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Much can be said about the testimony of victims of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Women like Marissa Blair and Chelsea Alvarado, who were injured when James Fields plowed his car into protesters, bravely recounted arguably the worst weekend of their lives in front of the Nazis who had a direct hand in what is now considered a terror attack. Blair’s description during her testimony Monday of dropping to her knees upon hearing of friend Heather Heyer’s death at the hands of Fields is absolutely heart-wrenching, as is the sacrifice of her now-husband, Marcus Martin, who pushed her out of the way of Fields’ car and sustained life-altering injuries.

A photo of Martin being violently struck ultimately won a Pulitzer Prize. Martin never stopped fighting for what’s right throughout his recovery after that horrible August day. He took the stand in 2018 during the trial against Fields, who was ultimately sentenced to life in prison, and is expected to testify during the Sines vs. Kessler trial. Alvarado took the witness stand on Tuesday and identified photos showing the impact the damage had on her and a fellow plaintiff and friend, Natalie Romero. A particularly alarming photo showed Romero’s blood on the blue drum Alvarado had been carrying at the time of the attack.

There is consistent, explicit photographic evidence of the damage wrought by the many Nazi groups who terrorized the city of Charlottesville. Yet Chris “Crying Nazi” Cantwell chose to focus his questions on whether members of antifa may have been lying in wait, focusing on nonexistent details in hopes that they may somehow save him from himself. Cantwell, whose mastery extends to only being a racist waste of a courtroom’s time, is representing himself in the trial—and seemingly everyone is tired of his bullshit.

At one point on Tuesday Cantwell chose to cross-examine Matt Parrott, who co-created with Matt Heimbach the neo-Nazi Traditional Workers Party. Unsurprisingly, it did not go well.

Cantwell asked Parrott about racist jokes and memes instead of making any meaningful headway in his own defense. He described hateful slogans bashing Jews as haiku-style memes. It only got worse from there.

Cantwell gleefully gets his kicks from being reactionary, even in a courtroom setting. Yet all Cantwell seems to be reinforcing is how much he truly means to be racist and how deeply intentional his actions have consistently been across the board. There appears to be no set date for when this trial ends just yet, but one thing is clear: The jury wants it over with. Judge Norman Moon announced that jurors agreed to work through the federal holiday on Thursday. Integrity First for America, the civil rights nonprofit whose lawyers are representing the plaintiffs, is in it for the long haul, however.

Executive Director Amy Spitalnick described the trial as “four years in the making” and hopes the outcome makes clear the consequences of inciting violence through white supremacist rhetoric. “We know that civil litigation is very impactful in terms of taking down the finances, the operations of these organizations,” Spitalnick said during a phone interview. “Throughout history, there have been many cases that effectively bankrupted and dismantled hate groups and their leaders.”

History weighs heavily on this case. Spitalnick noted that Tuesday marked the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, the antisemitic pogrom that led to the deaths of more than 90 Jews and the destruction of innumerable structures, including homes and schools. Spitalnick’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors so the work that she’s doing carries a deeply personal meaning, as it does for so many on the Integrity First for America legal team.

“It’s just stunning to me that we are literally as we mark this anniversary, there is a modern day neo-Nazi on the stand in our case talking about his admiration for Hitler and the ways in which he built an organization intended to mimic a lot of the Nazi infrastructure from decades ago,” Spitalnick said. “And so certainly the parallels of this moment are sadly clear. The difference is that we live in a country with a rule of law and a justice system and we can use laws like the ones we’re using in this case to seek accountability and fight for justice … At least for me, it gives me some hope and I hope for others that it does the same.”

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The first subpoenas issued by the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 back on September 24, included a large number of document requests. Included in these requests were a large block of material from the National Archive that originated in the Trump White House. Donald Trump immediately attempted to claim executive privilege over these documents, but President Joe Biden cleared them for release to Congress. 

So Trump did what Trump does—he took it to court. On October 18, Trump sued committee chair  Bennie Thompson and Keeper of the National Archives Jeff James in federal District Court. 

On Tuesday evening, The Washington Post reports that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled against Trump saying that she agreed with the House committee’s contention that these documents, involve “a matter of unsurpassed public importance.” Judge Chutkan’s opinion denies Trump’s claim and explicitly acknowledges the House request meets all the Constitutional provisions by holding a potential legislative purpose.

The court holds that the public interest lies in permitting—not enjoining—the combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to and occurred on January 6, and to consider legislation to prevent such events from ever occurring again.

In response, Trump has done exactly as expected and immediately appealed the ruling to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Judge Chutkan’s ruling has some very blunt things to say about Trump’s claims and his position.

[Trump’s] position that he may override the express will of the executive branch appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power “exists in perpetuity.” But Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President. He retains the right to assert that his records are privileged, but the incumbent President “is not constitutionally obliged to honor” that assertion. 

All of this seems like a very cut-and-dry position from Judge Chutkin: Congress has an express right to request these documents, the request deals with a matter of national importance that could be the subject of future legislation, and Trump is most definitely not president, despite what many of this supporters may believe. Judge Chukin also states that she does not believe that Trump is likely to succeed based on claims that he will suffer irreparable harm, or that he somehow retains a “residual” executive power.

