March 11, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Biden Takes The Fight To The MAGA Republicans

We have to warn everyone up front here that this week's Friday Talking Points column is not going to follow the normal format. Most of it is actually going to review the speech that President Joe Biden gave yesterday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Biden went to Philly to introduce his annual budget proposal, which was publicly released just before he spoke.

Rather than do what many Democratic presidents do when faced with an unruly house of Congress run by the opposition -- which is to go into a defensive crouch and try to compromise on just how much the federal budget needs to be slashed -- Biden instead took the fight to the Republicans by showing America that if we would just tax the ultra-wealthy enough to pay their fair share, this country could accomplish all kinds of good things and reduce the deficit at the same time. That is surprisingly refreshing to see from a Democratic White House, we have to say!

But as we said, we've devoted much of the rest of this column to excerpting Biden's speech, so we'll just very briefly run down a few other things that happened in the political world first (in extremely abbreviated fashion, since the other parts are so lengthy).

The biggest story this week in the political/media world was the proof that Fox "News" is nothing more than lies and propaganda. It is entertainment that is solely focused on their bottom line. The sheer hypocrisy of both the people who run the company and their most popular entertainers is just staggering.

We simply aren't going to take the time to delve into everything that has been revealed by the lawsuit progressing against Fox by the Dominion voting-machine company, but we have to include a few choice moments from the week, starting with the most-quoted thing Tucker Carlson was caught texting in the period after the 2020 election: "We are very, very close to being able to ignore [Donald] Trump most nights. I truly can't wait. I hate him passionately." Also: "What [Trump is] good at is destroying things. He's the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong."

Of course, Tucker never got his wish, as Fox "News" continues to this day to spew lies just to please Donald Trump. Carlson spent all week trying to pull the wool over the entire country's eyes about how January 6th was nothing more than a tour group at the Capitol who got lost -- which is gaslighting on what can only be called a Trumpian level.

Also amusingly revealed this week was a bit of a self-own. Twenty years ago Carlson wrote a book where he said the following (to show his disdain for the ruling king of cable news at the time):

As many have pointed out, he could now write something awfully similar to describe himself. To promote his book, Carlson went on C-SPAN and went even further:



As if this weren't enough, this week Carlson actually opined on the subject of liars on his show -- once again without the slightest realization of what a self-own it truly was:



Takes one to know one, Tucker.

Anyway, for those of you who have somehow missed the whole fracas, here is a baker's dozen of links to articles detailing the woes over at Fox this week: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13].

In other news from the right side of the aisle, we have two examples which show precisely how much Republicans "stand up for children" -- in Missouri, the governor just signed a bill to loosen child labor laws, and in West Virginia Republicans voted down a bill which would have banned underage children from getting married. Nothing like those good old-fashioned "family values," eh folks?

Speaking of which, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell fell down and got a concussion this week. Both Democrats and Republicans wished him well. But a lawyer for Donald Trump decided cruel mockery was what was appropriate instead.

Speaking of Trump, we have two items for our regular check-in on Donald Trump's developing legal woes: a judge just ruled Peter Navarro will now have to turn over the emails he's been trying to hide, and Trump has now been "invited to testify" before a criminal grand jury in New York which has been investigating his hush-money payoff to Stormy Daniels. Legal experts are predicting that this is the final step before charges are actually brought against Trump, so we might have that to look forward to in the next few weeks or so.

And to wrap up with some good news, the Internal Revenue Service has bounced back in a rather amazing fashion from the enormous backlog of a few years ago (during the COVID times).



This, of course, is the money that the Republicans want to stop flowing to the agency. Because they just hate it when Democrats actually make government work well.





There were a few Democrats who earned Honorable Mention awards this week, before we get to the main award.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is taking the fight to Walgreens by cancelling a contract worth $54 million the state had with the company to provide medications to prisoners. This is in reaction to Walgreens buckling to pressure from Republican attorneys general over dispensing abortion medication, which has led to general calls to boycott the company. Other blue states may follow in Newsom's footsteps in the coming weeks, but once again Newsom is out front of the Democratic pack on a big issue.

Representative Jamie Raskin gave a heartfelt speech on how the Republicans' Big Lie now encompasses what happened on January 6th, and it is definitely worth watching (it's only two-and-a-half minutes long). Raskin tears into Republicans for refusing to state the difference between truth and lies. So an Honorable Mention goes out to both Raskin and Newsom this week.

When it became apparent that Joe Biden was going to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, we have to say we weren't exactly thrilled about it. We supported Bernie Sanders, personally, because we really wanted to see a party leader with a truly progressive agenda.

But we have to now admit, Joe Biden has proven to be one heck of a lot more progressive than we ever expected. And his newly-unveiled budget proposal just confirms that opinion.

Biden travelled to Pennsylvania to give a speech introducing his budget to the American people. And parts of the speech almost seemed like Bernie had ghost-written them for Biden to deliver. Here is Biden on the high cost of prescription drugs:



Biden pointed out that Republicans not only didn't vote for this plan, now they want to repeal it -- even though it would add billions to the deficit if they did.



Biden then told of hearing from a mother who shamefully admitted that she can't afford the insulin her two daughters need and that she has to "split it sometimes." Biden used this to highlight his budget proposal that would extend the $35-a-month cap on out-of-pocket insulin costs from just seniors on Medicare to everybody. And he put it in very personal terms:



Biden's budget expands affordable child care, preschool, Pell Grants, paid family leave, paid medical leave, elder care and home care. Democrats don't just proclaim they are for families, they back it up with actual policies to help families. Which Republicans are against. That's a pretty basic contrast to make. Biden hammers this point home again and again:



One part of his speech was a masterful redefinition of what the entire "defund the police" movement was actually about (as opposed to what its detractors claimed).



And finally, one last excerpt that also could have been written by Bernie Sanders:



President Joe Biden's budget proposal is a roadmap to his re-election campaign, quite obviously. He has tossed his budget down as a political challenge to the Republicans: "This is what I'm for -- what are you for?"

As we'll explore more in the Talking Points segment, Biden has the possibility of pulling off an impressive political feat: defining the Republicans for the 2024 election before they can get their act together to define themselves.

So for his very progressive budget, for a rather impressive speech, and for taking the fight to the Republicans early, Joe Biden is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate President Joe Biden on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





No Democrat of national stature truly disappointed us this week, so we're going to retire the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award back to the shelf until next week. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments, in case there's someone we missed, as always.




Volume 698 (3/10/23)

As mentioned, this is really "Part 2" of reviewing President Biden's recent speech. Because Biden was not just introducing his budget plans, he was rolling out the main themes of the 2024 election -- and not just for him, but for all Democrats. So we thought it was important enough for such a deep dive.

President Biden has a golden opportunity here, and he seems to know it. In fact, he's trying to exploit it for all it is worth. It's a basic tactic in politics -- define your opponents early, before they have a chance to define themselves.

Biden now has a budget which shows his whole agenda, with concrete numbers he can point to. The Republicans do not. And they're not going to have one any time soon, it seems. Because they cannot decide what they stand for and what they really want, at least outside of: "We want to annoy liberals." There are many competing factions (each with their own particular degree of extremism) within the House Republican caucus. They're going to have a tough time putting forth any budget proposal that all of them will actually vote for.

Which gives Biden a clear field to paint them with the broadest brush possible -- which he is already doing. So we thought instead of our normal talking points format we'd just run the best excerpts from his Philadelphia speech this week, to show how up until the GOP actually gets its act together, how easy it is to define them in the public's mind before they even get a chance to.

Biden begins by almost taunting Kevin McCarthy over the squabbling he's experiencing within his own ranks. A shorter version of this might be: "I've shown you my budget.... where's yours?" Here's how Biden actually put it:



While most of it is polite, that "tomorrow, if he has his budget" is indeed a bit of a taunt. Biden then moved on to the box he has so successfully put Republicans into on Social Security and Medicare. The Republican Party has -- for decades -- wanted to either cut or just eliminate both social safety net programs. Which Biden points out:



Biden only went halfway in his budget (to be fair), by proposing a fix to Medicare but failing to do so on Social Security. Nonetheless, his fix would work to make the program solvent -- something the Republicans are quite likely to utterly fail at doing.

Biden then returns to taunting mode:



Biden then moves on to how he's going to pay for his budget, which is actually a quite popular thing to propose:



Biden then once again defines his opponents before the fight even begins. He makes an excellent point -- he's fully willing to hold budget negotiations with the House Republicans, but he insists that this discussion happen without threatening the entire economy:



And finally, to drive it all home at the end, Biden taunts them directly. He's now made his budget public. Everyone can see what he wants to do. Until the Republicans do the same, any Democrat can define the Republican agenda in any way they wish. Until they admit to the American people what they actually want to do, we should all assume the absolute worst:



Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

March 4, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Some Bipartisanship Appears, For Better Or Worse

Apparently, there was a big murder trial down South that culminated this week, but we have to admit that since it wasn't an overtly political case, we just didn't pay much attention to it. Instead, as always, we had our nose to the grindstone of sifting through the week's political news so that you don't have to. In other words: Welcome to another installment of Friday Talking Points!

We're going to start this week with some good news. Not great news, mind you, but pretty good nonetheless. A spate of actual bipartisanship broke out in the Senate this week and with amazing speed (for Congress in general and for the Senate in particular) they came up with proposed legislation that might actually have a chance of passing. Well, passing the Senate at least, since nobody has any clue of what the GOP House will do these days.

The issue is rail safety. The disastrous derailment of a freight train in Ohio sparked off a political frenzy, with both sides trying to make as much political hay over the matter as humanly possible. Recovery and cleanup efforts continue, and the Biden administration is now reportedly exploring ways to get some economic relief to the town long before the company at fault would likely provide it. This is an interesting idea -- perhaps the government could make direct payments to people and businesses in the town and then recoup the money from the company later, when all the lawsuits and penalties are considered.

But another interesting development is how both Republicans and Democrats -- almost by accident (ok, pun intended, sorry...) -- found themselves on the same side of an issue. "Freight trains are unsafe" was the obvious takeaway from the disaster, or at the very least: "Freight trains could be a lot safer." Populists on both the right and left pointed fingers at not only the company involved but also at how the government regulates the freight rail industry in the first place. And, miracle of miracles, they actually decided to do something about it together. Here's the story:

That is all good news. As we said, it's not great news, because Democrats would have really preferred going a lot further, as the article also points out:



The House Democrats' bill would certainly have been better, but House Democrats can propose bills until they are blue in the face and Speaker Kevin McCarthy isn't going to bring any of them to the floor for a vote any time soon. We have to focus on what could actually be possible here. And with three Senate Republicans already on board with it (train pun also intended), the bipartisan measure looks like it'll have a chance of actually passing. And a bipartisan Senate bill will carry a lot more weight (see, we just can't help ourselves once we go down this track... as it were...) with McCarthy than anything Democrats propose on their own. So we have to commend both Ohio senators for putting their differences aside and actually trying to get something productive accomplished. True bipartisan efforts like this are rare as hen's teeth these days, so such developments are almost always worth celebrating.

There were two bits of other news that could be called "bipartisan" this week, but fewer Democrats are cheering either one of them on. There has been a bit of infighting in the District of Columbia's government over the concept of reforming their criminal code -- which hasn't been updated since 1901, apparently. The city council came up with a reform plan, but it was vetoed by the mayor. Her veto was overturned by the council, in a 12-1 vote. But since Washington D.C. is not a state, Congress always has the power to weigh in and make whatever changes they feel like to D.C.'s laws. Which they are in the process of doing, to overturn the new reform effort.

The issue is a contentious one, as are all police reform proposals these days. Republicans have successfully made lots of political hay over: "Crime rates are going up!" and have painted Democrats as somehow being pro-criminal and anti-police. The measure in question has been attacked as "lightening penalties for carjacking," for instance. So some Democrats -- including the mayor of D.C. -- balked at supporting the effort. When the bill in Congress to overturn it passed the House, more than two dozen Democrats voted for it. And now President Joe Biden has weighed in (while trying to carefully square the circle of also supporting the D.C. statehood effort):



This is going to give cover to Senate Democrats to vote for the bill, so that it won't be used against them later out on the campaign trail. It might even be seen, to use a phrase from Bill Clinton's time, as Biden's "Sister Souljah moment." While Republicans routinely use the power of Congress to tinker with D.C.'s government whenever they get the chance, this time the effort has to be seen as bipartisan.

The other development that can (much more marginally) be called bipartisan is not going to end with a presidential signature, however, but with Biden's first presidential veto. Using a loophole in the filibuster rules, the Senate voted to overturn a Biden administration rule that would allow retirement plan managers to consider "environmental, social, and corporate governance considerations" (which is shortened to just "E.S.G." ). The new Labor Department rule was meant to undo an earlier Trump rule that limited the practice. It's a complicated issue but it stems from Republicans: (1) hating anything they convince themselves to call "woke" these days, and (2) hating anything that would interfere with lots of money being invested in oil and coal companies.

Two Democrats voted with the Republicans to pass the bill in the Senate: Joe Manchin and John Tester of Montana. Both will face tough re-election races next year in red states (if Manchin even runs, that is -- he is being coy about that for the moment). But none of it will matter since Biden has sworn to veto the bill, and there is no way the Republicans are going to overturn his veto in either chamber of Congress.

So it's a mixed bag this week when it comes to "bipartisanship," although the new train safety measures are certainly the best of the lot.

In other big political news of the week, President Biden's plan to forgive either $10,000 or $20,000 of student loan debt went before the Supreme Court this week. Expert court-watchers all agreed that the only way Biden will win this fight is if the court decides to deny standing to the people and states suing. So far 16 million students who have applied for such debt relief have been approved, so this is obviously going to be an impactful decision later in the year.

House Republicans, as usual, had all kinds of idiocy on display this week, including:

A committee chair sending a letter to Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of the Department of Transportation, demanding documents from "DOT's National Transportation Safety Board." Buttigieg responded: "I am alarmed to learn that the Chair of the House Oversight Committee thinks that the NTSB is part of our Department. NTSB is independent (and with good reason)."

Matt Gaetz, in a committee hearing, asked a Pentagon official about a story Gaetz had read in some Chinese Communist Party propaganda, which he dutifully entered into the record. Here's the back-and-forth between the two:



However, some Republicans do, obviously.

Marjorie "Three-Names" Taylor Greene was a fount of idiocy this week as well, but that's not really saying anything new, is it? She tried to blame Joe Biden and his administration for two people's fentanyl overdose deaths -- even though the deaths happened while Donald Trump was president, in July of 2020. When a fact-checker from CNN called up her office to see whether she'd retract her statement (or at least delete her tweet about it), a spokesman answered back with: "Do you think they give a fuck about your bullshit fact-checking?" Charming.

One commenter on MSNBC noted that this was a recurring problem for the GOP:



Marjorie "Three-Names" also got some pushback from her own side of the aisle this week, after she tried to explain her seditious call for a "national divorce" between red states and blue by explaining: "We want our own safe space and we deserve it."

Problem was, "safe space" is a thing Republicans are supposed to mock Democrats for wanting. Ooops! While Democrats had the usual fun openly ridiculing her, some Republicans were (we can't help using another term they love to throw at Democrats) obviously triggered by her words. What snowflakes!

The House Tinfoil Hat Committee continues to beclown itself, along with a few other Republican-led committees, in conducting their hearings into all kinds of conspiracy theories. Which includes testimony from rampant conspiracy theorists, naturally. Representative Jamie Raskin this week had a good summary of this effort that deserves a mention for its succinct nature: "Weaponization of the government is not their target -- weaponization of the government is their purpose." Couldn't have said it any better ourselves!

And we'll end with the weekly roundup of Trumpian follies. The Department of Justice issued a long-awaited legal opinion that clearly stated that Donald Trump could indeed be sued by cops and members of Congress for inciting the insurrectionist mob on January 6th, writing:



It was also revealed this week just how thin Donald Trump's skin truly is:



Kimmel, of course, wasted no time in firing back in one of his show's monologues.

And an amusing Trumpian note to close on. Those around him have apparently convinced Trump that this time around he's got to actually have some policy proposals to run for president on, and that effort is going about as well as you'd expect. They've been slowly rolling these out in videos where Trump explains his new agenda, and this week it seems that Trump was inspired by watching old re-runs of The Jetsons. He wants 10 brand-new futuristic "Freedom Cities" to be built from the ground up on federal land, and he also thinks the people who will live there should get around via their flying cars. There has been no word yet on whether a second Trump administration will invest heavily in robot maids, as of this writing at any rate.





We know the bill could have been better. But if it was, it likely wouldn't even have a chance in the Senate. So we're going to cheerfully award Senator Sherrod Brown this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week for doing what his newly-minted GOP counterpart would allow and actually getting something done in the short window after a disaster when productive legislation is even possible. Waiting would have killed the opportunity for doing anything, and the law can always be revisited and strengthened later, if necessary.

For joining with a Republican and exhibiting more concern for his own citizens than for partisan politics, Sherrod Brown is easily the winner of this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. In a divided Congress, it becomes essential to not let the perfect stand in the way of the good.

[Congratulate Senator Sherrod Brown on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





The head of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, is being further exposed for his virulent anti-Union misdeeds with his coffee company, but we decided that since he took a pass on running for president we will also take a pass on classifying him as a Democratic politician, and thus ineligible for these awards.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot disappointed some folks this week as she became the first Chicago mayor in a long time who will be limited to a single term by the voters. The election will go to a runoff, but Lightfoot didn't make the cut.

Some Democrats were seriously disappointed with Joe Biden's stance on the D.C. criminal code reform, but as we already said the fact that the city's mayor is also on the side of going back to the drawing board certainly gives him political cover.

Instead, we have an obvious choice for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week. Here's the story:



Seriously? He "doesn't believe" in the separation of church and state? That is just stunning, from a Democrat. To be clear, we don't care what religious beliefs any politician has (or doesn't have), but we want all of them to have a strong commitment and respect for the idea that they shouldn't impose them on their own constituents in any way.

Which is why the MDDOTW award is such an easy call, this week. We'd suggest Adams go read what Thomas Jefferson thought about such matters, because he obviously missed that part in school.

[Contact New York City Mayor Eric Adams on his official contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 697 (3/3/23)

We have to begin here by wishing Senator Dianne Feinstein a speedy recovery, after it was announced she is in the hospital with a case of shingles. We sincerely hope she gets well soon, since while we have not personally experienced this horror, we have talked to others who have had it and heard it described as "the worst pain I ever felt." In other words, something you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. And no, while we do politically disagree with DiFi on occasion here, we certainly wouldn't classify her as that, just to be crystal-clear.

The first segment of this week's talking points have a theme to them. Because Joe Biden is apparently itching for a political fight. At least, that's what it sounds like these days. He spoke at a gathering of congressional Democrats this week and urged them all to go out and run on what he and Congress managed to get done already, and he is already going on the offensive over the budget and debt ceiling showdown.

These are both important things for both Biden and the rest of the Democrats to start doing, as much as possible. The budget is a particularly rich field of political opportunities for Democrats, since Republicans (so far) cannot even agree among themselves what particular hostage they're going to take, when they threaten to allow the federal government to default later this year. Oh, sure, it's easy for GOP politicians to posture on the debt ceiling and decry deficits and all of that, but when the rubber meets the road they're going to have to let the American people know precisely what this is going to mean. And Biden is already exploiting their division and lack of specifics.

Biden is on the brink of releasing his budget plan to Congress. This is an annual event where the White House sends over its proposal, and then Congress does whatever they feel like doing (presidential budget plans are never just passed intact, it bears mentioning, even when the president's party fully controls Congress). But since the Republicans have indicated that they're spoiling for a big showdown over the budget with the debt ceiling fight, Biden can then challenge them (as he already did this week) to release their own budget plan, so the American people can compare the two proposals. Biden's calling on Kevin McCarthy to release the GOP budget proposal on the same day the White House does.

This, to be blunt, is just not going to happen. Republicans are nowhere near ready to do so. In the first place, they can't agree on what spending to slash -- although Biden's masterful trolling of them in his State Of The Union now seems to have at least put Medicare and Social Security off the table. With that victory already in place, it becomes a whole lot tougher to find cuts elsewhere in the federal budget, which is precisely the problem Republicans are now struggling with.

What this all means is that Biden can define the GOP budget before it appears. Since they won't admit what they're planning on doing, it's certainly fair game to point out the things that they have stood for in the past and assuming they'll be attempting to do the same things again this time around. Biden will attempt to beat the GOP's "nothing" with his own "something."

It's a good political strategy, which is why Biden is urging other Democrats to adopt it. So we're going to devote our first four talking points this week to offering up how we'd go about crafting such a strategy.



Define your opponents early

Biden did so well on this front with the State Of The Union speech that it's an obvious place to start.

