Prime
Benjamin Netanyahu’s dozen years as Israel’s Prime Minister are most likely coming to an end. The new government should be sworn in sometime next week. But it’s still not a done deal because Netanyahu and many of his supporters view his removal from office – even by a unity government led by one of his former proteges – as existential. I’ve mentioned several times the January 6th analogy. But every political system has different mechanisms and every country has a unique political culture. So how could Netanyahu manage to remain in power either by norm-busting but still technically legitimate means or by extra-legal and extra-constitutional means?
Let’s start with the central fact: For the moment the new government is only a proposed government. To come formally into power it must be approved by a vote of 61 members of the Knesset, the country’s parliament. The coalition has to keep everyone on board for several days so they cast those 61 votes.
Israel Gallops Toward Its Own Jan 6th
By rights, it’s over and in effect it probably is over. Last night Israel’s opposition finalized and formally agreed to create a coalition government that will remove Benjamin Netanyahu from power. The coalition stretches from the right to the left and includes an Arab Israeli Islamist party. The architect of the new government is opposition leader Yair Lapid, whose deftness, patience and self-abnegation in this effort is really hard to capture or overstate. He has the signed document, which will make the right-wing Naftali Bennett Prime Minister for the government’s first two years, and he’s brought that to the country’s President. In the Israeli system, that’s it, all but the formality of the parties who just agreed to the deal voting it into power in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
But Netanyahu isn’t letting go.
TPM Inside Briefing With Paul Krugman
Yesterday we held an Inside Briefing with Paul Krugman in which we discussed pretty much all the economic policy questions (and the political debates growing out of them) of the early Biden presidency. We talk about the Biden infrastructure plan, inflation, chronic under-investment, Larry Summers, whether deficits matter and more.
If you’re a member, you can watch our discussion after the jump. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Where Things Stand: Trump Is Only Now Catching Up To The MyPillow Guy
By now you’ve likely seen new reporting from the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman: Former President Trump is telling people that he expects he will be “reinstated” to the presidency in August.
Thunder in the Distance
With Texas Democrats refusing to attend a state legislative session in an effort to block the state’s election crackdown law it reminded TPM Reader MR of a similar instance 18 years ago. It was a story I covered closely at TPM, and MR dropped me a note this morning reminding me. It’s more than just a trip down memory lane. What happened in 2003 in Texas was a preview, prologue to almost everything that would happen over the subsequent two decades. It presaged the debt ceiling hostage taking; it presaged Merrick Garland; and it presaged Donald Trump.
As we know from looking forward to the 2022 midterm, once a decade there’s a federal Census, a reapportionment of congressional seats and redistricting in every state that has more than one representative. It happened in 2010, setting the ground work for Republicans storming back into the majority in the House. Democrats rightly fear something similar will happen next year.
Some Thoughts on the COVID ‘Lab Leak’ Theory
Are you having trouble keeping up on the press discussion of a ‘lab leak’ theory of the origins of COVID? Here are a few pointers.
Broadly speaking, there’s seldom been an example of a more rapid shift in public opinion or rather elite conventional wisdom in the face of so little changing evidence. A bunch of right wing or right-adjacent columnists are running around high-fiving each other and patting themselves on the back about how “the media” got it wrong.
On balance, this isn’t true. What happened is that from the outset China-hawks who were largely out to defend Donald Trump made a series of baseless accusations about COVID either being a bioweapon or the accidental release of a Chinese biological warfare weapon. When that got shot down (there’s strong genomic evidence against this), they retreated to a more conventional lab accident as their pet theory. The best one can say is that most journalists became reflexively skeptical to all such claims since they were mainly coming from people who are professional liars with obvious axes to grind.
Where Things Stand: A Big Lie Weekend
A few prominent Republicans and Trump allies opted to celebrate one of America’s more patriotic federal holidays by hanging out with QAnon supporters and promoting the big lie.
