PMC Commentary

Manchin budges. There is hope.

A whole of lot people, indeed around 330 million, would have been spared the months-long Sturm und Drang of "$3.5 trillion" if Sens. Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer had simply revealed on July 28 that the former would countenance no more $1.5 trillion.

Such is today's news, two months after the fact of Manchin's written declaration to Schumer — perhaps a bit of fudging at $1.6 trillion or maybe even $1.7, but definitely, immovably, not $3.5 trillion.

Had Manchin's unswerving calculation been known, congressional Democrats could have — would have, I think, once the reality of his inflexibility sank in — muted their 3.5 rallying cry and begun touting the politically doable number.

Instead they have slogged through months of never never land, which is to say, quicksand, only to learn at the eleventh hour that the fix was in.

The time for recriminations is not now, though. Democrats should seize on Manchin's July proposal, some of which is plenty palatable: "raising the corporate tax rate to 25 percent, the top tax rate on income to 39.6 percent, [and] raising the capital gains tax rate to 28 percent," as Politico reports.

Unfortunate is Manchin's stolid opposition to the "old" $3.5 trillion's social and climate objectives. Students of history, however, would observe that this is why sweeping, dramatic change is so politically perilous in this country — and why incrementalism is nearly always the preferred route.

Even FDR, routinely hailed as an agent of revolutionary change, maintained a conservative-progressive course, knowing, as he did, that primal eruptions are hazardous to one's political health.

There's still time for congressional Democrats to effect … something; something in the way of social spending they can take back to constituents in the next, midterm year. Ignore pretentious reporters and commentators who will smugly lecture that nothing gets done in election years. That's a myth. Historically there are more bills passed in the second year of congressional terms than in the first.

Of course Democrats are still stuck with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who's not a liberal, progressive, centrist or conservative. She's a one-woman horror story of self-centeredness and radically shifting self-definitions. My only advice to her Democratic colleagues is that they let her know that they know where her family lives. And I'm only half-joking.

My point is simply this: One obstacle down, only one to go. That's progress. And Democrats must capitalize on it.

Thursday, the mother of all showdowns

​​​​Thursday, I'll be tuned to C-Span, since Speaker Pelosi's latest plan is to then hold a floor vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill after all. (Her official reasoning is that transportation funding ends that day, the fiscal year's last).

The House vote is a gamble, although it's not. Pelosi doesn't gamble on "maybe" outcomes; she'll pull the bill before any Democratic implosion.

Publicly, however, threatening a vote was a risk taken, seeing how most House progressives are still adamant about their opposition to passing infrastructure in the absence of a reconciliation package. More adamant than ever, or so they're saying.

"Absolutely not," said Rep. Ilhan Omar. "A deal is a deal. We are not passing anything short of having the full Build Back Better agenda." (Note "full" BBB agenda.) Said Rep. Ro Khanna: "Let’s be clear: there’s no passing the infrastructure bill without passing the Build Back Better Act." Rep. Rashida Tlaib: "We will hold the line and vote it down."

What's more, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal, still insists that the Senate, too, must sign off on an acceptable reconciliation deal before her members support infrastructure's passage.

(Lest we chortle at those unrealistic odds as some sort of unique, progressive delusion, consider what Politico reported yesterday about some moderate Democrats: "[They] remained confident that enough Republicans would support the infrastructure bill to allow it to clear the House." Sure. And I'll take the old nag in the sixth, to win.)

Pelosi is having none of Jayapal's Senate demand. Circumstances have changed, hence the approach to progress must change, which is the essence of pragmatic politics, which is the essence of Nancy Pelosi. "We are not going to pass a bill that won’t pass the Senate," she instructed her caucus Monday; and it's no longer feasible to argue that "until the Senate passed the bill, we can’t do [infrastructure]."

As for the reconciliation bill's careeningly downward spending? It strikes me as nothing short of political malpractice, not only by the Senate's infamous, quasi-Democratic duo of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, but by the noted scattering of recalcitrant House moderates. So far they are forfeiting their right to the title of United States representative, as they seek instead another mere two years of a government paycheck, the country at large be damned. Faust would be proud.

Meanwhile, Manchin continues to distort the political basics at hand. Referring to progressives' infrastructure-reconciliation linkage, he said "I don’t do really good on threats." They aren't threats, Senator. They're President Biden's campaign promises, which you have almost single-handedly reduced to ashes.

That said, another act of political malpractice would be tanking infrastructure because of reconciliation's doom, if doomed it is. To permit America's literal disintegration because of reconciliation's failure would be inexcusable. It is here we see the party's potential, bifactional recklessness.

The truly weird aspect of a few moderates' dissatisfaction with reconciliation's amorphous price tag is that they can't, or won't, specify an alternative number. President Biden, Speaker Pelosi, House progressives and reasonable moderates are negotiating with a kind of phantom displeasure. It's akin to a husband trying to pacify his wife over some wrongful act he's entirely unaware of.

