Ryan's Fall

As a Democratic U.S. Representative from Ohio who challenged the Democratic gerontocracy by going against Nancy Pelosi for the post of House Minority Leader in late 2016, Tim Ryan was not only fiercely ambitious, he was ahead of his time.  Now, at 52, with Democrats old enough to be his parents retiring left and right, Ryan's own time is up.

Having been smacked down by James David Vance for a U.S. Senate seat from Ohio in 2022, Ryan looked to return to public office some time in the future, and when Vance became Vice President,  another attempt at the Senate seat Vance had held for two years served seemed logical.  That is, until former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, 73, decided to go for that seat after he lost Ohio's other Senate seat to Bernie Moreno.  Ryan, in fact, looked toward running for governor of Ohio in 2026, until former Ohio Health Department Director Amy Acton, a confidante of Brown's, decided to seek the governorship.  Knowing that challenging her would mean an expensive primary campaign that could split the party and destroy the eventual nominee before next November, Ryan decided not to seek the Ohio governorship after all.  

Ryan's decision ends one of the most self-destructive political careers in American history, a career marked by a fall to the bottom that, ironically, was fueled by his desire to rise to the top.  He constantly sought higher office at the exact same times that the deck was clearly stacked against him.  It took a lot of guts to challenge Pelosi for the leadership position over House Democrats after the party suffered an ignominious loss to Donald Trump and congressional Republicans in 2016 (since eclipsed by an even more ignominious loss to Donald Trump and congressional Republicans in 2024), but it also showed no brains.  Pelosi was still popular among the Democratic base, and distrust of entrenched, aging elitists had not yet set in.  But, as I have made clear several times on this blog, Ryan's grab for power condemned him to the point where he would not gain a leadership position as long as Pelosi had something to say about it.  A presidential run in 2019 showed even less intelligence, as he never made it to 2020, a year where no Democratic newcomer proved the equal to Joe Biden.  (Even Kamala Harris outlasted Ryan in her presidential bid that year.)  With no future in the House, Ryan aimed for the Senate in 2022, only for fate to deal him another blow; his Republican opponent, Vance, had tech oligarch Peter Thiel backing him, and Ryan faced a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that couldn't be bothered to have his back.

Avery Kreemer of the Dayton Daily News, in what was clearly a subtle sliver of snark, noted that Ryan "has had a political career marked by lofty goals, from an attempt to unseat U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California as Democrats’ House minority leader in 2016, to launching a long-shot 2020 presidential bid, to mounting a U.S. Senate contest in 2022, [which he] narrowly lost."  The inference was clear; though marked by lofty goals, Ryan's political career was marked by little if anything else.  

And this is borne out by those who would argue that it was not a vindictive Nancy Pelosi or an impudent pro-Pelosi Democratic-friendly commentariat that ruined his political career.  "Come to northeastern Ohio," a Threads member tweeted to me when I suggested Pelosi's role in undermining Ryan, "and see all the closed factories [and] vacant homes and then ask who ruined his career.  He wants to just be a politician [but] not in it to help his constituents."

Ryan's anticipated bid for statewide office was doomed when it became apparent that the deck was once again stacked against him.  As soon as Amy Acton announced her candidacy, she immediately became the favorite just by being a woman.  (Hey, the future is female!)  Sherrod Brown's decision to make a bid for a comeback was also fatal, as Brown was less inclined to support Ryan's gubernatorial ambitions given his disagreement with Ryan over cryptocurrency regulation - Brown is for it.  Meanwhile, in addition to lobbying for natural gas companies, Ryan also lobbies for cryptocurrency interests, having made as a result more money in a month than his former constituents in the Mahoning Valley make in a year.   

That sudden cryptocurrency market crash was so unfortunate.

I suppose Ryan could run for the Senate again in 2028 if Brown loses the 2026 special election for that seat, or maybe run for Bernie Moreno's seat in 2030.  Not likely. Ryan announced his non-candidacy for governor of Ohio "after careful consideration, much prayer and reflection, and after long conversations with my family, my closest friends and advisers." Of course he prayed.  Given his efforts to to go from back-bench congressman to higher office and left with nothing after three strikes and being out, the Lord said unto him, "Tim . . . take a hint."

A Golden Farewell

Born in 1940 to an Italian family in Baltimore, moved to California, developed incredible skills to convey a statement . . ..  What can I say?  This American original is one of the most influential people of the past century.

But enough about Frank Zappa . . .

Nancy Pelosi was also born 85 years ago in Baltimore, too! 

Yeah, Nancy Pelosi just announced her retirement from the U.S. House of Representatives at the end of her current term.  And while I know lots and lots of pundits are toasting her as she prepares to cap her career and cement her legacy as the first female Speaker of the House, I come to bury, not praise, Pelosi for not having stepped aside a decade earlier - 2016, the same year Ohio congressman Tim Ryan tried to win the position of House Democratic leader from her only to fail to realize just how much power she still had despite being the minority leader at the time.  And, of course, Ryan's political career never recovered.  (What's he doing these days?  I'll get to him later.)

Once Pelosi got the Affordable Care Act passed, she should have prepared the next generation of House Democrats for leadership, but like her ex-friend Joe Biden, she held onto power too long, freezing out House Democrats young enough to be her children (and when one of them, Mikie Sherrill - my congresswoman, now governor-elect of New Jersey - was first sworn into the House, she voted for another House Democrat to be Speaker).  Her lieutenants were also oldsters, James Clyburn of South Carolina and Steny Hoyer of her native Maryland - hardly an indication of trust in the younger generations.  Her handling of Joe Biden's plans to stand for re-election to the Presidency in 2024 - refusing to take his yeses for an answer when he answered the question as to whether he was staying in the campaign - may have been justified when it became apparent that Biden would have to step down, but that doesn't excuse her ungraceful method of getting to change his mind, which was about as subtle as a pie in the face.

