Democratic Politics

I hope you’ll forgive me for not trusting the sleazy, evil, obstructive Pastor of the House.   I can’t help but wonder what he has up his sleeve.

(CNN)  Speaker Mike Johnson announced to reporters on Wednesday that he will put a bill compelling the Department of Justice to release all of its Jeffrey Epstein case files on the House floor next week – earlier than expected.

Narrator:  Earlier than “when hell freezes over” which is what appeared to be his plan.

“We’re going to put that on the floor for a full vote when we get back next week,” Johnson said.

“In the meantime I’ll remind everybody the [House] Oversight Committee has been working around the clock” on its own investigation, the speaker said.

Johnson is required to put the bill from Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and GOP Rep. Thomas Massie on the floor soon, now that their discharge petition has reached 218 signatures. But he has some leeway to do so, and Johnson suggested Wednesday he would not use that extra time.

The sooner the House takes the vote, the sooner he can try to officially declare it “moot” and move on?   I’m not as cynical as some of you guys, but on this one?  With this guy?  I’m right there with the rest of you.

Oh, and speaking of the House petition…

Congratulations, Adelita Grijalva!  She really gets going at th 3-minute mark!

Something Up His Sleeve?Post + Comments (114)

This from Josh Marshall may not have anything new, but it’s nice to see it collected all in one place, and I can’t argue with a single thing he said.

Josh Marshall calls all this Change or Purge.  I think it’s the old classic – lead,  follow, or get out of the way.

If you want to be in the House or Senate in 2026 or 2028 or 2030, and any of the following items  is a bridge too far for you, then you might have made a fine Senator or Representative 10 years ago or maybe even 10 years in the future, but sorry, you’re not the right person for the time.

Does anyone want to argue with me on that?  Do you think red state elected officials should get a pass on this?   What about someone in a close race?  What about someone you really like, who has served for years, or decades?

Personally, I think no free passes, but if you think that’s too extreme, make your case.  We get to disagree on all of this, and there’s no way to know who’s right, because the future is unknown.  So by all means disagree, but no name calling, please, and no one is the devil because they are on the other side of an argument.

Johs Marshall

Over the last couple days I’ve argued both that the denouement of the shutdown standoff was a flub and an embarrassment and also that the overall situation is going reasonably well. This isn’t defending the members of the Democratic caucus. I don’t need to defend or attack them because I’m mostly indifferent to them. I’m looking to a half-dozen year or more time horizon in which almost all the current senators need to be convinced to take a dramatically different approach to politics or purged from the ranks of elected office. Let’s call it Change or Purge. To me, from March to now was a big step forward. The way of operating during this shutdown was very different from what happened in March. And the way it ended — here I know many disagree with me — doesn’t negate what happened during the last five weeks, either in terms of the changed behavior or what was accomplished. This is a multi-course treatment. The results of the first course were encouraging. So, on to the remaining nine.

Since I’ve focused on this Change or Purge framework in this post I’d like to flesh out some of what that means. Of course a lot of this is either characterological or a way of using power. That can be hard to capture in bullet points or outside the context of a specific political situation. But there are a series of things senators support or don’t support that gives a clear indication of whether they are serious about confronting the challenge of the moment or battling back from Trumpism.

What does that mean? I think of it as: You live in a disaster zone. The floods and hurricanes are going to be twice as strong and three times as frequent going forward. So you’ve got to retrofit the house (this means legislation, mostly) and get in the habit of handling natural disasters (this means their approach to power). So what counts in this context? Here are five things I would want to ask and get an answer on from every Democratic senator or candidate. Think of it another way: You’re new management coming in to turn around a failing company. You want to sit down with every employee right after you take over to see if they’re part of the solution or part of the problem. That’s the Status Interview. Here are the five questions.

One: The filibuster.

If you support keeping the filibuster you are not serious about moving the country forward in any positive direction. Unless you’re a Democratic senator from a red state — holding a seat probably no one else could hold — you should absolutely be primaried with the intent of removing you from office at the first opportunity.

Two: Supreme Court reform.

The purpose of the high court is not to run the country. It is to render decisions on points of constitutional ambiguity in a good faith and broadly consistent manner. It is now engaged in purely outcome-driven reasoning, mixing and matching doctrines and modes of jurisprudence depending on the desired ends, with the aim of furthering autocratic and Republican rule. That is the heart of the corruption. Passing laws doesn’t matter if they can and will be discarded simply because six lifetime appointees don’t like them. That’s a perversion of the constitutional order. I know this one is hard to swallow for many people. It doesn’t come easily to me either. But the facts of the situation and fidelity to the Constitution require it. I’m not going to get into the specific kind of reform here. There are various ways to go about it. You can judge it by the end result. If you are for leaving intact the corrupt Republican majority’s absolute control over the political and partisan direction of the country, you should leave or be driven from office.

Three: Statehood. Making DC and Puerto Rico into states isn’t quite as essential as points one and two. They aren’t sine qua nons that stand in the path of anything else happening. But they’re very important. The most important reason for making DC and Puerto Rico states is that DC and Puerto Rico should in fact be states.

In practice, life in DC wasn’t that different from Maryland or Virginia. What we’ve seen over the last year makes clear this is a very real harm and deprivation of rights, not at all theoretical thing. A renegade president can treat the district and its citizens as conquered territory. DC absolutely needs to be given the sovereignty and structural protections of statehood. The other issue is that making DC and Puerto Rico into states is a very legitimate opportunity to redress some of the current structural Republican advantage in the Senate. That’s good on principle and good politics.

Four: Clearing the law books. As we’ve seen over the last year, the U.S. federal code is full of laws which assume the sitting president broadly supports the federal Constitution, civic democracy and the best interests of all American citizens. We know now that that is a dangerous assumption. There are lots of laws which grant the president vast powers if things get super weird. And the president is in charge of deciding whether they’re weird. A lot of this is the dirty work of the corrupt Republican majority on the Supreme Court. But a lot of the laws are genuinely far too ambiguous. We need to change all of those laws.

Five: Outlaw extreme gerrymandering. A couple things here require explanation. I say “extreme” gerrymandering. And that may sound like I’m okay or we should be okay with some gerrymandering. That’s not it exactly. I say this because there is no objectively correct map. All legislative maps involve decisions and advantages here or there. I add “extreme” as a matter of realism more than license. But it is essential to have a federal legal framework governing how maps can be legitimately drawn. They cannot be drawn for partisan advantage, to disempower or empower one racial group over another or one region over another. Again there are no perfect maps and no perfect rules. But it cannot be a free-for-all.

A summary of sorts from Josh.

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Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way, Josh Marshall StylePost + Comments (192)