Politics Archives

Monday

November 8, 2021

The infrastructure bill spends big at the worst time

Few things are inevitable in Congress, but passing massive spending during a time of record deficits is probably one of them. Late Friday night, the House agreed to changes made by their Senate colleagues, sending a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package to President Joe Biden’s desk after months of debate. Despite much palace intrigue and handwringing, our leaders managed to do what they do best: authorize spending a lot more of our money. The vote was mostly along party lines, with a baker’s dozen Republicans crossing the aisle in support of the package — much to the chagrin of their conservative colleagues. With contentious midterms closing in, some Republicans wanted to tout their adeptness at bringing home the bacon to more moderate districts.

Stephen L. Miller

Resist the never-ending mask mandate

Face masks are forever. If you blinked, or weren’t paying attention, you might have missed it. If you weren’t tuning into CDC director Rochelle Walensky, then you didn’t hear it at all. Several media outlets picked up on something Walensky subtly added to a statement about mask efficacy. You probably weren’t paying attention to them either, which is what they are counting on. The CDC director endorsed the idea of permanent masking, during seasonal communicable diseases, including the seasonal flu or common cold. In an HHS statement on YouTube, Walensky sneakily slips “protection from the flu, or coronavirus” into her statement. “Whether it’s an infection from the flu, coronavirus, or even just the common cold.

Oliver Wiseman

Biden’s big infrastructure week(end)

The long road to Build Back Better “It’s finally infrastructure week,” said Joe Biden in a speech on Saturday morning to mark the long-awaited passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which includes $550 billion in new spending. Given the timing of the vote, late on Friday night, it was more a case of infrastructure weekend. When Biden heralded the legislative win, he also talked up the prospects of the second, more contentious piece of legislation that has been the subject of months of Hill negotiations. “I feel confident that we will have enough votes to pass the Build Back Better bill,” he said.

Michael Dahlberg

Nancy Pelosi is losing her grip

Top Democrats took a media victory lap last weekend, crowing about the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that finally cleared the House on Friday night after months of false starts and intra-party squabbling. The vote came only after Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in her latest Hail Mary, attempted to satisfy progressive lawmakers by also allowing a procedural vote on the massive social spending bill craved by liberals. Even then, Pelosi was forced to rely on a handful of Republicans to secure a majority. Predictably, the White House was eager to spin the bill’s passage as major win for the Biden agenda, claiming it would energize voters and pave the way for trillions more in government spending just in time for the holidays.

Sunday

November 7, 2021

Chadwick Moore

The mask caste system

Visitors to New York tell me how surprised they are to see so few masked up people on the streets. But a sizable portion of the NYC population isn’t letting go of the disgusting, soggy, disease vectors strapped to their faces — and they never will. This set aren’t true-believers in the still-unproven effectiveness of masks; for them, it’s both an identity and psychological disorder. On the streets of any city, the forever-masked are broadcasting their allegiance to authoritarianism, letting you know they’re most comfortable somewhere on a hierarchy of coercion, whether among the hopelessly obedient, or tyrants themselves. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. You now have a visual cue letting you know exactly who you’re dealing with and who to avoid.

Saturday

November 6, 2021

Oliver Wiseman

Biden and Pelosi score late-night infrastructure win

For months, Democratic negotiations over Joe Biden’s twin spending bills were stuck in a cycle of infighting that felt it would never end: the unstoppable force of progressive overexcitement up against the immovable object of moderate resistance. That deadlock was finally broken late on Friday night, when the House passed an infrastructure bill worth $550 billion in new spending. The breakthrough came after a head-spinning day on the Hill (a day that progressive congressman Mark Pocan described as a “clusterfuck”).

Bill Zeiser

What is national conservatism?

I expected there might be some trouble at the National Conservative Conference, held earlier this week in Orlando. There had been omens. American Airlines flight cancellations had upended many attendees’ travel plans, with some unable to make it at all. I was fortunate enough to have booked on Delta, but was hit with a stomach bug as soon as I stepped on the plane. A bad portent on a personal level, but more to the point, this wasn’t the first time I had been to a conservative event with high-profile — some would say controversial — speakers. Disruptions are fairly standard fare. Years ago, I saw Newt Gingrich, of all people, speak at the New School in New York City.

