Dems hoped to "shame" McConnell on the debt limit. Instead they're sputtering with limp outrage while Mitch gets "savvy" points from the media. Time to nix the debt limit in reconciliation. Force Republicans to be the ones howling with ineffectual outrage: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Right now, Dems are searching for *another* procedural trick on the debt limit.
This is absurd! Kill it already! It can be done in reconciliation, by simply tying it to the debt.
This solves Dems' substantive *and* political problems. Here's how:
Dem outrage is met with savvy coverage that paints GOP depravity and recklessness as a dilemma *for Dems* while marveling at how politically shrewd Mitch is being.
No more. Time to put Republicans in the role of sputtering with outrage.
Sinema's latest nonsense wrecks a key talking point: That the left is demanding "all or nothing." Progressives are asking her to say what concessions she wants *from them* on reconciliation. She won't say! The left is easily the more reasonable party here: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
At this point, the levels of bad faith coming from Kyrsten Sinema are genuinely hard to fathom. She seems to be insisting on passage of the infrastructure bill *entirely* on her own terms. That seems almost designed to make any accommodation impossible:
Yes, the Arizona "audit" imploded on Trump. But people are missing a big part of the story: Its "findings" continue to push the lie that the 2020 outcome was dubious, and Republicans are gearing up to use this to fake-justify voter suppression. My latest: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
For months, we were told the "audit" was about restoring voter "confidence."
But even though it couldn't find the fraud it looked for, its "findings" still say we should lack confidence in our elections, and that more voting restrictions are needed!
Many headlines are saying the Arizona audit "confirmed" Biden's win.
Don't do this! It implies that the audit was about empirical verification of the outcome, normalizing this practice. It was actually about undercutting the legitimacy of a Dem victory:
A key tell from @RepJayapal: On NPR just now, she asked centrists to detail their demands for reconciliation and said she thinks it'll be done in 2-3 weeks. Still a brutal slog, but I think that cracks open the door for a way forward. It looks like this: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
@RepJayapal It looks like @SpeakerPelosi has a strategy: She's hoping to get all sides to agree on general outlines for the reconciliation bill.
This may create a way forward. It clears space for centrists to be specific on what they want to see in reconciliation:
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.
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: