Friday Talking Points -- What Will Putin Do?
The world pauses and holds its collective breath as we all wonder the same thing: What is Vladimir Putin up to? Will he invade Ukraine? Is this all some sort of bluff or feint? Or is he deadly serious about reconstituting the Soviet Union's sphere of influence (of satellite states subservient to Moscow)? Is he just waiting for the Olympics to end as some sort of favor to China? Or will the troops eventually go home and the whole crisis blows over?
Nobody knows the answers to those questions except for Putin himself. President Joe Biden and the United States have a limited number of options before anything happens, and a limited number of realistic options even if an invasion begins. We are not going to send U.S. troops and aircraft to fight Russian forces in Ukraine itself. That is clearly off the table. Militarily, we are essentially going to sit back and watch whatever happens from the sidelines. Which is a good thing, because direct military conflict between the two largest nuclear powers on the planet wouldn't be good for anybody concerned. But it would still mean watching it all play out in real time on our television sets, if the invasion actually happens.
Of course, the Biden administration has been saying for weeks now that an invasion was "imminent," and yet no invasion has yet begun. Today, Biden said directly that he had intelligence that Putin has already made up his mind and would invade, which made some news. At some point, if Putin is content to just stall, this is going to become a credibility problem. Warning "the sky is falling" when the sky does not, in fact, fall can lead people to completely tune you out. Or maybe a different mythological metaphor is necessary: maybe Biden is crying wolf, but even if we start ignoring it that doesn't mean the wolf won't eventually attack anyway.
If Putin does invade, Biden may pay a political price here at home. After repeatedly threatening crippling sanctions, he's going to have to follow through. But this could roil world energy prices, since Russia's biggest export is fossil fuel. In other words, gasoline prices here (which are already high) could spike. And that becomes a political problem for any sitting U.S. president. Biden's already paying a political price for high gas prices, so if things get markedly worse the political price he pays is going to increase right along with the price at the pump.
If Putin does not invade, however, then Biden will emerge stronger politically. The shorthand version will be: "Putin blinked." That's always a political asset for any U.S. president, obviously. Who knows how true it might be -- Putin might have been planning all along to just scare the living heck out of everyone without actually invading -- but that's how it will be seen here, rightly or wrongly.
In any case, Republicans certainly won't have any cohesive way to complain about Biden even if Putin does attack. The Senate was poised to pass a sanctions package that would have threatened very specific steps towards Russia as a consequence of any invasion. Republicans even wanted sanctions that would have kicked in immediately, to punish Putin for even threatening an invasion. But in the end, nothing happened. The Senate could not agree on anything, so no actual legislation appeared or was voted on. They did manage to pass a very weak non-binding resolution that essentially said: "If Russia invades, we're going to be very, very angry," but with no real details. Even passing that was in doubt, since Rand Paul might have gummed up the works (it had to pass by unanimous consent, so one senator could have torpedoed the whole thing).
This does not exactly make the case to the world that the American system of government is up to the challenge of speaking as one voice in times of crisis. But it should make it impossible for Republicans to second-guess Biden's moves no matter what happens, since all Democrats will have to do is point out that they couldn't get their own act together before the fact.
Add to this the fact that one senator has been having a hissy fit over Biden's Afghanistan pullout and by doing so has delayed for months a confirmation that finally did go through (with a whopping 83-13 vote) this week. Josh Hawley personally delayed Russia expert Celeste Wallander being confirmed to her important job at the Defense Department, which is pretty much the definition of rank partisanship interfering in a national security matter. Which Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wasn't shy about pointing out: "To intentionally delay the confirmation of a critical Department of Defense nominee and a Russian expert at a time when tensions persist in Ukraine and Eastern Europe is supremely reckless and is making the American people less safe."
Meanwhile, Fox News seems to have morphed from a Republican Party propaganda outfit into a Russian government propaganda outfit, as their coverage is heavily slanted towards Putin's talking points. Ronald Reagan is doubtlessly turning over in his grave at all of this, one assumes. Who ever would have thought the right wing in American politics would champion the views of Russia, after all? But that's where we seem to be.
Of course, that's when the right-wing media echo chamber wasn't disappearing down a rabbit hole in search of something they could (and you can't make this up) pin on Hillary Clinton. Talk about living in the past! Their breathlessly overblown claims were quickly debunked, out here in the real world, but that didn't stop them from fulminating about it all week.
