Like many progressives, I would be delighted to have a Green New Deal as well as a host of other progressive programs that would immediately and directly help the American people. However, this is not going to happen anytime soon. Joe Manchin has shown that he can single-handedly prevent it now; he has in the past. His help from Republicans will grow exponentially if they reclaim one or both houses of Congress this coming November.

All the same, political power in the United States is distributed in a way that gives Republicans far more influence than they are warranted. They hold half the seats in the U.S. Senate despite the fact that their senators represent only 43% of the population, compared to the Democrats 57% In other words, 43% of the American people are represented by the 50 Republican senators; the remaining 57% by the 50 Democrats. That is clearly unfair.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, five million more Americans (3%) voted for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates, and yet the Democrats have only a few more seats than the Republicans. Once again, this is unfair, especially as we will shortly have new elections for the House with hundreds of districts that are gerrymandered.

The Supreme Court is heavily weighted towards Republicans, in a particularly pernicious way since five justices were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote. They became presidents only because of the antiquated Electoral College.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito were appointed by President George W. Bush who lost the popular election to Al Gore by 500,000 people. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were appointed by Donald Trump who lost the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton by three million popular votes.

Over half (5 out of 9) of the justices who were appointed by semi-illegitimate presidents. This has been a grave and great injustice and needs to be corrected.

These problems of disproportionate power in the hands of Republicans exists in all three branches of our government. This is why we need a recalibration of how power is distributed in Washington and in our states. Recalibration is different from retribution. Changes should not be designed to make it “the Democrats turn.” Instead, it should be time for “fairness to prevail.”

Here’s how we would do it in three steps:

1. Either abolish the Electoral College or codify the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in which the electors in all states are bound to vote for whomever one the national popular vote, not the vote in their state. This would be fair because our presidents would be elected solely on the basis of the vote of the people – the people who he or she represents.
2. Outlaw gerrymandering, the practice of dividing geographic areas into legislative districts in a way that gives one party an advantage over another. By outlawing gerrymandering, the number of seats from each party from each state would come close to reflecting that party’s percentage of voters in the state.
3. Institute some permanent and temporary changes to the Supreme Court:
   1. Permanent: Put term limits on how long a Supreme Court justice can serve, perhaps twenty years.
   2. Temporary: Because the court is currently leaning so far to the right, allow President Joe Biden to nominate three additional justices to the Supreme Court, temporarily constituting the court with ten members. Each of Biden’s nominees would be linked to one of the three Trump appointees. They would leave the Court when that particular Trump appointee no longer serves. The president at that time will then select one nominee to replace the two. When all six of the Trump and Biden appointees (exclusive of Ketanji Jackson Brown) are no longer on the court, it will be back down to nine members.

It is fair to ask how could this come to be. Why would Republicans accept these three changes, all of which would help Democrats, at least in the short run? These would be difficult changes to enact under any circumstances.

Naturally, there is no guarantee that Republicans would accept any of these changes. However, if the American people knew that Democrats were going to take a temporary pass on the most impactful items in their legislative agenda in order to spend several years focusing on recalibrating our democracy, it is possibly that many independents would join Democrats and a few Republicans to get this done. No guarantees, but the idea of advancing and simplifying democracy has a natural appeal to a great many voters. It’s worth a try because Manchin and the Republicans are not going away.

The post Recalibrating our Political System appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The Political Playbook of Tuesday, January 25, 2022 includes a lengthy description of how Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s leadership strategy has led to considerable simmering among Democrats.

Reporters Rachel Bade and Tara Palmeri spoke with a half-dozen Democratic staffers in both houses of Congress Monday night and heard frustration with how Schumer and other Democratic leaders are treating Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ).

Apparently, Manchin continues to be furious at how he has been treated. Other Democrats are now upset with Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others for having stated the obvious. For either the Build Back Better Act or the Voting Rights Acts to have passed, the votes of both Manchin and Sinema were needed. Obviously, that didn’t happen with the voting rights proposals and a Senate vote on BBB has been indefinitely postponed because of a lack of affirmative votes.

In an earlier iteration of Manchin saying that he would not vote to change the filibuster rule, he implied on Fox News Sunday that the Biden Administration was not working respectfully enough with him. It may indeed be possible that some staff members in the White House were expressing their exasperation with Manchin either to him directly or to outside sources.

Manchin and Sinema are entitled to view issues differently than the other 48 members of the Senate Democratic caucus. What they don’t have a right to do is to get upset with other Democrats who have increasingly been frustrated with them.

Had Manchin and Sinema joined the other 48:

1. Two voting rights bills would have passed and the discriminatory election and voting laws that Republicans have passed in nineteen states would either be negated, or involved in court cases, the types of which the federal government has traditionally won.
2. The Build Back Better Act would be law meaning child tax credits would be expanded, there would be child care subsidies, free universal preschool, health care subsidies, paid family leave and a host of other provisions that would help families and bring the American economic and social safety web closer to those in other industrial countries.
3. President Biden’s popularity would be much higher and the prospects for Democrats in the 2022 and 2024 elections would be much better.

Who could blame Democrats for being upset that these two senators have greatly damaged their party politically, and deprived the country of perhaps the two most necessary pieces of legislation currently being considered?

Manchin could whine and pout about how he is being treated, but other Democrats were not entitled to express frustration over how two senators are using antiquated rules to hold the country hostage.

Strictly speaking, the reporting in of Bade and Palmeri is accurate. Democrats other than Manchin and Sinema are expressing their frustration with other Democrats. But the reporting is not in context, with inclusion of how Manchin and Sinema set off a chain of bad feelings within the party.

It seems that the two wayward Democratic senators have the same privilege as Mitch McConnell and essentially the entire Republican caucus. They can speak of hurt feelings as if they are righteous victims and have been unjustly attacked, while other Democrats cannot say “ouch” for fear of being called wimps. The press needs to take a leading role in not perpetuating this unfair and false equivalency.

The post Who on Capitol Hill is Allowed to Whine appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The thermostatic public opinion of the American voter is not a well understood phenomenon, but it is something that has been well observed for the last century. The President’s party almost always suffers a midterm penalty and Joe Biden is historically unpopular, only just missing out on the bottom spot except Donald Trump was more unpopular. This is all to say that the political environment is bad, and conceivably very bad. These are not really debatable points, what is debatable is how much we can read into the future from what happened in Virginia and New Jersey. There is a lot of spin and misguided optimism in politics, there is also an equal amount of apocalypse type meltdowns. This preview attempts to be neither, but rather a 10,000 foot view of the state of things.

The good news first:

Another Glen Youngkin is Hard to Find

How exactly did a Carlyle employed, fleece vest wearing, multi-millionaire who has never held elected office defeat a former Governor? The strengths of the Republican were only amplified by the many weaknesses of the Democrat.

In a normal campaign, you’d probably see the Democrat take a more populist tone and attack Youngkin for his ties to the financial industry. Terry McAuliffe was unable and unwilling to “go there” perhaps because as many pundits have noted, McAuliffe himself is an investor in Carlyle.

Youngkin made extraordinary use of education as a campaign wedge issue, drawing a lot of attention to an apparent gaffe made by McAuliffe during a debate in which he said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach”. There are a couple pieces to this, the first being the frustration many Virginia parents have had because their schools have been closed for in-person learning longer than most other states because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The second more obvious motivating force was race, specifically a considerable amount of white opposition to anything deemed “Critical Race Theory”. Normally a dog whistle this loud would be easy to counteract except the Democrats had very little credibility on racial issues in this election. The incumbent Governor, Ralph Northam, admitted to wearing black face as did the incumbent Attorney General, Mark Herring, who was unsuccessful in his bid for re-election. The Republicans also managed to nominate Winsome Sears, a Jamaican-American who will be the first woman and person of color to be Lieutenant Governor. Republicans essentially were able to neutralize whatever natural advantage Democrats typically have on issues of race and racism, which allowed at least several thousand more conservative Biden voters to pull the lever for Youngkin.

Finally, the way in which Youngkin talked about race sounded rhetorically much more like a liberal critique than a conservative one, despite the more straightforward right-wing animus we saw at school board meetings across America. Ironically, he very successfully used the Obama era “post-racial America” that worked so well for the former President in diffusing tensions with the rural and working-class whites who have abandoned Democrats in droves.

