Joe Biden jiu-jitsu’d Repubs so hard during the SOTU when he accused them, correctly, of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare. It was kind of a stroke of genius on Biden’s part because, after the assembled Repubs bellowed LIAR and hissed like 10,000 demonic swans, Biden got them on the record promising they’d never touch either program.
They’re liars, of course, so the promise-by-acclamation isn’t worth the stale bourbon breath that propelled it through their pieholes. But we all saw what we saw. That’s at least a political complication to the GOP granny-starving agenda, which isn’t realistically going anywhere anytime soon anyway since Dems control the Senate and presidency.
But in the aftermath of the speech, the scale of the ownage is becoming clearer because now Repubs are turning on each other over the issue. McConnell is blaming Rick Scott, who’s up for reelection next year. Scott will probably get reelected because Florida Republicans love invasive pythons that engulf and devour native wildlife. Still, it’s probably not helpful to have to defend a record of wanting to sunset Medicare and Social Security every five years in the state with the largest number of retirees.
Also, thanks to the necessity of issuing denials, Repubs are being exposed as liars. Here’s one of the liars lying on Fox News:
There is NO Republican in Washington, DC, in the House of Representatives or the Senate, that wants to CUT the benefits for seniors on Social Security and Medicare.
That’s a falsehood. That’s a lie.
I discussed that and more on @FoxBusiness last night. Check it out! (Twitter link)
Josh Marshall at TPM is onto them:
As we noted earlier, Republicans are now aghast that anyone would be claiming they want to cut Social Security. But last year the Republican Study Committee — a House caucus which includes about 75% of all House Republicans — released a proposed 2023 budget which included basically every kind of Social Security cut on offer…
As you can see, it’s really all word games and flimflam. Republicans are shocked!, outraged, **frustrated** that President Biden has the effrontery to claim they want to cut Social Security while they are simultaneously on the record proposing exactly the cuts he claims they support.
Exactly right. Will it matter? Maybe not. We’re cursed with a dysfunctional political media that has the interrogative powers of a banana slug and the attention span of a fruit fly. But thanks to Biden’s clever framing, Repubs are exposed, and we’re having a national conversation that they don’t want to have. Bravo!
Open thread.
evap
I have nothing to add, just wanted to note that reading a BC post always makes me smile and brightens my day!
Baud
The GOP better start releasing some balloons to distract people with.
waspuppet
The fact that Republicans have openly, explicitly and proudly wanted to get rid of Social Security and Medicare for at least 30 years is a complication for them that even complaining to Chuck Todd won’t completely fix.
Brachiator
The Joe is a crafty fellow. I recall some pundits or posters suggesting that Joe should just send a written statement and not address Congress. Instead he took them down on their own ground. Took their displays of faux outrage and disrespect and made them choke on it.
And he may force at least some of the press to do their goddam jobs as well.
I love it!
bbleh
Will it matter? Maybe not.
Depends on the audience IMO. It won’t matter at all for the cultists, who will believe whatever they are told to believe, even if it’s transparently false. And they’re a majority of the Republican Party, which means the politicians and the right-wing media will dutifully toe the line. BUT, for the non-cultist Republicans, and the waverers, and I think even a lot of the disconnected/uninformed, as well as the MSM, I think it CAN matter IF Dems keep hammering on them. But it’s on Dems, not “the media” to do the hammering.
Burnspbesq
ICYMI, DiFi is retiring at the conclusion of her current term.
California Dems are spoilt for choice. I would have a really hard time choosing between Schiff and Porter.
Anonymous At Work
More for tonight’s Ukraine thread but apparently a RU general who had been sacked committed suicide today/last night. There were family witnesses and the gunshot was NOT to the back of the head, so it wasn’t a case of “window-itis” like several other Russians.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-general-takes-own-life-194151071.html
Alison Rose
@Burnspbesq: I like them both, but Schiff’s seat is solid blue and very likely wouldn’t be at risk of flipping. Porter’s is more precarious.
HumboldtBlue
@bbleh:
I mean, that’s true, as far as it goes, but if the media can’t come around to describing the narrative accurately and without hemming and hawing about both sides and “comity” the message never gets amplified in the manner the masses will see it, and where it can have an impact.
It will just lead to more “both sides are crooked and ya can’t trust any of them” which allows the bigots and racists dissemblers and liars to remain comfortably in the GOP bubble.