Meanwhile, the legal woes of Donald Trump continued to pile up. His accounting firm dropped him as a client and disavowed all the financial statements they had previously stood behind for Trump and his businesses.
A judge in New York ruled that Donald Trump, Donald Trump Junior, and Ivanka Trump will all have to sit and answer questions under oath in a civil investigation into false claims about Trump's wealth and outright fraud. Doubtlessly he'll appeal, but the time could be approaching fast when we get to see Trump either repeating "I'm taking the Fifth" or sweating while trying to answer questions about his past sins.
Taking the Fifth Amendment, in this particular instance, could be risky for the whole Trump clan, though. In a civil case, the prosecutor can introduce the fact that a defendant refused to answer questions as proof of guilt (which is not allowed in criminal cases).
It was also confirmed today by the National Archives that there were indeed classified documents in those 15 boxes that sat at Trump's Florida resort all year, and that they had been in communication with the Department of Justice, since mistreating classified documents is, of course, a crime. To say nothing of all the violations of the Presidential Records Act that keep mounting up.
Throughout it all, Trump continues to successfully grift his rubes out of every dollar he can manage to hustle, reports the New York Times. Although his wife Melania isn't doing quite as well on that front, as it was revealed that she actually had to buy her own crap (including a hat and an N.F.T.) through a few shell companies, so she wouldn't be embarrassed that nobody bid the exorbitant prices she was asking.
Senator Josh Hawley seems cut from the same cloth, as he's now hawking mugs with the image of his salute to the rioters on January 6th of last year. Shamelessness is in, for Republicans (especially when you can make a fast buck at it).
Speaking of the insurrection, the Washington Post published the frantic texts that Trump's chief of staff (Mark Meadows) was receiving on January 6th from all and sundry. Consider it light bedtime reading.
The Republican Party now seems to be openly standing up for sheer lawlessness, which we wrote about at length earlier in the week.
That's when they're not being downright incoherent. One GOP woman running for governor in Georgia under the slogan (prominently painted on her bus): "Jesus Guns Babies". Seriously? What precise theological creed is that? Or is it a grammatically incorrect sentence by someone unclear on the difference between nouns and verbs? Jesus guns babies? Who knows... the most amusing reaction we saw came from Twitter: "Jesus. Guns. Babies. Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV."
Speaking of guns, an interesting development happened this week as Remington agreed to pay the families of the Sandy Hook victims a whopping $73 million dollars. Perhaps settlements like this might induce some changes in the gun industry as a whole? One can only hope....
And finally, we have to end on a sad note, because this week saw the passing of P.J. O'Rourke, a political commentator who influenced our own political views and writing. We first read Parliament Of Whores (which tackles what really happens in Congress) decades ago, and even though O'Rourke wrote from the other side of the political spectrum, we had to admire his prose, as he was a master of making complicated subjects not only easy to understand but downright funny. That's a rare thing for a conservative writer, which is why even when we didn't agree with his reasoning (which was often) we could still appreciate his wit and his command of the language.
So we have to end by saying: Requiescat In Pace, P.J. O'Rourke.
It was actually a fairly quiet week for domestic politics, so we're reaching down to the state level for this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.
California's Governor Gavin Newsom, as he is wont to do, is getting out ahead of the pack in politics. He just announced a plan to move the state from a pandemic emergency into an endemic phase, which translates into moving the state back a lot closer to the pre-pandemic normal. The Washington Post has the details of his announcement:
"We are moving past the crisis phase into a phase where we will work to live with this virus," Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said at a news conference.
"People are looking forward to turning the page," he added. "They also need to know we have their back, we're going to keep them safe, and we're going to stay on top of this."
California's plan, he said, shifts from a "crisis mentality" to emphasize prevention and adaptability, allowing officials to step up measures to detect and contain fresh outbreaks, as well as to look out for new variants. It also includes more public campaigns against misinformation and the stockpiling of tests and equipment rather than mask mandates and business shutdowns.
Republicans actually have the gall to complain about Democratic governors now relaxing standards, which is pretty incomprehensible when you consider how GOP governors have handled things, but here was Mitch McConnell, attempting to push a gigantic lie on the subject this Monday: "The scientific facts have not changed in the last few weeks. The only science that's changed in the last two weeks is the political science. The only data that's changed in the last two weeks is Democrats' polling data."