Still, I shall end on an upbeat, hopeful note — at least on the House side of things — which I'm borrowing from my old hometown's representative, Kansas City, Missouri's Emanuel Cleaver: "I think we’re going to do everything Nancy Pelosi said we’re going to do. That’s usually the way things turn out. It’s not pretty, it’s not gonna be easy, but what I know is that there’s not a single Democrat who will walk into that room who’s interested in sacking our quarterback."

I'll add only what I noted the other day. Would you want Speaker Pelosi as your enemy?

Two polls that will make you wet yourself

​​​​​Every now and then I run across a poll of American voters that has the lightning effect of destroying whatever vestigial confidence I had in our already troubled democracy and justifying a Platonic dictatorship.

For only a philosopher king with unlimited power could possibly overcome the staggering, aggregate stupidity of the average American voter.

Which, with a mere 2% margin of error, was confirmed by a Morning Consult poll of 2,000 American yahoos with voter registration cards, Sept. 24-27. Its findings required double and triple takes on my part; the mass stupidity was, initially, that unbelievable.

The poll addressed the impending debt-ceiling crisis — caused exclusively and unmistakably by Senate Republicans. Nevertheless, this "question" was put to the 2,000 respondents: Who's to blame? Given that the only answer is Senate Republicans, exclusively and unmistakably, this was one poll in which Americans' basic political knowledge would inescapably shine. Right?

Wrong. Only 20% of respondents blamed Republicans.

Seventy percent blamed either both parties or Democrats, with 10% straying off into befuddled uncertainty. Which is to say, four out of five American voters were unable to identify the default-pending culprits, even though the culprits are known — exclusively, unmistakably.

Bring on a benign dictatorship. Madison, Jefferson, Franklin's dream of an informed republic has turned nightmarish. We've become a nation of idiots.

And if you've any doubt remaining, just ponder one moment the results of another poll, a recent Harris poll, in which 51% percent of respondents said Trump was superior to Joe Biden as a president.

Take your pick

Good news, bad news, same yet different above-the-fold news this morning, from America's top newspapers.

The NY Times:

Thousands of health care workers in New York got inoculated against Covid-19 ahead of Monday’s deadline, helping the state avoid a worst-case scenario of staffing shortages at hospitals and nursing homes.

The Washington Post:

Tens of thousands of health-care workers in New York are likely to have refused a coronavirus vaccine before a state requirement went into effect on Monday, serving as a preview of resistance that the Biden administration’s vaccine requirements will face on a bigger scale in coming weeks.

Are we clear?

Democrats can't shoot at all, let alone straight

I've never seen the political constellations align so forebodingly.

As Republicans plot and execute the cavalier hijacking of battleground-state elections with little to no resistance, congressional Democrats are squabbling and splintering over aggressively popular issues such as freeing Medicare to negotiate drug prices and taxing untaxed billionaires, while "activist" Democrats are now pondering how best to hand the White House to Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis — without Republicans even needing to steal it.

They're pretty sure — already — that they know how to achieve this mother of all political blunders and final, kamikaze act of sheer stupidity: support Vice President Kamala Harris for a job promotion in either 2024 or 2028, whichever year is available for an unsightly Democratic suicide.

This intel I learned from a Washington Post piece on Vice President Kamala Harris, who, in turn, is assiduously, successfully persuading progressive Democrats to back her in the next presidential cycle.

There is, of course, nothing unorthodox or surprising about a U.S. vice president hankering for the Resolute desk. Equally unsurprising is that Kamala's activist cheerleaders believe in her potential success; they'll never stop dreaming the impossible dream — that of a brassy progressive's odds of presidential inevitability.

I quote the Post's sympathetic reporter: "Behind the scenes, Harris has been quietly seizing the opportunity to build a liberal national network of dedicated activists that is convinced she embraces its causes. If Harris has a path to the presidency, it is likely to run through an energized liberal base — not, as it did for Biden, through blocs of centrist Democrats and moderate Republicans."

I've no idea — not one clue — as to why a political reporter would report that a Democratic presidential nominee's "likely" path to the White House is through an "energized liberal base" — a base dismissive of centrist Democrats and moderate Republicans, whose votes made Joe Biden president; in incontrovertible fact, without whose votes Joe Biden would today be a Delaware retiree.

I shall put aside the other, cluelessly reported fact that progressive activists are fast warming to a just-tell-me-what-you-want-me-to-say presidential wannabe who's an abysmal political retailer to boot. Noteworthy, however, is the additional fact that there's a political science professor at Southern Methodist University who was willing to say this to the Post's reporter, which progressives will undoubtedly buy:

"It is unlikely that Kamala Harris will ever be broadly popular and loved by the center of the American electorate. [But] you can get elected president without being loved by the center of the American electorate. For evidence of that, ask Donald Trump."

My dear, historically addled professor. I won't ask Donald Trump, who in 2016 captured sizable "centrist" swaths, thus permitting his foul ascendence. I shall instead ask Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Howard Dean, Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern how their dismissal of the Great American Middle worked out.

Worse, Ms. Kamala Harris lacks a genuine devotion to doomed progressive causes, however righteous they may be. Nonetheless, progressives are allowing themselves to be bamboozled early on. At least Bernie believed in his unrealizable promises.

