GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell knows who's to blame for Senate Republicans' midterm drubbing, and he is definitely not it.
“Look at Arizona, look at New Hampshire, and the challenging situation in Georgia as well,” McConnell said Tuesday, ticking through a list of once-promising GOP losses at his weekly press conference. “You have to have quality candidates to win competitive Senate races.”
McConnell stopped short of calling out Donald Trump by name, because god forbid he show some actual leadership. But every GOP candidate in those states—Blake Masters in Arizona, Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, and Herschel Walker in Georgia—had Trump's endorsement. In fact, Trump's heavy-handed backing was instrumental to the candidacies of both Masters and Walker.
McConnell did, however, admit that he was basically powerless in the face of Trump.
“Our ability to control the primary outcome was quite limited in ‘22 because of the support of the former president proved to be very decisive in these primaries,” McConnell lamented.
Of course, McConnell bears as much responsibility as Trump for the Senate GOP’s pathetic cycle. In New Hampshire, McConnell tried desperately to recruit the state's highly popular GOP governor, Chris Sununu, to take on Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. But after speaking with several members of the Senate GOP caucus, Sununu took a hard pass on jumping on that sorry do-nothing bandwagon. Instead, he ran for and secured a fourth term as governor.
The Senate GOP's Sununu misadventure highlighted the fact that Trump obviously wasn't the only hurdle to recruiting quality candidates. McConnell also tried to convince term-limited GOP Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to run for Senate to no avail. So let’s just be honest that the Senate GOP's lack of appeal to reasonably capable people certainly isn't on Trump—it's on McConnell.
"Herschel is the only one who can unite the party, defeat Senator Warnock, and help us take back the Senate," McConnell said in an October statement to Politico. "I look forward to working with Herschel in Washington to get the job done."
Walker not only failed to help Republicans take back the Senate, he didn’t exactly deliver as a uniter either.
Back at the post-election press conference, McConnell reflected on similar losses by fatally flawed Republican candidates in 2010 and 2012, saying the GOP had “unfortunately revisited that situation in 2022.”
Gee, Senator, if only there had been a way to avoid "that situation" again. If only Trump had, for instance, orchestrated a wildly unpopular insurrection against the U.S. government, leaving himself open to a career-ending impeachment.
The truth is, if McConnell hadn't miscalculated every step of this midterm cycle, perhaps he'd be poised right now to become the longest-serving Senate Majority Leader in U.S. history. Instead, he's devoting press conferences to excuse peddling for the GOP's anemic election showing.
If McConnell's still looking around for culprits, might be time to take a look in the mirror.
A key Democratic committee voted Wednesday to recommend Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) be the top Democrat on the powerful House Oversight and Reform Committee in the next Congress, lending a boost to the six-year veteran heading into a deciding vote of the full caucus next week.
Raskin, a high-profile member of the House Jan. 6 select committee, is squaring off against two other members of the Oversight and Reform Committee — Reps. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) and Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) — to become the panel’s ranking member in the 118th Congress.
The committee's current chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), lost her primary contest this cycle to Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) — a race prompted by New York’s chaotic redistricting process earlier in the year.
Wednesday’s vote to recommend Raskin was conducted behind closed doors in the Capitol by the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, an influential panel that helps to guide the party’s committee assignments.
Lynch, a 22-year veteran, and Connolly, in his 14th year, are more senior to Raskin both within the Congress and on the Oversight and Reform Committee. But Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, has quickly built a national profile in his short time on Capitol Hill, leading the House’s second impeachment of former President Trump after last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol and playing a high-profile role as a member of the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 rampage.
The Steering panel’s recommendation is not the final word. The full House Democratic Caucus will vote next week to choose between the three candidates. But the Steering panel is essentially hand-picked by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), the New York Democrat who will replace Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at the top of the party next year. And the panel’s counsel holds outsized sway in the process of choosing committee heads to work with party leaders.
The Oversight panel, with subpoena powers and a broad mandate to probe federal affairs, is among the most sought after panels in Congress. And with Republicans set to take control of the House next year, the position of ranking member will assume even greater importance, acting as a line of defense for President Biden against the majority Republicans, likely led by Rep. James Comer (Ky.), who are vowing aggressive investigations into the administration.
Comer is already forecasting his top priorities, which include investigations into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the origins of the coronavirus and the international business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
A group of U.S. House Republicans on Tuesday called for the impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The lawmakers, led by U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., made their remarks during a news conference outside the Capitol Building, calling for Mayorkas’ impeachment amid the soaring number of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S.
