Dana Milbank: Failure isn’t an option, Democrats

Hey, Democrats, stop acting like children.

To Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) and fellow House progressives: Pass the damn bill. The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, even by itself, is an enormous win for progressives, for Democrats and for Americans. You are on the cusp of historic gains for public transit, clean drinking water, safer roads and bridges, high-speed Internet, and clean energy. Don’t blow it.

To Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and fellow moderates: Stop stalling. West Virginians and Arizonans, like the vast majority of Americans, want paid family and medical leave, easier access to preschool, cheaper community colleges, and breaks on their health insurance and taxes. You can’t stomach $ trillion? Then how about $2 trillion? Put up a number. The longer you play hard-to-get on President Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, the more likely you are to produce nothing for your constituents.

To both sides in this internecine squabble: Failure isn’t an option. If you come up empty on both of these packages, you will kill the rest of the Biden agenda, mortally wound the Biden presidency, and facilitate a Republican takeover of the House and the Senate — handing power to a faction that is creeping toward authoritarianism. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/29/democrats-failure-infrastructure-reconciliation-sabotage/

John Cassidy: Republicans Are Gambling Recklessly on the Debt Limit

The brinksmanship surrounding the debt ceiling—which brings the threat of a government default—represents something more recent and ominous. Led by Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority leader, Republicans in Congress are cynically exploiting for partisan advantage a set of antiquated rules and procedures that should have been done away with years ago. They are displaying a willingness to bring the country to the edge of a financial cataclysm amid a global pandemic.

Last week, the House passed a temporary funding bill that would keep the government running until December 3, 2022, and also suspend the debt ceiling until that same month. It was this bill that Senate Republicans blocked on Monday, with the Democrats failing to get the sixty votes needed to defy a filibuster and McConnell accusing them of engaging in a “socialist” spending binge. For weeks, McConnell has made clear that his goal is to force the Democrats to raise the ceiling on their own, through the reconciliation bill, so that Republicans can attack them for profligacy going into next year’s Senate and House races. The G.O.P. is pursuing this cynical and reckless course even though Democrats twice agreed, during Donald Trump’s Presidency, to raise the debt limit on a bipartisan basis. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/republicans-are-gambling-recklessly-on-the-debt-limit

Philip Bump:The effort to downplay Jan. 6 is working

Two days before a planned rally at the U.S. Capitol in support of those arrested for participating in the violent riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, former president Donald Trump, in whose name that riot unfolded, released a statement.

“Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election,” Trump wrote on Sept. 16, using the false characterization of the 2020 election that spurred the violence. “In addition to everything else, it has proven conclusively that we are a two-tiered system of justice. In the end, however, JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL!”

The idea is that those arrested for participating in the riot — including the 185 people arrested for “assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees,” in the words of the Justice Department, 55 of whom “have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer” — have been targeted unjustly. That the riot wasn’t a riot at all, just a demonstration, maybe with a few bad apples. That the effort to prosecute the participants is simply the Biden administration trying to target Republicans.

It’s an idea that fundamentally downplays the scale of what happened that day. It’s also an idea that has gained ground with Republicans over the past six months.

New polling from the Pew Research Center shows a significant decline since March in the percentage of Americans who say it’s very or somewhat important to find and prosecute those involved in the riot. That shift is entirely a function of decreasing concern among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

When considering only those who say such prosecutions are very important, that decline is more dramatic. In March, about half of Republicans said this was important; now, about a quarter do. Among Republicans and leaning independents who in June said that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, about 43 percent said the prosecutions were very important. Among the Republicans who told Pew that Trump won (which, of course, he didn’t), less than 1 in 5 said it was important to find and prosecute the rioters. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/28/effort-downplay-jan-6-is-working/

Michael Hiltzik: America is not facing a civil war — only loudmouthed extremists

With an election just behind us and another beckoning a year from now, political pundits are dusting off their perennial observations about a “polarized” America.

Actually, these observations don’t need to be dusted off because they’re never put on the shelf, no matter how wrong they’re proved by actual facts. The truth is that America is nothing like a polarized country.

