Pax Texana

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Warren Kenneth Paxton.

Ken Paxton is the Attorney General of the not-so-great state of Texas.  He is best known for drastically reducing the sentence of an imprisoned pedophile and allowing him to go free, and he has used his office to enrich himself and his Big Oil donors in the Lone Star State.

And now he's the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

That alone is scary enough.  He also has a chance of winning, because . . . it's Texas.

Texas hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, and the last Democrat to occupy the seat Paxton has been nominated for was Lyndon Johnson.  Texans have learned to hate the Democrats for their policies and their positions, and Democrats have learned to hate them back, rarely winning any elections in the state beyond a few mayoralties and a few state and federal legislative seats.

But now Texas has a Democrat who could win the seat Paxton seeks to acquire.

He is State Representative James Talarico, thirty-seven years old, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.  He's running hard on the economy and on the stink of Paxton's corruption, which is pretty fetid.  Paxton is considered the most corrupt politician in Texas and the second most corrupt person in America after the Trumps, who are tied for first.  He is so laser-focused on the hard times Texans are going through and the cavalier disregard Paxton has for the people that he is on track to give Paxton a tough fight.

But is he on track to win?  Texas has moved from "solid Republican" to "lean Republican" in the Cook Political Report's analysis of U.S. Senate campaigns, meaning that he's not exactly winning now and he certainly hasn't won.  Because . . . it's Texas.  Democrats have spent the past thirty-odd years trying and failing to win a statewide election, and Talarico could end up being no more than another shooting star like the politically dead and unlamented Beto O'Rourke, but as long as he can avoid culture-war issues and identity-politics pitfalls, he might just make it.

I bring up identity politics because Talarico defeated U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett, who is black, in the primary election earlier this year.  Talarico has a head start, though, as Paxton and incumbent Senator John Cornyn had to slug it out in a runoff primary, which Paxton won last week thanks in part to Trump's endorsement of him.  But after he defeated Crockett, many black female voters in Texas were ticked off that a smart, progressive, accomplished black woman lost to a honky that they've vowed to boycott the general election and let Paxton win, even if it means the end of free and fair elections in Texas and beyond as we know it.

It's Texas.

They Made Her Squeal

The importance of being Ernst is no more.

Republican U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, who was first elected to the Senate from Iowa in 2014 who likened cutting pork-barrel spending to castrating pigs on her family farm and who won a second term in 2020 despite knowing precious little about other forms of farming, reportedly will not seek a third term next year.  She is bowing out in part because of her reasoning for supporting Trump's Medicaid cuts (because sooner or later we're all going to die) but also because she was reluctant to support Pete Hegseth's nomination to be Defense Secretary because of his misogyny and her own experiences in the military.  Although Ernst did end up supporting after arm was twisted - literally, I assume - her initial reticence angered Trump and his cronies.  

It's appropriate that she grew up on a farm that raised pigs.  Because she's dead meat.

Numerous Iowa Democrats are already lining up for the U.S. Senate primary in the state next year, but while i have no idea who will be the Democratic nominee for Ernst's seat, I can tell you who won't be - Theresa Greenfield, who ran against Ernst in 2020.  Even though she was more knowledgeable than Ernst regarding agricultural issues, the simple fact is, she still lost to Ernst.  As I always like to note, Democrats don't let failed nominees try again for the same office - they shoot their wounded.  Though, in Iowa, they likely opt for castration.

Make 'em squeal.

Profile In Dis-Courage

Trump's big ugly, blister-faced, goateed creature of a budget bill is going through a marathon of amendments to be voted on in the Senate as Democrats try to slow the bill down enough to prevent Trump from signing the bill into law on July 4 (when this blogger will be in Montreal for an extended weekend to get out of the country during a holiday this blogger no longer believes in, hence expect a new Music Video Of the Week a day early).  The bill, which cuts spending on renewable energy and health-care access and will likely cause people to die in order to give Jeff Bezos and is new wife (yuck!) a tax cut as a wedding gift.  One Senate Republican announced his opposition to it due to Medicaid cuts that will disproportionally hurt his state - Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Tillis had been against the Affordable Care Act because he was not convinced that people could keep their coverage and their doctors if they so chose.  He was right, and he considered that a broken promise from President Obama.  That got Tillis elected to the Senate in 2014.  Now he is lashing out at Trump because the protections to Medicaid Trump promised just aren't there, which Tillis considers yet another broken promise on health care from the executive branch - only this time it's Trump, not Obama, he's angry at.     

