Balloon Juice - Politics Archives

Sunday Evening Open Thread: If It Wasn’t So Catastrophic, Watching the GOP Shutdown Kabuki Would Be Mildly Entertaining

by Anne Laurie| September 24, 20238:36 pm| 96 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, Republicans in Disarray!

"We still remain hopeful, although the writing is on the wall," said @AFGENational President Everett Kelley of looming government shutdown.

Congress has *8* days to reach & pass a deal to keep government funded. A look at negotiations and preparations for @CBSNews stations: pic.twitter.com/DPUUfncCko

— Natalie Brand (@NatalieABrand) September 22, 2023

“By the way, when that government shutdown began Donald Trump was president, Republicans controlled the House and the Senate. In December of 2018, they shut themselves down.”

Can’t wait for us to make @RepJeffries *Majority* Speaker in 2024. Let’s get it done! pic.twitter.com/fGdCRFYgLh

— Maya Contreras (@mayatcontreras) September 22, 2023

Fun fact:

Since 1995, there have been 5 major government shutdowns.

The GOP controlled the House for all 5 of them.

Stop giving these idiots power.

— Angry Staffer ?? (@Angry_Staffer) September 22, 2023

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McCarthy warns House Republicans against spending stonewall https://t.co/lr9Med0lQ9

— POLITICO (@politico) September 17, 2023

McCarthy’s not that dumb, but he is completely powerless against the GOP Angry Tantrum Carcass. Last week:

… “I’ve been through shutdowns, and I’ve never seen somebody win a shutdown. Because when you shut down, you give all your power to the administration,” McCarthy said Sunday during an interview on Fox News’ [last] “Sunday Morning Futures” with host Maria Bartiromo.

McCarthy is facing concurrent challenges as he attempts to placate his right flank while holding onto support from mainstream Republicans in the House. The Republican leader seemingly lacks the votes to pass a stopgap bill to keep the government open past Sept. 30. And despite attempts to reel in support from hardliners by opening an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, some conservatives are still threatening to force a vote stripping him of the speakership.

The only way to cut spending, as members of his party hope to do, is to pass the bills that would allow the government to keep running, McCarthy said.

“These are Republican bills. These are the most conservative bills going forward,” McCarthy said. “But remember, you don’t get it all your own way,” he added, noting that any bill that makes it through the House must be able to gain enough support in the Senate to be enacted…

Kevin McCarthy has about as much control of his party as he does the phases of the moon. https://t.co/C1jXFssF4T

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) September 22, 2023

The United States House of Representatives is now indistinguishable from a motorcycle gang after the 15th beer run of the day. I am re-reading Joanne Freeman’s invaluable Field of Blood, about the descent of the Congress into madness and violence in the years leading up to the Civil War because, frankly, I think we’re getting close to that period again with the Republican majority over which Speaker Kevin McCarthy has about as much control as he has over the tides and the phases of the moon…

It’s a cannibal circus now, and the Democrats are better off out of it. They should ignore the siren songs of the Problem Solvers caucus and/or the New Democrats Coalition, who are said to be “negotiating” a way out of the impasse— which, it should be noted, is only an impasse because the Republicans are running a cannibal circus. These no-hopers have no constituency either inside or outside the Capitol. This is a classic case of throwing an anchor while your opponent is floundering mid-river. The Republicans created the base who created this Congress. They gave the cannibals their first taste of human flesh and, lo and behold, you taste the same as Democrats do.

Can we, as they say in the military textbooks, harass the retreat?

My
Constituents
Cannot
Afford
Rebellious
Tantrums,
Handle
Your Shutdown, @SpeakerMcCarthy.

If the government shuts down & federal workers don’t get paid, Congress shouldn’t get paid either.

My MCCARTHY Shutdown Act blocks Member pay during a shutdown.https://t.co/WXin4sPmoV

— Angie Craig (@RepAngieCraig) September 21, 2023

A government shutdown would be devastating for the thousands of federal workers supporting their families. Congress shouldn’t get paid if they can’t do their jobs & keep the government open.

