In what is in all likelihood a political shot across Joe Biden's bow, Senator Bernie Sanders is about to introduce a bill in the Senate which would cap all credit card interest rates at 15 percent. A companion bill will be introduced in the House by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (where it actually has the prospect of being voted on). This will be a welcome addition to the ongoing debate over what the Democratic Party's agenda and 2020 platform should include. It's an idea with the potential for widespread support from the public, and one of those rare issues where normal people would actually see a concrete and beneficial difference in their own lives emerge from the politics in Washington. A further provision of the bill would allow the post office to start offering basic banking services, putting it in direct competition with the banking industry.

Continue Reading »

The end of the saga! My apologies once again for the lack of new column today, but this will be the last time (for this particular reason, at any rate). Spent the day dealing with the car again, but the transmission has now been rebuilt and it's charging around as good as new. That's the good news -- the bad news was the bill, of course. Sigh. But personal finance woes aside, this is good news for everyone else because this will be the last time I have to play hookey to deal with the car. So my apologies once again, and let's hope nothing else needs fixing for a good long while.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

The end is officially in sight. Hopefully.

Yes, we're almost at the point where every Democrat who has ever dreamed of running for president has already announced his or her intentions, and we can finally say that the field is set. Almost. We've still got three holdouts, but two of them seem likely to jump in the race within the next few weeks, and the third has announced she's not going to make up her mind until September, so even if she does join in, it isn't going to happen any time soon.

So, hopefully, in a few weeks we'll have a full slate of 2020 Democratic candidates and the news will move on from: "Who will jump in the race next?" to the inevitable: "Who will drop out first?" Such is the cynical cycle of political reporting.

Campaign News

As we predicted last time around, Joe Biden has now officially joined the race. Also as we predicted, this caused a political earthquake of sorts as the race got shaken up in a major way. More on that in a moment.

Continue Reading »

The word on the lips of every political journalist who resides within the Washington Beltway this week is "electability." Countless articles have been written on the subject, and it's been raised to almost obsessive levels as the pundits wonder what the voters think about the Democratic field and who will have the best chance of defeating Donald Trump next year. And as with every modern presidential election cycle for at least the past 20 years, the elusive quality of electability is measured and debated using an agreed-upon definition of the term. The only problem is that this definition is now wildly out of date -- if it ever was even correct in the first place.

Literally, electability is "the ability to be elected." Period. No more, no less. Not a word in there about how moderate or extreme any particular candidate must be to qualify. It should be seen as a neutral term, in fact. Whichever candidate is the most electable is the one who will be elected. And that can (and does) mean very different things each and every time around. And it usually means something wildly different than what the pundits think, as well.

Consider the following: Donald Trump was the most electable candidate in the 2016 race. I can say this unequivocally, because he got elected. Trump was more electable than all the other Republicans (including such scions of supposed-electability as Jeb Bush), and he was more electable than Hillary Clinton (in the Electoral College, at least). But would anyone have used the word to describe Trump before he won? It's doubtful, because Trump didn't measure up to what the punditocracy has come to mean when they use the word.

Continue Reading »

Those are strong words to use in a subtitle, as well as so dated as to almost be anachronistic. But we feel this is the perfect phrase to sum up Stephen Moore's announcement that he's withdrawing from consideration for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Because apparently Moore has been in a coma since just before Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in a tennis match billed as the "Battle Of The Sexes."

Moore's attitudes on gender fit neatly in to this decades-ago era of rampant misogyny, nowhere more obvious than how he sees the sporting world. He has opined at length on women in sports, dismissing professional women tennis players as "inferior" to men -- who simply do not deserve to be paid anywhere near what they are (if they even should be paid at all). But the sport he gets most worked up about is basketball. Here is an extended rant from Moore from an article he wrote for the National Review back in 2002. It begins, naturally, with a healthy dose of testosterone:

Ah, March, the greatest month of the year. This is the season where I return to bachelorhood, lock myself into the TV room and tell my wife that I'll see her sometime in April. Oh, and by the way, keep those three crying kids out of my hair for the next three weeks.

Charming. Oh, and go fix me a sandwich while you're at it. But he really gets going on the subject of how even peripheral inclusion of women into the male bastion that is (or, according to Moore, should be) basketball is a sign of the impending apocalypse. Or something. Here are his first two manly suggestions for improving the situation:

Continue Reading »

For the second time in just a few weeks, Republicans in the Senate have denied President Trump's hand-picked choice a seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. First it was Herman "Nine Nine Nine" Cain, and now Stephen Moore has also announced his withdrawal from the nomination process. Both are political blows to the president, who seems to want a Fed loyal to him rather than to the American economy as a whole. For a number of Republican senators, however, these particular nominees were simply a bridge too far for them.

