for in the negotiations over the Inflation Reduction Act. Sinema stood tall for the right of these Wall Street zillionaires to pay far less in taxes than every normal worker in America, because Sinema simply hasn't met a wealthy donor she won't fight hard for. And fighting that fight pays off -- to the tune of a cool million bucks in the past year alone.

But, we have to admit, this kind of falls under the heading of: "This just in: water is wet!" news -- not exactly shocking and unexpected, in other words. So we'll just hand her another (Dis-)Honorable Mention award and move on.

Instead, we had a much clearer choice, this week. Here are the disgraceful details:



We hate to pre-judge, but a "28-count indictment" sounds like a slam-dunk type of case. And these sorts of things tend to leave a damning paper trail behind them. So while Cox is still "innocent until proven guilty," we have to say that we're not exactly expecting him to be fully exonerated.

Which is why we're adding to the woes of T.J. Cox this week, by piling on with a Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.

[T.J. Cox is a private citizen, and we do not provide contact information for such persons as a rule, so you'll have to search his info out for yourself if you'd like to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 673 (8/19/22)

Today's talking points section is in two parts. The first, we will fully admit, is no more than stenography. Not even, it is more accurately "copy-and-paste-ography," since we didn't even have to type it all out ourselves. It all comes from an interview Politico held with White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who lays out President Biden's record with admirable clarity and brevity. These are the talking points Democrats should be echoing out on the campaign trail, and we found there was just no way we could compete with such masterful wordsmithing. So we present three excerpts from the interview from Klain to get us started this week.

One quote from Klain that wasn't so applicable as a Democratic candidate's talking point but is well worth including here was his response when asked about Biden's public profile:



Truer words were never spoken. But moving right along....

The second segment today consists of four talking points constructed around polling. Democrats need to point out to the public -- and almost more importantly, the national political media -- that the all of the stuff in the Inflation Reduction Act is wildly popular with the American people, and that Republicans voted against all of it. This all came from one tweet which gave a great rundown on the approval gaps when all these issues were polled, we should mention (to give credit where it is due). Politico also has the full breakdown of the poll responses, for those interested in the raw data.



A record to take to the American people

Klain begins by name-checking some impressive former presidents, and measuring up what Biden has accomplished by the metric of what they managed to get done:





What have Democrats done? Plenty.

Tell the people what Democrats have accomplished by passing this law.





Republicans fought it all

Draw the distinction as clearly as possible: Republicans fought us on all of this stuff.





Net support gap

Lean heavily on these numbers. Repeat them so many times that the media is finally forced to admit how popular all this stuff truly is.

"A recent poll asked respondents about the specific items in the Inflation Reduction Act, whether people supported such plans or not. Not surprisingly, all the things which the political pundits love to lump into the 'extreme lefty' or 'radical progressive' pile are actually more mainstream than just about any other issue you can name. Here are some of the numbers just on the medical reforms in the bill. Placing caps on prescription drug price increases? Over three-fourths of the American public -- 76 percent -- support that idea. Only 13 percent oppose it. The net support for it is a whopping 63 percentage points. Allowing Medicare to negotiate some prescription drug prices? That clocked in at 73 percent support, 13 percent opposed -- a net of 60 points in support. Limiting annual out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries to only $2,000 per year? A full 72 percent of the public supports that concept, which will positively impact millions of seniors' budgets, while only 15 percent oppose it, for a net support of 57 percent. When issues poll this stratospherically-high, it is absolutely wrong to label them 'extreme' or 'radical' -- you simply cannot get more mainstream than these numbers, folks."



Strong support for climate agenda too

These numbers aren't quite as high as the healthcare reforms, which is why we led with them first. But they're still pretty impressive.

"President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act which contains the biggest investment in attacking climate change in American history. We can all see the changes already happening around us on a yearly basis -- wildfires, floods, powerful hurricanes -- and it is a relief to finally see the federal government take meaningful action. Two questions were asked on that poll about the climate provisions, and both were also overwhelmingly popular. Providing $60 billion in incentives for clean energy manufacturing in the U.S. polled at 59 percent support to only 28 percent opposition -- a net support of 31 points. Investing $369 billion in climate and energy programs over the next 10 years got 54 percent support and 33 percent opposition, a net support of 21 points. It is not just young voters who care about the future of our planet. A lot of voters have been waiting for something like this to happen for a very long time now, and Democrats delivered."



Make them pay!

Fight the Republican scare tactics they are already attempting.

"Republicans are going around saying Democrats have 'raised everybody's taxes,' which is just so wrong it is laughable. What Democrats did was to tell all the humongous corporations that have enjoyed setting up their operations in America -- while paying zero in taxes each year to support the country's infrastructure, which they benefit heavily from -- that enough is enough! It is time to pay your fair share. You cannot tell the I.R.S. that you somehow made zero profit last year while telling your shareholders you raked in billions any more. From now on, these corporations will have to pay a 15 percent minimum corporate tax rather than exploiting the tax code to bring their taxes down to zero. And you know what? Over six out of ten -- 61 percent -- of the American people support that concept. Only 24 percent disagree. No corporation that makes billions in profits is going to get off scot-free ever again, because Democrats stood up to them and told them: 'The free ride is over -- it is time for you to start paying your fair share now.'"