I’ll include a portion of his final stump speech, and I think you’ll notice that this threading of the needle will be hard to replicate:

“We will teach all history, the good and the bad.  America is the greatest country on the planet. We know it. We have an amazing history, but we also have some dark and abhorrent chapters. We must teach them all. We can’t know where we’re going unless we know where we come from. But let me be clear, what we don’t do – what we don’t do — is teach our children to view everything through a lens of race, where we divide them into buckets; one group’s an oppressor and another group’s a victim; and we pit them against each other, and we steal their dreams. We will not be a commonwealth of dream-stealers. We will be a commonwealth of dream-enablers and builders. We know it’s not right. We’re all created equal, and we’re trying so hard to live up to those immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who implored us to be better than we are; to judge one another based on the content of our character and not the color of our skin. And so let me be clear, on day one, we will not have political agendas in the classroom, and I will ban critical race theory.”

That’s not how former President Trump talks about race nor is it how many GOP primary voters talk about race. Therein lies the greatest hope for Democrats, Youngkin of course was not the choice of a primary electorate. The Virginia Republican party opted to hold a convention to select its nominees for statewide row offices as opposed to a regular primary. This was because the party establishment correctly understood that State Sen. Amanda Chase, who self-described as “Trump in heels”, would run away with the nomination if left up to primary voters. A convention however would limit the influence of party outsiders and the folks who might be motivated enough to vote but not spend several hours at a convention. Most states will have primaries and as we saw in 2010 when Republicans lost easy pickup opportunities in Senate races in Nevada, Delaware, and Colorado; sometimes a bad candidate is just bad enough to break a wave.

Other Good News:

1. Midterm and off-year elections are not predictive of Presidential elections. Consider 2018, 2010, 2002, 1994, and 1990. In 2018 and 1990 Presidents Trump and Bush saw their party, the Republicans, suffer loses in the midterm election and they in-turn went on to lose re-election. In 2010 and 1994 Presidents Obama and Clinton saw their party, the Democrats, suffer historic defeats only to be re-elected themselves 2 years later. Finally in 2002, President Bush saw his party make gains and was re-elected President. What’s the theme? Context matters. The results of the next Presidential election were about the next battle, not the last one. Even if Democrats do poorly in 2022, they have until 2024 to recover if they can.
2. A year is an eternity in politics. In 2018, it seemed probable if not likely that Republicans would lose their Senate majority until as late as September. However, the confirmation battle of Brett Kavanagh made possible an opening for Republicans to galvanize voters in states like Missouri and Indiana. What would that look like for Democrats? It’s unclear, but it may defend against potential loses in Georgia and Arizona by providing openings in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. However, it should be said, Republicans won Missouri and Indiana by 19% in 2016 while Democrats won Georgia and Arizona by less than 0.2% in 2020.
3. Starting in 2024 but continuing through 2026, 2028, and 2030 many of the seats drawn to favor Republicans will likely continue to trend Democratic. Population growth is exploding across American suburbs while rural areas are seeing mass depopulation. Take Cobb County in suburban Atlanta for example which mirrors the trends being seen elsewhere. In 2020, Donald Trump received 25,000 more votes than George Bush had in 2000 when he carried the county with nearly 60% of the vote. Joe Biden however received 135,000 more votes and won the county with 56.3%. You can find similar numbers in the suburbs of Houston, Dallas, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, New York, and nearly every major American city with the obvious exception of Miami (although Jacksonville and Tampa show greater upside). The 2012 maps had been gerrymandered heavily in some places, but by 2018 more than 40 seats had flipped to the Democrats. This is short-term good news for the House, but the Senate might be a longer-term view.
4. Should Donald Trump announce his candidacy for President in 2024 he will be the Republican nominee. The potential of a defeated President returning to lead his party in another general election campaign if frankly something that exists well outside the bounds of living memory. The closest examples we have are Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 who ended up running under a third party or Grover Cleveland in 1892 who successfully returned to office after being ousted in 1888. There’s not a lot of precedent for that and there is no precedent for Donald Trump. He is the unknown unknown and he could completely scramble expectations for November should he begin actively campaigning.

Now that Bad News:

Split Ticket Voting is a thing of the past

In 2013, the last time McAuliffe was on the ballot, over 113,000 votes separated the highest performing Democrat (Ralph Northam, then the candidate for Lieutenant Governor) from the lowest performing Democrat (Mark Herring, then the candidate for Attorney General). All three Democrats ended up being elected in that election. In 2021, only 13,000 votes separated the highest performing Republican (Glenn Youngkin, Governor-elect) and the lowest performing Republican (Jason Miyares, Attorney General-elect).

In some environments, that is good news. If there was less split ticket voting, Susan Collins would’ve been defeated in 2020 and the Democratic majority in the House would not have shrunk to single digits. In some environments, this is bad news. If there were more split ticket voting in 2020, it’s very easy to imagine Republicans keeping Senate seats in Arizona and Georgia and perhaps picking up a seat in Michigan, bringing us to 54-46 as opposed to 50-50. Democrats unfortunately find themselves much closer to the latter than the former. This is a bad environment for more split ticket voting for a couple reasons.

The seats Democrats see as most vulnerable, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and New Hampshire are not necessarily full of voters that are trending towards Democrats currently. According to exit polling, here’s the percentage of white voters without college degrees in the aforementioned states:

Nevada: 42%

Arizona: 41%

Georgia: 35%

New Hampshire: 53%

In Virginia according to exit polls, these white voters without college education went from voting Republican 62% to 38% in 2020 to 74% to 24% in 2021. There are of course problems with using only exit polling data, but looking at county level swings in conservative southwestern Virginia tell this story too. Every county swung more Republican, some as little as Buchanan County which became only 2.1% more Republican but some as large as Radford County which swung right 18%. If you apply that kind of shift to Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and New Hampshire what you find is that every state flips Republican. The challenge becomes clearer when you look at the states Democrats want to flip; Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida which at least have 40% of their voters being non-college educated white people. What is dire however is 2024, which as David Shor has observed that if education and race are still as predictive as they are now for voter choice and voters split ballots like they do now and Democrats manage 52% of the popular vote as they did in 2020; Democrats likely will only capture 45 seats (not including any potential loses in 2022). If they win the Presidency in 2024, the 2026 midterm could be equally challenging when Democratic seats such as Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire will be contested.

The Senate has a bias that currently benefits Republicans (It was not so long ago that Democrats had 60 Senate seats and could expect modest support from non-college educated white voters). There are simply many more states with large populations of non-college educated white voters, and many of those states are relatively small while receiving the same number of senators. Democrats need some voters concentrated in red trending states to vote for them, it’s becoming clear that not many will.

The Fundamentals favor the Republicans

Analysts like Dave Wasserman and Nate Silver said in 2018 that Democrats would probably need to win the popular vote by around 7% in 2018 to win a majority of seats outright in the US House. The latest polling averages suggest Republicans have a lead in the generic congressional ballot in the low single digits although some polls show a dead heat. With gerrymandering, there will likely be a slight bias in favor of Republicans given that many “Blue” and “purple” states opted for independent redistricting processes while “Red” states are utilizing the more familiar partisan redistricting process. However even without gerrymandering, something that is not an issue in statewide races, Democrats are still at a disadvantage if they are losing the popular vote. Remember in 2012 when Democrats led Republicans by 1.1% in the House popular vote, they still found themselves in a minority position weaker than the Republicans find themselves in now.

On key questions where Democrats had previously enjoyed relatively good numbers in our hyper-partisan political environment but polling from YouGov/The Economist shows a pretty clear story of declining fortunes over the last several months.

Direction of the Country:

Generally headed in the right direction: 27% Nov., 31% Sept., 35% Jul., 42% May

Off on the wrong track: 61% Nov., 55% Sept., 51% Jul., 46% May

Trend of the Economy

Getting Better: 16% Nov., 17% Sept., 23% Jul., 28% May

Getting Worse: 54% Nov., 45% Sept., 38% Jul., 34% May

The bit of good news is the final question that most analysts look at when trying to handicap the political environment shows some hope for Democrats. The only thing people dislike worse than Democrats are Republicans! 53% of voters dislike the Democratic Party including 39% who strongly dislike Democrats, but 59% dislike the Republican Party including 40% who strongly dislike Republicans. However, the light at the end of the tunnel on this one is still somewhat dim. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was the most disliked Presidential nominee in the history of polling….second to Donald Trump who ended up defeating her. Americans are familiar with negative partisanship and there is a critical mass, certainly millions of people including this author, who have a negative opinion of both parties. This is in my opinion the true swing group of voters because some not only are weighing whether to vote for the Republican or the Democrat, but many more are conflicted whether to vote at all. Donald Trump won this group of voters by 17 points in both 2020 and 2016, but in 2016 they accounted for 18% of voters while in 2020 they made up less than 5%. So it’s unlikely that it will be enough to be less hated but rather Democrats need to become more popular. Which brings me to my final point.