And about 12 years late, Feinstein hangs up her Senate shoes. I wonder if she’ll give Lindsey Graham another big hug after allowing the GOP to fuck the country one more time with a shit judge pick.
And I don’t think there is much choice between Schiff and Porter, it’s Schiff all the way.
Benw
The banana slug is the mascot of UC Santa Cruz, so technically, “I was a banana slug for a year,” is a true statement for me!
Salty Sam
That in itself is no small thing…
Baud
My guess is that the House GOP was planning to use the debt limit to force cuts to SS&M and now Biden has cut their legs out from under them. The GOP will have a tough time finding enough cuts elsewhere.
WV Blondie
@bbleh: If the audience is senior citizens, they’ll care, even if/though they’re MAGAts.
CaseyL
I’d be a very happy camper indeed if Biden took to the airwaves and said something like:
“Republicans don’t want to raise the debt ceiling. Not because they care about the debt – they’re the ones who let the Former Guy increase it by 25%. Do they want us to default? Do they want to crash the American, and the world’s, economy? The truth is, they don’t care if they do. Republicans want to crash the American economy because it is finally working for you, not for their donors.”
Tony G
@Anonymous At Work: He shot himself in front of his wife? That’s a classy move.
Old School
As the Pitchbot put it:
trollhattan
They now all carry the Dark Brandon Brand, a brand applied immediately following the de-horning and nutting.
Well done and all hail, Dark Brandon.
Rocky Mountain oysters on special in the Senate Dining Room.
Tony G
@Benw: As seen in “Pulp Fiction”!
sab
I had been expecting to retire and collect Social Security at age 65, like they promised me my whole working life. Then when I reached age 65 it was sorry we uppped the age. So I retired at 66. Now it’s 68 for full benefits and they have been talking 70 as the starting age.
Hell no I don’t believe the Republicans.
Baud
@Old School:
Heh.
Tony G
@WV Blondie: MAGA retirees will probably allow themselves to be manipulated into believing that the Social Security is threatened because of those liberals, blacks and illegal aliens.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I’m not sure ‘Biden forces Republicans to expose themselves’ is really the framing I’d go with. Because… Ewww!
...now I try to be amused
@Baud:
Yeah, Biden is taking their bargaining chips off the table. However, I understand that Biden’s (correct) position is that the debt limit is non-negotiable. Congress passed the spending bills, Congress takes on the debt, period. We need to stuff the genie Gingrich let out back into the bottle.
Jeffro
Hey, lookee here, we’ve got the GOP on their heels for once! And it’s 110% fact-based!!
I like this. Let’s keep it up, Dems, whaddya say?
Baud
@…now I try to be amused:
Agreed. Nonnegotiable. But the GOP will look pretty silly demanding a negotiation with any sort of proposal on what they want to cut. And unlike other times when the media allows them to look silly without comment, journalists have 401(k)’s so they have some skin in the game.
geg6
Happened to catch Josh on Morning Joe discussing this yesterday. I watched while he was on and they discussed this and several other really good analysis pieces he’s had recently. Glad to see him getting the exposure in the MSM that he deserves. He’s been on a real roll recently at TPM and the team he’s built there is pretty damn impressive. I’m happy to help support TPM financially. One of the few things I pay to subscribe to that is worth every penny.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Right before the SOU speech, I was trying to think about how best the Biden team could use the inevitable booing and boorishness of the opposition to get us (and the media) talking about something specific, something that just by talking about it (or playing clips of the booing) would be politically advantageous.
Then I thought about Social Security and Medicare. Get R’s booing Social Security. Make that the headline.
So I called up my buddy Ron Klain, and here we are!geg6
@bbleh:
I don’t think we have to worry about the Dems hammering them on this, in three part harmony.
As for the press, I call bullshit on your idea that they have no agency in this fight. Even Chuck Todd has fought back on this when they try to gaslight him on it. They have a responsibility to present the facts. And the facts hammer the GOP.
Betty Cracker
@Burnspbesq: I’d have a hard time picking between those two as well. As a Florida Democrat, I’ve never had that sort of luxury. I just hope to Christ Charlie Crist doesn’t run again.
Aussie Sheila
@bbleh: I agree. No one has more contempt for the press and broadcast media here in Oz than I do. They were atrocious at the last election. Really put their thumb on the scale even more than usual.
But they were beaten anyway. A united and full throated defence of your own team, plus a plan for the future can beat them. I get the hatred for the ftfnyt, and their US political coverage is terrible. Even from here it is obvious, let alone their egregious behaviour in the run up to the Iraq war and their trashing of Clinton.
