Schumer lets Senate Dems know they’ll “debate and consider changes to Senate rules on or before January 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to protect the foundation of our democracy: free and fair elections.”
New — Schumer announces plan to hold vote to change filibuster rules to advance bill overhauling election laws. Wants vote before MLK day on Jan. 17. Talks continue in Senate but Manchin and Sinema are opposed to changing rules along party lines — known as the “nuclear option.” pic.twitter.com/9yp0qO9O7x
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 3, 2022
Good. If Manchin and Sinema (and possibly others) value the filibuster over democracy itself, let that position be on the record. Republicans have already made their choice, and time is growing short.
Open thread.
Roger Moore
It’s about time. We’ve been taking steps to remove the filibuster for a good long time, so it’s about time for another one. The more carve-outs we create, the easier each subsequent one is and the more people see how stupid the filibuster is as a general idea. I don’t think we’ll see it completely gone this Congress, but I’m hopeful that if the Democrats maintain control of both Houses in the upcoming elections it will be gone for the next Congress.
RepubAnon
At the very least, reinstate the talking filibuster. If we’re going to worship Mr Smith Goes To Washington, let’s make life more closely imitate art.
germy
@RepubAnon:
Ted Cruz can read Green Eggs & Ham all night. Winning hearts and minds.
Kay
I’ll make an optimistic prediction. They’ll get voting rights done. It is a promise they cannot break to an essential part of their base. It’s not optional.
Frankensteinbeck
Hmmm. I wish we knew what Schumer knows. One thing that I have come to appreciate is that in a big tent a whole lot of politics happens behind closed doors, and the leaders of the House and Senate know vastly more about the situation than we do. Unfortunately, Schumer is not Nancy Pelosi, and you can’t be sure anything he says will come true. Especially since he’s stuck with Contrary Sinema and Prima Donna Manchin.
Chief Oshkosh
@RepubAnon: It would be dramatically satisfying, but I don’t think it would matter at all. It think someone here has explained in the distant past that there’s a way to immediately get around the continuous talking requirement. This may be the reason that Harry Reid went with specific carve-outs. But others here are much more knowledgeable about this.
Kay
One thing that’s nice is it’s a essential to part of the Democratic base but it is also really good policy and governance.
There’s no downside. The only people who could object to this bill are anti-democratic sleazeballs like Donald Trump, who is squealing loudly, so that’s good. It modernizes and updates civil rights process and election process, and it needed modernizing and updating. It will work better. Any good faith voter should support that.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chief Oshkosh:
Well, if there is, why not just change the Senate rules to make sure there isn’t? These are just rules written by humans after all, not the laws of physics. Who, besides the Republicans, could object?
cope
Nice to see a concrete date associated with this even though it’s likely to recede into the future.
JMG
Unfortunately there are not 50 good-faith voters in the US Senate.
Roger Moore
@RepubAnon:
I would also argue in favor of eliminating the filibuster requirement for procedural motions. If the purpose of the filibuster is to allow unlimited debate on important issues, then that should be its focus. The recent tendency of Republicans to use the filibuster to keep debate from even starting is completely at odds with that justification, so it should be eliminated.
I would also argue in favor of tightening the rules on procedural stuff more generally. A single senator shouldn’t be allowed to hold up nominations for an entire department by denying unanimous consent, for example. The rules of the senate wind up stifling debate rather than encouraging it, so they need to be changed.
lowtechcyclist
Maybe someone should send Manchin and Sinema copies of the “Every Day Is January 6th Now” NYT editorial?
Would be nice if those two who have actual power took the threat to American democracy as seriously as the NYT surprisingly does.
Baud
@Kay:
It’s not part of Manchin’s base.
But we’ll see.
Jerzy Russian
@germy: And still miss the point of the book.
NotMax
So this bodes the MSM churning out two weeks of breathless minute-by-minute close-ups on sausage making and entrail reading.
“BREAKING: Sources report Senator X ordered the regular tuna sandwich at lunch, but on white toast instead of the usual rye. After the break our panel of experts will explain whether this is good news or bad news.”
Too cynical?
Betty Cracker
This is a purely hypothetical question because I don’t believe there are two good Republicans in the Senate. But would it be possible to approve a filibuster carveout for voting rights with 48 Dems and 2 Republicans?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I believe so. All that matters is the numbers, not the party.
lowtechcyclist
The one that’s so stupid I can’t believe it exists is that a Motion to Proceed can be filibustered.
In theory, a filibuster is an insistence that debate continue rather than come to an end. A Motion to Proceed is a procedural motion to allow a bill to come to the Senate floor for debate. So when it’s filibustered, they’re insisting on unlimited debate over whether a bill should be debated.
You’d think all 50 Dem Senators should at least be able to agree that if you want to debate something, it should be the bill itself, rather than whether or not the bill should be debated. And then change the rules so that the Motion to Proceed gets an up-or-down vote after no more than maybe an hour of debate.
Chief Oshkosh
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Who? Sinema, Manchin, and likely a handful of conservative-leaning Democratic Senators. Sad, but likely.
I’m in the early chapters of Schiff’s “Midnight in Washington” and, among other things, it’s a great reminder to me of what a bubble those in DC really live in. I experienced it years ago when I had a gig that took me to the Hill a couple of times a year to chat with Congressional staffers (and sometimes, Congress members). It is very, very difficult for some of them to understand how dynamic the outside world is relative to their world. It’s challenging for House members, as Schiff notes, but I think it’s even worse for Senators, many of whom very much like the idea of the Senate being the staid, relatively unchangeable cooling saucer of legislating.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
Every time someone asks if we can find X good Republicans to help with something, I’m reminded of the story of Lot. Except I don’t think there’s a Lot among them.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@lowtechcyclist:
They probably think their money and power will protect them. Or they could be as incredibly obtuse as is popularly believed. Personally, I think they’re both flagrantly corrupt and their public personas are just acts. We know they meet with high-profile donors/groups that aren’t especially friendly to progressive priorities
Chief Oshkosh
@NotMax: Now I’m hungry. Thanks, asshole. Great start to my 2022 diet.
ETA: no, not too cynical.
Sebastian
I think not enough people have gamed out the Jan 6 Commission’s effect on the Senate. Hawley and Cruz might be out of the game fairly soon. Not sure if it’s soon enough for voting rights or filibuster, though.
Baud
@NotMax:
“Why Senators take out orders spell trouble for Biden’s hopes in 2024.”
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t think any Republican can because their base has gone so far Right (and delusional) on voting. That could have happened in 2012. It can’t happen now.
The GOP base are already ging nuts. It’s what’s driving the increase in the violent rhetoric. Voting legislation.
Trump poisoned the well for them on voting. They’re done on that issue, in the same way they’re done on “health care” or “immigration”. They blew it up. They can’t move at all.
Miss Bianca
So, I just read the NYT editorial on Jan. 6, which was at least refreshingly blunt, for a change, about laying the blame for the ongoing attempted assassination of American democracy at the Republicans’ door.
But in the middle of the article was a whole bar of links on the theme “Opinion Debate: Will the Democrats face a midterm wipe-out?” Oh, NYT…I guess you’ll never really change, will you?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chief Oshkosh:
Yes, but voting rights is incredibly important to AA voters, an important Dem constituency. If it’s not passed than Machin will be completely irrelevant and so will Sinema. Those other conservative-leaning Dem Senators will also be rendered irrelevant. And that’s the best case scenario assuming an Orban/Putinesque dictatorship isn’t created
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: The question is whether Manchin and/or Sinema actively WANTS to be the person who colludes with the Republicans to destroy American democracy. They might. It’d put their names in the history books, and assuming the history books are written by the winners, maybe positively.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Add voting rights to the longer and longer list of areas where national GOP politicians cannot go. They’re barred by the base. Other than rubber stamping far Right judges, tax cuts, deregulation and purely performative fake laws- banning CRT or some shit- they have to operate in a tiny little sphere.
Their senators are useful only in obstruction. They operate solely as tools. Happily, apparently.
lowtechcyclist
@Roger Moore: You’re probably thinking of Abraham, not Lot, in Genesis 18. Abraham gets God to agree that if there are 50 righteous men in Sodom, God won’t destroy the city. Then by stages, talks him down to 10 righteous men sufficing.
At this point, I think anyone hoping for any righteous Republican Senators is deluded. There’s been no sign that even Murkowski has considered breaking ranks, and every other GOP Senator is less gettable than she is.
Cameron
@NotMax: That’s just taking a cue from the Vatican when selecting a pope.
H.E.Wolf
Thanks for spotlighting this bit of potential good news.
I left voicemail for my Senators, saying that protection of voting rights is my top priority and that I was glad of the plan to adjust the filibuster if needed.
Can’t hurt; might help. :) And it goes nicely with the Balloon Juice commitment, during this election cycle, to support Four Directions and other organizations doing voter registration and GOTV.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
It is so depressing that most GOPers do believe Democracy is under threat, but BECAUSE they believe the Big Lie. They are so easily manipulated they are going to lead us straight into a dictatorship. I keep hoping we can stop it. I just don’t know how to deal with the fact that so many people live in an alternative reality.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
The Voting Rights Act was always renewed with huge majorities. Conservatives lurched Right on voting. They went far, fringy Right in one swoop, with John Roberts in the lead.
cain
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I can never understand Blue Dogs – they have never been able to survive at any time. You’d think that they’d have watched blue dogs go down in a pit of flames during 2012 and learned something from it.
But alas.
cain
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
They think we are the ones that are being manipulated while they swallow wholesale FUD from not only grifters like Candace but from Russia and China.
Roger Moore
@lowtechcyclist:
I’m thinking of Lot. Abraham talks God down to saving the city if he can find 10 good men in it, but he can’t. The only good man in the city is Lot, and God has him flee rather than save the city for one man. I feel like the Republican party is like Soddom, but they don’t even have Lot.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Makes sense — thanks!
@Kay: Yep, in power or out, that’s all they can do. It’s the same story in the FL statehouse now that the governor is a full-time “own the libs” troll.
Cathie from Canada
Another two G-d D-mn weeks of the Manchin and Sinema show!
Another two weeks of media running the hallways interviewing these two jerks while everybody else wrings their hands and tries to parse their incompetence while they boast and grandstand. Another two weeks of chatter chatter on the talk shows about how will they vote and does anybody know how they will vote and did anyone last talk to them about how they will vote. Another two weeks of why doesn’t somebody do something and when is somebody going to DO SOMETHING.
Just hold the vote already, Chuck, and let everyone out of their misery when it fails and the filibuster survives again. And bring back earmarks!
Redshift
@RepubAnon: The talking filibuster never mattered except in Mr. Smith. The important changes to reverse are the 1975 ones; before that it required two-thirds of those present to end it, now it’s three-fifths of all senators. So the burden used to be on the filibusterers to have enough people in the Capitol to maintain it, now it’s on the people who want to end it.
Cameron
@Kay: Hasn’t crushing voting rights been Roberts’ entire legal career?
Another Scott
@JMG: Don’t be so sure.
Manchin.Senate.gov (from November):
If Murkowski stays, Schumer can hammer the “bipartisan” aspect and it gives S&M cover for their demands for bipartisanship in changing the rules.
“We’ve got a good, important, bipartisan bill that is being blocked by a rule that’s important, but voting rights are more important. Thus, I have decided that we need to have a filibuster carve-out for this important bill…”
There are always ways to skin the coelacanth. I agree with Kay that they’ll find a way to get it done.
Cheers,
Scott.
steppy
@Baud: Stop working DougJ’s side of the street. This town ain’t big enough for two Pitchbots.
Brantl
@Betty Cracker: They’d have to be Democrats, before the vote finished being tallied.
Kay
@Cameron:
I don’t know. Apparently he was developing his wacky theory that states have feelings that can be hurt when he worked for Reagan, but that’s all I know. But if voting rights die in the United States, make no mistake- he’s responsible, more than any other single person. It was him.
Cavalier, feckless decision that will be with us for decades, maybe generations. He took the “crown jewel” of the civil rights movement and tossed it on the trash. Imagine the fucking size of that ego that tells John Roberts he knows better than millions and millions of AA’s. Hubris. Another elite with his head up his ass.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
My feeling is that the Republicans have been opposed to voting rights for a long time, but they were afraid to come out against it publicly. The moment the courts backed them up on opposing it, they were no longer afraid to say what they really believed.
I think this is the big story of the recent past, especially the Trump years. The Republican crazy has been kept in check by the fear of public censure. But they’ve now seen that the public censure has been less severe than they feared, and being publicly crazy is more popular with the base than expected. That has caused an apparent lurch to the right that’s a combination of a real move to the right and revealing the long term drift to the right they had been hiding.
Leto
@Cathie from Canada:
Earmarks never went away, they simply evolved. Yes there was a temporary ban on it, but they were still there. This year House Dems “officially” brought them back, but renamed them: Earmark spending went away after corruption scandals. Now, it’s back on the table. You can also Google, “Did earmarks go away?” And get a ton more articles/info on this subject.
The issue we have is that Rethuglicans simply don’t give a shit. They don’t care about good governance, and are not rewarded for that. They’re not going to participate in the legislative endeavor because Dems will do all the work for them, and they’ll still claim credit. Witness all the Rethuglicans who voted against every Biden bill designed to help the American people, but still ran ads claiming they helped bring money to their constituents/districts. They’re shameless liars whose voters keep sending them back. Earmarks won’t help this.
Brantl
@Kay: You make it sound as though he didn’t know what he was doing; HE DID.
Miss Bianca
@Cathie from Canada: I always love getting lectures from Canadians on how American politicians ought to act.
Betty Cracker
@Roger Moore: Sounds about right to me. God help us if they get back in power. No rights would be safe.
TriassicSands
I can hardly wait for Senator Manchin’s impassioned defense of democracy, which he will offer as he refuses to do anything to protect it. Ditto the other member of the Narcissist Caucus, Senator Sinema.
Completely inadequate. A non-response response. Republicans will simply take turns reading “Atlas Shrugged” or “Mein Kampf.”
Kay
@Roger Moore:
Agree completely. Gutting the VRA was one of the most dispiriting things I have witnessed in US politics. I knew it was really, really bad news.
It’s just the history of the thing- the absolutely noble cause of it that so many people worked for – and died for. Just to pitch it in the trash with some incoherent nonsense about states rights?
