Friday Talking Points -- Biden About To Get A Big Win
President Joe Biden is about to have a very good month. The Senate is on the brink of passing (after all the Republican time-wasting obstacles are cleared) a mammoth $1.9 trillion pandemic recovery bill. The White House has taken to calling it the "Rescue Plan." It is wildly popular with the public. Next week, the House will pass the same version and Biden will likely sign it immediately thereafter. It will be the first big legislative victory for the president and the Democratic Congress.
After this happens, Biden will undoubtedly emerge from his self-imposed retreat in the White House (he wanted everyone to know how important this bill was by postponing several other traditional things until it passed). Biden will give his first press conference, he will speak to a joint session of Congress (the "don't call it a State Of The Union" speech), he will likely make his first foreign trip and then host his first world leader at the White House. More and more of his cabinet will be confirmed by the Senate, meaning his administration will now be able to get in gear in a big way. In the meantime, those $1,400 checks will go out, more and more people will get vaccinated -- including (importantly) teachers -- and more schools will reopen while more businesses will return to some sort of normalcy. Also, the House will pass a number of important bills to address a wide range of problems -- each of which also polls very strongly with the public.
That all adds up to a solid month of good news for Biden. His job approval rating is already at 60 percent (over 10 points higher than Donald Trump ever saw), and with all this to come it wouldn't be surprising to see it head upwards even more throughout the month.
Biden will deserve this victory lap, but it is important for both him and his fellow Democrats to remind everyone of one simple fact: all of the good news from the Rescue Plan was made possible by Democrats and Democrats alone. The entire Republican Party fought against any of it happening. And you know what? Nobody out there who gets a $1,400 check in the mail is going to scream: "This wasn't bipartisan enough!" and rip it up and refuse to cash it. Because real people don't think that way, no matter what politicians in Washington may believe. People want to see results. And they really don't care what parliamentary nonsense has to happen for those results to appear.
But they also won't notice who deserves the credit and who the blame (for opposing it), unless Democrats constantly remind them. Republicans fought against any and all of it happening. If the economy recovers quickly later this year after herd immunity is reached through vaccination, then Democrats should continue claiming credit for the success. This is the number one issue for Democrats to run on in 2022, after all. Biden beat the pandemic and fixed the economy -- and by doing so, returned us all to normalcy. We're not there yet, obviously, but this bill will certainly put us on a better path to getting there.
Of course, the high of the next month isn't going to last for Joe Biden. The honeymoon is eventually going to wear off. This will likely happen after the House passes a large majority of the Democratic agenda, but then the public finally notices that none of it has actually happened yet. All of these bills are going to get stuck in the Senate. There is virtually no chance a bill like the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act is going to get 10 Republicans to vote for it. And that's going to be true for almost all the other bills that Nancy Pelosi sends over as well. This is the point where Biden is going to have to decide whether he wants to be a gridlocked president or a substantial one, because those are really the only possible choices when it comes down to whether to get rid of the Senate's filibuster once and for all. But that's in the future -- for now, Biden's got a good couple of weeks to look forward to.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party has given up all pretense of standing up for pretty much any agenda at all, other than "whine like the world's biggest snowflake" about things that have nothing at all to do with politics. Seriously, you just can't make this stuff up -- while Democrats are fighting hard for a pandemic relief bill, Republicans are in a tizzy over Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss.
Their juvenile behavior didn't even end there. Several Republicans tried to troll Biden after he made a comment slamming Republican governors for their "Neanderthal thinking" on reopening their states too early. The snark was pretty obvious, on this one:
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) trolled the left by calling on the president to apologize for offending people whose very, very, very, very distant ancestors were of the archaic human species. He suggested Biden "seek training on unconscious bias." And Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) even took to the airwaves to defend the reputation of cavemen and women.
"Neanderthals are hunter-gatherers, they're protectors of their family, they are resilient, they're resourceful, they tend to their own," Blackburn told Fox Business. "So, I think Joe Biden needs to rethink what he is saying."
