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Welcome to the first installment of our year-end awards!
As always, we must begin with a stern warning: this is an incredibly long article. So long you likely won't make it to the end, at least not in one sitting. It is, as it always is, a marathon not a sprint.
We were reminded of an old political saying this week: "Only Nixon could go to China." Only a president who was long known as a staunch anti-communist warrior could open up American relations with communist China in the depths of the Cold War, without being painted as some sort of pinko/commie back home. This week's update might read: "Only Biden could pardon weed crimes." Joe Biden, before he became Barack Obama's vice president, had spent much of his life in the Senate being the biggest, baddest drug warrior around. He actually coined the term "drug czar" and worked with the Reagan administration to make the Office of National Drug Control Policy a reality. He's never been pro-legalization in any way, a fact that didn't exactly help him in the 2020 Democratic primaries. But there he was yesterday, taking the first steps away from the War On Weed that any U.S. President has ever taken.
Even though it is a Monday, I find myself in an optimistic mood. Maybe it's just the end of the political Silly Season, but I found myself wondering what would happen if the Democrats truly ran the tables in the midterms and wound up still in control of the House of Representatives and with at least 52 senators in the Senate (so Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin could be politely told to go fly a kite by Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Democrats). What could they get done? What would their agenda look like, with a Democrat in the White House ready to sign whatever passed? I know, I know, it is still the longest of longshots -- Democrats will likely still lose the House even if they manage to expand their majority in the Senate -- but like I said, I'm feeling optimistic, so let's just assume it does somehow come to pass.
The irony is delicious, we cannot deny it. A man who rose to power by leading chants of: "Lock her up!" against his political opponent (for mishandling classified documents -- a man who later signed a law making the offense a felony with up to five years' prison time) is now in the process of being hoist by his own petard. So it's been a rather schadenfreude-y kind of week.
The day many of us thought would never happen is here. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema finally allowed President Joe Biden and the entire rest of the Democratic Party to actually get some good things done. A budget reconciliation bill has -- almost miraculously and at the last possible second -- passed the United States Senate. The House is on vacation, but they're being forced to come back to Washington anyway for a vote this Friday on the Inflation Reduction Act. It should be on Biden's desk in time for a triumphant signing ceremony by the weekend. Victory is at hand.
That title, of course, is intended as a spoof of what some consider the most overused go-to headline in the Washington punditocracy's toolbox: "Democrats In Disarray!" For once, the absolute opposite seems to be true, and it is so glaringly obvious that even the political press's pooh-bahs have had to admit it (full credit where it is due: we got the title from a Politico article). Because Senator Joe Manchin (of all people!) just turned a very rainy day into some beautiful sunshine.
President Joe Biden is hoping for a few legislative wins before the midterms. Three bills in particular seem to have a better-than-average chance of success. They're a far cry from the agenda Biden attempted to achieve last year, but having to deal with two corporatist Democratic senators derailed almost all of these lofty ambitions. So Americans will not be getting tuition-free community college, subsidized child care, free preschool, student loan forgiveness, action on climate change, and a whole host of other ideas that would have dramatically improved the lives of hundreds of millions of American citizens. Thanks, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, for nothing.
There is no right to privacy specifically enumerated in the United States Constitution or any of its amendments. According to the current Supreme Court, this means that it does not legitimately exist as a foundational right of American citizens. Democrats, for over half a century, have been complacent in relying on previous Supreme Court rulings which did spell out what the implied right to privacy encompassed: the right to marry someone of a different race, the right to purchase and use contraceptives, the right to an abortion, and the right of gay couples to marry (among others). All of those spring from the same right to privacy, but one of them obviously does not exist anymore at the national level.
Hey, kiddies, it's time to play "shadow boxing with Joe Manchin" once again! Yes, his teasing game has begun anew, where Democrats get their hopes up that Senator Manchin will finally agree to pass something -- anything -- from President Joe Biden's agenda, in the hopes of counteracting the predicted coming "red wave" in November's midterm elections. Once again, Manchin is playing it coy, as he is "in negotiations" with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, but has not actually committed to much of anything. The deadline this time around is the end of July, right before all of Congress disappears into the summer breeze for an entire month. Of course, they're all still on their two-week July 4th vacation this week, so nothing will really happen until next week, which leaves a rather abbreviated window.
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.