"Democrats have been working hard for decades to improve the healthcare system for as many Americans as possible. Republicans are more interested in playing politics with people's lives. Joe Biden's budget expands healthcare access. Republicans are going to cut healthcare for as many people as they think they can get away with. Biden already got Republicans to loudly agree to keep Medicare funding intact, so Republicans are now eyeing Medicaid for crippling cuts. Biden has expanded access to Affordable Care Act policies, but Republicans want to make sure everyone on one pays more for it -- a lot more. As Biden just said in Virginia Beach, 'MAGA Republicans are trying to take away people's healthcare.' Because that's what they've always tried to do."



Rural hospitals will close

Take the fight right to their voting base!

"Republicans in some states still refuse to expand Medicaid to cover more of their poorest citizens. They still hate 'Obamacare' so much that they refuse to admit that things are working out much better in the states that have adopted the Medicaid expansion. And it's becoming more and more of a crisis in the areas that are actually heavily Republican. Rural hospitals in the states without Medicaid expansion -- lots and lots of them -- have either closed their doors or will be forced to soon. And a whopping three-fourths of such closures have happened in states which have refused to expand Medicaid. If a hospital in a big city shuts down, it's an inconvenience to the people who live there -- but it doesn't mean they still won't have another hospital to go to in an emergency. But in rural areas that's just not true. When the local hospital shuts its doors there is no other option for the people who live there. The only other option is to drive -- sometimes for hours to get to the next-nearest hospital. Republicans are forcing their own base voters into dangerous 'healthcare deserts' by their stubborn refusal to join a program that is working in four-fifths of the states already. Because they just don't care, they'd rather be ideologically pure than keep rural hospitals open."



$35 a month for insulin

Since this is the poster child item, use it!

"Joe Biden tried to make insulin available to every patient who needs it without forcing them to break the bank to buy this life-saving medicine. He proposed a $35-a-month cap on out-of-pocket insulin prices, but so far has only achieved this goal for seniors. But now one of the biggest pharmaceutical corporations -- Eli Lilly -- has announced that it will now be dropping its prices on insulin by a whopping 70 percent. This is the power of the federal government to rein in out-of-control drug companies, folks. Eli Lilly could see the writing on the wall and knew that its days of extortionate prices that just ripped American consumers off was coming to an end one way or another. So they decided to get out in front of it. Democrats have also managed to allow Medicare to -- for the first time! -- negotiate with the drug companies to get other outrageously-priced prescription drugs down to Earth. This saves the government lots of money but the Republicans want to overturn it anyway. Don't believe them when they say how concerned about the budget they are because when it comes to lowering the deficit versus allowing Big Pharma to keep ripping people off, they've already shown which side they're really on."



Show me yours!

This should be the overall challenge to the Republicans, to point out their inability to agree on much of anything.

"Joe Biden will soon be releasing his budget proposal. When will House Republicans -- or any Republicans for that matter -- be releasing theirs? What will they be fighting hard to do? What federal services are they going to slash to the bone or even try to eliminate? The American people deserve a real debate, but they're not going to get one while Republicans keep refusing to put their own cards on the table. It's time to put up or shut up, folks. Joe Biden will make his spending priorities clear. Until the Republicans do the same, no one should listen to any of their complaints at all. Because the general rule of thumb when it comes to budgets is when politicians don't want to talk about their proposals, it's going to wind up being really, really bad for a whole lot of people out there."



96 percent of extremist murders

This needs pointing out in a big way.

"Most Americans have no clear picture of political extremism in America, and that probably includes most law enforcement professionals as well. There's a reason, to put this another way, that the police and the F.B.I. refused to take the threat of right-wing violence on January 6th as seriously as was necessary. A lot of people seem to think that both sides of the political divide are somehow equally guilty of deadly political violence, but this is far from being true. Over the past decade, here is the true divide: of the incidents where political extremists killed someone, a whopping 96 percent of them were committed by violent right-wing extremists. Of the murders committed by right- and left-wing extremists, a similar 95 percent of them came from the right. In the past five years, there have been precisely three deaths linked to left-wing extremists. During the same period there were 176 murders caused by right-wing extremists. The scope of the problem is clear, and it is nowhere near 'both sides do it equally.' The real threat is coming almost exclusively from one direction. More people should be aware of this."



Not necessary? Really?

More rights Republicans think need to be taken away.

"Remember when the Respect For Marriage Act passed to codify gay marriage into federal law? Remember how there were a whole bunch of Republicans who swore up and down that it just simply was not necessary -- because no state would ever even consider outlawing gay marriages anymore? Well, it turns out it was actually necessary because, yeah, Republicans are still trying to strip rights from people in a big way. Iowa Republicans are now trying to change their state constitution to ban gay people from getting married. Here's their proposed text, which is pretty plain: 'In accordance with the laws of nature and nature's God, the state of Iowa recognizes the definition of marriage to be the solemnized union between one human biological male and one human biological female.' So it looks like abortion's not the only human right that Republicans have their sights set on, folks. And please take with a large grain of salt any Republican who tells you otherwise when Democrats try to protect such rights for all Americans everywhere."



What a drag

Of course, most Republicans have moved on, even the total hypocrites among them.

"The big Republican boogeyman now, however, is not gay marriage but rather drag shows. Look for a whole bunch of fearmongering over the issue in the next few years, as Republicans run exactly the same playbook that used to work so well for them in scaremongering the voters over gay people. But this week, interestingly enough, two Republicans were exposed for being gigantic hypocrites over the issue. Tennessee's governor just got a bill to sign from his state's legislature which would make it illegal for any minor to see any public performance in drag. Funny thing, though, Bill Lee was photographed for his high school yearbook in drag -- wearing a short skirt and sweater. Which, being in the yearbook and all, was seen by all the minors at his high school. Which didn't seem to be any sort of problem for him back then. And he's not the only blatant hypocrite either -- a Texas state lawmaker who authored a similar bill appeared in a school video playfully running around outside in a dress as well. So it was OK for them to appear in drag in front of children back then, but suddenly now it's the biggest boogeyman imaginable? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it?"




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

February 25, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Off The Rails

Trains were at the heart of the political scene this week. Internationally, President Joe Biden took a 10-hour train ride to get to Kyiv in person (which he must have thoroughly enjoyed, knowing his general love of trains). Domestically, the trainwreck in Ohio became sidetracked into a political circus.

Biden's surprise appearance in Ukraine had an enormous effect on the goodwill and fighting spirit of the Ukrainians, from all reports. An American president visiting a war zone at great personal risk resonated with the populace, and Biden once again reaffirmed American support for the brave resolve the Ukrainians have felt for one year and counting. The anniversary of the start of the war was precisely the time to make such a journey, and Biden followed it up with a very fiery speech in Poland reminding Vladimir Putin once again of what a colossal mistake he made with his decision to invade. America is on track (sorry, had to throw in a train metaphor) in fighting Russian aggression with the Ukrainians.

Down in East Palestine, Ohio, things went completely off the rails... again. They started with a tragic industrial accident. Then they got a whole bunch of indifference, from both high-ranking government officials and from the mainstream media. Then Republicans sensed an opening and spewed an inundation of politics all over the disaster. This quickly led to a media circus descending on the small town and now they've become no more than a photo op for both sides. It's hard not to feel sorry for the inhabitants of this town, in other words, because they didn't ask for any of this to happen.

One thing that hasn't been said enough is that it's also easy to understand where they are coming from. Toxic fumes literally exploded all over their town and now they're being told everything is fine and the air and water are safe -- despite still getting sick or being able to smell all the toxic residue. But few in the media have picked up how a lot of average people process this all, because what we personally would be thinking if we lived in this town is:

"The federal government doesn't have a whole lot of credibility when it comes to assuring people everything is safe -- after 9/11, they told New Yorkers the air was safe right after the buildings collapsed, and look at what the first responders went through as a result -- and then the military seemed to think the toxic burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq were no problem, but the soldiers soon found out otherwise. So you'll forgive my healthy skepticism when I hear the feds saying everything is peachy when everyone I talk to here still has headaches or rashes or chest pain or worse."

As we said, that's a pretty easy conclusion to come to, but for some reason nobody seems to be picking up on this particular aspect of the problem -- the distrust over the federal government's track record (to throw just one more train metaphor into the mix).

We are choosing to focus on the good that might come out of this man-made disaster. The Republicans are figuring out that they have painted themselves into a corner on this one. They sensed political weakness in the Biden administration, so they started trying to blame it all on Democratic policies somehow. But the reality of the situation (which the White House and plenty of other Democrats were quick to point out) is that the Republicans have fought hard to either outright remove or water down any train safety regulations for years and years. Donald Trump was part of this "deregulation" effort, and he was actually proud to chuck out safety rules for trains and hazardous materials.

Which Trump lied about, during his own self-serving visit to the town. He flew in with some bottled water (with his name on it, naturally) and did what he does best: disavowing any responsibility for the things he did. When asked about all the safety regulations his administration rolled back, Trump just flat-out lied: "I had nothing to do with it."

Which more than one media organization conclusively proved is just laughably false. In fact, Trump's visit actually served to focus everyone's attention on which side of the political aisle bore more responsibility for lax rail safety rules:

Of course, there is blame enough to go around on the subject. Biden's administration hasn't done nearly enough and not nearly fast enough on rail safety. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has been in his job for over two years and is just now getting around to making this a priority. And he was awfully slow to respond to any of it as well -- even with just a few public words of empathy for the people affected. But this wasn't just his fault, it was also the national political media dropping the ball:



He was even on more than one Sunday morning political show the weekend after the accident, and he wasn't asked about it even once. But then again, neither did he bring it up himself.

But as we said, perhaps something good will come of all this. Buttigieg has newly dedicated himself to tightening up those safety rules and is publicly shaming both the freight rail companies and Republicans into now publicly supporting such efforts. He is striking while the political iron is hot and so far it looks like he might even succeed in making trains much safer for all Americans. There's no guarantee he can achieve this, but there is a political moment where bipartisan cooperation might actually be possible on the issue.

What would help, of course, is if the circus left town. The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (who is in charge of investigating the accident) expressed her frustration this week: "Enough with the politics on this. I don't understand why this has gotten so political. This is a community that is suffering. This is not about politics."

The people of the town largely feel the same, because they know they are being used as political pawns, and they resent it from both sides. Here are some quotes from people who live in East Palestine which show their exasperation:



Trains aside, there were a few other notable political events this week. Former President Jimmy Carter has entered a hospice and the political media is now on a sort of deathwatch, waiting for the end. We wrote in honor of Carter this Presidents' Day, in case anyone's interested.

In other presidential news, we have one new official entrant in the 2024 race and one unofficial one that is dropping big hints, but neither one of them is going to ever get anywhere near the Oval Office. On the Republican side, Vivek Ramaswamy tossed his hat in the ring. On the Democratic side, Marianne Williamson broadly hinted she's about to do the same. The almost-universal reaction from voters on both sides of the political aisle was, appropriately: "Who?"

In non-trivial election news, Senator Jon Tester of Montana announced he will be running for another term, and Representative Barbara Lee joined the race in California for Senator Dianne Feinstein's seat.

Donald Trump got some more bad news on the legal front this week, as the foreperson of the special grand jury in Georgia danced around what she quite obviously wanted to tell the world -- that Trump was almost certainly at the top of their list of recommended indictments. The only question really left, at this point, is when this will be announced.

In another case, brought by former F.B.I. employees Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, a federal judge ruled that Trump will indeed have to sit for a deposition under oath and answer questions. Page and Strzok are suing because they were targeted by Trump and his F.B.I. director for retaliation back in the Russia investigation. So there's that for him to look forward to as well.

The non-legal news for Trump wasn't very rosy either this week, as new polls showed that Ron DeSantis is now leading Trump. When a long list of possible candidates was read to Republican voters, they picked DeSantis over Trump by 40 percent to 31 percent. When it was just presented as a head-to-head race, the news got even worse as DeSantis beat Trump by a whopping 55-37 percent. The head of the polling outfit explained this very simply: "Our poll found that while Republican primary voters want a candidate who's a fighter and will take on the status quo, they also want one who can win a general election in 2024." A separate Washington Post article took a deep dive into what previous Trump voters are thinking and they came to the same conclusion: Republican voters are more and more beginning to see Trump as nothing more than a big loser, period.

Which seems to be a very cheerful place to end this week's political wrap-up, don't you think?





She's not officially a Democrat, since judges in Wisconsin must be non-partisan, but if she was, Janet Protasiewicz would definitely be in the running for this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

Wisconsin held a primary on Tuesday for a seat on their state supreme court. Two liberals ran against two conservatives. Janet Protasiewicz got more votes than both conservatives combined. The liberal/conservative vote split 54 percent to 46 percent (we wrote about this contest earlier in the week at more length), and turnout was high for such a primary election. If liberals win this seat it could mean guaranteeing women's rights in the state and jettisoning a severely gerrymandered map that the Republicans drew up. So the consequences will be pretty big. And it looks like Protasiewicz has an excellent chance of doing just that, which is good news indeed. And (icing on the cake) it wasn't even the only off-year election Democrats did well in recently.

Senator Bernie Sanders gets at least an Honorable Mention this week, for striking while the political iron is hot on the idea of boosting Social Security. Sanders met with President Biden and pitched the idea of at least partially scrapping the cap on the payroll tax which funds the program -- which would make the whole thing solvent for the next 75 years without reducing benefits one dime. Bernie even wants to increase benefits. After Biden's coup at the State Of The Union, where he got almost all Republicans vocally on board with protecting Social Security from the budget hawks, a window might just have opened to pass some bipartisan legislation. Hey, you never know until you try, right? Which is precisely what Bernie just did, for which he should be commended.

But the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week was clearly President Joe Biden, for his unexpected visit to Kyiv. What United States president has ever visited one side of an active war zone that American soldiers are not engaged in? We're not sure if anyone else has ever done so, and we certainly can't think of a single example.

Biden's visit was much-appreciated by the president of Ukraine and by all the Ukrainian soldiers and people. They've had a long cold winter and what is right around the corner is what promises to be a very bloody spring offensive for both sides of the war, so an American president marking the one-year anniversary of the start of the invasion was certainly an impressive sight.

Biden followed up his visit with a speech in Poland that mostly failed to break through the American media's boredom with foreign affairs, but was well-received and applauded in Europe. Biden, unlike our last president, actually stands up to Vladimir Putin, and by doing so has gained the respect of the entire free world.

Once again, Joe Biden is showing real American leadership on the world's stage. Back at home, the White House could actually be making progress on another issue from Biden's State Of The Union address, as even some Republicans are getting on board the effort to rein in the "junk fees" so many corporations use to pad their bottom line. United Airlines is the first to read the tea leaves and announce they are now dropping fees they have been charging to families to be allowed to sit together on an airplane ride, which is just an abhorrent and indefensible concept to begin with. So Biden could actually wind up making a lot of progress on these issues, since (as he noted in his speech) everybody hates getting ripped off. Polls show fighting junk fees is supported by between 75 and 79 percent of the public, in fact.

Few people noticed it and few media companies devoted much coverage to it, but Joe Biden had another really good week. For which we are pleased to award him another of our own Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week awards.

[Congratulate President Joe Biden on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





We read a deep-dive article this week that was pretty stunning. In last year's midterm elections, there was one state where Democrats did not do as well as their counterparts elsewhere, and we wound up with a Republican House with George Santos in it as a result. It appears there is a big reason for this, and that big reason is "the New York State Democratic Party organization." Because this organization is not just woefully small, but it seems focused more on fighting progressive Democrats than on beating Republicans. So it's no wonder we lost a handful of what should have been very winnable House seats there.

Here is the whole sordid story (sorry for the length of the excerpt, but we just had so many jaw-dropping moments when reading it...), from the New York Times:



Those last lines are pretty damning: "...more than one man and a few aides conducting political business from a summer-camp office... George Santos would never have been sworn in as a Congressman."

New York's progressive and corporatist Democrats have been in a civil war for years. But no matter which side of that ideological divide New York Democratic voters might find themselves on, you'd think the idea that they deserve better from their state's Democratic Party organization would be universal.

For general incompetence and for the sheer amateur nature of it all, we have to give Jay Jacobs this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. And hope that New York Democrats can start rebuilding a more robust party apparatus in the near future.

[Contact New York State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs on his official contact page (which may lead to his summer camp, who knows?), to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 696 (2/24/23)

Happy Mardi Gras week, happy Presidents' Day, happy February everyone! Here are our talking points for the celebratory week that was....



This is what it means

This first one makes a conceptual point that needs making.

"Republicans back to Ronald Reagan have long worshipped at the altar of 'deregulation,' because they believe that regulating business is a bad thing. But stop and think for a moment -- every regulation was put in place to either solve a problem or reduce risk or promote safety. That's why regulations are created. Sometimes these cost businesses money to implement, which they hate, so they fight against regulations as hard as they can. But the train accident in Ohio shows us all what getting rid of regulations or watering them down actually means. The risks go up. Disasters have a higher chance of happening. That -- deregulation -- is what Republicans have long fought for: the right of corporations to save a few pennies by putting Americans at higher risk of massive disasters."



Fox, meet henhouse

This is a much deeper problem, of course.

"You know what else this disaster points out? How short-sighted it is to allow industries to essentially write their own regulations. They tell the politicians exactly what to enact so they can run higher risks and make a few extra bucks, and the politicians do exactly as they are told. We saw the same sort of thing with the airplanes that were dropping out of the skies -- when you put the corporate fox in charge of the regulatory henhouse, bad things happen."



So we're all agreed now, right?

This next one is from Secretary Buttigieg, calling out the hypocrisy of Republicans crying crocodile tears over rail safety lapses. As we've already mentioned, the GOP really painted itself into a corner over this and now has no logical way of opposing tightening these regulations. So Buttigieg is actually happy to have them on board, as he says:





Call it by its real name

Seriously, everyone needs to just stop.

"The organization that calls itself 'Fox News' simply has no right to use that second word. This is not a news organization, as their internal emails have baldly revealed. They care only about their bottom line, and if it is ever threatened by actual truth, they react by trying to ignore or bury that truth under a mountain of falsehood. They are much more interested in keeping their viewers happy in whatever delusions those viewers have -- delusions Fox has fed them over a long period of time. This may cost them dearly in court, since it is a smoking gun in the defamation case from the companies who make voting machines and equipment. But before that even happens, the emails make it crystal clear that the rest of us should never use the word 'news' to describe what is nothing more than straight-up propaganda."



More Republicans ignoring reality

Not that this is going to surprise anyone, really, but the Washington Post just dug out a rather amazing refusal of a Republican officeholder to face reality or admit it to the public.

"After the 2020 presidential election, Arizona became a hotbed of conspiracy theories. These were fed by high-ranking Republican officials, although to be fair it was contradicted by other Republican officeholders who ensured that the state's elections were conducted correctly. But now it comes out that the state's attorney general, Mark Brnovich, launched an investigation into the election which consumed more than 10,000 hours of his staff's time. You know what the report they compiled concluded? That there was no widespread fraud at all. That there was no evidence to back any of the conspiracy theories up. And so you know what Brnovich did with this report? He refused to release it. He sat on it. Because he didn't want Arizona's voters to know the truth -- that the election had been fair and well-run. This seems to be the new normal with a lot of Republicans these days -- if you don't like whatever the truth has to say, just conveniently ignore it."



Loser!

The Post also had a very deep dive into the MAGA electorate in multiple states, just to check their pulse about the 2024 presidential contest.

"It seems more and more Republican voters -- even lots and lots of them who voted for Trump twice -- are coming to the conclusion that Trump is just a sad loser. It's not that they don't like Trump or don't support Trump anymore -- they like him just fine -- but they're getting tired of Trump losing so many elections for the party. They're taking a look at all the other Republicans who either are running or might run for the party's presidential nomination next year, and they're concluding their chances for victory will be a lot higher if Trump's name is nowhere near the ballot next November. Trump's biggest fear is coming true from his own base supporters, because they have begun to see Donald Trump for precisely what he is -- a gigantic loser."



Liz still feisty

This week, for Presidents' Day (you can't make this stuff up, folks), Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted out a not-very-patriotic thought: the country needs "a national divorce," where red states and blue states could separate and form their own countries. Which, obviously, was tried once before and didn't exactly end well. But it was Liz Cheney who ripped into this idea the best, so here's her clapback at M.T.G. to end on:






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

February 18, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Republican Woes

We have to begin today with a look at the woes of the Republican Party. Because, when you think about it, why not?

The most amusing news (speaking from across the political aisle) all has to do with the Republican Party trying to come to grips with another presidential nominating process with Donald Trump as the 800-pound elephant in the room. Most of the party establishment would dearly love to see literally anyone else win the nomination than Trump, but they also fear the prospect of Trump going rogue if he doesn't win and launching his own third-party bid.

So the bigwigs and the deep-pocket GOP donors are all planning their strategy, which aims to learn the lessons from 2016, when Trump won the nomination mostly by getting only around one-third of the votes in each state's primary. While GOP voters rejected Trump by a 2-to-1 margin, the "2" in that equation was splintered between over a dozen other contenders. So this time around, the bigwigs and the big-money types are going to try to strongarm whichever candidates they wind up endorsing into agreeing to drop out early if they don't catch fire. The only problem with this wonderful scheme is what will happen if different groups of bigwigs and donors settle on different "not-Trump" candidates? If there are three or four of them who are backed by tens of millions of dollars, are the people who invested so much money in them really going to say to themselves: "Well, we spent a lot, but he's not going to win, so let's just pull the plug and start backing another candidate"? This remains to be seen.