Republicans promise, Democrats deliver

Democrats might as well get some mileage out of this one, since it is one of those issues that Republicans love to make sweeping promises on that they never actually deliver.

"The Inflation Reduction Act is going to reduce the federal budget deficit by $300 billion. Republicans love to run on the issue of tackling the deficit, but whenever they get into power they always fall all over themselves to hand so much in tax giveaways to the wealthy and Wall Street that they wind up blowing up the deficit even further. Democrats are truly the party of fiscal responsibility -- because we don't just make empty promises, we deliver. And you know what? Reducing the deficit by $300 billion is supported by 72 percent of Americans and opposed by only 11 percent. And no Republican voted for it. That's something for the voters to consider in November."




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

August 12, 2022

Friday Talking Points -- Lock Him Up!

The irony is delicious, we cannot deny it. A man who rose to power by leading chants of: "Lock her up!" against his political opponent (for mishandling classified documents -- a man who later signed a law making the offense a felony with up to five years' prison time) is now in the process of being hoist by his own petard. So it's been a rather schadenfreude-y kind of week.

We have to admit we were a little taken aback at what seemed to be an invasion into the regularly-scheduled start of the August "Silly Season" in politics (where Congress scarpers off to sunny shores while political reporters are left scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with something to write about) by a week that seems to have been taken straight from the middle of Donald Trump's presidency and plonked down now, just to liven up August of 2022. Remember those agonizingly-long four years? When one week's news contained so many revelations and outrages that it was just hard to keep up with it all? That's what this week felt like, at least, to us. More than a little déjà-vu-esque in other words.

But we're going to buck all trends and give President Biden some top billing. Because he deserves it much more than his criminally-inclined predecessor, that's for sure.

Biden began the week (which we count from Friday afternoon to Friday afternoon, we should point out) watching major portions of his political agenda pass in one huge budget reconciliation bill through the United States Senate. Because Chuck Schumer refused to allow them to disappear for their August vacation, the opposition didn't even fight all that hard. The bill was debated on Saturday and by Sunday actually got a floor vote (Republicans could have wasted a lot more time, but it was time that would have eaten into their own vacations, so...). It passed 51-50, with all Democrats standing firmly together (including Vice President Kamala Harris, casting yet again the tiebreaking vote), and headed over to the House of Representatives. Nancy Pelosi called the House back from their own vacation (which they had started a week earlier than the Senate) and will be holding a vote on the bill as soon as this afternoon (it may have already even passed by the time you read this). [Editor's note: it did.]

Biden also held two signing ceremonies, for the previously-passed "Chips and Science" bill and for the PACT Act, to help veterans exposed to burn pits get the care they deserve. Midweek, he got a monthly inflation report which showed the rate of inflation (measured year-to-year) had gone down faster than anyone expected, and which also amazingly showed that the month-to-month inflation rate for July was zero percent. Falling gas prices drove much of this, but not all of it. Certain sectors of the economy are indeed cooling off, which is exactly what needs to happen to achieve a "soft landing" that doesn't involve a recession.

The biggest news was the Inflation Reduction Act, though. Because with this passed into law, Democrats have a much better outlook on the midterm elections. Rather than trying to somehow motivate Democratic voters to make it to the polls with nothing more than promises of future good legislation, now they can explicitly make the case: "Promises made, promises kept!" Biden did successfully get the biggest-ever effort to fight climate change through Congress. Democrats are working hard to bring down the obscene prices for prescription drugs. And the price of gas keeps going down, to boot.

All in all -- and setting aside all the melodrama from the other side of the aisle -- that's a pretty good week for President Biden.

But in all honesty, the political week truly began with the news that Donald Trump's golf resort in Florida had been searched by the F.B.I. Trump himself was the bearer of this news -- the F.B.I. bent over backward to be as low-key as possible about the whole thing. But Trump always sees all events through the lens of: "How can I make some money off of this?" so he riled up his base and invited them to send him lots of money to fight off all the imaginary dastardly forces that were, once again, attacking him for no reason.

Salon got this part exactly right:

After the initial search (conducted via a completely legal search warrant signed by a federal magistrate), Republicans dutifully flipped out. Their new political slogan is: "Defund the F.B.I.!" which is a rather amusing turnaround for them. Only a handful of GOP politicians kept their powder dry and took a "let's wait and see what this turns out to be" approach. Chris Christie is the only Republican we heard this week who actually admitted the truth (since he was previously a federal prosecutor, he's well-versed in the legalities and the propriety of what happened). He called the search (even the part about breaking into Trump's safe): "fair game."

His was a lonely voice, however. The rest of the Republican Party absolutely went bonkers. They inched right up to calling for violence against the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice, with some of them blatantly crossing that line or even suggesting what America needed was a "civil war." And then one of the January 6th insurrectionists took them up on their incitement and tried to force his way into a regional F.B.I. office with an assault rifle and a nail gun (to break the bulletproof glass he knew was there). He was later shot and killed by Ohio police. Since then, precious few Republicans have denounced such violence. It's only a matter of time until Trump declares the guy a new martyr for his cause, just like the insurrectionist woman from January 6th who died trying to force her way into the same room where members of the House of Representatives were cowering in fear.