The Democrats Actually Are in Disarray

Despite what you might hear from party loyalists, self-proclaimed resistance members, never-Trumpers, and MSNBC viewers there is actually a lot of internal discontent in the Democratic Party. The left is likely more distrustful of moderates than ever after several betrayals over the last several months. Years of “Vote Blue No Matter Who” rhetoric to encourage disaffected progressives to support the party fell apart when the incumbent mayor of Buffalo was defeated by India Walton, a democratic socialist, in their democratic primary. Instead of conceding, the defeated mayor launched an independent bid for mayor which went unchallenged by Gov. Kathy Hochul (who had made endorsements in other races) and was actively supported by establishment figures in the state (except for Majority Leader Schumer). Brown was successful in his re-election, showing progressives that the relationship they have with the party is entirely one-sided as they were left flailing looking for support when just a year earlier, they we were decisive in defeating Donald Trump. There’s also the Build Back Better/Infrastructure chicanery which has produced a lot of bad will not just among rank-and-file voters but clearly amongst members. The original agreement reached by Moderates in the Senate, Progressives in the House, and President Biden was two bills that would move simultaneously. One bill would be bipartisan and contain Senate priorities on physical infrastructure like roads, bridges, broadband, and environmental upgrades. The other bill would pass through reconciliation with only Democrat votes but would have the vast majority of Biden’s domestic policy goals including a public option, paid family leave, tuition free community college, dental coverage for seniors, the PRO Act, and other liberal priorities of the last quarter century. The end result so far has been the passage of the Senate bill without support from the left with Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Bush, Tlaib, Omar, Pressley, and Bowman voting no. Meanwhile, the House bill has been neutered by moderate figures like Sens. Manchin, Sinema, and unnamed others who don’t have the temerity to put their opposition on record. This doesn’t begin to touch on the palpable disappointment with the failure to raise the federal minimum wage or cancellation of student debt. This well sums up the left-wing frustration with the party, but it’d be dishonest not to acknowledge the drift within the right flank of the party.

James Carville and his neoliberal allies have made clear that they blame Democratic misfortunes on leftist activists and progressives lending support to causes they think are electorally toxic. Namely “Defund the Police”, “Critical Race Theory”, “Wokeness”, “Cancel Culture” and “Socialism” generally. Admittedly these issues clearly have some cultural resonance among at least some voters although this has likely been helped by a media that seems insistent on promoting narratives as opposed to nuance. However much of the blame does lay with Democrats who have not effectively found a way to explain exactly what it is that they do believe in this new culture war. The answers they’ve given on these issues is some variation of “This isn’t real, it’s more of an academic thing that most people don’t engage with and it’s missing context, but we do agree with the sentiment and will attack anyone who attacks these ideas by name although we aren’t running on these things but opposing these things puts you closer to Donald Trump.” To be clear, it is not the job of activists to support popular policies, lunch sit-ins and Martin Luther King Jr. were widely disapproved of by white Americans. Their job is to shift the window of what is politically possible and bring issues to the attention of the actors who can address them. The job of politicians is to build public support for policies and then to enact them. If something associated with the Democratic Party is “Toxic” that is the fault of the party for not figuring out how to explain themselves to the voters. There is a lot that Republicans campaign on that is not just offensive but unpopular and they are connected to activists and ideologues who are equally unpopular. Nevertheless, they have at least managed a coherent (although often inflammatory not to mention dishonest) message that appeals to a growing number of voters.

Not everyone blames the culture war, in fact some moderates like Rep. Spanberger blame the political environment on the national economy and blame the condition of the national economy on progressives. She’s quoted in the New York Times saying:

“We were so willing to take seriously a global pandemic, but we’re not willing to say, ‘Yeah, inflation is a problem, and supply chain is a problem, and we don’t have enough workers in our work force, we gloss over that and only like to admit to problems in spaces we dominate. Nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos”

Spanberger is now being challenged for her seat by State Sen. Amanda Chase, the aforementioned Trump in heels. Virginia aside, many so-called fiscal hawks have pointed to President Biden’s American Rescue Plan as the cause of the spike in inflation we’re currently experiencing. Which of course is not just a critique of government spending but government priorities.

My Prediction: Republicans are going to Win, Democrats can decide by How Much

I’ll let Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter describe exactly how bad for Democrats it would be if Republicans continue the swing they achieved earlier this month.

“To put yesterday in context: in NJ, GOP legislative candidates outperformed the ’20 Biden/Trump margin in their districts by a median of 10.8 pts. If that swing were superimposed nationally, Rs would pick up 44 House seats in 2022 (before even factoring in redistricting). Before unpacking what this could mean we need to discuss “PVI” or “Partisan Voting Index” to ground us.

From www.ballotpedia.com:

“The Cook Political Report published its first Partisan Voter Index (PVI) in August 1997. The PVI was developed by Charles Cook, editor and publisher of Cook, and scores each congressional district based on how strongly it leans toward one political party. The PVI is determined by comparing each congressional district’s presidential vote to the national presidential election results. According to Cook, the PVI “is an attempt to find an objective measurement of each congressional district that allows comparisons between states and districts, thereby making it relevant in both mid-term and presidential election years”

You can find the PVI of your state or congressional district (according to 2020 lines) here. For example, Rep. Cori Bush (MO-1) represents the 22^nd most Democratic seat in the nation with a PVI of D+29. Therefore, in an election where nationally Republicans and Democrats tied in the popular vote (a D+0 or R+0 environment), you’d expect Bush to win her election about 79% of the vote. In 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by about 4.5 points nationally (meaning a D+4.5 national environment) and Bush won her election with about 78% of the vote, a slight underperformance. Meanwhile Rep. Jared Golden (ME-2) represents the most Republican leaning district held by a Democrat at R+6. In 2020, Golden won with 53% of the vote, running ahead of his district’s partisanship by an impressive 8 points. What accounts for over performance or under performance varies from race but political science says generally a few things matter: incumbency, fundraising, voter contact, and candidate favorability (not necessarily in that order). In the Senate we see a bit more of candidates defying state partisanship like Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia which has a score of R+23 and Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine which has a score of D+1. The House is increasingly becoming more partisan with no Democrat representing a district redder than R+6 and no Republican representing a district bluer than D+5. This isn’t usually true in the aftermath of a wave election, 2006 and 2008 saw many Democrats representing Republican leaning districts while 2010 and 2014 brought a lot more Republicans from D districts. 2022 will probably see Republicans take many of those Democrat leaning districts back.

What could it look like? Well assuming some Democrats will outperform their districts partisanship (although most won’t), some states/districts are weighted too heavily towards 2016 as opposed to 2020, and that Joe Biden’s approval doesn’t recover to majority support but doesn’t fall below Trump’s in 2018…it’s a good picture for Republicans.

In the House, Republicans might expect to end up with a majority somewhere between those that they had in 2014 and 2010, which themselves were extraordinary wave elections. However, partisanship might be so strong that even with new lines, some D leaning seats are just too far out of reach (this could be a particular problem California and New York). Therefore, you might see Democrats land somewhere around 200 seats, about the size of their caucus after the 1994 elections. Conversely, if partisanship has weakened then it’s possible that some Democrats who have been outperforming expectations in their district since flipping them in 2008 or 2006 or earlier may finally find themselves out of office and Democrats could reach their nadir of the century. A lot of this will depend on how new lines are drawn, as of the writing of this article Republicans have created 5 new winnable seats for themselves and Democrats have created 5 new winnable seats for themselves, additionally 5 competitive seats have been erased. Which brings up another natural dynamic of wave elections which is the swing districts fall first and most people representing those districts are moderates. That was true in 2018 when Democrats inadvertently created a much more Trumpian Republican caucus by defeating most of the party moderates. In 2022 the Democratic caucus is likely to lurch a bit to the left but it’s unlikely that the left flank of the party will be empowered in the minority, but this election will provide an opportunity to lose the more obstructionist members of the caucus like Rep. Gottheimer in New Jersey’s 5^th Congressional District (D+0). However, some seats will be harder to flip back than others, as some Latino and Asian voters continue to drift to the right it will make incumbent Republicans who are members of those communities more formidable. In southern California Reps. Young Kim and Michelle Steel are the first Korean-American republican women in Congress and they represent districts with growing Korean populations, they will probably be able to represent California as long as they want to. Overall, the house looks fairly grim for Democrats if things persist as they are.

