NY Times Editorial Board: Jan. 6 Was Worse Than We Knew

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

However horrifying the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol appeared in the moment, we know now that it was far worse.

The country was hours away from a full-blown constitutional crisis — not primarily because of the violence and mayhem inflicted by hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters but because of the actions of Mr. Trump himself.

In the days before the mob descended on the Capitol, a corollary attack — this one bloodless and legalistic — was playing out down the street in the White House, where Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and a lawyer named John Eastman huddled in the Oval Office, scheming to subvert the will of the American people by using legal sleight-of-hand.

Mr. Eastman’s unusual visit was reported at the time, but a new book by the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa provides the details of his proposed six-point plan. It involved Mr. Pence rejecting dozens of already certified electoral votes representing tens of millions of legally cast ballots, thus allowing Congress to install Mr. Trump in a second term.

Mr. Pence ultimately refused to sign on, earning him the rage of Mr. Trump and chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” by the rioters, who erected a makeshift gallows on the National Mall.

The fact that the scheme to overturn the election was highly unlikely to succeed is cold comfort. Mr. Trump remains the most popular Republican in the country; barring a serious health issue, the odds are good that he will be the party’s nominee for president in 2024. He also remains as incapable of accepting defeat as he has ever been, which means the country faces a renewed risk of electoral subversion by Mr. Trump and his supporters — only next time they will have learned from their mistakes.

Mr. Trump may never stop trying to undermine American democracy. Those who value that democracy should never stop using every measure at their disposal to protect it. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/02/opinion/jan-6-trump-eastman-election.html

Susan B. Glasser: The Democratic Civil War Has a Winner: Donald Trump

The reality of life in Biden’s Presidency is a Democratic Party in which the center has moved left but hasn’t figured out what to do about its remaining centrists. But math is math. Biden needs every Democrat’s support to get anything significant through this Congress.Most of the week’s frenzy was about trying to figure out Manchin’s bottom line. It was revealed on Thursday that it had started out as one and a half trillion dollars over the summer, and that Pelosi hoped to get it up to $2.1 trillion by the day’s end, in order to satisfy progressives enough to get them to proceed with the infrastructure bill. It’s worth noting that either number represents an extraordinarily large investment in a progressive agenda advanced by Biden—with significant new spending on everything from climate to education to health care. Such vast changes would not be possible but for the unlikely Democratic victories in two Senate runoffs in Georgia in January. The outsized expectations fueled by Biden’s outsized promises in his “Build Back Better” agenda have made it hard to remember the tenuous origins of this tenuously small congressional majority.

What got lost amid all the talking this week was another kind of bottom line: while Democrats were fighting about liberal spending priorities in debates that at times resembled a congressional version of fantasy football, they were neither passing Biden’s agenda nor bolstering the case for his Presidency. The stakes for Biden are about as existential as they come in politics; his approval ratings are dropping, and his time is running out to get anything done in Congress before the midterm elections—when the Party’s majorities may disappear. And they may not last even that long, given the actuarial tables in the Senate, where a single sick or retiring senator could overnight end Biden’s Presidency when it comes to major legislative initiatives.

The person who benefits the most from all of this, of course, is someone who was rarely mentioned this week but should have been: Donald Trump. The former President loomed offstage, sending out nasty missives, rooting for failure. Trump wants Republicans in Congress to vote against the budget bill, no matter what is in it. He wants them to vote against the infrastructure bill, as well—especially that, because he promised even bigger infrastructure spending and failed to deliver. Trump even wanted them to vote against the continuing resolution that kept the government open and avoided a shutdown, and a disturbingly large number of them did.

The Trump Show, like it or not, is still running, and, even if you are not watching it anymore, a big voting swath of America still is. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-democratic-civil-war-has-a-winner-donald-trump

 

 Thomas L. Friedman: Do Democrats Have the Courage of Liz Cheney?

Do Representative Josh Gottheimer, the leader of the centrist Democrats in the House, and Representative Pramila Jayapal, leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, have the guts to stop issuing all-or-nothing ultimatums and instead give each other ironclad assurances that they will do something hard?

The progressives need to have the courage to accept less than they want. They also could use a little more humility by acknowledging that there could be some unintended effects from such a big spending bill — and far more respect for the risk-takers who create jobs, whom they never have a good word for. If Biden’s presidency is propelled forward and seen as a success for everyday Americans, Democrats can hold the Senate and House and come back for more later.

The moderates need to have the courage to give the progressives much more than the moderates prefer. Income and opportunity gaps in America helped to produce Trump; they will be our undoing if they persist.

We’re not writing the Ten Commandments here. We’re doing horse-trading. Just do it.