Because that's where we are in politics in America right now. One major political party is openly flirting with fomenting open violence against the federal government in order to cover up crimes committed by their leader. While many rightwingers threw the term around with abandon this week -- to describe a legally-executed search warrant signed off on by a judge -- what the Republicans are doing in a not-so-hidden way would indeed turn this country into a banana republic. A place where brute force is the only thing that mattered in politics.

At the height of all this, Attorney General Merrick Garland called Trump's bluff. Trump always had the power to release the search warrant and the list of items taken on his own, but Garland announced the Justice Department would ask the judge to unseal the warrant and the property list -- unless Trump's lawyers objected. Trump painted himself into a corner and the only ways out were either to admit to the world that he wanted to keep the whole thing secret (to better make money off the suspicion, no doubt), or to acquiesce to releasing what the F.B.I. hauled away in (reports vary) the 10 to 20 boxes they seized and confiscated.

Trump chose the latter, and today it was revealed that he had 11 sets of classified documents -- one of which was classified at the highest level that exists ("Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information" ). Here was one of the earliest reports today:



The Washington Post earlier ran an article stating how serious things could be:



The New York Times also reported this week that Trump had received a subpoena "this spring" for all these documents, and (obviously) had refused to cough them up. Which is why a search was necessary in the first place. Because he was illegally in possession of top secret documents.

There was one amusing side note during the week, as it was reported that the information for the search warrant (and, assumably, that subpoena from back in the spring) came from an inside informant. Someone who knew not only exactly what Trump had in his possession in detail, but someone who also knew exactly where it all could be found. This led to a bout of acute paranoia inside Trump's inner circle. Trump's even afraid that people he meets with are wearing a wire, it now seems. You know, just like a real mob boss.

But the real irony in all of this is that this is all precisely what Trump continually denounced Hillary Clinton for. This was the heart of all those "Lock Her Up!" chants. So whenever the media interviews a Republican denouncing the "raid" on Trump, they should really go back and dig out what that person said back in 2016 about Hillary's emails. Because there's plenty of hypocrisy to mine there.

While they're at it, journalists should also ask a few more tough questions of GOP politicians these days. Because things are getting completely out of hand -- an F.B.I. office was attacked at gunpoint this week. Here are a few Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post came up with:



We have to agree, wholeheartedly. The rightwing fringe is going through exactly the same explosion of calls for violence and civil war that they went through right before January 6th happened. That is happening right now. And Republicans are either ignoring it or openly enabling and supporting it (to some degree or another -- some of them choose their words more carefully than others, we should mention).

They shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. There should be outraged cries for Republican leaders to denounce such violence immediately and unequivocally. The failure to do so is a dereliction of duty, because it allows such sentiments to grow.

This is dangerous stuff, people. So far, only one F.B.I. office was attacked. Let's hope it stays that way.





We've got a couple Honorable Mention awards to hand out before we get to the main one for the week.

The first goes to Letitia James, the prosecutor in New York who finally forced Donald Trump to sit down and answer questions under oath this week. The only question he would answer was what his name was, and then from that point forward -- for hours and hours -- he repeated that he was "taking the Fifth." Reportedly, he used this answer or a variation over 400 times.

This was highly amusing to everyone on the internet who remembered that, as usual with Trump, there was an earlier Trump quote on the same subject: "You see the mob takes the Fifth. If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?" Yet another petard to hoist Trump's oversized hindquarters upon.

Our second Honorable Mention goes to Beto O'Rourke, who during a campaign stop this week was denouncing the Texas gun law that allowed an 18-year-old to buy an AR-15 military rifle and shoot small children at a school, when someone interrupted him with laughter.

Beto's response came straight from the gut, but it also comes with an "if strong language offends you, please skip to the next paragraph" warning. Beto departed from his remarks to denounce the heckler: "It may be funny to you, motherfucker, but it's not funny to me!"

The crowd erupted in cheers. Beto's anger and revulsion worked. And the video clip immediately went viral (8.1 million views and counting...).

But the winner of this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week was President Joe Biden. Even while he was still dealing with a bout of COVID, Biden still had a rather extraordinary week. And it began earlier than usual, as the Senate debated on Saturday and then passed on Sunday the biggest chunk of Biden's political agenda to date. The House will vote on it today and the outcome is certain. The Inflation Reduction Act will be on Biden's desk soon for his signature, capping off a year and a half of his presidential legacy.

Here's how one Washington Post columnist summed it up:



Remarkable indeed, especially when you add in the rest of the week: zero inflation in July, gas prices dipping below $4 a gallon nationwide, and Biden successfully signing two major pieces of legislation: the bill which will boost our competition with China and bring semiconductor manufacturing plants back home, and the PACT Act, to protect veterans exposed to toxic burn pits by giving them the health care they now need. Biden explicitly said it during the signing ceremony: he believes that this is what caused the brain cancer which killed his own son, Beau. So it was a very personal victory for Biden to sign the PACT Act for all the other veterans (and parents) out there.

The bookend to this week will be the House passing the Inflation Reduction Act and putting it on his desk for Biden's signature. All in all, an extraordinarily good week. Which is why we have to say that President Biden was this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

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





There's an argument to be made that Beto O'Rourke also deserves this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, for using that one particular word.

There are, obviously, a whole bunch of other insulting terms he could have substituted. Since we printed the quote unexpurgated, however, we're going to refrain from listing a few choice selections. We're sure you can think a few on your own, right?

