No, wait... that can't be right...?

Sorry for opening with some snark, but we felt that was the appropriate tone for addressing this week's legal developments. Republicans have been swearing up and down for years now that President Joe Biden's son Hunter somehow bribed his father to use his position as vice president to do... well, something nefarious... and that all they really needed to do was dig into it all and the evidence would then appear.

Hunter has now been investigated for five years (and counting) by the Department of Justice. Republicans in the House of Representatives have been investigating him since the first day they retook control of the chamber at the start of this year. A special counsel was even named to look into all things Hunter. And what do they have to show for it all? Some pretty small potatoes indeed.

To date, there is zero evidence that Joe Biden did anything to benefit his son. None. All of his actions as vice president were exactly what President Obama wanted him to do and told him to do. There is no record of any bribes paid from Hunter to Joe at all, despite Hunter's bank records being repeatedly scoured.

This week, Hunter was indicted on federal gun charges. He bought a pistol and lied on the form when asked if he abused illegal drugs (he said he didn't, but he was indeed an addict at the time). He owned the pistol for 11 days, until his girlfriend (at the time) found it and threw it into the trash. He never committed a crime with it. He never even fired it.

So Republicans are left with not a smoking gun linking all the "Biden crime family" (as they like to say) together, but instead a "(he was) smoking (crack while he owned a) gun." That's it. Hunter may also get indicted for paying two years of taxes too late. As we said, some very small potatoes. Even some Republicans admit their disappointment. Matt Gaetz quipped: "Getting Hunter Biden on the gun charge is like getting Jeffrey Dahmer on littering." As you can see, after month upon month of hearing how evil Hunter is on night after night on Fox News, Republicans naturally equate him to a serial murderer and cannibal. That's how far down the Hunter rabbit hole the GOP is in general, really.

This week House Speaker Kevin McCarthy also announced he was unilaterally opening an impeachment inquiry into Hunter Biden. No, no... that cannot be right... how can we keep making that mistake? [Insert eye-roll emoji] Hunter, after all, was never a government employee and has never and will never run for political office, so impeaching him is absolutely impossible!

What we meant to say was that the House has started an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, for absolutely no reason at all. But don't take our word for it -- here is Republican Representative Ken Buck's thoughts on the matter:

I have been a prosecutor for 25 years. I want to see evidence that ties Joe Biden to Hunter Biden's activities. I haven't seen that evidence yet. If that evidence was developed, would I be in favor of impeachment? Yes, but it hasn't been developed yet.... We've got border problems and we've got crime problems. We've got inflation problems. We've got a [government funding resolution] that we've got to come up with. So this is distracting at a point where we don't need a distraction.

Chris Christie, who is also a former federal prosecutor, made the salient point that all Democrats really should be screaming about right now:

I mean, you know, you've got Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump making 40-plus million dollars a year while they're serving in the White House. And then Jared leaves the White House and gets $3 billion -- $2 billion from the Saudis, and a half-a-billion each from the Qataris and the Emiratis, after the president had put him in a major role on Middle East negotiations.

Christie called Jared "essentially the son of a real estate developer in New Jersey." When asked point-blank if the Trump family is corrupt, Christie responded:

Yes. Sure. I mean, when you pay your son's girlfriend 60 grand out of campaign money to give a three-minute speech, you're using money... donated by people who wanted to fund him to fight the "stolen election." When they donated that money, they didn't think 60 grand was going to Kimberly Guilfoyle to give a three-minute speech. They didn't think $208,000 was going to Melania's stylist. Right? So I don't know what you would call it other than corrupt.... That looks like corruption to me.

Some in the media have noticed both the lack of substance and the obvious parallels to the Trump family. After itemizing what led to the previous three presidential impeachments (Bill Clinton's and both of Trump's), a New York Times columnist pointed out the difference:

But at the risk of sounding crass, where is the blue dress? Where is the phone call? Where is the riot? There's little question that Biden family members -- especially Hunter but also [President] Joe Biden's brother James and daughter-in-law Hallie -- have profited enormously over the course of Joe Biden's political career. But evidence that the president was himself involved in Hunter's schemes or shared in any of the profits is thus far lacking, as is any evidence that the president violated the law.