But Trump doesn’t have to win. As with the battle over subpoenas, what Trump is mainly trying to accomplish is simply stalling. How long it will take for the appeals court to hear the case isn’t clear. And if that court rules against Trump—which is almost certain—then comes the wait for the Supreme Court, which is unlikely to hurry in hearing this case. 

Should Trump manage to drag this out until January of 2023, he stands a good chance of laughing as the whole case dissolves under a Republican majority. Even if he is unable to delay for that long, every month extracted from the calendar is another month in which the select committee is unable to examine the documents or act on the information they contain.

And there’s another possibility. The conservative-heavy Supreme Court might grant a Republican wish by placing an extreme limit on Congressional power. For example, they might rule that Congress’ ability to subpoena information related to legislation only extends to current legislation already drafted and waiting for a vote. Such a ruling would effectively end Congress’ ability to conduct meaningful oversight of the executive—a power that’s already been badly eroded in the last five years through Trump’s constant refusals to cooperate, which forced Congress to go to court for every request.

Trump’s tax returns, requested in April of 2019, are still not in the hands of the Ways and Means Committee, 

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The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

Leading Off

● NH-Sen, NH-Gov: In a move that deprives Senate Republican leaders of one of their most sought-after Senate recruits, Republican Chris Sununu announced Tuesday that he would seek a fourth two-year term as governor of New Hampshire rather than challenge Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan next year. Speculation immediately swirled that former Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who lost an extremely tight 2016 race to Hassan, would be the Senate GOP’s backup choice, but unnamed sources close to Ayotte soon told WMUR’s John DiStaso that she “​​will NOT be a candidate for any office in 2022.”  

We’re not sure if Ayotte tipped off Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell or NRSC chair Rick Scott about her reported decision to sit out the race, but according to Sununu, they learned about his plans at the same time as the rest of us: The governor revealed he didn’t give any advance notice to McConnell or Scott, saying, “I guess you’ll have to let them know. I haven’t talked to them.”

They sure know now (with McConnell advisor Josh Holmes responded to the Sununu news by tweeting, “Unbelievable”), and it will be up to Team Red to find a new candidate to take on Hassan. However, while the senator will avoid going up against Sununu, who won re-election 65-33 even as Joe Biden was taking New Hampshire 53-45, she’ll still be a top GOP target in a state that can swing wildly from cycle to cycle. There are plenty of Granite State politicians who may now take a look, including some politicians who may have campaigned for governor if he’d decided to take on Hassan.

Campaign Action

The only notable Republican currently running for Senate is retired Army Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, who got into the race a year ago at a time when Sununu all but froze the party’s field, but he’s unlikely to scare anyone off: Bolduc lost the 2020 primary for the Granite State’s other Senate seat 50-42, and he ended September with a mere $58,000 in the bank.

One person who seems uninterested, though, is Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator who moved north to unsuccessfully run for the Senate here in 2014. Brown said he was focused on helping his wife, ​​Gail Huff Brown, win the 1st Congressional District, and said of another Senate run, “I don’t think so unless something traumatic happens.” (We have no idea what Brown considers “traumatic” for this race.)

Several potential Senate names surfaced following the Sununu/Ayotte news, though some looked far more formidable than others. In the latter column is 2020 nominee Corky Messner, who defeated Bolduc before losing to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen 57-41; Messner said Tuesday that he wasn’t ruling out another campaign for the upper chamber

DiStaso also tweets that former Rep. Frank Guinta also hasn’t said no and “is calling around to donors & supporters to gauge interest,” though we’re guessing the interest will not be overwhelming. Guinta unseated Democratic Rep. Carol Shea Porter in the swingy 1st District in 2010, lost their 2012 rematch, and defeated her again in 2014, but things started going wrong for him soon afterwards.

Guinta earned embarrassing headlines when he paid an FEC fine for an illegal 2010 six-figure donation from his parents, and he resisted calls from Ayotte and other prominent Republicans to retire or even resign. The congressman won renomination just 46-45 and lost his fourth and final contest with Shea Porter 44-43 as Donald Trump was narrowly carrying his seat.

A stronger candidate might be Matt Mowers, who is currently campaigning for the 1st District again after losing a tight 2020 race there to Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas. Politico reports that national and local Republicans have been talking to Mowers about possibly switching races, though it remains to be seen if he’s interested. (Huff Brown quickly said she was staying in the House contest.) Multiple media outlets also mentioned state Senate President Chuck Morse and Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Education Frank Edelblut as possibilities.

Sununu, for his part, will likely be the clear favorite to win a fourth term as governor. A recent Saint Anselm College poll gave him a 56-42 job approval, which, while considerably smaller than his 64-34 score back in August, still puts him well above water. No notable Democrats have launched a campaign for governor yet, though it’s unlikely Team Blue will give him a free pass especially if more polls show his numbers in decline.

Redistricting

● AK Redistricting: Alaska’s Redistricting Board, a five-member body made up of three Republicans and two independents, has settled on a new map for the state House, though work continues on a plan for the state Senate. Each district in the upper chamber is made up of two “nested” lower-chamber districts, so it’s a matter of the commissioners deciding which pairs of districts to link together. The panel must complete its work by Wednesday, at which point its maps can be challenged in court. As the Anchorage Daily News‘ James Brooks notes, “Every redistricting process since statehood has involved a lawsuit.”