But we decided not to give Beto even a (Dis-)Honorable Mention award, because, after all, he was reacting to a man who was laughing at the slaughter of small children in a school. That is pretty heinous. Would we have been able to restrain ourselves if we had been in Beto's position? Probably not. So how can we judge him for his reaction?

So we're going to put the MDDOTW back on the shelf, since we can't come up with any other Democrats who transgressed enough to deserve it this week. If you feel we've missed someone, please feel free to make nominations in the comments, as usual.




Volume 672 (8/12/22)

A rather varied bunch, this week. No real coherent theme, just a mixed bag.



Lock him up!

Too, too funny....

"OK, we're just going to use exactly the same logic and exactly the same respect for due process that Donald Trump and his crowds showed towards Hillary Clinton and her emails. Trump has been caught red-handed with documents with the highest secret classification that exists in his possession. There is no possible justification or excuse for him holding on to a whole bunch of national security secrets as a private citizen. None. And the documents weren't just casually in his possession, they were documents his lawyers have refused to hand over after getting a subpoena for them back in the spring. It's not like Trump or his legal team were taken by surprise by this, in other words. The warrant specifically mentioned possible crimes Trump has committed under the Espionage Act. So what do we say in this circumstance? Well, Trump himself taught it to us all, although we have to change the second word to make it fit -- Lock him up! Lock him up! And throw away the key, while you're at it."



Just look in the toilet

A nice footnote to the week.

"Donald Trump is obviously guilty of breaking the law regarding presidential records and he has been all along. He illegally ripped up too many presidential documents to even count. Some his aides would find later and tape back together so they could go -- as the law dictates -- to the National Archives. But some Trump literally just flushed down the toilet. And we've now even got proof of this, as a New York Times journalist posted this week. You want to see what Trump's level of respect for the law truly is? Just look in the toilet."



$2,000 cap!

This is enormous news, politically, but both the Democrats and the media really need to do a lot better job prioritizing it, when speaking of the Inflation Reduction Act.

"Next year, diabetics on Medicare will only have to pay a maximum of $35 a month for the insulin they need to survive. Soon after that, an even more amazing new policy will start to take effect. No senior on Medicare will ever again have to pay more than $2,000 a year for prescription drugs. That's a hard cap. Think of the savings! Think of the peace of mind millions will now have because they'll know that once they've paid two thousand dollars, that will be it for the year -- no having to budget for thousands and thousands more dollars in drug costs. This is going to be revolutionary folks! And yet, every single Republican voted against that. So every senior in America should really think about this, just before they go to the voting booth this November. Because one party capped drug costs for seniors while the other party fought hard against it."



GOP stripped insulin cap from applying to private insurance

This is truly shameful, but that only works if you point it out.

"Republicans in the Senate were able to remove one portion of the Inflation Reduction Act -- a provision that would have also allowed everyone with private health insurance to also only pay $35 a month for insulin. This would have been a dramatic savings for millions upon millions of Americans. But Republicans shot it down. So to every diabetic in America who isn't on Medicare yet -- when the new $35-a-month cap begins next year, you won't be covered, sorry. Democrats tried to get it included, but Republicans stripped it out. So please blame them for all the money you pay each and every month above $35. We tried, but Republicans insisted that you pay exactly the same exorbitant prices you are now paying."



They want it all to be a political football

This is going to work best up in Wisconsin, but "guilt by association" can work to some degree with all Republicans.

"Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin actually came out and admitted what the Republicans really want to do, not just to Medicare but also to everyone's Social Security. They want to force Congress to debate the entire program's existence each and every year. They want your retirement money to be a giant political football. Republicans aren't content with occasionally stopping Social Security checks from going out with their government shutdowns, they want to be able to actually slash the amount you get in that check each and every year. Democrats fight for Social Security and Medicare. Republicans want to abolish both -- just as they always have, ever since the programs began."



The price red states will pay

This would have been a much bigger story this week, if Donald Trump had never decided to use the F.B.I. search of his property as a fundraising device.

"Indiana just passed the first post-Dobbs abortion ban, and it's about as Draconian as you can imagine. But an interesting thing happened after they did. One of the state's largest employers, Eli Lilly, announced that the company would be looking to expand its workforce outside of Indiana. Because it's a lot harder to convince new workers to join your company when it is in a state that is moving backwards on human rights. Red states are already having a tough time -- understandably -- getting OB/GYN doctors to work there, and college students are refusing to even consider attending colleges in red states. There will be an economic price for attacking women's freedoms, mark my words. Giant corporations have loved setting up in red states because of their anti-Union laws and cheap labor, but there's a price to be paid for doing so. So now more than one of them is going to have to rethink that calculation, and the red states might just wind up paying a big economic price that they didn't expect."



Exhibit A: Tim Scott

Hoo boy.

"Republican Senator Tim Scott just showed precisely why ignorant and untrained men who have no idea what they are talking about should not be the ones in charge of women's rights, women's freedoms, or women's health care, period. He warned, in a fundraising letter, that if Democrats held the Senate in the midterms all sorts of dire things would happen, including 'abortions up to 52 weeks.' Um... human pregnancies only actually last nine months. Call it 40 weeks. When asked about this idiocy while being interviewed, Scott tried to throw as much sand in the issue as possible but could not come up with any answer (he really should have just admitted the truth: 'I am completely ignorant about such things, as you can see') as to what exactly he was even talking about from week 41 through week 52. Once again, this is precisely why men with no medical training -- or even common sense -- should never, ever be in charge of making a decision which belongs between a woman and her properly-trained doctor. Ladies and gentleman, I give you Exhibit A: Tim Scott."