Ironically enough, McCarthy's announcement came months after the initial Republican investigations failed to find any criminal activity by the president. There is no evidence remotely comparable to the evidence that spurred [impeachment] inquiries against [Bill] Clinton or [Donald] Trump.

. . .

It's also worth mentioning here the sheer extent of Republican hypocrisy. The deep concern that Joe Biden might have profited from his position sounds almost comical after the G.O.P. has spent years trying to divert Americans' attention from the blatant way that the Trump administration steered federal dollars into Trump properties during his presidency. And if we're talking about the sleaziness of presidential family members profiting from their access to power, then Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump -- who, unlike Hunter, worked in the administration -- have benefited to exponentially greater degrees from Saudi Arabian and Chinese largess.

The White House responded by calling the whole thing an "evidence-free goose chase simply to throw red meat to the right wing so they can continue baselessly attacking the president to play extreme politics."

Which is exactly right. Kevin McCarthy swore up and down (up until this week, that is) that if the House moved to an impeachment inquiry, it would do so with a vote. He got up on his high horse about it, even:

To open an impeachment inquiry is a serious matter, and House Republicans would not take it lightly or use it for political purposes. The American people deserve to be heard on this matter through their elected representatives. That's why, if we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People's House and not through a declaration by one person.

That was less than two weeks ago, but it all went out the window this week. Because if there's one principle Kevin McCarthy is dedicated to, it is saving his own political skin. His power was about to be questioned by members of his own caucus, so he tossed out the impeachment inquiry in a futile attempt to assuage the MAGA crazies he has to deal with. This failed almost immediately. The MAGA crazies showed no inclination to cut McCarthy some slack on the real issue at hand (the budget fights), and were quite willing to say so to the press:

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), another member of the [Freedom Caucus], was also blunt: "Him [Speaker Kevin McCarthy] starting an impeachment inquiry gives him no -- zero -- cushion, relief, brace, as it applies to spending."

. . .

"If you are trying to do the impeachment inquiry, thinking that is going to somehow keep you away from the motion to vacate... that's not going to work," said Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who acknowledged he tends to vote with the Freedom Caucus members most of the time.

"We know exactly what the timing is," he added. "We know the D.C. Dance -- when people started getting into trouble, they dangled just enough red meat over it to be able to try and make sure that the conservatives, and constitutionalists, and the other brothers on the far right can actually have something to bite onto. We know the fight is going to be in Appropriations."

It was all a desperate ploy that landed with a thud, to put it another way. This was made evident when McCarthy tried to get his Republicans to vote for a Defense appropriations bill (that has already been larded up with all kinds of conservative poison-pills, at the insistence of the MAGA crazies), and he couldn't scrape together even enough votes for that. This is the least contentious of the budget bills remaining to be passed, and even that was a bridge too far for McCarthy.

Now McCarthy is trying another tack, one that could possibly save face for all the various Republican factions while still almost guaranteeing a government shutdown at the end of the month. He's cobbling together a Republican-only version of a "continuing resolution" (C.R.) which is also filled with plenty of MAGA red meat. Passing it would be a small accomplishment (passing anything through this House is almost impossible), but it wouldn't do anything to solve the real problem since there is no way this C.R. will be acceptable to the Democrats in the Senate or Joe Biden. So McCarthy is left struggling to pass even a meaningless bill that will never become law, to be used as some sort of bargaining position, since he has a Nihilist Caucus within his own party that just wants to burn the whole place down.

Case in point: one hour after McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry, Matt Gaetz went to the House floor anyway (the scheduling of this speech was what lit a fire under McCarthy to act when he did) and called for the McCarthy to kowtow to all of his crazy demands immediately, or there would be a "motion to vacate the chair," which would (if successful) depose McCarthy from the speaker's chair. Speaking to reporters, Gaetz threatened to call for these votes on a daily basis, promising each day would begin with: "the prayer, the Pledge [of Allegiance], and the motion to vacate."

All this grief from his own caucus seems to be starting to get to McCarthy a little. In a closed-door meeting with his fellow House Republicans, McCarthy reportedly got a little not-safe-for-work in his exasperation with the Crazy Caucus, throwing down the gauntlet thusly: "If you want to file a motion to vacate, then file the fucking motion." And we're going to let that be the final word on the subject, at least for now.

