New York City finally has a presumptive mayor. That would be "mayor-elect," but since this was just the primary election, it isn't technically true (while being de facto true, since the Republican doesn't stand a chance in the general election). It took two weeks for the results (which still aren't completely final and certified) to be announced, though, which was due to the new "ranked-choice voting" (R.C.V.) system for citywide elections. I've long been a proponent of all kinds of experimentation to make the American voting system work better, and have already seen how ranked-choice voting can work just fine (or, to put it another way, that's what my far-flung correspondents in Maine and San Francisco tell me). So I wanted to take a deeper dive into the results, after the dust has settled a bit.

The biggest conclusion, after examining the full data, is that the multiple-choice nature of the ballot is far more important than most voters -- and most candidates -- have realized. Because it was the second, third, fourth, and fifth choices which proved decisive, in the end. There is a clear lesson for politicians campaigning in such contests: convincing voters to make you their second (or third, or whatever) choice might just be your key to victory. Of course, convincing voters to make you their first choice is always going to be the real focus, but some strategy for corralling voters who don't put you first is also of critical importance and should not be neglected.

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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.

The quandary McCarthy is now facing is that while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quickly named her eight picks to the new committee (including one prominent Republican, Representative Liz Cheney), it is now up to McCarthy to suggest the other five members. Theoretically, he is supposed to pick five GOP members and submit their names to Pelosi for approval. I say "theoretically" because at this point it's not even certain that McCarthy will do anything.

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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.

Biden talked today about the efforts his team will be making from now on to reach the hard-to-get people who have not yet gotten their free vaccine shots. And he's got an uphill climb among certain slices of the population. But what I've been wondering from the start is how America will achieve the "herd immunity" level where the virus begins to just die out for want of unprotected victims. Note I said "how" there, not "if." We will get to herd immunity eventually, but it's looking like the last stretch might have to be done the hard way instead of the easy way. More on that in a moment.

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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.

To put it bluntly, blue states -- almost all of them, with only a few exceptions -- are doing a great job. All the states with the worst records are red states. There are a few in the middle (some purple states, some red states, and three bluish states), but this divide is so obvious and notable that it's kind of a mystery why more people haven't pointed it out.

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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!

Here is what John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, on the third of July, 1776:

The second of July 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.

So, as we said: Happy Independence Day, everyone!

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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.

I think the odds are heavily on Trump fighting it, since it really is almost a knee-jerk reaction from him for any sort of legal trouble. Trump is the master of slowing the justice system down to a glacial pace -- he's been doing so with some degree of success or another for decades. So why should this be any different? I also think the chances are better than not that the committee tries to talk to everyone else around Trump, but never actually comes out and subpoenas Trump.

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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.

Most House Republicans are incensed. But they simply have no leg to stand on. They really don't. In the first place, while a number of Republicans in the House voted for what would have been a much better way to handle this (a nonpartisan special commission comprised solely of people who were not sitting members of Congress), in the end this measure fell at least three votes short of breaking the inevitable filibuster in the Senate. So Republicans had their chance to get on board with a better way to do it, and they torpedoed this effort. Therefore, they have no real right to complain now about the select committee being "too partisan."

Secondly, one word puts the lie to the moral high road House Republicans are attempting to walk: Benghazi. Republicans, when they were in charge of the chamber, felt no compunction whatsoever to set up purely partisan committees to investigate something they thought would tarnish the leading Democratic presidential candidate -- indeed, over and over again. There were multiple investigations into Benghazi, please remember. The very same Kevin McCarthy even admitted that they were set up to worsen Hillary Clinton's chances of becoming president. And the exact same rules for naming members to the committee applied -- Pelosi (who was only the minority leader, back then) was allowed to put forward names, and McCarthy had the power to veto any of them. In fact, they copied this language exactly in the 1/6 measure, to make this point obvious. So all those House Republicans who now will flood the cable news airwaves with their faux outrage and indignation should immediately be reminded of Hillary Clinton sitting in front of a committee hearing for 11 hours straight, answering every rude and insulting question the Republicans could dream up. Because not until Donald Trump runs a similar gauntlet will things even begin to approach parity, on this front.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Biden doesn't just value bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake, of course. He truly does believe in the concept and really would prefer Congress return to the days of yore when bipartisanship was actually pretty common (always hard-fought, but mostly achieved). But at the same time, Biden is a politician and knows full well what this will mean for him, personally.

Now, Biden is savvy enough not to say this until after he signs the bill, because he knows how fragile the applecart is right now, and how there are many things which could still upset it before it does arrive on his desk. But immediately after he does sign it, he will quite likely say something along the lines of: "Cynical people thought it wasn't even possible to bring the politicians from both sides of the aisle together to get something done. I never believed that. I think America works best when we work together, and I have always believed that. I promised bipartisanship during my campaign, and many in my own party scoffed at the idea. But here we are, with the proof that -- with leadership and support -- it is still possible."

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