It's not just the money, either. The Republican National Committee is currently engaging in talks with news organizations interested in hosting GOP candidate debates later this year. They are reportedly open to making a few changes in their rules, including the possibility of adopting reforms that Democrats found helpful when confronted with a large roster of candidates -- such as requiring "candidates to prove they have a certain number of grass-roots donors and meet a threshold of polling support to get on the stage."

But the biggest sticking point may be the loyalty oath. As they did in the 2016 election cycle, Republicans are likely going to demand that any candidate who participates in their official debates has to sign a pledge to eventually support the Republican presidential nominee, no matter who that turns out to be.

In 2016, this rule was pointed directly at Trump. Previously, the question hadn't really even been an issue -- of course all the Republicans would eventually support the GOP nominee. But Trump didn't seem inclined to agree. He gave a "depends on who it is" answer, when asked the question during his campaign. Eventually the R.N.C. did get Trump to sign such a pledge, but everyone by that point knew it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on -- Trump was going to do whatever Trump was going to do, no matter what he was now saying. And this time around, he's being just as coy. He recently gave the same answer in an interview with a conservative host: "It would depend on who the nominee was."

But this time the problem has an additional complication -- other Republicans who are loath to pledge to eventually support Trump, if he wins the nomination. So-called "Never-Trump Republicans" are pretty adamant about Trump's unfitness for office (to put it mildly). Some of them took this stance very early on -- way back in the 2016 campaign; some were initially Never-Trumpers only to kiss up to him after he won (which sometimes resulted in being hired by Trump, as Nikki Haley was); and some of them only recently converted to Never-Trumpism after the events of January 6th. But it is pretty morally impossible to say: "Donald Trump would be dangerous if he became president again," and then turn around a sign a pledge to support him if he wins the primaries. Some are saying this out loud -- ex-governor of Maryland Larry Hogan recently tweeted he "won't commit to supporting" Trump. Some, like ex-governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson, are already attacking the concept of a loyalty oath:

This leaves the R.N.C. in a quandary. It's easy to see why they want such a pledge from all the candidates, but it's also easy to see that any of these candidates could sign such a (non-binding) pledge and then later tear it up and refuse to support Trump. The choice for a Republican candidate might come down to: lie (and sign your name to it) -- or be barred from the debate stage for telling the truth. Which sounds about right, for the morals of the Republican Party in Trumpian times, when you stop and think about it.

The R.N.C. chair is pretty adamant, though:



Which completely ignores the problem such a pledge was initially designed to solve: Trump not being the nominee and walking away to form his own party. As we said, it's a double-edged conundrum for the R.N.C.

In the one place in elected government where Republicans do currently have control, it seems another "Republicans In Disarray" headline is warranted. The New York Times took a look at how things are going for the Republican House:



In other House GOP news, Matt Gaetz is apparently not going to be charged with having sex with an underage girl or sex trafficking, and he recently opened a committee meeting by inviting an accused murderer to lead them all in the "Pledge Of Allegiance." About par for the course, for Gaetz. Nothing like those good old-fashioned Republican family values, folks! Also, George Santos might not be the only serial fabulist in Republican ranks, as Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee apparently also constructed his résumé out of whole cloth. And the GOP "Tinfoil Hat Committee" continues to be a particularly wet firecracker.

The big news in Republicanland this week was Nikki Haley's official announcement that she is running against Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination. But we've got some snarky things to say about that down in the talking points, so we merely mention it in passing here.

Over in Trumpworld, the legal news continues to be grim and unrelenting. Trump's lawyers sheepishly turned in another folder with classified markings on it as well as an aide's laptop which had some classified documents on it, just for starters.

The special counsel looking into all of Trump's possible crimes seems to be moving full speed ahead, and is now trying to convince a judge that Trump's lawyers shouldn't be able to hide being "attorney-client privilege" when what was being discussed was how to commit crimes. Trump's lawyers now need lawyers of their own, it seems.

Mike Pence has also been subpoenaed to tell what he knows about such criminal activity, but he's trying to hide behind a different legal claim, so he won't be testifying any time soon to the special counsel as the whole thing works its way through the judicial system. Meanwhile a group of Proud Boys on trial for sedition relating to January 6th are trying to subpoena Trump, but legal experts don't expect this gambit to work.

It was revealed that Trump hired some experts back in December of 2020 to look into all the claims of election fraud and whatnot -- and when they reported back to him that there simply was no fraud on any sort of magnitude that would change any of the election's results, Trump promptly ignored these conclusions.

And the icing on the legal-woes cake for Trump this week was a partial release of the special grand jury report in Georgia, which indicated: (1) that they also had found precisely zero widespread election fraud, and also that: (2) "A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it. The grand jury recommends that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling." Most of the grand jury report was redacted, though, indicating that the grand jury called for other indictments as well which are now being followed up.

Trump, rather delusionally, insisted that since his name was not mentioned in the small segment of the grand jury report that was publically released, that somehow that translated into "total exoneration" for him. He even thanked the grand jury for their "Patriotism & Courage." Seems a little premature, no? We're betting that when the full grand jury report is released, Trump will be singing a completely different tune....

What else? Fox News has now been exposed as the propaganda and money-making machine it truly is, as the case against it by one of the manufacturers of voting machines revealed this week. The executives and even the fire-breathing commentators there knew full well that all of Trump's noise about election fraud was complete and utter moosepoop, but they took a look at their bottom line, shrugged, and aired all of Trump's delusional conspiracy theories anyway. They're getting sued for over a billion dollars, did we mention that?

And we'll end on a few high notes before we get to the awards section. First, America's skies are now completely balloon-free! Or maybe not, it's hard to tell. The White House did inform us that it was definitely not aliens, however, and President Biden finally addressed the nation on the subject and promised some new protocols for handling future incidents. We must admit we have tended to tune some of this news out because it really feels like a political "silly season" story at this juncture....

President Joe Biden got a clean bill of health in his annual physical, which was good to hear.

There's one committee in Washington that was actually incredibly productive in the last Congress, and shockingly enough it was a bipartisan success story. Even more shocking was the committee's name -- the "Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress." Their job was to make recommendations for how the House can actually work better and they were apparently astoundingly successful at it. It's a feel-good government story, in case you need to read one.

But the best feel-good story of the week came from Representative Jamie Raskin, who has been undergoing chemotherapy and is losing his hair as a result. So he's taken to wearing bandannas. And not just any bandannas, these days:



Raskin also had some fanboy things to say about the gifts: "Whoever is making his scarves is like the Michelangelo of bandannas. They are really in a class of their own. These are a work of art."

As promised -- we told you that was a great feel-good story!





We have one Honorable Mention to hand out this week, to Senator Dianne Feinstein, for announcing she will not be running for re-election in 2024. We wrote about this announcement on the day it happened, where we tried to be fair by highlighting both the things she stood for that we agreed with as well as the things we didn't. This one's personal, since DiFi is our own senator, and has long been featured in both (again, to be fair) of our awards segments here.

But this week the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week is none other than Senator Bernie Sanders, who sensed an opportunity to go on the offensive and took it and ran with it.

What with all the political dustup over supporting Social Security and Medicare this week, Bernie essentially told the Republicans: "Oh, so you now say you support these programs? Then prove it!" Here's how he threw down this gauntlet:



That is what it means to support the safety net! And we're not exactly holding our breath awaiting the surge of support for the plan from the Republican side of the aisle, if you know what we mean.

For good measure, Sanders also tossed out another excellent idea:



We even stumbled across a classic "Bernie being Bernie" quip from the past week. If this wasn't perfect enough for Saturday Night Live and other late-night comedy writers, the subheading of the article also helpfully points out that Sanders "ordered soup" during the meal:



Must be a nefarious plot by the billionaires behind Hallmark and the candy and flowers industries, obviously.

Kidding aside, however, we have to admire Bernie's "strike while the iron is hot" strategy. Republicans are newly-won converts to supporting Social Security and Medicare, so the time is indeed ripe to hold their feet to the fire and show America with their votes which party supports the safety net and which party would just prefer to make empty statements about doing so.

Well done, Bernie. Nice timing!

Which is why Senator Bernie Sanders is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Senator Bernie Sanders on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





Over the past few weeks, the mainstream media dropped the ball on a major story, after the flames and fireballs had been extinguished. Then Twitter went a little crazy and Republican politicians jumped into the breach, because they smelled vulnerability in a member of Joe Biden's administration.

Who also largely dropped the ball on the whole matter.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was actually interviewed on three Sunday morning political chatfest programs on February 4th, the day after a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. None of the journalists asked about the (quite literal) trainwreck. Buttigieg didn't bring it up either, as everyone was still consumed with the ongoing "balloon attack" stories.

In fact, Buttigieg waited 10 whole days to even send a tweet about the incident: "I continue to be concerned about the impacts of the Feb 3 train derailment near East Palestine, OH, and the effects on families in the ten days since their lives were upended through no fault of their own." Which doesn't exactly offer up much in the way of answers, obviously.

The Nation ran a scathing article about Buttigieg, where Jeff Hauser ("founder and director of the Revolving Door Project and an astute critic of corporate domination of government" ) shares his rather metaphor-heavy opinion:



That's from the left. But here's what Senator Joe Manchin (the most rightward of the Democrats in the Senate) had to say about Buttigieg's lackadaisical performance:



Republicans, of course, had even more scathing things to say about Pete.

Getting beyond personalities, there are tangible steps that could be taken, the New York Times helpfully pointed out (in great detail):



In other words, there are plenty of areas for improvement. Which should all have been immediately championed by Pete Buttigieg.

Instead, he dropped the ball. It wasn't until Twitter and the Republicans essentially shamed the media into paying attention to the aftermath of the derailment that Buttigieg even reacted.

Which is why Buttigieg was really the only choice for this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. We sincerely hope we see Pete on this Sunday's political shows, and we hope he's got a plan of action by now. Because he's wasted enough time already.

[Contact Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg on his official contact page, which has no email or form, just a department telephone number, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 695 (2/17/23)

Before we begin the talking points segment, we'd like to send our "get well" wishes to both senators from Pennsylvania. Senator Bob Casey is in the hospital following prostate surgery, and Senator John Fetterman checked himself in on the advice of doctors to treat severe depression. We hope for a full recovery for both, so they can get back to representing the Keystone State in the Senate.

This week's talking points start out with some scorn for Republicans on the subject of the safety net, and then finish with a rather tongue-in-cheek callback to some recent Republican talking points. Yes, we are going to (not at all sincerely) offer up some rather kicky messaging advice to Nikki Haley, and we're also providing the original Democratic quote that many Republicans now seem eager to rip off (because it was that kind of week). Enjoy and use responsibly, as always.



Make some political hay while the sun shines

This is obviously getting under their skin, so rinse and repeat....

"President Joe Biden is right to be calling out Republican hypocrisy on supporting Social Security and Medicare. Because there is only one political party which has stood firm for these programs from the very start, and that is the Democratic Party. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the first Social Security law, after all, and Medicare and Medicaid were enacted under President Lyndon Baines Johnson. You know who launched his political career by fearmongering that Medicare would mean the death of freedom in America? Ronald Reagan. So it's pretty easy to understand which party has historically supported these programs and which party did not. As Biden himself might say: 'C'mon, man! It's obvious!' I mean, as Biden also said, we certainly do welcome converts to the cause of protecting Social Security and Medicare, but let's not forget who the Johnny-come-latelies to this effort truly are, OK?"



They've always been against it!

Show the flip side of this coin, too.

"Republicans started their opposition to a federal safety net by calling Social Security and Medicare 'socialism' and darkly warned that it all would somehow lead America to descend into communism. In 1935, one Republican senator darkly warned that Social Security would: 'end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European.' Oh, the horrors! In 1961 as Medicare was being debated, Ronald Reagan grimly predicted what would happen if it passed: 'one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it was once like in America when men were free.' Republicans have been trying to make deep cuts to these programs for as long as I have been alive -- it is certainly nothing new for them. They have previously tried to slash benefits, privatize Social Security, or turn Medicare and Medicaid into voucher programs. That is the Republican record on America's safety net. They even want everyone to call these programs 'entitlements,' because they think it sounds more like 'welfare' if they do. They have been doing this stuff for decades and decades, folks. If they're ready to change their tune now, we welcome such a major ideological shift. But let's not forget the history of it all when we do."



Scott throws in the towel

Breaking news today!

"Senator Rick Scott, who authored the plan to sunset Social Security and Medicare has apparently now had a change of heart. Or he's just tired of Joe Biden and all the Democrats accurately pointing out what he proposed as a Republican platform in the midterm elections -- that could be it, too. Either way, he has rewritten his plan for sunsetting all federal laws every five years to now say: 'with specific exceptions of Social Security, Medicare, national security, veterans benefits, and other essential services.' Well, that's mighty nice of him to realize, don't you think? Gosh, I guess government actually does do some good things! It only took being called out by the president to make him realize the error of his ways."



But what about Jared?

This should really become the go-to answer any Democrat gives whenever anyone brings up the name "Hunter Biden" in any context.

"Excuse me, so you're saying that we should be vigilant to protect against members of a president's family so they don't peddle influence or access to foreign entities? Is that what your worry is? You're saying that sort of thing is corrupt? Well then, let's talk about Jared Kushner and the two billion dollars that the Saudi crown prince handed him to play around with about 12 seconds after he left his White House job after his father was forced out of the building. Let's have some investigations into that, shall we? Or the lucrative business advantages the Chinese communist government handed to Ivanka Trump while her daddy was still president, perhaps? Or the fact that close members of Donald Trump's family were even given high-ranking administration jobs and security clearances to see secret documents -- maybe that sort of thing needs some looking into, whaddyasay?"



This is what deregulation looks like, folks

There's plenty of blame to go around on this one. Just ask any of the railroad workers who went on strike last year, they'll tell you chapter and verse.

"When politicians -- usually conservative Republicans, but far too often corporatist Democrats as well -- talk about 'deregulation,' they always frame it as some small-business owner being buried alive under government rules and paperwork. It is always portrayed as a very bad thing to 'over-regulate' any industry. Well you know what? That trainwreck in Ohio recently is a prime example of 'deregulation' in action. This is the inevitable result in getting rid of safety regulations or refusing to institute new safety regulations. Most regulations are created for a very good reason. Avoiding devastating industrial accidents is just one of those reasons. Giant corporations pay lobbyists millions of dollars to avoid regulations because they fear it might hit their bottom line. The only way to change this is to make the aftereffects of the accidents cost them even more than the safety regulations they fight so hard against. Maybe if the rail company didn't get away with paying five dollars per resident to the town affected -- or, when they realized how bad that looked, even one thousand dollars -- and instead were held liable in a court of law for a few million dollars in punitive damages for each and every resident affected... maybe then the corporations would understand that promoting safety is in their best interests. Because 'deregulation' has real-world effects. And those that lobby hard for riskier business practices should be held fully accountable."



Haley's kickoff

We tried to, but in the end we just couldn't resist. What kicked this all off, of course, was Nikki Haley's campaign kickoff, which included the charmingly ass-kicking line: "You should know this about me, I don't put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you're wearing heels." Later, when asked by Sean Hannity how she would differentiate herself from Donald Trump, Haley got a kick out of ignoring the question: "I don't kick sideways. I'm kicking forward. Joe Biden is the president. He's the one I'm running against." Obviously, Haley's campaign is alive and kicking! So we thought we'd just let our creativity kick back and relax as we came up with a few more quips for her to kick around:

"I don't mean to kick a man when he's down, but Donald Trump is a loser and the Republican Party just has got to kick the Trump habit once and for good. Otherwise we'll all be kicking ourselves later at Biden's second inauguration! Trump has got to get kicked to the curb, no matter how much he kicks and screams about it. Or kick him upstairs -- let him run Fox News or something. Personally, I don't care if he kicks the bucket, but we cannot nominate another person who instantly recognizes the line 'Get your kicks on Route 66' again. This party needs a kick in the pants, we don't need to kick the can of losing elections down the road again. So I invite everyone to kick the tires of Nikki Haley, because I think you'll find I'm a real kick in the pants when you do! I know you'll walk away saying 'she's got a real kick to her,' because I am more than ready to start kicking ass and taking names in Washington. So help me kick up my heels, America! Let's kick the 2024 Republican presidential campaign into high gear!"



J.F.K. said it better

We're soon going to get sick of hearing this one, that is our guess. Sarah Huckabee Sanders used it in her response to the State Of The Union. Nikki Haley is leaning into it in a big way already (even calling for politicians over the age of 75 to have to pass a competency test). So we thought we'd close today talking points with the original, since it was Democrat John F. Kennedy who made the phrase famous in the political world:






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

February 11, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Biden Rope-A-Dopes GOP Into Showing Unity

President Joe Biden achieved -- in public and on national television -- a seemingly-impossible feat this week, as he vocally unified all of Congress in support of the long-held Democratic goal of protecting Social Security and Medicare from having their budget slashed by Republicans. That was pretty astonishing to see, you have to admit, since Republicans have been attacking Social Security since before Joe Biden was born (which is really saying something, considering he's about as far from a spring chicken as you can get). But suddenly they decided en masse to take exception with this fact, and loudly protested when Biden pointed out what they've essentially been saying for decades and decades. So Biden welcomed them into the fold of politicians who do fight to preserve the safety net, gleefully proclaiming he had achieved "unanimity." This was a warning to the Republicans that the subject of cuts to Social Security and Medicare were now officially off the table. Rarely has so major a bit of political bargaining worked so effectively during a State Of The Union speech. Which is why it was all so astonishing to watch.

Biden got some rave reviews for his speech, which had the theme "Let's finish the job" (a not-so-subtle 2024 campaign slogan tryout). One line from a Politico review seemed to sum the evening up perfectly: "At times, Biden seemed to take delight in ribbing lawmakers on the other side of the aisle -- wearing a Cheshire cat grin when he did so." After leaving the chamber, Biden even tweeted a challenge to the Republicans: "Look: I welcome all converts. But now, let's see your budget." Chuck Schumer had some warm words for Biden afterwards, saying: "Joe Biden was so deft. He let them walk into his trap. He rope-a-doped them. And now all of America has seen the Republican Party say, 'No, we're not going to cut Social Security and Medicare.' He did a service."

You have to imagine that some Republican members of Congress walked out of the chamber wondering what had hit them. Outright denial of reality finally stopped working, in a very embarrassing and public way. Since Republicans have been talking about gutting Social Security and Medicare for so long, there are just oodles of examples of dozens and dozens of Republicans saying so. And now they're trying to get all of America to forget it all exists. Senator Mike Lee was the poster child for this, as he appeared shocked and incredulous that President Biden would dare say that Republicans wanted to get rid of Social Security. Later, however, a clip emerged of Lee campaigning for office by saying: "It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots, to get rid of it... Medicare and Medicaid are of the same sort and need to be pulled up." And he's certainly not the only one with quotes like that on the record. Wherever could Joe Biden have gotten the idea that Republicans wanted to gut the safety net? Heaven forbid! Well, from Republicans calling to gut the safety net, all the way back to F.D.R.'s time, that's where.

Even conservatives had to begrudgingly admit Biden had a good night. Ross Douthat wrote an article with a very accurate title: "Biden's Message: What Trump Promised, I'm Delivering." Trump's "infrastructure weeks" turned into a punchline, while Biden is now visiting groundbreaking ceremonies.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave the Republican response, which accurately framed the political landscape in America as a "choice between normal and crazy." Of course, she got the labels backwards, but then she is part of the crazy bunch, so that would have to be expected. As Paul Krugman put it, in a column titled: "War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Democrats Are Radicals":

Sanders spoke to the core MAGA audience in her speech, while Biden spoke to ordinary American families. The difference was stark and could not be missed.

The House Republicans set about trying to prove just how crazy they could be this week, by beginning what (according to them) were supposed to be blockbuster hearings proving that the F.B.I. has become the Politburo and that Hunter Biden's laptop is the biggest problem America now faces. This went about as you'd expect it to go -- disjointed beclowning by the Republicans scurrying down their QAnon rabbit holes, while Democrats yanked everyone back to reality every once in a while.

One of the first hearings was supposed to uncover dastardly dealings between the federal government and Twitter, who supposedly colluded to kill the story about Hunter Biden's laptop. Since this never actually happened, there was nothing to uncover. Except for one instance of the White House trying to pressure Twitter into taking down a tweet -- when Chrissy Teigen called Trump a nasty name. Then the White House sprung into action, and attempted to actually censor free speech for political reasons. In other words, the entire hearing backfired on the Republicans.