But at the end of the day it is up to political parties and their support base to wage the war for themselves.
One of the many advantages of Biden is that he has been round the rodeo a number of times and also his ‘centrist’ instinct for where the electorate is on the basic issues. He is much more conservative than I am for example, but I think he has done a masterful job of uniting his Party and discombobulating the opposition.
That is everything in a leader. The rest is up to the party base to get behind him and push the republicans on every front, into the trash can.
I have enjoyed watching him smile at them while shiving them in the front. Most enjoyable and edifying for his own party, importantly.
Betty Cracker
@geg6: Agreed. Marshall has put together a really great team at TPM. I’m especially fond of Kate Riga and Josh Kovensky.
HumboldtBlue
@Betty Cracker:
Pelosi has endorsed Schiff, and I get the sense that the money folks who supported Feinstein will turn to Schiff as well. I think Schiff is better suited to operating in the senate, and I think Porter is far more effective in the House, actually crafting legislation. Plus, Porter has worked her ass off for that Orange County seat, and I don’t think anyone but her can keep it.
Scout211
IMHO, we need to retire the word “sunset” when we are discussing legislation like this. Normies don’t have a clue what that word means with regard to legislation. We need to replace it with a more obvious and clear word like “end” or “expire” to reach the normies out there who would be the most affected.
Also, Rick Scott is too clever for his own good (thank goodness) because it appears that he has been caught talking out of too many sides of his mouth and no one is happy with him right now. Sweet.
narya
The biggest problem (w/r/t SS/Medicare) is that many Repubs simply do not believe it when they are told that the R candidate wants to end/cut those programs. I know there’s some face-eating leopards in that mix, but it’s not even that they think those cuts will affect others but not them–they do not believe that there will be cuts.
I’m wondering what will happen if Barbara Lee gets in the race.
Kent
Yeah, I’m not in CA but after the impeachment I definitely became Schiff curious. And if he isn’t going to be Speaker then Senate seems a good place to be.
Porter is very good but we need very good people in the House too.
Kent
REPEAL is the correct term here. Scott wants to REPEAL every single progressive piece of legislation ever passed. Maybe they put something else back into place, maybe they don’t. But REPEAL is the correct word here.
Betty Cracker
@HumboldtBlue: Don’t both have to resign their House seats to run, or is that not a thing in CA?
Scout211
@Kent: I’m in California and I will be fine with any new Senator because that person will be a Democrat. And that person will be young enough and engaged enough to actively work for California and the Democrats in congress. It’s been so frustrating to have a Senator who, while voting with the Dems in the Senate, has been pretty much been a ghost for several years.
...now I try to be amused
@Kent:
Yep, “sunset” is repeal without having to vote to repeal any specific law. It’s chickenshit.
Kent
Yep. Because that would have the advantage of getting Democratic fingerprints on any social security cuts. They are stupid but also not that stupid.
Any Democrats who go anywhere near getting their fingerprints on any vote to cut social security in any way should be tossed from the party. They should be pushing to expand it not cut it.
kindness
I’d say that is pretty unfair to fruit flys if you as me.
HumboldtBlue
@narya:
Lee is in the race and I don’t think it will make much difference.
What will be interesting is to see which way Kamala goes, she’s a long time ally of Lee.
@Betty Cracker:
No. Only five states have that law, and Cali ain’t one of’em.
Scout211
@Kent: REPEAL. Yes, much better. Clear to normies and accurate.
Kent
But strictly speaking, none of these programs have sunset dates now. So voting to add one is in effect, a vote to repeal it on X-date.
So you would in effect be voting to repeal it on x-future date. It isn’t a stretch to call it repeal. It is actually what they are voting to do. Repeal social security effective on x-date in the future.
RaflW
The Turtle of the Senate, in a press avail where he also courageously said he’d support whoever the eventual GOP nominee is, including the chief insurrectionist of J6, did make it clear that he isn’t for cutting Social Security.
I don’t trust him for a second, but I do believe that he’s seen enough of these fights to know the third rail is still fully electrified and he’s not going to get fried by it. Rick Scott? I doubt Mitch cares what happens to him, as long as the seat doesn’t flip “D”.
Baud
@Kent:
Where here = Balloon Juice.