Democrats. They're AWOL on Republicans' election thievery; they're shattering party unity on easy, popular issues; and now the ideological base is fawning over the most defeatable presidential candidate since Gov. Dean.

There are 1,134 days of the presidency's self-destruction to go, and Democrats appear eager to take suicidal advantage of each one.

The Trumpists go more berserk than ever; they're literally worse than the old Nazis

From my reading of 1920s and early 1930s' German political history, Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party's rise to electoral eminence was imbued with more probity and legal integrity than Donald Trump and his party's struggle to regain government control.

The Nazis never gained a Reichstag majority until after Hitler's 1933 appointment as chancellor, and even then only through a coalition government did the Nazis rule. In the previous year, Hitler lost the presidential election to Hindenburg.

Neither the Nazi party nor its leader ever claimed election fraud was the cause of their defeats.

In the United States, however, local, state and federal elections will soon be won and lost because of counterfeit claims of election fraud, both past and present. The Trumpists' mendacity about "fake votes," "phantom votes" and thus urgent, remedial audits will soar beyond the Nazis' ethnocentric lies as the singular instrument of election manipulation and triumphalism. Elections will be stolen right out from under us.

Because Americans now live in opposite world, the recently concluded Arizona audit, which explicitly confirmed Joe Biden as the state's presidential victor, is being touted by Trumpists as proof of Democratic fraud and the need for doubled-down efforts at election "reviews."

Black-and-white evidence of this lie has not only not slowed Trumpists' demands for recalculating legitimate election tallies, it has sharpened and accelerated the demands.

The Times has summary of the nationwide Trumpian madness which came barking on the heels of Arizona's Biden confirmation:

Trump himself, in an early Friday statement: "The leaked report conclusively shows there were enough fraudulent votes, mystery votes, and fake votes to change the outcome of the election 4 or 5 times over. There is fraud and cheating in Arizona and it must be criminally investigated!"

Liz Harrington, a Trump spokeswoman: Arizona's audit revealed "23,000+ Phantom Voters."

Peter Navarro, former Trump adviser: "Falsely claimed on Twitter that the report had shown that 50,000 potentially illegal votes were cast in Maricopa County."

Mark Finchem, Trumpist candidate for Arizona's secretary of state: "Now that the audit of Maricopa is wrapping up, we need to Audit Pima County — the 2nd largest county in AZ. There are 35k votes in question from multiple sources & I want answers."

Wendy Rogers, Arizona Trumpist state senator: "Canvass Maricopa." No one knows what this "canvassing" entails, but overnight it became a new buzzphrase.

State Senator Ed McBroom, who once exposed Trumpian lies about election fraud in Michigan, now endorses, because of Arizona's "findings," fresh obstacles to voting: "Just like we found in Michigan, it’s good that we found that these vulnerabilities weren’t exploited to any important extent in this election. It doesn’t mean that somebody might not use them in the future."

Eric Greitens, former governor of Missouri, now U.S. Senate candidate: "Arizona must decertify! “We MUST have forensic audits across the country!”

Josh Mandel, Ohio U.S. Senate candidate: "Not only should we audit the vote in AZ, WI, MI, PA, GA — we must audit the vote in all 50 states. Even in states like OHIO where Trump won by massive margins, he probably actually won by even larger margins were it not for the Democrat cheating."

Again, these Trumpist reactions erupted because of the total evidentiary absence of election fraud in Arizona.

What, I hear you ask, has been Democrats and "good-government groups'" reaction to all this Trumpian bullshit designed to steal future elections? They're "alarmed," reports the Times.

No national movement has organized to battle Trumpian lies about election fraud. The lies embed themselves more believably each day among the half-attentive, bullshit-susceptible electorate. In short, the Trumpists have the run of the field.

Not even the Nazis had this much freedom to corrupt discussions of election processes and then alter election outcomes.

Political historians will someday look back on early 21st-century U.S. history and marvel at how Democrats, good-government groups and the majority electorate sat back and watched American Nazis seize local, state and federal control.

Unless …

Unless anti-Trumpists of all ideological stripes get mad — goddamn mad — and take to the streets, thereby recapturing the nation's attention and shutting down the Hitlerian buffoons. Howling progressive cable hosts, liberal newspaper columnists and a few bands of goo-goo activists won't do the job. The formation of a massive, national movement for authentic election integrity is an inescapable prerequisite for safeguarding American democracy.

American democracy on the rack

The Cyber Ninjas are even more incompetent than we thought. They possessed every shabby opportunity to discredit Joe Biden's Arizona victory, which was the entire point of their slapdash exercise in election chicanery. And what do they come up with? An even stronger Biden win, and fewer votes for Trump.

"No substantial differences" exist between the Ninjas' findings and Maricopa County's official results, already twice audited. So says their draft report, although a possibly conflicting, full report is scheduled for release later today. Perhaps the Ninjas can then redeem themselves.

In fact they took a stab at it in the draft, referencing popular conspiracy theories as valid concerns and, through sheer ignorance, misrepresenting routine election procedures as possible dark doings. All of which, they said, resulted in findings "very close to the margin of error for the election."

I suppose some credit should be given to these idiots for denying, essentially, that unfettered fraud had poisoned Arizona's presidential election of late. That, however, will have no material effect on the state's Republican pols, the right's hyperventilating media twits and, of course, Trump.

Together they'll seize on the Ninjas' subtextual references to bustling conspiracies and uncomprehended election processes and be the first to rebrand the re-re-re-audit as a shocking exposé (although, as noted, the Ninjas might beat them to it in the final and "full" report). Indeed one Republican state senator moved quickly last night to defuse any danger of honesty, tweeting that the early report was "simply a draft," only "partial." She then triumphantly declared, "Tomorrow we make history."

Next up, Arizona's Republican state legislature will use the Ninjas' … whatever … as unassailable evidence of an urgent need for election thievery, otherwise known as election subversion. This scarcely needs emphasis, and it's even less of a revelation; it's been the unconcealed play all along.

Republican state-engineered election theft is also scarcely confined to Arizona. It's already law in Georgia, and Trump is agitating for the same in Michigan and Pennsylvania, wherever his partisan toadies can exterminate American democracy. 

Texas, another battleground state under autocracy's spell, opted yesterday for a four-county, Arizona-like audit of 2020. Only its tardiness surprises. At any rate, just a few hours passed betwixt Trump's agitation and a straight-armed Sieg Heil! from the state's election officials, which is to say, governor. "Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties," wrote Trump to Reichmarschall Greg Abbott. "Let's get to the bottom of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam!" And to the bottom they're going.

Before 2024 more battleground states under Republican Party control will have washed clean any regulatory impediments to victorious Trumpocracy — though merely one state's Electoral votes could well suffice to overturn a legitimate presidential election.

The United States is under a fierce, concerted assault not unlike the ghastly events of 1860-61. The contemporary forces of political brutality believe that in this nation-gutting go-around, the majority opposition will quietly countenance what amounts to authoritarian fait accomplis.

I find the brutalizers' confidence convincing. Though anti-Trumpian, the electorate at large is more engrossed by disappearing fiancés than by its vanishing democracy.

In short, our democratic spirit is either cripplingly wounded or already dead. Disinterest in politics has reached off-the-chart levels just as political engagement has become more vital than ever.

I have also come to doubt the potency of federal laws prohibiting the Trump Party's foul intentions, should congressional Democrats ever pause from squabbling about maybe taxing Jeff Bezos — a challenging question indeed — to pass them. This is a party brazenly unconcerned with the rule of law. It's stoked on depraved self-entitlement, and it has a Trump-loaded Supreme Court as an indecent ally. Who's to stop the Trump Party in the corridors of institutional power?

I pray that I've never been more wrong in my life. The logic of democracy's demise at the torturing hands of Trumpian authoritarians, however, is, from where I sit, incontestable. 

A comment on Sen. Sinema

Literally, a comment. The below is from Jason, a commenter here. I wanted to allow it more prominence in the site's main body.

What Jason remarks about Sinema fascinated me, in that it made me reflect on the politicians I've known over the years. They wouldn't be politicians if they weren't (usually) "intelligent," as well as "tenacious, competitive," and so on. Definitely ego-driven. But Sinema would seem to stand out in being a "self-involved braggart" — which makes me question the level of her intelligence. Prone as many pols might be to self-centered braggadocio, normally they subdue the impulse. It's a bad look, notwithstanding Trump's — and, it appears, Sinema's — success at it.  

Anyway, try imagining negotiating a $3.5 trillion spending package with this:

I once spent a week with Kyrsten Sinema some ten years ago when we were working in Africa. As two Americans in a very foreign land, we befriended each other, had dinner together almost every night where we enjoyed some fierce debates, traveled, stayed in the same hotel, and so I got to know her pretty well. This was when she was a representative in the Arizona state legislature. I’m not at all surprised by her recent political behavior. She’s extremely intelligent, tenacious, independent, and competitive. But my Lord, a more ego-driven, stubborn, self-involved braggart I have never met. Completely unself-aware, her arrogance and need to dominate conversation became a bit of a behind-her-back running joke among our other companions. I remember clearly a discussion we had in a taxi where I told her that a problem I have with most politicians is their inability or refusal to engage in any sort of self-reflection or self-criticism. She was dismissive of my comment; it didn’t register with her one bit. And now here she is, poised to halt so much longed-for progress that would lift the quality of life for millions. I think she’s partly doing it to cater to her more conservative constituency (which is stupid), but really, I think she’s doing it because she can. She craves power and attention. Her name’s all over the news. She loves fucking with anyone who would try to corral her. Her stated reasons for not supporting the spending bill are non-sensical, but she’s wholly incapable of admitting error.

The granddaddy of all clusterfucks

"I would not want Nancy Pelosi as my enemy."

That, I would normally assume, is the gentle motivator being circulated by House Democratic whips among the legislatively fussy. But it would also assume that the whips themselves are being unfastidious.

And since every House Dem is presently at the throat of every other House Dem, this gentle motivator appears inoperable. The result is an epic street brawl between the moderate and progressive wings in the House, with both sides embarrassing themselves with unconcealed chutzpah.