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

August 5, 2022

Friday Talking Points -- The Midterm Ground Shifts In Two Big Ways

There were two major events in politics this week which will have a profound effect on the upcoming midterm campaigns. The first was the stunning victory in the Kansas primary of the anti-forced-birth position on an abortion referendum -- which passed with a jaw-dropping 59-41 percent margin in a very red state. The second was Senate Democrats finally achieving unity by all agreeing to the "Inflation Reduction Act" budget reconciliation bill. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has refused to let the Senate begin their month-long August vacation and is planning the first vote on the bill tomorrow, with all the other arcane floor events to follow, so the final passage could come early next week.

Both of these events will resonate throughout the campaign and upcoming elections, but at this point nobody really knows how big a factor either will actually be. Passing the reconciliation bill will mean that Democrats can now tout a rather impressive list of accomplishments they have been able to rack up during their time in power in Congress, which will now include: "capping Medicare drug costs for seniors at $2,000 per year," "allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices with the big prescription drug corporations to finally start to bring the cost of prescriptions down," "finally making gigantic corporations pay a minimum tax so we can stop hearing about Amazon or any other big company paying zero taxes each year," and "making the biggest commitment to fight climate change ever made." All of these are wildly popular with the public, and all of them are impressive achievements to brag about. And that's just from the new reconciliation bill alone -- there are plenty of other wins Democrats have put on the board since Joe Biden was sworn in as president.

The abortion issue is likely to resonate more with the voters, however, and the Kansas vote already has Republicans running scared. It's easy to see why. The New York Times ran the data to figure out how the rest of the country would vote, if the demographic trends from the Kansas vote were replicated in each state across the country. They found that nationwide, a whopping 65 percent of voters would vote a referendum down that was intended to deny women reproductive rights. The state-level data was even more unforgiving to the absolutist position many Republican politicians have been taking -- such a referendum would fail in 43 out of 50 states. The only states where a majority of voters would back a forced-birth ballot initiative are: Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming. If this analysis played out, a whole lot of deep-red states would actually vote such a measure down, though, including: Idaho, South Carolina, West Virginia, and even Texas. That is why Republicans are hastily rethinking the advisability of taking the hardest line on abortion laws. Again: the measure in Kansas was voted down by 59 percent of a very red electorate.

It wasn't just that Democrats turned out in a primary that usually only sees mostly Republicans voting. There weren't any big races on the Democratic Party ballot -- the sitting Democratic governor waltzed into her re-nomination without a serious challenger. And Kansas has a closed primary system, meaning that independent voters normally have nothing to vote for in the primaries -- since they have no party affiliation, there are no party nomination contests for them to vote on. And there are more independent voters (29 percent of registered voters) than there are Democrats (26 percent) in the state. Independents were allowed to vote this year, but the only thing on their ballot was the referendum. And they showed up in far larger numbers than usual. But even with all that, the truly important thing is that the Republican vote against the referendum was also a lot higher than anyone expected -- rough figures seem to indicate that around one-fifth of Republican voters voted "No." So Republicans can't even count on their base on the issue, they can't count on independents, and the Democrats are absolutely fired up over the issue.

Which is why some Republicans have now started to back away from the absolutist positions they very recently were espousing:

GOP consultants are now advising that Republican candidates somehow counter the fully-correct impression that their party is extremist, the article goes on to say:



That last bit is rather amusing, since Republicans are almost universally against paying one thin dime for the care of women during and after pregnancy, and plenty of Republicans are for banning exceptions for rape or incest. In other words, their only strategy is to lie, lie big, and hope no one notices. Which is exactly what they tried in Kansas, as a matter of fact. Text messages were sent out just before the vote which (falsely) stated that: "Voting YES on the Amendment will give women a choice. Vote YES to protect women's health." In fact, the opposite was true. And the voters were not fooled.

On the other side of the issue, voters are angry. And not just Democratic voters. The article also points out:



Got that? "Real passion flares." And that's just with swing voters. Democrats are even more enraged. This could wind up being the key to motivating Democratic voters to actually turn out in November, because it will be the first time (for everyone outside of Kansas) that they will be able to register their disapproval of the Supreme Court's action. It will specifically motivate young voters -- a group notorious for seldom showing up in midterm elections. And it will also enormously help Democrats continue to siphon voters (especially, but not limited to, women voters) away from voting Republicans in the suburbs. Suburban moms are not exactly happy that their daughters might enjoy fewer rights than they did, and that's putting it mildly.

This is why Republicans are so frightened. Here were the statements from the two Republican Kansas senators, after the primary votes were counted:



Some Republicans are refusing to face this reality, and instead are trying to spin the Kansas results as some sort of win for them. But smart Republicans are reading the Jayhawk tea leaves and realizing that now the onus is on them to accurately define what it means to be (as they like to put it) "pro-life." Does their fealty to the fetus mean that the life of the mother is secondary, if there is medical risk? Does it mean fatherhood rights for rapists? Does it mean a young preteen raped by a relative will be forced to carry her baby to term? Does it mean a pregnant woman can claim the fetus on her taxes as a dependent (which, in Georgia, it now does)? There are all sorts of legal implications that have barely been touched upon yet since the Supreme Court threw the question out into the wilds of state legislatures, and Republicans now are going to have to answer for the outcome of their Draconian forced-birth laws. Some of which will be tragic and revolting to the average voter (like forcing a 10-year-old rape victim to give birth).