Roger Moore
@Burnspbesq:
Schiff all the way. I got to vote for him when he was first elected to Congress and again until I got redistricted into Judy Chu’s district. I still miss having him as my Rep. I would love to have him as my Senator.
Geminid
@HumboldtBlue: Cook’s Political Report gave Porter’s 47th CD a Partisan Voting Index of D+3, and she won last November by 3.5%. They rate it as “Lean D” for 2024 as an open seat, so another Democrat should have a decent chance of holding it, especially in a Presidential year.
Four Democrats have announced for the race, including former U.S. Representative Harley Rouda and State Senator David Min(sp?). Much of the 47th was represented by Rouda before redistricting, but he declined to run against Porter last year. Porter has aleady endorsed Senator Min.
Gin & Tonic
@Anonymous At Work: He apparently shot himself with the firearm shown in the Tweet below. I’m no expert on firearms, but that seems challenging to do.
RaflW
@Betty Cracker: Good lord. 1.5 million more Floridians voted for DeSimpleton than Crist.
It’s just gotta be over for ol’ Charlie. Please!
Dorothy A. Winsor
Imagine these fools having to reauthorize all Federal legislation every five years, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They had trouble electing a speaker.
Betty Cracker
@RaflW: There seems to be real hostility between Scott and McConnell, though of course McConnell would support the devil himself as long as there was an R after the head demon’s name. Scott is also despised by Ron DeSantis. You usually have to be a good person to be despised by scoundrels like McConnell and DeSantis. Scott is a special case!
HumboldtBlue
@Geminid:
I did not know that, and I wonder how much of that is due to Porter herself, but I know fuck-all about OC Dem electoral inner workings, so I ain’t got anything of substance to add.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: Nope, that’s only a thing in a few states.
Old School
@RaflW:
Not sure what Mitch said recently, but here he is in 2018:
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: They don’t have to resign, but I think they cannot be on two different ballots, at least not in California. It was done in Virginia in 2023, but the State Delegate running for Governor was beaten in both the Governor and the Delegate primaries.
I guess one of the California Reps could bail on the Senate race before the filing deadline for their House seats, but this seems unlikely.
bbleh
@HumboldtBlue: there will never NOT be people who believe “both sides are crooked and ya can’t trust any of them” and there will never NOT be “bigots and racists dissemblers and liars … comfortably in the GOP bubble,” at least not in the near future IMO. Most of them wouldn’t even be exposed to “media … describing the narrative accurately and without hemming and hawing about both sides and ‘comity,’ ” even if such media were to materialize, and I agree that such media would likely be in the distinct minority.
BUT there are a significant number of people who ARE receptive to the message, who will hear it from Dems and Dem-friendly media, and whose vote could very well make the difference in many races. It’s worth the effort IMO.
And yes thank FSM that DiFi has decided to hang it up. Concur re Schiff as well.
VeniceRiley
Meanwhile in WV
https://twitter.com/dabeard/status/1625329666696577024?t=LQyzHQCfWFCJVsEY_SstEw&s=19
Keith P.
@Gin & Tonic: Even more suspicious, “Vladimir Makarov” is the main bad guy from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
UncleEbeneezer
@Roger Moore: Judy Chu is pretty great too. Not as famous, but every bit as progressive, imo.
RaflW
@Dorothy A. Winsor: “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We’re currently number 139 for takeoff here at LAX.
Since the Republican Party forgot to hold hearings to reauthorize the FAA, we’re all on our own and can only fly visual flight rules and, well, that means we’re going to be on the tarmac a while.
Oh, and that Tarmac Delay Law that used to get you money for waiting 6 hours in a poorly ventilated tin can? Yep, the GOP let that sunset, too.
Please be sure to tip your flight attendant, since she no longer gets minimum wage.
Thank g-d I don’t have to wear a mask, though. MAGA!
I’lll update you when we think we might have spotted the landing strip in Omaha.”
HumboldtBlue
@bbleh:
I feel ya.
Redshift
@Kent:
If you think you’re going to get an argument from someone being unreasonably pedantic about “repeal” (like pundits, for example), I would go with “voting to let it die.” There really is no way to argue that’s not true; if you add a “sunset,” you’re adding a doomsday clock and pushing the button, and it can only be turned off by a vote of people who see a national default as a bargaining chip.
If you claim don’t want to kill it, why would you possibly want to do that?