Large majorities agree on the most pressing issues of the day: They favor abortion rights, stricter gun controls and more COVID-related restrictions, especially on unvaccinated people. You might not be aware of this if you listen to programs on Fox News or even the average political commentary in our leading newspapers or on CNN. There, depictions of an America wracked by irreconcilable disagreement is daily fare.

But they’re not reporting a genuine schism in American politics; they’re reporting on a divide pitting a majority in broad agreement against a boisterous minority. The latter’s footprint is magnified through the platforms provided by Fox News, Facebook and other information outlets that don’t care to report facts but prefer trading in conflict.

Sometimes you even hear the prospect of a new “civil war” being waged in the U.S.

One indication that chatter about America’s perilous divide may be overwrought came just last weekend, when a highly touted rally scheduled for Washington to support the Jan. 6 insurrectionists turned into a comic-opera flop, with rallygoers apparently outnumbered by journalists.

“Emotions ran tepid,” wisecracked the New Republic. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-09-22/america-not-facing-a-civil-war-just-a-loudmouthed-extremism

Ed Kilgore: Arizona Audit Aftermath Shows Trump Conspiracy Theories Will Go On Forever

After more than five months and around $6 million (most of it privately raised among Trump supporters), the legendarily ludicrous Arizona audit of the 2020 election results from Maricopa County (home of Phoenix) ended with the filing of an official report late last week. The headlines in most of the mainstream media focused on the most conspicuous finding by Cyber Ninjas, the outfit conducting the audit on behalf of Republican state senators: A hand recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa (which accounted for about two-thirds of the state’s vote) confirmed, and even slightly increased, Joe Biden’s margin of victory there.

But MAGA folk have concluded the rest of the audit and the rest of the report have revealed yet-to-be-resolved anomalies in mail ballots; Trump himself is even claiming it “proved” he won Arizona, which is as mendacious as anything else he’s said about the 2020 elections, but is nonetheless holy writ among his core followers. And the suspicions Cyber Ninjas raised will be used to justify similar “audit” efforts in other states, most notably Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Texas.

That this has nothing to do with legitimate questions about the 2020 results should be made plain by the fact that no one disputes Trump’s 2020 win in Texas. This is “auditing” for the sake of auditing. There is no reason to think it will ever end until Trump has undermined faith in our electoral system enough to suit his purposes. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/end-of-arizona-audit-doesnt-end-trump-conspiracy-theories.html

Aaron Blake: How Republicans learned to stop worrying and embrace ‘replacement theory’ — by name

The story of the Republican Party in the Trump era is, by and large, one of a boiled frog.

President Donald Trump constantly pushed the envelope in ways that made his allies uncomfortable. They sometimes spoke out, especially early on, only to have the base stand by the president and rebuke them. That meant that when Trump pushed even further, his duly chastened allies increasingly responded accordingly: with silence. It’s how we got from a guy carping about supposed voter fraud in an election he won, in 2016, to a guy spurring a harebrained effort to overturn the 2020 election, which he lost.

The boiled frog (the proverbial tale of a frog that is boiled too slowly to realize what’s happening to it) is now returning, in the form of “replacement theory.” The GOP seems either unconscious of what’s happening — or doesn’t care.

As we wrote a while back, the Republican Party’s increasing embrace of replacement theory — the idea popular in white supremacist circles that immigrants are being brought in to replace native-born (read: White) Americans — has been a slow build. For years, it was an idea relegated to infrequent mentions by fringe Republicans who operated outside the political mainstream and weren’t generally welcomed in politer circles of the GOP. When it was mentioned, it was dressed up as something besides replacement theory, per se.

What has transpired over the past week, though, shows how quickly something can be injected into the bloodstream when that dressed-up version is initially given a pass. While some of the most prominent members of the conservative movement have increasingly espoused a version of replacement theory without calling it that — and sometimes seeking to differentiate it from the white supremacist version — they’re now just straight-up embracing the label. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/27/how-republicans-learned-stop-worrying-embrace-replacement-theory-by-name/

Ashley Parker: As Trump hints at 2024 comeback, democracy advocates fear a ‘worst-case scenario’ for the country

A year before the 2020 election, about two dozen constitutional scholars and democracy advocates traveled to Washington to work through a range of scenarios where something goes awry on Election Day.