Her last great act came in 2024, after she stepped down as leader of the House Democrats when she used her power to deny Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York the chance to serve as ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee after Trump was returned to power and instead pushed (successfully) for Gerry Connelly of Virginia, who was 74 and dying of esophageal cancer, because it was "his turn."  (A few months later, the Grim Reaper also decided it was Connelly's turn.)   Pelosi remained adamant against a generational change not on her terms to the very end, deciding her successor and leaving the keys to her fiefdom to Hakeem Jeffries, the one guy from Brooklyn that's as feckless and as malleable as Chuck Schumer.

Anyway, I hope Nancy enjoys the winter of her life when she goes into retirement.  Just one tip, Madam Speaker Emerita - watch out where those Huskies go, and don't you eat the yellow snow! 😝   

Fight the Matriarchy!

So many progressives want to do away with patriarchy.  Why not do away with matriarchy as well?

We can start with Nancy Pelosi.

As the Democrats, once again as in 2016 faced with the spectre of Donald Trump when they thought they were going to see one of their own become the first female President in history, Pelosi, Capitol Hill's dowager empress, continues to throw sand in in the gears while the House Democratic caucus tries to find a way forward.  

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tried for a bid to become the ranking minority member on the House Oversight Committee, which would have allowed her to stick it to Trump's cronies in hearings and garner a lot of positive attention for the party.   Pelosi, still in Germany while recovering from a fall she sustained in Luxembourg,  put her thumb on the scales and was able to get House Democrats instead to elect Representative Gerry Connelly of Virginia to assume the position instead.  Connolly is 74 and dealing with esophageal cancer.

Now, I've had my disagreements and issues with AOC in the past, but no one can deny that she is an inspiring leader with excellent communication skills and an ability to make Republicans squirm.  The only trouble is, she's able to make Democrats squirm as well.  In addition to having threatened to have moderate House Democrats in other districts primaried, she offended Pelosi first by defeating Joseph Crowley, whom Pelosi was grooming for leadership in the House, for his House seat and then second by camping out in front of her office door.  At 84, Nancy Pelosi appears to suffer from a uniquely Italian strain of Alzheimer's disease; she remembers only vendettas. 

It's more than personal slights Pelosi punishes Democrats for, however.  She is committed to an increasingly outdated seniority system that rewards old folks like Connolly for time well-served and keeps young'uns like AOC patiently and interminably waiting their turn at leadership posts.  Pelosi has famously trusted the counsel of only her generational peers, and she has long frozen out younger members who seek positions of greater power and responsibility; those who actually make a grab for such positions ultimately commit political suicide.  Ask Tim Ryan.  

To respond to the inevitable point that there is new leadership in the House Democratic caucus, ask yourself this - why is Pelosi, not House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, calling the shots on ranking committee memberships?  Why does she hold the title of "Speaker Emerita," when no former Speaker of the House ever before held a title like "Speaker Emeritus" after stepping down from party leadership while retaining his House seat?  Why was she still strategizing House elections in the 2024 cycle and proclaiming that Democrats would retake the House based on her own count?  Why did people take Pelosi seriously about that?  Why do I have a feeling that she shared a beer and a chuckle with Peter Thiel, the maliciously craven Geppetto behind James David Vance, when Vance defeated Tim Ryan for a Senate seat?  I think you know the answer. 

Nancy Pelosi is still, in the wake of Kamala Harris's defeat, the most powerful woman in Washington, and she intends to keep it that way through her influence over Jeffries and his team even if it means shunning newer voices over people who, like Pelosi, have been in Congress too long.  It leaves the party run by a gerontocracy that refuses to acknowledge the younger generation and preserves the status quo even as the Democrats need fresh ideas for taking on Trump.  And Trump is a problem Pelosi is partially responsible for.  Not only did she use her influence to knock President Biden back down when he was still trying to pick himself up after his debate with Trump, she advocated for an open convention because she did not like Harris.  She lost that fight, but Harris's loss has returned Pelosi to the catbird seat.  She is trying to be the power behind the throne on Capitol Hill.  Except that the Democrats have no power to speak of and may not have any recourse if the Democratic old guard sticks around.

AOC hugged Connolly and congratulated him after losing her bid for ranking minority member on the House Oversight Committee, and she will still serve on that committee in the new Congress, where she still promises to be an effective anti-Trump firebrand.  But a party's younger members are only as strong as its leadership allows them to be, and if Pelosi doesn't get out of the way and let the new House Democratic leadership team actually, well, lead, she's going to get the Democrats - and the country - in big trouble.        

Shut Up, Nancy!

Nancy Pelosi has a lot of damn gall.

Right after Kamala Harris conceded the 2024 election, she blamed President Biden for Harris's loss.  The former Speaker of the House - and no, I'm not calling her "Speaker Emerita," that's just a title Democrats came up with to rub it in against Republicans  that there hasn't been a Republican Speaker who remained in the House after losing the gavel to a Democrat since Joe Martin in the 1950s - blasted Biden for not withdrawing from his bid for a second term earlier to allow a primary/caucus process to pick a new candidate and for immediately endorsing Harris to avoid a brokered convention.

What a bitch.

I'm sorry, but I have zero respect for someone who led the circular firing squad against Biden this past summer when he faltered in his one and only debate with Donald Trump in June.  Biden had a bad night, to be sure, but numerous Presidents had recovered from bad debate performances - even performances worse than Biden's, as Ronald Reagan's first debate against Walter Mondale in 1984 proved.  Biden was never truly respected in Washington, and as soon as he stumbled badly enough, they pounced like hyenas, and Pelosi led the pack.  You might recall that the more Biden dug in and vowed to stay in the campaign, the more Pelosi said she was waiting for Biden to "do the right thing" and make his decision on quitting it.  She and many other Democratic leaders had asked Biden what his decision on the presidential campaign going forward was, whether he would stay in, and he said he would.  But Nancy Pelosi wouldn't have that.

Pelosi's power play appalled historian Allan Lichtman, who said that he had never seen such a naked public trashing of an incumbent Democratic President by his own party.  MSNBC commentator Symone Sanders-Townsend, who has worked for President Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders, echoed  Lichtman's sentiments, angrily saying on MSNBC this past weekend that Pelosi had not only doomed Biden's chances of winning by undermining his resolve to stay in the campaign but had failed to meaningfully support Harris as his substitute.   