Roger Moore
@HumboldtBlue:
Orange County is no longer the Republican stronghold it used to be. It actually voted for Biden over Trump by about a 9% margin, and for Hillary over Trump by almost as large a margin. They even have a Democratic majority on the Board of Supervisors. It is no longer the home of White Flight from LA County. The population is still plurality non-Hispanic White, but that’s about 37% of the population vs. 34% Hispanic and 22% Asian.
sdhays
Betty, this is just chef’s kiss. You have such a way with words.
bbleh
@HumboldtBlue: @Roger Moore: “As goes California …”
zhena gogolia
@sdhays: Yeah.
Redshift
I think people may have missed the attempt to pull their old scam of claiming they won’t take away Social Security from the current seniors, because they’re just going to kill it for younger people. That used to work, but now too many of them are on record railing about the programs in their entirety being evil socialism, so no one is willing to buy the line of “technically if you squint just right, those exact words aren’t true.”
(Also, there’s the whole Rick Scott thing, which absolutely would cut SS & Medicare for current retirees.)
Annie
@Benw:
I was a banana slug for two years, attended UC Santa Cruz 1975-1977! Fiat slug!
Redshift
Or to put it more succinctly than I did the first time, I want to see Democrats ask “you want to put Social Security and Medicare through the same process as the debt ceiling, and you still claim you don’t want to kill them? Really?”
Two-fer of bludgeoning them with truth and calling out the debt ceiling idiocy in one go!
CaseyL
@Redshift: There’s also the problem, which they totally ignore, that SocSec is a pay-as-you-go program. Current benefits are funded by current contributions.
Cut off the contributions, and the benefits vanish even if the program hasn’t been formally repealed.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
I don’t know much about firearms. Is a carbine short enough to shoot yourself with? I tend to think that suicides are most likely to use a pistol/revolver.
Geminid
@HumboldtBlue: I don’t think Cook’s looks at candidate quality, but just weighs past party performance for a district over in several races. In this case, they had to add up the votes in the different areas that made up the new district. A lot of it was new for Porter.
Porter did do well in what seemed over all a down year for Democrats in California. But I think another Democrat can hold that seat. One will have to, because Porter seems all in on the Senate race
sab
@CaseyL: That is why they call it a Ponzi scheme. By their definition all government at any level is a Ponzi scheme. The alternative, of course, is the hitch your wagon to the strongest local warlord and hope for the best.
Redshift
@Baud:
Ah, but they don’t want to find cuts. They don’t actually care about spending, the whole point of the exercise is to make Democrats cut spending, because it’s political poison. As long as our side steadfastly refuses to do that, they’ll either cave or crash the economy.
Redshift
@Baud:
You would think so, but it used to work, because Democrats care about having a functioning government and Republicans don’t. We’ve gone through periods where “we need to cut spending, give us your ideas for cuts and we’ll let you know which ones we find acceptable” wasn’t laughed out of the room. Even more than the Social Security judo, the Biden Administration demanding that the people who say they want to cut spending do it is the best news we’ve had on budget/taxes/etc. in a long time.
Betty Cracker
Okay, this is messed up. After her office issued a statement that she’s stepping down, Feinstein said the following to a Raw Story reporter on the Hill who asked her about the announcement that she’s stepping down:
I’m skeptical of Raw Story, which mostly seems to just reword and repost stories other media outlets get. But they’ve got audio that sounds a lot like Feinstein.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
She might not remember.
sab
@Betty Cracker: Possibly Feinstein forgot what she told her staff.
She has been slipping a lot for a quite a while.
My dad was possibly one of the most intelligent men I have ever met for most of his life. Last seven or so years he can barely recognize his children, and he doesn’t even know what grandchildren are.
The Moar You Know
Got a degree which proves I am one, proud UCSC grad. They’re really cool animals, actually.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Seems like she hasn’t been all there for quite a while. It’s sad for her on a personal level, but I blame the staffers who’ve enabled it too. It’s like adult children who won’t take grandma’s car keys away even when she becomes a danger to others.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
We can debate her Schrodinger’s retirement in the thread AL just put up.
gvg
@narya: Not everyone is alike. Sort of like not all hispanics vote as a block? There are definitely a bunch of habitual nice republicans who don’t believe their team actually will do those mean things. When I was a child I listened to my father rant about how Regan SAID he wanted to cut SS and then my grandfather voted for him anyway and complained afterwards when Regan did it. Grandpa told my father he didn’t think Regan meant it, so naturally there were some rants at our dinner table. It made an impression on me. About nice fools too.
