Trump's ugly admissions of guilt over 1/6 are clarifying. Because he's flaunting his corrupt designs, opposing reform of the Electoral Count Act is now firmly aligned with making a 2024 coup easier.
@SenAngusKing@Matt_Seligman Trump's candidate for governor in Georgia, David Perdue, is running on an implicit willingness to appoint fake electors if necessary.
Other Trumpist candidates for positions of control over election machinery are explicitly running on Trump's 2020 lies:
Simply unreal: A GOP bill in New Hampshire targets "negative" depictions of US history. Its explicit goal: To ensure teachers retain "loyalty" and don't push "subversive doctrines."
This McCarthyite effort could be a model for more to come.
The absurdly vague language of these bills is a feature, not a bug. The idea is to make teachers feel as if they're perpetually on thin ice, treating them like subversive elements that must be rooted out at the slightest deviation from orthodoxy:
Under the New Hampshire bill, it would be reasonable for teachers to think they must tread carefully when saying positive things about certain abolitionist or civil rights tracts:
Mitch McConnell told us exactly how his strategy works: Make government look dysfunctional and get the media to blast the Dem president for failing to secure "unity."
It's working. Three new polls show Biden slipping badly with core Dem groups and indys:
Mitch McConnell's strategy also successfully exploits flawed conventions of political reporting.
McConnell surely chortled with glee during Biden's presser, where Biden was hammered for failing to achieve "unity" while GOP conduct was erased as a factor:
Here Joe Manchin explicitly declares that the filibuster is an affirmative good *precisely because* it allows the minority to prevent the majority from passing laws:
"This has been a long-standing critique of the filibuster, that it allows the minority to block a majority from passing legislation. Manchin essentially acknowledged that.”
Smart comments from Senate expert @jiwallner on what Manchin has revealed here:
“There’s no doubt that McCarthy is a material witness to a possible crime by the former president. His conversation with Trump during the height of the riot could provide direct evidence of Trump’s mindset and scheme.”
@rgoodlaw Did Trump indicate to McCarthy that calling off the rioters was in some way contingent on Republicans doing more to subvert the electoral count?
That is only marginally different from what Trump did reportedly say.
A big deal: The coal miners' union just ratcheted up pressure on Manchin to support BBB. This is a seminal moment: The divergence in interests between workers and mine owners who oppose BBB has been exposed. Manchin must choose one or the other. My latest: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…
Really telling:
Mine owners are now attacking the mine workers for supporting BBB. The owners explicitly argue that BBB would transition to clean energy too quickly!
This perfectly shows that BBB is in workers' interests and against owners' interests: