House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has never been seen by anyone as any sort of profile in courage. The most common view of him, in fact, is that he's as spineless as a jellyfish. He has gotten to his position of power within the Republican Party largely by trying to be everyone's best buddy, but that's not exactly a core leadership quality, to put it mildly. And now he's in a pickle, because everyone is waiting to see what he's going to do about the House 1/6 Select Committee. My personal guess is that he'll figure out what the path of least resistance is and then embrace it. He's certainly done so before, so it's about all I expect from him.

Read Complete Article »

It's been a quiet week in politics. The type of quiet week that used to regularly happen when Congress was off on yet another of their multi-week holidays and not much was happening at the White House. Perhaps this August we'll even return to a real "silly season," where all the political reporters and pundits feverishly look for something interesting to write about. But after four solid years of a never-ending silly season ("insane season" would be more accurate), it's kind of quaint and normative to enjoy a week like this again, I must say.

President Joe Biden did give a short speech today on his vaccination effort. He had to admit that for the first time he had fallen short of one of his own self-imposed goals. America has not reached the mark of having 70 percent of all adults at least partially vaccinated, but we did at least get north of 67 percent by Biden's Independence Day deadline, which is pretty close.

Read Complete Article »

A divide has opened up in America, between states that have done a good job vaccinating as many of their citizens as possible and those who are falling behind. Many noted this disparity as Independence Day rolled around, when the country as a whole fell three points behind President Joe Biden's ambitious goal to get at least one vaccine shot into the arms of 70 percent of adult Americans. Hitting only 67 percent is still a monumental achievement (more than two-thirds), to be sure. But a lot of media focus was on the fact that many individual states have indeed reached the 70 percent goal, while others hadn't even gotten to 60 percent. But what was largely missing in all this commentary was the stark fact of the political divide.

Read Complete Article »

Happy Independence Day! No, that heartfelt wish is actually not premature, as we pointed out years ago. The second of July is indeed the day American declared her independence from Britain. All the histories, all the traditions, all the celebrations get it wrong each and every year. No, really!

Read Complete Article »

There's a lot of news in the legal world today, so even asking the question: "Will Trump testify?" needs further specification. I am not asking whether Donald Trump will testify in the upcoming case against his namesake Trump Organization and its top financial officer, because it's pretty obvious he would never take the stand in a case like that. Instead, what I'm wondering is whether the still-forming House 1/6 select committee will try to subpoena Trump -- and if they do, whether he'd actually appear or (as is more usual for him) fight it to the bloody end in the courts.

Read Complete Article »

The House of Representatives just passed a measure to create a select committee to investigate the 1/6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and all the things which led up to it and fed into it. This will be a partisan undertaking, as the 13 members of this committee will be named by Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- and while she may be open to allowing up to six Republicans on it, she will also have the power to veto any suggestions made by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. It is looking like this committee will provide the most substantive and wide-reaching investigation into all the things which were allowed to go wrong. That's important, because America really does deserve to know the truth -- the whole truth -- about what happened that dark day.

Read Complete Article »

So far, most of the attention on the progress of President Joe Biden's economic agenda has been on the bipartisan infrastructure deal. It went first, so it got the spotlight first. Now that the Republicans and Democrats seem to be in the final stages of hammering out a deal, the attention is soon going to shift to the second part of the plan: the budget reconciliation bill that will be designed to make it through the Senate solely with Democratic support.

As I've been pointing out, the most interesting thing about this bill is that Senator Bernie Sanders is in charge of writing it. Bernie's not on the outside looking in anymore, he now chairs the Senate's budget committee. And he's about to flex his power for the first time. Although the key will be (as always, these days) what Senator Joe Manchin will agree to. And this past weekend, this bidding game began in earnest.

Read Complete Article »

President Joe Biden made a political mistake, last week. Thankfully, it looks like he has rectified it with the right people, meaning it will not be a major stumbling block in the continuing negotiations over his hoped-for bipartisan infrastructure deal with a group of moderate Republican senators. Biden walked his error back, and everyone sounded placated a few days later, and now the process is back on track once again. So far so good. But Biden never needed to get out in front of this issue in the first place, because Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had already volunteered to take all the political heat. Which is precisely what Biden will now allow her to do, and what he really should have done from the start.

Read Complete Article »

Call it true irony. The man who had a book ghost-written for him called "The Art Of The Deal" could never actually manage to strike any kind of deal. So the man who replaced him ran on his own dealmaking skills, in a time where pretty much everyone in Washington considered the idea too old-fashioned to ever work. But President Joe Biden just got his first big deal, this week. A bipartisan infrastructure plan is now going to move forward in the United States Senate and has what can only be called a better-than-average chance of passing.

Read Complete Article »

After months of breathless anticipation, a path forward hove into sight. The legislative endgame for a major portion of President Joe Biden's agenda is now in view. And -- surprise! -- it looks like a bipartisan infrastructure deal will actually be a part of it. I fully admit I was wrong about this one, because I have been cynically calling the entire negotiating process Kabuki theater and I would have put the odds of failure much higher than the odds of success. But today, Biden publicly appeared with the Republicans who have been negotiating with him and the Democrats, and he formally put his seal of approval on the last-ditch offer the Republicans just made. By doing so, Biden opens the door to having two successful bills arrive on his desk, one with 10 or more Republican senators' votes and the other passed on strictly partisan lines. As I've been saying all along, the American people just do not care about the process, so this whole exercise was pretty pointless, to me, but it now at least it looks like it's going to be successful.

Read Complete Article »