Politics

Is Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe really “losing it”? Last week, McAuliffe snapped at a tracker who asked him if he really believes that parents shouldn't have a say in their children's education, demanding to know if the tracker is vaccinated and questioning why he wasn't wearing a mask. It was a bizarre exchange and suggested the stress of the campaign may be getting to McAuliffe. His Republican challenger, Glenn Youngkin, responded to this revealing moment during a radio interview with Larry O'Connor and me on WMAL last week. “Terry is really starting to lose it,” Youngkin said. “I mean, he really is. He's desperate. He knows that he has absolutely fallen behind in this race. We have huge momentum.

The Biden administration announced Tuesday that Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary of health, will be sworn in as a four-star admiral in the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Levine will not only be the first openly transgender four-star officer in the uniformed services — according to the Biden administration, Levine will also be the "first female four-star admiral" of the health corps. Allow Cockburn to be the first to congratulate Ms Levine — sorry, Admiral Levine! — on this historic achievement. How inspiring that Rachel, formerly known as Richard, only had to identify as female for about 15 percent of her life before becoming one of the most successful women in the world.

Delaware used to be Cale Boggs country, almost as much as Massachusetts belonged to the Kennedys. Boggs served as governor, congressman and twice as Delaware senator, so in late 1972, when he was seeking a third term, the race looked sewed up. But as summer turned to fall, his 28-point lead evaporated. Voters started paying attention to Boggs’s rival, a Democrat youngster with fire in his belly and a spring in his step. Anti-Boggs ads said his best days were behind him. According to his fresh-faced opponent, Boggs was a ‘helluva nice guy’ but, after decades in power, he had ‘lost that twinkle in his eyes’. On election day, Boggs lost by a margin of 3,000 votes. The people of Delaware sent to Washington a 30-year-old thruster named Joe Biden.

We begin today with the reigning alpha of the self-celebrated political super-staffers. Enter Ron Klain, President Joe Biden's chief of staff, who is a polymath in the D.C. sense that he has both a job and a Twitter account. Klain last week made news when he endorsed a tweet that dismissed our current bout of inflation as a mere problem for the "high class." Cut to Jeff Bezos weeping at the grocery store: "I can't possibly afford any of this!!!" Klain, according to a New York Times profile, is neighbors with Chief Justice John Roberts and lists Twitter as a "hobby," so you can tell he's the well-adjusted sort.

It’s time for Pete Buttigieg to truck off down the road from the Department of Transportation — if, that is, he turns up for work again and can find a driver. It’s shameful even by the standards of the federal government for the head of a department to disappear during an emergency. It’s ludicrous for a technocratic Democrat in a technocratic administration. The smart set are explaining away the supply-chain fiasco as middle-class false consciousness. ‘Most of the economic problems we're facing (inflation, supply chains, etc.) are high class problems,’ says Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff. That’s right, Ron: if the peasants can’t find vegetables on the shelves, let them eat the rich.

In the waning months of the 2020 campaign, President Trump cast himself as the defender of the suburbs. It didn’t work. Suburban voters made Joe Biden president. But although Trump lost that election, the pro-suburb talking points he popularized didn’t go away. Last month, after California legalized duplexes statewide, the outrage came roaring back. Tucker Carlson fumed that soon 'drug-addicted vagrants’ would be terrorizing innocent American suburbanites. Right-wing Twitter personality Auron MacIntyre perceived a plot to destroy the wealth concentrated in single-family homes and force everyone to live in the 'urban decay’ of 'the favela’.

The word malaise, a general feeling of uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify, is creeping into discussions. It's a politically loaded word, following its use by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 to describe the country he could not figure out to how lead. Carter's specific use of the term focused on the energy crisis, when OPEC monkeyed with America's oil supply. But Carter saw that something much deeper was wrong. There wasn't just an oil shortage to manage, but a recession of hope, a crisis of confidence that someone would have to lead America out of. He perceived that we were tired, worn down, unable to come together in common purpose and fix something. It would be interesting to hear what Carter thinks about 2021, when things once again don't work well.

Dean Obeidallah has an impressive résumé. While he is not a household name, the lawyer-turned-award-winning-comedian hosts a satellite radio program, is a frequent guest on MSNBC and CNN, and has written for all the big publications. But while he has good chops for a progressive pundit, he is no Abraham Lincoln. It shows. Far from emulating the tone taken by the Great Emancipator, Obeidallah prefers to fan the flames of political disunity. In a recent tweet, for example, he wrote that he does not believe that a civil war is coming because 'the Civil War in 1861 happened when Red States said we are leaving and Blue States waged a war to preserve the Union. Today if Red States wanted to leave Blue states would say "Check out time is 1 p.m.”’ That tweet is preposterous!

If we have learned anything over the last few months it is that emergencies, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. The ruling elites have been as shifty and duplicitous about what justifies enacting emergency powers as the FBI has been about what warrants investigating angry parents at school board meetings (and before them, Trump campaign operatives for their Russian 'collusion’.) One feature of all these police-state excursions into unbridled power never changes — vagueness. It is so much easier to move the goal posts when there are no lines drawn on the field. The COVID-19 pandemic served as the all-encompassing key to unlocking 'emergency powers’ for politicians and unelected government bureaucrats.

Attorney General Merrick Garland was confirmed to the top post in the Department of Justice in March 2021 by a Senate vote of 70-30. Twenty Republicans crossed party lines to vote for President Joe Biden's nominee, who was previously denied a seat on the Supreme Court during the Obama administration. Here are the Republicans who voted to confirm Garland: Sen. Roy Blunt Sen. Richard Burr Sen. Shelley Moore Capito Sen. Bill Cassidy Sen. Susan Collins Sen. John Cornyn Sen. Joni Ernst Sen. Lindsey Graham Sen. Chuck Grassley Sen. Jim Inhofe Sen. Ron Johnson Sen. James Lankford Leader Mitch McConnell Sen. Jerry Moran Sen. Lisa Murkowski Sen. Rob Portman Sen. Mitt Romney Sen. Mike Rounds Sen. John Thune Sen.

Nearly 50 years after Roe v. Wade unleashed a constitutional right to abortion and redefined modern American politics, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has arrived as its foil. In a term already packed with high-profile cases ranging from gun rights to religious liberty to the death penalty, the Supreme Court has announced it will hear arguments in Dobbs on December 1. In doing so, the Court has opened the door to overturning Roe and its sister case, Casey v. Planned Parenthood, sending the question of legal abortion back to the states. The case itself centers on a 2018 Mississippi law that, with limited exceptions, bars abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.