HumboldtBlue
@Roger Moore:
Yes, we have seen the shift both at the state level and the county level over the past 18 years. In the early 1990s California had two Republican Senators IIRC, Pete Wilson and some other schlub I can’t remember before Feinstein won her seat followed by Boxer in ’98 (?), and we’ve had two Dem women since then until Padilla following Kamala’s resignation.
When I moved to Humboldt 20 years ago the GOP was still a viable political party in the state. They got Davis recalled, put in Arnold, and from then on it’s been a steady decline that ultimately led to the Dem super majority in 2014. That ratio doesn’t look to change in any way any time soon, it’s quite a story.
Anonymous At Work
@Tony G: Well, life’s work and livelihood destroyed in an instant can lead to depression and suicide. Or it could be part of this scene from the Godfather Part 2: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071562/quotes/qt0339704
You know, how Rome would let the rich who had fallen out of favor protect their families.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: Oy. And yet she’s planning to serve out the rest of her term. Sigh.
bbleh
It’s front page on WaPo. It’s a done deal.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
And he’s going to make them say what they’d cut. He’s already said that. He’s going to make them own it, or own the more likely fact that they won’t name more than a handful of trivial things where cutting them won’t come within a mile of keeping us under the debt ceiling.
Social Security, Medicare, and defense are where the big money is. They’ve boxed themselves in on the first two, and (other than possibly aid for Ukraine) they won’t dare touch the third. Which leaves them having to get rid of half of everything else. Should be fun.
rikyrah
What I love most is all the receipts.
Found one on twitter today about Nikki Haley from 2010 on the subject.
The receipts are everywhere.
Kent
I don’t think they actually even look at past Congressional race performance. I think they just look at presidential voting patterns over the past several elections for all those precincts and come up with a partisan lean for the district based on that. So Trump/Clinton and Trump/Biden percentages determine the lean, not Porter’s past history in that district
So if the district is Dem+3 then it means over the past several elections, all the precincts that compose that district voted Dem+3 in the past several presidential elections even though the district as it is drawn now didn’t exist back then.
rikyrah
I also think that Democrats need to physically hand out the pamphlet with Scott’s plan and all the other GOP Comments about cutting SS. Something about having it physically in the hand – makes a difference. And, I don’t mean just the President. I mean when ANY Democrat gets in front of an audience, pass it out. No matter the office.
catclub
@narya:
,
I would say it is quite likely they are okay with cuts for younger workers who are not them. A LOT of the panic over Obamacare was generated by telling the olds that having healthcare for poor people would cut them out of their medicare funded healthcare.
cmorenc
True, SCOTUS upheld the constitutionality of social security act way back in 1937; and it’s been settled constitutional law now for 85 years. But then, so was Roe v Wade for 50 years. Where I am going with this is: with Biden now forcing the GOP to recognize that eliminating or undermining social security is dangerously nonviable politically, might they now attempt to get the RW-packed federal courts to do the dirty work for them by reconsidering its constitutional basis? Starting with a suit filed in that Texas federal district with the same far-right ideologue judge who’s been their go-to attack dog for reinterpreting the constitution to disallow laws they don’t like.
Yes, it would still likely be a reach for that to succeed with a majority of even the current SCOTUS, but OTOH we should take Justice Thomas at his word that the parts of the constitution that need to be revisited and correctly re-interpreted aren’t limited to abortion / privacy rights.
rikyrah
Everything is settled about SS and Medicare?
That’s what we thought about Roe v Wade.
TriassicSands
Sure, the Republicans kinda said they don’t want to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, but the truth is they now have all the excuse they will ever need to junk both programs — Joe Biden was MEAN to them. Hurt feelings are enough justification for those lying sacks of shit to punish millions of people. Plus, did their so-called promise include Medicaid. After all, the party of wealth hates poor people more than anything (except, maybe, the truth).
Oh, Joe, why ya wanna be so mean?
On the other hand, do Republicans really want to end those programs? Right now they provide an endless source of misinformation and outrage for their campaigns. Having Roe as the law of land was invaluable. Then, they finally got what they wanted and it’s difficult to argue they are better off now as a party on election day. They’d be even worse off if the Democrats were better at messaging.
If the Republicans actually were able to get rid of all three programs, they would very likely suffer hugely at the polls. The Republicans always count on the ignorance and disengagement of voters (and voters rarely disappoint). I suspect they don’t want to end the programs as much as they want to render them far less effective (think privatization vouchers or both). Then, they can have their cake and eat it too, claiming, “See,we didn’t end the programs, we improved them. Enter voter disengagement and ignorance.
Mandatory sunsetting of programs would give the Republicans the opportunity to gradually change them. Frogs might not really sit in slowly heating water, but a lot of American voters are not as smart as frogs.
Kent
Social Security and Medicare are actual LAW passed by Congress and previously defended in front of the Supreme Court.
Congress had 50 years to actually pass an abortions rights law and never did. So Roe v. Wade was an opinion and only took 5 justices to overturn.
I mean I take your point. But the two things are not equivalent. Take Brown v. Board of Education. That was followed up by a lot of anti-discrimination law from the Civil Rights Act to various education equity laws. If the Supreme Court reversed itself on Brown v. Board of Education it wouldn’t much matter because there is a tremendous amount of existing Federal law that would prevent a return to Jim Crow style segregation.
Congress never did any follow-up to Roe.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: I know very little about firearms or suicide, so your guess is as good as mine.
Kent
@TriassicSands: Honestly I don’t think Republicans are really all that interested in repealing social security and medicare one way or the other.
What they are REALLY interested in doing is heading off any sort of increase in the payroll cap tax for either program. Or expanding the types of income subject to the tax from wages to all income. Which is what is going to be necessary if we expand the program or keep it self-sustaining past about 2035.
By cutting now they are pre-empting the argument about raising taxes in the future. The don’t want to arrive at 2035 and have the choice be tax increases or IMMEDIATE benefit cuts. Because the know they will lose that argument.
But it also means there is nothing wrong with Democrats just kicking the can down the road and not get caught up in “solvency” arguments today. Because we will win the future arguments. Guaranteed. And the GOP knows this.
CaseyL
@Betty Cracker: Sadly, she might not remember having issued the statement. (I don’t think a rogue staffer did it; that’s a good quick way to be unemployable on the Hill.)
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
You are correct that most suicides use handguns, but the difference between a rifle and a carbine is that a carbine is shorter. So it is more possible to shoot yourself with a carbine…
Princess
@Betty Cracker: my guess is it’s because she has dementia. My mother would do something like this too. She should probably be stepping down right now.
Geminid
@Kent: I did not specify past Congressional races. I assumed it was Presidential and statewide races. For instance, in Virginia the ratings I saw for Congressional districts considered both Biden’s performance in 2020 as well as Youngkin’s in 2021.
CarolPW
@The Moar You Know:
I have the degree, and I’m proud my diploma was signed by Jerry his first time as gov. If I had graduated on time, Ronnie would have signed it (spit).
Roger Moore
@HumboldtBlue:
I would argue the decline goes back a lot further than that. The most obvious early sign was when California voted for Clinton over Bush in 1992. In 1994, Pete Wilson was uncertain enough of his reelection as governor that he felt the need to put Prop 187 on the ballot to goose Republican turn-out. It helped with the turn out that year, but it alienated a lot of Latino voters. More importantly, it alienated a lot of Latino non-voters and convinced them to become Latino voters. Arnold was really the last gasp of the California Republican party, and he was really a RINO as far as the state party sees it. IIRC, they haven’t won a single statewide office since he was reelected. They kept looking vaguely relevant through the 2000s because they agreed to a gerrymander that favored incumbents after the 2000 census. That locked them in as a substantial minority in the state legislature, but after the 2010 census, their legislative position collapsed. It didn’t help that California moved to a non-partisan redistricting commission that blocked any kind of gerrymander.
pluky
@Baud: Defense /s
Bill Arnold
@sdhays:
She had me with “hissed like 10,000 demonic swans”.
joel hanes
Scott will probably get reelected because Florida Republicans love invasive pythons that engulf and devour native wildlife.
Ms. Cracker, your prose is an important national resource.
caphilldcne
@Kent: second this. That is exactly the correct word.
Tony G
@Gin & Tonic: That’s a good point. Why use a carbine when a pistol is so much easier? Of course I don’t doubt the official Kremlin description of what happened, but that seems kind of strange to me.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Semi-automatic rifle?
Sit in a chair, hold the firearm slightly off vertical and press the muzzle against the roof of mouth.
Kids, don’t try this at home or anyplace else.
So it’s cumbersome but possible, however this being in Russia all bets are off.
HeartlandLiberal
I love Betty Cracker’s way with words.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Agree on that with the staffers.