Let's see, what else has been going on this week? Donald Trump had a few legal developments, but they were all fairly low key -- Mark Meadows was denied in his attempt to move his case (in Georgia) to federal court, the judge in the documents case made a ruling on Trump's access to the same secret documents he refused to hand over, and Trump won't have to start his trial in Georgia in October, as the two defendants who demanded speedy trials have now been "severed" from Trump's case.

This week also marked the first lawsuit filed (in Colorado) challenging whether Trump is eligible to appear on ballots, due to the clause in the Fourteenth Amendment that bars those who have even "given aid and comfort" to insurrectionists from ever holding office again. But in New Hampshire, the top elections official determined that he didn't have the power to keep candidates off the ballot, so Trump's name will appear there (at least in the primary election).

The big legal news everyone is waiting for today hasn't been announced yet, as the Texas senate is now in the equivalent of "jury deliberations" and could return at any time for a public vote on whether to expel Ken Paxton from office or not. The impeachment trial in the Senate wrapped up with closing statements, but no decision had been announced as of this writing.

Mitt Romney made some big news this week by announcing he won't be running for re-election to his Senate seat. Excerpts from an upcoming tell-all were also revealed this week, where Romney dishes a little dirt on what his own fellow Senate Republicans think about Donald Trump behind closed doors.

Representative Lauren Boebert was ejected from a public theater performance, for vaping and taking flash photos and otherwise generally acting like a jackass. She at first denied the vaping accusation, until a local news station obtained footage of her doing precisely that.

And finally, to end on an upbeat note... well, an upwards note at any rate, NASA has now announced a new effort which will encourage the public to report U.F.O.s. They also call for sophisticated satellites and A.I. to aid in the search and make it a little more comprehensive than anything the government has yet tried. Initially they balked at publicly naming the new director of this office, but then someone must have realized that this just feeds into the whole stigmatization of such reports, and his name was released to the press. Is the truth out there? Maybe NASA will soon find out....

While President Biden gave a rousing address on the subject of the United Auto Workers strike (no surprise, Biden came down heavily on the side of the workers getting a fair share of the record profits the Big Three car companies have been enjoying), it's too soon to tell how this situation is all going to shake out. Maybe next week, in other words (and we do have a few excerpts from his address in the Talking Points section, don't worry).

Instead we're going to award this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week on a much longer-term basis than just the past seven days. We decided this after reading an in-depth Politico article which profiled a rather astonishing (and extremely impressive) North Carolina Democrat:

At 25 years old, Anderson Clayton could pass for a college student. The North Carolina Democratic Party chair's persona is reinforced by the bag slung over the shoulder, her colorful overalls and bright yellow Croc sandals, the half-consumed Venti iced coffee in her hand, and the youthful southern drawl with which she speaks.

But she's not a student. She's the linchpin for Democrats winning over her state. And a lot of pressure is now falling on her after she ousted a 73-year-old-incumbent with the backing of a number of top state Democrats earlier this year.

There are a lot of unknowns, too: Whether the vigor she brings to the job is enough to overcome her lack of experience for it; whether the national fascination in her as the youngest chair in the country will be justified. It's not just reporters who have taken notice. [President Joe] Biden campaign officials speak of her as a rising Democratic star.

Now just for one minute, think: What were you doing at her age? Only 25 years old... were you the chair of a state political party? We weren't. Far from it, in fact!

But she's impressive not just for her youth and vitality. She is attempting a formula that has indeed worked for Democrats elsewhere (most notably, in Georgia, due largely to the efforts of Stacey Adams) -- stop ignoring rural counties and rural voters! Get the word out to them -- this is what Democrats stand for, and this is why it is better for you and your family than the Republicans you've been voting for.

This effort could take years, but Clayton seems up to the challenge:

"People told her she was too young and that she could never do this. And I was probably one of those people because you work your way up. You start at the local level, maybe become a city council or town council member, then you may be a state legislator, and then in 10 years when you're 35 or 40, you run for chair of the Democratic Party or for some statewide office," said Phillip Ardoin, a Appalachian State political science professor who served as Clayton's faculty adviser.

"But she believed she could.... And I think it's what the North Carolina party needed was a jolt of youth and energy."

North Carolina is a true battleground state. It is purple. Democrats have a solid chance for making gains there, even with a heavily-gerrymandered map with the lines drawn against them by state-level Republicans. So if she's successful, we all may be hearing a lot more about this extraordinary young woman in the next few years.