My MCCARTHY Shutdown Act would withhold pay from Members of Congress during a shutdown. pic.twitter.com/rb1TdlY7fM

— Angie Craig (@RepAngieCraig) September 23, 2023

I have some hopes that follow-up investigations on this top-secret rats’ nest will prove, shall we say, informative:

SCOOP: House Freedom Caucus conservatives have been holding government shutdown meetings in a townhome owned by a convicted tax cheat — the neighbors are pissed, and it's not clear who is paying the rent. Me w/@ZTPetrizzo @thedailybeast https://t.co/AxVsrNhHwr

— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) September 20, 2023

Talk about your both-sides:

KWelker, on MTP, after Sec Buttigieg explains that the shutdown disagreement is ENTIRELY *within* House GOP, Welker: "But again, if there's a shutdown, that falls on everyone's shoulders… Why isn't prez using Bully Pulpit?"

Can't make it up.

— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) September 24, 2023

Barreling destructively toward a federal government shutdown ==> pic.twitter.com/aUta87DHjt

— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) September 21, 2023

Sunday Evening Open Thread: If It Wasn’t So Catastrophic, Watching the GOP Shutdown Kabuki Would Be Mildly EntertainingPost + Comments (96)

Crooked Clarence and ‘Quid Pro Koch’

by Betty Cracker| September 24, 202311:18 am| 77 Comments

This post is in: Activist Judges!, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Venality

Over at Slate, legal reporters Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discuss why ProPublica’s latest revelations about Clarence Thomas and the Koch network are so significant: Clarence Thomas’ Latest Pay-to-Play Scandal Finally Connects All the Dots. As Stern points out, Thomas brags about his judicial steadiness, which he (implausibly) cites as proof that no outside influences affect his rulings.

But conspicuously, Thomas changed his mind on so-called “Chevron deference,” i.e., the notion that agencies’ “reasonable interpretation of ambiguous federal laws” should stand. And he flipped on that standard after being corruptly coopted by the Koch network:

Thomas was a strong supporter of Chevron deference and even wrote a major decision expanding it. But after he was cultivated by the Kochs and became their close friend, he drifted away from Chevron, ultimately renounced and repudiated Chevron deference and is now on the brink of issuing or joining a decision that will overturn Chevron deference this coming term, in a case that is partly funded and supported by the Koch network…

Stern: There’s no speculation required to connect those dots. There had been previous reporting on why Clarence Thomas changed his mind about Chevron deference, because it is a big question. It’s a huge anomaly in his jurisprudence to have an about-face like this, and I think the ProPublica report makes any kind of remaining subtext very clear. He was initiated into this circle through a conscious effort—basically recruited, right?

Lithwick: Groomed. Let’s say groomed… Last go round, we called it quid pro Crow, and now we’re calling it quid pro Koch, but it’s the same pay-to-play.

Thomas has demonstrated repeatedly that he has absolutely no shame. In 2021, he issued a ruling that favored shielding communications among a group of coup plotters that we now know included his wife. So it makes sense to assume he will not recuse in the case this term and will rule in favor of deregulation, just as the Koch network’s long-term strategy envisioned.

It’s hard to get normies to pay much attention to the SCOTUS, though the Dobbs decision seems to be an exception. Maybe that’s a crack in the dam or maybe not. In any case, kudos to ProPublica for keeping the heat on Crooked Clarence. I have a feeling they aren’t done digging up examples of plutocrats plying Thomas and his Fed Soc-approved colleagues with luxuries.

Open thread.

Crooked Clarence and ‘Quid Pro Koch’Post + Comments (77)

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Snippets

by Anne Laurie| September 24, 20237:16 am| 198 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Popular Culture, Proud to Be A Democrat, Schadenfreude

Jimmy Carter's family assumed he had just days left when he went into hospice last February. But Carter had other ideas. "We thought it was going to be in that week that it was coming to the end," said Jason Carter. "And it’s just now been seven months." https://t.co/CbAPJ4FyXy

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) September 21, 2023

(Unpaywalled gift link)

Because there is still just too much news, here’s a collection of totally unrelated stories to start your morning.

