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Sorry, but there will be no new column today, as I had to take time to deal with jury duty. The good news, however, is that I was not selected and thus will be able to write a Friday Talking Points column tomorrow. So there's that to look forward to.
If I had had [...]
In December, the members of the Democrats' "Unity Reform Commission" will make their recommendations to the Democratic Party for changes in the way it handles presidential elections (among other things). Then it will be up to the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee to decide whether to fully or partially adopt any of these recommendations. This is a big deal for Democrats, as it is the culmination of the effort to bridge the still-raw divide between the Bernie Sanders wing of the party and the Hillary Clinton establishment wing. Nobody at this point knows exactly what the unity group is going to propose, but there's one festering issue which will likely take center stage: superdelegate reform. The answer to this problem, though, seems pretty obvious to an outside observer. There's one way to solve it which would seem to appeal to all concerned.
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are apparently ready to play hardball at the start of the negotiations to work out a year-end deal with Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress. They signaled their intentions today by snubbing a planned photo op at the White House in response to a rather nasty tweet the president sent out about them, hours before the meeting was supposed to begin. Why negotiate when Trump is already calling them names, after all?
Two weeks from tomorrow, Alabama will hold its special Senate election. The chances of Democrat Doug Jones pulling off an upset win are really anyone's guess, at this point. Is Roy Moore so damaged that the very conservative voters of Alabama will reject him in favor of a Democrat? Stranger things have happened, but this is in no way assured. This is, after all, Alabama we're talking about. But Democrats should be looking ahead, whether Jones wins or not, to shape their strategy for the upcoming 2018 midterm congressional elections.
As a rule, I don't generally write touchy-feely columns where I talk about my own life or my personal feelings. This isn't that kind of blog, after all. I may give my personal impressions about politics in the midst of commenting on the issues of the day, but almost never spend a whole column navel-gazing. Today I'm departing from this general rule, and would like to offer up the following as a very personal Thanksgiving Day message to my readers. So if you're not into that sort of thing, I'd advise you to stop reading right now.
Congress is currently tightly focused on the Republican tax-cutting bill, which is likely to consume most of their time when they return from the Thanksgiving break. But what is remarkable is how many other pressing issues they are currently all but ignoring which will have to be resolved before the end of the year. It's looking like a busy legislative December, in other words.
Who will be next? That's the point we've all gotten to, it seems, on sexual misconduct charges made about powerful men pretty much across the spectrum of fame, journalism, and politics. Just today the news contained eight women accusing television journalist Charlie Rose of what can only be called workplace harassment and sexually predatory behavior. Also today, new accusations were made against New York Times political reporter Glenn Thrush, and a second woman accused Al Franken of groping her. That's merely one day's worth of news, and it follows months of such revelations going back to Harvey Weinstein, who was really the start of this cycle of accusations.
America is in the midst of a gigantic sea-change on how accusations of sexual misconduct are viewed. That much seems certain. You could say it began with the Access Hollywood tape during Donald Trump's campaign, or you could argue it began with the end of Harvey Weinstein's Hollywood career. Notably, the "Me Too" movement has actually been around for a decade, but it really caught fire this year in a big way. But no matter the origins of the shift, America now views accusations of sexual misconduct in a much different light than before.
After writing two columns on sexual misconduct and politics within the past seven days, I never thought I'd be writing about it again so soon. But today's breaking news pretty much precludes any other political discussion, even on a day when the House passed a real stinkeroo of a tax bill. Because on a purely political level, things just got a lot more complicated for Democrats with today's accusation against Senator Al Franken.
There is one emerging scenario (which currently is in no way certain) where the Republican Party might just have to decide to swallow its outrage -- at least temporarily -- and welcome Senator Roy Moore into their ranks on Capitol Hill, no matter what he did with underage women in the past. Because if Moore wins his special election in Alabama while at the same time two Republican senators have publicly announced they'll be voting "no" on the GOP tax bill, then Moore's vote becomes the deciding one. If this comes to pass, the GOP will be faced with the hard choice of ignoring all their previous denunciations of Moore in order to pull off their first legislative win since Donald Trump took office. Call it a striking moral/political dilemma.