But just for what she's achieved so far, we have to hand her this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. Even if we had somehow managed to attain the leadership of a state-level Democratic Party at the tender age of 25, we fully admit we wouldn't know what to do in the job. But that doesn't seem to be a problem for Clayton at all. We wish her good luck in turning her state a bluer shade of purple.

[Congratulate North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton on her official contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]

Before we get to the award, we have a strange sort of preamble. We saw a rather eye-catching headline this week in the Washington Post this week: "VA Dem. House Candidate Performed Sex Online With Husband For Tips." Which pretty much sums up the story in its entirety. A candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates "performed sex acts with her husband for a live online audience and encouraged viewers to pay them with 'tips' for specific requests." She didn't break any laws by doing so, which is an important point. Even so, in the "before times," this might have won her a Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week quite easily, but in our Trumpian era, we have to find ourselves wondering if it even matters. In fact, we find ourselves agreeing with a Politico article which responded with: "So What?"

The website she and her husband performed on is not password-protected and requires no money -- anyone in the public can freely watch. The woman now has an attorney and is claiming that someone violated her rights under the state's "revenge porn" law, but it's hard to claim you had a "reasonable expectation of privacy" when anyone could tune in for free at any time. But the surprising thing is the woman is not backing down -- so far, she's fighting back and is continuing her campaign. Which is another point -- all of this came out before the election happened, so it really is going to be up to the voters in her district to decide if they're in any way disappointed in her or not. But in this day and age -- especially after the COVID lockdown era got a lot more people interested in performing on these sites -- if it's OK with her and OK with her husband, who are we to judge? That will be up to her voters, and if she wins her election it is nothing that they can complain about later since they found out before she got elected. So any sort of negative award from us simply isn't justified.

Instead, we have a much more serious subject which is beyond merely "disappointing." Figures were released this week which showed that child poverty in America more than doubled last year. This was the entirely-predictable result of killing off the expanded Child Tax Credit that was passed during the pandemic. And that can be laid at the feet of two Democrats in particular -- at least one of whom is not sorry in the slightest:

Sen. Joe Manchin isn't sharing any regrets about letting his party's expansion of the Child Tax Credit lapse, even after a historic spike in youth poverty last year.

According to Census data released on Tuesday, the share of Americans under 18 living below the poverty line jumped from 5.2% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022 as the Biden administration's bulked-up credit expired, the biggest annual increase on record.

Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat whose opposition to extending the supersized credit was a decisive factor in its demise, seemed unfazed when asked if Tuesday's poverty data left him with any second thoughts. "It's deeper than that, we all have to do our part," he told Semafor. "The federal government can't run everything."

A number of Democrats reacted with regret and indignation at the new numbers. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., called it "a specific choice" in a statement. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., took aim at his moderate colleagues. "Unfortunately, we had zero Republican support and we lost two corporate Democrats in Manchin and [Kyrsten] Sinema" on the Child Tax Credit, he told Semafor. "And that's why we are where we are today."

In his opposition to the credit, Manchin dismissed this lifeline for poor children, saying their parents would probably just spend it all on drugs. You cannot make this stuff up, sadly.

So for condemning millions of children to poverty that could easily have been avoided, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are our two Most Disappointing Democrats Of The Week. For shame!

[Contact Senator Joe Manchin on his Senate contact page, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema on her Senate contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.]

Volume 723 (9/15/23)

We begin with a program note. Due to us deciding we wanted to go have some fun instead, there will be no Friday Talking Points column next week, sorry. Hey, everyone deserves a break now and again, right?

We also have a very sad note as well (and we apologize for the jarring segue). This week, Representative Mary Peltola's husband died in a small plane accident in Alaska. Our thoughts go out to Representative Peltola and her family. Requiescat In Pace.

   Record profits should mean record contracts

Not surprisingly, President Joe Biden was quick to address the United Auto Workers strike, and he came down pretty squarely on the side of the Union. From his remarks this morning:

[O]ver the past decade, auto companies have seen record profits, including the last few years, because of the extraordinary skill and sacrifices of the [United Auto Workers]. But those record profits have not been shared fairly, in my view, with those workers.

. . .

Let's be clear: No one wants a strike. Say it again: No one wants a strike. But I respect workers' right to use their options under the collective bargaining system. And I understand the workers' frustration.