The moderates are demanding a quick and stand-alone passage of the infrastructure bill, while progressives are having none of that, demanding instead a parallel approval of the roughly $3.5t social spending plan. Meanwhile, a government shutdown presses, with the subsequent option of a debt default.

There are no heroes in our story. Only villains. And they're behaving like three-year-olds, with a three-year-old's understanding of political realities and compromise. Their "sharing" skills are yet developed.

"Moderate" objections to the social policy bill are anything but. There are calls for lower price tags entirely divorced from need and fixated on the number alone; panty-waisted opposition to taxing the obscenely affluent; and mind-boggling hostility to Medicare-negotiated drug costs.

Progressives are more generic in their grievances. AOC has simply staked out a "nonnegotiable" stance, as has the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal, who insists that up to half of her caucus will vote down the otherwise in-the-bag infrastructure bill, should moderates fail to approve the full spending package.

Which propelled Majority Leader Steny Hoyer into classic understatement: "There will not be a positive reaction to help coalesce our [entire] caucus if the infrastructure bill goes down."

And this is just the House. The mind rebels with violence at pondering, simultaneously, the Senate.

What seems to be missing from House Democratic calculations is that the party stands on a fatal precipice. The failure of compromise between moderates and progressives will mean three tortured years of legislative stagnation, a Democratic Party irreparably split, and a promising presidency shattered. To that we can add two years of a Republican majority, come 2023, investigating every White House sneeze.

It's time to do your magic, Nancy, probably with bludgeons and knives. Never have I seen your members' self-interest cranked up so staggeringly high. It ain't pretty, it's embarrassing, and it could well present the death of America's only governing party.

Guys, get your fucking act together.

Democrats are at a historic crossroad; the republic's survival depends on which way they turn

​​​​​Among Republicans' many misleading rhetorical ploys — together, there are gazillions — employed on the singular matter of refusing to raise the debt ceiling is that Senate Democrats, in the past, have also voted in opposition. Which is true. What is also true is that Democrats have historically done so only when there was no question that the ceiling would be raised; their opposition was mere theatrics for the fiscally befuddled back home.

Because to not raise the debt ceiling would be stupid, malicious and catastrophically reckless. These are behavioral inclinations that Democratic politicians tend to abjure. Not Republicans, though, for two reasons: Their tenure in office depends fundamentally on the stupidity, malice and cranked-up recklessness of their base, and, of equal significance, Republican pols just kinda like behaving that way. If they didn't, they would not have run as Republicans to begin with.

In a primal, preemptive scream, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spelled out the ABCs of Republicans' malicious stupidity in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last Sunday:

"[Default] would likely precipitate a historic financial crisis that would compound the damage of the continuing public health emergency [and] trigger a spike in interest rates, a steep drop in stock prices and other financial turmoil…. Mortgage payments, car loans, credit card bills—everything that is purchased with credit would be costlier after default…. Nearly 50 million seniors could stop receiving Social Security checks for a time. Troops could go unpaid. Millions of families who rely on the monthly child tax credit could see delays…. Billions of dollars of growth and millions of jobs [would be] lost."

These are facts, as was Yellen's conclusion: "Neither delay nor default is tolerable…. We are just now emerging from crisis. We must not plunge ourselves back into an entirely avoidable one."

Plunging headlong into avoidable crises, however, is a Republican speciality of the highest order. Fomenting chaos and crisis is also the party's principal objective, for only by proving that government is nothing but chaos and crisis can Republicans also prove that Democrats are useless.

And here, in the impending calamity of a debt-ceiling standoff — about debt incurred mostly by Republicans — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has stumbled, ironically, on an uncomfortable reality: Senate Democrats are co-conspirators in making Republicans' case of Democratic uselessness, resulting in chaos and potential crisis. I'll let Mitch explain:

"The debt ceiling will need to be raised," he conceded last week to Punchbowl News. "But who does that depends on who the American people elect." In a contemporaneous tweet, he strained for more clarity: "Let’s be clear: With a Democratic President, a Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate, Democrats have every tool they need to raise the debt limit. It is their sole responsibility."

The generality of that last part is, of course, bullshit. In any Congress with two sane parties, raising the debt limit would be a happily achieved, bipartisan exercise. In this miserable Congress, however, raising the debt limit is, indeed, Democrats' de facto, sole responsibility.

Now, laughably untrue in McConnell's assertion is that — at the moment — Democrats possess "every tool they need to raise the debt limit." See: filibuster.

Yet Senate Democrats do possess the power to unravel the wretched thing; to obliterate its undemocratic wickedness not only for America' fiscal survival and health, but, oh, I don't know, maybe also to guarantee every American's right to vote and ensure that the Trump-McConnell-McCarthy Party can't steal future elections? Just a thought.

To accomplish these rudimentary decencies, the filibuster's total annihilation is unnecessary. Advisable, but not required. Exceptions to the filibuster rule already exist, and democratically minded Democrats have proposed further exceptions. Nothing radical there. The problem, as we all know, lies in the ferocious obstinance of a few Democratic senators — very few. So here we are, tied up in immovable debt and electoral sabotage.

But that's not McConnell's problem.