"She played in presidential politics this cycle, and she helped orchestrate the very public demise of the president,” Sanders-Townsend said. She praised her former boss, Biden, saying: "And thank God for Joe Biden, that he came out and, yes, endorsed his VP. 'Cause these people wanted an open primary . . ..  For what?"

For what, indeed?  How could an open primary be set up after Pelosi forced him out in the month between then and the convention?  Pelosi did say that Harris ran a great and inspiring campaign, but that doesn't excuse her ongoing public bark-stripping of the President.   

Sanders-Townsend also quite rightly called attention to Pelosi's apparent failure to ensure a Democratic House majority, as the control of the House of Representatives in the coming 119th Congress at this writing is still not determined and it will come down to a few seats in Pelosi's home state of California.  "I'm gonna say it . . .. Nancy Pelosi, everybody talks about how the Speaker Emerita, you know, she’s so strategic, she can count, she did all of that when she was the speaker in Congress, but my question is: Where is your calculator now?" She added that Democrats were “about to lose the daggone House," suggesting that Pelosi’s successful effort to force Biden to drop his re-election bid led to what happened. 

Joe Biden has been accused of hubris for opting to seek a second presidential term, but the truth is that there was no one other than Kamala Harris who could replace him - the talent pool in the Democratic party having been drained a good deal from years of Democratic "stars" losing elections and being sent off into political internal exile for it - and Harris, being Vice President, was a largely unknown quantity among the voters.  And voters didn't like what they did know about her.  But because she had the chops to be President, and because many party leaders, including Representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC), thought she had earned the right to be Biden's pinch hitter, the choice of Harris without a messy brokered convention that would have left a lot of sore feelings was logical.

Wrong, apparently, but logical.

Biden has always been a fighter who keeps getting back up.  Indeed, he was almost like those old egg-shaped Weeble action figures of the 1970s - he wobbled but he didn't fall down.  Pelosi knocked him over, wouldn't let him get back up, bashed him after the election for making his decision to withdraw at the wrong time only after she belittled him and trashed him in public, and didn't pay attention to her own bailiwick and to diminishing Democratic chances of taking the House back.   So how is the election result Biden's (or Harris's) fault?

The whole thing reeks.

Nancy's Out

Nancy Pelosi saw the writing on the wall - and not graffiti from January 6.  The Republicans will  control of the House of Representatives in January, and the outgoing Speaker of the House decided not to stand for a position in House Democratic leadership. (She will serve one final term representing her San Francisco district.)  She thanked everyone in the House chamber for allowing her to serve and marveled at how wonderfully geographically and ethnically diverse These States had become . . . and how democracy survived the 2022 election.

Few of those in the chamber were Republicans, and none of them cheered.  Incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy couldn't be bothered to attend - he was too busy outlining the Republican House's agenda, which includes investigating Joe Biden, investigating Hunter Biden, investigating Anthony Fauci, investigating Justice Department for investigating Trump, and investigating some other stuff that Marjorie Taylor Greene wants him to investigate.

And, I assume, naming post offices.

The relentless investigations House Republicans plan at the expense of actually getting anything done could weaken and diminish Joe Biden as he looks toward running for a second term in 2024.  Even if there's no there there with regards to wrongdoing, it could be enough to ruin Biden's re-election hopes.  In response to those who disagree, I offer three little words from 2016 - "But her e-mails!" 

And if Biden does not seek re-election, the Democrats can always nominate someone else. 

I got yer someone else right here.  😉 

Democrats Living Dangerously

Okay, boys and girls, remember when, in April 2015, Hillary Clinton urged the Democratic National Committee to play up Trump because she so desperately wanted to run against him?  Judging from the recent primaries for the midterm general elections, it seems that the Democrats have learned nothing from promoting the most dangerous Republican candidates.

Democrats have been running ads highlighting the records of Republican election-deniers - the folks who say that Trump won the election of 2020 - in order to help get them nominated so the Democrats, theoretically, can beat these candidates in November.  I touched on that in commenting about the 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary.  The Democrats have gotten similarly involved in primaries in numerous elections in various states, like the Maryland gubernatorial primary and now the Michigan U.S. House primary in the district based in Grand Rapids, where Republican U.S. Representative Peter Meijer was running for re-election.

The operative word here is "was."  Meijer, a scion of the family that owns the Midwestern pharmacy chain that bears their name, was one of ten House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump for the January 6 insurrection.  He's the sort of Republican I would like to see more of in Congress, because he stood up for principle.  Democrats praised him for standing up to Trump.  But then the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee went ahead and showed their admiration for Meijer by stabbing him in the back and spending money to get his election-denying opponent, John Gibbs, nominated for the November election to give the Democrats a greater chance of winning a House seat in a U.S. House district that hasn't elected a Democrat to represent it since 1990.  Gibbs won.  (In a foreboding sign of how this might backfire on Democrats, their candidate in that district, Hillary Scholten, hasn't gotten any mention from the national media.)

What the hell are these Democrats doing monkeying with the business like this?  All they're doing is helping GOP election-deniers get one giant step closer to winning office.  And some of them have real shots at winning.  If they do win, it will be in part because Democrats helped them get nominated.  Why don't Democrats stop wasting their money on messing with the Republican primaries and start spending it on helping Democrats win in the general elections?  Their cynical political game reeks, and the Democrats could pay a heavy price for it.

Meanwhile, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - who has endorsed the  Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's tactic of interfering in Republican primaries - made a dangerous move this week by visiting Taiwan and, as the U.S.'s third-highest-ranking elected official, speaking defiantly and forcefully about American support for the Taiwanese government and the Taiwanese people.  China considers Taiwan, a country Americans are obliged to defend, to be a breakaway province and hopes to reunite it with the mainland by force if necessary.  (Taiwan's government, the Republic of China, ran all of China until it was driven off the mainland by the Communists in 1949 and has been reduced to just the island of Taiwan and a few small islands off the mainland coast.  Ironically, Taiwan had just been returned to China by Japan after fifty years of Japanese rule.)   