The country’s political system was being tested by a campaign like no other in modern history, with an incumbent president, Donald Trump, who showed little regard for the democratic traditions and constitutional norms that had guided his predecessors — and who repeatedly claimed that the only way he could lose was through rampant fraud.

So the group considered a slew of hypothetical catastrophes: “What do we do if a vigilante group takes over a major county tabulation facility and burns it to the ground? What do we do if there is a military coup?” But, as Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser to the elections program at Democracy Fund tells it, the experts were too quick in retrospect to dismiss the outrageous as unlikely to happen in a country like the United States.

But, the challenges for American democracy were on stark display almost exactly two months after Election Day, on Jan. 6, when a violent mob of Trump supporters mounted a deadly insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. And the challenges have been clear in the eight months since the riot, as Trump and his allies have intensified false claims of election fraud and the former president has remained the Republican Party’s most popular leader.

Now, as Trump looks and sounds increasingly like he intends to mount a presidential campaign rerun, Democrats and democracy experts are grappling with what such a campaign — and a potential second Trump presidency — would mean for the country. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-trump-hints-at-2024-comeback-democracy-advocates-fear-a-worst-case-scenario-for-the-country/2021/09/28/ee357558-1a47-11ec-914a-99d701398e5a_story.html

Dana Milbank: Republicans aim their fire at the military

Perhaps nothing Republican lawmakers do anymore should come as a surprise, but their treatment of Gen. Mark A. Milley on Tuesday opened a new front in the war against civilized norms.

Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee didn’t just give a dressing down to the nation’s top soldier about the Afghanistan pullout; they assassinated his character and impugned his patriotism, accusing him of aiding the enemy and of placing his own vanity before the lives of the men and women serving under him.

Had the senators listened, they would have learned from the generals that they uniformly opposed staying in Afghanistan beyond Aug. 31 because it would have resulted in “significant” U.S. casualties, that Trump’s withdrawal agreement with the Taliban was violated by the Taliban from the start and left Afghan security forces demoralized, and that Biden faced the very real risk of the situation escalating into another war if he didn’t withdraw.

But that was difficult to hear much beyond the Republicans’ heckling:

“Humiliation.”

“Fiasco.”

“Debacle.”

“Botched evacuation screwed things up.”

“Disgraceful.”

No. What’s disgraceful is that Republicans have now turned their unquenchable rage into personal attacks on the nation’s military leaders — and on the “broken” and no longer “trustworthy” military itself. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/28/mark-milley-senate-hawley-blackburn/

Susan B. Glasser The Most Important Statistic of the Biden Presidency

Trump is out of office, but Trump-style politics have decisively won over the Republican Party. A new CNN poll this week found that seventy-eight per cent of Republicans subscribe to Trump’s Big Lie that Biden was not legitimately elected—more than in some polls in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s traumatic exit.

The partisan split has also translated into a deadly divide in vaccination rates—a tragedy given that vaccines are, for now, the only real way out of this mess. And no wonder this divide persists. It is not an accident or an immutable fact of American political life; it’s a fire built and stoked by Trump and his supporters. Among the top stories on Fox News’ home page on Thursday, I could not find a single reference to the pandemic, and little sense that covid even existed, beyond a link to a video headlined “Liberal host torched for labeling GOP ‘COVID-loving death cult’ in bizarre rant.” As I was writing this column, I received an e-mail from one Donald J. Trump. The subject was “Biden’s vaccine mandate.” “I totally OPPOSE this liberal overreach that requires Americans to be vaccinated,” Trump wrote. “The Left is working overtime to CONTROL you, Friend,” he warned. Biden, he added, “doesn’t care about you or your freedoms.”

The tragic triumph of Trumpism is not that he has persuaded all Americans, or even a majority of Americans, to reject their way out of the pandemic; it’s that he has persuaded just enough of them to keep the disease wreaking havoc on the country.

