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President Joe Biden capped off a pretty good week with a pretty good speech today, given right before he signed an executive order to do what he could to protect women's rights. Biden did so, of course, in response to the "extreme" Supreme Court decision which overturned Roe v. Wade.
Control of the United States Senate will be one of the biggest political prizes fought over in the 2022 midterm elections this November. So far, out of all the 2022 Senate races, Democrats look fairly well positioned to either hold onto their thin majority or perhaps even expand it by one or two. In what is supposed to be a very Republican-friendly year, the GOP's chances of taking the Senate seem dimmer than ever. This is due to one very big reason: personality matters. The quality of the candidates matter.
The two biggest political topics of the past week were the continuing outrages piling up from both the Supreme Court and the House Select Committee on January 6th.
On Tuesday, a young aide who worked for Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, appeared in a surprise House committee hearing. The previous week, the committee had let it be known that there would be no hearings over the two-week Independence Day break. But a day beforehand, a new hearing was announced without fanfare and without any details.
The witness who appeared, Cassidy Hutchinson, had apparently been getting threatening messages from those still surrounding Donald Trump. They read like mob bosses leaning on a witness who might spill the beans:
Republicans have come up with all sorts of attempts to deflect the public's attention from the enormous number and easy availability of guns in this country, some of them far wackier than others. But the more-reasonable response they've largely gathered behind is to say that all mass shootings happen because of "crazy people," and therefore we should put lots of effort into weeding those crazy people out before they can cause atrocities. That's what they say they're for, at any rate. As a way of deflecting attention, it's a lot better than what the fringe of the GOP is saying, after all.
Last night, President Joe Biden gave only the second evening address (not counting speeches to joint sessions of Congress) of his presidency. The last time he did so was over a year ago. The subject of his speech this time was a grim one: the recent massacres of innocents in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. And all of the others which didn't receive quite as prominent media coverage, as well. He urged Congress to act, in the strongest possible terms. He pointed out that Republicans are the ones obstructing any progress whatsoever, and pleaded for some bipartisanship in the Senate.
President Joe Biden is about to give an evening speech on national television. This shouldn't be all that rare an event, but with Biden it sadly has been. Last March, he gave such a speech on the COVID-19 pandemic response. Last March. Biden himself has reportedly been frustrated by his inability to get his message out, but he really bears a goodly portion of the blame for this himself. Where was the speech to the nation on the Russian invasion of Ukraine? How about a primetime address on inflation? Or the infant formula bottleneck? Or gas prices? Maybe he shouldn't have given a speech on each and every one of these important issues, but it would have been nice to see at least one or two of them addressed by the president, or perhaps a few within just one speech.
Last week, America experienced a racist extremist shooting up a grocery store, in an effort to kill as many Black people as he could. This week, America had to once again watch as innocent schoolchildren age 10 or under were massacred for no reason whatsoever. This is who we are, and it is shameful.
It is not, however, who we want to be. The public wants more and tighter gun safety laws, by an overwhelming margin. But even in the wake of the horrors of yet another slaughter of innocents, most people who follow politics don't expect much of anything to change. No new laws will pass the Senate, or if something does manage to be worked out, it will be weak and watered-down and likely ineffective at stopping such outrages from regularly happening.
There's an old adage that says success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. Last night's election results in Georgia, however, did indeed have a single clear father, and his name is Donald Trump. Not that he'll admit this fact, even with the proof of a paternity test. But perhaps I'm stretching the metaphor a bit too far, so let's begin again, shall we?
After Georgia's primary, many are today proclaiming that Trump is now a paper tiger within the Republican Party and that it is safe for candidates to buck both him and his toxic Big Lie that the last election was somehow stolen from him (spoiler alert: it wasn't). This may be overstating the case, but it is undeniable that Trumpism suffered a big and humiliating body blow last night.
As we continue to wend our way through primary season, we now turn to the two states with the most interesting races to be decided tomorrow: Texas and Georgia. Georgia is more interesting on the Republican side, while there's one Texas race that Democrats will be closely watching.
We were reminded of the whole Wonderful Wizard of Oz metaphor early this week, when we saw Mehmet "Dr." Oz at a last-minute Pennsylvania campaign rally, holding up his smartphone to the crowd, as the disembodied voice of the great MAGA Dear Leader bellowed forth bombast and nonsense to the crowd. All it needed was some smoke and fireballs at the sides of the stage, really. It seemed to us (but then we do have a rather warped sense of humor...) that Oz was begging the crowd to please pay lots of attention to the man behind the curtain.