China responded to Pelosi by sending over two dozen warships to the Taiwan Strait and blasted Pelosi for impugning Chinese sovereignty.  So, if World War III breaks out in the Far East, this could be where it starts.

Waving the proverbial red flag in the face of Xi Jinping (who salutes a literal red flag, with a few yellow stars added to boot) is a pretty dumb thing to do when U.S.-China relations are tense enough, and leading government and intelligence officials in Washington told Pelosi to please, please, please not go ahead with her Taiwan visit.  Alas, Pelosi doesn't take orders from anyone and makes clear to everyone else that her way is the way it's going to be.  In other words, she's a typical Italian mom. 😛 

Closer To the Edge

Congress is still - still - trying to get an infrastructure bill passed, and as of this writing, nothing has happened.  The vote on the bipartisan infrastructure had been repeatedly delayed - and that's the good news!  President Biden has been trying to broker a compromise, but progressives aren't quite there yet and moderates aren't there at all.  West Virginia's Senator Joe Manchin has made it clear that he wants no more than $1.5 trillion for the reconciliation bill and Arizona's Senator Kyrsten Sinema doesn't want to let anyone known where she is on this because she doesn't seem to know herself.  She jokes about it! 

Meanwhile, Republicans rigging the electoral process for Donald Trump in 2024 are licking their chops as they're waiting to put on the black shirts and weed out the weaklings and smash in their windows and kick in their doors.

With COVID still not quite licked yet (thought we may be getting there slowly), the economy still in a precarious place, and the debt ceiling nearing, it's going to be up to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (above) to deliver in the House of Representatives while Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer has to find a way to make sure Manchin and Sinema are on board.  It's mostly Pelosi's game here, and she needs to bring the legislation before the House at just the right time so it can pass.  If she can pull this off and bring the moderates and the progressives together, she should win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Otherwise, this storm before the calm, as Jonathan Capehart put it, will be more like a storm before the storm.  

Banks of the Jordan

So U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (below) looked over the five Republicans the House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy nominated for the select committee January 6 insurrection and accepted three of them but not those two Midwestern morons named Jim - Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana.  McCarthy demanded that Speaker Pelosi accept all five of his choices, and when she refused, he pulled them all and left the committee with only the eight members Speaker Pelosi appointed, including Republican Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

McCarthy sought to improve his chances to help the Republicans regain the House in 2022 and make him Speaker by pulling this stunt, but Speaker Pelosi is letting the select committee go ahead, since it has a quorum and all.  McCarthy doesn't want the truth of the insurrection to get out and diminish the GOP's chances in the 2022 midterms, but the select committee will be moving forward this coming week to get the truth out, and it may have some help.  At this writing, Speaker Pelosi is considering expanding the committee and adding two Republicans - including Adam Kinzinger of Illinois - making it an even ten members and also more bipartisan than it currently is.  The House has the votes to do that. 

The hearings begin this coming week.  They could end up being more fun to watch than the Tokyo Olympics!

Select THIS!

Fed up with efforts to get Republicans in Congress to authorize an independent commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going ahead and pushinga resolution creating a select committee to investigate it.  Though the committee will be bipartisan, it will not be free of partisan politics.  But it's the only way to get to the truth about what happened.

Speaker Pelosi said that the committee will be comprised of thirteen members. She will appoint eight of them, with the other five to be chosen  in consultation with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.  There's just one thing wrong with that - McCarthy opposes an investigation of any sort, and he could try some trick to sabotage the select committee.  Mainly because McCarthy himself would likely be subpoenaed to testify before the select committee.  McCarthy, who wants to be Speaker, had to deal with Donald Trump on the day of the insurrection and begged him to call it off.  If he testified before a committee, he might not get the Speaker's gavel - even if the Republicans retake the House her in 2022.

Speaker Pelosi has let it be known that she is seriously considering one or two Republicans among eight choices for the committee.  This would make the committee truly bipartisan and give any of its findings more credibility.  And it could help the Democrats in the 2022 midterms.  I don't think there's been anyone in Washington like Pelosi who has been able to pull off the impossible so magically since then-Secretary of State Martin Van Buren defused a sex scandal in President Andrew Jackson's Cabinet by resigning, allowing Jackson to ask the rest of the Cabinet for their resignation.  

Meanwhile, Trump himself could be indicted this week - not for the insurrection but for his company's shady business practices.  The select committee could end up being just another nail in an already-completed coffin.  

Whiplash

Back around Easter time, Dr. Rochelle Walensky (below), director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was afraid we were on the cusp of another COVID surge.  Then she was criticized for keeping numerous COVID restrictions in place when a surge did not happen.  Now she's gone completely in the opposite direction and announced that people who are fully vaccinated against VOCID can now go anywhere, including public indoor spaces, without wearing a face covering, which I will henceforth refer to in this post as an FC.  (I stopped wearing mine outside long before the CDC said I could, because not needing an FC outside was already common knowledge.)  

At first hearing, Dr. Walensky's announcement was greeted with enthusiasm.  The, almost immediately, we had to curb that enthusiasm.  Too many questions that no one can sufficiently answer ensued.  How can businesses like stores and bars know which customers have been vaccinated?  How do customers prove it?  Also, the new guideline was expected to encourage more unvaccinated people to get the COVID vaccine.  But what about people who lie about getting vaccinated just so they don't have to wear an FC when thy go in the supermarket?  Even Dr. Leana Wen, who had problems with the CDC being too strict with its guidelines after the rate of COVID infections dropped over the early spring, now says that the CDC is now being too lenient, an that the new guidelines could cause that very fourth COVID surge Dr. Walensky feared in early April.