Friday

November 5, 2021

Grace Curley

Defund the Police will be the death of the Democrats

Defunding the police might be a winning issue for scoring points on Twitter, but according to Tuesday’s elections, it is a losing issue at the polls — at least in Minneapolis. A ballot measure voted on this week read in part, “Shall the Minneapolis City Charter be amended to remove the Police Department and replace it with a Department of Public Safety?” Voters rejected Question 2 handedly, with 56.17 percent of residents voting no on the amendment. The results should have sent a shockwave across the cocktail parties of the liberal bourgeois in DC, many of whom proudly shout about defunding the police from the rooftops of their fancy apartment buildings.

Oliver Wiseman

It’s Republicans who benefit from high voter turnout now

The turnout tables have turned “When we vote, we win.” So goes a favorite Democratic Party aphorism. I heard it from Amy Klobuchar campaigning for Terry McAuliffe in Northern Virginia last month. And I’ve heard it from countless others, in races across the country, as they urge audiences to register to vote, tell their friends to register to vote and get out there ahead of an election. Behind this slogan is the assumption that high turnout helps Democrats. But Tuesday’s election is the latest evidence that this dynamic is changing, and may have even reversed. In Virginia, turnout was up 26 percent on the last gubernatorial contest and the Republican won. The ten counties with the biggest increase in vote totals were all won by Glenn Youngkin.

Bobby Miller

Josh Mandel, true conservative?

A veteran, some career politicians, and a venture capitalist-turned-author meet on a debate stage. No, this isn’t the start to a joke. These are the Republican candidates vying to replace Ohio’s moderate GOP senator, Rob Portman, who announced his retirement in January. Since then, a flurry of contenders have thrown their hats into the ring. Josh Mandel is the former treasurer of Ohio who's run a mostly spectacle-laden campaign, sucking up to Trump and lighting masks on fire. J.D. Vance is the author of Hillbilly Elegy and is popular among nationalist and postliberal thinkers in Washington and on Twitter. The race so far has been a circus. Yet the differences between the two headliners couldn't be more stark.

Melissa Chen

The Trump talisman doesn’t work anymore

Glenn Youngkin’s victory over Terry McAuliffe is a loud wake-up call for the Democrats, who attempted to fuse the GOP candidate for Virginia governor to Donald Trump’s hip and failed miserably. Joe Biden won the commonwealth by ten points a year ago — yet Youngkin beat his Democratic opponent by two points. A slew of other Republican victories in key states have led to frantic analyses on cable news and soul-searching postmortems about why the Democrats proved so unpopular. Sure, anti-incumbent sentiment and Biden’s historic disapproval ratings haven’t helped, but one clear takeaway has emerged: the Trump boogeyman no longer works.

Thursday

November 4, 2021

Matt Purple

I’m a racist, you’re a racist, we are racists all

What news network did you watch on election night? Thankfully we all had plenty of options. There was CNN, where John King's magic wall grows ever more granular: "we're moving the Kelleher household into the leans-Republican column, Wolf, though their dog remains undecided. Now next door to the Smiths..." There was Fox News, where loud people shout at each other until Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum finally pull over the car and tell everyone to knock it off. And then there was MSNBC. Oh, Lord, was there MSNBC. There did we find Nicolle Wallace, one of the network's fastidiously objective anchors, declaring that Virginia governor-elect Glenn Youngkin "worshipped at the altar of Donald Trump.

Roger Kimball

Actually Youngkin’s victory shows Trump is still strong

Eventually, November 2 will be seen as a key date in American history. I am not thinking of November 2, 2021, however, the day of Glenn Youngkin’s stunning, delicious, gratifying victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race. Important though Youngkin’s victory was and is, it was prepared for and defined by a preceding triumph. The date I am thinking of is November 2, 2020. That was the date on which Donald Trump signed the executive order establishing the 1776 Commission, the purpose of which was to “encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding.” 1776, mind you, not 1619.

