Senator Marco Rubio just let the cat out of the bag. In traditional "Kinsley gaffe" fashion (defined as a politician accidentally telling the truth), Rubio admitted what Democrats have known all along -- that the Republican tax cuts were primarily designed to help Wall Street, not Main Street. Here is the relevant quote, from a recent interview Rubio gave to The Economist: "There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they're going to take the money they're saving and reinvest it in American workers. In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there's no evidence whatsoever that the money's been massively poured back into the American worker." That's a pretty sweeping indictment not only of the sole item on the Republican agenda that the GOP Congress has managed to pass, but also on the sole plank in the Republican platform for the 2018 midterm elections (which will take place almost exactly six months from now).

Rubio's admission is a stark contrast from how the rest of his party is attempting to sell the tired old snake oil of trickle-down economics. When the tax cut bill was being debated in Congress, the White House made a jaw-dropping promise that wages for the average American worker would immediately increase by $4,000. Needless to say, they haven't. Workers have noticed this fact, too. Tax cuts are usually quite popular with the public, but not this time around. A recent Gallup survey showed only 39 percent support for the GOP tax cuts, while a majority of 52 percent disapproved of them. And yet this is all the Republican Party has to run on in November, because it's all they've really accomplished in Washington (despite controlling both houses of Congress and the White House).

Continue Reading »

Last week, we were admonished for celebrating 4/20 in a manner that was too subtle by half. We subtitled last Friday's article: "Dazed And Confused," and began with: "We don't know why that headline sounded like such a good idea on today, of all days. [Ahem.]" But the rest of the article didn't really have much to say about the issue of marijuana. So today we are going to correct that lack, as you can tell by this week's subtitle.

We wrote an article back in January which predicted that marijuana legalization had passed a "tipping point" with the public. No matter how hard the War On Weed warriors fought back, the growing swell of public support for legalization would ensure that America's second Prohibition would come to an end, the article predicted. We wrote this right after Vermont became the first state in the nation to legalize recreational adult use of cannabis through its legislature (rather than through the direct democracy of a ballot initiative). This law was signed by a Republican governor, it's worth pointing out. But we were only cautiously optimistic that national politicians would be part of the process this year:

Continue Reading »

Today, Donald Trump shifted his publicly-stated position on the Stormy Daniels lawsuit in what could turn out to be a major way. While chatting with his buddies on the Fox News morning show, Trump admitted that his "fixer" lawyer Michael Cohen was indeed representing him in the Stormy Daniels affair. Trump's exact words were: "He [Cohen] represents me -- like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me." It's tough to square this with all the other claims Trump has made about the case, to put it mildly. Trump's position seems to be evolving over time.

Trump's initial position was the most laughable one. Trump stated that the sexual encounter never happened, he had never heard about the non-disclosure agreement or the payoff of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, which was paid out of the goodness of his personal lawyer's heart, from money Cohen had to borrow from a home equity line. The whole thing was a gigantic surprise to Trump, in other words.

Continue Reading »

Arizona held a special House election last night, and while the Democrat overperformed the historical partisan makeup of the district by double digits, the Republican managed to eke out a win. It was closer than it should have been, but in the end the deep-red district stayed in the GOP column. So you could say both sides can feel good about the outcome, although in reality only one of them is actually worried about what it might mean for the future.

Donald Trump won Arizona's 8th district by 21 points. Last night, the vote spread was only 5 points. This means eight percent of the voters who voted for Trump shifted to voting for a Democrat, resulting in a 16-point shift in the margin of victory (as in all such shifts, when one percent of the voters change their minds, the margin goes up by two percent -- as in: "from 50-50 to 51-49").

Republicans were relieved to hold onto the seat (the special election was called due to yet another Republican stepping down in disgrace), but then again they never should have even been worried about it in the first place. This is not normally what anyone would call a "swing" or "battleground" district. In fact, there are 147 other House districts that are less reliably Republican than this one. Which is precisely why Democrats see this as a real opportunity for November.

Continue Reading »

That is a rather bizarre headline, as is any sentence with both "Donald Trump" and "our Founding Fathers" in it, really. But then I'm in a rather bizarre mood today, waiting for some election results which may turn out to be rather good news even if (as expected) the Democrat loses. Plus, I've been saving this subject for a slow day, which turned out to be today.

Before I dig into the main subject, though, a quick note on that election seems necessary. Arizona's 8th congressional district is up for grabs tonight, due to yet another Republican House member who had to step down in disgrace over sexual misconduct in the office. This is a district that Trump won by more than 20 points, so it really shouldn't even be close. But it is. The odds are still heavily against the Democratic candidate, but that the race is even close is sending shivers down the spines of astute Republicans everywhere. So the margin of victory will be important even if the Republican wins. If the margin of victory for the Republican candidate is five points or less, it will send almost as loud a warning signal to the GOP as if the Democrat actually wins. So it'll be interesting to see what happens, even if the Democrats don't pull off a spectacular upset.