Interestingly, though, none of these senators really seem to be putting principle before party, because what was at issue was not whether the Fed should stay as independent as possible from the political process, but rather the odiousness of the character of the two men Trump wanted to nominate. Moore lost support when it was revealed that he had made racist jokes about President Obama and held some rather antediluvian attitudes towards women. In fact, his outlook on women is so mired in the past that the only real proper label for his worldview is a very old one indeed, because he is nothing short of a classic male chauvinist pig.

Continue Reading »

Congressional Democrats, especially those in the House (where they enjoy a majority, and can thus get things done), should counter a recent Trumpian dodge by taking up his challenge and drafting some very specific bills dealing with presidential and campaign ethics. Not only will this head the false GOP talking point off at the pass, it will also add to the developing Democratic platform for the 2020 elections (both presidential and congressional). A win-win situation, in other words.

House Democrats are currently exploring multiple avenues in investigating President Donald Trump's possible wrongdoing. Much of this is centered around the president's finances, both personal and business. Trump is pushing back hard against these investigations, in an attempt to both stonewall and delay these Democratic efforts. Both Trump and his toadies have latched onto a new explanation of why such pushback is both proper and necessary. Congressional oversight, they argue, is only proper and justified if there is underlying legislation designed to solve some sort of problem. In other words, if the congressional committee has no intention of actually writing some sort of bill, then they simply should not be allowed to investigate anything about the president, especially his finances.

Continue Reading »

The saga of the transmission continues, which once again ate up my whole day. I will try to get to answering some comments later (something I've been lax at this past week), but my apologies once again as there will be no new column today.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

When political wonks look at factors which influence presidential elections, one of the most obvious correlations is with how the economy's doing. Economic indicators are a good indication of the mood of the voters, or at least they have been in the past. Of course, as with any attempt to identify causality in the nebulous field of politics, this isn't a hard-and-fast rule or anything, but tracking the economy is a better indicator than most as to whether the voters are in the mood for a change at the top or not.

A more important measure is harder to take, because it's not so much how the large economic indicators (such as unemployment and gross domestic product) are performing that matters to voters as it is their own personal perception of how the economy's doing that matters most. A low national unemployment rate may be a good thing, but if you happen to be unemployed and living in an area with not many jobs (or not many good jobs), then you may not have as rosy an outlook as the numbers might at first suggest. This leads to a large political risk for any candidate, most importantly an incumbent. If you base your campaign on how wonderful the economy is doing, then you run the risk of people deciding you are simply out of touch with their own lives and situations.

Continue Reading »

[Program Note: Due to dealing with ongoing automotive problems, I was not able to do a full Friday Talking Points column today, so my apologies for the lack. Instead, I did have time to write the following extensive overview of what Joe Biden's entry has already meant for the Democratic presidential nomination race. It's not a full wrapup of the week, I realize, but it'll have to do for today. By next Friday, hopefully we'll be back up and running (both figuratively and literally, for the car) for our usual Friday Talking Points column.]

Former Vice President Joe Biden entered the 2020 Democratic presidential field as the clear frontrunner, which is a new experience for him. In his previous two runs for president, he never got to where he is now: comfortably leading the entire pack. Biden is polling ahead of the previous frontrunner Bernie Sanders by anywhere from a few points to a healthy margin of 10 or more, and both men are far out in front of all the other contenders, who are all struggling to even manage to break into double digits in the polls.

Add to that today's breaking news, that Biden outraised everyone else in his first 24 hours, and Biden has -- for now, at least -- cemented his frontrunner status. Biden raised an impressive $6.3 million in his first day, topping the other two highest candidates in this metric as well (Beto O'Rourke raised $6.1 million and Bernie Sanders raised $5.9 million on their first day on the campaign trail).

But even though he's never had the experience of leading the pack before, Biden is already acting like a frontrunner. His introductory video was a marked departure from the other candidates running, because Biden did not focus on any one political issue or lay out his plans for America's future or make the case why he's the best Democrat to win the nomination. Instead, Biden focused almost exclusively on what the entire election is about for many (if not most) Democratic voters: beating Donald Trump. Biden made the case that for America to remain true to its ideals, President Trump must not have a second term in office.

Continue Reading »