Reaching back to the Dr. Seuss idiocy, an unnamed White House "official" responded in classic form:
To a President who acted like a Neanderthal
Instead of coming together, the flames they fan
When they should be working with Joe on the Rescue Plan
Cry, whine, and gnash their teeth as they may
It's actually the Republicans who are in disarray!
What this means, ladies and gentlemen, is that we have fully descended into farce. One of America's once-proud political parties is throwing in the towel on any sort of rational ideological debate and acting like small unruly schoolchildren. Or, to put it another way, Trump remade the party in his own image and they're a long way from shaking that off.
The first momentous bills were passed by the House, and of particular note was "H.R. 1" otherwise known as the "For The People Act." We wrote about this earlier, with a full (and extensive!) list of what the bill contains. It would lay down solid federal rules to reform the way elections happen at the state level, as well as ending gerrymandering forever and instituting ethical reforms such as requiring presidential candidates to publicly release their tax returns. It is a sweeping and breathtaking piece of legislation.
Republicans, of course, are fighting back hard. They are openly admitting what used to be secret -- the Republican Party knows that if more people vote, they will lose more elections. In other words, they have given up even the pretense of persuading people to vote for them and are instead now fully dedicated to rigging elections in their own favor. A Republican lawyer even flat-out admitted it, during a Supreme Court oral argument. When asked why he wanted to disqualify out-of-precinct votes, the Republican lawyer responded: "Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game." And the only way Republicans see left to winning is to cheat -- as much as possible and in as partisan a manner as can be imagined.
To justify this, Republicans are using circular logic. They lied to the voters (the Big Lie that the election was stolen), they tell people the election was rigged (even though it wasn't), and then they point to the widespread belief which they caused with their lies as a reason why they should change the rules to favor themselves more. It's as if they had launched a massive advertising campaign to convince people unicorns are real and then used "many people now believe in unicorns" to pass a whole bunch of money for "unicorn-hunting operations."
The task remaining for Democrats (from Biden on down) over the next few months is to point all of this out to the voters. Over and over again. Democrats are now the party of building back better, while Republicans are just AWOL on any rational debate whatsoever. The more positive things Democrats can get done -- and the more they rightfully take credit for those things -- the easier it's going to be to win the next election.
We have to begin with a correction, from last week. Last week we wrote about New Jersey legalizing recreational marijuana and we said:
This is wrong on two levels. First, New Jersey was actually the fifteenth state to legalize, and it was not done legislatively. We know this because we are about to hand out another round of Honorable Mention awards to all the Democrats in Virginia, which also legalized recreational cannabis this week. And the correction was right there in the details:
The move puts pressure on neighboring states such as Maryland, where an adult-use legalization bill got its first hearing this month. New Jersey also recently enacted legalization, after voters overwhelmingly backed a referendum in November.
Sixteen states is almost (except for fractions) one-third of the entire country. It is high time (pun intended) for Congress to act on the national level, to end the War On Weed once and for all.
But this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week goes to Senator Bernie Sanders, who refused to take "no" for an answer and forced the Senate to vote on raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. By doing so, he put everyone on the record, which was about all he could have accomplished (after the parliamentarian ruled the minimum wage hike didn't qualify for the pandemic relief bill under the arcane rules of budget reconciliation).
Bernie's right -- the refusal of the richest country on Earth to guarantee a living wage to all its workers is nothing short of shameful. He got 42 Democrats to vote for $15 an hour, which is a benchmark of sorts.
For showing all the faux populists what populism is truly all about, Bernie Sanders was easily our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.
[Congratulate Senator Bernie Sanders on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo continued to go down in flames this week, as two more women came out and accused him of sexual impropriety. Cuomo issued several different "non-apology apologies" without ever truly grasping that what he did (instead of just "what others felt about it" ) was just wrong.
Cuomo, so far, has resisted calls to step down, which kind of surprises us because we really weren't expecting him to make it to the end of the week. But we gave him the MDDOTW last week, so we'll just add oak clusters to it for his continuing shameful slide downwards.