So far -- thankfully -- none of these hearings has really escaped from the confines of cable news. The mainstream media hasn't obsessed over them, probably because of the deranged and reality-defying nature of them. Which is quite likely to spur the extreme GOP lunatics to double down on their craziness, so sooner or later there will doubtless be some explosion of idiocy so hilarious that it'll break through the news cycle. That's our guess, at any rate, although we have no idea when it might happen. The best write-up we've read yet began with the following:



There are a few other write-ups of the hearings available, which dismantle the Republican's conspiracy theories item by item, if you are interested. There are just too many of them to list here.

Oh, speaking of cutting things out of our weekly round-up, we've made the editorial decision that we simply don't care about the constant stream of shocking revelations about George Santos anymore. So while he was accused of a few more heinous crimes and ethical lapses this week, we're just going to take a pass on it all. Except for one tidbit that involved someone else -- Mitt Romney apparently went up to Santos on the House floor right before the speech and told him he didn't belong in Congress. Later, Romney called Santos "a sick puppy," while a fellow Republican House member from Long Island characterized Santos as "a sociopath," and "an embarrassment and a distraction to Republicans in the House." So that's what his own party members are saying about him, which feels like enough for now.

Romney was also in the news for exiting the classified briefing about the Chinese surveillance balloon and defending both Biden and the military:



Today, we got the news that a second "high-altitude object" was shot down over Alaska, although it was said to be much smaller than the first one and as of this writing there weren't a whole lot of details about it, other than that it was flying at about 40,000 feet which (unlike the first one, which was up at 60,000 feet) would have been a hazard to commercial aviation.

This week, Mike Pence was in the news twice, first because it was revealed that he has been subpoenaed by the special counsel looking into Donald Trump's possible crimes -- and unlike congressional committee subpoenas, this one can't be ignored. Also, today the F.B.I. searched Pence's house and lo and behold found yet another document marked classified. The search, as the searches on Biden's homes and office, was consensual. Neither Pence nor Biden resisted the idea of a search, so no subpoena or search warrant was necessary, unlike with Trump.

Speaking of Trump, it appears he's already actively funneling donor cash into his own pockets -- to the tune of a cool million bucks already (and his campaign's just getting started!). File that one under "grifters gotta grift," as usual.

But we're going to end on a nice note today, by noting that First Lady Dr. Jill Biden made a splash this week by handing out two Grammy awards including Song Of The Year. It's good to see a first lady being gracious in public again, isn't it?

Representative Nancy Mace went for funny rather than gracious this week, and it was indeed so funny we saved it for the end here. Mace was invited to do some roasting at the Washington Press Club Foundation Congressional Dinner, and she used her time to rake a few of her fellow Republicans over the coals:







Apparently the "only member of GenZ in Congress" (this appears to be his unofficial title, now) is doing a great job on the GOP's Tinfoil Hat Committee. He makes his point with his questions, and by doing so undercuts the entire Republican house of cards (especially on the border issue). He also got the insulting phrase that Chrissy Teigen called Donald Trump (which we decided not to reprint here, for the language used) into the congressional record. Which he then tweeted about, naturally. For his efforts, and for having to represent his entire generation until some other whippersnapper gets elected to Congress, we hereby award Representative Maxwell Frost an Honorable Mention.

But the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week goes without question to President Joe Biden. Biden knocked his State Of The Union speech out of the park. He handled the hecklers with aplomb. And he portrayed the "happy warrior" image throughout it all.

Biden laid out all the themes he plans to run on in 2024 this week. None of them were much of a shift from positions Biden has long held, as they centered on the dignity of work and boundless optimism for America's future. Biden laid out his own record of accomplishments so far and told the Republicans he was more than willing to work with them on the areas they could agree upon. They howled and (literally, at one point) cursed at him in return. America got an eyeful of the difference between (as Huckabee Sanders put it) "normal and crazy."

We wrote at length about the State Of The Union speech twice this week (the first a review and the second detailing how masterfully Biden played the Republicans like a fiddle), so we're not going to go into it all again. Besides, we've got excerpts later, so we're going to keep it short here.

Joe Biden rose to the occasion, we will leave it at that. And he removed all trace of a doubt in anyone's mind that he will indeed be running for re-election. He was clearly the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

[Congratulate President Joe Biden on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





We would have given the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to Senator Kyrsten Sinema for her bizarre sartorial choices for the speech, but she's no longer a Democrat so she avoids the dishonor.

We could also give it to Senator Joe Manchin, who sat on the Republican side of the aisle for the speech and did his impression of "guy who just sucked on a lemon" for most of it. But since the Republicans were so unhinged, we don't feel that this rose to the level of the MDDOTW award.

Instead, we're going to leave it on the shelf this week. Not only Biden but Democrats in general had a pretty good week all around.




Volume 694 (2/10/23)

This week our talking points section is going to consist of excerpts from President Biden's State Of The Union speech. The text was taken from the official transcript at the White House website, although we have removed all of the " (Applause)" and other extraneous markings from it.

These excerpts are presented in the order they were delivered, and are the ones we feel will likely be a big part of Biden's 2024 stump speeches (in one form or another). There were plenty of other good segments of Biden's speech, so we heartily encourage everyone who hasn't already done so to either watch the speech or at least read the full transcript.

President Biden began by painting a broad and optimistic picture of the country:



He then reached out a hand to the Republicans, and contrasted what they now seem to stand for (endless chaos) with the way he's handled things:



That last line, obviously, is going to appear on a whole bunch of campaign signs in the very near future. Biden then returned to his "small-town average Joe" theme (which he's always run on, this is really nothing new for him), with a few economic milestones he has been able to achieve along the way:



This, as opposed to the flimflammery from Donald Trump and other Republicans, is actual populist appeal, rather than rage-based populism. More Democrats should pick up on the theme of "the dignity of work," in fact, because the concept is indeed quite popular. And again, Biden was able to point to his own record in this regard, which is a good thing because so far the public hasn't really realized what an explosion of infrastructure projects is already beginning to happen as a direct result:



That last bit was an amusing taunt, since many Republicans have actually already tried to claim credit for local projects that they did not vote for. Biden is gently ribbing this hypocrisy, and the line went over well. He followed this with yet another very broadly popular idea:



Biden's message, once again: others talked about it, I am making it happen, which is a pretty good theme for a political campaign. He then returned briefly to the "dignity of work" theme just to reinforce the message:



Biden then taught a little "modern history" lesson, to Republicans who live in non-reality-based headspaces. This is where all the indignant yelling began:



Biden gets out in front of the upcoming debt ceiling fight and frames the issue perfectly: you did this multiple times for Donald Trump, so what's your big problem now? And, as mentioned, this is where the big dustup over Social Security happened. But the end of this is going to be the big takeaway from this particular speech, as Biden reveals how completely he has trapped the entire Republican Party:



Nice ad lib, at the end, there.

In this final except, Biden takes on some very specific things big businesses have been getting away with for years and urges Congress to pass laws reining such practices in. Many pundits sneer at this sort of thing as being so lowly and small-ball as to be beneath the dignity of the president, but they couldn't be more wrong. Look at the outrage that happened over Taylor Swift concert tickets if you need convincing how annoying stuff like this is to millions of Americans. And it's not just concert tickets, either, as Biden points out:



Again: this is real populism, not the fake kind the Republicans have been pretending to support for the past few years. And our guess is that this sort of message is going to go over pretty well with the voters back home.

OK, that's it. And once again, this isn't a comprehensive overview of Biden's speech, it was just the bits we feel will resonate the deepest out on the campaign trail. Because make no mistake about it, Joe Biden is already running for re-election.




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

February 4, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Biden Gets Good News Heading Into The SOTU

Next Tuesday night, President Joe Biden will deliver his State Of The Union speech to a joint session of Congress. Today, he got some good news he will without doubt be touting in this speech -- the unemployment rate is not just low, not just "lower than it ever hit under Donald Trump," but historically low. The last time the unemployment rate was a mere 3.4 percent was in 1969, before we sent any men to the moon. If it falls any further, we'll have to go back to 1953 to find a similar number. So we certainly expect this to be prominently featured next Tuesday night.

Over half a million jobs were created in January. This is also an astounding number, since the predictions were that fewer than 200,000 had been created. Also, the figures for the past few months were revised upwards as well -- more jobs appeared at the end of 2022 than had previously been known. During Biden's time in office, the country has added an astounding 12.1 million jobs -- the fastest job-creation rate of any president ever. So, yeah, we fully expect a little football-spiking and endzone-dancing from Biden next week.

While of course we will be watching the speech along with millions of other Americans next week, we have to admit that an article in the New York Times caught our eye, for its refreshing ideas to modernize the entire format of State Of The Union speeches. Sooner or later someone's going to take this idea and run with it, and while we kind of doubt that's going to be Joe Biden, it certainly would be interesting to see it happen. The author, Josh Tyrangiel, is billed as: "a journalist and television producer whose work has won 11 Emmys," which is pretty impressive, and he has taken his cue from the showmanship exhibited by the January 6th House Select Committee:

Tyrangiel goes on to suggest another radical idea for the speech: cut away to a few cabinet members touting their own areas of achievement, with Biden serving as emcee. This way the president would "still get to hog the best lines," while allowing others to report their progress.

It is rare when we come across such brilliantly original thinking, but we have to admit this idea did qualify. Watching any politician -- no matter how polished he or she is in front of the cameras and no matter how much they ooze charisma -- can get tedious and downright boring for a full hour with no breaks at all. Americans have never been known for their long attention spans, which is why breaking up the speech with a few multimedia presentations would absolutely transform the entire concept of the State Of The Union speech.

However, Joe Biden is a staunch traditionalist, so picturing him actually taking this advice is rather tough to do. But Tyrangiel is right -- sooner or later some president is going to see the wisdom of his suggestion and at least add a few video breaks to the annual spectacle.

Speaking of a spectacle, the Chinese spy balloon is certainly... well, ballooning in the media. [We do apologize for that, but we had to resist the urge to stick some "balloon" joke into the headline, so at least we managed to do that much....] There's not a whole lot that a surveillance balloon can do that a spy satellite can't -- and China already has plenty of those flying over the U.S. on a daily basis -- but it certainly did spark a whole bunch of apocalyptic responses from politicians.

Biden had an eventful week this week otherwise, including an appearance at a 150-year-old train tunnel in Baltimore to tout the money he secured to rebuild it (which was a natural for him, as not only does it have to do with trains, but Biden probably personally knows every foot of that tunnel since it is between Washington D.C. and Delaware -- Biden's ridden through it probably thousands of times). This continues his extended victory lap on infrastructure projects, which should be a regular feature for him all year long (as more and more such projects actually break ground).

Biden sat down with Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy this week, and they both aired their views on the budget and the debt ceiling. As expected, neither one budged an inch from their positions -- this was seen as a purely preliminary "get to know you" sort of meeting, although it was hyped beyond recognition in the political press.

The president also announced that the official emergency declaration for the COVID-19 pandemic will end in early May, and also called for Congress to end the outrageous fees and other markups tacked on to event tickets, after Congress held a hearing on Ticketmaster and the entire Taylor Swift fiasco last week. Bringing down such extortionate fees may seem like small potatoes politically, but it is one of those issues that touches so many Americans' lives that it could be a big winner if it actually happens. It could even easily be a bipartisan winner, since everybody hates these fees. For once, Congress could pass something which would tangibly improve the lives of millions, across the board, so we remain hopeful.

There was more "drip drip drip" news this week, as Biden's beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, was searched by the F.B.I. No documents marked classified were found. Mike Pence is also preparing for the F.B.I. to search his home, after he found classified documents there. Of course, with both men, this is exactly the right thing to do -- voluntarily invite the F.B.I. in to look around -- which could not be more different than the way Donald Trump tried (and is still trying) to hold onto such classified documents even in the face of subpoenas and search warrants (neither of which was necessary in the case of Biden and Pence).

The new Congress finally got underway this week, after spending all of January either on vacation or holding endless votes for House Speaker. Because of the whole McCarthy fiasco, the committees were not set in stone on January 3rd, so it took both parties all month long to release their lists of who would be on each committee. But hey, the more time the Republican House wastes the better, since it means they weren't doing anything worse.

Speaking of which, this week, in response to yet another horrific and unnecessary death at the hands of the police, the Republicans responded by disbanding a House panel on civil rights. And passing out tiny lapel pins shaped like an assault rifle. During "Gun Violence Survivors' Awareness Week," no less.

Perhaps this is the reason why the American public is not very happy with Republicans in Congress right now. A recent poll showed that 67 percent of voters don't like the way Republicans in Congress are handling their jobs. Furthermore, 73 percent say that they aren't paying enough attention to the country's real issues.

Need proof? Here's what Republicans spent the week doing, instead of (as they promised repeatedly on the campaign trail) doing anything on either crime or inflation. They launched investigations, mostly centered around Joe Biden. When polling is showing that fewer than one-third of American voters want Republicans to spend any time investigating Biden at all.

They passed a completely symbolic measure denouncing socialism and lots of tyrannical despots all the way back to Hitler and Stalin. Because, of course, the world has been anxiously awaiting word on whether America approved of leaders like Chairman Mao or not. Republicans also took the time to institute a rule requiring a committee to recite the Pledge of Allegiance before all their meetings, even though they all do so every day on the floor of the House anyway.

These are the things Republicans are doing with their new majority. Because they just don't have anything tangible to offer to the American public. They are filled with righteous vengeance which is only shared by their most fervent base, and they are going to vent their collective spleens no matter how much it turns off most voters (which we'll talk about in more detail, down in the awards section).

One Republican in particular is especially unpopular right now, as a new poll came out from the district of George Santos (R-Fantasyland). It is not good news for Santos, since fully 78 percent of his constituents now want him to resign. Only 13 percent say he shouldn't resign. Republicans want him to resign by a margin of 71-to-18 percent. An almost identical number (71-to-17 percent) say that Kevin McCarthy was wrong to seat Santos on any committees. And almost three-fourths of Republicans say Santos does not reflect the values of the Republican Party. So, of course, Santos is sticking around and having lots of fun in the spotlight.

Speaking of pathological liars, Donald Trump is still promoting political violence on his pet social media site, while his legal problems continue to get closer and closer by the week. This week it was revealed that a district attorney in New York City is presenting evidence to a grand jury in anticipation of bringing legal charges over the hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Perhaps he's in a race with the prosecutor down in Georgia (where there was no "Trump legal woes" news this week, but there could be very soon).

Trump is also causing the same headache in the Republican Party as he did back in 2016, since he (once again) is refusing to support the Republican presidential nominee for 2024 unless (of course) it is him. Trump is about to lose his status as the only announced presidential candidate later this month, as Nikki Haley publicly pre-announced her upcoming official campaign launch announcement. We will be interested to see if this motivates any other Republicans to toss their hat in the ring as well.

And just to end on a hilarious note, if you didn't catch it, check out Jimmy Kimmel interviewing "the My Pillow guy," Mike Lindell, while forcing Lindell to do the entire interview from inside an arcade "claw" game. And yes, it is precisely as funny as you would expect from that description. We've certainly seen politicians who are shameless before, but we don't think we've ever seen anyone more humiliationless, to coin a phrase.

Coin? Anyone got a coin? Jeez, just look at what you could hook onto!





We had never really considered the matter before, but we read an article this week and had to agree with the basic concept. Pennsylvania's new Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro got something interesting done a while back:



A good point, and one we had never thought about previously (but should have). A college degree is an important milestone for anyone to achieve, but it also shouldn't be a requirement for 92 percent of civil service jobs -- that is simply ridiculous. [Full disclosure: your humble author did attend college for a while, but did not actually stay long enough to graduate.] In any case, an Honorable Mention for Shapiro is certainly warranted.

But this week, the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week was Representative Ilhan Omar, who had to endure a vote of the full House kicking her off the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Kevin McCarthy was able to personally vent the collective Republican spleen on two other Democrats -- Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff -- due to House rules which allowed him to personally bar the two from the House Intelligence Committee, but also due to House rules a vote of the full House was required in Omar's case.

Plenty of Democrats rose to speak in Omar's defense. She has been accused of saying "antisemitic and un-American" things in the past, but this was a fig leaf for naked revenge, plain and simple. Nancy Pelosi -- with bipartisan support, mind you -- kicked two Republicans off of committees in the last Congress, one of whom spouted nonsense about satellites owned by Jews shooting lasers at California to cause wildfires, and both of whom have spoken to a gathering of neo-Nazis (whose leader has repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler). Also, both of the Republicans (we refuse to name them) have supported using political violence -- one actually posted a cartoon adulterated to show himself killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a samurai sword. Both these Republicans have been reinstated to their committee spots under McCarthy, so antisemitism is obviously not a bar to service.

Plenty of Democrats made this point, in various ways. Eric Swalwell pointed out that the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee took months to take down a tweet praising Kanye West, even after he made some truly vile antisemitic comments. Swalwell tried to shame McCarthy and the Republicans by challenging them: "Don't come here looking at us for antisemitism. Look in your own damn mirror before you ever come over here."

But it was Ocasio-Cortez who probably gave the most heartfelt speech in support of Omar on the House floor, and for it we are awarding her her own Honorable Mention. In it, she says:



Her whole speech is only one minute long, and it is well worth watching.

But our main award has to go to Representative Ilhan Omar herself, who gave her own impassioned defense and had to sit through the entire demeaning process. Which was really only held to prove that McCarthy can successfully whip his own members to vote the way he wants, which some of them even acknowledged after all the sturm und drang was over. Overheard in an elevator after the vote was Republican Ken Buck of Colorado, who called it the "stupidest vote in the world."

Well, hang on there Ken... after all, Kevin McCarthy is just getting started.

While McCarthy proved to the American people that Republicans truly do place political vengeance above doing anything at all on inflation or crime or any of those other things they actually ran on, Representative Ilhan Omar sat through it all and earned this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Congratulate Representative Ilhan Omar on her House contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





We do understand why, but we're disappointed nonetheless.

This week, 109 Democrats crossed the House aisle to vote for a completely meaningless bit of political puffery from the Republicans. The measure condemned socialism and dictators past and present, which will have precisely zero impact on anyone on Earth, living or dead.

As we said, we understand why so many of them voted the way they did, because this is a tailor-made wedge issue that Republicans can use in future elections. The ads they're planning are pretty obvious: "Representative Smythe-Jones voted for socialism and in favor of Hitler and Pol Pot and Stalin!!!"

Nevertheless, Democrats could still have avoided the whole political trap by just voting "present," as 14 House members did. But rather than take this easy offramp to such political grandstanding, 109 Democrats voted for the Republican puffery. Let's hope Republicans don't send a flood of similarly-idiotic bills to the floor in direct response.

[We're not going to list 109 names and contact points here, sorry. But you can check the official roll call of the vote for your own representative, if you'd like to let them know what you think of their actions.]




Volume 693 (2/3/23)

This week's talking points section leans heavily on the good news on jobs and the economy, for at least the first half of the list. We fully expect to hear similar points being made to a joint session of Congress next Tuesday night, in fact.



You tell 'em, Joe

This first one comes directly from President Joe Biden, who is certainly entitled to another victory lap on the economy. From remarks he made this morning, after the new jobs report dropped:





Where?

For once, we are going to use a talking point that nobody can criticize for being too long. We would credit it, but we've seen it in too many headlines to know who used it first, this morning. For all the gloom-and-doom predictors, it is the perfect rejoinder:

"Recession? What recession?"



Back to Eisenhower

Beating Trump's record is nice. Pointing it out repeatedly is even nicer.

"The last time the unemployment rate was this low -- at 3.4 percent -- America was still months away from the Apollo 11 moonshot launch. Yep, it was 1969 when we last saw employment numbers this good. And you know what? If it drops even further in the coming months, you will have to go back 70 whole years -- to 1953, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president -- to find numbers that low. So yeah, this is indeed a historic achievement by Joe Biden."



12,100,000

Hammer it home.

"Since Joe Biden took over, America has seen more small businesses created than ever before and a whopping 12,100,000 jobs have been created. This is the fastest job growth in American history. No other president has a record which even comes close. We saw half a million new jobs get created just last month alone. Joe Biden has steered us out of the COVID pandemic and into full recovery, and he really deserves a lot more credit for that then the media has so far given him. Twelve-point-one million new jobs. That is beyond impressive."



Another big turnaround

This is what they say they wanted, but obviously they don't.

"Republicans love to use the southern border to score political points -- they love it so much that when someone actually solves a big part of the problem they get so mad they have to sue to stop it. Under a new policy from the Biden administration, illegal border crossings in January fell from over 250,000 in December to only 150,000 in January. The changes were most dramatic in illegal border crossings from the four countries the changes were meant to address -- Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti. Migrant crossing from those four countries were down by over 95 percent last month. Yes, you heard that right. In December, border agents were seeing as many as 3,500 illegal entries per day for those countries, but last month that number sank to only 50 per day. That is an astounding reduction for one month, you've got to admit. So you'd think Republicans who claim to take the southern border seriously would be happy, wouldn't you? Instead, 20 Republican states filed suit to halt the new program. Because the dirty little secret is that Republicans don't really care about illegal entries at the southern border -- instead all they care about is using the issue as a political weapon against Democrats. So when a Democratic president solves a major part of the problem, they sue in court to make sure the problem stays as bad as possible."