The Senate is probably bad news but there are a couple of ways Democrats can thread the needle here assuming nothing else changes. As was mentioned earlier, candidate quality really does matter although it isn’t everything. In the 2017 Alabama Special Senate election (where I correctly anticipated the surprise result) for example it might not have actually been enough for the Republican candidate to be a credibly accused sexual predator who was “more than off color” about matters ranging from slavery to 9/11 being divine retribution from God. After all, the Republicans did still manage 48.3% of the popular vote in Alabama. What was also required was a near-perfect candidate in Doug Jones the Democrat who had prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan, had no voting record, and could raise $22 million. Democrats have well positioned candidates in Sen. Raphael Warnock and Sen. Mark Kelly and potentially very poor candidates in Herschel Walker and Mark Brnovich in Georgia (R+3) and Arizona (R+3) respectively. Yet we should probably expect Republicans to have an edge, however they may be able to save themselves. In Nevada (D+0) and New Hampshire (D+0), Sens. Catherine Cortez-Masto and Maggie Hassan were both elected with less than 48% of the popular vote in 2016 and represent states with large populations that are trending Republican. Their incumbency, fundraising ability, and raw political talent will keep these races competitive but only Cortez-Masto faces a potentially strong challenger in Nevada’s former Attorney General Adam Laxalt who comes from a political dynasty in the silver state but who is not without baggage. Hassan avoided almost certain defeat when Gov. Chris Sununu announced that he has no interest in being part of the United States Senate (and why would you when you can be God-King of New Hampshire) and will run for re-election after winning the popular vote by 32 points just last year (New Hampshire elects its governor every 2 years, with no term limits). However she may face the President of the New Hampshire Senate, Chuck Morse, who is well connected around the state.

That said, Democrats will probably lose one of the four aforementioned seats if not all of them. To counteract that, Democrats need to pick up Republican seats and there are theoretically opportunities in Pennsylvania (R+2), Wisconsin (R+2), North Carolina (R+3), Florida (R+3), Ohio (R+6), and Missouri (R+11) but many of these are simply illusions of opportunity. Although the potential of an explosively toxic Eric Greitens, the disgraced former governor who resigned after allegations of stealing a donor list from a veterans charity and less than clearly consensual series of sexual encounters with his hairdresser, candidacy may seem like the best opportunity for Democrats to capture Missouri’s US Senate seat. However, there are zero reasons to believe based on any publicly available data or easily observable trends that Missouri will elect anyone but a Republican to the US Senate next November. In an environment where Democrats won the popular vote nationally by 8 points, Sen. Claire McCaskill was defeated for re-election by a larger than expected 6 points (McCaskill underperformed her state partisanship at the time by a little over 5 points).

In Florida, Sen. Marco Rubio is popular enough in South Florida with Latino voters that he could conceivably win Miami-Dade County as he did during the 2016 Republican primaries. If you’re not familiar with Florida politics, Democrats won Miami-Dade by 29 points in 2016 and still lost Florida. In Ohio, Republicans seem set to nominate the Trumpian former state Treasurer whose campaign staff walked out on him last year, Josh Mandel or the Peter Theil financed Hillbilly Elegy author that the liberal media constantly platformed  J.D. Vance. Rep. Tim Ryan is no slouch as a potential Democratic Senate candidate, but he’ll likely be forced to account for statements made on the campaign trial during his quixotic quest for the presidency in 2020. Furthermore, Ohio has seen perhaps the most accelerated rightward shift of any state in the Midwest and in 2020 Donald Trump received 300,000 more votes than 4 years prior while achieving virtually the same margin of 8 points.

North Carolina has two very strong Republican options to choose from in the former Gov. Pat McCrory and Trump endorsed Congressman Rep. Ted Budd. 2020 saw over performance down ballot in North Carolina as the Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Auditors Office all were won by Democrats as Joe Biden lost the state to President Trump. The character of North Carolina is changing from a traditionally inelastic southern state with nearly all white voters supporting Republicans while Black voters support Democrats at similar levels, which bodes well for Democrats future prospects in the state. However, North Carolina is more red than purple, and Democrats will need to do better than they have in better years where they also lost which is a tall order.

Finally, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania which do represent the best opportunities Democrats have to flip any senate seats. These states are both trending Republican and were won by President Biden last year, but Wisconsin has a polarizing candidate in incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson and an open-seat in Pennsylvania where the Trump endorsed Republican is credibly accused of domestic violence. In Pennsylvania however, Democrats are threatened with a party crackup as the front-runners for the nomination are conservative Rep. Connor Lamb, moderate state. Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, and progressive Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman. After the betrayal in Buffalo, it seems unclear if any of these candidates if nominated can unify the Democratic voting base. Wisconsin although it has an incumbent, and incumbents are typically harder to defeat, benefits from the character of Mr. Johnson which has been remarkably conservative given the lean of his state. Wisconsin is trending Republican, but it isn’t that Republican yet and it’s likely that Johnson’s likely challenger, Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, will be able to raise enormous sums of campaign dollars.

As far as Alaska goes, it’s complicated. The state has recently adopted a new voting system described here by the Anchorage Daily News:

“Under the new Ballot Measure 2 system, all candidates for a particular office, regardless of party, will run against one another in the August primary. (Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor are paired together on a single ticket as running mates.)

Voters pick one candidate or ticket for each office, and the top four vote-getters advance to the general election in November. In that election, voters will be asked to rank the candidates in order of preference, Nos. 1 through 4. A write-in spot offers a fifth choice.

If one candidate gets more than half of the first-choice ballots, that person wins the election. If none of the candidates reach that mark, the candidate with the fewest first-choice ballots is eliminated. Voters who picked that candidate first will instead have their ballots go to their second choices, and the total is recounted.

If a candidate then has more than half of the votes, that person wins. If not, the process continues until there are only two candidates left, and the person with the most votes wins.”

President Trump has already endorsed an opponent to Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the former commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Administration Kelly Tshibaka. Meanwhile Murkowski has been endorsed by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republicans like Sens. Mitch McConnell, Rick Scott, Susan Collins, and John Thune to name a few. It’s unclear what the voters will do or if Murkowski will make the top-two in November. If she does, it’s likely that she’ll win with coalition support as she did in 2016 and 2010. If she doesn’t, Tshibaka will almost certainly win. Given that Murkowski voted to impeach the Donald Trump who last year won Alaska by 10 points and voted against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, you might want to be Tshibaka.

All said, the Republicans have a lot more paths to 51 seats than Democrats have to 50.

Without beating a dead donkey, Democratic incumbents in Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Maine and Nevada find themselves in tough races for the reasons listed above. These states either have large populations that are trending Republican, or they are traditionally red states. Democrats have the best odds likely in New Mexico and Nevada where the strength of incumbency may carry Gov. Steve Sisolak and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham over increasingly conservative working-class Latino voters in their states. However, all these governors were swept in on a blue wave in 2018, it’s not impossible to think that they could be as easily swept out. In fact, in 2010 that’s exactly what happened in Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Maine (Nevada already had a Republican governor) after the 2006 blue wave. The fact is that while it helps to be an incumbent, these are still not favorable environments.

In New England, liberals love electing Republican governors and we shouldn’t expect that to change in the near future. Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont (D+15) was re-elected last year by a staggering 41 point margin capturing every municipality in the state except for 3. Scott voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and called for President Trump’s resignation after January 6^th. Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire (D+0) also won re-election by a very impressive 32 points in 2020, but Sununu unlike Scott has described himself as a “Trump guy through and through”. The only Republican in any danger is Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts (D+14) and it’s not from the Democrats but rather a Republican primary challenger. President Trump has endorsed Geoff Diehl, a former state rep who challenged Sen. Warren in 2018, over Gov. Baker who despite being overwhelmingly popular in the state is actually not very popular among Republicans who view him as too liberal. If Baker should decide not to run or be defeated in his primary, Massachusetts would be ripe for Democrats to flip. However, should Baker survive his primary, he will surely sail to re-election like Scott and Sununu.

In the South, Democrats are hoping failed Presidential and US Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke will make the race for Governor in Texas (R+5) competitive. That likely won’t be the case for several reasons starting with the heavy GOP swing in the Rio Grand Valley in 2020 which is home to many Latino voters. Just looking at Zapata County, which is 94% Hispanic, you can see just how uphill Beto would need to fight to be competitive.

Beto of course ran for President and made a number of statements on the campaign trial that were calibrated to appeal to a national primary electorate that in theory is much more culturally liberal than general election voters in Texas, although of course voters opted for chronically “un-woke” Joe Biden so it’s not clear if Democrats were that “woke” to begin with. Yet Beto will likely be easy work for the Republican propaganda machine with statements like “hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47” and “In necessary some cases, completely dismantling those police forces”. However, Beto is perhaps the strongest candidate Democrats could hope for, but having unnecessarily tarnished himself in a Presidential campaign it’s unlikely that we should expect Gov. Gregg Abbot to be in any serious danger.

Georgia like Massachusetts will see its Republican Governor challenged seriously in the primary which will have implications for the general election. Gov. Brian Kemp has fallen very far from the graces of Donald Trump after he refused to intervene on behalf of Trump in the certification of Georgia’s election last year. Enough Georgia Republicans sat out the Senate run-offs that Democrats were able to narrowly win and secure the majority in the US Senate, in large part due to Trump continuing to spread conspiracies about unproven mass voter fraud. If Kemp is the nominee, Trump may well decide to ask Republicans to stay home. That’s if Kemp makes it that far as he’s being challenged by Vernon Jones, a once promising Black former Democrat legislator turned Republican who has been dogged by allegations of anti-white racial prejudice. There are rumblings that former Sen. David Purdue might challenge Kemp and if he did it’s an open question whether Kemp could win. Now it’s time to address the name Democrats have been hearing for the last 4 years, Stacey Abrams who narrowly lost her campaign for Governor in 2018. Abrams would be a formidable candidate given the chaos that is consuming the Georgia GOP, but it’s not clear if she will jump into the race given the difficult political environment. Abrams, who has never been shy about wanting to be President (or Vice President), understands where to look for political opportunities. In 2018 she ran for Governor in her purple state when polls showed a national wave environment for Democrats. In 2020 she did not enter the race for President after seeing over 2 dozen candidates including the runner-up from 2016 and the former Vice President enter because she (unlike Beto) correctly recognized that she didn’t have a lane to win. Later in 2020, when polls showed Biden with an exaggerated lead over President Trump, she auditioned heavily to be Vice President on what would eventually be a winning ticket. Now we are less than a year from the next election, and this time in 2017 Abrams had already been a candidate for 5 months. This could’ve been because she had a primary then and doesn’t expect much competition now. It could also be because she doesn’t want to run just to lose.

If one state is likely to flip to the Democrats, it is Maryland (D+14) where Gov. Larry Hogan is term-limited. He was elected in a close upset in 2014 but since then had achieved high marks from Democrats and Independents with more mediocre numbers among Republicans. Like Scott in Vermont, Hogan did not vote for President Trump in 2016 or 2020.

The white whale for Democrats is Florida, a state that has not elected a Democratic Governor in over 25 years. Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration have mirrored their style in many ways after the former President and that has created many detractors. Yet it’s also produced many supporters as DeSantis polls in the top-tier of potential Presidential candidates, and those are polls with and without former President Trump. In Florida Gov. DeSantis is on the positive side of polarizing — notching a 52% approval rating among registered voters ahead of his upcoming re-election bid. The Florida Democratic Party however has a penchant for botching elections in the state and that doesn’t seem to be changing as for the first time in history as registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats in the Sunshine state. Challenging DeSantis are the former Republican turned Independent Governor who already lost an election as a Democrat in 2014 now Congressman Charlie Crist, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried who is Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat, or state Sen. Annette Taddeo who previously ran with Crist as his Lieutenant Governor candidate in 2014. None seem prepared so far to deal with the precipitous slide in Miami-Dade or the continued collapse in the panhandle which will be the party’s undoing.

Republicans should be able to hold on easily in Ohio, Iowa, and Arizona and they should be able to hold on very easily everywhere else. Iowa is approaching the status of red state and is currently more Republican leaning than Texas, there are no indications that rural white voters (of which Iowa has many) will be shifting back towards the Democrats anytime soon. In 2012, President Obama won all white voters in Iowa by 4 points. In 2020, Joe Biden lost white voters in Iowa by 12 points. Gov. Kim Reynolds was elected for the first time in 2018 in a much more hostile political environment, she should be fine in 2022 against any Democrat. The same is true of Gov. Mike DeWine in Ohio who is a known quantity in Ohio having previously been elected statewide as its Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, and US Senator. In Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey is term-limited (although he would’ve been unlikely to earn a Trump endorsement after he acknowledged Biden won his state last year) and so that race is the most competitive. Trump has endorsed former TV news anchor Kari Lake although it’s not clear if she will be the party’s nominee given her history of association with QAnon conspiracy theories, white supremacist congressman Paul Gosar, and alleged Nazi sympathizers. Should she be nominated however, it’s likely that she’ll face Secretary of State Katie Hobbs who does not have the same history of bizarre connections. Nobody should be surprised if Hobbs pulls an upset because again, candidate quality can and often does matter on the margins.

Finally, Illinois, California, New York, and Oregon will almost certainly elect Democratic governors (although in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul faces a very strong primary challenge from Attorney General Tish James). The state level Republican parties in these states for the most part lack a serious moderate element which means that they will likely be unable to mount serious challenges in 2022. These for all intents and purposes are blue states, and they’ve only gotten bluer since the last GOP wave in 2014.

So, what’s a Democrat to do then?

The Democrats are on borrowed time, it’s not clear if all of them know that but some do. It might be easy to despair as we look down the road at the horror of possibilities. Instead, though, we should remember that we are living through a turbulent period of great transitions and there are forces outside of our control. It is up to the President and his Congress to understand the stakes of the next year and do whatever it takes to pass their policy agenda. It may not be enough to save themselves from ignominy but doing nothing will surely doom them to it. And so, what if they do everything they promised last year and more and still the American people still reject them at the polls? What good is government that is so afraid to govern lest they be thrown out and forced to not govern some more but this time from the minority? I’ve written about the need to radically change the Supreme Court, but beyond that Democrats should probably try to do what voters want and dare them not to like them.

Polling suggests sweeping majorities in favor of legalizing marijuana, increasing the minimum wage, forgiving student debt, codifying Roe v. Wade, and letting the government negotiate prescription drug prices. These are things Democrats could do if they were willing to really question the rules of what is possible. The only thing that will save the party from likely electoral disaster is if they can get out of their own way and realize that the rules of the road have changed forever. Perhaps they still will, but the clock is ticking.

As for us, the ball is in their court. Knock on doors if you want, make phone calls if you have time, donate if you’ve got the disposable income, talk to your neighbors if you like them enough and vote if you’ve got the Tuesday available. Ultimately though, it’s up to the people in power to decide how long they think America can survive Republican control of the federal government. In a nation where 700,000 have died of an infectious disease over the last 20 months, it’s not an unreasonable question.

The post An Honest Preview of the 2022 Midterm Elections appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s been clear for some time that Joe Manchin is a one-man wrecking crew. With help from Kyrsten Sinema, for the past seven months, he has essentially stopped all major legislation that the Biden Administration and Congressional leadership have wanted passed. He has played right into the hands that Donald Trump and his legion of sycophants have wanted – making Biden appear weak and ineffectual.

Progressive Democrats can be praised for their strategy that has kept alive the possibility of a significant “soft infrastructure” bill with a price tag of $2.5 trillion or more. But without demonstrative help from Manchin and Sinema, each day is another one in which nothing happens, and Biden appears incapable of enacting his agenda.

With the exception of the Trumpsters, Biden is personally liked by most American voters. But his affability is not enough to keep his popularity above water – above 50%. That is the minimum level for it to be for Democrats to have a chance to hold on the Senate and the House in the 2022 mid-term elections.

When Biden took office in January of this year, his ratings were in the mid to high 50s. Now, he has slipped to 43%, far too low to help keep his party in power following next year’s elections, particularly since 2022 will reflect a new landscape with further Republican gerrymandering and undermining of our electoral systems at the state levels.