None of the Democratic lawmakers will be risking their careers by such a compromise, which is child’s play compared with facing the daily wrath of running for re-election in the most pro-Trump state in America, Wyoming, while denouncing Trump as the greatest threat to our democracy.

But I fear common sense may not win out. As Minnesota Democratic Representative Dean Phillips (a relative) remarked to me after Tuesday’s caucus of House Democrats: “The absence of pragmatism among Democrats is as troubling as the absence of principle among Republicans.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/opinion/liz-cheney-democrats-democracy.html

David Brooks This Is Why We Need to Spend $4 Trillion

I’ve spent the last few weeks in a controlled fury — and I’m not normally a fury kind of guy. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and others are trying to pass arguably the most consequential legislative package in a generation, and what did I sense in my recent travels across five states? The same thing I sense in my social media feed and on the various media “most viewed” lists.

Indifference.

Have we given up on the idea that policy can change history? Have we lost faith in our ability to reverse, or even be alarmed by, national decline? More and more I hear people accepting the idea that America is not as energetic and youthful as it used to be.

I can practically hear the spirits of our ancestors crying out — the ones who had a core faith that this would forever be the greatest nation on the planet, the New Jerusalem, the last best hope of earth.

My ancestors were aspiring immigrants and understood where the beating heart of the nation resided: with the working class and the middle class, the ones depicted by Willa Cather, James Agee, Ralph Ellison, or in “The Honeymooners,” “The Best Years of Our Lives” and “On the Waterfront.” There was a time when the phrase “the common man” was a source of pride and a high compliment.

And so came the crisis that Biden was elected to address — the poisonous combination of elite insularity and vicious populist resentment.

The Democratic spending bills are economic packages that serve moral and cultural purposes. They should be measured by their cultural impact, not merely by some wonky analysis. In real, tangible ways, they would redistribute dignity back downward. They would support hundreds of thousands of jobs for home health care workers, child care workers, construction workers, metal workers, supply chain workers. They would ease the indignity millions of parents face having to raise their children in poverty.

Look at the list of states that, according to a recent analysis of White House estimates by CNBC, could be among those getting the most money per capita from the infrastructure bill. A lot of them are places where Trumpian resentment is burning hot: Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota.

These measures would not solve our problems, obviously. In many
large Western nations, there are vast tectonic forces concentrating wealth in the affluent metro areas and leaving vast swaths of the countryside behind. We don’t yet know how to do the sort of regional development that reverses this trend.

These packages: We support the choices you have made, in the places where you have chosen to live. That fundamental respect is the key scarcity in America right now. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/opinion/federal-spending-democrats.html

 Maureen Dowd: Sinema Stars in Her Own Film

Just like the original Sphinx, the Phoenix Sphinx is blocking the way until those who would move ahead solve her riddle:

What does Kyrsten Sinema want? And why doesn’t she stick around to explain it?

The Arizona senator’s name is pronounced “cinema,” and it is apt because she sweeps — and sometimes, when the triathlete has a sports injury, limps — through the Senate like a silent film star.

“The Greta Garbo of Congress,” as one top Democrat called her.

What has caused the former social worker and Green Party champion who grew up in a gas station, a left-winger who supported Ralph Nader for president, to shift from progressive stances to more conservative ones? Is she unmoored in her politics, simply being opportunistic? What is the principle that is leading her to obstruct the party of her own president, who really needs a win right now?

“She doesn’t do interviews, she doesn’t answer questions, she speaks in vagaries, she doesn’t explain the core reason she’s opposed,” one member of the progressive crew on the Hill told me. “It’s hard to look at her actions and not conclude that the donations are part of the story. If she’s here to fight for corporate power and lower taxes for the wealthy and get more money for pharma executives, be on the level and say it.”

And why would a congresswoman go off in the summer of 2020 to take a paid internship at a donor’s Sonoma County winery?

One thing is clear, though. When Americans are hurting and everything is on the line, behaving like a sphinx is riddlesome — and disquieting. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/02/opinion/kyrsten-sinema-congress.html

Matthew Cooper: Stay Calm. Biden’s Presidency Is Not “On the Line” with Build Back Better

The question isn’t just what happens with Build Back Better—a historic mash-up, a Great Society/New Deal confluence of programs in one bill. Democrats all agree that there’s a lot in there to love, from child leave to green energy to hearing aids. But as a matter of politics, all sides seem to implicitly believe that failing to pass the act dooms the Democrats next year.

Let’s step back a second and see why that may not be so.

If Build Back Better doesn’t pass, Biden can still run on what he’s done: overseen the vaccination of what will be more (possibly way more) than 200 million Americans; passed a series of emergency measures that kept the economy from hemorrhaging; and enacted the American Rescue Plan Act, with its stimulus checks and health insurance subsidy.

