I've never really understood the case against this, given that the Democrats could always go to reconciliation in the end (as Manchin notes), and I'd be interested to read it
The case for it seems straightforward:
--Quicker action on the most time sensitive vaccine/COVID aid, which could have been done already
--A political/public opinion benefit to a) bipartisanship; b) multiple bills
--An unknown shot that bipartisanship breeds bipartisanship
The case against it mainly boils down to delaying the package as a whole, but:
--Democrats still control timing, and can bolt whenever conditions merit it
--Much of the package isn't *that* time sensitive
--Delay can be the excuse that lets progressives get to 2000 dollar checks
If you push a 1400 bill through regular order in February and it fails, you do 2000 through reconciliation in March and say the increased number is to cover the delay in relief
Here's a very narrow, clarifying question (since many think any bipartisan engagement means ACA repeat):
what was the case against moving *just* the COVID/vaccine dollars through regular order (which the GOP 10 agreed on), while continuing to move on reconciliation resolution?
The case *for* that seems obvious: there is only a risk of COVID/vaccine distribution dollars coming through faster, as there's no delay on the reconciliation resolution and you could add in the vaccine dollars if they were negotiating in bad faith. So what is case against?
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There's less confidence in the electoral system because people tried to erode confidence in it, not because of the way the election was administered
No 'blue-ribbon' plan could have gotten us out of the mess we found ourselves in
Go through that call between Trump and GA SOS, and think about how many of his assertions would be fixed by, say, a ban on mail absentee voting and a strict photo identification requirement
The answer is: not much of it
You can still assert that someone shredded ballots, or pulled a box from under a table, or that someone wasn't watching, or that there were 'dead' voters based on a file match, or that there isn't a perfect match with poll books, or lie that there are 'more votes than people' etc
Here's North Carolina, just a few months ago (and the hick up in the estimate around 11PM result was induced by an IRL irregularity in the NC results, not the needle).
Here's how Senate control would have changed over the last decade if DC had been a state:
2010: D (IRL) --> D (with DC)
2012: D --> D
2014: R --> R
2016: R --> R
2018: R --> R
2020: D --> D
Here's how Senate control would have changed over the last decade if DC and Puerto Rico had been states:
2010: D (IRL) --> D (with DC+PR)
2012: D --> D
2014: R --> R
2016: R --> R
2018: R --> R
2020: D --> D
*ALSEN in 2017 is an interesting side-story
If PR/AL were states, then the Doug Jones race in 2017 would have flipped Senate control (which the GOP would win back in 2018), though there's a distinct possibility that Jones wouldn't have won if Senate control was on the line
Republican Senate candidates won the Georgia vote in November. Democrats won it on Tuesday.
The reason: a superior Democratic, and especially Black, turnout nytimes.com/2021/01/07/ups…
We won't have an authoritative account for a bit, but based on what I see, there's basically no evidence of significant, net-Democratic vote switching since November.
Instead, turnout held stronger in Democratic areas than GOP areas
One fun way to check the proposition that turnout was decisive: if you take the Ossoff/Perdue tallies in November, and use precinct data to infer what proportion of Biden/Trump voters returned (which is not a safe assumption!) you get Ossoff +.4 with no switching
Ossoff and Warnock are both on track for victory with a greater than 95% chance to win, according to our estimates.
This is not a projection, but the remaining vote--including another 18k DeKalb early votes and nearly 100k absentee votes--overwhelmingly favors the Democrats
Ossoff's lead is still just slim enough that you do want to make sure that some of these late absentees and provisionals really materialize to the extent we expect. I'd think we could see some projections in the Warnock race tonight
But the remaining early in-person votes in DeKalb, alone, will give Ossoff the kind of lead that Biden had in the final count, and there's a lot more for him beyond that. So there may not be a call there tonight, but it's not serious doubt
I'm getting a lot of questions about the DeKalb County vote that remains. Apparently an election official said they only had 130k votes left, not 170k in-person early votes as they had previously said.
First and foremost, I think it's quite clear that it's 170k votes.
The state reports the early vote in great detail; and there were definitely 170k votes cast in-person in early voting in DeKalb County.
Now one possibility is that there's a reporting error--say, they uploaded 30k and called it in-person. I see no signs of that. The votes are left.