But I digress. Getting back to the subject at hand, I've been noticing for a while now that Donald Trump seems to be channeling his inner Founding Father in one particular way. See if you can spot it from the examples below. Hint: you don't even need to read every word, just skimming them should be sufficient. First, a few of Trump's most recent tweets:

Continue Reading »

Due to circumstances beyond my control, there will be no column today. Sorry, folks, but two minor emergencies (one medical, one automotive) happened over the weekend, so I had to deal with both of them today. Don't worry, everything's fine on both fronts, but it took so much time that I didn't have enough to spare to write today.

I was going to write about the new royal baby in England... nah, just kidding, I was going to write about Macron's visit from France and wonder if he'll be able to talk Trump into staying in the Iran nuclear agreement, if anyone needs a subject to talk about in the meantime.

I apologize for the lack of column, and do realize it's the second time in a week there hasn't been one, but while the first was nothing more than my own fault (for putting things off until the last minute), today just kind of snuck up on me. So I ask your forgiveness and promise there'll be a new column tomorrow.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

We don't know why that headline sounded like such a good idea on today, of all days. [Ahem.] But it somehow seemed appropriate when the week began with the Trump White House casually tossing Nikki Haley under the bus. Except, unlike most of the folks now residing down there with her, Haley pushed back on the cover story that she had just somehow "gotten confused."

Haley, appearing on last week's Face The Nation, answered very directly when asked if Russia would be facing further sanctions: "Absolutely. So you will see that Russian sanctions will be coming down. Secretary [Steven] Mnuchin will be announcing those on Monday, if he hasn't already." Now, Haley is one of the more competent members of Trump's team, so you can bet your bottom dollar she had cleared such a statement in advance before publicly making it. The specific nature of her comment -- that Mnuchin would be announcing new sanctions within a day -- also go to show she had obviously discussed the subject beforehand with the White House.

On Monday, the White House announced there would be no new sanctions on Russia, and tried in various ways to walk back or otherwise explain Haley's comment. Most of these excuses relied upon some version of Haley getting ahead of where Trump actually was, or that she must have been "confused" about the subject. But Haley, rather than back Trump up in what was plainly a reversal of a major policy on a whim, responded tersely: "With all due respect, I don't get confused."

Continue Reading »

A funny thing happened on the way to the 2018 midterm elections. Obamacare ceased being a liability for Democrats, and instead the overall subject of healthcare has now become a liability for the Republicans -- while becoming the Democrats' strongest campaign issue. How times change, eh?

Less than two years ago, Republicans were still locked into their "repeal and replace" frenzy, voting over 65 times in Congress to kill the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known (derogatorily, from Republicans) as Obamacare. After they took control of both houses of Congress and the White House, this effort failed miserably -- both legislatively and politically, as the public got their first chance to see what the GOP's "replace" idea actually meant. In a nutshell, the Republican replacement would have been: if you were too poor to buy health insurance, you were kindly asked to crawl off into the woods to die, so your corpse wouldn't litter the streets for everyone else.

The reality of the repeal-and-replace effort backfired on Republicans in spectacular fashion, since this was really what pushed Obamacare over the top in public opinion polling. Since the start of 2017 (when the new Congress and president were sworn in), Obamacare has consistently polled more positively than negatively with the public -- something that was never actually true while Barack Obama was still in office. This reminds me of the chorus of the old Joni Mitchell song "Big Yellow Taxi":

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Continue Reading »

Cuba is about to go through only its second transfer of power since its revolution. For the first time in my lifetime, this will mean a Castro won't be running Cuba. For almost six full decades, Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl ran the island in what amounted to a communist cult of personality. For the first time since the 1950s, Cubans are about to have a government without a Castro in charge. It is the end of an era, in other words.

What this will mean for the island's residents and for Cuban-American relations is unsure, at the moment. Cuba's new leader is firmly entrenched in the communist hierarchy, so it's likely any changes won't be radical in nature, at least not to start with. But perhaps -- just perhaps, mind you -- without a Castro in charge, America will finally put the Cold War past behind it and fully normalize relations with Cuba.

Continue Reading »

Apologies for the lack of an original column today, and also happy Tax Day to everyone. Yes, those two are connected.

Snark aside, I thought the following article would be worth running again, what with the current debate over Sean Hannity and his lack of full disclosure on the Michael Cohen story. Since it's also tax day, I remembered the one time I devoted an entire article to the concept of journalistic full disclosure. It's from quite a few years ago, and (sadly) nothing has changed. Enjoy, and rest assured, new columns will resume tomorrow.

Originally published September 13, 2010

There's an upcoming debate on taxes and tax cuts which is likely going to define the rest of the 2010 midterm election season. This will be reported on and commented on by a wide array of people in the media, from all sides of the political landscape. But why is it that media "full disclosure" rules seem to be completely ignored during such debate by the punditry? Because by all rights, anyone in the media talking about raising income tax rates on the top two income brackets should have to disclose their possible conflict of interest in the debate. It wouldn't take much, just a simple declaration: "Full disclosure, I fall into the top tax bracket myself, so I would personally be affected by changing this rate."

Continue Reading »