It seems odd that the administration and Congress treat the American Rescue Plan Act as an afterthought rather than a national Narcan that brought us back to life. Biden can also brag about leveraging his power for popular mask mandates. He can brag about bringing an end to the unpopular war in Afghanistan (albeit without glory), and ending the insanity and corruption of the Trump years. Those are things to run on. The economy seems to be on a good trajectory, inshallah.

But will the public say that, since Democrats control both chambers, they’re dolts because they couldn’t pass the president’s bill? I doubt it. It may give Biden a reason to argue in the midterms that he needs a real majority in Congress, not a precariously thin one that one intransigent senator can scuttle. The collapse of Build Back Better might give him and members an excellent chance to make a public case for killing or curtailing the filibuster. What’s more, if the failure of Build Back Better led to the passage of a voting rights bill, that could potentially do more to help the party than anything else.

I don’t know where this all ends. I tend to think that Schumer and Pelosi can and will pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill and Build Back Better in some limited form, maybe by another name. They might shorten the bill’s duration from 10 to five years or excise some significant chunks until next year. Even if it doesn’t pass, however, it’s not the Democrats’ last chance at holding on to their majority. Their fate has much more to do with protecting the nation from the ravages of viral mutations than anything else. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/10/01/stay-calm-bidens-presidency-is-not-on-the-line-with-build-back-better/

Benjamin L. Ginsberg: Don’t be afraid of the election audits — they may be our only ticket out of this mess

Bring on the audits.

Really. As a Republican election lawyer who has participated in more than 30 post-election recounts, contests and audits, I am extremely confident: They won’t find anything. The massive fraud that former president Donald Trump claims tarnished the 2020 election has been and will remain illusory — because it didn’t exist.

But audits, I believe, can be the friend of sanity, helping everyone in the political process, especially the Republicans who understand that convincing their voters that elections are hopelessly rigged is no way to win elections.

Denying reality is not a successful electoral strategy. My argument to Republicans is simple: In the end, Trump’s elections-are-rigged message is going to hurt not only our democracy but also Republicans more than it hurts Democrats.

So to the extent that some of those who have bought into Trump’s delusional claims of a stolen election can be dislodged from this view by the repeated conclusions of the audits he himself has called for, my advice is: Bring it on. Welcome them with open arms. The furies have already been unleashed. And if there’s a better plan to dispel the “big lie” out there, no one’s described it.

The status quo is not sustainable, Trump is corroding American democracy with his unproven charges of fraudulent elections. Almost 30 percent of the electorate — and an astonishing 66 percent of Republicans — say they buy into Trump’s “big lie.” Constant fact-checking and reprobation by mainstream media outlets and good-government groups have not budged that number. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/01/ben-ginsberg-election-audits-upside-big-lie/

Jennifer Rubin: Don’t give up on Texas, Democrats

Republicans now seem poised to accomplish what Democrats have not been able to do: The GOP has alienated sufficient numbers of voters outside their hardcore base to put the state in play in 2022 in gubernatorial and congressional contests and beyond.

A new Quinnipiac poll suggests Republicans’ radicalism has put them at odds with a majority of Texas voters. In the wake of the Texas law offering bounties to “turn in” those seeking an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest, the poll reports that 77 percent of state residents say abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest, including 66 percent of Republicans. Some 72 percent of Texans do not want the law enforced, and 60 percent want to keep Roe v. Wade in place.

Even on a quintessentially Texan issue such as guns, voters are not in sync with MAGA politicians. The pollsters found: “Roughly two-thirds (67 percent) of voters, including 58 percent of gun owners, say allowing anyone 21 years of age or older to carry handguns without a license or training makes Texas less safe, while 26 percent say it makes Texas safer. Half of voters (50 percent) say it’s too easy to carry a handgun in Texas, while 44 percent say it’s about right, and 4 percent say it’s too difficult.”

Like the rest of Americans, most Texans support vaccine mandates for health-care workers (57 percent to 36 percent) and for teachers (54 percent to 40 percent). When it comes to businesses requiring a vaccine (without a testing alternative), opinion is evenly divided, with 45 percent in favor and 47 percent opposed (a statistical tie).

Abbott’s polling numbers have crashed in the aftermath of his attempt to blame migrants crossing the border illegally for the rise in covid-19 infections, passage of the abortion bounty law and his signature attempt to impose new barriers to voting.

It’s in this political environment that Matthew Dowd, a former senior adviser to President George W. Bush who has backed a slew of notable Texas Democrats, has emerged as a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor. His announcement video conveys his values-oriented approach to politics.

Dowd is betting that Texans want something other than pandering to the MAGA base. “The Texas Republican politicians are completely out of step with Texas values like integrity and community and no longer govern with common sense, common decency or for the common good," he told me on Saturday. “They put their ‘me’ over our ‘we.’ ”

At a time when Texas Republicans are neglecting the health of residents, pitting neighbor against neighbor and launching an assault on democracy based on the “big lie” of a stolen election, Dowd will test whether a former Republican (who cannot be written off as a left-winger) can break through where other Texas Democrats have failed. If he can, Dowd may encourage other disaffected Republicans to run as Democrats in conservative states. They may be well suited to repudiate a Republican Party whose extremism, cruelty, authoritarianism and deceit are anything but conservative. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/03/dont-give-up-texas/

Doyle McManus: Warning: Jan. 6 was not a one-time event

Nine months ago, when followers of President Trump stormed the Capitol to halt the election of President Biden, the insurrection appeared to be the work of an extremist fringe led by right-wing militias and pro-Trump zealots.

But election denialism, the movement that spawned the uprising, has turned out to be much larger, more durable and every bit as worrisome as the violence of Jan. 6.

Stoked relentlessly by Trump, the belief that Biden stole the election has become a tenet of faith for most Republican voters.

A CNN poll last month found that 78% of Republicans say Biden lost the election. Almost 6 in 10 said “believing that Donald Trump won the 2020 election” is an important part of being Republican — right up there with low taxes and limited government.

Another survey, the Economist/YouGov poll, found that election denialism has been growing. In January, only 33% of Republicans said Biden won the presidency “legitimately”; last month, it was down to 26%.

It’s tempting to consider this as merely more evidence of what psychologists call “motivated reasoning” — the tendency to believe only those facts (in this case, imaginary facts) that conform with your partisan views.

But it’s more dangerous than that. It means a Jan. 6-style insurgency could happen again. https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-10-03/warning-january-6-was-not-a-one-time-event

Max Boot: The GOP has become the stupid party — and proud of it

In the 1980s, when I became a Republican, the GOP took pride in describing itself as the “party of ideas.” But under Trump’s leadership, Republicans have reclaimed their old reputation, dating back to the 1950s, as the “stupid party.” What’s even more telling: This is not a source of shame or embarrassment for the party’s populists. They’re the stupid-and-proud-of-it party.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) responded to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) criticism of a mask mandate by saying, “He’s such a moron.” My brilliant colleague Dana Milbank carefully examined this charge and concluded it was “mostly true.” Yet McCarthy is a veritable brainiac compared with many of his GOP colleagues.

On July 30, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) praised Medicare and Medicaid for protecting “the healthcare of millions of families” and warned: “To safeguard our future, we must reject Socialist healthcare schemes.” Somehow Republicans miss the obvious contradiction between defending Medicare/Medicaid and assailing socialized medicine.

For some Republicans in Congress, of course, acting dumb comes more naturally than for others. Take Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) — please. He warns that the Green New Deal, which hasn’t actually passed, is already ushering in an avian apocalypse. Birds that aren’t killed by windmills, he said, are spontaneously combusting while flying over solar panels. He acts as if “flamers” — yes, that’s the term he uses — are actually a big thing. In fact, fossil fuel plants kill many more birds — and people — than solar arrays. Little wonder that, as Gohmert himself admitted, people think he is “the dumbest guy in Congress.”

Hold my dunce cap, says Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). She doesn’t believe in evolution but does believe in Jewish space lasers. Then there’s Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), who tweets that “1984 is a great fiction novel to read.” As opposed to a great nonfiction novel? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/04/gop-proud-of-its-own-stupidity/

Catherine Rampell: If Democrats must scale down their ambitions, they should prioritize investments in the young and the future

There are a lot of admirable ideas in the Democrats’ agenda. In a world with unlimited resources (or, at least, more pliable senators from West Virginia and Arizona), they might all be worth doing. But given the constraints, Democrats should prioritize the several policies that represent investments in the future.

Specifically: climate change and kids.

“Building Back Better” almost by definition requires investing in a lower-carbon future, to literally keep the planet habitable. We have a sense of which policies are likely to be most effective. Those policies may not be the exact array of climate programs that Democrats currently offer. (A carbon tax would be more effective at reducing emissions than pretty much anything Democrats are seriously considering, and it would have the added benefit of raising money.)

Their other priorities must include investing in children, particularly low-income children, such as through universal, high-quality pre-K; and a generous child tax credit that aims its firepower at families with low or zero earnings, so that more children are lifted out of poverty. Reducing child poverty is both a humanitarian and economic concern. Investing in children suffering from poverty helps them grow up to become more productive adults, who earn more money, have better health and need fewer services.

Many times Biden has said, “Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” His party has tried to wriggle out of the moral implications of that statement by pretending its budget can accommodate every desirable program. Now Democrats must prove what they actually value most. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/04/if-democrats-must-scale-down-their-ambitions-they-should-prioritize-investments-young-future/