And Trump is angry at Tillis.  After more or less threatening him with supporting a primary challenger in the 2026 U.S. Senate campaign in North Carolina, Tillis, fearing naught for his career but likely fearing for his life, prudently decided not to seek re-election after two terms.  He'll be 65 at the end of 2025, which dovetails nicely with his impending retirement.  Progressives are loath to give Tillis any credit for standing up to Trump, since he gave up his political career rather than continue fighting, even as he voted 95 percent of the time with Trump beforehand.  But it's never too late to do the right thing.

That is, until this godawful bill passes.  Tillis's only definite company in his own party in opposition to the bill is Rand Paul of Kentucky, who loathes the exorbitant spending on the tax cuts and finds the bill distasteful and fiscally irresponsible.  Like Tillis on health care, Paul is completely consistent here.  But currently there's no sign that the two extra Republicans that the Democrats need to derail the bill in the Senate are ready to step up.  Meanwhile, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine continues to express her "concern." 

Right now, alas, I'm afraid that passage of this budget bill is inevitable.  But then again, people said that about a Hillary Clinton Presidency, and look how that turned out.

Brown Versus Moreno

Hey, guys, how about an Italian-American third-party candidate named Maronne? 😃

Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio will face MAGA Republican Bernie Moreno, and the common meaning of their surnames is just about all they have in common.  Brown is a traditional Hubert Humphrey liberal who supports a strong industrial policy to help workers and who backs unions and workers' rights.  Moreno is a Trump wannabe who has a big auto-dealership network, and that's all you need to know about him.  And being a MAGA man may be all he needs to win Brown's Senate seat in November.

Brown was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006, the first - and only - Democrat to be elected to the Senate from the Buckeye State since John Glenn won his last term in 1992.  Ted Strickland was elected governor of Ohio in 2006, but since then no Democrat other than Brown has won statewide in Ohio, mainly because the national party keeps relying on a coalition of Ivy League ethnic-studies professors, Wall Street bankers, and latte drinkers with a running tab at their local Starbucks.  Democrats have become spectacularly toxic in Ohio because of all that, which is why Brown - who is neither an Ivy League ethnic-studies professor or a Wall Street banker and prefers a good ol' cup of diner coffee - has been able to distinguish himself from the national Democratic leadership.  

But this time, Brown's luck may have run out.  As the Democratic Party in Ohio has atrophied, Brown has found himself increasingly isolated from political trends in his home state as well as from the party elites in Washington.  Ohio has become so deeply Trumpist that not even a Democrat who runs on working-class concerns and issues and has his own blue-collar bona fides, like Tim Ryan, can win a statewide election.  This explains why Ohioans keep sending morons like Jim Jordan to the House and James David Vance to the Senate. 

I still can't understand how Ryan could have lost his 2022 Senate bid,  but it may be for the same reason Brown may lose his bid for a fourth Senate term; Ohioans are just plain sick of the Democrats. They're so full-blown MAGA that Brown will likely lose and (like Tim Ryan did in 2022 and like the Ohio Democratic Party did long before 2022) become politically irrelevant.  And if that happens, as I have said on this blog before, Ohio will be as Republican, as MAGA, and as hostile to Democrats as Florida.

And so having a university named Miami won't be the only thing the two states have in common.  

Buckeye Blackeye

Tim Ryan, after losing his bid for the open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, said he's unsure of what he will do next.  The truth is, he likely doesn't have a future in politics unless President Biden appoints him Assistant Secretary of  Labor. 

It says something about how reliably Republican Ohio has become when you realize that J.D. Vance was not just the only Trump-backed Republican Senate candidate to win, he won by 264,675 votes out of 4,031,121 votes cast - hardly the close race many of the polls were predicting.

I still feel that Tim Ryan could have won that open Senate seat if the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) had given him more money and more support, but DSCC Chairman Senator Gary Peters of Michigan had only so much money to spread out and he made a calculated decision to hold all Democratic-held seats and flipping as few Republican seats as necessary.  His strategy paid off; not one incumbent Democrat lost, and John Fetterman's Senate victory in bipartisan Pennsylvania was the only seat flipped by either party,  The Democratic strategy preserved the party's Senate majority no matter how the Georgia Senate runoff two weeks from today plays out.

But Ryan more or less made a pariah of himself with his own ambition.  His attempt to oust Nancy Pelosi as House Democratic Leader in 2016 ended in ridicule and scorn, as well as an outbreak of schadenfreude among Pelosi's most ardent supporters.  The new Democratic leadership emerging for the next Congress - Hakeem Jeffries, Katharine Clark and Pedro Aguilar - have been assistant leaders for the past four years and have been nurtured by Pelosi and her leadership team to take over.  The fact that Ryan felt compelled to run for President in 2020 - although no sitting House member has been elected to the White House since another Ohioan, James A. Garfield, pulled it off in 1880 - constitutes prima facie evidence that Ryan was frozen out of potential House leadership for his brazen act of rebellion.  Besides, the new leadership reflects the Democratic Party's bi-coastal, diverse base; Jeffries, from New York, is black,  Cark, from Massachusetts, is a woman, and Aguilar, from California, is Hispanic.  Ryan is just another white guy from Ohio.  

So of course Ryan, seeing no future in the House, decided to go for a Senate seat.  But Ryan's tried-and-true blue-collar liberal populism in his own district in the Mahoning region in eastern Ohio didn't translate very well statewide.

Ryan had the right stands on the issues and the right temperament to represent Ohio in the U.S. Senate, but he was as out of touch with the more conservative, narrow-minded Ohio electorate as he was with the House leadership of his own party.  Not only would he likely lose a Senate bid in 2024 if Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown retires, but Brown himself might face an uphill battle if he runs then for a fourth term.  And if Ryan is a Senate candidate in 2024, there's no guarantee that the DSCC would support him in the interest of keeping a Democratic Senate seat Democratic.  There are twice as many Democratic Senate seats up for election in 2024 as there are Republican seats.  Perhaps the DSCC, likely being unable to save every Democratic Senate seat, will sacrifice Ohio if Sherrod Brown retires.  

Besides, I don't think Washington Democrats like Ryan very much.

Tim Ryan has a lot of political talent, and I hope he returns to public service in some form, but it won't be to an office he has to get elected to - least of all the Presidency.  I'm reminded by what Hollywood producer Darryl F. Zanuck said of French film director (and son of painter Pierre) Jean Renoir, which Washington insiders and Ohio voters could easily say about Tim Ryan: "[He's] got a lot of talent, but he's not one of us." 

Quality Matters

It looks like Mitch McConnell has been having heartburn.

You'd have heartburn too, if you saw the latest news and poll numbers involving Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate in the 2022 midterms, who McConnell has to count on to win back a Republican majority.

In Pennsylvania, John Fetterman is ahead of noted New Jersey resident Dr. Mehmet Oz by ten to fifteen points, and Oz undistinguished himself by complaining about the rising prices of exotic vegetables in a supermarket whose name he couldn't get right.  Mandela Barnes - whose biggest asset is that he is not Russ Feingold - is ahead of incumbent Republican Senator and crackpot conspiracy theorist Ron Johnson in Wisconsin by eight points, while incumbent Democratic senator Mark Kelly holds a similar lead over Republican challenger and 2020 election denier Blake Masters in Arizona.  In Georgia, incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock is ahead by four points over Republican challenger Herschel Walker, the noted spousal abuser and climate-change non-expert who says China can get rid of its bad air by letting the winds blow our good air over the ocean to them.  Uh, you think someone should tell him that the jet stream flows from west to east and not the other way around? 

McConnell has conceded that the GOP's lack of "quality candidates" is helping Democrats in the polls, and many of them are likely headed to defeat.  But the Republicans could make up for losses in Pennsylvania or Georgia elsewhere.  In Washington State, Republican challenger Tiffany Smiley is giving incumbent Democratic senator Patty Murray - first elected to the Senate when the biggest threat from China was Olympic diver Fu Mingxia - a run for her money, and incumbent Democratic Senator Michael Bennet is facing a tough challenge from Republican challenger Joe O'Dea, who actually says that Trump lost the 2020 election.  A Republican that faces reality head-on - wow, what a concept!

I don't even want to consider the J.D. Vance - Tim Ryan Senate race in Ohio.

And remember, the weaker candidates currently behind - even Herschel Walker - could pull out a victory in November.  If that sounds unthinkable, remember that the insufferable Iowa GOP senator Joni Ernst won re-election to the Senate over a Democratic opponent who knew corn and soybean prices better than she did. Remember also that many a Republican wave has swept some serious chuckleheads into the Senate - remember Dan Quayle? Right now, the Democrats may be gaining some momentum thanks to having passed popular legislation in the past few weeks, but with inflation and public health issues still a problem, the Democrats could end up answering an old riddle on Election Day . . . the riddle of what happens when a force in motion meets an immovable object.  