It's the Democratic Party's problem, exclusively. However infuriating, however sickening, however absolutely insane it is, raising the debt limit in a responsible, timely fashion, as well as permanently safeguarding American democracy, is Democrats' sole responsibility.

Because they're dealing with a stupid, malicious, unthinkably reckless opposition party hellbent on American chaos, crisis and catastrophe.

And if Democrats cannot proceed accordingly — that is, as the majority power they are — then their unforgivable failure shall be America's epitaph.

Again with the U.S. credibility questions

Just now, this above-the-fold, NYT headline:

One monumental happening, however, preceded and preemptively answered such doubts: AUKUS.

The French are pissed, although with respect to Australia, submarines and deals, they once pulled the same stunt on Japan.   

The point being, the United Kingdom and Australia appear to have no "doubts" about U.S. global leadership. But it makes good headlines.

A rolling insurrection, perfectly normalized

Not once did I read it in the mainstream press, and not once did hear it on cable news: that the absence of Trump's brownshirts at Saturday's (presumed) non-event was a manifest warning.

"It's a trap." Such was the subterranean chatter detected by D.C., FBI, and DHS intelligence prior to the scheduled, neoNazi meet-and-greet. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three percenters and other putsch-savoring gangs were therefore deliberate in discouraging their rank-and-file thugs from attending.

But just what did "a trap" suggest? What, in fact, did these groups' advisories openly declare? The D.C. police could lay a trap only for those intending to do harm of some sort. Traps cannot be laid for the innocent and peaceful. Hence the Proud Boys et al. must have harbored violent intent all along; otherwise they would have issued no "trap" alerts for Sept. 18. In the coverage I heard, this went unmentioned.

In short, the violence-prone gangs will be back. Domestic-terrorist analysts have been clear in promulgating the general message that we're at the beginning — not the middle or end — of far-right militancy. Trumpian extremism is on the rise, the chatter is everywhere, the yahoos are sliming their way to even higher mucks of "kinetic" madness. The weekend's tranquility reports, then, were, in a way, unfortunate.

Another and more critical phenomenon went overlooked as well — a paradoxical fixture that greatly transcends the events, or non-events, of one day.

True, the yahoos are cowards, as I observed on Friday. Cowards are also bullies, and bullies will always avoid a fair fight. This singularly distinguishes them from Germany's far-right extremists of the early 1920s and others of history's revolutionary ilk. Nevertheless, while the Trumpists' fear and poltroonery are palpable, so is their unending menace.

For their pervasive blight is an inbred part — a small, underground but outsized part — of America's normalization of extremism.

How normalized has it become?

As the media were covering, in disappointed fits and starts, Saturday's absence of sensationalist, far-right extremism, a glaring instance of the real thing had occurred just 24 hours before. Yet it received little to no television coverage the following day, and in the press, neither the NY Times nor Washington Post treated it as front-page news. This overt, unprecedented and monstrous assault on American democracy was, I gather, but a ho-hum event in the media's estimation.

Friday, a former president of the United States and still base-acclaimed leader of the Republican Party sent a public, vastly intimidating, extortionist letter to Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, demanding that he singlehandedly reverse the state's 2020 presidential election results:

"Large scale Voter Fraud continues to be reported in Georgia," wrote Trump. "Enclosed is a report of 43,000 [invalid] Absentee Ballot Votes…. I would respectfully request that your department check this and, if true, along with many other claims of voter fraud and voter irregularities, start the process of decertifying the Election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner."

The letter's "if true" passage was a mere and typically fatuous throwaway, of course, given its subsequent "true" winner segment. But then came Trump's pointed intimidation meant to keep the secretary of state and governor's lights on at night and their sidearms loaded:

"People do not understand why you and Governor Brian Kemp adamantly refuse to acknowledge the now proven facts…. You and Governor Kemp are doing a tremendous disservice to the Great State of Georgia, and to our Nation — which is systematically being destroyed by an illegitimate president and his administration."

The letter was tantamount to calling out the Klan of yesteryear (i.e., the no-show buffoons of Saturday); an undisguised exhortation that its bed-sheeted yahoos pony up and ride, plant a burning cross in the censurable authorities' lawns, and for the latter to prepare for the deadly reckoning that any traitor to Trumpian supremacy deserves. 

From Georgia the Trumpian Warriors would gallop, one assumes, to the Great Southwest and then northeasterly, where more "true" Electoral Votes would be unmasked. Illegitimate presidency begone, Trump back in the saddle.

It's all a part-laughable, part-nauseous, part-bewildering fantasy, for sure. Yet up to three-quarters of Trump's everyday followers not only believe in the corrupt illegitimacy of a sitting presidency, they're seemingly untroubled by his naked threats to sitting government officials — with an assist by barely attentive news media.

Combined with Republican state legislatures' breezy efforts to outright steal the 2022 and 2024 elections, we now have what must be described as a kind of rolling insurrection, scarcely noted and thus perfectly normalized. 

Sept. 18: "The Pathetic Revolution"

The revolution will be televised. The revolutionary spirit, however, seems to have flagged.