The G.O.P.’s desire to see Biden fail has become a willingness to let the country fail. Nine months into Biden’s Presidency, the bottom line is that the Republican war on Biden’s legitimacy and the war on Biden’s covid policies are now inextricably linked. The consequences of this are so hard to contemplate that we often do not do so: a politics so broken that it is now killing Americans on an industrial scale. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-most-important-statistic-of-the-biden-presidency

Robert Kagan: Our constitutional crisis is already here

The events of Jan. 6 proved that Trump and his most die-hard supporters are prepared to defy constitutional and democratic norms, just as revolutionary movements have in the past. While it might be shocking to learn that normal, decent Americans can support a violent assault on the Capitol, it shows that Americans as a people are not as exceptional as their founding principles and institutions. Europeans who joined fascist movements in the 1920s and 1930s were also from the middle classes. No doubt many of them were good parents and neighbors, too. People do things as part of a mass movement that they would not do as individuals, especially if they are convinced that others are out to destroy their way of life.

It would be foolish to imagine that the violence of Jan. 6 was an aberration that will not be repeated. Because Trump supporters see those events as a patriotic defense of the nation, there is every reason to expect more such episodes. Trump has returned to the explosive rhetoric of that day, insisting that he won in a “landslide,” that the “radical left Democrat communist party” stole the presidency in the “most corrupt, dishonest, and unfair election in the history of our country” and that they have to give it back. He has targeted for defeat those Republicans who voted for his impeachment — or criticized him for his role in the riot. Already, there have been threats to bomb polling sites, kidnap officials and attack state capitols. “You and your family will be killed very slowly,” the wife of Georgia’s top election official was texted earlier this year. Nor can one assume that the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers would again play a subordinate role when the next riot unfolds. Veterans who assaulted the Capitol told police officers that they had fought for their country before and were fighting for it again. Looking ahead to 2022 and 2024, Trump insists “there is no way they win elections without cheating. There’s no way.” So, if the results come in showing another Democratic victory, Trump’s supporters will know what to do. Just as “generations of patriots” gave “their sweat, their blood and even their very lives” to build America, Trump tells them, so today “we have no choice. We have to fight” to restore “our American birthright.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/23/robert-kagan-constitutional-crisis/

Donna F. Edwards: McConnell has given Democrats the justification they need to kill the filibuster

News flash: The Grand Old Party, also known as the Deadbeat Republican Party, is unwilling to pay the bills and ready to turn off the lights in America. No principles here; this is all about politics — no matter the consequences of this deliberately inflicted economic crisis with a global pandemic and multiple natural disasters as a backdrop.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pronounced that no Republican would cast a vote to increase the debt ceiling. That moved the goal post, because he’s effectively threatening a filibuster if 10 Senate Republicans do not join Democrats to advance the measure. With classic McConnell cynicism, he declared that the government must pay its bills while announcing that Republicans won’t sign the checks. That was the reveal. Not to be outdone, every single House Republican voted against both increasing the debt limit and keeping the government running when funding runs out on Oct. 1.

Just as Republicans have fallen in line with the “big lie” about the 2020 election, undermining confidence in our democracy and its constitutional norms, they are now prepared to set fire to the entire house by tanking our economy. But this despicable move can give Democrats exactly the ammunition they need — a genuine, defensible justification for eliminating the filibuster.

Democrats should call McConnell’s bluff. Kill the filibuster, raise the debt ceiling to pay our bills, fund the U.S. government. And then be free to move on and pass the broader agenda that the majority of voters want. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/25/mcconnell-has-given-democrats-justification-they-need-kill-filibuster/

Cleve R. Wootson Jr.: Vice President Harris, assigned to tackle volatile issues, quietly builds a network

When Kamala Harris became an administration point person on abortion this month, many operatives in both parties viewed it as yet another example of President Biden’s saddling her with a thankless task on an explosive subject he was eager to avoid handling. Biden had already assigned Harris to tackle the root causes of irregular migration, amid a chaotic influx at the southern border, and to take the lead on voting rights, as Republican-led states began passing restrictive voting laws.