Thanks to decisions made in the private sector and by state and local governments, though, none of the CDC's new guidelines and recommendations matter.  Many chain stores, such as Target and Home Depot, still require FCs at their locations, and while several states are lifting FC mandates, New Jersey is not one of them.  Governor Phil Murphy said that the FC mandate in the state, will continue for several more weeks, despite the fact that the rate of full vaccination in New Jersey is higher than the country at large.  )New York and California are keeping their FC mandates in place as well.)  And in the U.S. House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made it clear that the FC rule on the House floor will continue because too many Republican House members haven't gotten vaccinated yet.  She'll gladly lift  the rule when enough of them do.  But, of course, even if they do so privately despite all the anti-vaccine rhetoric in the GOP and tell Speaker Pelosi in full confidence, it will become apparent that GOP House members will have gotten vaccinated simply because the FC rule has been lifted.  The Republicans have a large minority caucus in the House, five seats away from taking control, and so a lot of them have to get a COVID shot before the FC rule in the House floor is lifted.  A fully vaccinated Democratic House caucus won't be enough to have the rule lifted.  If House Republicans are seen as having gotten vaccinated against COVID and going against the view of constituents who don't trust the vaccine, they'll get voted out of office for "selling out."  So even if some House Republicans get vaccinated against COVID in private, they will not tell Speaker Pelosi, who, in turn, will not lift the FC rule.  (The rule has been dropped in the Senate, as most Republican senators, more confident in their standings with voters statewide, have been vaccinated, Kentucky's Rand Paul and Wisconsin's Ron Johnson - both having had COVID - being exceptions.) 

Perversely, the joint session of Congress President Biden addressed in April should have been an FC-free zone.  Only vaccinated lawmakers and lawmakers who tested negative within 24 hours of the speech were allowed on the House floor, yet they still had to wear FCs despite it being a COVID-free environment.  (The entire Congress was not in attendance, of course.)  Thus, when we saw two women - Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris - sit behind the President on the House dais for the first time, we couldn't see their faces.  It became an historic moment for all the wrong reasons. Dr. Wen thought that enforcing the FC mandate in the House even for President Biden's speech sent the wrong message when it was already proven that everyone in the room did not have COVID and they could have gone without FCs to show that vaccines work.  Now she thinks the CDC is sending the wrong message by saying that anyone fully vaccinated from COVID can stop wearing FCs everywhere - when the Speaker of the House, many state governors, and a whole bunch of national chains have made it clear that we most certainly can not.

The CDC has gone from downplaying the virus under Trump to being overcautious, then inconsistent, under Biden.  My biggest fear is that the more the CDC tries to clarify its directives on COVID, the more confusion it will cause.

And I'll have to keep writing very long blog posts on the subject.

One more wrinkle: Despite having been fully vaccinated against COVID, several people, including comedian Bill Maher and several members of the New York Yankees baseball team, have tested positive for the disease. At a time of vaccine hesitancy, how is Dr. Walensky going to handle that?

No DeJoy In Mudville

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy thought he could get away with cutting back post office hours, taking away mailboxes, and cutting back on overtime. He was wrong. The public outcry against his "reforms" has been so great that he now says he will halt his actions until after the 2020 election. Mail processing facilities won't be closed before then, hours at post offices would stay the same, and overtime would be approved "as needed."

DeJoy (above) may have been wrong about being able to do all of this with no opposition form the public, but not as wrong as he will be if he thinks this move will take the heat off him. Nancy Pelosi, for one, isn't satisfied.  She noted that DeJoy's about-face does not restore changes already made, stops only a few of his proposed changes, and does not go far enough to ensure that mail-in ballots for the election will be fairly counted.  So, he can still expect to have to appear before the House Oversight Committee meeting on August 24, and he even has to face a Senate panel.  And the House is going ahead with a vote on a bill to keep the Postal Service afloat.

I don't yet have full confidence that an election can be held with the guarantee that all mail-in ballots will be counted.  But I'm closer to having it after all of this news.

I gotta hand it to Trump, though, because even though the Postal Service was created out of the old Post Office Department in part to take the power of appointing the Postmaster General - a position that pre-dates American independence and first held by Benjamin Franklin - out of the hands of the President, Trump simply appointed sycophants to the Postal Service's board of governors to ensure the selection of his right-hand man for the job.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy is sending mail-in ballots out to all of the stat's registered voters as soon as possible.

The Impeachment Trial: More Meh

Now that Her Holy Modal Majesty, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is releasing the articles of impeachment against Trump to the Senate, people are praising her deft move to get pressure on Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to have fair trial, with key Republican senators demanding a fair process in which to call witnesses and with new information about the Ukraine scandal - including former White House national security adviser John Bolton's willingness to testify on the matter - during the Speaker's imposed interregnum.   

Don't you believe it.  It's more daft than deft.

Pelosi (above) never had any leverage in holding back the articles if impeachment.  McConnell never wanted to receive them anyway, and he has no interest in holding a trial that would, if not remove Trump from the White House, still make him look bad.  There are four to six Republican senators who could join the 47 senators in the Democratic caucus in allowing witnesses to be called who could easily stick with McConnell when it comes to actually calling the witnesses during the trial.  (Except maybe Mitt Romney, who has said he'd like to hear what Bolton has to say.)  If there is a trial; McConnell is seriously considering a dismissal of the trial so he can get back to packing the courts with right-wing judges that will dominate the federal judiciary at least until my generation dies off.  In short, Pelosi's intransigence changed nothing, and it helped not a single Democrat.

Except maybe Joe Biden.  With Senator Bernie Sanders surging in the presidential polls in New Hampshire and in both February caucus states (Iowa and Nevada), House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has opined that Pelosi delayed the submission of the articles of impeachment to ensure that Sanders is stuck in Washington as a juror in the impeachment trial to get him off the campaign trail in the crucial final weeks before Iowa and New Hampshire.  I don't agree entirely with McCarthy's assessment.  I think she did it to get Senator Elizabeth Warren off the presidential campaign trail as well.  Speaker Pelosi is officially neutral in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination process, but she's already made clear her disdain for Grandpa Bernie's and Aunt Liz's policy positions, such as their support for Medicare for all and the Green New Deal (which went down like an old brown shoe).  The last thing she wants is to have either one of them as the Democratic presidential nominee, and their absence from the campaign trail wild help Biden gain traction in the state primaries and caucuses preceding Super Tuesday and possibly prevent the 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign from going all the way to New Jersey in June.