What is it with these guys? — just yesterday, they of such vigor, mischief and boyish pride. Did Robespierre quake before the gendarmerie? Did the Bolsheviks sweat the Tzar's police? Did Sam Adams and Paul Revere huddle and hide as they espied the tyrannical Brits?

Of course not. Which is just another way of saying that one cannot stage a revolution without balls.

And so it is that the evidently testectomized folks organizing tomorrow's "Justice for J6" muster, "dedicated to standing up for patriotic Americans who have been forgotten by our government," may themselves be forgotten by tomorrow night.

Their fear is palpable.

January 6 was soft target instigated by an even softer head; the Capitol Building was essentially undefended, with no one having imagined that a towering lie could incite so many morons to such insane acts of violence. Tomorrow is a different story. The Capitol Police, the Washington D.C. force and the National Guard are all on alert — armed with items that hurt.

And so the revolutionaries are running scared.

Initial mob estimates were in the 700 to 1,000 range, but have since diminished to 500 and as low as 200. Proud Boy leaders have instructed their members to cower: "We aren’t going and you shouldn’t either because errbody going to jail. Sounds like bait." The organizing group's "director of government affairs" has disavowed any relationship with the Proud Boys as well as the Oath Keepers, just in case — in case any violence and thus indictments should follow.

In both a tweet and a CNN interview this week, Matt Baynard, the September Revolution's chief organizer, said "We have told people that when they come, we don't want to see any messaging about the election, we don't want to see any messaging on T-shirts and flags or signs about candidates or anything like that."

There is a man pissing his pants, for fear of joining his fellow revolutionaries in prison.

And the greatest, softest head of them all — you know you — told The Federalist yesterday that tomorrow is "a setup." Good grief, when even the Lenin of Loony forewarns his followers to stand down, well, what hope do we have of seeing 1,000 cretinous noggins cracked?

So yes, though the revolution will be televised, we are likely to be bored. There's nothing more tedious than watching a couple hundred emasculated morons standing around, scratching their ball-less groins and trying to sound tough.

I could be wrong, and I hope I am. For I was indeed looking forward to watching 1,000 cretinous, Trumpian noggins being cracked.

To scream or not to scream

I cannot account for my early morning compulsion to post this, but since when have compulsions demanded an accounting? So I'm dropping this note forthwith — a note about a subject that will soon hit the airwaves and presses with all the sensationalist drama of a presidential impeachment trial:

The debt ceiling calamity of 2021.

Because we haven't enough calamities.

Such is the sentiment — I started to type "thinking" — of the Trump Party, which once again is about to stick a loaded gun in the face of the American economy. The party's chief mugger is Mitch McConnell, who tweeted yesterday that raising the debt limit is Senate Democrats' "sole responsibility." They'll receive no assistance from Mitch & Friends.

To this he is committed, even though the Dems bailed him and his president out in 2019 by suspending the debt ceiling through this summer — thus averting an economic calamity on a Republican president and Republican Senate's watch. (Mitch is unlike Vito Corleone in only one respect: He never returns favors.)

The stupidity and partisan cruelty of refusing to raise the debt ceiling have been discussed and analyzed by the press every which way for years, which is to say, ever since Strangelovian GOP pols learned to stop worrying and love the terrorist bomb. No need, then, to rehash all the stupidity and cruelty here.

But wait, now I recall what compelled me to drop this note at this particular time. Earlier this morning I was reading a piece that referenced McConnellite hypocrisy; namely, that era in which he stiff-armed Democrat Obama's Supreme Court pick because the presidential election was but a year away, then rammed through a Republican president's appointment when a presidential election was only 45 days away.

Hypocrisy of that gargantuan magnitude can never be topped. It shall live not so much in infamy as in jaw-dropping, absolutely fucking astonishment. Goddamn! it's almost admirable.

At any rate, while the short story about McConnell's Supreme Court hypocrisy is keenly relevant to his hypocrisy about the upcoming debt-ceiling crisis, it's even keener in the broadest possible political terms, which have been astutely framed by Hawaii's Sen. Brian Schatz:

"I don’t think anyone believes [McConnell] will say, 'They nailed me for being hypocritical — I give up.' But it is possible, in fact it’s imperative, that we demonstrate that the modern Republican Party is just too dangerous for the American economy and for American democracy."

Jan. 6 was "exhibit A," he added. "This is exhibit B."

My profoundest wish is that the Democratic Party possessed the skill, the artfulness and above all the ballsy determination to demonstrate to the American electorate that the Republican Party is, as Schatz says, too dangerous for both the economy and our democracy. Any competent handicapper, however, would reduce the odds of Democrats ever striking the second target with thermonuclear determination because of its sorryass record on squarely hitting the first target.

Empirically proven is that the economy since FDR has performed better under Democratic administrations assisted by Democratic Congresses than have their Republican counterparts. And yet the party has failed to impress this straightforward fact upon the public. By and large, it persists in believing that the GOP is the party of strong, or stronger, economies.

Why? Because the Republican Party knows how to propagandize with a stentorian bullishness that could make Josef Goebbels blush. No longer does the party even really need to convince voters of the fabled untruth of its macroeconomic wizardry. With a Democratic assist, the electorate's delusion is baked in.

