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A window of opportunity in Congress is going to close soon. As usual in these things, Senator Joe Manchin is the key deciding factor as to whether Democrats will hit this window or miss it. In fact, there are actually two windows, a big one and one with a specific focus -- and Manchin is holding both of them up at once.
President Joe Biden capped off a pretty good week with a pretty good speech today, given right before he signed an executive order to do what he could to protect women's rights. Biden did so, of course, in response to the "extreme" Supreme Court decision which overturned Roe v. Wade.
Hey, kiddies, it's time to play "shadow boxing with Joe Manchin" once again! Yes, his teasing game has begun anew, where Democrats get their hopes up that Senator Manchin will finally agree to pass something -- anything -- from President Joe Biden's agenda, in the hopes of counteracting the predicted coming "red wave" in November's midterm elections. Once again, Manchin is playing it coy, as he is "in negotiations" with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, but has not actually committed to much of anything. The deadline this time around is the end of July, right before all of Congress disappears into the summer breeze for an entire month. Of course, they're all still on their two-week July 4th vacation this week, so nothing will really happen until next week, which leaves a rather abbreviated window.
Control of the United States Senate will be one of the biggest political prizes fought over in the 2022 midterm elections this November. So far, out of all the 2022 Senate races, Democrats look fairly well positioned to either hold onto their thin majority or perhaps even expand it by one or two. In what is supposed to be a very Republican-friendly year, the GOP's chances of taking the Senate seem dimmer than ever. This is due to one very big reason: personality matters. The quality of the candidates matter.
Let's begin with a big "Happy Independence Day, everyone!"
This July Fourth it is tempting for progressives and all others who care about basic human rights to want to declare independence from the Supreme Court. Packed with radicals, it has begun what could be a terrifying reign over American life for decades to come. Who knows what laws they will target next? The basic understanding that whichever candidate gets the most votes wins an election, perhaps? The possibilities are frightening.
But there is a way to completely defang the Supreme Court, and one that would be far easier to accomplish than, say, increasing the membership of the court. "Court-packing" has all kinds of historical baggage, and to flip the court Democrats would have to appoint four more justices -- which would seem like too radical a step for many. But there's another way Congress could completely strip the court of the power of interfering with basic human rights, and it is built right in to the Constitution itself.
The two biggest political topics of the past week were the continuing outrages piling up from both the Supreme Court and the House Select Committee on January 6th.
On Tuesday, a young aide who worked for Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, appeared in a surprise House committee hearing. The previous week, the committee had let it be known that there would be no hearings over the two-week Independence Day break. But a day beforehand, a new hearing was announced without fanfare and without any details.
The witness who appeared, Cassidy Hutchinson, had apparently been getting threatening messages from those still surrounding Donald Trump. They read like mob bosses leaning on a witness who might spill the beans:
Rarely do I sit down and write a column just to proclaim my abject ignorance about a political subject, but today seems an appropriate day to do so -- to make a larger point about pundits everywhere: nobody knows this right now. Nobody. Don't believe them if they tell you they do, because we are truly in uncharted territory.
The Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade was always going to have an impact on the upcoming election. I've been saying that pretty much ever since they heard the case, months ago. It became patently obvious when the draft decision was leaked. But still it seemed to catch some by surprise. The real unanswerable questions here are: How much impact will it have on the election? And which party will benefit?
Barack Obama created many memorable soundbites and campaign slogans, but one of the best-remembered is (as he phrased it in a tweet): "There are no red states or blue states, just the United States." This call for unity in politics was generally well-received, since it spoke to (as another former president once put it) "the better angels of our nature."
But what is becoming more and more obvious is how wrong Obama got this. His words sound blissfully naive, at this point. Because we are devolving further into the Divided States of America, seemingly with every passing day. Today's Supreme Court decision which overturned Roe v. Wade is merely another milestone on this grim journey.
How low can the bar go for what is acceptable in a Republican candidate to the rest of their party? That is a question that many have been asking ever since the rise of Donald Trump. Because while he was busily tearing up all the political rules of decorum, one of the first ones he shredded and flushed down his golden toilet was the expectation that political candidates aren't suppose to tell blatant lies -- especially about themselves. Before Trump, getting caught in one big fat lie might not have been a death blow to a Republican politician's career (at least, with the right artfully-worded explanation), but getting caught in two of them was sure to be disqualifying. In our post-Trump world, however, it is apparently fine with the Republican Party if you just go out and have a ball lying your face off and just making things up out of thin air. Because, these days, why not?
Republicans have come up with all sorts of attempts to deflect the public's attention from the enormous number and easy availability of guns in this country, some of them far wackier than others. But the more-reasonable response they've largely gathered behind is to say that all mass shootings happen because of "crazy people," and therefore we should put lots of effort into weeding those crazy people out before they can cause atrocities. That's what they say they're for, at any rate. As a way of deflecting attention, it's a lot better than what the fringe of the GOP is saying, after all.