This is unadulterated moosepoop. As the Washington Post helpfully pointed out:
Data compiled by The Washington Post shows COVID cases in the United States have dropped 44 percent over the past week. Hospitalizations are down 22 percent. And deaths slipped 6 percent....
This is the reality that most in the media and plenty of politicians have just refused to admit -- things are changing. Fast. The Omicron wave played out pretty much as advertised (from the early data from South Africa, where it first emerged). There was a breathtaking spike in the number of cases which happened faster than anyone had seen before in this pandemic. But the new variant was far less deadly than the earlier strains and more and more people have been vaccinated -- so that even if they did have a "breakthrough" case, it usually meant a mild case not involving a hospital or threat of death. Then the spike quickly peaked and Omicron ran out of steam, so the numbers went right back down at a pace that was just as breathtaking as the initial rise was.
The numbers are down. Not down far enough -- we're still averaging just over 100,000 new cases reported daily nationwide, but that is a lot better than it was in January, when we hit 800,000 new cases per day. Perspective is key, when looking at the raw numbers. We are now lower than the peak that hit last winter (250,000 new cases per day), and lower than the Delta peak at the end of last year (160,000 new daily cases). But we're nowhere near the level we hit in the middle of last summer, when only 10,000-15,000 new cases appeared each day. Still, the numbers continue to rapidly fall, so the real question is where they will bottom out. If that metric falls below perhaps 50,000 then everyone is going to start calling it an endemic rather than a pandemic.
Newsom got out in front of everyone else. His "SMARTER" plan (Shots, Masks, Awareness, Readiness, Testing, Education, and Rx) means the state will stockpile 75 million masks, push for more people to get vaccinated and tested, and monitor wastewater to track the spread of the virus (including any new variants that appear). He's planning for a return to normalcy but with a healthy amount of vigilance against any possible next waves.
This seems timely and smart, both from a scientific outlook and from a political one as well. Newsom hasn't always threaded this needle successfully throughout the pandemic, but then no governor has been perfect.
Being the first with a comprehensive plan for the endemic phase of COVID is just the latest in a long list of issues Gavin Newsom stuck his neck out on (most notably, allowing gay couples to marry in 2004 while he was mayor of San Francisco, which was long before the Supreme Court made it legal everywhere). There's a word that means getting out in front of a contentious issue and later being proved prescient, and that word is "leadership."
This week, Gavin Newsom showed real leadership. Which is why he is also our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week as well.
[Congratulate California Governor Gavin Newsom on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]
Before we begin, a special (Dis-)Honorable Mention is due for Senator Joe Manchin. Manchin singlehandedly stopped the Child Tax Credit payments that had gone out last year from continuing this year. And now the data is in, and it is brutal. The monthly child poverty rate increased nationwide by an astounding 40 percent in one month alone. This meant 3.7 million children fell below the poverty level in January, which was the first month that the $300-350 C.T.C. payments stopped being mailed out to parents. So those 3.7 million children can all thank Joe Manchin for their fate. For shame, Senator, for shame!
But Manchin didn't actually do anything this past week, it's just that the data were released. So we're going to go back to the Golden State for our other major award as well. We don't live there, so we can't say we followed the recall election in San Francisco all that closely. But this Tuesday the voters who bothered to cast a ballot (turnout was very low) overwhelmingly recalled three members of the school board in San Francisco.
Unlike such efforts elsewhere, the issue at hand was really one of competence. Or setting the proper priorities, perhaps. Politico has the details of how this whole recall election came about:
Some San Franciscans grew angry enough to launch a recall drive that gained the support of deep-pocketed allies and prominent Democratic officials, vastly outraising the school board's defenders. Affluent technology industry players like former PayPal executive David Sacks and other wealthy donors, including charter school proponent and billionaire investor Arthur Rock, have opened their wallets to buoy the effort.
A San Francisco teachers union and labor allies backing the school board members have not kept pace, with opponents outraising them ten-to-one.
Board members abandoned their drive to strip schools, including Abraham Lincoln High School and Dianne Feinstein Elementary, of their names after the effort drew national ridicule, and a judge recently ruled the board had violated the law in rushing to end merit-based admissions for the selective Lowell High School. Proponents had argued the change would boost the school's diversity, but it infuriated parents who said it would undercut Asian-American students who made up just over half of the student body.