With all due respect, this sounds like the premise for a kaiju movie…

The U.S. military is planning to establish in Japan a command post for its Space Force in the near future.
https://t.co/Yw1g7zPybW pic.twitter.com/5TvaspfegI

— The Japan News (@The_Japan_News) September 15, 2023

I don’t *think* I shared this earlier, but it remains worth reading:

This is the single best piece I've seen about the Biden administration working to reduce administrative burdens that the public experiences. It is not flashy work, but if we want to see more effort to fix public services, we should praise it when it occurshttps://t.co/uMcMZSJG3U

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) September 16, 2023

Schadenfreude!

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Sunday Morning Open Thread: SnippetsPost + Comments (198)

Open Thread: Exciting News — Andy Kim Is Contesting Menedez’s Seat

by Anne Laurie| September 23, 202310:15 pm| 78 Comments

This post is in: 2024 Primaries, Excellent Links, Local Races, Proud to Be A Democrat

After calls to resign, Senator Menendez said “I am not going anywhere.” As a result, I feel compelled to run against him. Not something I expected to do, but NJ deserves better. We cannot jeopardize the Senate or compromise our integrity. Please join me:https://t.co/QFIaMsgJc9

— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) September 23, 2023

Bound to be lots more about Kim’s campaign to discuss by Monday, but here’s something good to celebrate now!

What ‘we’ said about Andy Kim in 2018: Andy Kim for NJ-03

In 2021: Thursday Morning Open Thread: Cleaning Up After the Looters

In 2022: Excellent Read: What Rep. Andy Kim Saw, After the Insurrection

NJ Democratic Rep Andy Kim will run against Bob Menendez next year in the wake of senator’s indictment & refusal to step down.
Kim represents NJ's 3rd Dist in Congress; he was reelected last November by more than 10 percentage points.#ProudBlue #DemVoice1 https://t.co/PLdjGswijA

— Tommasina Says Prosecute Insurrectionists NOW 💙🌻 (@TommasinaResist) September 23, 2023

I don’t know a lot but I do know that how your staff talks about you says more about your leadership than almost anything you actually do ever will.

Andy Kim’s staff *really* loves him.

— tré easton (@treeaston) September 23, 2023

Andy Kim is taking on Menendez for the Senate, and he's a much stronger candidate for Democrats. Here's my Senate Forecast projection:

For Kim:
Margin: D+17.8%
Chance to Win: 92% D, 8% R

For Menendez:
Margin: D+7.8%
Chance to Win: 75% D, 25% R https://t.co/DAzHYYzMac

— Logan Phillips (@LoganR2WH) September 23, 2023

Open Thread: Exciting News — Andy Kim Is Contesting Menedez’s SeatPost + Comments (78)

Postcard Writing Party & Music Thread

by WaterGirl| September 23, 20238:00 pm| 60 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Political Action, Politics

Welcome to our first postcard writing party and music thread of this election cycle!

If there is enough interest we wlll be having combination postcard writing & music threads on Saturdays and Tuesdays – 8 pm blog time.

Not writing postcards? Not a problem, you can share some music and maybe even some encouragement with the writers.

I would like to collect information about all the opportunities for VA and OH all in one place, so if you know of a campaign please share the information! And if any of the information below should be edited, or if you know of additional opportunit9es, chime in with those, too, please.

OHIO Opportunities

Ohio Indivisible

This is the group that wrote for us using Voces addresses for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and other races. Let’s return the favor and write for them for Issue 1! I have addresses – just send me email, include your nym, and let me know how many addresses you would like to start with.

Dear [VOTER NAME],

Let’s amend Ohio’s constitution to protect reproductive freedoms! Decisions about your health should be in your hands.

Vote YES on or before Nov. 7 to protect abortion rights in Ohio. Early vote begins Oct. 11 – find details here: voteohio.gov1

Thank you for being a voter!

Sample postcard from Mousebumples

Postcards to Voters – Ohio

PtV has a 3-day window to write, and a minimum of 4 addresses.