“Every day he remains in office, America is less safe,” Biggs said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection have released a steady stream of figures showing that the number of illegal immigrants entering through the southern border has soared to record levels since President Joe Biden took office.
Those numbers are poised to get worse. Trump-era Title 42 protections that allowed feds to expel migrants more quickly because of COVID-19 concerns are set to expire later this month, and experts predict a surge of illegal immigrants are awaiting that expiration.
Some areas, like El Paso, are seeing thousands of migrants cross over each day.
Those larger numbers of migrants have also brought large quantities of fentanyl, a deadly drug that is trafficked in the U.S. via cartels. Fentanyl overdoses have soared in recent years as well.
Some in the Senate have echoed the criticism of Mayorkas.
“The southern border has been an issue for a long time,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. “Secretary Mayorkas only showed back up when the mainstream media caved and reported on the issue.”
Syndicated with permission from The Center Square.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is stepping up his attacks on former President Trump as Trump’s support dips.
The Senate GOP leader on Tuesday blamed Trump for the “candidate quality” problem that hampered the party’s bid to recapture the Senate in 2022, marking the third time in three weeks that McConnell has directly criticized the former president after repeatedly avoiding engaging with him over the past two years.
The stronger pushback comes as polls show Trump’s support is slipping among Republican voters, a trend that has accelerated since Trump-aligned candidates lost important races across the country in the midterm elections.
A USA Today-Suffolk University poll published Tuesday showed that 61 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters want someone else to be the party’s nominee for president in 2024.
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The poll also showed Republican voters prefer Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over Trump as a potential presidential candidate by a margin of 56 percent to 33 percent.
With Trump “leaking oil,” in the words of one GOP senator, McConnell isn’t wasting any time in striking back against someone who has repeatedly called for his ouster as Senate Republican leader.
McConnell told reporters Tuesday that Trump was a big reason why Senate GOP leaders were not able to steer Senate nominations to stronger candidates in key battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia and New Hampshire.
He had hinted at a press conference a week after Election Day that he thought Trump was a drag on Republican efforts to win back the Senate, but he made his criticism more explicit after Republicans lost another key race, last week’s Senate runoff in Georgia.
“We ended up having a candidate quality [issue],” he told reporters Tuesday. “Look at Arizona, look at New Hampshire and the challenging situation in Georgia as well.”
U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks was one of the candidates McConnell actively worked to get out of office while Trump pushed for his reelection.
McConnell said his affiliated super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, intervened in the Republican Senate primaries in Alabama and Missouri by investing money to defeat Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens.
But he argued that Trump’s influence with primary voters made it very difficult to weed out weak candidates who had Trump’s support or embraced his false claims of a stolen 2020 election.
“Our ability to control the primary outcome was quite limited in ’22 because the support of the former president proved to be very decisive in these primaries. So my view was do the best you can with the cards you’re dealt. Hopefully in the next cycle we’ll have quality candidates everywhere and a better outcome,” he said.
McConnell also took shots at Trump the previous two weeks when he criticized Trump’s call to terminate parts of the Constitution to allow himself to return to the White House and condemned Trump’s dinner at Mar-a-Lago with an outspoken white supremacist and antisemite.
The leader’s stiffening rhetoric against the former president reflects the growing consensus within the Senate GOP conference that Trump would not match up well against President Biden or another Democrat in the 2024 general election and, if nominated for the White House, could drag down candidates in Senate races as well.
So far, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (Ala.) is the only Republican senator to have publicly endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential candidacy, which Trump launched with a rally at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 15.
Numerous Republicans went after Trump after he had dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist. Trump said he had no clue who Fuentes was after the dinner was revealed to the public.
McConnell questioned Trump’s ability to win the presidency after he had dinner with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, who has lost business partnerships after making a string of antisemitic comments, and Nick Fuentes, a prominent white supremacist and antisemite.
“There is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy, and anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, [is] highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States,” he told reporters after Thanksgiving.
The following week, McConnell observed that Trump or anyone else would have a hard time getting sworn into office if he refused to uphold the Constitution, a pointed reference to Trump’s call for a “termination” of “all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” after new details emerged of content moderation at Twitter during the 2020 presidential election.
At the same time, Trump’s legal problems are mounting, and GOP lawmakers think there’s a good chance that special counsel Jack Smith will move forward with one or multiple indictments against him.
The Justice Department asked a federal judge to hold Trump in contempt of court for failing to comply with a subpoena to turn over classified documents he took from the White House.
Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, was convicted last week on 17 criminal counts related to what prosecutors said was a 15-year tax fraud scheme.
McConnell’s stiffer stance against Trump also came after the former president encouraged National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to challenge the senior Kentucky lawmaker for Senate GOP leader.
Trump predicted Scott would “have a lot of support” if he challenged his leader, but McConnell defeated him easily in a 37-10 vote.
McConnell and Trump haven’t spoken since Dec. 15, 2020, after McConnell recognized Biden as the winner of the presidential election.
Their relationship really soured after McConnell excoriated Trump on the Senate floor for instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, even though McConnell voted to acquit the president of the impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection.
But after that scathing floor speech, McConnell kept largely quiet about Trump’s behavior and controversial comments throughout 2021 and 2022, when Trump repeatedly rehashed his false claims that the presidential election was stolen through widespread fraud.
The family of the late Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died in the line of duty defending lawmakers on Jan. 6, refused to shake McConnell’s hand — and that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) — at a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony last week because they felt GOP leaders didn’t do enough to call out Trump.
Senate Democrats finally have subpoena power, and they’re ready to use it.
Though their target list is still under discussion, Democrats in the upper chamber have made clear that they intend to use their investigative authority — newly acquired thanks to their functional 51st Senate seat — as a counterpoint to House GOP probes of Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
They’re also mulling picking up the baton from House Democrats on two fights: scrutinizing the oil industry’s culpability for climate change and obtaining former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, according to senators.
The House has been the epicenter of investigations in the current Congress given the deadlocked Senate, but that spotlight will be shared starting next year. Democrats’ loss of the House has created an investigative “vacuum” that party senators intend to fill, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), an investigative-minded former prosecutor and senior Judiciary Committee member.
“There are very definitely investigations that I think now will be possible,” Blumenthal said, referring to Democrats’ inability to issue subpoenas in the current 50-50 Senate because Republicans could block them at the evenly divided committee level.
Democrats’ Senate pickup is welcome news for a party that had agonized over how to push back on a spate of planned House GOP investigations into everything from the president’s son to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan to the FBI and Justice Department. For the moment, President Joe Biden’s party is brushing off Republican efforts. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer indicated last week that oversight isn’t just about the executive branch, but also the private sector.
A senator set to lead that sort of private-sector oversight — Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), incoming chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — said it was “premature” to discuss subpoenas but outlined a laundry list of areas he plans to investigate next year.
“We’re talking about incredible greed in the pharmaceutical industry, very high prices. We’re paying the highest prices in the world for healthcare, we’re talking about union busting. … I think those are issues the American people want us to look at,” he said.
But that doesn't mean Senate Democrats are going to immediately start firing off subpoenas. Its 51-49 majority has given the party more power, but that authority remains fragile — a fact underscored by Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to become an independent. Sinema is expected to keep her committee assignments, importantly, with Democrats and Schumer seeking to tamp down the ramifications for their majority by vowing that Democrats would still be able to “exercise our subpoena power.”
However, they'll have to carefully navigate aggressive investigations for another reason: a difficult 2024 Senate map. Several of their seats in red and purple territory are up next term, where partisan probes may not pay political dividends.
Among those up for reelection, besides Sinema, are Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who chair the energy, veterans' affairs and banking committees, respectively. And all hail from states that voted for Trump in 2020, two by overwhelming margins.
Brown shrugged off a question about new investigative priorities once he gets boosted committee powers: “Nothing jumps to mind, but perhaps.”
Despite past intra-party criticism of the Biden administration, from a rule to decrease methane emissions to the botched pullout from Afghanistan, Democrats are less than keen on conducting oversight on the current head of the executive branch. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who is poised to chair the Budget Committee, said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if there were members within the conference who thought that anything negative about the administration “was kryptonite.”
But Democrats are already leaving a trail of bread crumbs pointing to what they could dig into next year, likely picking up long-awaited threads that the 50-50 Senate has prevented them from pursuing.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the chair of the Finance Committee, and outgoing House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) are asking for records related to Trump-son-in-law Jared Kushner’s family business. And in line with Schumer’s corporate focus, Wyden sent a letter last week to Amgen, a biotech company, as part of a probe into pharmaceutical companies' compliance with tax laws.
Wyden pointed to the Kushner-related effort as a sign that Democrats “believe in strong oversight” and signaled that he’s also interested in Trump’s tax returns. But he sidestepped committing to using subpoenas next year.
“All the options are on the table,” Wyden said. “But as my wife always says, ‘you know there’s some history here.’ I wrote the first Trump-related tax bill.”