None of the recall targets -- Gabriela López, Faauuga Moliga or Collins -- responded with comments for the story. But their supporters lambaste the recall attempt as a waste of taxpayer sources [sic] and a ploy by Mayor London Breed and wealthy allies to reshape the school board.
When the returns came in, over 70 percent of the votes were for recalling all three. This is a local fight that involved very specific circumstances, but that hasn't stopped a lot of people from trying to draw national implications. It's tempting to do so, since San Francisco is one of the most liberal cities in the country. But the real lesson Democrats should take from this is that education is going to be a very big issue in politics this year, no matter where you live.
For driving this point home in a liberal enclave, the three San Francisco school board members who just got recalled have to be seen as the clear winners of this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week awards.
[Since being recalled means being ousted from office, Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga are now private citizens, so you'll have to look up their contact information on your own if you'd like to let them know what you think of their actions.]
Volume 651 (2/18/22)
We realize we've been doing this too often, but the circumstances are not exactly "politics as usual" these days. Instead of our usual discrete (but never discreet) talking points for Democrats everywhere to use, we're going to publish an extraordinary letter in full, from one prominent Republican to another.
The Republican Party continues its slide downwards into being nothing short of an authoritarian cult of personality, but occasionally someone from within their own ranks strongly calls them out on the seriousness of what they are doing. This letter is one of those times.
It was written by former Republican National Committee Chair (and former governor of Montana) Marc Racicot, and it was published this week in the Billings Gazette. Unfortunately, it didn't cause much of a stir in the national political media, which is one reason why we are highlighting it here. The letter is written to Ronna McDaniel, the current R.N.C. chair, and it is not only self-explanatory, but absolutely scathing in its indictment of the R.N.C.'s recent actions.
So instead of political spin, here's some political truth, from one leading Republican to another.
Open letter from former Republican National Committee Chair Marc Racicot to the current R.N.C. Chair Ronna McDaniel
Dear Chairwoman McDaniel,
It is a sad day, indeed.
Having held the same position that you presently occupy two decades ago, I would never have imagined that the day would come when the chair of the Republican National Committee and its members would rebuke and desert two GOP members of the United States House of Representatives, who, consistent with the Constitution, their oath of office and their conscience, have been performing their assigned Congressional duties with honor and integrity pursuant to the lawful passage of a House Resolution.
The resolution in question, of course, concerns the Select Committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021. I have carefully reviewed that document, House Resolution 509 (hereafter HR 509), as well as the Republican National Committee's "Resolution To Formally Censure Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger" (hereafter RNC Resolution). In order to get the facts straight, let me summarize the two resolutions as I understand them.
HR 509, after establishing the Select Committee, enunciates the purposes of the Committee, namely "to investigate and report the facts, circumstances and causes," of the "attack on the Capitol." In addition, HR 509 calls for a review of intelligence and law enforcement preparations and responses in order to identify corrective measures to prevent future acts of violence, improve the security posture of the Capitol and strengthen the security and resilience of democratic institutions against violence.
The RNC Resolution provides that "Winning back the majority in Congress... in 2022 must be the primary goal." That achieving that goal "must not be sabotaged by Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger who have demonstrated... that they support Democrat efforts to destroy President Trump" and, therefore they must be denounced for deliberately jeopardizing victory in November, 2022 even though, it is alleged in the Resolution, the Democrat [sic] Party's prospects are "bleak." And finally, before articulating the severe and formal censure, the RNC Resolution asserts that Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger "are participating in a... persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse."
I must confess, it is difficult to even know where to begin.
First of all, I would like you to know that confronting you and the Committee with the thoughts and observations contained herein is not something, for me, easily done. Knowing my own imperfections and mistakes, I initially contemplated refraining from preparing and dispatching this missive and critique. At the same time, my heart tells me that, as a citizen, a former elected state official and former Chair of the Republican National Committee, I must try to do what I can to take care of and protect our democracy and way of life.
Based on my decades of engagement in Republican politics, my intuition tells me that you and the other members of the RNC will come to regret, if you don't already, the passage of the RNC Resolution. It appears possible, and maybe even probable, that the RNC Resolution, with its incendiary language and histrionics, has advanced the very threat that you accuse Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger of creating, namely the diminution of the chances for Republican electoral success in 2022.