This is a winning issue for Democrats for two reasons. The first is that the public is already on their side. Even in Kansas. The second is that aforementioned "passion" that the issue raises with voters. This is real, although until this week it had flown beneath most of the media's radar. People are angry about losing the protections of Roe. They are motivated to show this anger in the voting booth. And it has fast become an issue that supersedes all other political issues for a growing share of the electorate. A lot of "single-issue voters" will be voting in November, to put it another way. Many Democrats running for office are already putting it front and center in their campaigns, and this trend will likely quickly grow after the stunning Kansas results. Republicans trying to get elected to swing House districts are already backpedalling and in a defensive crouch. Because even if they swore they were moderate and favored rape and incest exceptions, all a Democrat has to point out is that if the Republicans take control of Congress, they will pass a nationwide abortion ban which would end abortion rights even in blue states. This irrefutable charge is why Republicans are in a defensive crouch.

The political landscape was already getting better for Democrats, as Republican voters have nominated some awfully weak Senate candidates in more than one battleground state, and tapping into that passion on the abortion issue is only going to increase this trend. Which is very good news indeed.

Other good news that will wind up helping Democrats: President Biden was right -- we are not in a recession, as the 528,000 new jobs added last month proved. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, which is just one-tenth of a percent off the all-time record low (set right before the COVID-19 pandemic began). And, best of all, gas prices have now fallen more than 90 cents from the peak they hit at the beginning of the summer. And with crude oil prices continuing to drop, the price at the pump should continue to fall. It could slip below a nationwide average of $4 a gallon next week, and the majority of gas stations across the country are selling gas for cheaper than that already. This should also cause the inflation numbers to start coming down, but we won't know that until later in the month.

Let's just quickly run down all the other political news of the week before we get to the awards, shall we?

In foreign policy news, the Senate approved the expansion of NATO to Sweden and Finland, in response to Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine. The vote was almost unanimous, but Rand Paul (a foreign policy crank and isolationist) voted "Present," and Josh Hawley (who is just a garden-variety schmuck) voted "No."

The man who might best be described as "Osama Bin Laden's partner in crime (and terrorism)" -- Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the co-founder of Al Qaeda -- was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan. Even Republicans had to grudgingly offer up some praise for President Biden's approval of this strike (which was so amazingly precise and limited it didn't even kill anyone else in the house).

Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, becoming the first speaker of the House to do so in a quarter-century (Newt Gingrich was the last one to do so). She wrote an article for the Washington Post explaining her reasons for her visit, since she faced a whole lot of pearl-clutching inside the Beltway over her trip.

The ultra-conservative group CPAC had an Eastern European racist autocrat speak at their recent convention, shortly after he had given a speech railing against Europe becoming "mixed race." One of his own advisors quit in protest of this speech, quite accurately calling it "pure Nazi," but CPAC was just fine having him speak to their gathering.

Speaking of odious speech, Alex Jones just got shamed in court, committed obvious perjury multiple times, and learned while testifying that his lawyers had inadvertently given the plaintiffs' lawyers the entire record of everything on his phone for the past two years. This was before the jury came back with a $4 million dollar decision against him for his vicious slander of the parents of the small children killed in the Sandy Hook school massacre. Jones made a lot of money convincing people that the whole incident was somehow a hoax, and he is finally having to make restitution for his vile lies. And the punitive damages part of the trial is yet to come, so he could wind up paying a lot more than just $4 million. [Breaking news: the punitive award is now in, and Jones will have to pay an additional $45 million.]

Oh, and the House Select Committee on January 6th is now interested in seeing all those texts and other phone data, which the plaintiffs' lawyer seems happy to provide to them, so there's that to look forward to as well.

Speaking of phones, it was revealed this week that top Pentagon officials also had their phone data wiped just after the January 6th insurrection attempt. Gee, it's starting to look like a giant cover-up! Who ever could have guessed?

And to end on a highly amusing note, the satirist-in-residence at the Washington Post is back on the job after her maternity leave, and has resumed cranking out hilarious copy once again. This week she wrote about Andrew Yang's new third party, "Forward," and absolutely skewered him for the vacuity of his announcement. One sample line: "Instead of a specific party, we are just the principle of a party. We are not a party of ideas; we are the idea of a party." The whole thing is well worth reading, if you need a laugh this week....





We're not entire sure he qualifies for this award, since he was acting in a truly nonpartisan manner, but we find that we do not care -- we are going to award the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week to Jon Stewart. After all, we went ahead and awarded him an Honorable Mention last week, right?

Last week, we honored Stewart for his valiant efforts to pass a bill that would have automatically helped veterans who had become sick after being exposed to the notorious toxic "burn pits" in Afghanistan and Iraq. We also honored him for his scathingly righteous anger directed at the Republican senators who had decided to play politics with veterans' lives. But even we never expected Stewart to be this effective.

