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Greg Sargent Profile picture
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10 Dec, 5 tweets, 4 min read
At this point, the filibuster is blocking:

*Curbs on election subversion and voter suppression

*Beefed up oversight of WH manipulation of DOJ

*Reform of ECA to prevent future coup

The window for a generational set of reforms is closing fast. My latest:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
The House just passed the Protecting Our Democracy Act. It's a great bill. It would fix many things that we saw Trump exploit for years.

It will likely not survive a GOP filibuster.

Same with ECA reform, which would protect against a future coup:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… ImageImage
The window for once-in-a-generation reforms, such as those after Watergate, is rapidly closing.

Democracy advocate Fred Wertheimer tells me:

“The problems here that have to be corrected go much deeper than the problems that existed after Watergate."

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… ImageImage
Because automatic GOP opposition and the filibuster are treated as unalterable background conditions of our politics, big reforms pass the House and are treated as DOA and therefore non-stories.

Result: Voters don't know what GOP and filibuster killed:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… ImageImage
Manchin knows democracy must be protected.

Manchin knows no Republicans will participate in that endeavor.

Yet Manchin still insists protecting democracy must be bipartisan by definition.

As long as we're stuck in this doom loop, we're in trouble:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… ImageImage

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More from @ThePlumLineGS

Greg Sargent Profile picture
9 Dec
1) Mark Meadows is suing the 1/6 committee, claiming it has no "legitimate legislative purpose" in subpoenaing him for documents about Trump's coup.

I'm having some dark thoughts about this. In a hidden way, this has very ominous implications.

*THREAD*

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
2) The 1/6 committee has lots of valid legislative purposes. To name just two:

* Reforming the ECA to prevent another coup

* Tightening oversight on WH-DOJ communications.

These are both serious soft spots in our system that Trump corruptly exploited.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
3) But Trump and Meadows say none of these constitute a valid legislative purpose.

In response to this effort to overthrow our political system, we should do nothing meaningful to safeguard against another coup attempt.

Nothing.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 7 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
8 Dec
How can Biden lead at the democracy summit without telling the truth about the authoritarian threat at home -- that it comes from the right and GOP? Will he really paper over his own party's utter failure to safeguard against that threat? My latest:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Biden advisers are struggling with how to address our own democracy problems at the summit. SecState Blinken says he will use it to rally our "better angels" at home.

But this casts the problem as a failure of persuasion, when it's a failure of inaction:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Manchin and Sinema are obviously the problem. But Dems could forcefully commit to a future agenda if more Dems are elected:

*Reform filibuster
*Defend voting rights
*Fix Electoral Count Act
*Protect against manipulation of law enforcement
*SCOTUS reform

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 4 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
7 Dec
Just awful: Steve Bannon is now ripping into David Perdue, who is *Trump's* candidate for Georgia governor, as too much of a squish to wage the war on democracy Bannon wants. This shows that the right is headed toward full-blown insurgency. My new piece:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
I had a fascinating conversation with Nicole Hemmer, a historian of conservative media, about Bannon.

Bannon is similar to Oliver North. Both parlayed their willingness to operate outside the law into a media following built around explicit insurgency:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
David Perdue supported the lawsuit seeking to invalidate millions of Biden votes. He called for the firing of the Sec of State who rebuffed Trump's pressure to steal the election.

Yet Bannon still sees him as a squish. Only full blown insurgency will do:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 5 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
6 Dec
Important: Ben Ginsberg, a top GOP lawyer, just called on his party to reform the Electoral Count Act to avert a stolen 2024.

If and when Republicans say no, it will show that they're perfectly happy to see a rerun of Trump's coup attempt in the future:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Some hope to persuade Republicans to support ECA reform by claiming VP Harris could help steal a future election.

But this misses the antidemocratic currents in today's GOP. Many Rs appear to *want* to be able to execute such a future scheme themselves:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… ImageImage
Dems must end the filibuster to reform the ECA.

It's unthinkable that Ds would let the filibuster scuttle reforms to avert a future coup, when we *already saw* Trump attempt exactly this scheme, and antidemocratic currents in the GOP are getting worse:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/… Image
Read 4 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
3 Dec
Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene aren't fringe. They're leading indicators of an increasingly violent, paranoid style of right wing politics. They claim to speak for the base. Given that GOP leaders won't censure them, are they wrong?

My latest:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Marjorie Taylor Greene and her friends have launched a creative new defense of their anti-Muslim bigotry:

The GOP base agrees with us!

Perhaps that's why GOP leaders are *not* forcefully criticizing that bigotry:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
There's real overlap between the ravings of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon, and some of the stuff from the "intellectual" Claremont Institute.

The thread: A leftist enemy so fiendishly monolithic and totalitarian that anything goes in response:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 4 tweets
Greg Sargent Profile picture
2 Dec
Three days after Trump tested positive for covid, Melania, Don Jr and others in his inner circle sat in the debate hall without masks, in direct violation of protocols. They rebuffed demands to mask up.

I took a close look at the chronology. It's damning:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
A crucial detail:

Meadows told everyone around Trump to treat him as "positive" on covid, while concealing this publicly.

That makes it even more damning that his family sat in the debate hall maskless.

Reporters witnessed this at the time. Receipts:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
At the time, the Commission on Presidential Debates complained that the Trump family had violated protocol.

But nothing was done, even as they flaunted those rules before a national audience of millions.

We now know Trump had already tested positive:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 4 tweets

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