Let's talk about Bill Barr, shall we?

More rank Republican hypocrisy that needs pointing out.

"Republicans are about to make as much political hay as they can over the supposed 'politicization' of the Department of Justice. But I'd be willing to bet my bottom dollar they won't even be slightly interested in the new evidence which shows how Donald Trump's pet attorney general, Bill Barr, completely weaponized the department when he ran it. There are plenty of examples of this for them to look into, including the new reporting on how Barr's hand-picked special counsel who was charged with looking into the investigation into Trump and Russia and somehow coming up with some sort of criminal 'weaponization' by the people who conducted the investigation, was actually acting as nothing more than a political tool. While Barr was acting as Trump's stooge, he appointed a special counsel to be his own stooge. The special counsel uncovered no bombshell evidence of crimes, of course, because none were ever committed. But that didn't stop them from looking! And Barr and his stooge would sit down for drinks or a meal weekly to chat about how Trump's requested wild goose chase was progressing. If Republicans were truly serious about the 'weaponization' of the Justice Department, they need look no further than Bill Barr. But I'm not exactly holding my breath waiting for them to do so, if you know what I mean."



Keep up the good work!

This last one is nothing short of a taunt, really.

"I would like to congratulate the House Republicans for showing their true colors and showing the American electorate what their true priorities are. In fact, I would encourage them to continue down exactly the same path they are taking, because it will make it so much easier for Democrats to regain control of the chamber in 2024. Why am I so confident? Because of what the voters themselves are saying. Two-thirds of all voters -- 67 percent -- don't like the way Republicans are handling their jobs. Three-quarters -- 74 percent -- of independent voters feel that way, too. The same amount -- 73 percent -- of all voters say Republicans aren't paying enough attention to the country's real issues. Another poll showed that less than one-third of the country wants Republicans to spend time investigating Joe Biden. Which, of course, the Republicans are completely ignoring. Which is really fine with me, because the more time they spend chasing conspiratorial white rabbits down holes and barking at the moon means the less time they actually do any damage to the country at large. So keep it up, guys! Keep the lunacy rolling in, because it makes Democrats' campaigns for next time around so much easier. All we have to do, really, is point at what the GOP is doing and ask: 'Do you really want two more years of that?'"




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

January 28, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Republicans Show Their True Colors

President Joe Biden gave a speech this week on the state of the American economy. On his watch, the economy has greatly improved as we all dug ourselves out of the pandemic recession together. So Biden deserves a victory lap. He also used the speech to draw a stark comparison between Democrats responsibly steering the economy and Republicans who apparently are salivating at the prospect of blowing it all up.

Biden pointed to many indicators that the economy is strong, including better-than-expected growth, all-time low unemployment levels, a manufacturing rebound, the fact that wages are now growing faster than inflation, and that inflation itself has been coming down for six straight months. Biden's big infrastructure investments are now being implemented across the country, in thousands of projects that will improve Americans' lives (including a whole bunch of them in red states and red districts). Biden's basic message: things are getting better and better.

So of course the Republicans now want to burn it all down. The big fight in Washington for approximately the next six months is going to be over the debt ceiling. House Republicans seem to think they got elected to hold the American economy hostage to force Draconian budget cuts on a Democratic president (they never scratch this particular itch when a Republican is in the Oval Office, of course). But the American people don't seem to agree -- a recent poll showed that 73 percent of the public did not agree with the House Republicans' priorities in Congress. Not exactly a mandate, is that?

Republicans don't seem to realize that they're picking a fight they're ultimately going to lose. They are going to be the ones the blame lands on, even as they assure themselves that the public will take it all out on Joe Biden. And so far Republicans don't even know what they're demanding, and probably won't be able to agree on much of anything. There's a reason for this, and the reason is that steep spending cuts in government programs are not popular, period. This is why Republicans don't even want to talk about what spending they are targeting -- because no matter what they put forward, it's going to annoy a whole lot of people.

Take just one measure the House worked on this week. It was really nothing more than Republicans venting their spleen on Joe Biden for effectively bringing the price of gasoline down. Yes, you read that right. House Republicans passed a measure that would have forbidden Biden from releasing gas from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which would have had the effect of hiking the price of gas another 40 cents per gallon. That is what Republicans want to do -- make you pay more for a gallon of gas in times of crisis. As we said, that's not exactly a popular position to take. Especially when a whole lot of Republicans ran on bringing the price of gas down, not sending it back up again. It's not just George Santos, there are a whole lot of bald-faced liars in the Republican ranks, it seems.

McCarthy was also forced to tee up a national sales tax of a whopping 30 percent, which would replace income taxes. This would be an enormous benefit to millionaires and billionaires and it would be an enormous hit on pretty much everyone else. Who wants to pay 30 percent more on everything they buy? Anyone?

Grover Norquist, whose credentials as a champion of cutting taxes cannot be questioned by conservatives, reacted to the idea of the 30 percent tax by writing an article for The Atlantic titled: "A National Sales Tax Is A Terrible Idea." Just in case that wasn't clear enough, the subtitle for the article read: "A handful of House Republicans want to force a vote on it. That's just a free gift to Democrats." Tell us what you really think of the idea, Grover!

As we said -- Republicans are much more interested in blowing the economy up rather than actually doing anything to help anyone. They also want to cut Social Security and Medicare, even if they don't come out and admit it.

This is, of course, nothing more than Kevin McCarthy desperately dancing while the MAGA brigade calls the tune. He had to promise them votes on all their pet crazy ideas, and now we're seeing the result. The House GOP can't seem to get it together on much of anything, as they scramble for votes on immigration, the new 30 percent sales tax, budget cuts, or even getting the promised vengeance of kicking Representative Ilhan Omar off her committees. They can't even manage to do mean-spirited things in unison anymore, which is a real measure of how discombobulated the party truly is in the House.

They've even already gotten to the point of begging Biden and the Democrats to save them from their own cluelessness. They're actually suggesting that it should be Biden who should suggest budget cuts to them, instead of the other way around. Which must have been on Biden's mind when he recently called the House Republicans "fiscally demented."

Biden, meanwhile, continues to show American leadership on the world stage, intervening in a stalemate over Ukraine to get some modern tanks to the battlefield in time for the anticipated spring offensive from both sides. Biden freed Germany up to send their own Leopard 2 tanks by promising to send a couple dozen M1 Abrams tanks from America. This defused the tension within NATO, and now the tanks should be on their way soon (from Poland first, most likely).

Biden's drip-drip-drip on the classified documents scandal added another drip this week, but it was completely overshadowed by the news that former Vice President Mike Pence also found some classified documents stored at his own home. This completely took the wind out of the Republicans' sails on the issue, since now any one-sided investigation into Biden's handling of documents will be met with Democratic questions of why they're not also investigating both Donald Trump and Mike Pence as well.

This led to an amusing little meltdown on Fox News, when the Pence news first broke. The on-air personalities (we simply cannot use the term "journalists" to describe them) were downright depressed that they had to report the reality of the situation, when they were having so much fun before the Pence news broke -- and no, that's not an exaggeration, here's an exchange between Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld:

So sad.

In other reality-obscuring news, Republicans in Arizona just decided to exempt themselves from their state's open-records law. Seems like they got caught red-handed, so they're going to try to avoid this in the future by burying their own communications:



Speaking of folks who worked to overturn the 2020 election results, the chickens are coming home to roost for John Eastman, a California lawyer who was at the center of the fight for Trump to essentially just seize power. The State Bar of California has brought 11 disciplinary charges against Eastman, in an attempt to disbar him. And the charges are pretty serious:



One would like to think so, at any rate.

Speaking of moral turpitude, let's check in on Donald Trump, shall we?

It was a fairly quiet week on the legal front for Trump, but that may not last much longer. Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis stated to a judge this week that decisions about whether to charge and prosecute Trump "are imminent." So we'll be watching for any breaking news on this front, and we are positive Donald Trump will also be breathlessly waiting to hear what's going to happen next.

One amusing Trump story ran in the New York Times this week, under the headline: "OMG. Trump Has Started Texting." It seems that since the start of the year, someone taught Donny how to send a text to other people's phones, which he had never managed to do before now. This is a fun article to read, for revelations such as:



The article even saves the snarkiest note for last, ending on:



We certainly could suggest a few....

And we'll end on even happier news. Finally, political unity has been achieved in Washington. Democrats and Republicans banded together in common cause -- raking Ticketmaster over the coals in a Senate hearing, for their monstrous SNAFU with Taylor Swift tickets as well as their dominance over event tickets in general. And you can bet all those "Swifties" were paying close attention.

Because it doesn't matter what side of the aisle you are on -- everyone agrees that Ticketmaster sucks. Voila! Nonpartisan unity achieved!





We have some Honorable Mention awards to hand out this week, the first two to Representative Ruben Gallego in Arizona and Representative Adam Schiff in California. Both men announced a Senate bid this week, Gallego to challenge Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema for her seat while Schiff joined Katie Porter in running for Dianne Feinstein's seat. We feel that both of these Senate seats would benefit from some fresh new faces so we wish them both the best in their campaigns.

Joe Biden also deserves an Honorable Mention, for protecting the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from mining (full disclosure: we have personally visited this area in northern Minnesota and it is beautiful and well worth protecting).

And one final Honorable Mention goes to House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the chamber. Her daughter, Riley Dowell, had just been arraigned on charges of assault and battery on a police officer, resisting arrest, and vandalizing a historic marker or monument. This all happened during a protest on the Boston Common.

So Clark did precisely the right thing, and showed the country the right way to speak out about these things even when they happen from your own side of the aisle -- or from within your own family. Clark told reporters: "I condemn violence against everyone, whether that is against police or against community members as a result of any person or government entity." This is the difference between Democrats and Republicans these days, when it comes to either tacitly supporting or clearly denouncing political violence of any sort, by anyone. Which you've got to admit is not only principled, but impressive.

But to us, the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who had the most effective attacks on the House Republicans' plans of any Democrat. Schumer was out there in front, asking the pointed questions and framing the issue for all other Democrats with skill. Here he is on the Senate floor this week:



He hammered this theme home after meeting with President Biden at the White House a day earlier:



And here was Schumer weighing in on the Republican scheme to tax everything everyone buys at 30 percent:



Tell it like it is, Chuck! Don't let the Republicans get away with being vague, hit them on what they would actually do if they had their way. The American people need to see this and understand it, and the only way that is going to happen is if Democrats are relentless in pointing it all out. Schumer took the lead in doing so, right off the starting line, which is why he is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





This didn't exactly disappoint us, but it must have disappointed someone somewhere. The Blue Dog Democrats are in disarray, as their ranks further shrink with every passing election. Which apparently wasn't happening fast enough, so some of them decided what they needed was rebranding. Which didn't go over very well, and let to a split in the already-diminished group.

Here's the story:



Again, this doesn't disappoint us personally -- in fact, the faster this group shrinks the better, as far as we are concerned. But the news must have disappointed some Democrats, so in the interests of fairness we're going to collectively give the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to the Blue Dog Coalition, for being the only group within the Democratic caucus who still insists on perpetuating the whole "Democrats in disarray" storyline.

It was either that, or give it to Joe Manchin again, really.

[We tried to find official contact information for the Blue Dog Coalition and were led to a broken link, so we suggest you use their Twitter page to let them know what you think of their actions.]




Volume 692 (1/27/23)

A very mixed bag this week, with two of our talking points taken from articles in the media which framed the issues better than our humble attempts could have. Enjoy and, as always, use responsibly!



It's getting better all the time

Joe Biden's been increasingly pointing this out, and as more and more of the infrastructure and other projects are rolled out in the coming months, it'll just become more and more apparent that he's managed to get a whole lot of good things done for America.

"No economic picture is perfect, but what we're experiencing now is pretty darn good, you've got to admit. Growth is up -- and it is much higher than the experts were predicting. Pay is now increasing faster than inflation, so more people have more in their pockets. Inflation has gone down every month for the past six months and looks to continue dropping in 2023. Unemployment is at an all-time low. Jobs are plentiful, and they pay better than they used to. Manufacturing is enjoying a rebound. High-tech chip factories are now on the drawing board for many communities across the country. Gas prices are back down again. The economy has recovered from the dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic. And it just keeps getting better and better. You don't hear about this as often as you should on the news, but Joe Biden's been doing a pretty good job steering the economy."



Our demands

This idea (from a Washington Post article by Paul Waldman) is absolutely brilliant. Instead of falling into the negotiating trap Republicans have laid for Democrats, they should take the initiative and fight back. Go on offense! Change the whole tenor of the conversation!





What are you going to cut? Say so!

As we said earlier, Chuck Schumer's already doing a great job of this, but it should be the go-to line for any Democrat whenever the subject of the debt ceiling and/or budget cuts comes up.

"So Republicans say they're going to hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage in order to slash the federal budget. But what does that mean? They won't tell us. They are afraid to tell us, because then people would know what they are really trying to do. So I ask all of these budget hawks specifically: Are you going to cut Medicare? How many of your constituents are on Medicare? Are you going to cut military pay or the V.A.? How many of your constituents are veterans? Are you going to cut the Child Tax Credit? How many parents live in your state or district? This is precisely why Republicans are so far refusing to say what they'd cut -- because they know full well that millions of real people are going to be affected. They know that their ideas are going to cause some real pain out there. And they're afraid of people figuring that out. So they just stay silent. So any time a Republican opens his or her mouth to talk about the debt ceiling or the budget or 'spending' or just any of it -- ask them: 'OK, so what would you cut?' Because if they won't tell you that it means that you are not going to like their answer."



Thirty percent

Zero in on the figure, which they're already trying to lie about.

"Republicans now want to institute a national sales tax on everything you buy. And it's a doozy -- 30 percent. Because that is such a jaw-dropping number, they're even lying about it. By their figures, it's actually a 23 percent tax. But say you go to buy something and it costs $100. When they ring you up, you wind up having to pay $130. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a 30-percent tax. Anyone who tries to tell you differently is obviously trying to pull the wool over your eyes. So how many people support a new 30-percent tax on everything you buy? Anyone? Because that doesn't sound like a very good deal for the American consumer to me."



Don't forget to add in Pence now, too

This is (so far) the best way we've heard the differences laid out between what Joe Biden (and now Mike Pence as well) did, and what Donald Trump did. It comes from a very deep dive into the whole matter by Bruce Maiman in HuffPost.





97 percent!

Point out successes when they happen!

"Republicans simply are not serious about wanting to fix the problem at the southern border. They say they want illegal border-crossings to stop, but when Joe Biden does precisely that they sue him in court to stop it. Inside of one month, illegal border crossings from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have dropped by an astounding 97 percent due to a new way for immigrants to apply online rather than attempting to make an illegal entry. You heard that right -- 97 percent of the problem was solved. So of course, 20 Republican states are now suing Biden in federal court to stop the program. Because they have no interest in any real-life solutions, they just love making political hay over the issue instead. The hypocrisy is just astounding, folks. They say they want illegal border crossings to end, Biden does just that, and they sue him in court to stop him."



They got the "dummy" part right

File this under "you just can't make this stuff up, folks"....

"A newly-elected Republican member of the House decided to pass out a free gift to his fellow members of Congress this week. And nothing could exemplify the House Republicans' strategy more, really. Because what Cory Mills decided to pass out was a '40mm grenade, made for a MK19 grenade launcher.' They even have cute little Republican elephants painted on them. They are, his office assured everyone, inert -- just 'dummy' grenades. But what better gift to kick off the GOP House majority and how they are going to operate than grenades? I mean, it just speaks volumes, really...."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

January 21, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Biden's First Two Years

Two years ago today, Joseph Robinette Biden Junior was sworn in as the nation's 46th president. So how is he doing at his job? His approval rating in public opinion polls has generally improved since the midterm elections, hitting numbers he hasn't seen in a year. But those numbers are still south of 45 percent (on average), which is fairly common for a first-term president but certainly nothing to brag about.

Biden has had some notable successes as president, and some notable rocky patches as well. He entered office as the COVID-19 vaccines were becoming widely and freely available, and things seemed rosy on this front for his first year, only to get a lot grimmer as the Omicron strain hit much harder than any of the previous variants of the virus. All of a sudden we weren't done with COVID-19 and life didn't return to normal as expected. But since then, the virus has become almost an afterthought and didn't matter much to voters in the midterms (even though it had been predicted that it would be a major issue).

Biden's legislative accomplishments are more impressive than any president since Lyndon B. Johnson. True, Biden did have a Democratic Senate and House to work with, but both of those had historically-slender majorities -- L.B.J., for instance, had as many as 68 Democratic senators to work with. Biden only had 50 -- including two who loved the media spotlight so much they didn't care if they torpedoed Biden's agenda in major ways. Biden also managed to pass some major bills with bipartisan support, which is almost miraculous, these days.

Here's just a partial list of what Biden has gotten through Congress and signed (so far): COVID-19 pandemic stimulus that put much-needed money in Americans' pockets. Largest infrastructure bill ever. First gun safety law in decades. Protecting marriage equality. Health care funding for veterans exposed to burn pits. Climate change action. Lower health care costs, lower prescription drug prices, and a cap on insulin costs for seniors. Protecting American democracy by strengthening the process for electing presidents. Military aide to Ukraine, to help them fight Russia's aggressive invasion.

In his second year, Biden faced runaway inflation and skyrocketing gasoline prices, which soured the public on the economy in general (even though, by other indicators, the economy was actually still doing extraordinarily well recovering from the pandemic slump). Since the summer, both inflation and gas prices have receded noticeably, which has brightened the outlook for the future. Job growth is still strong, we have not hit a recession yet, and unemployment is at 50-year lows.

Biden's foreign policy includes (so far) one major misstep and one big accomplishment. The misstep, of course, was the execution of the Afghanistan withdrawal, which (to use a military term) was about as FUBAR as can be imagined. Biden's resolve on countering Russian aggression in Ukraine, however, has shown the world what presidential leadership from the United States in support of freedom and democracy is supposed to look like.

Of course, those are just a few of the ways Biden's presidency can be measured. We've got whole lists of others, but we are saving that for later in the program. Instead, let's take a look not at the past two years but instead at the past week to see what's been happening more recently in American politics.

Some Senate races are getting interesting, as the whole "2024 campaign announcement" season begins, but we'll have plenty of time to talk about all of that in the coming weeks.

We officially technically hit the debt ceiling this week, but once again this is only like the first inning of a ballgame, so we're ignoring some of the pointless freaking out in the rest of the media on the subject.

Vice President Kamala Harris will be giving a speech on abortion this weekend in Florida, after today's pro-forced-birth parade in Washington (the first such pro-forced-birth parade since the overturning of Roe v. Wade).

The House of Representatives is finally getting up and moving, now that they have an actual speaker. This has involved rewarding all the crazies and clowns that Kevin McCarthy had to placate in order to win the gavel (on the 15th ballot). The White House is having a field day with all of McCarthy's "secret deals," it is worth pointing out:

Team Biden also got the opportunity to "dunk on" the crazy Republican clowns who got plum committee assignments due to their extended tantrum:



They weren't the only ones pointing out the absurdity of so many foxes being assigned henhouse-guarding duties. Marjorie Taylor Green, Paul Gosar, and George Santos all came under some fire for their new committee seats as well. Not that any of it matters to McCarthy, since this is just the beginning of his servitude and subservience to the craziest clowns in his little circus.

Think that's exaggerating things? We don't. One committee in particular is going to be constantly in the news, for reasons such as this:



We think that's got a nice ring to it -- "Tinfoil Hat Committee" -- and so are going to start calling it that from this point onwards. Republicans are trying to portray this as a Church Committee for the 21st century, but Gary Hart -- the only surviving member of the 1970s Church Committee -- had a few choice words for that plan, and chief among them was that it was an "outrage" to even suggest that.

In other "Republicans behaving badly" news, the George Santos story just gets worse and worse with each passing day, it seems. There is no such thing as shame in the Republican Party these days -- Donald Trump drove a stake through the heart of the very concept.

In "Republicans acting criminally" news, a GOP candidate for the New Mexico state legislature was arrested this week and charged with a scheme where he not only personally shot at a house with a Democratic elected official inside of it, but paid other men to shoot up other such houses. He did all this because he was convinced he had lost his election because it had been "rigged" -- even though he lost by almost 50 points. This is nothing short of political terrorism, plain and simple. From a Republican. Who ran for state office.

Peter Navarro got told by a judge he's going to have to go to trial for contempt of Congress, and that trial could begin very quickly.

Which brings us to the "Trump's legal woes" part of our weekly column.

Some of the deposition Trump sat for in the rape and defamation cases against him were made public, and his responses are about what you would expect of him. He said the woman who has accused him "said it was very sexy to be raped," that every reality he doesn't like in life is "a hoax," and although he has previously offered up (in some twisted sort of defense against the accusation) that the woman in question was "not my type," when presented with a photo of her while under oath Trump mistook her for his former wife Marla Maples. Oops!

The big legal setback for Trump was losing a case in Florida he had filed against Hillary Clinton and 30 other defendants he didn't like. The case wasn't just laughed out of court, it was scolded out -- as the judge told Trump and his lawyer they had to pony up almost a million dollars to pay for the legal fees of all the Democrats Trump took an inkling to sue for no reason. Here's some of the story, although there are plenty of other scathing quotes from the judge's opinion as well:



That last line is some real poetic justice, obviously. Today -- one day after this news broke -- Trump withdrew an equally-frivolous lawsuit against the New York district attorney who is prosecuting the case against the Trump Organization. Having to fork over a cool million bucks to the political enemies Trump hates the most must really sting, eh?

Other Trumpian news: he wants back on Facebook, he seems to be losing his touch with evangelical voters (who were a big part of his base), he's gotten millions of dollars from Saudi Crown Prince M.B.S. (because of course he has), and in a surprise move has now staked out a rather bizarre position for Republicans: that they should not touch a penny of Social Security or Medicare.

That last (it has been speculated) might just be Trump trying to pick a political fight he might win with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, but if Trump starts slamming his own party for attacking Social Security and Medicare on a regular basis it will completely undermine their strategy for the next six months of holding the debt ceiling hostage in order to force such cuts. Which, ironically enough, is being driven by the ultra-MAGA members of his party, so it'll be interesting to see what they do next.

This leads to a perfect place to close this roundup, because if they do go through with their threats and do choose Social Security as a hostage in their negotiating strategy, then this particular quote is going to come back to haunt them (that's our guess, anyway). And we couldn't have come up with a better talking point than the one at the end of this excerpt, so we're just going to leave it at that:







Of course, it's not just presidents who get sworn in at the start of a new year, many governors also take office around this time. One who did so this week was impressive just due to the rather shameful rarity of it.

Wes Moore is now the governor of Maryland. He is only the third Black governor ever elected in all of American history. The first, Douglas Wilder of Virginia, didn't take office until 1990. The second was Deval Patrick, 15 years ago. Moore is now the third.

Technically, he is the sixth Black man ever to hold a state's highest office (no Black woman has ever done so to this day). There were two during Reconstruction who at the time were lieutenant governor in Louisiana when the governor wasn't there, so they were "acting governor" for a while. The third was another lieutenant governor, David Paterson in New York, who was sworn in as governor after Eliot Spitzer self-immolated in a prostitution scandal. But none of these three were ever elected to the top job.

After two centuries and as the United States grew to have 50 states, only three Black men have ever been elected governor. As we said, this is rather shameful when you think about it.

After winning a landslide election against a full-on MAGA Republican, Moore takes the helm of the Old Line State. The previous governor was term-limited from running again, which cleared the field (which was crucial since he was a very popular moderate Republican who did so well in this blue state that he's now considering a run for the presidency). Because of this partisan change, Moore was able to make some rather dramatic moves right away:



In other words, a rather impressive start. After an impressive swearing-in, we should mention:



Not every new governor gets this level of attention or scrutiny, it is worth pointing out.

Moore will have challenges, and it remains to be seen what kind of governor he will be. But so far he's looking pretty good, and without doubt he qualifies for this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Congratulate Governor Wes Moore on his official Maryland contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





We already said this earlier this week, but we have to hand President Joe Biden the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week. His handling of the disclosures about the mishandled classified documents may have (as a deep dive by both the Washington Post and the New York Times laid out this week) been due to an overabundance of caution and desire for full cooperation with the Justice Department's investigation, but it utterly failed in one respect. Team Biden apparently was trying to avoid any comparisons at all between how Biden handled the matter and how Donald Trump has behaved, but the comparisons were made anyway.

We wrote earlier this week a plea for Biden to get out in front of this and just address the American people to give his overview of everything that has happened so far. Strangely enough, he actually did so (in a very minor way) while he was visiting our own neck of the woods. Biden travelled to California this week to see the extent of the storm damages, and on a beach in Santa Cruz County, he was asked about the classified documents by a reporter. He seemed frustrated and annoyed with the question, but he did give at least some sort of personal answer to it for the first time:



Now, students of witty and literate quips will immediately realize that Biden really should by all rights have uttered that last line while standing in Oakland, California, rather than on a state beach in Aptos, but that's just pedantic nitpickery. Also, we personally had to take pride in getting mentioned (kind of) in the Washington Post article on his trip: "Along his route, Biden drew larger than usual crowds for a visit to a disaster site."

Kidding aside, though, this is what Biden should have done from the very start. Give a broad overview of how he sees the situation, and then perhaps identify a spokesman from his legal team to answer any further questions. This would take the heat off the White House press office, which has borne the brunt of Biden's reluctance to speak on the issue so far.

It still might be necessary politically for Biden to give some sort of statement on the issue, but this was at least a first step.

Joe Biden has to realize he's got to give his own defenders in the political arena something to work with. He's got to give his own explanations without completely hiding behind his lawyers. But for allowing the drip-drip-drip of the details coming out in the media to continue, and for reacting so slowly to any of the outcry for far too long, Joe Biden is once again our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

[Contact President Joe Biden on his official contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 691 (1/20/23)

Before we begin, we'd like to mark the passing of a rock icon. David Crosby will be missed by millions, most definitely including us.

Our own favorite Crosby song without doubt was an absolute anthem for us personally, back when we were in our teenage years. Because back then -- and some may find this difficult to even imagine -- this was a political statement, not just a lifestyle or fashion statement. Being a "freak" was a rejection of the establishment, the government, and "normal" American life. It was a statement that said you were part of the counterculture, not the dominant stultifying culture. It said: "I choose to be me, and I do not care what you think about that." It was also dangerous, because: back then hippies were routinely hassled by cops for no other reason than being hippies; just possessing marijuana could get you long prison sentences back then; and rightwingers also felt free to hassle and sometimes physically attack those who so flamboyantly displayed their disdain for normalcy. An entire Broadway play was called Hair for a good reason, in other words. And Crosby captured all this perfectly in the song "Almost Cut My Hair," so we had to run two short bits from his powerful lyrics, to mark his passing:



Requiescat In Pace, David Crosby.



Moving on... we are going to try something different today, mostly because to do otherwise would have involved a lot of picking and choosing, which would have meant a lot of this stuff would have gotten left on the cutting-room floor. So rather than making such decisions ourselves, we're not going to provide our version of talking points this week, we are instead going to give the raw data that Democrats can use to construct talking points of their own. Call it a do-it-yourself edition of the talking points section.

We have two sets of data, one directly from the White House and one from the Associated Press. Both attempt to summarize Biden's first two years. The White House one (obviously) is slanted towards positive spin. You can see the full "talking points document" yourself, courtesy of Politico (it's only two pages long).

The AP list is their way of providing an overview of America under Joe Biden's presidency -- quite literally, "by the numbers." The original of this list goes into more detail and has more items (we cut some that didn't seem as likely to become Democratic talking points, for length). In any case, here are the two attempts to answer the question: "At two years in, how is President Joe Biden doing?"

The first comes from the White House:



Those are all pretty impressive, but then these are the "straight from the White House" talking points, so you'd expect them to be. The AP list is more balanced, but since it is all about the numbers, we're not going to run these as excerpts but instead reword them a bit to make them more succinct (and also easier to use as a quick talking point). And as already noted, we cut a few of them out for brevity as well.

We do have to add two notes. Here is the full list of states that Biden has so far not visited (for the curious): AR, IN, KS, ME, MS, MT, NE, ND, SD, TN, UT, VT, WV, and WY. And if there's any overlap between anti-vaxxers and numerologists or Christian mysticism, their eyebrows will certainly shoot up over one of these numbers in particular (trigger warning!).

Kidding aside, though, here is Biden's term so far, by the AP's numbers:



All around, that should give everyone plenty to work with to come up with Democratic talking points this week, to mark Joe Biden beginning his third year in office.




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

January 14, 2023

Friday Talking Points -- Joe's Garage

With apologies to Frank Zappa, this week's big political story might be summed up as coming from "Joe's garage." But we'll get to all of that in a moment, down in the awards section (it shouldn't be any mystery which one he's going to get). First, though, let's take a look at the other momentous things that happened during the past week.

This column, of course, measures weeks from Friday afternoon to Friday afternoon. As we were writing last week, the House of Representatives was still deadlocked over who would become the next speaker. This continued far into the night, until Kevin McCarthy finally emerged victorious. Weakened, bloodied, diminished... but finally victorious.

The whole comedy of errors lasted through the fifteenth vote, which hasn't happened since Civil War times. This was not an ideological battle, as some in the media portrayed it (the "hard right" versus the rest of the Republicans), instead it was a battle over how nutball-crazy the next House will truly be. And the nutball-crazy faction was the true winner here, extracting pretty much every concession from McCarthy that they demanded.

The whole thing was highly amusing for Democrats, and the internet had an absolute field day watching the clown show (best we saw: "The Republicans don't even know how to peacefully transfer power to themselves" ). But what was most interesting was what intelligent Republicans and conservatives had to say about it all. Two examples of this stood out, one from the Washington Post:

And a second from Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist for the New York Times:



Personally, after being subjected to hearing McCarthy speak, we hope that moniker catches on. "Squeaker of the House" sounds perfect, for him. He's definitely more than just a little murine, in fact.

This week, Squeaker McCarthy managed to get the House rules package passed, which meant the House could start actually conducting business again. The first thing they then passed was a measure intended to "claw back" the money Democrats had passed to improve the Internal Revenue Service. It wasn't that long ago that the I.R.S. had a complete meltdown, with tax returns delayed for months on end for some filers, and worse customer service response times than Southwest Airlines during the holidays. But Republicans have been slashing the agency's budget whenever they're in control of Congress for years now, so this was an attempt to get back to starving the tax cops of money. But by doing so, they are actually undercutting the rest of their stated agenda, since with fewer resources the I.R.S. brings in less money (because it doesn't have the personnel to go after as many tax cheats). The bill the Republicans passed, if actually enacted, would cause the deficit to rise by $114.4 billion.

Biden's White House helpfully pointed this out. Chief of Staff Ron Klain tweeted: "It's a giant tax cut for rich tax cheats. Bill #1 from the new House GOP." Vice President Kamala Harris accused Republicans of "rushing to... allow too many millionaires, billionaires, and corporations to cheat the system." The Office of Management and Budget added: "With their first economic legislation of the new Congress, House Republicans are making clear that their top economic priority is to allow the rich and multi-billion dollar corporations to skip out on their taxes, while making life harder for ordinary, middle-class families that pay the taxes they owe."

Other than counterproductive "messaging" bills that are going to go precisely nowhere in the Senate, the new House will soon be investigating pretty much every right-wing conspiracy theory in existence. This will include a new subcommittee with the Orwellian name of (you just can't make this stuff up, folks) the "Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government." It's purpose will be to weaponize the House even further than was promised on the campaign trail. Jim Jordan, fire-breather extraordinaire, will be chairing this new subcommittee. The purpose will be to "expose" the fact that when rightwing people do criminal things such as attack the United States Capitol or make threats of violence or death to people in government -- or even just cheat on their taxes -- they are often investigated and charged in federal court for these crimes. Shocking! But Jordan is on the case, and will get to the bottom of the federal government being mean to these people for what he considers no reason at all. Fascism comes in many forms, but we have to agree with a Salon article which ended with a pertinent quote from Karl Marx: "all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. The first time as tragedy, the second as farce."

Because while Jordan will chair this committee, many in the media were making a parallel with a different name, by pointing out that we are all in for another round of McCarthyism. Not Kevin... Joe. Here is what we considered the best "big picture" take of the week on what we can now expect from House Republicans:



Sounds about right, to us. Buckle up, everyone, it's going to be a rough ride!

OK, just a few legal footnotes, for our weekly "Donald Trump faces the music" segment. A New York court handed down a fine after the Trump Organization was found guilty of over a dozen serious crimes, but unfortunately the state's laws don't levy these fines as a percentage of net worth, so the fine is a mere $1.6 million, which they'll probably find hiding in the couch cushions. Even so, it was as steep as the law allowed, which is something.

In Georgia, the special grand jury investigating the election-tampering after the 2020 presidential election wrapped up its work and delivered its final report to prosecutor Fani Willis. The next possible steps are: publicly releasing the report (to be decided within two weeks by a judge), and referral to a regular grand jury which has the power to bring charges. Some are predicting that this process will be fairly quick, meaning Donald Trump could be charged with crimes at roughly the same time that the report is released, or soon after. Kudos to the state of Georgia for moving a lot faster than the attorney general of the United States, but then they had a much less complex criminal case to make. In any case, stay tuned, this one could be about to get rather explosive.

And finally, it seems that Steve Bannon was not content with just machinating an insurrectionist attempt to install a country's leader by mob rule and violence here at home, he's been branching out to Brazil as well. When supporters of the losing candidate for president stormed the presidential palace and government buildings in a riotous attack, Bannon fully supported them and egged them on.

Remember when the United States strove to "export democracy around the world"? Now Trump's henchmen are trying to export insurrection against democracy around the world. Sad.





We have two Honorable Mention awards to hand out this week before we get to the big one. The first goes to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who signed a law this week which bans the sale and manufacture of assault-style weapons in his state. Illinois now becomes the ninth state to have done so.

Also getting an Honorable Mention is Representative Katie Porter, who announced she will be running for Dianne Feinstein's Senate seat in 2024 -- whether DiFi decides to run again or not. We wrote about this earlier in the week, if anyone's interested. One update: since we did write about it, Senator Liz Warren has endorsed Porter's campaign. Also, Representative Barbara Lee unofficially announced she would be running for the seat as well. It is long past time for this particular generational torch to be passed, in our humble opinion (as one of DiFi's constituents).

But the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week was House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, not only for holding his Democrats united during the whole clown show of the speaker's race, but for what he said after it was over. He was called upon to introduce the new speaker (a House tradition), and his speech was one for the ages. It is being called the "Alphabet Speech," for its most notable passage:



We admit we had to look up "xenial" to find out it means: "hospitality to guests." But you have to admit, that's a pretty impressive (and alphabetical) comparison. Jeffries spoke without notes or a TelePrompTer, which makes it even more impressive, that he could rattle all that off -- in the lilting cadence of a preacher -- off the top of his head. He even added alliterative flourishes when he thanked Nancy Pelosi for her tenure ("a legendary legislator, a fabulous facilitator, and a no-nonsense negotiator" ), for good measure.

Jeffries had a good debut, in other words, in his first big public speech to the House and to the nation. Which is why we are obliged to award him this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. We look forward to hearing more from him in the future, too.

[Congratulate House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on his House contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]




Again with our apologies to Frank Zappa, Joe's garage didn't produce a teenage garage band this week, instead it produced more documents marked classified.

Sigh.

President Joe Biden was actually having a pretty good couple of months, before this whole scandal broke. His average job approval ratings recently hit 44 percent, which is better than he's managed since October of 2021. Inflation continues to fall, down to 6.5 percent from the peak of 9.1 percent during last summer. That's a drop of almost 30 percent, which is pretty impressive. Gas prices are back down to Earth, which had a lot to do with the inflation number receding. Biden is preparing for his State Of The Union address to Congress, which will happen early next month. And he was getting ready to announce his re-election bid, from all reports.

This has changed with the revelation that Biden's lawyers found a handful of documents (described as "around 10" ) with classified markings stored at his think tank, and then the subsequent news that a few more classified document were found in his garage in Wilmington, Delaware, and one more in a room next to the garage. How much it has all changed is really anyone's guess, at this point.

One thing that has already changed is that there are now two special counsels at the Department of Justice investigating handling of classified material by political leaders. One for Biden, and one for Donald Trump.

This is all a rather large (and belated) Christmas present for Trump, of course. Politically, it allows Trump and all his supporters to claim "everyone does it." It provides a handy "but what about..." excuse, obviously. To say that it complicates matters for those looking to hold Trump accountable is an understatement.

Biden hasn't really raised an effective defense yet, either. He has said, during brief questions from the press this week, that he wasn't aware of the first documents, which were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, and that they were immediately turned over to the National Archives. But when asked about the ones in his garage, he was rather dismissive:



He also said he wanted to make a statement on the subject, but that he wasn't ready to do so yet. We were wondering whether he'd do so late today, since "late on a Friday" is often when politicians like to address touchy subjects, but as of this writing there has been no public statement by Biden.

There needs to be, and as soon as possible. The president has to address the American people and explain exactly what happened, what his involvement with any of it was, and what it all means. He can get out in front of this and give his defenders ways to differentiate his handling of classified records with Donald Trump's, but he has to do so himself. No doubt his lawyers are cautioning against such a move (lawyers never want clients to give public statements), but it is becoming imperative that he do so as soon as possible.

Because the scandal just broke, it hasn't shown up yet in the public opinion polling. But already many are intimating that perhaps Joe Biden wouldn't be the best choice for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2024. He had been facing such whispers before the midterms, but they largely died out when the "red wave" failed to materialize. Now, however, the doubters have returned, right when Biden was planning on triumphantly clearing the field with his campaign announcement. This could damage him severely, or it could all just be a bump in the road -- nobody knows at this point. But the best thing Biden could do for himself is to give a short public statement explaining it all to the American people.

No matter what happens next, it's pretty indisputable that Joe Biden deserves this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week, though.

[Contact President Joe Biden on his White House contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 690 (1/13/23)

Our talking points this week cover several subjects, with one highly amusing quote from a House Republican at the end, just for everyone's amusement.

But before we get to that, we did want to note the passing of legendary guitarist Jeff Beck, who was influential on rock music ever since he began in The Yardbirds. He will be missed.

Requiescat In Pace.



The big difference

This is a point that's actually pretty easy to make.

"You want to know the big difference between how Joe Biden and Donald Trump handled classified documents? Biden did the right thing. Trump did not. That's it in a nutshell. Lawyers for Biden discovered a mistake, and they immediately corrected it by doing exactly the right thing. Lawyers for Trump fought hard against doing the right thing, for almost a year and a half. That is the difference right there. Biden did the right thing, while Trump did not."



No need for a "raid"

This is the current talking point among Trump supporters, and it needs to be shot down.

"I see some are facetiously asking for Joe Biden's house and offices to be 'raided' by the feds, since that is what they call what happened to Donald Trump. But there's simply no need for such an action. Trump didn't get 'raided,' he got a search warrant legally executed because he lied and was still hiding things. He fought hard against following the law and returning the property of the American people to the National Archives, he lied and said he had turned them all over, he got subpoenaed because he hadn't, he turned over a few more and lied again and said that was all of them, and then evidence was presented to a judge who signed a search warrant which, when executed, found over 100 more classified documents in Trump's possession. None of that is true for Joe Biden. None of it! Biden had perhaps 15 documents, not over 300, and he never fought to keep them, period. There will be no 'raid' on Biden because he is fully cooperating with the investigation. So please stop embarrassing yourselves. The two situations aren't even remotely similar."



McCarthyism for the 21st century

Maybe this is why Republicans don't want American kids to know the real history of this country?

"I see Jim Jordan will be chairing a new House subcommittee which will be empowered to 'investigate' the investigators. They're trying to say it will be like the 1970s Church Committee, which uncovered abuses at the F.B.I. and C.I.A., but in reality it will be solely used to go after anyone with the temerity to attempt to hold conservatives responsible for anything they do. Donald Trump has been crying 'witch hunt' for years, and now he'll have an institutional system to launch all the witch hunts he wishes. Because that is precisely what Jordan is going to do. It won't be the Church Committee, it'll be a lot more like the House Un-American Activities Committee or Joe McCarthy's red-baiting committee, here in the 21st century."



They got nothin'

Democrats need to hammer this one home as much as possible and as often as possible.

"Remember all those campaign promises Republicans made in the midterm elections? Well, they're hoping you'll forget all about them. Because they don't intend to make good on any of them. What is the new GOP House doing to fight inflation? Nothing. They're busy passing bills which will allow millionaires to cheat on their taxes instead. What are they doing to bring crime rates down? Nothing. They're trying to defund the tax cops and politically attacking the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice instead. What are they doing on any problem the average American voter faces? Absolutely nothing. Because they simply have no answers to problems regular people face. Instead, they are going to go on a spree of investigating their political enemies, because they're more interested in investigating our withdrawal from Afghanistan or Hunter Biden then they are about making good on any of those promises they made to the voters who elected them."



Social Security and Medicare are next

This won't happen until the summer, most likely, but that doesn't mean Democrats can't get a whole lot of mileage out of it until then.

"You know what the biggest thing on the House Republicans' agenda is? Gutting Social Security and Medicare. Yep, they're coming for two programs that millions upon millions of Americans rely on. They don't often admit it, they talk about 'fighting spending,' and 'balancing the budget,' but what they really mean is gigantic cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They're even willing to tank the entire American economy in a dangerous game of 'Chicken' to do so. This is their highest priority, folks -- cutting the programs that tens of millions of Americans love and rely on to live. It is who they are."