Too, Roberts was proven WRONG almost immediately. Just about every confederate state responded immediately with voter supression efforts. All of his fanciful fairy tale spinning about the end of racism lasted about 6 months. One man. Took the US back 50 years on civil rights.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
It wasn’t one man; it was five.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Ugh, Roberts is such an arrogant piece of crap.
If Dems do manage to pass new voting protections, I hope they include the only good idea I’ve ever heard out of Manchin, i.e., applying preclearance to all 50 states. Would that neutralize the “feelings” issue for Roberts, or would he figure out another way to move the goalposts?
gene108
@cain:
Blue Dogs survived an increasingly pro-Republican electorate in their states for a decade or two by separating themselves from the national Democratic platform and running on local issues.
South Dakota had a Democratic Senator, Tom Daschle, in 2002. Mark Pryor defeated the incumbent Republican Senator, in 2002.
States we’ve written off as Republican strongholds, not that long ago, used to be competitive enough for Democrats to win.
Betty
@Betty Cracker: Lisa Murkowski has made noises about favoring voting rights legislation. I haven’t heard of any other Republicans publicly doing so.
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: IANAL, but Manchin’s changes (link in the link above) to the JLVRAA don’t seem to expand pre-clearance to every state.
Wikipedia:
Their table indicates that AK, AZ, MI, SD would no longer be covered, and CA, FL, NY, NC would be covered as a whole (rather than certain counties).
We know it won’t be perfect, but we must do whatever we can as soon as we can to protect voting (and fairly counting the votes).
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Preclearance is ACTUALLY really interesting, because it can and has been applied to jurisdictions that one might not expect.
Bronx County NY. They were suppressing Latino votes. South Dakota. I bet I know what was going on there. Native Americans.
Betty
@Another Scott: Murkowski can run as an independent which may allow her to take a principled stand on voting rights.
Betty Cracker
@Betty: Me neither. She’s sort of a unique case since, unlike the rest of them, Murkowski doesn’t owe her party a whole lot. All these years later, I’m still amazed she pulled off that write-in win after Palin recruited a fellow AK idiot to primary her. I thought she was toast then. Don’t know how she’ll fare against whatever clown Trump scares up to oppose her.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
My theory all year has been that Manchin and Sinema creamed their pants (or the equivalent) at the sight of McCain’s Great Act Of Statesmanship that was killing the ACA-repeal, and they’ve been looking for an equally dramatic way to fuck their own party the way McCain fucked the GOP, going down as the great centrist heroes who struck a blow against partisan extremism. Killing voting rights would certainly do that.
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott: Thanks! I am 99.9% sure I heard or read about Manchin proposing expanding preclearance to all states. It stuck in my mind because I was surprised to hear a good idea from him, but maybe I dreamed it. :)
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Anything they pass goes to the far Right Trumpist SCOTUS, but that’s not a reason not to pass it.
Just do the next right thing.
I enthusiastically support this bill. I think it’s a good piece of work. One of the things conservatives do to government is stymie it, so nothing gets updated and modernized because everyone is terrified they’ll overturn the whole thing. They’ve kept us locked in archaic and inefficient process that doesn’t integrate newer laws with older ones. It’s bad government. We’re always on defense.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
Of course he’ll move the goalposts. The “feelings” argument was just an excuse; curtailing voting rights was the real goal. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t move on voting rights, but we should expect Roberts will do everything he can to sabotage them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cathie from Canada: I’d rather take some time and have a chance for it to work. I am sorry that our political situation causes you such stress that you just want thing to be over with. OTOH as someone who lives here, reducing your stress as a spectator isn’t my highest priority.
lee
I’ve got an interesting tidbit via my oldest daughter (25).
She commented on how the media is not paying as much attention to Biden as they did with Trump. The media with Trump would have multiple stories a day about Trump and with Biden she rarely hears about him.
We literally laughed at her comment. We told her that this is what it was like with previous Presidents and Trump was a complete abberation. She was incredulous.
She vaguely remembers Obama but really remembers Trump so that was her ‘normal’
p.a.
I have no hope for any (R) senator to ‘do the right thing’ on voting rights, but entertain visions (delusions?) of some (upcoming retiree?) R supporting the Lewis Act as a McCain-esque fuck-you to tRump, and the cukoo base that have ruined their precious social status.
Chris
@Omnes Omnibus:
No disagreement with taking time and doing it right, but there’s nobody on this planet who’s just a spectator to U.S. politics. It’s part of the package with this kind of superpower status. Everybody has a vested interest in the outcome.
Betty Cracker
@Chris: Agreed. Especially poor old good neighbor Canada, whose proximity to our backsliding democracy someone once compared to living in an apartment above a meth lab.
Kay
@Cathie from Canada:
I agree with you that in that I think the conservative D’s lying and delaying is bad for the Party and Biden, so hope we don’t get a lot of coverage on “will they or won’t they?”
They hurt Biden over the last 9 months and if they hurt him they hurt the D’s for the midterms. These people have to learn that they rise and fall together. No one outside of political junkies pays any attention to “Manchin’s base” – they just see Democrats not succeeding.
I would prefer Schumer shut up completely until he has a deal. It’s damaging.
WaterGirl
@Cathie from Canada: I think Chuck Schumer is putting them on notice today, which gives them a couple of weeks to (hopefully) understand the consequences of not voting to pass the bill.
He’s backing them into a corner, but giving them a bit of room to save themselves.
Kay
Endorsed enthusiastically by the US Right. Gosh- I wonder if they’ll magically…. evolve back into a pro democracy position?
Has that ever, ever happened? People were just like “oh FUCK- we’re fascists! Ooops!”
Kay
@WaterGirl:
The truth is this didn’t work last time though, so maybe he should try another approach. The last thing we need is 6 more months of the Joe Manchin show.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Manchin did talk about that, so i can confirm that you are not crazy.
Of course, he talks about a lot of things. Interesting that it didn’t make it into the changes that were more formally proposed.
Chris
@Kay:
As I understand it, that’s pretty much exactly what happened to Charles Johnson, of Little Green Footballs fame, thus leading to his conversion into a liberal.
But that only seems to happen on an individual level.
topclimber
@Kay: Does NATO have a procedure for expelling members?
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Canada just lived through 4 years of trump and then the insurrection, too.
If our democracy fails, the whole free world is in deep shit. There is no non-peeing side of the pool.
Cathie may not live in the US, but i totally understand where she’s coming from.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Living upstairs from a meth lab is so much better than my “non-peeing side of the pool.”
WaterGirl
@Kay: I’ll give you that if it’s 6 months.
But i’m good if he sticks with the date on or before MLK day.
gvg
@Betty Cracker:
Lots of people had that idea. Frankly discrimination migrates. Places that weren’t become anti whatever group is currently moving in. America always had immigration and we also have demographic shifts like blacks moving north during Jim Crow and lots of northerners moving south after air conditioners. Rust belt hollowing out etc. People who were already there tend to blame new people for whatever they think is wrong. So when I understood what the reasoning was, I immediatly thought we should have the same law everywhere and plenty of other people did too. Problem is the votes for it.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Murkowski has been a yes vote on judicial and other nominations, but has stuck with McConnell on almost all policy matters. She might work with the Democrats on voting rights, though. Alaska’s Native Corporations may be making this voting rights law a priority, and Murkowski and Alaska’s Native Corporations look out for each other. When Murkowski lost a close primary in 2010 and ran as a write-in candidate, it was the Native Corporations, along with organized labor, that pulled her through.
Alaska will debut a novel electoral process this year. Murkowski will run in a ranked-choice open primary, then the top four finishers will compete in a ranked choice general election. It’s an interesting system, and should benefit Murkowski.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Just sitting here thinking how odd it is that following the Constitution is considered “the nuclear option”
@Geminid: the governor of Alaska just accepted trump’s endorsement that was conditioned on said gov’s non-endorsement of Murkowski
Geminid
@Chris: Everyone has an interest in outcomes, so these are more or less worth getting stressed out over. And given the intense attention paid to Congressional process these days it’s not hard to let oneself get stressed out about the process. I think that’s still a choice, though.
But I would agree with the commenters who say that Schumer and the other Democratic Senators should keep their business to themselves until they get a result.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: I like the timeliness AND the symbolism of making MLK Day the deadline for the vote.
@gvg: You’re right. That’s why I get impatient when anyone suggests a national split. That stopped being feasible more than 150 years ago, and even then, it wouldn’t have been a clean break.
@Geminid: Fascinating. I didn’t know they were going toward ranked choice.
TriassicSands
@Omnes Omnibus:
That seems unnecessarily arrogant. The US has an out-sized effect on other countries, but they have zero input concerning what goes on here. The frustration (and worse) has to be considerable for those paying attention, as Cathie is. When we hurt ourselves, it’s stupid; when we hurt others, it’s criminal.
Aren’t we supposed to have empathy?
James E Powell
@Baud:
“Senators & staff ordering Chinese food doesn’t sit well with the folks in this Ohio diner.”
RobertS
@Matt McIrvin: I think Manchin’s latest tantrum when the White House referred to him by name is a good clue, along with the fact that he called Jayapal. My suspicion is that he’s perfectly happy to screw over the country in favor of his personal agenda, as long as he doesn’t have to answer for it. Thats consciousness of guilt.
The same goes for Sinema. She appears to be bought and paid for, but has the good sense to conceal this from her voters. Somehow all of the fundraising emails I get from her don’t tout her defense of the filibuster.
Chris
@Geminid:
I agree! Like I said, I don’t think I even agree with Cathie on the substance. It’s just the gatekeeping vibe in Omnes’ last sentence that irritated me.
Betty Cracker
@topclimber: Great question. If they don’t, it was awfully short-sighted of them not to include one.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: Johnson seems to have honestly, actually been a liberal to begin with who was driven around the bend and into the arms of ethno-nationalist creeps by 9/11. That probably made his deconversion easier, once he stood back for long enough to realize the nature of the crowd he’d fallen in with.
Matt McIrvin
@RobertS: I think Manchin and Sinema are a little different–with Manchin it’s an acute consciousness that his constituents are actually extreme right-wingers and he can only exist as a D senator on fragile sufferance, whereas Sinema has the dramatic notion of being a maverick like a Democratic John McCain foremost in her mind.
James E Powell
@Kay:
That’s clear, but for some reason there have always been Democrats who don’t see it that way. We always have the “but some” Democrats.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
There’s always the “dramatic conversion speech at the next Republican convention and become a conservative movement darling” route, like Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman. Of course such notoriety is fleeting.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: And both are corrupt to the core. They have that in common.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It seems all but certain that the Governor did not want that statement to be made public. Trump is just asserting dominance, and humiliating Dunleavy. Trump may not have been able to wreck this country yet, but he’s doing a bang-up job on the Republican party. People keep talking about Democratic wipeouts in 2022 and 2024, but Republican wipeouts are a possibility too.
Miss Bianca
@TriassicSands: I think what Omnes might have been reacting to (and what I certainly reacted to) is Cathie’s “Here’s what Schumer SHOULD be doing!” guff.
This particular commenter, I’ve noticed, has a tendency to swoop in at various points and lecture us on US electoral and policy deficiencies, which is usually her only contribution to the ongoing discussion. Even if I happen to agree with her, I personally still find it irritating to get process lectures on US legislative practices from people who live outside the country. Petty of me, perhaps, but so ’tis.
For example, just because I find Tony Jay’s screeds about the dysfunctionality of British politics so right on and entertaining, I don’t kid myself that he’d find it either edifying or gratifying for me to start saying, “You know, what Parliament/Labour/You Lot SHOULD be doing is THIS – “
Omnes Omnibus
Okay, fine. CFC is still wrong on substance. Rushing into failure benefits no one. We need these bills to pass.
Jinchi
Trump’s entire purpose in making endorsements is to assert dominance. They have to be seen to kiss the ring. Dunleavy might not have wanted his statement made public, but he’s a fool if he didn’t think it would be.
Murkowski has to be publicly shunned by her fellow Republicans as a warning to any who would cross him. Ronna Romney McDaniel had to repudiate her own name to stay in good standing. Trump rules their lives by fear, not in mutual self-interest.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Thank you. That was exactly my reaction.
Jinchi
Sure, but Joe Manchin would also like those of us who live outside W.Va. to stop lecturing him on how to be a good Democrat. Unfortunately, his actions affect everyone, even those outside the US.
If Republicans are able to gut voting rights, President Trump Part II becomes a legitimate threat. I expect Canadians don’t want a facist neighbor on their southern border
Jinchi
He needs to keep his reputation as the great uniter. That’s hard to hold on to if he’s seen stabbing his own party in the back.
geg6
@Miss Bianca:
Yes, this.
I don’t tell Canadians or Brits how to run their countries and they are doing it all wrong. I may criticize or make fun of their politicians, but I am not familiar enough with their entire countries or their government processes to feel qualified to criticize them in that way. She can feel free to make fun of Trump or Biden or Schumer or Pelosi if she’d like. But really, we don’t need people who aren’t Americans to come in and explain to us how the Senate does or should work, mainly because they really have no idea. Just as I have no idea how Parliament works and would not dream of criticizing its rules and processes.
Chris
@geg6:
The fact that you have no idea how the British Parliament works is a very good reason not to criticize its rules and processes. The fact that you’re American… isn’t. (As in most countries, half the British public has no idea how their government works either. It sure as shit doesn’t stop them from weighing in).
That’s even before you get to the fact that there’s no country to which the principle of “if you’re not from here, you don’t get to weigh in” applies to less than the United States. Both because no other country affects as many people outside its borders as America, and because no other country’s political system gets as much exposure outside of its borders as America’s.
Betty Cracker
WTF?
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Like you point out, Joe Manchin represents a very conservative state. He might be the last Democratic Senator elected from West Virginia this century.
Sinema, on the other hand, now represents a purple state. She may have thought she needed to take a centrist tack because Arizona was more reddish, but it just elected Mark Kelly and he is in the mainstream of the party. If Kelly wins reelection this November, Arizona Democrats may decide they can do better than Sinema. I don’t know if Arizona Independents will turn out in a primary to save the maverick.
Arizona and West Virginia are very dissimilar states, especially when it comes to population growth. In 1960, Arizona had only two Representatives in Congress. After the round of reapportionment in 2011, they now have nine. West Virginia had six Representatives in1960. This year they’ll elect two.