Whitehouse, one of the caucus’ most outspoken voices on climate change, pointed to Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) investigation into whether fossil-fuel companies had been misleading and spreading misinformation on the impact of climate change as an example of an area Senate Democrats could take over next year.
“I think it can be quite busy and quite productive,” Whitehouse said about the forthcoming Democratic investigations.
Judiciary Committee Democrats have also signaled an interest in investigating decisions made by the Trump-era DOJ. They’ve previously signaled that they wanted to talk to former Attorneys General Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions, a goal they had to temporarily abandon in the 50-50 Senate.
And Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the homeland security and governmental affairs panel chair, said Democrats are still mulling how to handle House Republicans' Hunter Biden investigation — a topic Democratic senators have had to navigate before. In the run-up to the 2020 election, Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) teamed up to investigate the Biden family, issuing subpoenas through a Senate oversight panel over Democratic objections.
That probe sparked warnings from their Republican colleagues about inadvertently spreading Russian misinformation heading into the presidential balloting.
“We are in the process right now of putting together some of the investigations we’re going to do for the next two years,” Peters said, adding that the House GOP's Hunter Biden investigation was one issue that was top of mind "when we think about our calendar.”
House Republicans calling to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas turned up the pressure on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday, with around 20 GOP members and three former Department of Homeland Security officials gathering for a press conference.
The calls to impeach Mayorkas come as McCarthy faces opposition from a handful of GOP members to his Speakership, threatening to derail his bid for the gavel.
"Now that we have the majority in the House of Representatives, I expect our party to pursue impeachment next Congress,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who is running as a protest challenger to McCarthy for Speaker and introduced articles of impeachment against Mayorkas last year.
“Secretary Mayorkas has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. His conduct is not incompetent. It is not negligent. It is willful and intentional,” Biggs said.
Though McCarthy has been highly critical of Mayorkas, he has declined to firmly commit to impeachment for any Biden officials, saying that he will not make impeachment a political exercise. That position aggravated Biggs, whose resolution to impeach Mayorkas now has 32 GOP co-sponsors.
After winning the House GOP nomination for Speaker last month over Biggs, McCarthy traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border and called on Mayorkas to resign or face GOP investigations and a possible impeachment inquiry.
That is not good enough for Biggs, who said in a Washington Examiner op-ed on Tuesday that McCarthy had added “a little thickener to weak sauce — but it’s not good enough.”
Biggs insinuated that McCarthy’s resignation call was a political move, telling reporters that McCarthy did so only “after he knew that he was facing somebody who was going to possibly deny him being Speaker.”
Some of the members at the press conference, though, are supportive of McCarthy for Speaker — including Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), whom McCarthy appointed to the influential Republican Steering Committee, and Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), the incoming chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee.
“You're going to see a lot of sentiment across the conference to have Mayorkas removed from that job and put somebody in to do the job and do it,” Hern told reporters. “Obviously it's not going to happen instantaneously, but you have to point out that issues are out there.”
Republicans’ top driving argument for impeaching Mayorkas is that he has not kept “operational control” of the border as required by law.
When confronted by Republicans in congressional hearings, Mayorkas has maintained that the U.S. does have operational control of the country’s borders — a stance that has only further enraged critics and further fueled calls for impeachment, with Republicans accusing him of lying to Congress.
Republicans also accuse Mayorkas of improperly failing to detain migrants and improperly releasing migrants.
At the press conference, House Republicans were joined by three former Department of Homeland Security officials: cormer acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan, former acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan, and former U.S. Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott.
“He has served as this administration’s chief architect of their open border policies that we know has resulted in drugs pouring across our open borders, killing Americans every single day,” Morgan said of Mayorkas.
Senator Mitt Romney is voicing opposition to Republican investigations into Hunter Biden, describing such affairs as a “waste of time.”
Romney (R-UT) ran to his fellow faux conservatives at The Bulwark to make his position known.
The outlet, which described the younger Biden, currently identified by federal agents as having enough evidence to charge him with multiple crimes, as little more than a “political bugbear,” notes that Romney is the only GOP lawmaker to break with his party on the matter.
“I think it’s really hard to know what the politics of a course of action might be in this day and age, to know where our party stands, what our base wants, what independent voters want,” Romney said.
“But I think you have to do what you think is right and I think the American people want us to tackle some of the big challenges we have—immigration, inflation, and so forth—and the other things that divert from those priorities I think are a waste of time.”