Follow the money

This is what will get him, in the end -- that's our prediction.

"George Santos is being avoided by even Republicans in Congress, probably because they're all afraid they'll get burned by standing next to him when his pants spontaneously burst into flames once again. Santos has lied about just about everything there is to lie about, at this point. But the big unanswered question isn't whether his relatives fled the Holocaust or what he did in school and his career -- the big question is where did he get his campaign money from? Who funded him? Who poured money into his pockets? Those are the things that the investigators should be zeroing in on, because that's where the actual criminal behavior is likely to be found. As Deep Throat said back in the midst of Watergate: 'Follow the money.'"



Yeah, they probably shouldn't

Can't let this one go by without at least one comment.

"When, after the fourteenth vote for House speaker, Representative Mike Rogers had to be physically restrained from launching an attack upon his fellow Republican Matt Gaetz, another House Republican summed up the situation better than I ever could. Tim Burchett said of Rogers, and I quote: 'People shouldn't be drinking, especially when you're a redneck, on the House floor.' Can't argue with that. He also predicted what would happen if Rogers ever took a swing at him: 'I would drop him like a bag of dirt. Nobody's going to put their hands on me. Nobody's going to threaten me.' And they wonder why Democrats popped popcorn to watch the whole spectacle? Democrats expected to get a Ringling Brothers clown show, but they didn't expect a full-on W.W.E. wrestling match, that's for sure."





Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

December 24, 2022

My 2022 "McLaughlin Awards" (Part 2)

Welcome back to the second of our year-end awards columns! And if you missed it last Friday, go check out [Part 1] as well.

As always, this is long. Horrendously long. Insanely long. It takes a lot of stamina to read all the way to the end. You have been duly warned! But because it is so long, we certainly don't want to add any more here at the start, so let's just dive in, shall we?



Destined For Political Stardom

We got a lot of interesting nominations for the Destined For Political Stardom award, including: Representative-Elect Mary Peltola (who singlehandedly doubled the amount of geography represented by Democrats in the House, due to Alaska being both enormous and also an at-large state in the House with only one seat). Representative Maxwell Frost, for being the first Generation Z House member. Governor-Elect Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, who got two reader votes ("nypoet22" and "John From Censornati" ), while incoming House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries got the nod from more than one person (including, here, "andygaus" ).

However, we are going to go with two awards in this category, one personal and one geographic.

South Carolina is indeed Destined For Political Stardom in the Democratic Party, at least if President Joe Biden's preferred early-primary calendar is adopted. South Carolina already achieved early-voting status years ago, but it will now leap to the front of the (official) line. This will mean an inordinate amount of attention paid to the citizens of the state by both the candidate (or "candidates," if anyone challenges Biden for the nomination) and by the national media. A windfall of tourist spending will also be experienced in the state.

Personally, though, we thought that Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow was the best choice for this award. Forgot who she is? Don't recognize her name? Then you need to watch (or re-watch) the video of her speech of righteous indignation (there simply is no other term for it) after a fellow state senator falsely and vilely accused her of being a "groomer" of young children.

We were so impressed by this speech that we transcribed the whole thing as a column. You may remember it as the "I am a straight, White, Christian, married suburban mom" speech. Here's the end of it (the whole speech clocks in at less than five minutes):

Seriously, go watch this speech, if you haven't seen it before. It's worth it. Take the time. You'll be glad you did.

Michigan, this year, achieved the fabled "trifecta," where both houses of the statehouse and the governor's office were secured by the Democratic Party. This was big news, because it hadn't happened in decades. Michigan voters had (earlier) instituted a new plan to redistrict by nonpartisan committees, which resulted in the end of the Republican gerrymanders and ushered in the state being fairly represented once again. The incoming Democrats have a lot to do -- decades of Republican laws to reform, revisit, or just repeal. It could become a poster-child for how Democrats govern a state as opposed to GOP rule. Which could mean multiple opportunities for Michigan politicians to be on a national stage in the next few years.

And we certainly wouldn't be surprised to be hearing from Mallory McMorrow again, since she's our choice for Destined For Political Stardom.



Destined For Political Oblivion

We also had plenty of ideas for this one, as well. On the Republican side, there were many to choose from: Sarah Palin (whose comeback fizzled), Mehmet "Dr." Oz (who we should really start calling Mehmet "Dr. Crudités" Oz, we suppose), Herschel Walker (the worst of the worst of the GOP crop of clowns this year), or perhaps all the idiots in Arizona and elsewhere who thought that telling all their own voters that elections were rigged was a dandy way to turn them out to vote -- you know: "Be sure to vote! And then it won't be counted, because the whole system is corrupted against you!" Sheesh....

At least, we sincerely hope this whole concept of running on Trump's Big Lie is Destined For Political Oblivion (but you never know...).

Donald Trump was suggested (by reader "John M" ), as well as Mike Pence (John From Censornati and "Kick" -- who amusingly predicted Pence's political career "is as dead as the fly who upstaged him during the VP debate" ). But we're not so sure about how destined either one is for oblivion, quite yet. Reader nypoet22 went global and suggested Liz Truss, who was "U.K. prime minister for four Scaramuccis." That one got a laugh out of us too, we have to admit.

On the Democratic side, sadly, we had two prominent nominees -- Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke. Both are now multiple-time losers on a state-wide level, and will likely not ever run for such offices again. Either of them could transition into a new phase of their career, however -- be it on cable television or perhaps even in the Biden administration (which could have some turnover, even up to cabinet-level), much like Pete Buttigieg managed.

Trump's pet social media site Truth Social seems on the verge of collapse, but then this has been true pretty much ever since it got started (with a website launch that was actually worse than the Obamacare marketplace's, which is really saying something).

But again, we're going with one geographical and one personal. Unsurprisingly, the geographical is the flip side to the coin -- Iowa is Destined For Political Oblivion, at least as far as Democrats are concerned. Their removal from their early-voting status is going to make them just another unwinnable red state that the national party mostly ignores from now on. No more flocks of reporters going to see the butter cow at the state fair, no more solidly-booked hotels once every four years (although the Republican contest staying put will mitigate the blow).

But our choice for Destined For Political Oblivion is soon-to-be-"ex-" Representative Madison Cawthorn. He experienced what can only be called a brutal political takedown this year from within his own party. The GOP essentially dragged Cawthorn into a back alley and violently assaulted his character.

Think that's overstating the case? We don't. The opposition research campaign against Cawthorn was the most vicious thing we've ever personally seen in politics. We would call it a "smear campaign," except it seemed to all be true. Here's the list we put together (which is by no means definitive).

Madison Cawthorn:

Lied during his campaign about his personal life, including lying about the car accident which left him partially paralyzed.

Went to visit Adolf Hitler's vacation house because it had been on his "bucket list for a while."

Had 150 alumni of the college he attended sign a letter accusing him of "sexually predatory behavior."

Tried to take a loaded gun through airport security -- twice.

Got pulled over for speeding and driving with expired tags and an expired license and various other driving offenses -- three times.

Was alleged to have conducted insider trading.

Accused his fellow Republicans in Washington of holding cocaine-fuelled orgies, while he refused to name names.

That last one, more than the others, is probably what convinced the Republicans to come down hard on him, it's worth mentioning. And we're not even sure that's a complete list, we could have easily missed three or four more big scandals!

In any case, the back-alley mugging of Cawthorn then began in earnest. First, photos were released of Cawthorn partying in public wearing women's underwear, on a cruise ship. Then a British tabloid (the Daily Mail) took it up a notch. Here's how we recounted it, at the time:



You'd think that would have been enough. But there was one final shoe left to drop:



Cawthorn went on to lose his primary race. So he's about to make his final exit from the political stage. And we rather think his next destination is indeed going to be "political oblivion." Cawthorn is radioactive both within the Republican Party (this whole leak campaign was done by his fellow Republicans) and in the general world of conservatives as well (for obvious reasons). Madison Cawthorn is, thankfully, Destined For Political Oblivion.



Best Political Theater

This can be interpreted in various ways, of course. For sheer amusement, there were things like the statue of Senator Ron Johnson made out of poop, which toured Wisconsin during his run for re-election (which, alas, he won). There was the whole "Russian warship, go fuck yourself!" thing in Ukraine, but we gave an award to the stamps last week, so that's already been covered. In a more serious vein, there was a line of empty school buses which slowly drove by Senator Ted Cruz's house to represent all the empty seats there were on school buses due to children being killed by gunfire (with a photo from above that was easily worth 1,000 words).

If we had interpreted it for sheer amusement value, we would have given the award to Chicago comedian Kim Quindlen, who had the best reaction to Mehmet "Dr." Oz's infamous "crudités" video (in which he couldn't even get the name of the store right, confusing well-known Pennsylvania chains "Wegmans" and "Redner's" into "Wegners" ):



Hands down, the best comedic political theater of the year!

But we chose (as did several readers) to interpret it differently, in a more serious vein.

Because the real Best Political Theater of the year was (collectively) the presentations by the House Select Committee on January 6th. Now, the argument can be made (as one reader who suggested it, Kick, pointed out) that "that term denotes a stunt, which the committee definitely wasn't." We agree in principle, but we don't define the term that narrowly.

The hearings were political theater. They were a production. They were storytelling. They were choreographed (and excellently so). And they likewise will probably change the nature of congressional hearings forevermore (at least for important ones). Instead of the usual "everybody gets five minutes to fire questions at the witness," they adopted a different framework and just had one or two members run each of the hearings. Live witnesses were produced, video clips were intertwined, video of the insurrectionists was made public, the entire thing caught your attention and never meandered off into being so boring you fell asleep.

And the picture they painted -- which is being fully released to the public even as we write this -- is a damning one indeed. Donald Trump's centrality to the entire thing was made plain for all to see.

The hearings worked. They were effective. They caught the public's attention in the way few other congressional hearings ever have. And so we have to award them Best Political Theater of the year.



Worst Political Theater

We got some interesting ideas for this category from readers. Trump's N.F.T. trading cards (andygaus, John M, Kick), the purchasing and dismantling of Twitter (nypoet22), and Kanye West (John From Censornati) were all worthy of consideration, to be sure. As was the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings, but we covered them last week under "Bummest Rap."

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert heckling President Biden during his State Of The Union address -- while he was memorializing his dead son -- was pretty bad as well.

But we're going for more the "worst theater" aspect of the award, and we have to hand it to the American version of the Canadian trucker protest.

The Canadians, at least, had something concrete to protest. Some of the Canuck-i-truckers were upset about mandatory COVID regulations for their profession, so they drove their big rigs to the capital and made a god-awful nuisance of themselves for as long as they could get away with. Rightwingers in America cheered, because it fit perfectly into their "macho-versus-weenies" way of thinking. So a bunch of people then tried to organize a similar protest down here.

It didn't go well, and that's an understatement.

In the first place, there simply wasn't anything to protest. It was, in Seinfeld-ian terms, a protest about nothing.

There were no mandatory vaccinations or even mandatory mask requirements for truckers in America. So they tried to shift to just a sort of free-floating, generic "anti-pandemic-measures" theme. But by the time they had gotten their act together, all the COVID regulations here were either over or soon to be over. Omicron had come and gone. People were ready for normalcy again. Vaccines were widely available. Public health restrictions disappeared one by one.

But the truckers already had planned to protest, so protest they did. They drove across America, using donated money for their incredibly-small convoy, and they arrived just outside of the metropolitan D.C. area. There were rumors that they had planned on arriving for President Biden's State Of The Union address, but they were late. Even if they had gotten here on time, after what happened on January 6th, 2021, there was little tolerance for any perceived threatening move against the United States Capitol, and the response would indeed have been overwhelming (in one way or another). Which was all avoided, because they didn't get here on time.

When they finally did get here, they didn't even venture into D.C. Some wanted to, but a show of force made them think twice about it and few trucks even attempted to get off the freeways and enter city streets.

What they did instead was drive slowly around the Beltway. Once a day, they'd venture out from their campground and circle the Beltway. Slowly. With all the other traffic, also driving slowly (it's the Beltway -- there is almost always heavy traffic!). Sooner or later, they got tired of all the drivers flipping the bird to them, and they got tired of essentially doing nothing but burning fuel (without getting paid to do so), and the protest -- against nothing, we hasten to remind you -- just kind of withered up and blew away.

It was, without doubt, the Worst Political Theater of the year. It was also, in a word, pathetic.



Worst Political Scandal

We thought about mentioning the January 6th hearings here, but the scandal itself was really last year and we already gave the hearings an award....

The Secret Service conveniently "losing" a whole bunch of text messages from January 6th was one of the new items uncovered, and it was indeed scandalous to learn.

But the scandal of Donald Trump stealing tens of thousands of government documents -- including hundreds of pages of classified material (at the highest classification, including nuclear secrets) -- and then refusing multiple times to give them back resulted in the first-ever search warrant served on a former president. Which is indeed scandalous -- that a search warrant should ever have even been necessary. We still don't know that all the classified documents have been returned, as a matter of fact -- two were just handed over mere weeks ago, from a self-storage locker in Florida.

These documents are the property of the United States government. Or, to put it another way, they belong to the American people, not to Donald Trump. Which he still hasn't quite grasped the concept of. This is absolutely indefensible, and sooner or later Trump may have to make the attempt at defending his behavior in a criminal court of law. Which is why it is clearly the Worst Political Scandal of 2022.



Most Underreported Story

The media, once again, fell down in several big ways this year. The fact that the economy is going gangbusters even if inflation did spike was buried in all the attention paid to the one negative in all the economic data, for instance. Climate change, as usual, was underreported. And the price of gas went up, which was breathlessly covered every single night as somehow "breaking news" worthy of the lead story, while when it went back down again the media largely yawned. The supply chain issues the country experienced last year at this time have been solved, but again the media took little note of the fact.

Joe Biden's agenda passing in fits and starts brought a lot of good news that was (for the most part) largely ignored in the media. Hearing aids are now over-the-counter rather than prescription, which is saving millions of Americans thousands of dollars each. But it was just a one-day story to the media. The governor of New Mexico announced that all child care in the state would be free -- which will change the lives of many parents for the better but was almost completely ignored by the national media.

Even scandals were underreported, such as the discovery that Jared Kushner was entrusted with $2 billion in Saudi money to run a hedge fund -- an occupation he has no experience at whatsoever, and which happened soon after his father left office. One hopes that Senate Democrats will pick this story up if the House Republicans start going after Hunter Biden next year, but we'll have to wait and see.

Our runner-up for the Most Underreported Story was the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the start of the year, we were still being crushed by the Omicron variant and the Republicans thought that masks and mandates would be a gigantic issue for them to run on in the midterms. But the issue quickly faded away, and wasn't even a concern for most voters by November. We are in the holiday season once again and there is no spike concordant with the past two years, and nobody's wearing masks anymore and life has returned to normal for most people. COVID is still out there, people are still getting it (some of whom have escaped it until now), but it's no longer as frightening as it once was to the general public. And yet this enormous sea-change was barely even mentioned by the press.

But to us the Most Underreported Story was the complete lack of any Republican economic plan whatsoever. The political media ran with a storyline throughout the election, that went something like: "Inflation is so bad it is crushing the Democrats' midterm chances, because the public feels that Republicans would do a better job of steering the American economy." They simply never asked the follow-up question: "How are the Republicans going to do this?" at all. It was just assumed: GOP good on economy, Democrats bad.

Republicans did not have any ideas for bringing down inflation or gas prices. They just didn't. They had no quick fixes. They had some anodyne mush about "let's drill some more oil" and that was about it. But the pundits hammered their message home nonetheless, without ever even bothering to examine what the Republicans would do differently. So our Most Underreported Story is the fact that Republicans had nothing, and yet were treated like some sort of economic geniuses by the press.



Most Overreported Story

Inflation! Recession! No recession yet? Well, it'll get here soon! The economy's in the toilet! What, the unemployment rate is still at 50-year lows? Well, never mind.... Inflation! Recession looms!

Sigh.

We were treated to an inordinate amount of news about the British royalty, from Harry and Meghan (noted by nypoet22) to the weeklong mourning of Queen Elizabeth II on American television. At times we felt like shouting: "Hey, didn't we fight an actual war so we wouldn't have to pay attention to these people ever again?!?"

Sigh.

But being politically-centered, we have to say that the conventional wisdom drove one storyline all year long which turned out laughably wrong. We were told time and time again that Democrats were toast in November. History dictated it. Joe Biden's low job approval ratings guaranteed it. The loss of abortion rights was merely a momentary thing; women surely wouldn't actually base their vote on it in November. Joe Biden was a fool for talking so much about protecting democracy, since all the voters cared about was the price of gas and food.

The Most Overreported Story of 2022 was the red wave that wasn't.



Biggest Government Waste

We're going to go off on a bit of a tangent here, and judge "biggest" not by the amount of money involved but rather on a scale that might also be called "stupidest."

The Biggest Government Waste was in all those Republican states where they either created or beefed up their "elections police" units to fight a crime that is almost non-existent.

Florida's governor was the most glaring example of this, as he set up a group of state cops that answer directly to him and were charged with finding all that rampant voter and election fraud going on. They had millions of dollars to spend looking for just this, and they have only managed to come up with a relative handful of cases, most of which were ex-felons who were told they were eligible by government officials -- so they registered to vote and voted.

The fact that they weren't eligible was never explained to them in any way, shape, or form. And many of their cases have been either thrown out of court or dropped by state attorneys.

To recap: the governor set up his own personal police force. He told them to look into a crime that is virtually non-existent and nowhere near the problem that opportunistic Republican politicians try to make it seem. They looked and they looked and they found a couple people who were wrongly told they were eligible to vote. They didn't find "widespread election fraud." They didn't find anywhere near the criminal activity it would have taken to change any Florida election result. And they were only the most prominent of these newly-minted elections cops.

Easily, this was the Biggest Government Waste of the year.



Best Government Dollar Spent

We got one nomination each for COVID boosters (nypoet22) and vaccinations (John M), and one for a perennial favorite of ours too, the National Parks (Kick).

We also came up with the new Webb Space Telescope, which is already beaming back amazing and astonishing photos of the Universe.

But it came down to two nominees, for us. The first has a very strong case behind it. Reader andygaus suggested Ukraine aid, and it's easy to see why. Money spent to beef up Ukraine's military is directly contributing to the degradation of the Russian military. That is a wonderful investment, when you think about it. No matter what the final outcome turns out to be in Ukraine, Russia will have to spend years rebuilding to even get its military back to the sorry state it was in, pre-invasion. They just refuse to learn the battlefield lessons and keep doubling down on classic Russian tactics (which can be summed up as: "send as many thousands of men as you can into the fire as pure cannon fodder in the hopes of eventually wearing the enemy down" ).

This has exposed not Russian strength, but Russian weakness to the world. As we said, an easy case can be made that that's a great investment for the United States to be making.

But we're going to go with something closer to home. Because even red states are slowly having to improve their voting processes now. One good thing COVID brought was the awareness that early voting and mail-in voting is just a lot easier than voting in person on a Tuesday. The convenience ushered in by necessity in the midst of a pandemic has led the citizens of many states to demand such ease in future elections as well. For many states (most of them on the East Coast, and many of them blue) this has caused a sea-change in the way they do things.

Think about it. This November, stories about long lines at voting sites were almost non-existent. The media, over about the past decade or so, has belatedly done their job and explained how people in poorer counties (usually) sometimes have to wait in line for hours and hours just to cast their ballot. This constant exposure has had an impact, and a lot of places have improved dramatically on wait times. The places where long waits now happen seem to be where there was some snafu or problem that delayed things -- not in precincts that the state budget had starved of resources. Also, a whole lot of those people who used to patiently wait in line to exercise their franchise are now assumably voting from home, or at early-voting sites before Election Day (to avoid the rush). All of this together is a gigantic improvement for millions of people, which is why we are giving the Best Government Dollar Spent to all the dollars spent on making voting easier and more convenient.



Boldest Political Tactic

We don't agree with our winner, we want to state that up front. But "boldest" doesn't mean we have to like it....

Before we get to the winner, though, we had a lot of excellent choices here. Such as Joe Biden moving South Carolina to the front of the early-voting presidential states line, while dissing New Hampshire and totally ostracizing Iowa. That was bold and unexpected, too, but it's obvious Biden wants to reward the state that (more than any other state) secured the nomination for him in 2020.

Biden again, for nominating the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, following through on a campaign pledge. That was historically bold.

Reader nypoet22 nominated the Republicans for "doubling down on Dobbs and forced-birth," while John From Censornati chimed in with Donald Trump's call to become the "Constitution Terminator."

John Fetterman's campaign was already on our list but was seconded by John M. Because Fetterman ran a campaign that could be described as "in-your-face, all the time" against Mehmet "Dr." Oz, which was spectacularly successful. Democrats aren't usually this feisty, which is why it was such a notable campaign. Fetterman hammered home one message above all else: Oz was nothing short of a carpetbagger who had no idea what the people of Pennsylvania were like or wanted. That's a powerful message, and it won Fetterman the race.