PostcardsToVoters.org currently has OH addresses. To sign up, use their email option first: their text option may be temporarily out of order. They’ve also got a Slack option. Link tree here: https://linktr.ee/postcardstovoters

For anyone who’s interested in signing up:

Email [email protected]

FAQ page is here:

VIRGINIA Opportunities

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Postcard Writing Party & Music ThreadPost + Comments (60)

Interesting Read: ‘Are “Never Trump” Republicans Actually Just Democrats Now?’

by Anne Laurie| September 23, 20236:00 pm| 120 Comments

This post is in: Elections, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Politics

Lots in this ⁦@Bencjacobs⁩ piece, including:

“In Cobb County, Romney won with 55.5 percent of the vote in 2012, but Biden won with 56.3 percent in 2020” https://t.co/OLkPg2favi

— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) September 21, 2023

Author Ben Jacobs is a feelthy liberal (he was working for the Guardian when Montana’s rightwing soon-to-be-governor Greg Gianforte physically attacked him)… but Politico‘s Jonathan Martin, who posted the tweet above, is *not*. Are the vibes shifting? A long, anecdote-heavy piece, from the New Republic:

… After the 2016 election, there was a vogue in the media to understand how Donald Trump had possibly managed to win the presidency despite scandal after scandal. He received almost three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton—an early sign of the limits of his electoral might—but because most pollsters and experts had predicted a Clinton win, there was a desperate scramble across the Rust Belt to find the once Democratic voters who had cast a ballot for the Republican. Blue-collar diners from Allentown to Youngstown were swarmed with reporters determined to discern the secret of Donald Trump’s appeal.

In hindsight, that phenomenon may be eclipsed by another one: Republicans deserting their party precisely because of Trump, forming a demographic now familiarly known as “Never Trump Republicans.” Whether it was his xenophobic remarks about immigrants, his crude personal behavior, or his general disdain for the norms of American politics, many white, college-educated voters—long a bedrock of the GOP—cast their ballot either for Hillary Clinton or for a third-party candidate to avoid supporting Trump. The shock of his election kept this initially from being a broad focus in popular culture, but in special election after special election in the coming year, culminating in the 2018 midterms, it was clear there was a lasting revulsion from these Republicans toward the Trump-era GOP. This was reinforced in 2020, when these voters appear to have turned even more heavily against Trump, helping Joe Biden run the table in the most competitive swing states.

This tranche of voters is not huge, but they may be decisive—in 2020, 16 percent of self-identified moderate or liberal Republicans voted for Biden, according to an analysis by Pew, twice the share that did so in 2016. This even as Biden won a narrow electoral college victory by a combined margin of just under 43,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Bryon Allen, a longtime Republican pollster and partner at WPA Intelligence, noted that, before Trump, Republicans in many suburban counties would get narrow majorities. “Now, without a [GOP Georgia Governor Brian] Kemp or a [GOP Virginia Governor Glenn] Youngkin or somebody who has particular appeal and the right issues … we might get 47 percent or 48 percent” in the same areas…

“I think Donald Trump was the gateway drug that has drawn a lot of otherwise pretty standard Republicans to the Democratic Party over the last eight or nine years,” Zac McCrary, a veteran Democratic pollster, told The New Republic. “And a Never Trump Republican in 2016, two or three cycles later, turns into a pretty conventional Democrat up and down the ballot.”

That may be somewhat wishful thinking; ancestral loyalties can be hard to shake. The American South is dotted with jurisdictions that stopped voting for Democrats at the federal level a half-century ago yet continued to elect Democratic legislators and local officials into the past decade. Further, the Republican Party is still deeply at war within itself. And while Donald Trump and his ideological allies may be ascendant, there is no final verdict about the role of Trump and Trumpism within the GOP.

While that civil war rages, a faction of erstwhile Republicans has opted out of the fight and simply decided to back Democrats. With many of these well-educated suburbanites poised to vote for Joe Biden again in 2024, the question isn’t just whether they will swing what is likely to be yet another tight election next year, but whether they are part of the Democratic coalition moving forward. Conversations with pollsters and operatives from both parties suggest that, after a third straight election in which Trump is the leader of the GOP, Republicans may find that they have alienated these voters forever, while creating plenty of new Democrats along the way…

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… [T]he emergence of Never Trumpers is the product of both long-term trends and candidate-specific quirks; the trend of educational polarization slowed or accelerated depending on which candidates were on the ballot. In 2012, the GOP nominated a candidate in Mitt Romney who overperformed among the college-educated white voters in the suburbs who have turned on Trump. Some of these voters would have likely started shifting toward Democrats earlier if, instead, the Republican nominee was Rick Santorum, whose 2014 book was titled Blue Collar Conservatives. With Trump, the long-term trends and the candidate-specific quirks collided.