● GA Redistricting: Georgia’s Republican-run Senate passed the GOP’s new map for the chamber on a strictly party-line vote on Tuesday, while a committee in the state House, which is also controlled by Republicans, did the same thing with a new redistricting plan for its own districts.

● NV Redistricting: Leaders in Nevada’s Democratic-run legislature unveiled draft maps for Congress, the state House, and the state Senate on Tuesday, which lawmakers will take up when they convene for a special session likely to start later this week. The congressional plan would make the 3rd and 4th Districts bluer at the expense of the 1st District; under these boundaries, all would have supported Joe Biden by about 7-8 points. The 2nd, meanwhile, would remain solidly Republican.

● UT Redistricting: Republican lawmakers in Utah unveiled and passed a new congressional map in committee on Monday that would ensure GOP control of the state’s entire House delegation by dividing Salt Lake County four ways. Salt Lake is the state’s most populous county and its one sizable bastion of Democratic voters, so by quartering it and pairing each sub-section with dark-red rural areas, all four districts will remain safely Republican.

By contrast, the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission proposed maps that would have established a district centered on Salt Lake City and its suburbs by making fewer splits in the surrounding county. That, however, would have yielded a solidly Democratic seat—which is precisely why Republicans ignored the commission’s work.

The GOP’s proposal represents an exacerbation of the previous decade’s gerrymander, which had split Salt Lake County among three districts. But despite Republican efforts to juke the map in their own favor, Democrats managed to win the 4th District in both 2012 and 2018, and only narrowly lost in 2014 and 2020. For that reason, the latest map would protect freshman GOP Rep. Burgess Owens by moving the 4th from a 52-43 win for Donald Trump to a rock solid 60-34 Trump margin, according to Dave’s Redistricting App.

The other three districts all would have supported Trump with 56-57% of the vote, though that actually understates the GOP’s advantage, given the large numbers of Trump-skeptical conservative voters (including many Mormons) who eagerly vote Republican further down the ballot.

Republicans have proposed this extreme gerrymander in spite of a 2018 ballot initiative that voters passed in an attempt to end gerrymandering by creating a new redistricting commission. In response, however, Republicans passed a 2020 law that gutted the commission and made its role purely advisory, allowing lawmakers to treat it as though it doesn’t exist.

Senate

● CO-Sen: The Democratic firm Global Strategy Group’s survey for the liberal organization ProgressNow Colorado finds Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet defeating two Republican foes, Air Force veteran Eli Bremer and state Rep. ​​Ron Hanks, by margins of 48-35 and 52-34, respectively.

● PA-Sen: The conservative Free Beacon’ Eliana Johnson reports that Mehmet Oz, a TV personality who has a long history of dispensing what medical experts have warned is false advice, “is preparing” to run for this open seat as a Republican. Oz’s spokesperson didn’t deny it, saying, “Since last year, Dr. Oz has lived and voted in Pennsylvania where he attended school and has deep family ties. Dr. Oz has received encouragement to run for the U.S. Senate, but is currently focused on our show and has no announcement at this time.”

Johnson writes that Oz is registered to vote in neighboring New Jersey. She adds, “Oz has a non-permanent voter registration in Pennsylvania connected to a Montgomery County address that appears to belong to his mother-in-law.”

● WA-Sen: SurveyUSA’s poll for KING5 finds Democratic Sen. Patty Murray with a 49-31 lead over her best-funded Republican foe, motivational speaker Tiffany Smiley.

Governors

● CT-Gov: Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont confirmed Tuesday that he would seek a second term next year. His move came about a month after Lamont said he hadn’t decided if he’d run for re-election, though there was little indication he was seriously thinking about retiring.

● IL-Gov: Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts said Thursday that he was stepping down as Republican National Committee finance chair with more than a year left on his term, a move that reignited media speculation that the ultra-wealthy businessman could campaign for governor. Back in December, Politico reported that Ricketts was ​​not “ruling out a run” against Democratic incumbent J.B. Pritzker, but we’ve heard nothing new since then.

● LA-Gov: Democratic incumbent John Bel Edwards will be termed-out of office in two years, and LaPolitics Weekly’s Jeremy Alford takes a look at the many Republicans who could compete in the 2023 all-party primary to succeed the governor in this very red state.

Political observers have long anticipated that Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser and Attorney General Jeff Landry will each run, and recent events have only intensified that speculation. Last month, Nungesser confirmed his interest and said that “we’ll make a decision sometime next year.” Days later, one of Landry’s top aides, Liz Murrill, filed paperwork to campaign for attorney general, and her team added that she “plans to run and she intends to run if Jeff Landry does not run for re-election.” Landry himself soon used his appearance at a party meeting to make it clear he was mulling a run for governor.

Nungesser and Landry are two of the most prominent Republicans in Pelican State politics, but they would likely run very different campaigns if they both got in. Landry, an ultra-conservative who has advised employees how they can avoid COVID vaccination requirements, was one of several prominent Republicans who led the drive earlier this year to do away with the all-party primary system and replace it with a traditional partisan primary.

Nungesser, however, successfully fought to keep the status quo in place, arguing the proposed change would produce “extreme candidates.” The lieutenant governor has been willing to work with Edwards at times, and he’d almost certainly be better positioned to pick up Democratic voters if he and Landry both advanced to an all-GOP general election.