Stephen L. Miller

Manchin and Sinema: Cassandras of the Senate

Tuesday was a very bad night for the Democratic Party. They lost the Virginia governorship and House of Delegates, almost lost the New Jersey governorship, and lost several local school board seats in crucial electoral states such as Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Colorado. Blue states that kept schools closed or mostly shuttered for the duration of the pandemic now play host to legions of angry, fed-up parents. Nationally, Joe Biden’s approval ratings are crashing harder than Hunter Biden after a stint at the Chateau Marmont, and his domestic agenda is stalled in Congress, thanks to two Democratic senators who clearly saw the writing on the wall and the red wave coming: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Cockburn

No sex, please, we’re national conservatives

Orlando, Florida Cockburn just got back from the second annual National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida. The ballroom of the Orlando Hilton can hold more than a thousand people. A little snowbird tells Cockburn that Yoram Hazony, the event's organizer, was in panic mode in the days before the summit. Not enough people had paid for the $315 ticket or $2,500 VIP pass. It seems even DC politicos had better things to do on Halloween than listen to Josh Hawley scream about porn. Cockburn hears that every right-wing organization in attendance received emails from Hazony begging them to help ship out more people. In the end, the official turnout was 700 attendees — though a hundred of them were the ladies and gentlemen of the press, and most of them were on a freebie.

John Fund

Let’s hear it for Winsome Sears

Of all the improbable outcomes in this week's elections, a couple struck me as worthy of a Hollywood movie script. Ed Durr, the truck driver who toppled the New Jersey State Senate president after spending just $153 was one. But an even more inspirational, and almost as implausible, script could be fashioned from the story of Winsome Earle Sears, a 57-year-old Virginia mother of three, who by being elected Virginia’s lieutenant governor became the first female minority and naturalized citizen ever elected statewide. CNN and MSNBC ignored her memorable Election Night victory statement, but Fox didn't: https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1455761251737509898 Her "Winsome vs Goliath" story will no doubt now make her a fixture on the lecture circuit.

Cockburn

Maryland gubernatorial candidates push child vax mandates

There were plenty of lessons for Democrats to learn from the shock victory of Republican Glenn Youngkin in Tuesday night's gubernatorial election in Virginia. Perhaps the most important is that Terry McAuliffe should have focused more on local issues instead of nationalizing the race. Youngkin was able to tap into the ire of local parents protesting their school boards on a litany issues, including critical race theory and transgender bathroom policies. An often overlooked point in debates about critical race theory (and whether or not it is being taught in Virginia schools) is that the parent movement started in response to pandemic-related school closures and the shifting standards of teacher's unions and school boards for reopening.

Oliver Wiseman

Democrats shed more Latino voters

Biden’s normalcy problem The problem with promising a return to normalcy is that you can only do it once. That’s one of the lessons from the Virginia governor’s race, where Terry McAuliffe’s emphasis on the dangers of Donald Trump fell flat. In other words, what worked in 2020 hasn’t worked in 2021 and looks unlikely to work in 2022. That’s all true, but it’s also worth remembering that the strategy pursued by McAuliffe didn’t even work especially well last year. Yes, Joe Biden capitalized on dislike of the former president. Trump fatigue delivered Democrats the White House. But the strategy didn’t work further down the ballot. Biden outperformed other Democratic candidates on the ballot. The party lost seats in the House.

Wednesday

November 3, 2021

Bethany Mandel

Just say no to vaccine mandates for kids

I live in Montgomery County, Maryland. It’s one of those places where you see lawn signs proclaiming “In this house, we believe in science.” Naturally, our Democratic leaders have consistently ignored science over the last year, at least when it comes to COVID mitigation. Here in Montgomery County, our return to normalcy is currently being held hostage in exchange for near-universal vaccination of our least at-risk residents. If you believe that local governments are in a hurry to surrender “emergency” powers, I have a bridge over the Potomac to sell you. Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, has dropped our indoor mask mandate. But we still have a locally mandated one in place. Our county leaders reckon that they know better.

Kevin Mooney

New Jersey’s nothingburger governor underperforms

By removing Donald Trump from social media and New York governor Andrew Cuomo from office, progressives unwittingly gave an opening to a largely unheralded candidate in New Jersey. That’s why the newspaper headlines on the Wednesday morning after the election all declared the governor’s race in the Garden State “too close to call,” which in itself is a victory for beleaguered Republicans from the northeast. And even if Democratic governor Phil Murphy does pull it off, as now looks likely, this election portends serious headaches for Democrats.