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Most Fridays, we tend to focus on President Donald Trump's flailings and failings on domestic issues, but this week his buffoonery on the world stage was really what was front and center. Sure, there's an ongoing constitutional crisis between the White House and the House of Representatives, but this week in particular seemed to be "foreign policy mishap week" for Team Trump.
In what is in all likelihood a political shot across Joe Biden's bow, Senator Bernie Sanders is about to introduce a bill in the Senate which would cap all credit card interest rates at 15 percent. A companion bill will be introduced in the House by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (where it actually has the prospect of being voted on). This will be a welcome addition to the ongoing debate over what the Democratic Party's agenda and 2020 platform should include. It's an idea with the potential for widespread support from the public, and one of those rare issues where normal people would actually see a concrete and beneficial difference in their own lives emerge from the politics in Washington. A further provision of the bill would allow the post office to start offering basic banking services, putting it in direct competition with the banking industry.
Yes, we're almost at the point where every Democrat who has ever dreamed of running for president has already announced his or her intentions, and we can finally say that the field is set. Almost. We've still got three holdouts, but two of them seem likely to jump in the race within the next few weeks, and the third has announced she's not going to make up her mind until September, so even if she does join in, it isn't going to happen any time soon.
The word on the lips of every political journalist who resides within the Washington Beltway this week is "electability." Countless articles have been written on the subject, and it's been raised to almost obsessive levels as the pundits wonder what the voters think about the Democratic field and who will have the best chance of defeating Donald Trump next year. And as with every modern presidential election cycle for at least the past 20 years, the elusive quality of electability is measured and debated using an agreed-upon definition of the term. The only problem is that this definition is now wildly out of date -- if it ever was even correct in the first place.
Those are strong words to use in a subtitle, as well as so dated as to almost be anachronistic. But we feel this is the perfect phrase to sum up Stephen Moore's announcement that he's withdrawing from consideration for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Because apparently Moore has been in a coma since just before Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in a tennis match billed as the "Battle Of The Sexes."
For the second time in just a few weeks, Republicans in the Senate have denied President Trump's hand-picked choice a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. First it was Herman "Nine Nine Nine" Cain, and now Stephen Moore has also announced his withdrawal from the nomination process. Both are political blows to the president, who seems to want a Fed loyal to him rather than to the American economy as a whole. For a number of Republican senators, however, these particular nominees were simply a bridge too far for them.
When political wonks look at factors which influence presidential elections, one of the most obvious correlations is with how the economy's doing. Economic indicators are a good indication of the mood of the voters, or at least they have been in the past. Of course, as with any attempt to identify causality in the nebulous field of politics, this isn't a hard-and-fast rule or anything, but tracking the economy is a better indicator than most as to whether the voters are in the mood for a change at the top or not.
Former Vice President Joe Biden entered the 2020 Democratic presidential field as the clear frontrunner, which is a new experience for him. In his previous two runs for president, he never got to where he is now: comfortably leading the entire pack. Biden is polling ahead of the previous frontrunner Bernie Sanders by anywhere from a few points to a healthy margin of 10 or more, and both men are far out in front of all the other contenders, who are all struggling to even manage to break into double digits in the polls.
Monday night, Bernie Sanders appeared on a CNN town hall, and was asked a rather unusual question. An audience member asked whether Bernie supported enfranchising prisoners such as the Boston Marathon bomber or people convicted of sexual assault. Bernie's answer was surprising to many, because he spoke not only in favor of incarcerated prisoners voting, but cut to the heart of the matter: to Bernie, it's a question of basic rights.
Yesterday, Robert Mueller's investigative report on Donald Trump was made (mostly) public. Today, Trump and his cheerleaders are insisting that he has been totally vindicated and exonerated, while some Democratic candidates for president are demanding that impeachment proceedings be launched in the House of Representatives. That's a pretty wide gulf in perception, but at this point it was to be expected.