That Nungesser-Landry duel is far from a certainty though, especially since plenty of other Republicans could also get in. State Treasurer John Schroder said back in May that he was thinking about seeking the governor’s office, while state Sen. Rick Ward himself expressed interest in October. State Rep. Richard Nelson also added his name to the list just last week, telling Alford, “The bigger boys have the kind of money that scares people away, but I don’t think the field is settled.”

As for the Democrats, Alford writes, “So far no reliable names have surfaced, but party leaders insist they will have a marketable candidate.” Donald Trump carried Louisiana 58-40, and Edwards is the only Democrat to win statewide in over a decade.

● TX-Gov: Democrat ​​Beto O’Rourke’s PAC posted online Tuesday, “We’ve got something big to announce, and we want you to be a part of it.” The former congressman has spent months thinking about challenging Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, and no other notable Democrat has gotten in during this time.

House

● CA-10: Politico reports that former Trump official Ricky Gill is thinking of taking on Democratic Rep. Josh Harder in what is currently a competitive seat in the Modesto area.

Gill was on the ballot almost a decade ago at the age of 25 when he challenged another Democratic congressman, Jerry McNerney, in the neighboring 9th District. Gill raised $3 million for a campaign that attracted national attention, but McNerney beat him 56-44 as Barack Obama was carrying that constituency by a 58-40 spread.

● MD-04: Former Del. Angela Angel has filed paperwork for a potential campaign to succeed Rep. Anthony Brown, a fellow Democrat who is leaving to run for state attorney general, in a safely blue seat in the D.C. suburbs. Angel was elected to her only term in 2014, and she earned headlines two years later when she launched a high-profile, but unsuccessful, attempt to pressure legislative leaders to act on her domestic violence bill. She ran for the state Senate in 2018 but lost the primary 55-37 to a fellow delegate.

Meanwhile, Del. Jazz Lewis earned an endorsement Monday from House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who is his old boss and the congressman from the neighboring 5th District.

● NC-06: While Hillsborough Town Commissioner Matt Hughes, who is an official in the state Democratic Party, expressed interest last month in running to succeed retiring Rep. David Price, sounds like he’s now ruled it out. Hughes responded to Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam’s campaign kickoff on Monday by tweeting, “I’m so proud of @NidaAllam as she begins her next phase of public service.”

Another Democrat we hadn’t previously mentioned is former Wake County Commissioner Jessica Holmes, who also said she was interested last month before the Republican-dominated legislature passed its new gerrymander. Holmes ran statewide last year for the open post of commissioner of labor and lost the general election by a close 51-49 margin.

North Carolina’s candidate filing deadline is Dec. 17, so we’ll have a full candidate lineup before too long.

● NC-07, NC-Sen: Former Rep. Mark Walker last week told Dallas Woodhouse, the infamous former executive director of the state GOP, that he was considering campaigning to return to the House, though the Republican said he was still going forward with his Senate bid for now. Walker announced his involuntary retirement from the lower chamber in 2019 after court-supervised redistricting left him without a winnable seat to run for, but the GOP’s newest gerrymander may belatedly solve that problem for 2022.

Walker didn’t say which constituency he was interested in, though Woodhouse believes that if he ran anywhere, it would be in the new and open 7th District. This seat, which includes areas between Greensboro and Raleigh, supported Donald Trump 57-41 according to data from Dave’s Redistricting App, and it includes much of the turf held by one of Walker’s Senate primary rivals, Rep. Ted Budd.

Walker, though, wouldn’t have the primary to himself if he made the switch. Law student Bo Hines, a former North Carolina State University football player who announced a bid to succeed Budd in the current 13th District, has made it clear he’s now seeking the new 7th. Hines, who has self-funded part of his campaign, ended September with $371,000 on-hand, though Walker had a larger $613,000 Senate war chest he could use here instead.

State Rep. Jon Hardister also says he’s thinking about running for the House, though Woodhouse added that he “indicated he is unlikely to enter a primary against Walker.”

● NV-04: Boxer Jessie Vargas said Monday that he would seek the Republican nomination to take on Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford in Las Vegas’ northern suburbs. The candidate indicated he could do some self-funding, saying he did “very well” in his career in the ring.

Vargas, whose parents immigrated from Mexico, was on Mexico’s 2008 ​​Olympic team, and he was the 2016 world champion welterweight. He gave up the title later that year when he badly lost to Philippines Sen. Manny Pacquiao (who, coincidently, is running next year for president of his country), though Vargas received a $2.8 million guaranteed payout for that fight.

● NY-22: Democrat Josh Riley, an attorney who is a former counsel on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, has announced a bid against Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney. The current version of this Utica-area seat backed Donald Trump 55-43, though it could look very different once redistricting is complete.

● NY-24: Physician assistant Tim Ko said this week that he would launch a primary challenge against Rep. John Katko, who is one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump. Ko is a first-time candidate, but he could have a prominent ally in his corner soon. The Conservative Party, which is often aligned with the state GOP, is set to endorse a candidate on Nov. 16, and Onondaga County chair Bernie Ment said he’d advocate for Ko next week.

The current version of the 24th District went for Joe Biden 53-44, which makes Katko one of just nine Republicans in a Biden constituency. There’s some speculation, though, that redistricting could lead to a primary between Katko and hard-right Rep. Claudia Tenney, and Ko says he would drop out and support the 22nd District congresswoman if that happened.  

