Where are the excuses? Their behavior was inexcusable. But there was a popular narrative on here based on a few examples that they were mostly rich, which seems inaccurate.
This does not of course mean that the rioters were all desperately poor either. There was a mix of people with different backgrounds, some well-off, a substantial amount seem to have had significant money troubles.
More broadly people should really stop immediately reacting to every demographic observation by jumping to its presumed narrative implications about which side is Good or Bad. It's a silly way to think.
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So at the heart of the Summers op-ed is the political assumption that if you spend a ton on stimulus now then inevitably deficit mania will kick in and Congress will get cold feet on doing anything more, killing the rest of Biden's agenda.
In 2009 this sort of is what happened. Progressives often frame the stimulus mistake as going "too small." But at the time there was an assumption in the White House that if they needed more stimulus later, they could go back and get it from Congress. That proved untrue.
But...
Congress is different now. In '09 the constraint was a caucus of deficit-worrying Democrats + Republicans.
There are few D deficit worriers left, and hardly anyone expects GOP support for Biden's agenda. A second bill will be reconciliation again.
This is Manchin's ultimate trump card against any pressure Dems might bring to bear on him. He really does have the sole power to throw control of the Senate back to Republicans.
Jim Jeffords did this during our last 50-50 Senate in '01, flipping R to D
Jeffords ditched the GOP in '01 because he was unhappy with how the Bush Admin was treating him.
Another hugely consequential R to D Senate switch, Specter in '09, occurred because of pressure from the right. Specter's switch gave Dems 60 votes and allowed Obamacare to pass
Oh I certainly don't think he's anywhere close to doing it. But that's in part because Dem leaders have done well tending to his interests. And they're not doing stuff like threatening his gavel or using hardball tactics on him like some on here want
Senate Dems were never going to just kill the filibuster as part of an aggressive power grab to open the year. If they're going to do it (and I don't know if they will), they need a pretext.
So the real question is what will happen months down the road.
The question is: what is something that Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and Joe Biden all really, really want to become law, for which Republican obstruction would be outrageous enough to justify nuking the filibuster? Does such a thing exist?
It is possible they find such a thing. It is also possible that Manchin, Sinema, and yes, Biden, are more comfortable seeing the vast majority of liberal priorities bottled up by the filibuster. That there's nothing they want so badly as to change the rules to get it.
Schumer on Senate floor re: organizing resolution: "Leader McConnell’s proposal is unacceptable and it won’t be accepted. And the Republican leader knew that when he first proposed it."
Schumer said all he wants is the same agreement for the last 50-50 Senate in '01, and that McConnell's making an "extraneous demand" to put "constraints on the majority."
Says in addition to higher-profile nuclear option uses McConnell used it last Congress to speed nominations
McConnell argues that "there wasn't a need" in 2001 to reaffirm the basic rules, because it was "safely assumed" that no majority would break them.
That assumption was not so safe — Republican senators became fixated on the idea just two years later.
There's a lot that's smart about this @ezraklein column but the assumed connection between passing a lot of progressive policies and subsequent electoral success does not seem evident to me
For instance Bill Clinton was least popular when he was trying to pass his health care bill, most popular when Republicans controlled Congress, the economy was good, and not much was happening policywise.
GOP governors in blue states w/ Dem legislatures are incredibly popular
Obviously policies that help people are worth pursuing because... they help people!
But the idea that electoral success will likely follow, and that the only thing holding Dems back from success is their inability to pass more stuff, smacks of wishful thinking to me.
Basically, McCabe wrote about how placidly Flynn seemed to misstate facts in his FBI interview, according to his agents. He used the figurative language that it was *as if* Flynn kept staring outside on a normal day and remarking on the beautiful black sky.
A Fox reporter with poor reading comprehension wrote up the book saying McCabe said Flynn *actually made* the "beautiful black sky" comment. He did not, it was an analogy.
Given Q lore on the storm, obsession with secret messages + Flynn, here we are