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.

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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.

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Jon Stewart, a television comedian, just did an amazing and powerful thing. He actually caused Senate Republicans to feel shame.

In this day and age, that is a rarity. The Republican Party has been taught many bad habits by Donald Trump, but one of the worst of all is utter shamelessness, which I would describe (politically) as the inability of your fellow citizens' opinions to sway yours in the least. Trump's "come Hell or high water" attitude and his absolute refusal to ever admit he was wrong about the slightest thing (see: Sharpiegate, et al) has caused Republicans like Ted Cruz (a shameless politician if there ever was one, even before Trump appeared on the scene) to completely divorce themselves from public opinion. They will just insist that down is up, that black is white, and that everyone else in the world is wrong while they have a secret line to the absolute truth (with zero evidence to back it up, of course).

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is visiting Taiwan, considered by many to be a highly provocative act. Mostly because it openly highlights the diplomatic fiction that has existed in one form or another for 73 years (and counting). The fiction is that there is "only one China." Now, there was indeed one China in the past -- and there may also be one China in the future. But for almost three-quarters of a century, there have been two Chinese governments, both of them claiming exactly the same thing: that they are the real and legitimate government of all of China. But this is not true (no matter which one of them sits at the United Nations) -- it is fictional. The Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.), which governs the mainland it calls the Peoples' Republic of China (P.R.C.), also claims the island and territories of Taiwan as its own. The Republic Of China (R.O.C.), which governs Taiwan, also claims all of mainland China as its own. Neither is right -- their saying so is fiction, pure and simple.

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The conventional political wisdom all year has been that the Republicans were going to have a big "red wave" midterm election, which would mean Democrats would lose lots of seats pretty much everywhere -- the House, the Senate, and governors' offices. This idea was formulated back when the voters were worried about different things than they are now, however, because life (and politics) is not static -- constant change is the only thing that stays the same. We are just under 100 days until this year's election, which means there is still time for the public's focal point to change even further, as unforeseen events pop up. But it's worth taking a look at how things have shifted over the past few months, because things are looking decidedly better for the Democrats.

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That title, of course, is intended as a spoof of what some consider the most overused go-to headline in the Washington punditocracy's toolbox: "Democrats In Disarray!" For once, the absolute opposite seems to be true, and it is so glaringly obvious that even the political press's pooh-bahs have had to admit it (full credit where it is due: we got the title from a Politico article). Because Senator Joe Manchin (of all people!) just turned a very rainy day into some beautiful sunshine.

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For the second day running, I am leaning on a pop culture reference to express how I feel about politics. Today's title comes from The X-Files, as it was the slogan prominently displayed on a poster of a flying saucer which hung on Agent Fox Mulder's office wall. So here's what I want to now believe, after last night's bombshell news:

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President Joe Biden is hoping for a few legislative wins before the midterms. Three bills in particular seem to have a better-than-average chance of success. They're a far cry from the agenda Biden attempted to achieve last year, but having to deal with two corporatist Democratic senators derailed almost all of these lofty ambitions. So Americans will not be getting tuition-free community college, subsidized child care, free preschool, student loan forgiveness, action on climate change, and a whole host of other ideas that would have dramatically improved the lives of hundreds of millions of American citizens. Thanks, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, for nothing.

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Today Representative Elaine Luria tweeted out what could be called a deleted scene from the video testimony presented at the most-recent House Select Committee hearing. This new video shows more of Donald Trump's edits to the speech that his aides prepared for him to give on January 7th, the day after the failed insurrection attempt. From the Washington Post report today:

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Initially, tonight's hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6th was supposed to be the final hearing. That was before all the rest of the hearings caused so many other witnesses and tangential stories to come out of the woodwork. Nevertheless, it was indeed (as I wrote yesterday) the "season finale" of the summer miniseries of televised hearings. The committee is now promising to reconvene and hold more public hearings in September, to cover all the new information. The committee will stay busy during the August congressional break, digging into all the new evidence and witnesses who have come forward, and then they'll report back afterwards to the public. So there's all that to look forward to....

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