● OR-06: Democratic state Rep. Andrea Salinas on Tuesday kicked off her long-anticipated campaign for the new 6th District, a 55-42 Biden seat that includes the state capital of Salem and other parts of the mid-Willamette Valley. Salinas, who co-chaired the state’s congressional and legislative redistricting committees, is the daughter of an immigrant from Mexico, and she would be the first Latina to represent Oregon in Congress.

On the GOP side, fellow state Rep. Ron Noble told Oregon Public Broadcasting last month that he was getting ready to run, though he hasn’t announced yet.

● TX-01, TX-AG: Democrats and House Republicans leaders may finally be rid of Rep. Louie Gohmert because the legendary far-right bomb thrower threw up a website Tuesday saying he was thinking about challenging scandal-ridden Attorney General Ken Paxton in the GOP primary.

Of course, this being Gohmert, the revelation came after a complete train wreck: The Texas Tribune’s Patrick Svitek tweeted, “He was supposed to have an announcement at 11:30 in Tyler, [but] tweeted a livestream around noon that didn’t work.” (The Houston Chronicle‘s Taylor Goldenstein later said that he was felled by a “wifi problem.”)

Gohmert’s new site went up, though it could have benefited from some extra proofing: It declared that the congressman “needs 100,000 citizens to send $100 each (or any other amount to get to $1,000,000) by November 19,” which actually adds up to $10 million. He may struggle to reach either number, as his congressional campaign ended September with a mere $83,000 on-hand.

No matter what he raises, though, Gohmert would be in for a very uphill primary if he did decide to challenge Paxton. Donald Trump endorsed the attorney general earlier this year despite (or maybe perhaps because of) the myriad of scandals surrounding him, and a recent YouGov poll gave Paxton a 54-18 lead over his main primary foe, Land Commissioner George P. Bush.

If Gohmert did decide to take his chances statewide, there’s no question that Republicans would have no trouble holding on to his dark red 1st District in East Texas. However, few House Democrats would be sad to part ways with Gohmert, who said of the Jan. 6 attack, “It’s absolutely dishonest to say ‘insurrection’ when not a single person has been charged with insurrection.”

● TX-35: Democratic state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer said Tuesday that he would seek re-election rather than run for the open 35th Congressional District, adding that he’d be involved in fighting the new gerrymander in court.

That announcement came weeks after the Republican legislature made a last-minute change to the congressional map that placed Martinez Fischer’s home in the 35th, a move he acknowledged was done at his request. However, a fellow state representative may have deterred him from running after all: Primary School writes that Martinez Fischer is an ally of Eddie Rodriguez, a fellow state representative who has filed paperwork for a campaign and has an announcement set for Wednesday morning.

● VA-07: Republican state Sen. Amanda Chase filed paperwork last week for a potential congressional bid, but the far-right legislator now says, “I’ve not officially announced and we won’t announce that until after the lines have been officially drawn because we don’t know where we’re going to land.”

● WI-03: Former CIA officer Deb McGrath said Tuesday that she was competing in the primary to succeed her fellow Democrat, retiring Rep. Ron Kind, in what is currently a swingy seat in southwestern Wisconsin. McGrath is the daughter of Al Baldus, a Democrat who was elected to a previous version of this district in 1974 and narrowly lost it six years later.

Legislatures

● NJ State Senate, Where Are They Now?: Democratic Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker has flipped a long-held GOP state Senate seat by defeating former Republican Rep. Michael Pappas 53-47 in the 16th Legislative District, which supported Joe Biden 60-38. This marks the latest defeat for Pappas, a one-term congressman whose brief moment in the political spotlight came in 1998 when he took to the House floor to deliver an ode to the special prosecutor probing the Clinton White House that began, “Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr / Now we see how brave you are.”

Mayors

● Atlanta, GA Mayor: Attorney Sharon Gay, who finished fourth in last week’s race for mayor with 7% of the vote, has endorsed City Councilman Andre Dickens in the Nov. 30 runoff.

Other Races

● Nassau County, NY Executive: Nassau County election officials have announced that they will start counting the nearly 20,000 absentees and 1,200 affidavit ballots on Monday. Republican Bruce Blakeman leads Democratic incumbent Laura Curran by about 12,000 votes, a margin of 52-48.

Obituaries

● Georgia Democrat Max Cleland, a triple amputee Vietnam veteran whose long career in politics concluded with his 2002 loss after serving a single term in the Senate, died on Tuesday at the age of 79. We’ll bring you a detailed look at Cleland’s electoral history, including the notorious campaign Republican Saxby Chambliss waged against him in his final race, in the next Digest.

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This week’s episodeThe Brief focused on dissecting lessons learned from last week’s elections, Biden’s falling approval ratings, and what Democrats can do to ensure they’re prepared for 2022 elections. Featured guests included Drew Linzer, director and chief scientist at Civiqs, and Daily Kos political director David Nir.

Coming off of a difficult election week in which Democrats lost the Virginia gubernatorial race and had a close call in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, the race to analyze what went wrong is at full tilt. Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas believes it could have something to do with turnout from the Democratic base. As he said, “We don’t have enough information to indicate whether those constituencies [that include people of color and suburban white voters] actually did turn out and vote at the same rate in 2020,” though he suspects they did not. Democrats will need strong turnout from their base to do well in 2022.