Instead, we have eight (well, seven) Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week awards, for the senators who voted against raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. They are: Tom Carper, Chris Coons, Maggie Hassan, Angus King, Joe Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen, Kyrsten Sinema, and Jon Tester. King technically isn't qualified to receive the MDDOTW award, since he's not technically a Democrat, but we included his name just so everyone in Maine will notice.
There is really not much else to say. This is precisely why Bernie Sanders forced the vote -- so that everybody could see who was for the idea and who was against it. So now we know.
[Contact Senator Tom Carper on his Senate contact page, Senator Chris Coons on his Senate contact page, Senator Maggie Hassan on her Senate contact page, Senator Joe Manchin on his Senate contact page, Senator Jeanne Shaheen on her Senate contact page, Senator Kyrsten Sinema on her Senate contact page, and Senator Jon Tester on his Senate contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.]
Volume 608 (3/5/21)
This week, we decided to go with the rant format rather than a discrete list of talking points. This is a critical time for Democrats to toot their own horn, so that the public starts associating them with not only the pandemic relief bill, but also with the entire recovery back to normal which will take place all year long. Republicans made this easy to do, by uniting in lockstep against providing anyone -- workers, front-line responders, vaccine distributors, state and local governments, people buying health insurance, teachers, school administrators, and millions of others -- any relief whatsoever. Since it was not a bipartisan effort, in the end, what it means is that all the credit now belongs to Democrats and Democrats alone.
So hang this around the Republican Party's neck, for approximately the next two years. What follows is our suggestion for how to do this, both now and in the future. Draw the contrast in as stark terms as you can, and repeat often.
The difference between Democrats and Republicans
There's a big difference between Democrats and Republicans, and it is getting more and more obvious every day. Democrats want to help people, and Republicans refuse to even consider the idea. Democrats want to help people struggling with the pandemic, Republicans say we simply can't afford to spend money improving anyone's lives. Democrats want to help schools safely reopen, Republicans don't care about the safety, they just want to force schools to reopen. Joe Biden is implementing a national plan to get vaccines into people's arms -- a plan Donald Trump didn't even think was necessary.
And now Republicans are crying crocodile tears over the supposed lack of bipartisanship. This is just laughable, because this bill is quite possibly the most bipartisan bill in a generation's time. Seventy percent of Americans support the bill, including almost half of all Republicans. This bill is more popular than the Affordable Care Act, George W. Bush's tax cut, Trump's tax cut, or Dodd-Frank ever was.
That, my friends, is bipartisanship. The people are behind this bill, it is only Republican politicians who are not. They are the ones who are out of touch, not us. Because we think the government should act decisively to solve a medical and economic disaster -- and the other party thinks things are rosy and we shouldn't bother doing anything. That is the difference between Democrats and Republicans. GOP senators are so petty they forced the Senate clerks to read aloud all 628 pages of this bill for no reason other than to waste everyone's time. Eleven hours later, Democrats are still united behind this bill.
So, yeah, I'm standing with Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress who are standing with seventy percent of the people. And I will congratulate the Democrats for a job well done when it is signed into law and people start seeing their $1,400 checks in the mailbox. And I will leave it to the Republican politicians to explain to the public why all of this is somehow a bad thing -- just because they wanted to pout more than they wanted to help people out.
Also, there are plenty of other things in this bill that haven't gotten a lot of attention but will when they start helping people out. For instance: Obamacare subsidies are being substantially increased, which will mean cheaper health insurance payments for millions.
The big secret that Republicans don't want you to realize is that they have nothing left to offer the public. The party used to stand for things, even if I didn't agree with any of them. They had strong positions on all kinds of issues. After Donald Trump, the only thing they seem to care about is complaining about children's books and children's toys. Seriously, that is what the once-mighty "party of Lincoln" has reduced itself to. That's all they've got left.