But quality still matters.

Keystone Kops

Crazy things are going on in today's Pennsylvania primary elections.  On the Republican side, a racist black female conservative - she sounds like a Jerry Springer guest - has thrown a monkey wrench into things in the Senate nomination contest, while on the Democratic side, a tough guy with bad fashion sense and a heart of gold could beat a mainstream Democrat for their party's U.S. Senate nomination.

Kathy Barnette has surged in the polls for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania for the state's open seat, mainly for being farther to the right than even Donald Trump, bashing Muslims and gays while using her own circumstance - she's the result of her mother's rape - as an argument against all abortions.  Trump likes her and thinks she has a future but doesn't think she's ready for prime time now.  His choice is New Jersey resident (shh! - don't tell anyone! 😀) Mehmet Oz, a daytime TV show who says he's a doctor, though hedge-fund manager David McCormick is running a close race with him and could easily win the nomination by being more like Trump than Oz.  Now Barnette has made it a three-way tie in the polls, which means the election results could be unavailable for days.

On the Democratic side, Conor Lamb, a moderate congressman from the Pittsburgh area who looks so much like a senator that he could get away with wearing a toga, is well behind in the polls, with Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, a Bernie Sanders-style progressive so causal he campaigns in sweatshirts and gym shorts, in the lead.  Lamb, a former Marine and a former assistant U.S. attorney,  has a dream candidate's resume in his favor . . . and that's all.  Pennsylvania Democrats have decided that a safe choice is no longer desirable, simply because they believe that a Senator Lamb could go to Washington and fail to get anything done because of the way the Senate "operates" these days.  Fetterman is seen as a fighter who will fight for core Democratic values.  Lamb is seen as someone who lives up to his surname.  

Independent commentator and Pennsylvania resident Michael Smerconish worries that Pennsylvania voters will be turned off in the fall by the possibility of extreme Senate candidates in a state where only registered party members can vote in primaries and independents have to stay home, and some Republicans are looking forward to a potential Oz-Fetterman race, thinking Oz can win such a match because of middle-class familiarity with the not-so-good doctor.  I'm not sure about that. Fetterman is a working-class hero who always talks about how blue-collar voters and the middle class constantly get screwed by the system, making him a populist at a time when populism is, well, popular.  He can sell progressive populism because he's a regular guy, not some coastal intellectual or some social-media-happy showhorse.       

Fetterman has one thing against him.  He suffered a stroke a few days ago.  How that plays into today's voting remains to be seen.  One thing I'd like to note; former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley has supported both Fetterman and Lamb in earlier elections, Fetterman for his previous U.S. Senate run and Lamb for his first U.S. House run.  O'Malley is neutral this time, mainly because he can't be bothered with any political campaigns other than his wife's bid for Maryland Attorney General.  

The gubernatorial primary is more straightforward.  Far rightist state senator and 2020 election result denier Doug Mastriano is a shoo-in for the Republican nomination while Pennsylvania Attorney Josh Shapiro is running for the Democratic nomination unopposed.  Both sides agree that Shapiro will likely win the governorship in a landslide in November if Mastriano is his opponent. 

One Million

That's how many people have died of COVID in the United States so far.

And it likely isn't over yet.  That wave predicted for the end of the year I mentioned a few days ago?  It's more like a tsunami - a possible one hundred million infections in the late fall and the winter.  And apparently, the only way to prevent it is to have more federal funding to fight the disease.

Except that the Republicans in the Senate won't allow any more COVID funding until President Biden rescinds Title 42 and blocks immigrants from coming over the border, or at least let the Senate vote on the issue.  But even if Charles Schumer allowed such a vote at the risk of Democrats joining the Republican caucus in supporting Title 42 and producing an pro-Title 42 majority, the chances of getting COVID funding passed after that are still slim because a handful of Republicans think we've given enough COVID money to state and local governments.

And even if it could pass, Rand Paul will probably block it.  

It looked like we might get a warm-weather reprieve in the meantime but with cases going back up in this country, the light at the end of the tunnel has once again turned out to be an oncoming train.

Let it run over all of us. 😠

The Scariest People in the World

I saw as much of the Ketanji Brown Jackson Supreme Court confirmation hearings as I could take.  After a few minutes of it, it became apparent that the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were doing what comes naturally too them - trying to railroad a black woman for being responsible for  all of the cultural and societal failings of the world by, including but not limited to, representing terrorists in court, going leniently on child-porn offenders, being soft on crime overall, and possibly buying Mary J. Blige records when she was in college. 

Many of these GOP senators, in addition to a couple of current and former governors and a former President, are hoping to run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and they used these confirmation  hearings to show the right-wing base just how much they hate black women too.   Among the senators expected to run, along with a current governor and the previous President, are:  

Tom Cotton

Ted Cruz

Ron DeSantis

Josh Hawley

Marco Rubio

Donald Trump

I didn't have to think long for a list that was just as scary as that. It was the VIP list at the 1934 Nuremberg rally, which reads as follows:

Hans Frank

Joseph Goebbels 

Hermann Göring

Rudolf Hess

Heinrich Himmler

Adolf Hitler

When people talk about fascism taking over America, this is what they mean. And if - when? - America's homegrown Nazis goose-step their way down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, being the smartest person on the Supreme Court won't help Justice-to-be Jackson much. 😨

My apologies to Joe Queenan for ripping off his joke comparing the Nuremberg Rally VIP list to the cast of St. Elmo's Fire. 

Voting Wrongs

Voting-rights activists vow to continue their fight or the various bills in Congress that would nullify voter restrictions in the states, but they are pitching in a game with no hitters.  The Senate voted on a rule change to allow the bills to go through, the vote failed, and that was the end of it.  The topic likely will not come up in the Senate for the rest of 2022 and though a Democratic Senate may revisit the issue in 2023, the House will likely be Republican.  And, of course, any bill passed by the House in this Congress has to be voted on all over again in the next Congress that opens in . . . 2023.

The bright side? Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema turned out to be the only Democratic U.S. Senators to vote against the filibuster rule change to allow the voting-rights legislation to move to a vote.  The rest of the Democratic Senate caucus is otherwise united in the need to preserve voting rights, so this should bolster the Democratic progressive base somewhat going into the midterms.

Without the guarantee of passing any of President Biden's social legislation in 2022, Senate Democrats are planning to schedule votes on the legislation to force their Republican counterparts to go on record as proposing popular program proposals such as Medicare coverage expansion and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.  The Democrats are hoping that Republicans will be forced to explain their "no votes in the misterm campaign.  There's just one problem with this strategy, and it's a big one: The Republicans are very good at explaining away their opposition to policies the majority of people support.  Especially when those who support them the most are the ones most likely to be discouraged from voting, thanks to all of these odious state voting laws.

The Democrats had best start voting on legislation soon, if exposing the Republicans as the real obstructionists after so much Democratic in-fighting over process is their only hope, because it looks less likely that they'll be able to propose anything in the 118th Congress that takes over in January 2023 - because of one or both houses under Republican control . . . though, thanks to election cheating, false-flag operations, and conspiracy theorists, the 119th Congress looks to be successful in passing Republican legislation under a Republican President . . . thanks to an emergency measure by the new administration that leaves the GOP with every seat in the House and the Senate. 😮

The Path Forward?

Senate Democratic  leader Charles Schumer plans to hold a vote to change the filibuster rules to allow voting rights legislation to pass by a simple majority.  He's seeking a path forward to get such legislation to President Biden's desk.

Here is the path forward.

Not going to happen, folks.   Maybe the Senate should just stick to what it does best - issuing proclamations and naming post offices.

Oh, the Senate will one day pass legislation again - when it puts a rubber stamp on anything the next Trump administration wants.  😡

The Man From Kansas

Robert Dole, who died earlier this week at 98, was a lion of the Senate much like twentieth-century senators such as Robert Taft and Hubert Humphrey and nineteenth-century figures such as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.  A right-of-center Republican from Kansas - a state that has been reliably Republican for most of its 160 years of statehood - he took a pragmatic approach to governing by standing up for his own principles in advocating for leaner government.  Yet he supported Social Security and worked with George McGovern to shore up the nation's food-stamp program and worked with Edward Kennedy o pass the Americans with Disabilities Act  - a personal issue for him, given the limited ability in his right arm that resulted from being severely wounded in World War II.  He proved to be the adult in the room when then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich initiated government shutdown in late 1995 and helped broker a deal to pass a budget and re-open the government.   He was also very resourceful, as he got himself name recognition in Kansas politics by serving Dole pineapple juice in his campaigns, boasting once that he had drowned his electoral opponents in pineapple juice.

Dole had a quick wit and a penchant for brief statements that led him to be thought of as a sour man, but he was always straightforward and to the point.  He had no desire to indulge in the flowery language of his peers and he did not suffer fools gladly, even when he was on the receiving end of skullduggery at his expense, such as when George H.W. Bush discombobulated him with misrepresentations of his record in the contest for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination.  But he regarded people like Bush and Bill Clinton as opponents, not enemies, and toward the end of his life he lamented the polarization of the times.   

If you come to bury, not praise Dole with snide comments under this post, those comments will be deleted.  Dole was a decent person, which is more than I can say for today's Republicans, and he served his country well in a career that reminded all of us that politics is the art of the possible.  RIP. 

Bipartisanship?

It seems that the war against voting is over, and voting lost . . . after Joe Manchin dropped the big one.

Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia who has enormous power - something that might not have happened if North Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham hadn't been caught sexting and the party had a 51-49 majority in the Senate - ruled out voting for the voting rights bill the House passed, called the For the People Act.  He argues that the bill politicizes voting just like the Republicans have been doing so in the states.  Also, he's not going to support ending the filibuster in the Senate.

So that's it, right?  Joe Biden is not only going to be a one-term President, he's going to be a half-term President once the Republicans take back Congress in 2022?

Time out, people.  Manchin never said he's against bills that protect voting rights.  He's just against this one.  I don't profess to be an expert on voting rights legislation, but I understand that the arguments against it are that it does little to end gerrymandering and even less to stop partisan officials from hijacking the vote count and throwing out results they don't like.  Rather, Manchin's hoping to gain support for the less comprehensive but still effective John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act and allow the federal government to oversee changes in state voting laws.  He and his fellow senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, are working to get that passed.  (I'm not going any deeper into the intricacies of either bill, because that's above my pay grade.)

As for eliminating the filibuster, Manchin may be right about keeping it, because without the filibuster, a Republican majority could bass bad legislation in the Senate quite simply under a Republican President ready, willing and able to sign it.  And if the Republicans deny President Biden a comprehensive infrastructure bill or two-time him by agreeing to a deal on infrastructure and then stopping it, then and only then would Manchin be likely to enable it to pass through reconciliation.  But he'd still keep the filibuster.   

As for how President Biden's agenda moves forward, we'll see what happens.  But it looks like Manchin's fingerprints will be all over it.     

As for the President's negotiations with Senator Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) on the infrastructure bill, well, I think he's negotiating with the wrong West Virginia senator. 

A Great Effort

President Biden, of course, laid out the details of his infrastructure bill last week, and the details are probably too much for any one blog post to cover.  However, I can share the basics, thanks to a rundown courtesy of CNBC.  According to the cable business-news channel, the Biden proposal would spend another $2 trillion, on top of the $2 trillion already allocated by the COVID relief bill, on the following items:

• Put $621 billion into transportation infrastructure such as bridges, roads, public transit, ports, airports and electric vehicle development Direct $400 billion to care for elderly and disabled Americans
• Inject more than $300 billion into improving drinking-water infrastructure, expanding broadband access and upgrading electric grids
• Put more than $300 billion into building and retrofitting affordable housing, along with constructing and upgrading schools
• Invest $580 billion in American manufacturing, research and development and job training efforts

Give or take a few billion.

The big act of thinking outside the box here is that President Biden is counting health care, education, investment in job training, and even developing electric vehicles as forms of investment in human infrastructure, an investment in human capital.  Such attention to these details is precisely what this country has lacked since President Reagan began the dismantling of the Great Society that his detractors hoped would only last four years but has in fact gone on for four decades.

President Biden has invited Republicans to give him ideas on how to improve the bill, and they've already given him an idea - that being to junk the bill and stop even thinking of trying to spend more money on things like affordable housing and mass transit.  It's not just the tax increases Biden has proposed to pay for all this that they object to - they don't want to spend anything on these programs even if no tax increase is needed.  Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is famously on record as saying that he doesn't want the United States to become like a European country, and since Biden's bill almost sounds like something the German Bundestag would pass - thanks largely to a postwar constitution that espoused the same sort of economic rights that Franklin Roosevelt hoped to get passed by Congress after the war ended but died before - you can bet he'll try to stop it.