The lone break with Republicans came once again from Mitt Romney, who told The Bulwark those types of political investigations, particularly into Hunter Biden, are a poor use of Congress’s already-limited resources. ICYMI @JoePerticone: https://t.co/odWTUWE7Pp
Romney: Hunter Biden Investigation a Waste of Time, January 6 Committee Not so Much
While it isn’t surprising that Mitt Romney would break with Republicans and jump to the defense of an embattled Democrat President and his scandal-plagued son, his reasoning is a bit of a shock.
A “waste of time”?
This is the same man who voted in favor of establishing the January 6 committee to investigate the riot at the Capitol. Has there been a more colossal waste of taxpayer money than that investigation, Mitt?
Least surprising headline of the day: Romney first GOP senator to say he would vote for Jan. 6 commission bill https://t.co/ywNykvatby
Romney, of course, also defended Nancy Pelosi after she initiated the first impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, something even Democrat Representative Jerry Nadler (NY) called “unconstitutional.”
“She’s able to do what she feels is right. That’s up to her,” Romney said in defending Pelosi at the time. “At this stage, the process is to continue to gather information but clearly what we’ve seen from the transcript itself is deeply troubling.”
Much like the January 6 committee, the first impeachment trial was also a ‘waste of time.’
Romney later voted to convict Trump of inciting an insurrection during the second impeachment trial.
LATE BREAKING: Mitt Romney CALLS FOR END of Hunter Biden Investigations…
Romney has been seemingly protecting Hunter Biden from being dragged into investigatory avenues before.
In March of 2020, the Washington Post reported that Romney was poised to join Democrats and vote to squash a subpoena related to Hunter Biden’s work with the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings.
Though he later relented, his reasoning sounded awfully familiar.
“I would prefer that investigations are done by an independent, non-political body,” he claimed. “There’s no question the appearance is not good.”
Romney went on to tell reporters that the investigation “appears political.”
“I think people are tired of these kinds of political investigations.”
Romney indicated to me today that he is still weighing whether to vote for a subpoena in Burisma probe. (He could kill the effort if he votes ‘no’ on Wednesday.) “There’s no question the appearance of looking into Burisma and Hunter Biden appears political,” he said pic.twitter.com/YfeKYGM9v6
Sandy Hook grief almost too big, and too sad to ponder
I hate this so much.
You could take this whole miserable anniversary and push it off the highest cliff and into the darkest air, as far as I’m concerned.
But if you did, it would come wafting back up through the black night and land at your feet. There is no getting rid of a thing like this.
Colin speaks for many of us here in Newtown. I’ll cover this today so that I don’t have to cover it on Wednesday, 12/14/22, the 10th anniversary.
Huge announcement coming Tuesday from the Secretary of Energy. I’m hearing from a solid source that it’s a major breakthrough on FUSION. This is the holy grail of sustainable, abundant, clean energy — basically the power of the sun on Earth. 10am news conference in DC 12/13/22
Republicans struggle in the Southwest as Latino voters stick with Democrats
“The GOP could potentially lose the Southwest for decades to come" if it doesn't take a different tack with Latinos, one independent pollster in the region said.
The Southwest was once deep-red territory. But Republicans are struggling to regain their grip. It's in part because they've alienated Latinos by taking more hardline stances, including on immigration, according to Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic strategist who was part of the party’s early team that helped develop modern strategies for reaching Latinovoters. Rosenberg said the Southwest today is a far cry from what it once was under former President George W. Bush.
“This was once hostile terrain for us,” Rosenberg said. “Over the last 20 years, the Republican position has significantly deteriorated in the Southwest. And that’s indisputable.”
A look at the data behind Herschel Walker's defeat
A full and complete picture of who showed up — or didn't — and where won't come until counties finish updating the voter history file that tracks who was credited for voting and if they voted on runoff election day or early. But a look at the county-level results from Tuesday's runoff sheds light on how Walker became the only statewide Republican candidate to lose in the midterm election.
The record-setting early in-person vote saw Warnock open up a nearly 270,000 vote lead before Dec. 6, a total that ballooned to more than 321,000 when you include mail-in absentee ballots. That margin held even as an equally record-setting election day saw 1.6 million people cast ballots, which Walker won by nearly 225,000 votes.
As you can see in the chart below, Warnock ran up the in-person early voting score in urban, Democrat-heavy counties like Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton, but also won the in-person early vote in suburban Fayette County (which narrowly voted for Walker) and four other Republican counties in middle and Southwest Georgia.
Kyrsten Sinema left the Democratic Party. What it means and why it happened.
My take on Friday's bombshell.
Why did this happen?
This won’t be popular with some people, but the left has treated Sinema shabbily. Her willingness to poke the base in the eye has made her enemy number one — despite basically being a fairly conventional liberal and one who actually achieves stuff at that. She’s pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ rights, voted to convict Donald Trump in two impeachment trials, votes for President Biden’s judges, supports universal paid leave, and on down the list. She’s voted with Biden 93.1 percent of the time — more than fellow moderates Jon Tester (D-MT), and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), both Democratic senators from Nevada (Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto) and left-wing independent Bernie Sanders. And there is a chasm of 25 points between how often Sinema votes with Biden and any Republican.
I tweeted out yesterday that I thought Sinema still had a reasonable shot at re-election … but clearly I was wrong! I should have looked at the data first. These numbers are awful and it’s hard to see a constituency for her re-election https://t.co/UW5ajWw30i
The worst election deniers were defeated in the midterms. Trump is calling to terminate the Constitution. Is America heading toward authoritarianism? If so, can the trend be reversed in time?
So, where does that leave us? Is American democracy saved? Is our long national flirtation with authoritarianism over?
I’m afraid I must disappoint you. We’re still in serious trouble—and the specter of authoritarianism will continue to loom large for many years to come. Many of you already know this. But I want to walk through the arguments behind that claim, so we can better understand the threat and learn how to combat it. And I promise that before I end this post, I’ll explain why there’s room for optimism and hope.
But first, let’s understand the scale and scope of the authoritarian threat in America.
Why Constitutional Crises and Political Violence Could Soon Be the Norm
One year into Biden’s presidency, however, the threat to American democracy has not receded. Although U.S. democratic institutions survived the Trump presidency, they were badly weakened. The Republican Party, moreover, has radicalized into an extremist, antidemocratic force that imperils the U.S. constitutional order. The United States isn’t headed toward Russian- or Hungarian-style autocracy, as some analysts have warned, but something else: a period of protracted regime instability, marked by repeated constitutional crises, heightened political violence, and possibly, periods of authoritarian rule.
Prince Heinrich XIII was arrested last week as the suspected ringleader of a plan to overthrow the German government. Nostalgic for an imperial past, he embraced far-right conspiracy theories.
The crenelated hunting lodge of Prince Heinrich XIII of Reuss sits atop a steep hill, looking out over homes laced with snow and Christmas lights in Bad Lobenstein. Popular with the local mayor and many nearby villagers, the prince spent his weekends in the spa town, giving an aristocratic flair to this sleepy corner of rural eastern Germany.
But there was a darker side to his idyll.
Heinrich XIII, prosecutors and intelligence officials say, also used his lodge to host meetings where he and a band of far-right co-conspirators plotted to overthrow the German government and execute the chancellor. In the basement, the group stored weapons and explosives. In the forest that sloped beneath the lodge, they sometimes held target practice.
Last week the Waidmannsheil lodge, a three-hour drive south of Berlin in the state of Thuringia, was one of 150 targets raided by security forces in one of postwar Germany’s biggest counterterrorist operations. By Friday, 23 members of the cell had been detained across 11 German states and 31 others placed under investigation. The police discovered troves of arms and military equipment as well as a list of 18 politicians and journalists deemed to be enemies.
"In major legal news, The Trump Organization has been found guilty of 17 counts of tax fraud and other financial crimes. We know how this works, right? All the successes of the Trump Organization are due to the genius of Donald Trump. All the crimes? He had no idea. 'That's right, folks. I have zero control over the things I run!' "
—Trevor Noah
"Why this took so long is beyond me. I mean, convicting the Trump organization of fraud is like convicting Wetzel's of pretzels—it's what they do."
—Jimmy Kimmel
Continued...
You are now below the fold.
CAUTION: The sugar plum fairies down here carry nunchucks.
"Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock is projected to defeat Republican Herschel Walker in the Georgia senate runoff race. And if you think you're relieved, just think how relieved Herschel Walker is. He just narrowly avoided a six-year pop quiz he did not study for."
—Seth Meyers
“Herschel was like a plane crash into a train wreck that rolled into a dumpster fire. And an orphanage. Than an animal shelter. You kind of had to watch it squinting through one eye between your fingers."
—Dan McLagan, who ran against Herschel Walker in the 2022 Georgia MAGA senate primary
“With this loss Walker is expected to return to his previous job: lying about having previous jobs.”
—Stephen Colbert
"The White House chief of staff says that he expects President Biden to announce that he's running for reelection after the holidays. That makes sense—most Americans announce that they’re going to start running after the holidays."
—Jimmy Fallon
"You're not gonna believe this, but Alex Jones and Kanye West got together and it didn't go well. Kanye West made anti-Semitic jokes and said 'I like Hitler,' which is also the password he used to get into Mar-a-Lago."
—Colin Jost, SNL
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Friday, December 9, 2022
Note: Arson charges pending after Jeanette and Isabella admit to bringing a torch to a duplex on Maple Drive during a drinking binge. Film at 11.
CHEERS to what Georgia hath wrought. As the Mar-a-Lago elves continue their cleanup of ketchup hurled in rage at various walls, and as Herschel Walker continues asking random strangers for directions back to his Texas mansion, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gently pats a baseball bat in the palm of his hand, now that Rev. Raphael Warnock's landslide victory in the Georgia runoff election has given him an outright majority. (Arizona weirdo Kyrysytyeyn Synyeymyay went independent last night but will still caucus with Democrats, so the majority holds.) That means obstructionist troublemakers like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham all the MAGA clowns are now powerless to stop the normal function of the Senate. AP highlights the bigg'uns…
In January, for starters, Democrats will have an easier time using their 51-49 majority for simple tasks of governing, including votes on Biden’s nominees to judicial and executive positions, which Republicans have wielded as weapons.
“Sit yer ass down, Mitch, your co-sheriff badge is revoked. We gave it to Herschel as a souvenir.”
The same goes for committee action. The Democrats will now have full power to send legislation to the Senate floor, overcoming Republican objections that can drag out the process. They also will have subpoena power, which they plan to use for investigating corporate America.
As for Senator Warnock? He gets to trade in his ergonomically-nightmarish standard Senate seat for a comfy barcalounger with built-in massager and cup holder. I just decided that. Anybody second the motion?
CHEERS (we hope) to the future of fair elections. Not that gerrymandering isn’t already a huge problem that sticks a finger in the eye of every voter who lives in a congressional district that's been shaped like an anorexic seahorse. But what the star chamber-funded MAGAts are trying to do now is give state legislatures absolute power over how elections are not only run, but decided. That scenario is what was argued before the Hardly-Supreme Court this week, and no one knows how the judges will rule on Moore v. Harper next June. But Marc Elias at Democracy Docket, who has argued and won a shitload of election-related cases (he had a field day doing it in 2020), offers his opinion, which is worth more than most, based on his experience:
Today’s argument will likely assuage many, but not all, of the concerns raised by supporters of voting rights and fair redistricting. There seems little chance that the Court will deny state courts their traditional role of interpreting and applying their state constitutions to state laws governing elections. For voting rights advocates, the devil will be in the details of any opinion, but it feels like we dodged a bullet.
That bulldog should’ve recused himself. He had a bone to pick with the defense.
Proponents of the ISL [Independent State Legislature] theory will likely be disappointed by today’s argument. The Court greeted the arguments from the Moore lawyer coldly from the start and the Court seemed to coalesce around a middle ground approach petitioners rejected at the beginning of the day.
His lips to God's ears. And in other news, God asks people to stop it with the lips-to-ears thing because it's slimy, unhygienic, and feels too much like a wet willy.
CHEERS to the #1 cause of hairy palms and sudden blindness. On this date in 1994 Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders—who, at 89, is still professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences—got triangulated out of her job by President Bill Clinton. Her offense: having the gall to suggest that legalizing marijuana might be a good idea, and teaching kids about masturbation might help prevent the spread of AIDS.
Firing her was not one of Bill Clinton’s finest moments.
"Education, education, education," she said. "The only way we are going to get around this disease is with education. We have no vaccine, we have no magic drug. All we've got is education." Clinton should've let her stay. He might've learned that playing with yourself prevents something else: impeachment.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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This mini-tug was built by Chuck’s Boat and Drive out of Longview Washington and used by the U.S. Navy to move ships and submarines. It's the smallest active-duty vessel of the United States Navy [source, read more: https://t.co/UdJ1icOdOb] pic.twitter.com/ccABeQh8do
CHEERS to the Crossroads of America. Happy birthday Sunday to the home of 6.7 million clean-cut, "basketball ring"-dunking patriots in the heartland.
Also in Indiana’s “plus” column: the first openly-gay presidential candidate from a major party to win a primary or caucus (Iowa), and current Secretary of Transportation, is a Hoosier.
On December 11, 1816, Indiana (or as we say in Maine: "Indianer") became our nation's 19th state. I grew up next door in Ohio, so naturally I'm legally obliged to look down my designer reading glasses at you "Hoosier types" because I’ve been indoctrinated to believe that your corn is inferior and you stole our state bird, the cardinal. (I still say the Buckeye State should build a big, beautiful border wall and make Kentucky pay for it.) But I'll give you this: any state that produces David Letterman (Indianapolis), Eugene V. Debs (Terre Haute), Kurt Vonnegut (also Indy), Larry Bird (West Baden Springs), Florence Henderson (Dale), and all these other VIPs can't be all bad. But we do have three somber words for the folks in Columbus, where Mike Pence cultivated his lifelong obsession with Puritanism as a lad: “Thoughts and prayers.”
CHEERS to home vegetation. Sure, the world's crumbling around us…but at least we've got the magic talking picture box to make things better, so cheer up, Bucky. The evening starts out the usual way, with Chris Hayes and the MSNBC crew unwrapping the latest presents from the Bidenville and MAGA Town. Or at 8:30 on PBS’s Firing Line you can hear from Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa on how disinformation on social media threatens democracy. And there’s a new episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway? at 9 on the CW.
Tomorrow night is Christmas night, with Rudolph and Frosty on CBS, and a grisly murder-for-hire sting operation on Dateline NBC, which isn’t technically a Christmas show, but they’ll have Christmas-themed commercials during it so it counts. Then we’ll prop our eyelids open with toothpicks as we stay up to watch Steve Martin and Martin Short host SNL.
Sunday’s highlight is the lighting of the National War-on-Christmas Tree (8pm, CBS). On 60 Minutes: a profile of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the effects of legal challenges on social media, and the College of Magic in Capetown. Coach Moe hires brawlers to teach Nelson how to play hockey on The Simpsons, and Stewie and Doug compete in the race to become class snack captain.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
CNN's State of the Union: Bernie!!! Plus Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens.
Also: the Rockefeller Center tree weighs in on farm subsidies and tort reform.
Face the Nation: Rep. Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee (D-CA); Former National Security Council senior director for European and Russian affairs Fiona Hill; former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Chris Krebs; J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.
Meet the Press: Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT); former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who led the prosecution of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
This Week: NASA'S Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa E. Wyche; House Jan. 6 Committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Former Secretary of State and lifelong asshole Mike Pompeo (MAGA).
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 9, 2012
CHEERS to going nuclear. Senate Republicans have abused the filibuster more gleefully than a podiatric dominatrix on Dick Morris's toes. So Harry Reid and his allies (led by Jeff Merkley) have promised to make some minor but significant tweaks to the procedural rules. This week they re-upped their commitment to the task:
“There are discussions going on now, but I want to tell everybody here: I’m happy, I’ve had a number of Republicans come to me and a few Democrats,” the Democratic majority leader told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “We’re going to change the rules. We cannot continue in this way. So I hope we can get something Republicans will work with us on.
But it won’t be a handshake,” Reid added. “We tried that last time; it didn’t work.”
Damn right. Harry got Lucy-footballed by McConnell, and this is why neither party can have nice things in the Senate anymore. The rules need to be changed. That way minority Republicans will be forced to show America just how deeply they care about stopping the tyrannical legislation of the majority for the good of the Union by using airtight logic and appealing to our collective sense of justice, equality and fair play. You can laugh now…that was the punchline. [12/9/22 Update: Ten years later, still waiting.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to 19 laps around the blog track. December 10, 2003. A Wednesday. 7:33pm. Shrouded in the New England darkness, with only the constellation Orion to guide him, a newbie blogger, looking almost freakishly younger than his 39 years, clasps his mouse with trembling fingers and clicks the "Post" button. Suddenly the heavens erupt in a frenzy of partly cloudy skies with a slight chance of flurries and a light breeze as the Daily Kos blog accepts his diary:
This is followed by two comments: Nevsky42 at 7:38 and Bob Johnson at 7:50. From that moment on, social media will never be the same. Later, in 2007, the Daily Kos community elects to put me on your collective—and full-time—payroll. You fools! But if the holiday spirit moves you, you can still support C&J with a generous one-time or monthly contribution by clicking here for the various donation options and also a snail mail address.
EXCLUSIVE behind-the-scenes photo: a typical day at the C&J office.
Although it's been said many times, many ways: thank you for reading and supporting my little pixelfied rag for nineteen years. It's an odd little bag of flaming poo. But, by god, it's our odd little bag of flaming poo.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