Early this week, the Republicans caved. They realized, after getting beaten up on television by Stewart over and over again (on any show that would have him, which was quite a few of them) for their disgraceful behavior. So they stopped their pathetically weak attempts at lying about what was in the bill (that they had previously voted for) and threw in the towel. After an amendment from Senator Pat Toomey failed (an amendment which was ostensibly designed to "fix" the non-existent problem with the bill), Republicans voted en masse to support veterans after all. The vote was 86-11, which is what it should have been a week earlier, when 25 Republicans switched their votes to "No."

As we wrote earlier this week, Stewart did the seemingly-impossible in today's political word: he successfully shamed Republican politicians. This was astounding, because the entire Republican Party in the Trumpian era seems to have moved to a place where they are absolutely beyond shame. Stewart showed that this wasn't quite true, especially when the lives of veterans were the core issue -- an issue it is very hard to stake out a political position against.

Since the bill had already passed the House, it went straight to President Biden's desk after the Senate passed it. To change the official title would have required another vote in the House, but at least informally, this law should now rightfully be called: "The Jon Stewart's Righteous Anger Act," or something similar.

For effecting this stunning turnaround, for actually proving that shame can still work against some Republicans, for having no political weapon at all but his righteous scorn (which he used masterfully), and for all the veterans' lives that will be improved as a direct result, Jon Stewart is truly the only possible choice for the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award this week.

[John Stewart is technically a private citizen, and it is our standing policy not to provide contact information for such persons, so you'll have to look his contact info up yourself if you'd like to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





Senator Kyrsten Sinema is currently being lauded, after she demanded (and got) her pound of flesh from the deal Joe Manchin had previously struck with Chuck Schumer on the Inflation Reduction Act bill. But there's really nothing praiseworthy about her performance.

What it was all about (as usual, for Sinema) was two things: ego and money. She was reportedly miffed that she hadn't been included in the Manchin/Schumer negotiations. After all, she is just as capable as Manchin of shooting down most of Joe Biden's (and all the rest of the Democratic Party's) agenda, right? To rectify this snub, she forced a negotiation of her own.

That's the ego part. The money part is what she fought for in this negotiation. She killed a proposal to reduce (not even to eliminate!) the gigantic loophole that hedge fund managers use to pay roughly half the income tax rate that any regular employee of any business anywhere pays. This was unthinkable to Sinema, who has sworn to uphold all the Trump tax cuts -- giant loopholes and all! -- and not budge an inch on any income tax changes to even the wealthiest of the wealthy. She also fought for an as-yet-unspecified change to the 15 percent corporate minimum tax that Manchin and Schumer agreed to. Manchin actually feels strongly about this, and he expressed confusion as to why Sinema would be against making gigantic corporations pay at least something towards their fair share of the tax burden. But that didn't stop Sinema, who will do the bidding of any of the wealthy donors she bends over backwards to court. Sinema did apparently agree to a small tax on corporations buying back their own stock, which is indeed a step forward for the tax code, but her refusal to equitably tax millionaires working on Wall Street was so odious it overshadowed this concession.

We've long said it -- we are convinced that Kyrsten Sinema has no interest in getting re-elected. Oh, sure, she did get an "Arizona kickback" in the deal, to the tune of $5 billion in drought-resiliency money for her state, but this isn't going to change the fact that she completely changed her tune -- on just about everything she campaigned on to get to the Senate -- since she got there... and since nice people started offering her gobs of money to sell our her stated principles. She is angling for either a cushy lobbying job or even-cushier seats on a bunch of corporate boards, and serving out the rest of her first term is just a box to be checked on this route to riches. She is bought and paid for, plain and simple. We won't use the most-appropriate word in the English language to describe someone who fits this description, but we will certainly hand her yet another Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week for her disgraceful defense of the wealthiest Americans, who must (according to her) be allowed to continue paying half the tax rate that all workers pay.

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




Volume 671 (8/5/22)

Before we get started, we have a few condolences to send out.

This week Jackie Walorski, a Republican congresswoman from Indiana, died (along with two of her aides) in a head-on collision back in her home state. We've always been pretty non-partisan in offering condolences, so we feel for the loss of her family and friends and constituents.

Three people were killed in a freak accident in Lafayette Park (across the street from the White House) when lighting struck them this week. One other person was injured as well. Please, everyone, never stand under a tree in a lightning storm.

And finally, a personal fan note -- we were saddened by the death of Nichelle Nichols this week, a pioneering Black actress who broke several barriers in her portrayal of Lieutenant Uhura on the Star Trek original television show (and later movies). She will be missed by millions, and she will now live among the stars.

To all of them:

Requiescat In Pace.

This week, almost all of our talking points deal with a single subject, since it needs highlighting in the wake of the Kansas primary results. This issue is a potent one for Democrats. They should lean into it, hard. They should make the attempt to make the entire midterm election a one-issue election, in fact. Our last two talking points deviate from this theme, but you'll understand why they're both important when you get to them. So without further ado....



Roe is on the ballot

This should be the core message Democrats deploy, out on the midterm campaign trail. Get right to the point.