All are volatile social issues that many politicians would see as offering little benefit as policy assignments. But 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.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/harris-assigned-to-tackle-volatile-issues-quietly-builds-a-network/2021/09/25/5440d8ac-163c-11ec-9589-31ac3173c2e5_story.html

Dan Pfieffer: The Real Reasons Behind the Mess on Capitol Hill

Stop looking for someone to blame and look for something to blame. In one fell swoop, Democrats are trying to rebuild our roads and bridges, unrig the tax code, lift millions out of poverty, address climate change, create jobs, expand access to high education and help families afford childcare and eldercare. Any of these on their own would be hard. Doing them all at once is nearly impossible. But this is the only option because Senate Democrats won’t fix the filibuster, and Republicans will not lift a finger to help their constituents or save the planet under their feet.

Democrats are forced to use the one remaining budget reconciliation bill to accomplish their entire agenda. The process is cumbersome and depends on the capricious whims of the unelected Senate parliamentarian, who decides which policies can be included in budget reconciliation bills. It was the parliamentarian who decided that a minimum wage increase and immigration reform would not be included. Her reasoning was nonsensical because the entire process is nonsensical!

In 2009, Democrats had 59 Senate votes and couldn't overcome a Republican filibuster. Obamacare was paired with student loan reform and then pared back in various ways to satisfy the parliamentarian. We are repeating this pattern — and will continue to do so — until the filibuster is gone. The rest is just noise. https://messagebox.substack.com/p/the-real-reasons-behind-the-mess

Reid Wilson: Dozens of lawsuits filed ahead of redistricting presage years of litigation

The decennial redistricting process is always a magnet for legal challenges, though this decade is likely to represent a different sort of test. The U.S. Supreme Court in recent years has struck down many of the guardrails that once hemmed in legislatures, including sections of the Voting Rights Act. A more recent case effectively barred federal courts from weighing in on questions of partisan gerrymandering, forcing those suits into state courts. 

“Legislatures feel unbridled in what they’re allowed to do,” Feng said. “There were more legal constraints in past redistricting processes that have been eroded by court decisions and that sense that states can now engage in redistricting with far fewer legal constraints has allowed some to engage in very brazen gerrymandering.” 

Torchinsky, the Republican attorney, said lawsuits over district lines and the process itself can represent a no-lose situation for a minority party in any state. If a majority party forces through a map that puts the minority at a disadvantage, the worst that can happen to a minority party in a lawsuit is maintaining the status quo — and the best that can happen is a much more favorable map.

“The Democrats have no incentive not to challenge any Republican-passed map, and the Republicans have no incentive not to challenge the Democrat-passed map, and whoever’s ox feels gored by a commission has no incentive not to challenge it,” he said. “The incentive is, whoever feels like they’re on the losing side should sue.” https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/573712-dozens-of-lawsuits-filed-ahead-of-redistricting-presage-years-of

Jamelle Bouie: Trump Had a Mob. He Also Had a Plan.

John Eastman, a prominent, respected member in good standing of the conservative legal establishment, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, schemed with the president and his allies in the Republican Party to overturn the election and overthrow American democracy under the Constitution. Yes, they failed to keep Trump in office, but they successfully turned the pro forma electoral counting process into an occasion for real political struggle.

It was always possible, theoretically, to manipulate the rules to seize power from the voters. Now, it’s a live option. And with the right pieces in place, Trump could succeed. All he needs is a rival slate of electoral votes from contested states, state officials and state legislatures willing to intervene on his behalf, a supportive Republican majority in either house of Congress, and a sufficiently pliant Supreme Court majority.

As it happens, Trump may well run for president in 2024 (he is already amassing a sizable war chest) with exactly that board in play. Republican state legislatures in states like Georgia and Arizona have, for example, used claims of fraud to seize control of key areas of election administration. Likewise, according to Reuters, 10 of the 15 declared Republican candidates for secretary of state in five swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada — have either declared the 2020 election stolen or demanded that authorities invalidate the results in their states. It is also not unlikely that a Republican Party with pro-Trump zealots at its helm wins Congress in November of next year and holds it through the presidential election and into 2025.

If Trump is, once again, on the ballot, then the election might turn on the manipulation of a ceremony that was, until now, a mere formality.  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/opinion/jan-6-eastman-memo.html