Your generous
donations help keep
this site running.
Visa/MC/PayPal accepted.
The wind is now at the Democrats' backs. The "red wave" everyone's been predicting for November may turn out to be no more than a pinkish ripple... or perhaps it won't even occur at all. Of course, we're still more than two months away from the election, and unexpected events could intervene, but right now everything seems to be moving in the Democrats' direction.
President Joe Biden has always been a rather reluctant reformer of higher education, which is somewhat odd considering his wife works as a community college teacher. For example, during the 2020 Democratic primary race progressives such as Bernie Sanders were arguing for tuition-free college at all state-run colleges and universities. Biden was far more restrained, and said he favored only tuition-free college for two years of community college, which would have left out state university students entirely. The tuition-free community college idea was later included in Biden's Build Back Better plan, but that was before it hit the brick wall named "Joe Manchin." The concept didn't survive in the limited Inflation Reduction Act at all. Also during the primary campaign, the progressives were pushing for either outright cancellation of all student debt or forgiving at least $50,000 of debt per student. Biden was never on board with such sweeping proposals, and countered with his own idea of perhaps forgiving $10,000 in student debt. Which is what might just get announced tomorrow.
There's a special House election happening tomorrow in upstate New York that many are closely watching as a possible indicator of the strength of the abortion issue in the 2022 campaign season. The Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has shifted the political landscape for the midterms, but nobody really knows to what extent this shift will manifest itself. The New York special election is going to be a test of this.
President Joe Biden had a very good week the previous week, and he followed that up with another good week this week as well. A bill which is going to become one of the signature pieces of his presidential legacy passed the House last Friday, and on Tuesday Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Perhaps we should call it "Biden's Obamacare," because it really is just as impressive a piece of legislation.
Rudy Giuliani, one-time self-styled "America's mayor," is now the target of a criminal investigation in Atlanta, Georgia. He's not alone in this either, since already at least 17 other people have been informed that they too are targets of the investigation into exactly what happened after the 2020 election. Included in those 17 are two Republican state senators and the head of the state's Republican Party. The investigation is fairly wide-ranging, looking not only into Donald Trump and his minions trying to get every Georgia Republican holding office from the governor on down to somehow throw out enough votes for Joe Biden to allow Trump to proclaim he won, but also into the "fake electors" scheme where a group of Republicans tried to defraud the United States Congress and the American people into believing that Georgia had officially gone for Trump (when it hadn't). That's a lot to cover and it is why so many people are now targets.
The irony is delicious, we cannot deny it. A man who rose to power by leading chants of: "Lock her up!" against his political opponent (for mishandling classified documents -- a man who later signed a law making the offense a felony with up to five years' prison time) is now in the process of being hoist by his own petard. So it's been a rather schadenfreude-y kind of week.
As we head into the dog days of August, Democrats have finally gotten some good news to spread, out on the campaign trail. Legislatively, things are definitely looking up, after Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema finally relented and allowed major portions of President Joe Biden's agenda to head to his desk. But it wasn't just the reconciliation bill, there has been a flurry of bills passing, from allowing Sweden and Finland into NATO to helping America's veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits during their service. Democrats in Congress are showing that they can indeed get things done, with or without the help of the obstructionist Republicans. But the good news doesn't end there, because the economic picture is getting better as well.
The day many of us thought would never happen is here. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema finally allowed President Joe Biden and the entire rest of the Democratic Party to actually get some good things done. A budget reconciliation bill has -- almost miraculously and at the last possible second -- passed the United States Senate. The House is on vacation, but they're being forced to come back to Washington anyway for a vote this Friday on the Inflation Reduction Act. It should be on Biden's desk in time for a triumphant signing ceremony by the weekend. Victory is at hand.
There were two major events in politics this week which will have a profound effect on the upcoming midterm campaigns. The first was the stunning victory in the Kansas primary of the anti-forced-birth position on an abortion referendum -- which passed with a jaw-dropping 59-41 percent margin in a very red state. The second was Senate Democrats finally achieving unity by all agreeing to the "Inflation Reduction Act" budget reconciliation bill. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has refused to let the Senate begin their month-long August vacation and is planning the first vote on the bill tomorrow, with all the other arcane floor events to follow, so the final passage could come early next week.
Kansas is not generally known for its earthquakes, but what happened there Tuesday night has had that effect on politics -- because it truly has shaken things to their core. For the first time since Roe v. Wade was overturned, people actually got to vote on the issue of abortion and women's rights. And the results were nothing short of astounding.