Daily Kos senior political writer Kerry Eleveld pushed back on this idea a little, explaining that “the idea that we’re going to be able to recreate Biden’s numbers in next year’s midterms [is not realistic] … I don’t know if it’s fair to compare a presidential election that included Donald Trump and turnout in that election … I don’t know that we can judge whether or not we had terrible turnout in an election where we at least improved by 200,000 more votes.”

Nir said that these results were to be expected and cautioned against jumping to too many conclusions about what they say about the strength of each party’s platform:

I have yet to see an election where partisans of all stripes don’t say that the results reinforce their preferred narrative. I think that the most likely answer is probably the most boring one and the most frustrating one, which is: We have seen time and time again, going back many decades, that the electorate turns against the party in power—and that’s defined as whoever holds the White House, because it’s the most visible symbol of power in this country—during off year elections … it’s a very predictable pattern; we’ve seen it in Virginia over and over again, and it’s almost certainly what happened here.

The reason it’s frustrating is … political scientists, researchers of all kinds don’t have a really good idea of what happens. They call it thermostatic opinion … going up and down. No one is quite sure why this happens. There are some vague theories, we can always imagine the grass always being greener. But it is simply a reality, and you ask, ‘What does it mean for 2022?’ And I say, ‘We can’t be naive, it’s not a good thing. But it’s also not a surprise. It’s not just in Virginia. We can look at midterms … there have been very few exceptions where the party in power has gained seats—that party almost always loses seats.’ So I don’t think Virginia told us anything we didn’t already know.

Eleveld asked Nir if he thought the outcome was any worse than usual.

“I do not think that it was any worse than usual, and I want to point to one particular result, which is that a third state had a statewide election [last] Tuesday. Pennsylvania had a race for the state Supreme Court … and Republicans won that race, but they won it by 1.5 points,” Nir said. “So the swing was really, really small in Pennsylvania … the Pennsylvania results tell me that things weren’t good, but they weren’t nightmarishly terrible.”

The group then turned to discuss the downward trend in Biden’s approval ratings.

Linzer noted that Biden’s low numbers should be an area of particular concern for Democrats, since if the president’s lackluster approval ratings continue, it could spell disaster for next year:

One week after another, it just keeps dropping bit by bit. And the lower it goes, the worse Democrats are poised to do in the next election. We have seen Independents moving away from Joe Biden … and young people are really moving away from Joe Biden, as are, to a certain extent now, voters of color. This doesn’t have to happen—there are reasons for it, and we’ve been doing polling on it—it does not mean good things for Democrats’ 2022 election chances.

Civiqs specifically polled registered voters recently to find out what they are satisfied with or dissatisfied with in their daily lives, with the idea to take the focus off of politicians and spotlight what everyday Americans are experiencing and feeling and thinking. In all, Linzer said, the poll included 16 aspects of American life—everything from gas prices to access to health care, race relations, and the state of our democracy. A few interesting patterns emerged:

Overwhelmingly, the most widespread problem and [biggest] source of dissatisfaction among Americans is the state of our democracy. Democrats, Republicans. Everyone feels that our democracy is not in the state it’s supposed to be. The cost of gasoline, consumer goods, healthcare. People are very dissatisfied with their savings and wealth inequality. These economic issues are peoples’ top issues right now. The lowest areas of concern … their jobs, their housing situation, even the direction of the pandemic. People are saying they’re satisfied with that stuff. But what they’re dissatisfied with now is prices, the costs, inequality, savings. And it’s driving discontentment.

“I wonder how much of that is Republicans’ ability to weaponize the economy?” Moulitsas wondered, noting how many conservatives are in a frenzy about oil prices even though they are currently similar to what they were when Trump was in office. “How much is that Republicans being better able to tap into consumer angst … or [is it just that] the party in power [gets] more blame? Is there something inherently better about conservatives’ ability to tap into economic anxiety?”

Nir offered a perspective on the importance of the progressive movement and its messaging to push back against false narratives coming from the right:

I think the real question is, why are Republicans so good at exploiting that and what can Democrats do to counter it? I think that this, frankly, gets to the core of the issue of why the progressive movement exists at all, and why sites like Daily Kos exist in the first place … We need our own progressive infrastructure to bring issues of importance to the American public … After the election results, my strong feeling was, ‘Democrats need to place the blame where it belongs on Republicans for prolonging the pandemic.’ … the answer to things like Republicans ginning people up over gas prices has to be that we create our own system of really putting the right issues in front of the American people and making them feel that it’s okay to be angry or upset about these things, and that there are things that should motivate them at the polls.

Americans’ dissatisfaction manifests in attitudes around race, the state of democracy in America right now, and how people are unhappy about that, Linzer added. “Your freedom to live your life how you want—a majority of Americans are dissatisfied … There is something about the cultural mindset right now. Maybe it’s about race, freedom, education, I’m not sure what it is. But people are feeling it, and it’s coming out in some of their more pessimistic views of politics right now.”

Nir also voiced concerns about the right’s use of critical race theory as a boogeyman to stoke fear and racial tensions among their base, pointing out that Democrats have yet to figure out a strong way to push back against the misinformation surrounding CRT: “I think what’s been so frustrating for Democratic activists is this term ‘critical race theory’ … The right is very good at coming up with code, and they’ve used this code word as something it doesn’t mean. It’s a more sophisticated code for ‘Let’s go, Brandon.’ … Democrats need to figure out something deeper than that to figure out why this particular weaponizing of racial fears is working so well.”

Eleveld noted that it was important to focus not only on critical race theory, as there was also a lot of anger about kids not being able to receive in-person instruction during the school year over the past 18 months. Moulitsas agreed, noting that critical race theory remains a dog-whistle issue.

Linzer noted that the fall in Biden’s approval ratings indicate a more general dissatisfaction with his approach:

A large number of people who were willing to vote for Joe Biden because they didn’t like Trump … and when Biden won that election, their support was still with him. I think that whatever hopes or expectations those voters have placed on Biden, I think that just, in a very gradual way, their withdrawal of support from him in our polling reflects them not having their expectations met. And the reason I focus on that is because there has not been any point in the polling where there’s been a sharp drop.

So people under 35 who voted for Biden initially supported him and are now unhappy, or at least indifferent, not willing to commit to saying they’re unhappy but just unsatisfied, and voters of color. My understanding of public opinion is that they expected more … more and more of them are not approving of the job that Biden is doing. The way to put a positive spin on this is that since the trend is gradual, Biden and congressional Democrats can change course, put focus on what peoples’ needs are right now.

Nir agreed, adding that “we need to focus on making sure our regular base voters turn out” and that Democrats’ messaging needs to extend beyond Trump, especially since one of the criticisms of Terry McAuliffe was that he was too focused on tying his GOP opponent, Glenn Youngkin, to the former president.

Looking toward potential solutions, Moulitsas asked Linzer and Nir for their thoughts on what Democrats can do to turn things around and retain control of Congress next year.

“Look at who supported Biden and Democrats last January and do things that those people want!” Linzer said.

Nir thinks Democrats need to go on the offensive: “Democrats just suck at keeping people angry and engaged over the issues that they should be. I would just like to see more relentless messaging like I said—go on the attack on COVID, but just go on the attack in general, and when they do pass Build Back Better, then they just have to relentlessly, relentlessly sell it.”

Before closing the show, Eleveld asked, “There’s plenty of misreporting and everybody’s got a narrative they’re trying to sell … what do you think is a thing that is either misunderstood or not focused on enough?”

Linzer thinks that there is an obvious, clear-cut solution that Democrats are not focusing on enough:

I think that the conventional wisdom doesn’t realize how bad things are for the Democrats right now, but I think that the conventional wisdom also doesn’t realize how much time is left and how much opportunity there is to turn things around … they think this country is on the wrong track, they think the economy is moving in the wrong direction … [hard times are] falling harder on young people, they’re falling harder on communities of color, they’re falling harder on independents—who are really up for grabs here. If the Democratic leadership can focus on these issues, then they can really do something.

You can watch the full episode here:

You can also listen to The Brief on the following platforms:

• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• Google Podcast

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Reuters:

Reuters unmasks Trump supporters terrifying U.S. election officials

For this report, Reuters set out to identify the people behind these attacks on election workers and understand their motivations. Reporters submitted public-records requests and interviewed dozens of election officials in 12 states, obtaining phone numbers and email addresses for two dozen of the threateners.

Reuters was able to interview nine of them. All admitted they were behind the threats or other hostile messages. Eight did so on the record, identifying themselves by name.

In those seven cases, law enforcement agencies were alerted by election officials to six of them. The people who made those threats told Reuters they never heard from police

Max Boot/WaPo:

Democrats can win the debate over critical race theory. Here’s how.

The absolute worst thing you can say is what McAuliffe said: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” At some level, he was right; there would be chaos if every teacher had to run every lesson plan by the parents of every student. But his comment came across as tone-deaf after parents had spent 18 months supervising their kids’ education at home — and stewing about shuttered classrooms. McAuliffe paid the price for not feeling parents’ pain.

It’s also not productive to argue, as many on the left have, that critical race theory, or CRT, isn’t being taught and that raising the issue is nothing but a dog whistle to racists. It’s true that “parental control” has become the new “states’ rights” — a deceptively anodyne slogan for tapping racist fears. It’s also true that even those who are most hysterical about CRT have trouble defining it. Fox News host Tucker Carlson just admitted: “I’ve never figured out what ‘critical race theory’ is, to be totally honest, after a year of talking about it.”

But as a practical, political issue, none of that matters. CRT might have started off as an esoteric academic theory about structural racism. But it has now become a generic term for widely publicized excesses in diversity education, such as disparaging “individualism” and “objectivity” as examples of “white supremacy culture” or teaching first-graders about microaggressions and structural racism. You don’t have to be a Republican to be put off by the incessant attention on race in so many classrooms.

Danny Barefoot/Twitter:

We’re starting out with some temperature checks to see where these voters are more generally before we dig into what drove them to Youngkin. 64% disapprove of Biden. 86% don’t want Trump to run again. 79% agree with the statement “Trump is a racist” 

We start out by asking what the most pressing issue is facing these women. One volunteers gas prices. Everyone shakes their heads in agreement. 

We ask who here would describe gas prices as negatively impacting their finances. 76% say gas prices are. 

This sorta naturally brings us to inflation. One of the Black women says her grocery bills have doubled (no way to fact check this and seems dubious but still her impression). 70% of participants say their grocery bills have gone up “significantly”

David Leonhardt/NY Times:

What Moves Swing Voters

A creative new poll tries to understand.