But Pelosi's gambit is not going to have a detrimental effect on Trump's standing or slow down or retard McConnell's progress in fighting progress.  It would only make sense that her moves are designed to affect the presidential trail more than the presidential trial.

Trail, trial . . . love those anagrams. ;-)           

Impeachment

Get it?

Now that Trump has been impeached, the Democrats have won the battle but have not yet won the war.  The might find the end of this war to be like Waterloo, and not from Wellington's perspective.  They have history and duty on their side, with House leaders Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler convinced they have Trump dead to rights, but the Senate's Republican majority is already trying to figure out how to concoct a show trial that will allow Trump to be acquitted while Trump and his minions on his campaign and at the Republican National Committee figure out how to destroy the Democratic Party once and for all in 2020 and consign it Whig-like extinction.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is already anticipating that, and she's reportedly holding back on referring the indictment to the Senate, where Mitch McConnell is already planning to strike the final blow against the Democratic opposition.  Mitch is already planning how to decimate Amy McGrath, his likely Democratic opponent in Kentucky's Senate election next year, and he must relish the idea of doing the same to Pelosi simultaneously.  The Speaker has been known to outwit many an opponent, but McConnell is not an opponent.  He's a mortal enemy, and in him she may yet meet her match.        

Meanwhile, the Republicans are sure to raise money over the impeachment vote, giving them more  dough than they need.  Democrats are likely to get money from their biggest supporters, which means they'll get checks in figures without a lot of zeroes at the end, thus pointing to a financial disadvantage.  Joe Biden is already campaigning against Trump as if he's already the nominee-in-waiting, not because he's convinced he's going to win the nomination but because he wants to frame the argument against Trump early, whether he's the nominee or not.  Biden is showing how dangerous to democracy and the rule of law Trump is.  That said, how many people will really care if we continue to have a booming stock market and low unemployment, even if the Dow numbers and job statistics are grossly misleading?  This, sadly, is nothing new for the majority of voters in These States, who continue to vote their pocketbooks for leaders who take their oaths on Bibles. :-(  

The Show Must Go On?

Nancy Pelosi has decided that she's heard enough about Donald Trump's abuse of power and has given the relevant committees of the House of Representatives to go ahead and prepare articles of impeachment.  Even if more stuff that could close the sale for the Democrats surfaces after the articles are drafted and adopted by the full House.

The only problem is that Speaker Pelosi seems to have based her decision largely on the testimony from Democratic witnesses at the House Judiciary Committee's first (so far) impeachment hearing.  Left out of the equation is Republican witness Jonathan Turley's word of caution in impeaching Trump too soon before the investigations into his abuse of power get all of the facts.  And Turley is someone who did not vote for Trump.

MSNBC pundits have been dismissing Turley's comments as failing to recognize all of the evidence the investigation has covered, but that misses the point.  Support for impeachment among the American people is qualified at best, but the Democrats could enough sway enough voters to back their accusations against Trump with the information they uncover from the bigger witnesses they haven't questioned yet - notably, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney and Rudolph Giuliani.  These are the big stars of the Ukraine scandal and the dudes with the most direct and most airtight evidence of Trump's abuse of power.  For now, and possibly later, the Democrats are content to let the White House prevent these guys from testifying so they can charge Trump with obstruction of justice.  But having an impeachment process without the big stars providing the the most helpful testimony and relying only small bits of information and opinion from bureaucrats and constitutional lawyers who aren't household names is sort of like offering a side show without a main three-ring circus.

And remember, we're dealing with a President who's the most impressive showman since P.T. Barnum.    

Look, Trump isn't going to be convicted and removed from office because the Republicans in the Senate are solidly behind him, and even if the Democrats get all the information that's out there rather than just some of it, that's not going to change.  But with all of the inflation at their disposal, the Democrats would have a stronger case against Trump for their eventual presidential nominee to pursue against him.  Instead, they're only relying on only a little bit of information that will not persuade enough independents to join them and only cause eyeballs to roll.  That's what Trump wants.  He wants an opposition that isn't ready to go the full 26.2 miles like he is.  That's how he plans to win . . . once he's "exonerated" by a Senate acquittal that will only embolden him.  

But Pelosi lashing out at that right-wing "reporter" at her press conference made for some good drama.

The Week That Is (So Far)

Too much to keep up with, so I'll be brief . . .

The Democratic presidential debate two days ago (October 15) showed that, even if she's not really the front runner for the party's presidential nomination, Elizabeth Warren has surged to the point where she's being taken seriously.  All of the candidates - even Joe Biden - grilled her on her policies, specifically on how she'd pay for Medicare health coverage for anyone, and she ducked and weaved without ever answering the question.  Bernie Sanders - refreshed and ready to move on after his heart attack - as honest about it, saying that taxes would have to go up.  The fact that few if any candidates went after Biden suggests that he's through.  Not so.  Biden is still leading in a few polls and he's well ahead in South Carolina, and he projected strength and resolve in light of Donald Trump's attack on him and his son Hunter in a press conference the day after the debate in Ohio.  Hunter Biden himself was impressive in his interview with ABC's Amy Robach.  Both Bidens have gone a long way toward addressing the involvement or lack thereof in Ukrainian business dealings, but of course there are too many second-guessing skeptics who will say that they're not satisfied.

Even as impeachment is gaining support in light of Trump's mismanagement of a misguided effort to knock Biden out of the 2020 presidential campaign to make Warren the Democratic presidential nominee and give her the full McGovern next November, Trump  has mangled the carefully crafted U.S. Middle East policy to the point where the Turks have turned the Kurdish enclave in Syria into the greatest pocket of misery west of Bangladesh, and the Islamic State terrorist prisoners held there are escaping.  It took House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, during a White House meeting on Syria, to stand up - literally! -  to Trump over the matter in full fury while her male counterparts in the room bowed their heads for the shame if being there (stop pussy-whipping yourselves, guys), after which Pelosi - whom Trump called a third-rate politician - and Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer stormed out.  And yet Trump may survive all this despite bipartisan fury over his Syria policy simply because he supporters think a Kurd is something that cows chew.

Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings just died.  RIP. :-(  This could be a blow for House Democrats trying to make a case against impeachment that can persuade at least a few Senate Republicans to vote for conviction in a Senate trial.  Yes, yes, the House Oversight Committee will have a new chairman - I don't know who that would be - but, at this juncture, saying that the House Oversight Committee could get another chairman seems like saying that Led Zeppelin could get another drummer after John Bonham died. :-( 

Tell Me I'm Not Dreaming!

My, oh my, oh my, what have we here?

Donald John Trump, the man currently calling 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington his home, called the president of Ukraine to say that he could get the missiles he wanted for the Ukrainian armed forces provided he try to . . . dig up dirt on a political opponent?  And Trump's bragging about it?

In case you have been under a rock lately, Trump did just that, and a whistleblower who remains anonymous filed a compliant that the Trumpster was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" by trying to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the business dealings of Joe Biden's son and especially as to whether the former Vice President inappropriately intervened in Hunter Biden's affairs on his behalf.  Instead of getting Biden in hot water - who was in trouble already because of Elizabeth Warren's surge in Democratic presidential primary polls - Trump got himself into deep rhymes-with-voodoo.  This story was all Nancy Patricia Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, needed to allow a for an impeachment inquiry to go forward.  And although this allows House Democrats to get information they'd tried to obtain before on semi-unrelated matters, Pelosi is keeping the focus squarely on Trump's attempts to have Ukraine influence the 2020 presidential election - because the American people can understand that!

You know Trump is in trouble when even House Democrats from vulnerable swing districts - including my congresswoman, Mikie Sherrill - support an impeachment inquiry.  Thanks to Trump's brazenness, a majority of House members - not just a majority of House Democrats, a majority of House members (though all but one of them are Democrats) - now support the inquiry.  House Judiciary Committee Jerrold Nadler's investigation into Trump is no longer a sideline.  It's his main business. However, Adam Schiff, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, will be doing a good deal of heavy lifting, with this involving national security and all . . .

And we've already found out this much - Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr tried to lock down the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky call and remove it from the computer file where transcripts to calls to foreign leaders are stored.

And what does this all mean for Joe Biden?

Well, it depends on how he handles it.  Given that the American people are in no mood for a bold liberal experiment to make the United States more like a European country, with all of the nice things such a country has, Biden, whose most radical policy proposal is to modernize Amtrak, is likely still the best shot the Democrats have to beat Trump.  The stiff challenge he currently faces from Elizabeth Warren is less about his son's business dealings than it is about his own mistakes and missteps.  Bear in mind, though, that there is no evidence that Hunter Biden did anything wrong or that his dad tried to help him or obstruct justice in any way.  It's just a rumor.  And if it is in fact the case that there's nothing to see here, Biden should just come out and say so and then move on.

He didn't do so well, though, when a Fox News reporter asked him about Hunter and the former Vice President tried to do what Trump always does - change the subject.  I winced when he dodged the question, recalling Gary Hart's arrogant attempt to dodge the question as to whether he committed infidelity when reporter Paul Taylor asked it.  And if Biden wants to nip this in the bud, the last thing he should do is respond with a carefully crafted, lawyerly statement - as Hart had done with his sex scandal - because first of all, Biden is incapable of doing that anyway, and second of all, there'll likely be reporters who can find an opening to go after him on, as Paul Taylor did after Hart denied having done anything "immoral" with the future Trump supporter who went into his Washington townhouse.  ("Do you think adultery is immoral?"  "Yes."  "Have you ever committed adultery?"  You know the rest.)

My guess is that Biden will be fine.  After all, there's more evidence against Trump trying to get a foreign government to look into an alleged illegality on the Bidens' part than there is of the allegation.  Just as long as Biden's denial, whatever form it may take, isn't plagiarized from someone else.

Yes, I went there . . .

Oh, was there a United Nations General Assembly this week?

Ryan's Hopeless?

Why doesn't Tim Ryan seem to be getting anywhere in his presidential run? Is is because he's just another boring white guy?

I'm a white guy myself, and because I still listen to classic rock bands that went out of style at about the same time the United States Football League went out of business, I'm also boring.  So I'm not going to make that mocking charge here.  I do, however, have some charges to make against Ryan.

Ryan is hoping to win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination to get back the Midwestern working class that either went for Donald Trump in 2016 or, faced with the choice of Trump and Hillary Clinton, went to the bar for a drink or two.  He is demanding economic justice for the working class of the American heartland - white, black, brown - and campaigning on a promise to help them as much as Trump has not.  He is attacking Trump with some spirited and righteous indignation over guns and immigrants while maintaining a polite yet forceful persona.

The only problem with that is that he doesn't seem to know what to do about anything.

We only know what he doesn't want to do.  He wants a Green New Deal, just not the one proposed earlier this year by the party's progressive wing, but he doesn't know what would be in his Green New Deal.  He doesn't want Medicare for all, but I haven't heard a twit about what he does want.  He doesn't even seem to understand what he's against.  At one debate, he went after Bernie Sanders for misunderstanding a universal health care bill that Sanders himself wrote.

And that's not all.  There's also the perception that Ryan only wants to be President because he couldn't be Speaker of the House, a position he'd be serving in today had he defeated Nancy Pelosi in the 2016 election for House Democratic leader.  Pelosi and her supporters have never forgiven Ryan for his effort to unseat her from the top job in the House Democratic caucus, and he's been mocked for even daring to oppose her and thinking he was entitled to be House Democratic leader just because he was younger. Also, as a Catholic (yes, I'm going there), Ryan once opposed abortion. but he has since become pro-choice.  But while Republicans readily embrace converts from the pro-choice stand (like the older George Bush), Democrats are not so eager to trust converts from the pro-life stand.  Not even Catholic Democrats like Ryan who, unlike Trump, believe that you have the right to life after you're born.