Over generations, auto workers sacrificed so much to keep the industry alive and strong, especially through the economic crisis and the pandemic. Workers deserve a fair share of the benefits they helped create for an enterprise.

. . .

I believe [the auto companies] should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW. I'm going to say that again: Record corporate profits -- which they have -- should be shared by record contracts for the UAW.

. . .

The bottom line is that auto workers helped create America's middle class. They deserve a contract that sustains them and the middle class.

   Biden coins two new terms

President Biden gave a speech this week at a community college in suburban Maryland, and in it he coined two new political terms. The first was rolled out as a foil to Biden's campaigning on his own "Bidenomics" -- now he's comparing it to "MAGAnomics." The entire speech was about the contrast, as Biden laid out his impressive economic record and slammed the Republicans for being against it all and not having any sort of answers of their own. But the most amusing part was when Biden made it a little more personal:

Folks, it wasn't that long ago we were losing jobs in this country. In fact, there are only two presidents in American history with fewer jobs the day they left office than when they started. One was President Hoover, and the other was Donald "Hoover" Trump. Seriously, the only two presidents in American history. And, look, you may remember my predecessor promised to be the greatest job president in history. Well, it didn't really work out that way. He lost two million jobs over the course of his presidency. Two million. But we've created 13.4 million new jobs. We not only recovered all the jobs we lost during the pandemic, we've added millions more.

   What about Javanka?

Chris Christie shouldn't be the only one out there making this very obvious point. We are going to keep repeating it here week after week until we start hearing some actual Democrats answer any Hunter Biden questions with the following:

"Hunter Biden? I'm sorry, but please explain to me how Hunter Biden did anything differently than Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Except that they did it on an enormously bigger scale, of course. And, of course, except for the fact that they were officially serving in the White House -- which Hunter has never been. Jared got two billion dollars to play around with from the Saudis about ten minutes after Trump left office -- an obvious payoff, after Jared had been in charge of Middle East peace negotiations. Ivanka got trademarks awarded in China while Trump was in office. So if you want to talk about family members profiting off a president, let's talk about 'Javanka,' shall we?"

   
Sentence first!

An obvious reference to make, really.

"You know, the Queen of Hearts that Alice ran into in Wonderland has nothing on Kevin McCarthy and today's Republicans. It's now not even the Queen's: 'Sentence first -- verdict afterwards!', in fact it's more like: 'Sentence first -- evidence afterwards!' Can any one Republican point to any one piece of actual solid evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden? No, they can't. Because it doesn't exist. They've been investigating their little hearts out and they haven't found a single thing. So their logical next move was just to move right to impeachment. The Queen of Hearts would be so proud!"

   An arm of the Trump campaign

The truth hurts, Kev.

"Donald Trump reportedly turned the screws on Kevin McCarthy, who then dutifully announced the House was opening an impeachment inquiry -- despite having no evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing by President Biden. This entire thing is a political wild goose chase and will go precisely nowhere, but that's not the point. The whole point is to try to damage Biden politically during the presidential campaign. Kevin McCarthy has now made it official: the Republican House is just an arm of the Trump campaign, plain and simple."

   Good news for Democrats

This is sort of flying under everyone's radar, but could be determinative next year.

"As we get closer to next year's elections, more and more judges are weighing in on the blatantly gerrymandered maps Republicans have put into place in multiple states. And most of these court battles are being won by Democrats. Kevin McCarthy only has a five-seat majority, but that could be entirely wiped out just by the judicial decisions that are now being made. It's about time Republicans got called out on their rigging the election maps in such a bald-faced manner. Maybe we won't have to put up with 'Speaker McCarthy' for very much longer...."

   A national security problem

This one comes from a Republican, who has had enough of Senator Tommy Tuberville's hold on all Pentagon promotions and nominations. This won't come to an end until more and more Republicans pile on him, so it's worth repeating. Here is what Representative Mike McCaul from Texas just said about Tuberville's obstructionism:

The idea that one man in the Senate can hold this up for months -- I understand maybe promotions, but nominations? -- is paralyzing the Department of Defense. I think that is a national security problem and a national security issue. But to hold up the top brass from being promoted -- and lower brass -- I think is paralyzing our Department of Defense.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground