Let's be clear: Keeping the filibuster makes a stolen 2024 election more likely. Awful new details about Trump's coup attempt, and a terrifying new paper calling for reform of the Electoral Count Act, make this unavoidable. Dems simply must act. My latest: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
In an urgent and important new paper, @rickhasen recommends reforming the Electoral Count Act as a key safeguard against a future stolen election.
The gaping holes in the ECA are what made Trump's coup attempt plausible.
@rickhasen Awful revelation from the Woodward and Costa book: The White House sent at least one GOP senator a detailed memo "explaining" how VP Pence could subvert the electoral count in Congress.
This would not have been possible, but for the big holes in the ECA:
Let's stop asking whether Trump and his cronies "believe" 2020 was stolen. The truth is worse: The *deliberate* manufacture of lies is the essential pretext to subverting our democratic order. Right wing media continues to play a key role here. My latest: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
The news that the Trump team knew they were lying about Dominion has larger significance:
It illustrates the role of *knowingly* manufactured propaganda in subverting election outcomes.
When we ask if they 'believe" the lies, it's the wrong question:
Stop screaming about "hypocrisy." Mitch McConnell understands only one language: Power. The only response to his latest BS is for Dems to use their power to defang the debt limit entirely. There's a way to do this via reconciliation. @paulwaldman1 and me: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
@paulwaldman1 Georgetown law professor David Super offers a fascinating idea here:
He says Dems can use a separate, stand-alone reconciliation vote to effectively defang the debt limit once and for all.
@paulwaldman1 According to Georgetown's David Super, Dems could use reconciliation to, say, pass a bill essentially tying the debt limit to whatever is necessary to cover the national debt.
@LPDonovan floated something like this today. This would defang it entirely.
Dan Patrick's "great replacement" rant is becoming GOP dogma. But this is more than just vile racism. It also embodies a theory about democracy and self rule that we should adamantly reject. It merits a real rebuttal. In this rant, I tried to offer one: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Elise Stefanik is also playing the "great replacement" game. She said a path to citizenship would “overthrow our current electorate.”
For 20 years, Republicans have told the ugly lie that Dem proposals to tax the rich would devastate "family farms." It's sad to see Dem Heidi Heitkamp reviving this to block one of Biden's proposed taxes on the rich to fund human infrastructure. My latest: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Incredibly, Heidi Heitkamp is arguing that Democrats risk *alienating rural voters* if they close a loophole allowing untold amounts of inherited wealth to escape taxation.
I talked to tax experts. It's nonsense. It's strikingly cynical nonsense, too:
Covid seemed to open space for a new understanding of our political economy. Yet the same old lobbyists have descended to kill progress, using the same old arguments.
Dems should lean hard into condemning GOP sabotage of our Covid response. This will illustrate the concrete dangers of GOP extremism and activate the pro-public-health majority. In the Virginia Gov race, Dems are now doing this. It's a key test. My latest: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Note this: Terry McAuliffe is campaigning for governor in Virginia while squarely advocating for certain types of mask and vaccine requirements.
GOPer Glenn Youngkin opposes any requirements, even in schools.
Democratic voters need to take state-level elections more seriously. You'd think the huge wave of voter suppression and the active sabotage of our Covid response by GOP governors in red states might make a difference.