Ryan's a nice guy, but his overall politeness and his misguided efforts at career advancement only remind us that nice guys finish last.  In Ryan's case, he may finish dead last.  My guess is that he'll drop out of the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination process in due time under the impression that he can still be someone's Secretary of Labor.

Because he isn't going to rise any higher in the House Democratic leadership under Pelosi.

Wait - I still have other candidates to assess?

Divisive

That's what Donald Trump is.  I'm not going to beat around the bush about it.

For the past week Trump has lobbied some rather hateful comments about four freshman minority congresswomen - Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, collectively known as the Squad - calling them un-American for their sharp criticism of U.S. foreign and domestic policy, and he's been telling them to leave America if they don't like it here.  Although many people have rallied to stand with the four U.S. Representatives in solidarity, Trump has still juiced up his base, the Squad having given that base plenty to hate about them.  After all, they're women, they're of non-European origin, they're young, they're ultra-liberal enough to make Elizabeth Warren look like a moderate, and they call themselves a name commonly associated with hip-hop culture.  All very threatening for a political base that wants to see old conservative white men remain in power because they are mostly old conservative white men - and they prefer country and western.

Trump is trying to make them the de facto running mates of whoever gets the Democratic presidential nomination in an effort to paint the Democrats as far to the left, and he may yet do that.  The Squad haven't done themselves any favors by soaking up the media attention they've been given while moderate female Democratic House freshmen, including my own congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, get to work and learn the ropes of the job.  But Trump's attacks on the Squad go far beyond the pale, and it just might be that there are enough voters who disagree with the Squad's agenda but can't tolerate Trump's demonization of them just because the views they hold are more in common with those of Norman Thomas than with those of Clarence Thomas.  After all, they were duly elected, and they represent the views of most of their constituents.

If anything, Trump has helped Nancy Pelosi by trying to exploit the disagreements she has with the Squad.  Now she stands by them and she has for now put aside her own issues with them, at least in public.  It would be better, though, if she and the Squad hash things out in private from now on, but they probably won't, and that's what Trump is counting on. :-O   

Bad Power Plays

Nancy Pelosi has long been feared for her power and her ability to use it, but as Speaker of the House, she's on the verge of a power failure. This past week, she had a brownout. 

Pelosi expressed hostility toward U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, the left-wing Democratic minority women who have been raising hell over, well, you name it since the 116th Congress opened when the four women refused to vote for a border security bill that helped migrant children.  The quartet voted against the bill because it funded Trump's immigration policies and did not trust him to spend the money appropriated judiciously.  (To be fair, Pelosi was rightfully irked by an Ocasio-Cortez staffer sending out a tweet comparing moderate Democrats to Southern segregationists; that tweet has since been deleted.)  Pelosi still thought half a loaf was better than none and criticized the group for their stance, dismissing the lack of strength in numbers, as there are four of them, while overlooking the numerical strengths of their supporters . . . and by all accounts, she's not handing it very well.

Whichever side anyone is on regarding the immigration bill is irrelevant.  What matters is Pelosi's clumsiness in handling dissent in her ranks and how intolerant she is of it.  This looks worse than her freeze-out of Tim Ryan, who's now running for President (relax, I'll get to him), because the congresswomen involved here are all freshman women of color, not seasoned white males out for her job.  Both her attitudes toward these four women and toward guys like Ryan are indicative of how she want to hold on to power, yet she doesn't seem to be doing anything productive with it.

Pelosi wants to continue being feared because of her power, but she's undermined herself not just in the instance with these four congresswomen but in her lackadaisical attitude toward an impeachment inquiry of Trump, as she prefers to wait for Trump to self-destruct.  This approach is not unlike when General Motors, faced with the increase of Toyota sales in the American auto market, dismissed its rival as the beneficiary of a passing trend.

And with someone of Pelosi's power and position, that's far more than merely annoying. 

We have a Speaker who won't use her power for what she should be using it for.  Use it or lose it, Nancy.  

Out Of the Gate

If the opening of the 116th Congress is any indication, the next two years are going to be as unbearable as the previous two.  Maybe more so.

Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York signaled the tone of the new Democratic House of Representatives by officially nominating Nancy Pelosi for Speaker by declaring that he was "down with NDP" - a reference to Pelosi's initials and a hip-hop record from the early nineties that I'm trying to forget.  He tried to cast the Democrats as the with-it, cool, hip-hop party in which classic-rock-lovin' middle-aged white people need not apply.  Let the record show that Pelosi is old enough to remember Elvis Presley.  Anyway, such a pop-culture attitude is why so many people still vote Republican.

Meanwhile, newly minted Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) didn't get the memo from Democratic leadership about waiting for the committees to investigate Trump's dastardly dealings thoroughly before calling for his impeachment, vowing at a rally to say that Democrats would "impeach the mother f--ker" while a smartphone camera caught her every word.  Including that one.  A female Muslim using a vulgarity to call for political jihad against an opponent . . . There's another reason why so many people still vote Republican.

However, there has been reason for not to get too much into despair. . . a video of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), fast becoming America's political sweetheart, dancing to techno music when she was in school has surfaced.  Released by a Republican on Twitter as an attempt to embarrass her, the video instead shows just how adorable and ebullient she really is, and now people love her even more than before.  She then recorded a new video of herself dancing . . . outside her office!  Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the reason many people don't vote Republican! :-D

And my own congresswoman, Democrat Mikie Sherrill, has already shown what a great legislator she'll be going forward.  She is the sort of mature politician House Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi need of they're going to effectively battle Trump.  Ironically, Sherrill voted against Pelosi for Speaker (voting for Illinois congresswoman Cheri Bustos instead).  But then she promised to vote against Pelosi, so now we know she keeps her word.  And, she is now forgoing her pay as a U.S. Representative until the partial government shutdown ends. 

Now that's integrity.