Mai Naem mobile
There was a live person answering Kyrsten Sinema’s DC office today! It isn’t that I call a whole lot but I don’t think I’ve managed to get a live person in the past 6-9 months and when I do call I try all of her 3 offices. I told the staff person I would like Sen Sinema to support a fillibuster carve out for voting rights . I am wondering it the person was a brand spanking new college intern on her first day because she seemed surprised by the call. So any Arizona jackals call today!
Mai Naem mobile
@Betty Cracker: i think Adams is going to be the DeBlasio of the 2020s except worse than DeBlasio.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: New mayor with a big swinging dick.
Awesome.Definitely. Not. Awesome.What is wrong with NYC that they keep electing Democrats that suck. Better than Republicans that suck, but really? You can’t do better than this?
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I think this excerpt from Adams’ remarks is not so nutty when read in the context of his entire speech. He certainly is personalizing his mayoralty, but New Yorkers will judge him by his work product. I would give Adams a few months to demonstrate if he has what it takes to be a good mayor. City jackals will definitely keep us informed on how they see it, and I don’t think they’ll be cutting Adams any slack.
Chris
@WaterGirl:
Speaking of outsiders looking in at other people’s polities… Commenter Murc over at LGM has mentioned on and off that he’d like to some day do a whole post about the history of New York City politics, and specifically how Tammany Hall died, but didn’t really completely die, and within a couple of decades the system of machine politics had reconstituted itself, in a way that was different and less obvious than the original, but still quite significant.
I hope the front-pagers there take him up on it someday.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: New Yorkers are fairly politically aware people. Adams won a close election by doing well in the outer boroughs, especially among Black and Latino voters. Those folks may have a good idea of what their city needs. In any event, opinion polling in New York City is fairly frequent, and we’ll be able to see if citizens think Adams is delivering.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: I’m decidedly unimpressed so far — the crypto thing, the insinuation that only cops have standing to criticize cops and now this weird Pompeo imitation. Still, he’s gotta be miles better than anyone the Repubs would puke up.
Gravenstone
He still won’t understand it, no matter how many times he tries.
Tony Jay
@Miss Bianca:
In a tatty hotel room in Covent Garden a tubby, middle-aged man weeps snotty tears as he drinks white wine from a stained coffee mug and stuffs page after page of “I Know You Didn’t Ask, But – A 10 Point Plan to Save American Democracy from Fuckery and Improve Indoor Plumbing” down the overflowing toilet.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tony Jay: Should have been a grubby hotel in Paddington.
Geminid
@Chris: I had a back and forth with a New York jackal about Adams, and he empasized that Adams was a candidate of “the Machine.” I wouldn’t know myself. I do know that Representatives Jeffries and Meeks endorsed Adams as second choice, after Maya(ed.) Wiley as first choice. In ways Jeffries and Meeks are both “Machine” politicians, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they told their lieutenants that Adams was almost as good a first choice as Wiley, and then winked.
Adams starts out a controversial figure among Democrats nationally, especially among liberals. Some of them believe in the paradigm that a solidly Democratic jurisdiction should be electing the most liberal candidate, and Adams clearly wasn’t. This paradigm isn’t always fulfilled.by Democratic voters, though.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid:
So “the machine” is the NYC version of “the DNC”? Do people not remember who de Blasio’s predecessors were for twenty years?
Tony Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Verisimilitude. I’m actually in a tatty hotel in Covent Garden drinking warm white wine out of a stained mug right now.
Gravenstone
@Betty Cracker: Sounds like someone wants to embrace the Green Lantern theory, only in terms of COVID measures. Good luck NYC. Seems like you may well need it with this yahoo.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: The tenure of the new Police Commissioner will probably be more consequential than Adams’ cryptocurrency policy or how he claps back at the City Council on policing policy. You’re not going to hear about her, though, unless she screws up. New Yorkers will or won’t see improvements, though, and will judge Adams and his team realistically. There will be sound polling, and that’s what I will wait for. I think that New Yorkers are generally politically aware people, as I said above.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker:
I wonder what he means by greedy, because all but that word makes me think of what Royko said about old man Daley: The reason he beat out all the other machine mugs who wanted to run an actual political machine was that they were all after money and power, except for Daley, who only wanted power.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: For politically aware people, the folks in NYC sure do seem to elect a lot of obnoxious shitheads. That said, I live in Florida, so my problems are infinitely worse.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Interesting Royko quote. I hadn’t heard that before.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: The tenure of the new Police Commissioner will probably be more consequential than Adams’ cryptocurrency policy or how he claps back at the City Council on policing policy. We’re not going to hear about her in national news, though, unless she screws up. New Yorkers will or won’t see improvements, though, and will judge Adams and his team realistically. There will be sound polling, and that’s what I will wait for. I think that New Yorkers are generally politically aware people, as I said above.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It beats me what the New York “Machine” is, but I take people’s word that it still exists, perhaps as a coalition of more local machines. Hakeem Jeffries is said to have an organization in Brooklyn, and Greg Meeks succeeded Joe Crowley as Chairman of the Queens Democratic Party, and I don’t think that’s just an honorary post.
The people who were disappointed by Adams’ election did not explicitely state the paradigm I spoke of, I was stating it for them. I think it is true of some liberals, but that’s just my analysis. An example would be the disappointment people expressed here when Joel(?) Auchingloss won the Massachusetts primary to succeed Joe Kennedy, when there were more liberal candidates in the race. And Seth Moulton keeps winning his very blue* Massachusetts district’s primaries even though he is a moderate. But I’ve said before that I think the differences between the moderate and liberal wings of the Democratic House Caucus tend to be exaggerated anyway
*I wonder if Massachusetts is so strongly Democratic because the white working class component stayed with the Democratic party more or less, and if they tend to balance out a more liberal college educated component. My friend Debbie grew up working class in Medford, Massachusetts and she is a staunch Democrat, but probably more on the moderate side. That’s a sample of one, though. Maybe Massachusetts jackals have thoughts on this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: yeah, I’m sure there is/are political machine/s of some variety in NYC, probably at least one in each borough, as you suggest. But the left really needs to let go of the dark fantasies of machines and the Establishment and the DNC stealing and cheating in elections they lose. The people beating their candidates are voters.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid:
There’s Brooklyn/Queens blue, and then there’s leafy suburbs of Boston (and NYC and Chicago and…). MA has a very popular (I believe) Republican governor, and Deval Patrick’s 8 years in office were an interim in a string of Republican governors that goes back to Dukakis.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … AlJazeera:
It’s hard to imagine it happening, but just imagine how it would scramble the RWNJ’s view of foreign interventions if there was the possibility of personal consequences…
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Gravenstone: Adams is keeping existing Covid regulations in place, including the employer mandate recently instituted by his predecessor.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: I was wondering about that, that’s good. The “swagger” statement is breathtakingly stupid, but what he does on the ground is what counts. I never agreed with Rachel Maddow’s “Watch what they do, not what they say” wrt trump, but I think it works for most politicians.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Adams’ “swagger” statement will be judged as breathtakingly stupid if Adams is a poor mayor. If he delivers good governance- and a lot of people are already convinced he won’t- it may stand him in good stead. Sort of an ethos of MABA: Make the Apple Big Again.
topclimber
@Geminid: Ghouliani, Bloomberg, Di Blahsio all had swagger. That wasn’t their problem. You have to reach back to David Dinkins for a guy who wasn’t full of himself, and he sure got shafted, didn’t he?
I will give Adams a chance (nice of me, since I don’t live in NYC).
Geminid
@Another Scott: I would take the Iranian President’s threat seriously. Solemeini was a singularly powerful and revered figure among the Revolutionary Guard and it’s supporters. They’d be willing to take a shot, even if they had to prepare for a couple years.
Geminid
@topclimber: I’ve gotten curious about Adams now. I’ll probably be checking out local coverage. There will be plenty. Democrats in Albany will be drawing new Congressional and state districts next month, and that will be a big story too.
TriassicSands
An observation I’ve made frequently (elsewhere) is that Roberts’ supposed “moderation” never appears when a case involves Republican electoral prospects. If you think about it, his voting to save the ACA probably helped the GOP at the polls.
Yesterday, on the WaPo website, I commented that while Roberts sometimes appears more cautious than the other SCOTUS extremists, he is actually no less radical (or dangerous). The big difference, I think, is that since it is the “Roberts Court,” he alone cares about appearances and the legacy of his tenure. An occasional vote with the enemy gets the media falling all over themselves about how moderate he is. Historians may not be so stupid.
It’s clear, he is absolutely a threat to free and fair elections.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: There are still traces of old-fashioned Democratic urban machine politics in Massachusetts, as well as ideologically moderate Democrats who have a largely urban immigrant/minority base.
But there are also a lot of well-off educated professionals who are very culturally liberal, but also like lower taxes and for some reason abstractly value “bipartisanship” as an end in itself. I think they’re instrumental in repeatedly electing all those moderate Republican governors. Democrats are fine but if there’s a Republican they think is an OK guy, they’ll seriously consider voting for that guy just to advocate the existence of better Republicans.
J R in WV
@Kay:
Actually, all we really need is a single sentence at the end of the bill which states that the new law is not reviewable by the courts.
That would cut Roberts and his perverted court right out of the action regarding the Voting Rights Act.
It would make some of the right wingers cry, also too, which would be a good thing to ponder late at night.
Geminid
@Geminid: So on Saturday, Mayor Adams took the subway to commute from his Brooklyn brownstone to work at City Hall (work included the notorious “swagger” speech). On his way, Adams called in to 911 an assault he saw at a subway station. Yesterday Adams, a vegan health nut, rode a bicycle to various events around town, including a meeting at the police precinct whose officers beat him up when he was a teenager.
Meanwhile, The Guardian put out an article today headlined, “Progressives Concerned as Eric Adams Takes Helm of New York City.”
This will be interesting.