Democrats do have an agenda, and it's a pretty simple one. Fight for Main Street and stop letting Wall Street always win. Tax the rich, so everyone pays their fair share. Raise the minimum wage to a livable wage. Work should bring the dignity of living above the poverty line for everyone. Hard work should be rewarded. Make it easier for everyone to vote -- by mail, early, absentee, whatever. Let the people make the decision about how and when to vote, not the politicians. End gerrymandering. Make it easier to afford college. Reform police tactics that are outdated and cruel. Get money and politics out of the business of running our elections. Create a truly fair playing field. Adapt the country to the future by transitioning to green energy.
What do the Republicans have? They are against all that. They are totally reactionary, at this point, and all they know how to do is obstruct. They have completely abdicated any role in forming legislation, because they can't even agree among themselves on basic issues -- or reality, for that matter. All they have left is to try to get people riled up about stuff that politicians shouldn't even be involved in -- like whether a publisher decides to keep publishing a particular book or not. That's all that's left that seems to matter to them.
We hope the voters -- in the suburbs, out in farmland, in the cities, everywhere -- are taking note. Democrats have ideas and want to make government work for the people again. Republicans just want to break everything and then say: "See, I told you so -- this can never work!" Their entire platform, in fact is: "Government doesn't work, so vote us into office and we'll prove it!"
That's beyond sad. It really is pathetic. And what's even worse is what is seeping into this vacuum of ideas. Because the Republican Party is now openly flirting with white supremacy, in a desperate bid to retain voters.
Last weekend, a Republican member of Congress spoke to a formal gathering of white supremacists. And to date there have been no condemnations of this disgrace by any Republican leaders at all. After Representative Paul Gosar spoke to the "America First Political Action Conference," the organizer spoke next and ranted about how the country needed to protect its "White demographic core." And yet, from the rest of the Republican Party, all we hear are crickets.
At the same time, numerous Republican presidential hopefuls appeared on a stage at a different conservative conference that was apparently designed to be a Nazi symbol. No Republican politician refused to speak on such a stage. Not one of them uttered one peep about it.
Republicans have jumped all over the allegations against the governor of New York, but they still have yet to say one word about a Republican congressman who was accused of sexual assault in a letter signed by 150 students at the college he briefly attended. Madison Cawthorn only went to the school for a single semester, and yet 150 other students had learned he was a dangerous pig in that short time -- that's pretty astonishing when you think about it. And yet, his fellow Republicans say nothing.
The husband of another Republican House member -- one who recently quoted Hitler -- drove a truck to the Capitol this week with a decal on it from the "Three Percenters," who likely took place in the recent insurrection attempt. And the response from the Republican Party is the same -- absolute silence.
Republicans sure had a hissy fit over Hunter Biden because he somehow had ties to China, but when an inspector general reported then-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao for abusing her office to help her family's business out -- a shipping company that specializes in China -- the Trump Justice Department ignored it. Chao was not just a Trump cabinet member, she is also the wife of Mitch McConnell. And yet no Republican has denounced such swamplike behavior.
It's pretty obvious that the Republican Party has no ethics left. They just have no moral leg left to stand on anymore. For Pete's sake, at their conservative conference they all joined in worshipping what can only be called the "golden calf" statue of Trump. Do any of these people actually read the Bible? You have to wonder.
Republicans now welcome sexual predators and white supremacists into their ranks without blinking an eye. They allow their own politicians to personally profit off of their position and it doesn't bother them in the slightest. They continue to lie about the last election because they think they can keep what power they have left by making it as hard as possible for Democrats to vote. They are against helping people in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis.
That's what Democrats want the public to fully understand. There is only one party left that truly cares about the future of America and making progress for all towards that future. We dare the Republican Party: prove us wrong! Show us your plans for the future, because for like the last decade or so, all you've done is cut rich people's taxes over and over again. That's it. That's your answer to every problem. So if you think that's unfair, then prove us wrong!
But, sadly, they can't. Because they've got nothing left to offer. Just endless petty grievance and victimhood. No plans for the future at all.
We sincerely hope the voters remember all this in the next election.
Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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Thank you.
-Laelth
