Your generous
donations help keep
this site running.
Visa/MC/PayPal accepted.
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.
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.
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:
This month has been a monumental one in politics, containing several far-reaching Supreme Court decisions and the January 6th committee hearings. While it is too soon to tell, all of this may have shifted things in Democrats' favor heading into the midterm congressional elections. Democratic voters are a lot more engaged and motivated to vote, while Republicans are losing ground. Whether this proves to be enough to counteract the expected "red wave" in November is still a very open question, but it is clear that the shift has so far favored the Democrats.
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.
As we continue to wend our way through primary season, we now turn to the two states with the most interesting races to be decided tomorrow: Texas and Georgia. Georgia is more interesting on the Republican side, while there's one Texas race that Democrats will be closely watching.
We were reminded of the whole Wonderful Wizard of Oz metaphor early this week, when we saw Mehmet "Dr." Oz at a last-minute Pennsylvania campaign rally, holding up his smartphone to the crowd, as the disembodied voice of the great MAGA Dear Leader bellowed forth bombast and nonsense to the crowd. All it needed was some smoke and fireballs at the sides of the stage, really. It seemed to us (but then we do have a rather warped sense of humor...) that Oz was begging the crowd to please pay lots of attention to the man behind the curtain.
Today is a big primary day, and it could perhaps be the most interesting in this year's election calendar. It's not officially "Super Tuesday," but it might at least be considered "Rather Interesting Tuesday." There are multiple close races to watch, there are both ideological battles and personality contests in both parties, and the punditocracy is going to go into high gear afterwards drawing all sorts of conclusions on a nationwide basis (on races that may in fact only be limited to very local issues, or the strengths and weaknesses of individual candidates). So it's going to be a big night, no matter what happens. But everyone should keep in mind that these are just the primaries -- which means a big win for one faction or another tonight might translate into a big loss for the party in November.
Of all the different types of cycle that exist in politics, the one of overreach and backlash is one of the most interesting. We may be about to see one of these cycles happen in very accelerated fashion (since it usually takes years or even a few subsequent elections to fully materialize), although since we're at the beginning of the cycle it is impossible to now know how it will all play out.