Last night, President Joe Biden participated in a town hall in Cincinnati, Ohio, hosted by CNN and moderated by Don Lemon. He made some news there, because when he was directly asked if preserving the Senate filibuster was more important than passing voting rights bills, he sounded like he kind of wanted to have it both ways. He seems absolutely convinced that either: (1) Republicans are going to suddenly magically develop a conscience and a high-minded sense of civic duty and start joining with Democrats to pass good legislation; or (2) that getting rid of the filibuster would somehow "throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done." The first seems naive, at best. The second, however, is completely backwards.

Continue Reading »

Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are trying to paint Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats as being somehow "too partisan" about investigating the attempted insurrection at the United States Capitol on the sixth of January. This is supposed to somehow delegitimize the effort, but it is in fact laughable on the face of it. Because when you get right down to it, of course it is a partisan exercise. The reason? Because one of America's major two political parties was complicit in attempting to overturn the will of the people in a national presidential election. One party did that. In a very partisan way. So any investigation of the incident is going to naturally expose this fact in a glaring way, because at this point only one party is even interested in getting at the truth -- the other party doesn't want that at all because they know they are so complicit. It doesn't matter who investigates it, the facts are the facts -- and one party bears the blame. This is precisely what Republicans don't want to talk about, which is why they've attempted to either stop or sabotage the entire effort to investigate 1/6 in any way, shape, or form from the very beginning.

It's not that Kevin McCarthy wants the investigation done in any different way, in other words, it is that he does not want it to happen at all. That has been the Republican goal all along. Ironically, if he follows through on his threat to pull his choices from the select committee, he will make the entire proceedings a lot more serious, sober, and efficient -- which is precisely what he doesn't want to happen.

Continue Reading »

The ball is now in Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's court. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy finally named his five picks for the 1/6 Select Committee investigation, but the way the bill creating the committee was written gives Pelosi full veto power over any or all of these suggestions. At a minimum, she should reject at least one of the names put forth by McCarthy. [Editorial Note: This entire article should be read "as of this writing," as Pelosi could act at any time.]

In fact, Pelosi wouldn't even have to give any ideological reason for rejecting the most odious of McCarthy's choices. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First, here are McCarthy's five picks, in alphabetical order: Representatives Kelly Armstrong, Jim Banks (proposed as "ranking Republican," or lead GOP committee member), Rodney Davis, Jim Jordan, and Troy Nehls. One name rather obviously stands out from this list, n'est-ce pas? But perhaps not as much as you might think.

Continue Reading »

It became a running joke in the previous administration (the phrase a mockery since none of it ever came to fruition), but we may now have finally arrived at a real, honest-to-goodness "Infrastructure Week." Or, to put it another way, it's finally time for everyone to stop kidding around. By week's end, we may know what sort of legacy President Joe Biden is going to leave. He could be counted by history as one of the more transformational presidents of the modern era, or it all may fall apart at the last minute. Either way, this week will likely be the pivotal one.

The real question has always been whether Republicans are negotiating in good faith over a bipartisan infrastructure plan, or whether their true goal has just been to waste everyone's time for as long as they can possibly get away with it. That is still an open question, but if Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders remain firm, by week's end it may not matter.

Continue Reading »

There were two interesting developments in the congressional sausage-making process this week, both of which Democrats should immediately adopt as their main messages for the next week or so.

The first was that Senators Bernie Sanders and Mark Warner announced they had come to a compromise on the reconciliation bill which will fund the lion's share of President Joe Biden's economic agenda. They settled on a total figure of $3.5 trillion in new spending, which is far less than Bernie's original goal of $6 trillion (just for this bill alone), but also far more than the opening bid of the fiscally-conservative Democrats, which was in the $1.5 to $2 trillion range. It also will mean that Biden got the exact total he asked for in his "three-legged stool" of economic legislation. His first big legislative achievement (the American Rescue Plan) spent $1.9 trillion, and the bipartisan infrastructure deal represents $0.6 trillion more, which will mean a grand total of $6 trillion for all three -- which is exactly what Biden asked for in the first place.

But as we said, there were two interesting developments in the progress of both the reconciliation bill and the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Sanders managed to get one of his highest priorities included in the bill he will now write, and it's a doozy. Medicare coverage will expand to include dental, vision, and hearing insurance. There is no real logical reason why these three items are not considered part of standard American medical insurance in the first place -- they are medical problems which require a visit to the doctor and, sometimes, expensive accessories or treatment -- but for some strange reason in this country they are considered separate from regular health insurance. This means some older Americans haven't been able to afford things like new glasses or a hearing aid. Which is tragic. Bernie aims to fix that problem in one fell swoop. By doing so, he (and by extension all the Democrats who vote to make it happen) will earn the thanks of tens of millions of elderly Americans. This is a monumental and fundamental change that will improve the kitchen-table lives of a whole lot of people, in other words.

Continue Reading »

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced this week he will be moving legislation to the floor of the Senate to legalize marijuana at the federal level. This is an important milestone (even if the measure fails), since such legislation has never had leadership support in the Senate before. The House has passed similar bills already, knowing full well they were all going to die in the Senate. But with Schumer on board, the chances that the federal War On Weed could end have improved considerably.

Senators Cory Booker and Ron Wyden deserve much of the credit for this announcement, as they have been championing legalization for a while now. The three are listed as "Sponsoring Offices" in the document [PDF] Schumer just released.

Continue Reading »

Although few are pointing it out today, Senator Bernie Sanders is truly the man of the hour in the Democratic Party right now. Much faster than anyone expected (myself included), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced last night that a deal had been struck within the Democratic caucus over the reconciliation bill that Bernie Sanders is in charge of writing (as chair of the Senate's budget committee). This deal was principally negotiated between Sanders and Senator Mark Warner, who represented the penny-pinching faction within the Democratic Party. But even with this necessary trimming, what was just announced is simply breathtaking in its scope and reach.

Continue Reading »

Can Democrats still be bold? We are perhaps on the brink of finding that out. Joe Biden campaigned as a total moderate, but has been sort of thrust into a historical moment when boldness might actually be possible -- and be rewarded. By the time he got into office, Biden had realized this and was already talking about being a "transformational" president rather than just a moderate caretaker.

The COVID-19 pandemic was what set the stage for all this bold action, and Biden has done an admirable job of delivering on his promises on this front. But the rest of his economic agenda is now on the verge of becoming reality as well, and if the lion's share of it passes, Biden will indeed bask in comparisons to F.D.R. and L.B.J.

Of course, it's not a done deal yet. We'll see, in the next few weeks, how the sausage gets made up on Capitol Hill. There are still plenty of things that could go wrong.

And of course, Republicans are going to fight tooth and nail to try to derail Biden's legislative train. They're already whipping up their base over the supposed evils of the Democratic agenda, in fact. And they plan to run their midterm campaigns next year on the theme of "saving America from radical leftists."

Continue Reading »

Tomorrow, President Joe Biden is scheduled to give an address on voting rights. This could be a rather crucial speech, because it might signify how much political capital Biden is willing to expend over the issue. This might also signify the relative chances of whether the Democrats are going to do anything at all about it before the next election. Biden could just give a nice polite speech (but refuse to call for drastic action), or he could alternatively use the speech to lay out a series of actions he thinks Democrats should now take. Hopefully, it'll be the latter.

Biden is at his core a centrist, of course. But there comes a point when even the most committed centrist has to admit that the other party is just so dead-set against doing what is so obviously right that they need to be taken out of the equation in order to act. We are not only at that point, we've actually been here a while now.

Case in point: the Democrats in the Texas legislature just walked out for the second time to prevent a Republican voter-suppression law from passing. Some of them are reportedly going to fly to Washington to lobby Democrats -- by informing them of how the battle is going on the frontlines out there, in all the statehouses controlled by Republicans. The time for action on a national level is now, and this window is going to slam shut in the not-too-distant future.

And yet, some Washington Democrats still harbor the illusion that somehow 10 brave Republican senators are going to somehow be convinced to sit down and hash out a bipartisan bargain that would strengthen voters' rights in every state in the Union. Spoiler alert: they are not going to do so. Those ten Republicans just do not exist, period.

Continue Reading »

I've been warning everyone for the past two Fridays that I was taking today off, so there will be no Friday Talking Points article today, sorry. Tune in next week, when we'll have a new one up as usual.

Since it's summer holiday time, though, I thought I'd re-run a vacation travelogue article I wrote in August of 2018. This article has nothing to do with politics at all, it was just a few days on the road winding our way towards the Netroots Nation conference in New Orleans.

The article contains a promise to post photographs of what is described, but it doesn't have a link to it, so if you want to see the accompanying photos (as well as a few Netroots Nation photos as well), check it out.

And I hope everyone's having a wonderful summer!

Originally published August 1, 2018

This is your humble narrator, checking in from the road. Today's column is nothing short of a travelogue, so if that sort of thing doesn't appeal to you, I would suggest you stop reading right now. There will be no political discussion, as I've been doing my best to ignore politics for the past few days while enjoying a drive down the middle of the country. Oh, and today's title is quite literal.

Which is as good a point as any to begin with. Our drive was not carefully planned, we just kind of wandered around. Sometimes this leads to disappointing experiences, and sometimes it leads to quite the opposite. It's a Zen sort of way to vacation, in other words. This time, it worked out wonderfully, as we stumbled across a largely-undiscovered gem.

Continue Reading »