Prime
From TPM Reader NR …
Being angry with Manchin is like being angry with the spouse you love – eventually you are going to have to get over it. The quickest way resolve that anger is ensuring that you have really tried to understand where the other person/party is coming from – and that your position has been heard as well.
In general I don’t think I wholly agree with TPM Reader GT’s take here. This is likely right as a general matter. But what makes me very leery of underestimating Manchin is that he has managed to win three Senate elections (2010, 2012 and 2018) during a period when West Virginia has gone from being a very to an overwhelmingly Republican state in terms of national politics.
Here’s GT …
I like your point on Manchin’s position is simply confusing. Here is how I resolve that. I’ve been minorly active in my small state’s Democratic party. I’ve met state legislators and similar. And, not to be mean, but a lot of these people are simply not that talented. Being in small state politics is kind of the boobie prize for the provential elite. Your friends make all the money in real estate and other while you play student council in the state legislature where the majority leadership does everything.
Where Things Stand: The Drip Drip Of Proof
CNN exclusively obtained audio of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s messy conversation with Ukrainian officials, attempting to pressure the government to announce an investigation into Joe Biden.
It didn’t reveal much beyond confirming what we already knew and have known since the first impeachment — there was a quid pro quo.
Trump and Netanyahu and the Politics of Burn It All Down
From an American perspective the most interesting thing right now about the political crisis in Israel is how closely it maps to the one in the United States: a right wing political leader who simply refuses to accept losing office. Since we discussed this last Netanyahu and his supporters have continued the campaign of incitement against the right wing members of the incoming government. After the head of the country’s domestic security service issued an all but unprecedented warning about incitement and the risk of civil violence or assassinations, Netanyahu responded with even more incitement. In reply he made a perfunctory statement about incitement and then told his supporters to “let’em have it.” So, not really getting the message.
On the infrastructure front, TPM Reader MC thinks Manchin’s talk is mostly just talk, made to put himself at the center of the conversation and maximize his leverage when final negotiations get underway on an actual bill. I will add that this is broadly consistent with what I’ve heard from people close to the decision-making processes. And it’s always seemed to me like the most likely scenario. Still, hope is not a plan.
Your recent post is great, but to my mind misses something about Manchin’s possible decision process.
It’s been known for a long time that drafting the infrastructure legislation would take awhile. Back in early April, Pelosi said publicly that she hoped the text would be ready by July 4, with a vote in August. The timeline hasn’t been extended by Manchin’s hemming and hawing.
Where Things Stand: Willing Hostages With No Agenda
Former President Trump spoke at a GOP convention gathering in North Carolina over the weekend, where he not only gave his endorsement in the state’s crowded Republican primary for an open Senate seat, but also vowed to continue weighing in on races that will be crucial to the party’s midterm success.
The key ingredient to earning that coveted Trump endorsement, of course, remains fealty to the former president and his ongoing list of grievances.
Sometimes a writer will take a bundle of ideas that have been floating around in a lot of other peoples’ heads and commit them to paper with clarity and concision. If you are one of the other people in whose mind the ideas have been floating, seeing this happen can be both illuminating and annoying. But if someone else wrote them down before you did it likely wasn’t just a matter of speed. It was because you hadn’t done the work of taking the inchoate impressions and feelings that occupy all of our minds and whittling them down to concrete assertions and arguments that others can readily understand. We don’t really know what we think until we are able to commit it to the written word.
I got a decent amount of pushback on this rather pessimistic post I published Friday evening about the fate of the President’s legislative agenda – particularly for saying the White House was ‘adrift’. This is particularly about the President’s two big infrastructure bills. But it’s also about the President’s broader and quite ambitious legislative agenda – S1/H1 and a raft of other bills which would require some tweaking or squeezing of the filibuster because they can’t be passed through the 50 vote reconciliation process and they won’t get 60 votes.
First, it’s good to hear from you. If you’re involved in the process either at the White House or on the Hill or in the broader para-political process, please get in touch. Hit me at the main TPM email or my personal email and if you need a secure messaging option I can make that happen too.
On to the details.
How the Death of a 99 Year Old Arch-Segregationist Helps Explain The Trumpite GOP
John Patterson, former segregationist Governor of Alabama, died on Friday at the age of 99. In an interview with The Washington Post for what would later be his obituary, he said “Having a record of supporting segregation is a terrible burden to bear.” In 2008 he announced he’d be voting for Barack Obama for President, 50 years after his election as Governor.
Patterson is one of the last in a pretty long list of segregationist luminaries who later came to regret and recant their support for Jim Crow. We’re right to have limits on our patience for too much of these latter-day apologies. But Patterson’s story is instructive for understanding the current drive of radicalization within the Republican party.
All of these guys were segregationists to start with and all of them were racists, certainly by the standards of today and in pretty much every case by the standards of their own. But pretty few of them were the most racist and few got into politics with strong positions either way on segregation or the racial politics of their day.
I’ve mentioned a few times that Israel appears to be on course for a Jan 6th type moment. The possibility of that seems much more serious than when I first suggested it. The chance that Netanyahu and his supporters will be able to break free a few defectors from the new coalition government and prevent it from being sworn in seems perhaps to be diminishing. But the chance of violence of some sort or at least the expectation of it seems to be growing rapidly. The head of Israel’s domestic security service, the Shin Bet, just issued what seems to be an all but unprecedented warning that the climate of incitement threatens not only violence but a breakdown of the democratic order itself. The message seems clear aimed at Netanyahu without mentioning him by name.