One can see the same sort of delusion-inclined thinking already taking place when it comes to Republicans' theft of American democracy. In any engaged, committed democracy, incalculable hordes of honorable voters would be on the streets of Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, demanding that Republican pols cease and desist from their antidemocratic schemes — which are every bit as brazen as their scheme to crater the American economy over the stupid, cruel issue of the debt limit.

Those voters would be on the streets because America's one responsible political party put them there, propelling them to unprecedented anger and action through unremitting, fire-breathing determination to unmercifully arrest Republican thievery.

Do you see such mobs of the righteous?

You may see a mob Saturday, from the other side, wholly untethered from righteousness. And it will be the Republican Party that placed them there. 

Of course this particular mobocratic mobilization could fizzle out. Who knows? But this much we do know: The Republican party, the Trump Party, is dragging America from exhibit A — Jan. 6 — to exhibit B — the debt ceiling calamity. And it's all of a set piece: "The modern Republican Party is just too dangerous for the American economy and for American democracy" — with emphasis on the latter.

Meanwhile, what are Democrats doing? How are they countering this existential democratic crisis? By haggling over the no-brainer of whether Medicare should negotiate drug prices.

The proper rhetorical response to this is: Unfuckingbelievable.

You tell me. Should I be so disheartened, so furious and frustrated? Should I forego my profoundest wish — that the Democratic Party muster the needed polemical artfulness and equally the colossal will to rally the honorable citizenry against Republicans' brazen designs to rob us of prosperity and our American heritage? I'm on the fence here.

Pardon me while my hair lights on fire

Though I've become accustomed to undiscerning analyses in political journalism — mostly because so many political journalists today are a mere eight years out of middle school — Jonathan Martin's NY Times analysis of California's recall election misses the relevant mark by an uncommonly, stunningly wide margin.

He looks at the recall as perhaps a harbinger of 2022; it's a "warning," he writes, for Republicans. "The recall [offers] at least one lesson to Democrats in Washington ahead of next year’s midterm elections: The party’s pre-existing blue- and purple-state strategy of portraying Republicans as Trump-loving extremists can still prove effective."

Therein lies the essence, or rather totality, of Martin's analysis. And what he writes would indeed be true for "Democrats in Washington," but only if other states and locales were as deeply blue as California. Which, of course, they are not. Not even close, excepting maybe Hawaii, Rhode Island and a twenty-block district in Austin, Texas. As well, what California has to teach purple states, I've no idea. Neither does Martin. But damn it sounds insightful.

Yet we've not yet approached the monumental purblindness of Martin's analysis, which requires some quotes and this bit of Martinean prelude: "For Republicans eying Mr. Biden’s falling approval ratings and growing hopeful about their 2022 prospects, the failed recall is less an ominous portent than a cautionary reminder about what happens when they put forward candidates who are easy prey for the opposition."

Again, deep-blue California has nothing to do with nearly all other states and, in general, Republicans' 2022 prospects. But more than that is Martin's reference to whom "they" will put forward as candidates. The "they" in his piece clearly suggests strategists and party leaders, which is fine, but it's Republican voters, by and large, who will determine the candidates. And that means the cyclical ritual of Crazy Unbound: primaries.

This, Martin brushes up against: "The last time Democrats controlled the presidency and both chambers of Congress, in 2010, the Republicans made extensive gains but fell short of reclaiming the Senate because they nominated a handful candidates so flawed that they managed to lose in one of the best midterm elections for the G.O.P. in modern history."

And that, muses Martin, taught them (an outdated) lesson: "If Republicans are to reclaim the Senate next year, party officials say, they will do so by elevating candidates who do not come with the bulging opposition research files of a 27-year veteran of right-wing radio."

Now we're getting close to the huge red elephant in the room, which, somehow, Martin fails to notice. He continues: "The possibility that Elder-style figures could win primaries in more competitive states alarms many establishment-aligned Republicans as they assess the 2022 landscape. Nominees too closely linked to Mr. Trump … could undermine the party’s prospects in states like Georgia, Arizona, Missouri and Pennsylvania that will prove crucial to determining control of the Senate."

With that, his analysis draws to close — without ever even mentioning the monstrous Republican backstop that either can or most definitely will save the day for troglodytic, insurrectionist GOP candidates: election subversion.

Simply put, insane primary outcomes are no longer the Republican problem they once were. Go ahead, ye morons of Election Day, nominate any Elderlike lunatic you wish. For state GOP legislatures in battleground states such as Georgia have rigged the electoral process. They have enshrined in law the Stalinesque maxim that it's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes.

Nothing, absolutely nothing is more central to 2022 and 2024 than election subversion. (Show of hands: How many believe Georgia's state legislature, regardless of the will of voters, will return Raphael Warnock to the U.S. Senate next year?)

Republicans no longer need worry about psychologically disturbed candidates like Larry Elder, for Republican pols in critical battleground states have his back. The fix — the fixes — are in.

And yet nowhere is this all-encompassing, inescapable, thunderingly antidemocratic fact of America's electoral future — indeed, of America's future, full stop — even alluded to in Jonathan Martin's "analysis." Stunning. Just … stunning.