From Europe, we got two sides of the war coin. Reader Kick suggested "Putin's disinformation campaign" while we had "Ukraine taunting Russia during the conflict." Putin tried to boldly tell his own people a complete lie about his land-grab war, while Zelenskyy told the world the truth, with masterful presentation. This culminated in his speech to Congress this week, but his efforts all along were boldness incarnate.

But we're going to give this to a tactic we disapproved of in 2022, and one we hope is not repeated in future elections. Various fundraising entities within the Democratic Party tried a very bold tactic this election cycle -- spend money in the Republican primaries. By not-so-subtly urging GOP base voters to vote for the most extreme MAGA-fied candidate on the ballot, Democrats figured they'd have an easier time beating their opponent in the general election. And they spent millions of donors' money to achieve this goal.

It didn't work everywhere they tried it in the primaries, but it did work in quite a number of races. The extremists won the GOP nomination. And then (and this is the crucial bit) each and every one of those candidates went on to lose in November to the Democrat running. They had a perfect record where it counted, to put this another way.

But the tactic isn't just bold it is risky. What if it had backfired? What if one or more of those extremists had been elected, to the Senate or to a governor's office? Democratic money would have helped extremist election-deniers win, and the Democratic donors might have a few things to say about the strategy afterwards.

This time it worked perfectly. But it is a dangerous tactic, and it shouldn't be used again (in our opinion). At its heart, it is fundamentally dishonest -- meddling in the other party's nominating process. It is unfair, plain and simple. And Republicans could find a way to use it against Democrats in the future, so it could have set a very bad precedent.

But we do have to admit, it was the Boldest Political Tactic of the year.



Best Idea

There were a lot of good ideas to choose from last year. There some good scientific ideas, to begin with, such as getting fusion to put out more energy than is put into it, for example. Or testing the concept of creating a planetary-defense system to divert asteroids or comets or just other big space rocks from slamming into Earth. Or the first steps towards humans going back to the Moon.

Then there were good political ideas that actually got implemented, such as putting a Black woman on the Supreme Court. Or reforming the Electoral Count Act to avoid a corrupt president ever again trying to steal an election via his vice president. Joe Biden pardoning simple marijuana possession convictions was a fine idea, as was his (stalled, in the courts) idea to forgive either $10,000 or $20,000 of student debt. Early voting and mail-in voting were great ideas as well, and they expanded and continued after the COVID election in 2020.

Two readers agreed with us on our runner-up this year, which was the new Alaskan election system. We wrote (and raved) about it way back in February, actually. The system combines two ballot reforms and, by doing so, keeps the best of both of them while jettisoning the worst of each as well.

Alaska's primary is now a "jungle primary" instead of separate partisan contests. Every candidate (no matter their party) appears on the same primary ballot. Only the biggest vote-getters advance to the general election. But in (say) California, this system is patently unfair to both third parties and Republicans, because the Golden State only allows the top two to advance -- and it is often two Democrats. This means Republican voters don't get a choice in the general election -- which, as we said, is unfair. In Alaska, the top four advance, which allows for a much wider political spectrum in the general election.

In the general, since there are four candidates, "ranked-choice voting" is used. This is sometimes mistakenly called "instant-runoff voting" because while it is indeed an automatic runoff, it is by no means "instant" -- it often takes a week or more to determine the winners. But it means there will be no further election that people have to get out and cast ballots in, it's all handled in one ballot where voters mark their first, second, and third choices.

The drawbacks for ranked-choice, in an open general election with lots and lots of candidates, is that it takes too long and is too complicated. But with only four candidates on the ballot, voters only have to choose 1, 2, and 3. And it means only the possibility of a maximum of three rounds of vote-counting before the result is announced.

Alaska has found the sweet spot. Other states should move to emulate them. But even though we raved about it back then and continue to rave about it today, there's an even better Best Idea of the year: putting abortion rights on the ballot.

The proponents of the forced-birth ideology have long been way too smug about how many of their fellow citizens support their hardline approach. "States' rights" was supposed to be a magic answer because then at least the red states would totally and utterly ban abortion.

Except that's not what is already happening. Where people have had the chance to vote on it, pro-choice positions have won in every election. In places like Montana. And Kansas -- the biggest and earliest shocker of them all. A Kansas anti-abortion ballot measure failed by almost 20 points, even though polling had said it was going to be close. Kansas is a pretty red state, to state the obvious.

Look for abortion to be the wedge issue in the 2024 elections. Because the pro-choice forces are on the march. And they've got the people behind them. Putting abortion rights on the ballot is a proven winner. And that's why the concept of allowing the voters to decide was indeed the Best Idea of the year.



Worst Idea

The Dobbs decision, obviously was in the running. Republicans were like the dog who caught a car... and didn't know what to do with it.

Rick Scott releasing his own personal agenda for the Republican Party, which included taxing all poor people and forcing Congress to vote on Medicare and Medicaid every five years. To Democrats running, this was an absolute gold mine of bludgeons to use against the GOP.

Truth Social (Trump's social media company) which had a rollout that was worse than the Obamacare marketplace rollout, and has been tied up in financial freefall ever since. The whole thing could collapse for lack of funding at any time, and has been nowhere near as popular as Trump thought it was going to be.

Elon Musk taking over Twitter was nominated by more than one person, and we have to agree. Much like Truth Social, Twitter hasn't completely collapsed yet, but it could at any moment.

Russia invading Ukraine was a pretty bad idea, and also got multiple nominations.

Ending the Child Tax Credit "checks in mailboxes" program was a monumentally stupid idea that we have Joe Manchin to thank for. A last-ditch effort to reinstate the plan in the end-of-year budget bill failed, which is a shame because the program cut child poverty in America by a whopping 40 percent.

All the Michigan Republican candidates that signed up with a shifty signature-collecting company would probably agree that doing so was a monumentally bad idea. Candidates that needed, say, 10,000 signatures to get their names on the primary ballot turned in 20,000 "signatures," but then most of them were found to be bogus or otherwise invalid. So they wound up with only a few thousand -- and therefore a whole lot of the top candidates for statewide races didn't even get onto the ballot. This made the Democrats' job much easier, and they wound up sweeping Michigan for the first time in decades.

But the Worst Idea of the year was the continuing cowardice from the Republican Party. Over and over again, they just refuse to condemn political violence. They called January 6th "legitimate political discourse," they excuse threats to people trying to vote, they egg on the extremist White supremacists in their ranks, all because they are afraid that Donald Trump will say mean things about them if they show even a shred of decency or basic humanity.

Political violence should be condemned by all. Such condemnation should be universal, but sadly it is not. Political violence from the right just gets a huge pass -- either Republicans refuse to even address the subject or they have some smarmy way of excusing violence committed by their followers.

This is dangerous. It is not acceptable. It is a crisis in American politics.

And it was also the Worst Idea of the year.



Sorry To See You Go

This, of course can be read two ways. The first is non-fatal, just "sorry to see you exit the stage" in some way. In this category we'd place Justice Breyer of the Supreme Court, Jen Psaki from the White House briefing room, Dr. Fauci from his government job, and Nancy Pelosi from her historic House Democratic leadership position (including being speaker, twice).

We'd add a few "not sorry to see you go" people as well: Tulsi Gabbard and Kyrsten Sinema, both formerly of the Democratic Party.

And then there are deaths. We suppose we are obliged to mention Queen Elizabeth II, since everyone else did. There are a few people we actually weren't sorry to see shuffle off the mortal coil, but de mortuis nil nisi bonum and all of that, right?

Anyway, roughly grouped by when during the year they died, here is our personal Sorry To See You Go list:

• Richard Leakey


• Sidney Poitier


• Ronnie Spector


• Meat Loaf


• Louie Anderson


• P.J. O'Rourke


• Don Young


• Victor Fazio


• Madeleine Albright


• Gilbert Gottfried


• Orrin Hatch


• Norm Mineta


• Vangelis


• James Rado


• Mark Shields


• Shinzo Abe


• Nichelle Nichols


• David McCullough


• Mikhail Gorbachev


• Ashton Carter


• Jerry Lee Lewis


• George Booth


• Gallagher


• Michael Gerson


• Robert Clary


• Keith Levene


• Christine McVie


• Aline Kominsky-Crumb (wife of R. Crumb)


• Stuart Margolin ("Angel" from The Rockford Files, who is now an actual angel)


• sadly, from Sesame Street: Luis (Emilio Delgado) and Bob McGrath


• and finally, from reader andygaus: the iPod.

15 Minutes Of Fame

Um, First Cat Willow Biden? Willow was unveiled to the world in January, and then promptly disappeared off everyone's radar. First pets (especially cats!) are not usually this media-shy....

Mehmet "Dr." Oz? Herschel Walker? Maybe "15 Minutes Of Infamy," instead?

There was that whole trucker protest, both in Canada and here, but we think we've covered that elsewhere... although reader nypoet22 did suggest Jim Watson, the mayor of Ottawa, for breaking up the "stupid trucker protest"....

We chuckled when we heard that Richard Nephew was going to lead the American strategy on fighting against global corruption at the State Department... because as MSNBC reporter Hayes Brown tweeted: "I'm sorry, but 'Rich Nephew' is a very funny name for an anti-corruption czar." Excellent point! (heh)

But we have to say, the 15 Minutes Of Fame award this year simply has to go to Liz Truss, the prime minister of the United Kingdom for precisely four Scaramuccis... a new record for "shortest term ever," which more than qualifies her for this award.



Best Spin

There was actually a lot of good spin from the Democratic side of the aisle this year, which is a rare occurrence indeed. Senators Rick Scott, Lindsey Graham, and Ron Johnson all graciously helped provide the fodder for this spin, by admitting what the Republican agenda truly consisted of. Democrats gleefully spun it all quite effectively on the campaign trail: Republicans wanted to raise taxes on poor people, ban abortion, and kill Medicare!

But there was one particular bit of spin that took off like a rocketship. What used to regularly be called the "pro-choice" activists within the Democratic Party were as shocked as everyone else when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. But they rose to the occasion and anger at this decision did a lot to damp down the supposed red wave in the midterm elections.

Somewhere in the process, though, a new political definition appeared. What used to be called the "anti-abortion" side of the debate had successfully lobbied the media (over the course of decades) to stop using such a negative term to describe them and instead call them "pro-life." But this year, they were branded with what they actually stand for, after a series of high-profile actual cases of pregnant women seeking to terminate their pregnancies -- the most notable being a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio who had to travel to neighboring Indiana to get an abortion.

That's when the pro-choice side started calling their opponents "pro-forced-birth." This almost immediately caught on, and our guess is that it's going to stick like glue. Because this is what the anti-abortion side is arguing for: a Handmaid's Tale dystopia where a rapist can choose the mother of his children at random, and they will be forced to give birth to his child whether they want to or not.

That is some powerful spin. Which is why "forced-birth" was the Best Spin of the year.



Worst Spin

There were good suggestions in this category that we had to pass up, including the most egregious, the attempts by Vladimir Putin to try to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine (from nypoet22). John M suggested all the Republicans who tried to redeem the unredeemable Herschel Walker's campaign (including Lindsey Graham, who came up with some truly stupid comments). We thought of Kevin McCarthy's pathetic attempt to rebottle the "Contract With America" lightning, in the midterm campaigns as well. And Joe Biden (to be fair), calling the concept of Congress just straight-up permanently abolishing the debt ceiling "irresponsible" (when in fact it would be the most responsible thing they could have done).

But one particular bit of spin was so noteworthy it will go down in history. When Liz Cheney insisted on being faithful to her oath to the United States Constitution even if it meant exposing the criminal and seditious behavior of the Republicans' Dear Leader, the party itself successfully drummed her out -- out of office (by being primaried) and out of the party's favor, with a "censure" they passed last February.

The reason for the phrase has already mostly faded in people's memory, but the phrase has not. Because in the text of their censure resolution, the Republicans had the jaw-dropping temerity to call an insurrectionist mob forcibly seizing control of the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021: "legitimate political discourse."

That is just shameful, and we have no doubt that the history books will reflect this opinion. Without question, a major political party trying to somehow make a silk First Amendment purse out of the pig's ear of a violent attempt to overturn an America presidential election was the Worst Spin of 2022.



Most Honest Person

We're going to have to agree with andygaus and nypoet22 here, and declare Liz Cheney the Most Honest Person of the year. For the second year in a row, we might add.

Cheney knew what being honest was going to cost her. She didn't care. She knew it might be the end of her political career within the Republican Party. She didn't care. She knew it would make her enemies, but she brushed it all aside and did her duty, to her constituents, her Constitution, and her country.

Cheney pulled no punches as co-chair of the House Select Committee on January 6th. She dismantled Trump's lies methodically and ruthlessly, for the whole world to hear. She warned us all of the danger of allowing Donald Trump anywhere near public office again. She will go down in history as a profile in courage.

Cheney put her country above her party (which shunned her), above her own personal political career (which could now be over), and above all the lies from the legions of Trump supporters. She dug for the truth and she exposed that truth to the cold light of day. There weren't even any other real contenders. Liz Cheney was, once again, the Most Honest Person of the year. And we are grateful to her for being so honest.



Biggest Liar

Originally, we were all prepared to hand this award to all the Republicans who actively campaigned on money for their district which they had voted against. They hypocritically portrayed themselves as bringing home the federal bacon, when they actually had voted against that outcome. This included such lowlife senators as Rick Scott and Ted Cruz, because (of course) those two have no shame at all.

Then we got a nomination from andygaus for Marjorie "Three Names" Taylor Greene, or as andygaus put it, the "Space Laser Lady," for all her complete hogwash during the course of the year. And we had to agree, she was a monstrous liar -- even challenging the ranks of liar extraordinaire Trump himself. Her lies were just too numerous to even attempt to keep count or explain.

But the consensus among the readers was right -- the real Biggest Liar of the year was none other than Vladimir Putin, for all the whoppers he told his domestic audience to explain why Russia had to forcibly invade another country for no real reason other than a land-grab. Putin tried to convince the Russian people that Nazis had somehow taken over the Ukrainian government (which was rather ludicrous, seeing as how the Ukrainian president is Jewish), or that "ethnic Russians" were somehow at risk from "genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime" or any other moose-poop he could think up.

What was truly astounding is that Putin's lies only had a limited effect. He has been challenged all year by military bloggers within Russia who are generally pretty pro-government, but who are aghast at the fallout from this ill-conceived invasion plan. The cracks are beginning to show, in other words, even in the sterile world of a totalitarian state. Damn that pesky internet!

Putin has always wanted control of Ukraine to be back in the hands of Moscow. He's never hidden this ambition. But the thin excuses he's offered to his own people for why he the Russian military had to act now have been just pathetic. They all earn him the Biggest Liar of the year.



Most Overrated

Elon Musk?

Ron DeSantis? Well, one can hope... (suggested by John From Censornati).

But we find we have to agree with Kick's two-part nomination:



We did consider both of these for other awards, but they fit so nice together here we're going to let them stand. The red wave that wasn't was the political story of the year, and it turned out to be utterly wrong and overrated. The whole punditry completely missed the deep significance of the Dobbs decision and decided (amongst themselves at their oh-so-chic inside-the-Beltway cocktail parties) that women losing a basic constitutional right they had held for half a century would be but a fleeting thing, and that they'd all forget about it and vote instead on the current price of gas in November. This conventional wisdom proved to be monstrously wrong, as did much of the polling (for the third time in a row).

In fact, the only one who called it right seemed to be the same guy who called it right the last time around -- Michael Moore, who predicted a big Democratic midterm victory (just like he predicted Donald Trump was going to win in 2016). Everyone laughed at him and considered him crazy, but he had the last laugh, once again.

As for the Red Army... well, it wasn't completely exposed as a paper tiger, but it certainly is looking a lot less formidable since they began their invasion. A combination of kleptocracy, incompetence, poor training, poor equipment, and zero morale all proved to be much more consequential than the sheer number of human bodies they were able to throw into the conflict. Refusal to change tactics wasted Russian soldiers' lives in dozens of ways. Vladimir Putin still holds onto power in Russia, but the cracks are showing. He has planned a long war of attrition, which he could actually win; but that would require public support, which seems to be slipping away from him even in his totalitarian society.

For whatever reasons, though, domestically the red tsunami (that turned into a pink bathtub ring at best) and, internationally, the stunning Keystone Kops nature of the Russian military were both the Most Overrated stories of the year.



Most Underrated

John Fetterman -- especially after his stroke -- was vastly underrated by many.

The Ukrainian resistance was also vastly underrated (from nypoet22 and John M, who added "and Western resolve and unity" for good measure).

Georgia's Brian Kemp "beat Big Orange," John From Censornati pointed out, quite correctly.

But we have two interrelated winners for this category. One is (in a way) a subset of the other.

From reader Kick we got "women's fury," and we have to fully agree. Hell hath no fury like a woman denied a basic human right -- something that roiled and seethed from June through the election, but something which virtually everyone in the political media completely missed or discounted (even after the surprise in the Kansas election). This is going to be true going forward, too, but from now on it likely won't be in the Most Underrated category any more.

One man did believe in the power of women's fury, though -- Joe Biden. Our second (related) award for Most Underrated was Biden's midterm campaign strategy. It wasn't just underrated, it was pooh-poohed or ridiculed or ignored. But in the end, it worked.

From the beginning of the year to the election, Biden was seen as out of touch with the electorate. He gave a speech on the anniversary of the January 6th insurrection attempt and followed up on the theme of American democracy under attack in a big way all year long. He gave two major campaign speeches on the subject of the dangers to our system of government by the MAGA extremists, and the pundits rolled their eyes and declared the voters simply wouldn't be moved by the issue. They were wrong.

Biden sent Kamala Harris out to bolster support for abortion, which also paid dividends. He kept saying "Republicans have no idea of the power of women voters -- they're about to find out," and the pundits also rolled their eyes. Once again, they were wrong and Biden was right.

Biden did what he could on getting gas prices down and inflation down as well, but his options from the Oval Office were limited. Even so, by the time of the election, both had begun to fall so it's fair to say that voters saw things at least headed in the right direction again and gave Biden and the Democrats the benefit of the doubt.

Joe Biden has been underrated before, and he no doubt will be in the future as well. But we have to say (with the clarity of hindsight) his campaign strategy -- which was almost universally discounted and brushed off by the political media -- actually worked in November. The red wave did not materialize. By some measures, Biden had the best first midterm election since F.D.R.'s first term. Which is why Biden's campaign strategy was also the Most Underrated of the year.



Predictions

As always, let's start with a scorecard of what we got right last year and what we got laughably wrong. Here's our list of 2022 predictions, from last year's column:



Now let's see how we did.

Our first guess was spot-on, as you simply don't hear the term "supply chain issues" anymore. Inflation and gas prices are indeed down and heading lower, and indeed the media is ignoring this story too. But we can only award ourselves a half-point for this one, since both inflation and gas prices went way up this year before they started coming back down again.

Likewise the next one, where Biden matched Trump's low of 3.5 percent unemployment, but so far has not actually beaten his number. So another half-point there. But a clear win on the COVID prediction, although the scientists moved away from Greek letters to alphanumeric designations, so we never did get an "Upsilon variation." Even so, we got the broad picture exactly right (thankfully!).

Next year things may change, but we're going to have to call the next one a win too -- the Republican Party is still the "Party of Trump," by and large.

The next one we have to count as a loss, though, since Truth Social is still up and running (barely). The launch was a disaster, for multiple reasons, and it certainly isn't as popular as other social media sites, but it's still around (for now) so we get zero points for this one.

The next one, we're probably just going to (mostly) cut and paste for this year. Trump still hasn't been indicted (criminal referrals from the House Select Committee don't count), but that day seems to be approaching soon. But again, for last year: zero points.

Half-credit for the next one, as a stripped-down Build Back Better bill did pass the Senate (after obeisances were made towards the altar of Joe Manchin). It did actually help Democrats in the fall campaign, too, although not as much as the Dobbs decision helped, probably.

Kamala Harris was not hit with a scandal, so no points for that one. China saber-rattled but did not actually make a serious military move on Taiwan, so no points for that either.

We're giving ourselves a full point for calling the House right, even if Nancy Pelosi didn't fully retire (she will merely become a back-bencher). However, we're only giving ourselves a half-point for the Senate prediction, since the Democrats only picked up one seat, instead of two.

No credit for our Supreme Court prediction, since they did go ahead and overturn Roe v. Wade.

By our count, that means we got five completely wrong, four half-right at least, and four clear victories. That adds up to 6 out of 13, or 46 percent. That's about par for the course (although last year we did manage 62.5 percent!) for these crystal ball predictions.

Onward to next year! What do we think will happen during 2023? Here's our list:



OK, those are our guesses for the year. We wish all our readers a happy holiday season and a spectacular new year! And, as always, to end in true McLaughlin fashion, we now say to all of you:

"Bye-bye!"



If you're interested in traveling down Memory Lane, here are all the previous years of this awards column:






[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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