I believe you, and the members of the Committee, have substantially underestimated the Great Middle of America and what's happening with all of those good and decent people from sea to shining sea. Made up of Democrats, Republicans and independents, the Great Middle is in the process of organizing itself with a higher goal, quietly but surely, not by express agreement or party affiliation, but by standards of decency, integrity, honor and faithfulness to the best interests of the Republic.
Many intensely loyal Republicans, more polite and less dangerous than those who breached the Capitol, are, in larger and larger numbers, quietly but persistently looking for alternatives in the form of political movements and candidates of conscience, character, conviction and courage. They're not suggesting, hopelessly, a return to simpler times. They're calling, hopefully, for a return to simple, timeless and enduring values: presuming the best of each other, listening in good faith before acting or responding, exuding generosity and grace, self-correcting our own mistakes and being ambitious to accomplish something, not to be somebody.
In the Republican National Committee's search for power for its own sake and its obsession with winning at any cost, you have sacrificed, by your proclamation and its revelation of the presently existing soul of the party, the allegiance of a great many, and a growing number, of your most ardent and long-time supporters. Regrettably, it appears, "you have hitched your wagon to the wrong star."
But more important than ephemeral political calculations, in the political life of the United States there is no greater or higher loyalty as a citizen or an officeholder than a shared loyalty to the nation and the Constitution. Every citizen agrees to that premise as a condition of the social contract between the people and their government.
Hence, loyalty to a political party or candidate never trumps allegiance to the Republic.
The Oath of Office taken by every member of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the president, requires those office holders to "solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic [and] that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same." The Oath concludes with a solemn promise that "I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."
Bearing true faith means maintaining fidelity to the preservation of the union, fidelity to our fellow citizens, fidelity to a shared set of values and fidelity to the law and the Constitution. That transcendent fidelity or faithfulness to the Constitution is demonstrated by our continuing and unequivocal loyalty, first and above all else, to the United States of America, without interruption, without condition, without exception, without avoidance, without arrogance, without deceit, without connivance and without obfuscation.
The faithfulness referred to in the Oath of Office presumes not just faithfulness to the actual words of the Constitution, but faithfulness to its spirit as well. A spirit recognized and requited by humility, respect for others and the rights of others, honor, decency, integrity and self-discipline. Fidelity is the exact opposite of seeking power for its own sake or craving victory at any cost, each of which history has revealed time and time again to be a fool's errand.
All of the above is to say that I have discovered no facts nor evidence, anywhere, of the "sabotage" or "persecution" or efforts to "destroy" the former president that serve as the basis for the accusations cited in the RNC Resolution and lodged against Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger. Quite the opposite, the evidence reveals two Republican members of the House of Representatives honorably performing their investigative duties and searching for the truth as members of a duly constituted investigative committee. In other words, they're doing their job with fidelity and loyalty to the Constitution.
Parenthetically, it appears that the House Republican leadership not only made the wrong decision by refusing to participate in the legitimate business of the Select Committee, they made a serious tactical error as well. Now, having forfeited their opportunity to provide input into the Select Committee's work and deliberations, they are left with only one available option, namely, to close their eyes to the truth and curse the darkness.
How is it that an official inquiry undertaken to pursue and determine the truth can be so threatening? How is it that faithfulness to one's country and fellow citizens can be so precipitously and eagerly sacrificed in exchange for political victory, or the pursuit of power, or both? How is it that the responsibility to assess accountability, if the facts establish it, can be so easily dismissed? There has been no honest and reasonable answer to any of those questions.
Of course, the elephant in the room is the 2020 presidential election and the efforts of the unsuccessful candidate to overturn the results.
Although it is ever so neat and tidy to blame the defeat of the former president on the existence of decisive and widespread fraud, there is not even a scintilla of evidence, anywhere, to support such piffle. The former president didn't experience defeat in 2020 because of fraud. The truth is quite the opposite. The defeat of the former president is explained by the fact that legions of responsible citizens, part of that Great Middle of America, voted the way they did because they embraced the very fidelity to their country and its Constitution that the RNC claims to embrace in its Party Platform.
So what can be done now? My suggestion and request is that you lead the Committee through the process of withdrawing and dismissing the RNC Resolution rebuking and deserting Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. I urge the pursuit of this remedy with the understanding that we're human, that politics is a competitive enterprise and that sometimes we make mistakes. But I also believe in such a situation the final measure of our character is whether we have the insight and courage to humbly and honestly correct them.
Respectfully submitted,
Marc Racicot
Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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