As reported in Gabe Fleisher’s Wake Up to Politics, one Quinnipiac poll released last week showed that Biden’s approval rating was recorded as low as 38%; among independents, his approval rating sank to 32% while his disapproval rating swelled to 60%.

It would seem logical to cast blame on Biden himself, but he has skillfully and patiently worked with all segments of his party as well as some Republicans to advance the legislation that is fundamental to his programs to improve the economic, social, and human rights qualities of life in America.

The central problem is with the way in which the Democratic Party is stuck in stagnation. While there are now hundreds of outstanding Democratic legislators in Congress, they each have particular elements of a people-centric agenda that they want to advance. The problem is that at this point, virtually nothing is advancing.

In the current political quagmire, we have heard the often-used term, “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” If that were ever true, now would be the time. President Biden, the fifty Democrats in the U.S. Senate and the 220 Democrats in the House are spinning their wheels, each trying to get a little more of what is best for them and their constituents.

Now is the time for President Biden and Congressional leaders to pull together and determine what their “lowest common legislation denominator” is. What legislation would be in a package that they could agree upon NOW.

It might not be much, but at least it would get things moving. Voters would see new construction projects with those wonderful signs adorning them, “Your tax dollars at work.”

Get the low-hanging-fruit, and then work to pull together winning alliances for the remaining parts of the Democratic legislative agenda. If something is not going to pass, put it near the top of campaign planks for 2022 and 2024. But keep going back to passing what you can. There is enough that Manchin and Sinema want to keep the bucket of legislative accomplishments in motion. Democrats should keep in mind that virtually all of their proposed policies are overwhelmingly favored by the American people. As Republicans get more and more absurd in their priorities, Democrats stand to gain further strength with the American people.

Right now, the most effective thing that Democrats can do to optimize passage of the legislative priorities is to make Joe Biden look good. He is doing his part. Others need to rally around him. Let’s put some of these disagreements into the ‘W’ column for the Democratic Party and then further build off that momentum.

The post Democrats need to rally behind Biden appeared first on Occasional Planet.

If you happen to have a very stern father, or know someone else who does, wouldn’t Mitch McConnell telling you “no” about anything be housed in your collection of worst nightmares? Here’s this grizzled, remote, empathy-challenged man undermining your hopes for the future.

Why does McConnell have so much power? Hint: although his persona can be very intimidating, the real reason why he strikes fear in the hearts and minds of Americans is not because of who he is. It is because of the power that has been bestowed upon him as the current majority leader of the Senate, power granted through the rules adopted by all one-hundred members of the U.S. Senate.

Our founding fathers and those who followed them as legislators in the federal government threw caution to the wind when it came to distributing power in a democratic fashion in the U.S. Congress. Why is it that the Senate Majority Leader, one of one hundred, can singularly determine such essential to democracy decisions as:

1. Which bills introduced by other Senators can be brought up for discussion, assigned to committees and voted upon.
2. Who gets to serve on each committee within the Senate?
3. Empower committee chairs to once again determine which bills will be considered, whether or not witnesses will be called, and if so, who will be included and who will be excluded.
4. Determine when the advice and consent process of confirming presidential nominees for vital positions, including Justices of the Supreme Court, will be considered by the Judiciary Committee and the entire Senate (remember Merrick Garland).

Bernie Sanders talks about a revolution of the people, but it’s amazing how much would happen if there was a revolution of ninety-nine Senators other that Mitch McConnell to strip him and other leaders of the entire body and its assigned committees of their currently prescribed powers. There is less democracy in the Senate (and the House) than there is among the populaces of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Russian Federation, or the Islamic Republic of Iran. Individual senators have less power than their own children in a 5^th grade class or their older children who are privates in the U.S. Army.

Hell, yes to this revolution. But for some reason, it’s not going to happen. Senators and Members of the House are powerless simply because they choose to be. It is almost as if the status quo has a special gravitational pull on them and they are locked into the current positions.

Among the forces that perpetuate the worst elements of our political process are money and mindless tradition. We know that the only real way to wash the insidious role of money in politics is to eliminate private donations and have a system of public financing. When it comes to mindless traditions like the system of seniority in the U.S. House and Senate, the non-empowered Members need to become the voice of the people and amplify their own personal voices in their chambers. It’s not just about the right to talk; it’s about determining the subjects that can be discussed, studied and voted upon.

As the impeachment trial of Donald John Trump begins, it behooves us to notice the loci of power in the process and to think about how things could be different if each individual senator was (a) not intimidated by “leaders,” and (b) was free to operate as the individual that he or she is.

It probably won’t happen this time, but if we as vigilant citizens enhance our awareness and express our concerns to our elected officials, in time, things can take a positive turn towards legislative democracy.

This post is among a series related to Arthur’s just published book, POLITICAL INTROVERTS: How Empathetic Voters Can Help Save American Politics. The content of this piece is related to the “Organization of Legislatures” section of the Chapter 8, Needed Structural Changes. It is simultaneously published in the Political Introverts blog.

The post Some Thoughts on Smashing Impeachment Gridlock appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House of Representatives would launch a formal impeachment inquiry in response to allegations that President Trump pressured Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden’s son in what appears to be an attempt to influence the 2020 election. Whether Hunter Biden’s behavior was ethically dubious is a fair question (it was) or if President Trump’s actions were an abuse of power (they were) is a discussion for a different day. Yesterday according to most whip counts, the House has the votes to impeach the President of the United States and it looks like they will. So, what might come next?

1. The House votes to impeach and Majority Leader McConnell refuses to hold a trial in the senate.
   • As of the writing, there are reportedly 221 members of the House who are prepared to vote for impeachment which is a couple votes more than the majority that the constitution requires. The transcript and the whistleblower report don’t look good for the President. In fact, everything looks very bad and probably worse than the Mueller report because these new documents actually make a value judgement about the President’s behavior. We should not be shocked if the House votes to impeach because this is likely as close to a smoking gun that Congress is going to get. This charge is particularly damaging because we already litigated this issue and we already decided that foreign election interference is bad. It would still be a historic move for the House to vote to impeach the President, it’s only happened once every century, but this kind of corruption is historic. But of course, that’s not the end of the impeachment process, the Senate also plays a role and they are meant to hold a trial. If these were normal times then we’d expect it to happen without question, but after Majority Leader McConnell held the Supreme Court hostage in 2016 then we really have no reason to expect McConnell to respect constitutional norms. Although McConnell has said that he will follow Senate rules if impeachment makes its way to the Senate, trusting Mitch McConnell has never been a well-reasoned decision. It’s easy to imagine McConnell just refusing to hold a trial but it’s unclear if that would actually be beneficial to Republicans. President Trump would not be able to claim he had been acquitted because he literally wouldn’t be, he’d just be in some state of impeachment limbo. Furthermore, impeachment is polling a lot better than it was a few weeks ago and the imagery of Republicans refusing to even acknowledge their constitutional duty probably wouldn’t play well with voters. That doesn’t mean it still won’t happen, McConnell has continued to gamble with the constitution, and he continues to win so maybe he can win again.
2. The House fails to impeach because some moderates change their votes
   • It took around 80 days for the House to decide to launch an impeachment inquiry to actually voting for Impeachment in 1998. If we assume that we’re looking at a similar timeframe for President Trump, then we should expect a vote sometime in December. A lot could happen between now and then and given the chickenshit like nature of some Democrats I don’t have too much confidence in our caucus. I’m especially concerned about the New Democrat Coalition, which is made up of moderates, centrists, and your assorted third-way types. Many of these members come from purple districts and are rightly concerned with their electoral prospects. As a very likely hypothetical, let’s say that by December Elizabeth Warren is leading in the polls in the Democratic primary and is followed by Bernie Sanders while Joe Biden has slipped to a distant third. What is going to go through the minds of members like Sharice Davids of Kansas or Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey or any of the newly elected Orange County Democrats? Many of them have made clear that they’d rather Biden were the nominee. Will they feel like they’ll be able to run as a moderate with a progressive or a leftist at the top of the ticket and vote for impeachment? I think it’s an open question.
3. The House votes to impeach and the Senate acquits the President without Republican defections
   • Maybe the Democrats will impeach the President. It’s been a long time coming and we’ve probably crossed the Rubicon on impeachment. The evidence against the President is pretty damning and the timeline of events shows a pattern of corruption that is hard to ignore. Well actually it may be very easy to ignore if you’re a Republican senator and live in a perpetual state of fear because of your constituents cult like devotion to the President. Donald Trump has an approval rating among Republicans that is probably in the high 80s which means something. The President in the past has successfully rallied his supporters to oust incumbent members of Congress and there are a number of elected officials who if not for Donald Trump would not be in Washington. Also relevant is that the GOP lacks any ideological mooring and seems to exist solely for promoting the interests of corporations, Christians, and caucasians. This has produced some senators who are genuinely from the Republican base and are not rational actors and may actually believe that the President is acting in good faith. Josh Hawley, Marsha Blackburn, and Cindy Hyde-Smith come to mind but there are certainly others. Then of course there are the so-called “profile in courage” Republicans that liberals love. I’m talking about Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rob Portman. These are the Republicans who are always “deeply concerned” about the President’s behavior and are “reluctantly” voting for some evil multi-billion-dollar legislation to torture immigrant children. They’ll go on MSNBC, they’ll furrow their brows, and they may even cobble together a joint editorial and send it to the Washington Post. Then they’ll vote not to convict because they are cowards.
4. The House votes to impeach and the Senate acquits the President with several Republican defections
   • We’ve established that the Democrats are going to impeach the President and that Republicans are cowards. However, this time may actually be different because there are a lot of Senators who are still waiting to go on the record and haven’t instinctively jumped to Trump’s defense. Of course sycophants like Josh Hawley have but his senior counterpart Roy Blunt has not. That’s notable because for several reasons. First, Blunt was only narrowly re-elected in 2016 (underperforming Trump by 15.7 points) and likely would’ve lost if not for Trump’s landslide victory in Missouri. Second, Blunt played an integral role during the 2017 inauguration and commenced the ceremony. Finally, Blunt is the number four Republican on the Senate Leadership team. If anyone was going to defend Trump immediately it was going to be Blunt, yet he’s still “waiting and seeing”. If Blunt is a barometer for other Republicans, then maybe we can expect some Republicans to actually vote for impeachment which isn’t to say that Blunt won’t in the end vote to acquit. There are a lot of Republicans who have made clear their distaste for the President and although the votes to remove him from office likely aren’t there (Joe Manchin and Doug Jones are Democrats who might vote to acquit), we may still be looking at as many as a dozen Republican defections. If I had to guess who might vote to impeach, I’d look at retiring senators and Bush Republicans like Lamar Alexander (retiring), Pat Roberts (retiring), Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, and Lisa Murkowski.
5. The President is impeached and removed from office
   • This is the least likely outcome. I would sooner expect an Andrew Yang nomination than a Trump conviction. But it could happen, we may still be missing a piece of the puzzle. Donald Rumsfeld famously said “there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know”. There is almost certainly an unknown unknown out there and it could be one that is so repugnant and disturbing to the conscious of the nation that Republicans will literally have no choice but to impeach. I was tempted to lay out an addendum to this scenario because perhaps the Republicans could convince the President to resign in a similar fashion to what happened to Nixon. But we know Donald Trump and we know in our heart of hearts that he is not going to resign. Unlike other politicians who can be compelled to act by fear or shame or threat to their future in the party, Trump exists outside of conventional norms and he knows it. Trump has captured the racist zeitgeist and will have millions of followers no matter what happens next and that’s enough for him. The only way the President is leaving the White House is through impeachment or at the end of his term, whether that’s 2021 or 2025. There may come a point when Republicans begin to ask themselves, “Is this worth it? Could we achieve the same ends with Mike Pence?” and then the President will be in trouble.

There’s also a number of wild card scenarios that we should be prepared for because the moment we’re in is very fluid and it’s hard to predict anything anymore.

1. Clarence Thomas resigns or some other Supreme Court Vacancy
   • It’s probably time we stopped pretending that the Supreme Court isn’t partisan. It is. We don’t select justices based on merit, we select them based on reading their rulings, so we understand their judicial philosophy and ideology. There’s a reason that liberal and conservative groups create lists of preferred nominees, it’s because they know where they stand on the issues. The Supreme Court is a broken institution and it can be manipulated for partisan purposes. Enter Clarence Thomas, who has a very conservative world view and witnessed first-hand the kind of mobilizing force a Supreme Court vacancy can have on an election (see 2016 and to a lesser extent 2018). Clarence Thomas has served on the Court for nearly 30 years and hasn’t exactly hidden his conservative leanings, his wife Virginia worked for the Heritage foundation and currently contributes to Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller. He may just decide to announce his resignation at the end of the 2020 SCOTUS term and that would probably be enough for Republicans to circle the horses around President Trump. If the worst should happen, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer (or both) should die, then we’d be faced with a more significant realignment of the Supreme Court that actually would likely mean the realization of many conservative goals like outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage. That would almost certainly mean either impeachment would be completely abandoned by Democrats or Republicans would engage in some historically ugly campaigning.
2. President Trump Resigns from Office and then continues to run for re-election

• • Donald Trump did not win the Republican nomination because he had institutional support from the party. He won in spite of it because he was what Republican voters wanted, an anti-establishment figure who was willing to be unorthodox and dress down an elite that they loathe. If he needed to, he could probably do it again and if impeachment looks likely then that’d probably be a viable path forward. Would Mike Pence be willing to lead a caretaker government while Trump campaigned for President? He might have to because his choices are pretty limited. Would Pence defeat Trump in a Republican primary? Doubtful because even with the unlimited resources of the RNC, Trump is still Trump (ask Jeb how far $140 million will get you). Does Pence want a future in Republican politics? Probably, and he’s tied his fortunes to Trump and needs to stay in his good graces and for Trump to remain popular. That’s the thing about Faustian bargains, the Devil always gets the better end of the deal. Trump may well reason that he’d have a better chance of staying in power by giving it up. Trump appreciates a good story and the populist president who promised change is stymied by the Washington Establishment and is running an insurgent campaign on behalf of the people…that’s pretty good.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but we shouldn’t be surprised if it’s something we don’t expect. I wouldn’t hold my breath for the more outlandish scenarios that involve “President Pelosi” or “Hillary Clinton 3.0” but there’s a lot that could happen in the coming days and weeks. The President probably abused his office and attempted to have a foreign power influence our elections. That’s serious not just for President Trump but for our democracy. It’s time to see the full extent of the Article One powers in the Constitution.

The post 7 Paths Forward for Impeachment appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The resolution passed today in the U.S. House of Representatives, condemning Trump’s racist comments directed at Members of Congress is an amazing piece of writing. Its primary author is U.S. Congressman Thomasz Malinowski [D-NJ], who is, himself, an immigrant and, judging from the inspiring language of his resolution, a damn fine writer, thinker and believer in the ideals that Americans love to tout [but not always live by]. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could disagree with the sentiments expressed in this eloquent document. He quotes Ronald Reagan, for goodness sake, implicitly asking Republicans to choose the optimistic views of their erstwhile patron saint over the carnage of Trump. And yet, only four Republicans had the courage to buck Trump and vote for the measure. Really, though, it shouldn’t take very much courage at all to agree with the basic principles set out in this resolution, or to at least voice concern about the continuous river of hate speech spewing from the highest office in the land. When only four Republicans and one Independent tiptoe over the line to side with decency, we are living in a dangerous world. I applaud Democrats for taking this stand, even if it won’t change a single mind.

Here’s the full text of the resolution. Kudos to Malinowski. We need to hear more from him.

RESOLUTION

Condemning President Trump’s racist comments directed at Members of Congress.

Whereas the Founders conceived America as a haven of refuge for people fleeing from religious and political persecution, and Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison all emphasized that the Nation gained as it attracted new people in search of freedom and livelihood for their families;

Whereas the Declaration of Independence defined America as a covenant based on equality, the unalienable Rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and government by the consent of the people;

Whereas Benjamin Franklin said at the Constitutional convention, “When foreigners after looking about for some other Country in which they can obtain more happiness, give a preference to ours, it is a proof of attachment which ought to excite our confidence and affection”;

Whereas President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists”;

Whereas immigration of people from all over the Earth has defined every stage of American history and propelled our social, economic, political, scientific, cultural, artistic, and technological progress as a people, and all Americans, except for the descendants of Native people and enslaved African-Americans, are immigrants or descendants of immigrants;

Whereas the commitment to immigration and asylum has been not a partisan cause but a powerful national value that has infused the work of many Presidents;

Whereas American patriotism is defined not by race or ethnicity but by devotion to the Constitutional ideals of equality, liberty, inclusion, and democracy and by service to our communities and struggle for the common good;

Whereas President John F. Kennedy, whose family came to the United States from Ireland, stated in his 1958 book “A Nation of Immigrants” that “The contribution of immigrants can be seen in every aspect of our national life. We see it in religion, in politics, in business, in the arts, in education, even in athletics and entertainment. There is no part of our nation that has not been touched by our immigrant background. Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life.”;

Whereas President Ronald Reagan in his last speech as President conveyed “An observation about a country which I love”;

Whereas as President Reagan observed, the torch of Lady Liberty symbolizes our freedom and represents our heritage, the compact with our parents, our grandparents, and our ancestors, and it is the Statue of Liberty and its values that give us our great and special place in the world;

Whereas other countries may seek to compete with us, but in one vital area, as “a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on Earth comes close”;

Whereas it is the great life force of “each generation of new Americans that guarantees that America’s triumph shall continue unsurpassed” through the 21st century and beyond and is part of the “magical, intoxicating power of America”;

Whereas this is “one of the most important sources of America’s greatness: we lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world, and by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation”;

Whereas “thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge”, always leading the world to the next frontier;

Whereas this openness is vital to our future as a Nation, and “if we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost”; and

Whereas President Trump’s racist comments have legitimized fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color: Now, therefore, be it resolved, That the House of Representatives —

(1) believes that immigrants and their descendants have made America stronger, and that those who take the oath of citizenship are every bit as American as those whose families have lived in the United States for many generations;

(2) is committed to keeping America open to those lawfully seeking refuge and asylum from violence and oppression, and those who are willing to work hard to live the American Dream, no matter their race, ethnicity, faith, or country of origin; and

(3) condemns President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color by saying that our fellow Americans who are immigrants, and those who may look to the President like immigrants, should “go back” to other countries, by referring to immigrants and asylum seekers as “invaders,” and by saying that Members of Congress who are immigrants (or those of our colleagues who are wrongly assumed to be immigrants) do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America.

The post Resolution condemning Trump’s hate speech: Full text appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Somehow, I was led to believe that voting was a fundamental part of democracy. And when a majority exists, and no vote can take place – well, that is more than just a shame; it’s not democracy.

At center stage on this is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). There are currently forty-seven Democratic senators who want to pass legislation to open most of the closed departments and agencies of the federal government. There are also at least four Republicans; that makes a total of fifty-one; i.e. a majority of the one hundred members of the Senate.

But McConnell refuses to allow the Senate to vote on the bills that have already passed the House. His reasoning is that the president has said that he would veto such legislation.

McConnell was not born yesterday. The fact that Donald Trump is unpredictable and not good to his word is not a surprise to most people, and that includes him. If McConnell would allow the Senate to vote to reopen most of the agencies that are currently closed, who knows what Trump would do? In a sense, McConnell is now doing Trump’s bidding. A more responsible Majority Leader would let democracy prevail, and if the president would want to veto the bills, he would be free to do so. We have no way of knowing what he actually would do, because Trump himself has no idea.

The problem is not just McConnell. It is a system that has existed in Congress since its origins. Each house has its leadership. It makes sense to have men and women in positions to organize the legislation that is considered before Congress. There need to be traffic cops; one who will say let’s deal with Bill ‘D’ before Bill ‘A’ because it currently is more urgent. For example, it is far more important now for each house of Congress to deal with issues reopening the government, and even addressing border security, than it is to vote on a bill that would rename a post office.

We often talk about presidential abuse of power, and we are certainly seeing quite a bit of it with Donald Trump. Seldom do we talk about abuse of power with Congressional leaders, but it may be more prevalent and nearly as insidious. This is what we are seeing now with Mitch McConnell. He is essentially ostracizing fifty-one or more members of the U.S. Senate, leaving them with as much power to effect policy as you and I, as ordinary citizens, have.

We talk a great deal about structural changes necessary to improve our democracy. These include abolishing the Electoral College, eliminating gerrymandering, and eradicating voter suppression. But equally important is for Congress to drastically reduce the power of its leaders, including committee chairpersons.

Right now, Mitch McConnell is being cowardly, loyal, undemocratic and savvy all at the same time. It seems that he prefers to think of himself as loyal and savvy rather than cowardly and undemocratic. But his audience is more than a crowd of one – Trump. It is the American people, and in particular the 800,000 government workers who did not receive their paychecks yesterday.

Come on, Mitch, show Trump what courage and good judgment look like. It’s a way to try to rejuvenate the Republican Party.

The post McConnell As Much at Blame as Trump appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Before casting your vote on Tuesday, November 6, for the individuals who will be tasked with representing you in the House or the Senate, consider this shocking fact. The U.S. Constitution is nearly silent on the expected duties of members of Congress. The only formal rule requires that members be present to vote on the questions before their respective chambers.

What this means is that the way in which our representatives conduct the duties of their offices has simply evolved over time. In other words, our representatives have no printed road map for the major responsibilities of their jobs, such as the vital responsibility to interact with constituents. It’s difficult to imagine, but there’s no rulebook for the degree to which representatives must take into account the viewpoints and desires of constituents when voting on legislation. Think about it. Our representatives – those people who write and vote on the legislation that determines our taxes, our healthcare options, the rules of the workplace, the guarantees of our civil rights, the safety of our food and water, and much more — govern by adhering (or not) to what is often referred to these days as nothing more than norms and traditions.

It’s hardly shocking, then, that lacking clear guidelines those norms and traditions can be summarily tossed out the window and with them the assumptions about how our democracy works. In the past, those norms and traditions were respected. But times are changing. And the brazenness of some members of Congress to disregard those traditions and depart radically from what is called “regular order” should shock us to our very core. Of course, the most egregious example was the denial by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of a confirmation hearing for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. This is where we are on the eve of the most consequential election of our lifetimes—deeply uncertain and justifiably distrustful about even the rules of the game, thanks to Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party.

With no set rules, it’s not surprising that the manner in which our elected officials approach representing our interests becomes a personal choice, depending on personality, outlook, or commitment or courage for the time, energy, and fortitude it takes to interact in person with individuals and interest groups and weigh their sometimes conflicting opinions. It’s generally accepted, however, that two main styles of representation have emerged over time. Some representatives see their job as responding directly to the viewpoints and instructions of their constituents. This is called the delegate style. Members of Congress who follow the delegate style are more apt to hold public town halls and to solicit directly the viewpoints of their constituents before casting their votes. Other representatives follow what’s called the trustee style, in which they rely primarily upon their own judgment and initiative.

The trustee style, which seems to predominate among the current Republican members of Congress, has most certainly led to a lack of accountability and to the perception by many Americans that their elected officials do not reflect nor represent their interests. Combine the trustee style with the influence of donors, lobbyists, and special interest groups and it’s easy to understand why the fundamentals of truly representational government are threatened and why, unfortunately, so many Americans question the relevance of voting and believe that politics has no place in their lives.

The post Why voters don’t trust Congress anymore appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Do you wake multiple times during the night obsessing about the upcoming midterm elections and the Democrats’ chances of taking back the House or the Senate?  If the answer is “yes,” then here’s some updated data from statistician-extraordinaire Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight that might—at least temporarily—help you get through the night.

Hot off the presses on Tuesday, October 16, 2018, at 12:57pm, here’s Silver’s latest forecast about the probable breakdown of Democrats’ taking back the House.

According to Silver, there’s a 6 in 7 chance Democrats will win control, which translates for us non-data nerds as an 84.5% chance. Conversely, there’s a 1 in 7 chance, or a 15.5% chance, that Republicans will keep control of the House. Nate’s forecasting that Democrats have an 80% chance of gaining 19 to 62 seats and forecasts a pick up of 40+ seats.

Thank you, Nate, for today’s gift and for tonight’s (possible) restful slumber. And what about tomorrow and the day and night after and the days and nights after that? As in all things, there are no guarantees. However, Nate promises to continue to deliver his group’s most accurate forecasts up until election day.

There are still twenty-one days until the midterms, and all that we know for certain is that the world can turn upside-down in that amount of time. Anything is possible.

For today, I’m going to suspend my doubts, push aside the angst, and trust in Nate. What else have I got?

To read about Nate’s methodology, go to

How FiveThirtyEight’s House And Senate Models Work

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