But the difference with Trump is that his massive influence on American political coalitions is largely based on whether voters thrill to his transgressions or are appalled by his grotesqueries. Even now, it’s sometimes difficult to discern whether it is his personality itself or the worldview that Trump embodies that has driven some Republicans out of the party. As Schlozman put it, if you “take a dozen people in Atlanta who voted for Mitt Romney, what they think of Donald Trump determines how they’re voting now in a very important way,” but “what explains their views about Donald Trump?”

What’s clearer is that relatively few voters were swayed by his policy accomplishments, like a generic GOP tax cut bill or his administration’s oversight of Operation Warp Speed (which Trump alternately celebrated or shied away from). Instead, it’s the loaded rhetoric that he has brought to American politics on topics ranging from building a physical wall on the border with Mexico to his repeated false claims of election fraud. In contrast, past realignments have rested on far more robust legislative feats. The Democratic majorities of the Roosevelt era were founded on support for or opposition to the programs of the New Deal. The shift in the South starting in the 1960s was based on reaction to the landmark civil rights laws of the Johnson administration. With Trump, it’s often simply been the man himself and the forces he has unleashed. The result has smoothed the transition of these former Republicans into the Democratic fold.

It’s impossible to predict the next lasting fault line in American politics. As Schlozman noted, modern political parties rest on a layer of intersecting cleavages going back to the Civil War, and each new alignment leads to new coalitions and new points of contention. But if Trump remains the dominant figure on the GOP scene for yet another election cycle, the voters who fled the Republican Party aren’t likely to return. And even if he does somehow fade into the background, those same voters may find the party they once called their own virtually unrecognizable.

*Interesting* Read: ‘Are “Never Trump” Republicans Actually Just Democrats Now?’Post + Comments (120)

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Gradually, Then All At Once

by Anne Laurie| September 23, 20236:35 am| 223 Comments

This post is in: Biden Administration in Action, Gun Issues, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

Big crowd in the Rose Garden for ?@POTUS? ?@VP? unveiling of a new White House Office of Gun Violence Protection. No Republican leaders were present, according to a spokewoman. pic.twitter.com/55fJBqq3RM

— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) September 22, 2023

An ‘impossible’ shift in the gun-safety argument, and also a refutation of Old people have a death grip on the Democratic party! meme…

The age span of Democrats in federal office is on stage here. 55 years between the president at 80 years 10 months and the youngest Member of Congress and first Gen Z House member @MaxwellFrostFL at 26 years and 8 months. pic.twitter.com/Jw6qgyS8QY

— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) September 22, 2023

Promise kept. pic.twitter.com/JZcgFh8DSx

— President Biden (@POTUS) September 22, 2023

======

Yes. pic.twitter.com/xgKhfKXBKa

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 22, 2023

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Gradually, Then All At OncePost + Comments (223)

A consequence of cucumbers

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

… among the most cringeworthy communications in the history of the alphabet!

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Republicans do not pay their debts.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

T R E 4 5 O N

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Consistently wrong since 2002

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Sunday Evening Open Thread: If It Wasn’t So Catastrophic, Watching the GOP Shutdown Kabuki Would Be Mildly Entertaining

Crooked Clarence and ‘Quid Pro Koch’

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Snippets

Open Thread: Exciting News — Andy Kim Is Contesting Menedez’s Seat

Postcard Writing Party & Music Thread

OHIO Opportunities

VIRGINIA Opportunities

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Interesting Read: ‘Are “Never Trump” Republicans Actually Just Democrats Now?’

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Gradually, Then All At Once

Politics

OHIO Opportunities

VIRGINIA Opportunities show full post on front page

VIRGINIA Opportunities

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