McConnell doesn't need to, really.  Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has already indicated that he's against the 28 percent corporate tax that Biden wants to pay for his plan.  (Yet another reason to be angry at North Carolina Democrats for nominating a sexter to run for the U.S. Senate ad Maine Democrats for nominating an amateur to do the same.)  He is open to an increase to 25 percent (from 21 percent), so that means the bill won't pass as written.  If it did, Biden would be an autocrat and Congress would be a mere rubber-stamp legislature like the German parliament that existed before the war.  And no one wants that.  But the Senate parliamentarian's blessing of the bill's passage through reconciliation means that Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer is ready to get it done along with Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the House  So let the negotiations begin.

One thing that will definitely not happen is a fivefold increase of Biden's package to $10 billion, which is what Democratic progressives want - especially noted showhorse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.  Is this the same woman I praised only two years and change ago?  It's amazing, really, how one's views of someone else can change, and my view of AOC has curdled into disillusionment and disgust.  Someone forgot to to tell her during freshman orientation that legislation is about compromise and consensus, because she's long since rejected both. I mean, she's asking - no, telling - Biden to quintuple his proposed infrastructure spending when even moderate Democrats balk at a moderate corporate tax increase while left-of center suburban Democrats from the Northeast demand the restoration of the state-and-local-ta decision that was eliminated in 2017 in exchange for their support for this bill.  AOC must think she's President simply because, like FDR, JFK and LBJ, she's known by three initials.  Uh, Alex, dear, can I please see you in my office?

I'll comment on a few of the elements of Biden's proposal, especially a pet cause of his and mine - hint, it rhymes with "ham rack" - in later posts.

Filibluster

Joe and Joe, President Biden and Senator Manchin, have both expressed opposition to getting rid of the Senate filibuster, much to the chagrin of House progressives.  Both President Biden and Senator Manchin believe that the filibuster is the only tool the minority has in the Senate to demand changes to a bill they want more input on or to block a law they do not like.  The whole purpose of the Senate, after all, is to modify or "cool down" the passions of legislation passed by the House, as well as give small states an equal say in the Senate that they don't have in the House.  President Biden and Senator Manchin also concerned with the possibility of a future Republican Senate majority - possibly as soon as the next Congress - setting the agenda and passing everything they damn well please withut a Democratic filibuster to stop them.

Both President Biden and Senator Manchin do agree that the filibuster should be reformed, however, and political scientist Norman Ornstein has come up with a few ideas for that, such as having more senators present when one senator is babbling on and on and forcing them to listen to the babbling, requiring a supermajority of those present instead of all 100 senators, and a smaller required majority to begin with.  (His ideas are in greater detail here.)  Filibuster reform might come sooner than later if Republicans insist on filibustering everything President Biden tries to get passed.

That's not enough for some senators, who want the filibuster ended entirely.  And members of the Squad certainly would love to see the filibuster - not to mention the current Senate parliamentarian - done away with.  Forget for a moment that the Squad are a bunch of know-it-all House members who have nothing to do with the Senate.  They also happen to be lawmakers who never served under a Republican majority.  I don't suggest that they serve in a Republican Senate to understand the value of keeping the filibuster in some form in place.  I merely note that they haven't.  

The COVID Tide Turns

 It's done.

President Biden got his COVID relief bill passed in the Senate.  With lots of money for helping people and for getting them vaccinated.  All the House has to do is vote to approve it (which is more likely than not) and it then goes to the White House for President Biden's signature.

This could finally be the beginning of the end for the pandemic.  We now have a President who cares about his fellow Americans and is ready to take on a role of global leadership to end the pandemic elsewhere, especially in the Third World, by getting vaccines out to other countries as well as to his own.

We could reach herd immunity by summer and stop going into banks looking like we're about to hold them up by late fall.

The tide is turning.

Manchin On the Hill

Everything looked good for President Biden's COVID relief bill passing despite Republican opposition and obstruction.  Then Joe Manchin, the Democratic U.S. Senator from West Virginia, almost screwed up everything.

Manchin (above), balked at a Democratic deal to give an extra $300 a week through September to the unemployed with $10,200 of unemployment benefit s tax-free.  Then Manchin, who apparently wasn't privy to the deal, said he liked the proposal by Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio to just give an additional $300 per week to the unemployed only through July - without one cent being tax-free.  