"I am asking for your vote because Roe v. Wade is now on the ballot in every race across this country. Democrats hold razor-thin majorities in both the House and Senate. If we were to lose those majorities, you can bet your bottom dollar that a Republican Congress will try to ban abortion nationwide. Don't believe them when they try to hide their radical views or insist that somehow women's rights will be magically protected if Republicans gain control. They won't. They will be attacked. Because Republicans aren't satisfied with only depriving women of healthcare within red states, they want to legislate their religious beliefs on all the states, at the national level. Are you angry that your rights and your daughters' rights are being stripped away by the men in the Republican Party? Then vote blue this November -- up and down the ballot. This is your only chance to have your voice be heard at the national level. Make no mistake about it -- Roe is now on the ballot everywhere."



Republicans do not care about the mother, or the child after it is born

Point out the rampant hypocrisy about to be attempted by moderate Republicans.

"Republican politicians are getting the word from their consultants to speak more 'moderately' about their forced-birth agenda. These consultants have reportedly told GOP candidates 'to emphasize care for women during and after their pregnancies.' This is nothing short of some sort of twisted joke, though, since Republicans are the ones who refuse to lift a finger or spend a dime on care for pregnant women or new mothers. They refuse to expand Medicaid within their red states because they still hate Barack Obama -- even though it means millions of women don't get any care while they are pregnant. They are against all child tax credits or subsidies. They are against making child care affordable. They are against free preschool. Which of them has actually voted for such ideas? Democrats do. Republicans don't, period. They are lying to you, straight up -- because the fact of the matter is that Republicans do not care about mothers or expectant mothers. All they care about is forcing all women who get pregnant to give birth. That is it. That is the sum total of their agenda, and it doesn't include one thing that would 'care for women during and after their pregnancies.' So don't believe the lies... vote blue!"



Do we really want to force 10-year-old rape victims to give birth?

Boil it down to the real question. Don't get caught up in esoteric terminology.

"Let's just tell it like it is, shall we? The extremist Republican position is absolute -- no abortions for anyone, period, no matter what. They want to force 10-year-old rape victims to have the rapist's baby. That is not 'compassionate conservatism,' that is abject cruelty. Each and every day, that mother will look into the eyes of her child and see her rapist's eyes looking back at her. But Republicans don't care what trauma they're about to cause. They don't consider the real-life consequences of their votes in state legislatures or in Congress. They want to be purists. But another word for 'purist' is 'extremist.' When considering whether to vote for a Republican for any office anywhere in this country, voters should ask themselves a very simple question: 'Do we really want to force 10-year-old rape victims to give birth?' Because that is what you will be voting on, whether they admit it or not."



Big government intrusion

Speak to conservatives in their own language.

"You know what the forced-birth laws really are? It is nothing more than Big Government interfering with your freedom. Instead of privacy between a woman and her doctor, the state legislature wants to dictate the conversation and the outcome. It is government forcing their way into the most personal and private decisions a woman can make. It is telling her 'the freedoms you had for half a century are no longer acceptable, you'll have to give them up.' It is a Big Government takeover of medical decisions, because they get to dictate the result. How can so-called conservatives be for such government intrusion? How can Republicans be for taking away freedoms? You may not agree with Democrats on what should be done with the federal budget, but Democrats are the ones out there fighting for your freedoms and against the heavy hand of Big Government in your doctor's exam room."



This loss of freedom is just the start -- they're coming for others, too

They're only getting started, folks.

"Republicans are successfully removing one freedom from tens of millions of Americans even as we speak. But they're not going to be content with just that. They will be coming for other freedoms next. One Supreme Court justice even let this cat out of the bag, in his opinion tossing out Roe v. Wade. Democrats are fighting to protect other rights like the right of marriage equality for all -- no matter who you love, no matter their gender or race -- and the Republicans in the Senate are fighting against securing these rights. As far as Republicans are concerned, if the Supreme Court decides that gay marriage or interracial marriage is somehow unconstitutional, they're fine with that. Democrats aren't. Democrats want to enshrine these rights into federal law -- and Republicans are fighting hard against it. So don't believe them when they try to tell you abortion is the only freedom they've got in their sights, because they are obviously lying about that."



They want to fight over your Social Security every year in Congress

OK, we've got two other topics for the week, and the first one is a doozy. Actually, both of them are....

"Senator Ron Johnson wants to gut both Social Security and Medicare, and if the Republicans gain control of the Senate that's what he's going to be working to do. So far, other Republicans won't admit it, but Johnson just came out for removing the protection that every single worker who has been paying into Social Security their entire working lives has right now, and instead force Congress to hold a giant political battle over both Social Security and Medicare each and every year. If Republicans held the White House and both houses of Congress, they could do anything they liked to Social Security or Medicare -- yanking the rug out of all retirees in America -- under Ron Johnson's plan. Republicans have hated the idea of Social Security ever since the days of F.D.R., folks -- this is really nothing new. But this is what is at stake when you go vote. Will you vote for a Democrat who refuses to allow political games to be played with people's retirement, or will you vote for a Republican who thinks Social Security and Medicare should be on the chopping block each and every year? That is precisely the choice they are giving you."



When he's right, he's right...

This has to be unprecedented, for this column. Because our final talking point comes straight from a staunchly-conservative Republican -- a man who might accurately be described as "somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan" -- delivering a campaign ad for another staunchly-conservative Republican candidate. And the entire talking point is just going to be the transcript of that ad (or you can watch his gruff delivery on video). So, as astonishing as it is to type this phrase, we are in full agreement with Dick Cheney and applaud his efforts on behalf of his daughter Liz. Here's the full transcript:






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