It's the tax-free provisions in the Democratic proposal that Manchin had a problem with.

So why not go along with Manchin and the Senate Republican caucus and just stick with the Portman plan?  Only a two-month difference, and it would make the bill bipartisan!  Because it would have made the bill a sham, because it would have gutted the effort to fortify unemployment benefits, and also because congressional Democrats hate the idea of selling their constituents down the river just for a deal to keep one of their own on board - and for progressive congressional Democrats, that goes double.

Fortunately, an agreement was reached that spared the Democrats from a major disaster.  The Democrats announced that they now plan to extend unemployment insurance program through September 6 at a rate of $300 per week with the $10,200 tax-free figure in benefits pertaining only to households making less than $150,000.  Manchin obviously didn't want to be the Democratic senator who blew up President Biden's legislation and subsequently is Presidency.  But his stand on this and other issues mean that, as long as the Senate is split 50-50 - likely until January 2023 - Manchin is the most powerful U.S. Senator in Washington.  His vote alone can make or break a Democratic initiative.

That's either reassuring or frightening, depending on where you stand. 

Minimum Rage

The effort to include a $15-an-hour minimum wage in President Biden's COVID relief bill backfired when the Senate parliamentarian said no to including it in a bill going through reconciliation to avoid a filibuster.  There have been calls from progressives in the House  - the House - for the Senate parliamentarian to be fired.

It may be a blessing in disguise that the minimum wage increase has to be excised from the Senate's version of the COVID bill, because there are some serious questions as how the increase to $15 an hour would be implemented in some of the poorer states as opposed to states that can afford and need a high minimum wage, such as New York, New Jersey or California.  President Biden now has the ability to pass this COVID relief bill - which has tons of money for state and municipal aid - without threatened positron from Democratic senators who have a problem with the minimum wage increase as proposed, like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and he has a chance to negotiate an increase charge between the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and $15 and hour that can pass and even get Republican support.

Progressives won't be satisfied, of course, and I have this advise to offer to the Squad:  Take a chill pill, accept half a loaf, and save your minimum-wage fight for another day.  And when the 2022 midterms come around, maybe it would be a really good idea to persuade voters of the value of your ideas rather than beat people over the head with them.  Because that's how Democrats lost seats in the House in 2020.

And as for the realities of the 50-50 Senate that necessitates a lot of compromise . . . I've said it before and I'll say it again: The names of the Democratic Senate candidates who couldn't defeat vulnerable Republican incumbents in 2020 will forever be dammed for this situation.

The Second Trial

The U.S. Senate begins its second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, brought about by a House impeachment on the grounds of fomenting the Capitol insurrection, and thanks to a specious argument against convicting a former President coupled with a fear of the Trump (that is, Republican) base, most Senate Republicans will likely vote to acquit.  But House Democratic impeachment managers will undoubtedly put up a damning and damned convincing argument for Trump's conviction to win in the court of public opinion.

That shouldn't be too hard, given Trump's extremely low approval ratings at the time he left office and President Biden's popularity for his actions to get America as far from Trumpism as possible.  And this Senate trial, remember, is a civil case.  In New York State, potential criminal cases are pending, as noted here before, and there's nothing Trump can do about that.

In the meantime, we have to sit through this trial figuratively while a hundred U.S. Senators have to sit through it literally.  And watching the Trump impeachment trial will be like watching Citizen Kane after someone told you that Rosebud was Kane's sled - you already know the ending.

Senate Setup

Here's an update on that Senate standoff.  Early last week, Mitch McConnell backed off from his stand against the filibuster and let a power-sharing arrangement go through when he concluded that the Democrats wouldn't be able to get rid of the filibuster thanks to opposition from two Senate Democrats in particular: Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Both Sinema and Manchin are moderates who have a problem with progressives not unlike the problems Republicans have with progressives. But they're more likely to side with Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer on numerous economic issues, so that should help Schumer get President Biden's COVID relief bill passed.

President Biden wants to go big on this bill, and most congressional Democrats don't want to cave to Republican demands to spend less, knowing that the last time they did that, in 2009, they lost the House and also their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate - which allowed the Tea Party to come in and ruin President Obama's agenda.  If the Democrats can pull America out of the COVID crisis, the 2022 midterm elections could be a repeat of the 1934 midterms, when Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal helped the Democrats gain seats in Congress despite being the party holding the executive branch.  (The party that holds the White House often loses congressional seats in midterm elections.)