Political pundits often talk about swing voters as if they were upscale suburbanites, like “soccer moms” or “office-park dads.” And some are. But many are blue-collar. They are the successors to the so-called Reagan Democrats, who let Republicans win the White House in the 1980s and Democrats retake it in the 1990s.

This century, blue-collar swing voters helped elect Barack Obama twice, Donald Trump once and Joe Biden in 2020. They have also played a deciding role in congressional and state elections, including in Virginia last week.

In the current polarized political atmosphere, many college graduates follow politics obsessively — almost as if it were a sport — and identify with one of the two parties. Many working-class voters, on the other hand, vote for both parties and sit out some elections.

Figuring out what moves these swing voters is a crucial question in American politics. It has become an urgent question for the Democratic Party, which is struggling to win working-class votes in many places, including some Asian and Latino communities.

Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg:

Blame Virus and Economy for Biden Popularity Slump

The president’s approval rating keeps falling in polls, though not yet to historical levels. The reasons are hard to pinpoint, but timing provides clues.

Why has Biden’s popularity fallen? It’s hard to prove anything about such things; there are too many possibilities at play. But it’s certainly suggestive that the pandemic case count bottomed out in the first week of July, so Biden’s slide began right around the time that people started noticing that things were, once again, getting worse. And it continued as economic numbers deteriorated throughout the third quarter…

If the current plateau in Covid-19 case counts turns  out to be a blip on the way down, and if there is no significant winter wave, and if the recent jobs news and other economic indicators are evidence of a revived economy, we’ll have a test of this soon. The one thing I’d still doubt would be any conclusion that voters have already made up their minds against Biden for good. That’s one thing that the historical record strongly suggests doesn’t happen. Instead, the history of approval ratings says that Biden could recover all he’s lost, and more, if perceptions of the economy improve dramatically — or fall quite a bit more if they don’t.

Axios:

Why it matters: Republicans are weaponizing dissatisfaction around schools to shape elections. But when it comes to COVID issues specifically, the survey finds discontent is being driven by a vocal but small minority. Fewer than one in 10 parents said schools have done a “very poor job.”

Murad Antia/Tampa Bay Times:

Huh, so the economy performs better under Democratic presidents

Should pro-business Republicans consider changing their party?

What is clear is that there is zero evidence that tax cuts, deregulation, trickle-down economics — or whatever Republican policies were prior to Ronald Reagan — has led to superior economic growth. Republicans talk a good game, but as the old Wendy’s commercials asked, Where’s the Beef? Their pro-business, lower taxes, fewer regulations, or any of their prior policies have not translated into superior economic numbers. The proof of the pudding is in the data.

Lastly, the trade deficit was worse over the past four years (Trump) compared to the prior four years (Obama). What happened? The greatest dealmaker in history was going to win-win-win on trade deals. Didn’t happen. Given all these measures, I hope attendees at this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference switch their party affiliation. Pronto.

Sarah Binder/WaPo:

Three reasons Congress finally passed an infrastructure bill

And what happened to Build Back Better, the social and climate infrastructure bill?

So what led the House to pass the infrastructure bill at last? A cocktail of election surprises, lawmakers trying to avoid blame, and vexing Senate budget rules.

Magdi Semrau/WaPo:

Think Democrats can’t talk about race effectively? Biden shows why that’s wrong.

In 2020, Biden spoke candidly about systemic racism and grim episodes in American history — while also attracting swing voters. There’s a lesson there.

The presumption that frank discussions of racial inequity will backfire on Democrats neglects one recent, prominent example: President Biden, who during his campaign and since then has spoken with candor about the challenging topic. Given his electoral success, he offers an example other Democrats might consider emulating.

[examples from Biden speeches]

Democrats can do better — in part by learning from Biden. It’s easy to imagine, for example, how Biden would handle the issue of critical race theory — which was devised as a tactic for misleading voters about Democrats’ agenda and leaving a fog of negative connotations. He might dismiss it as “malarkey,” before moving on to more important issues.

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In the news today: No matter how grotesque the behavior of House Republicans has gotten—or how dangerous—they continue to have the apparent full support of their party leaders. Ever-odious Rep. Paul Gosar was nearly giddy in promoting a new animated clip depicting him attacking and killing a fellow member of Congress; that sort of thing would get you fired and quite possibly arrested in any other workplace in America. Republican leadership is also ignoring attacks by House Republicans on House Republicans who voted for the so-called “bipartisan” infrastructure bill—attacks with rhetoric that’s already led to death threats against their targets. A highly sought Republican candidate, in the meantime, was remarkably blunt in turning down his party’s calls to trade in his day job for a post in the current do-nothing hellscape that is the U.S. Senate.

Here’s some of what you may have missed:

• Paul Gosar isn’t as funny as he thinks after tweet prompts calls for censure

• McCarthy refuses to act as his deplorables try to get their colleagues killed

• New Hampshire governor declines Senate bid, crushing McConnell’s hopes

• Texas town’s first Black principal fired over CRT, which school district admits was never taught

• Secret recordings after Columbine show how the NRA developed its school shootings playbook

Community Spotlight:

• Q-Anon in Dallas and space aliens in Iceland

• For Progressives to win we must learn enough about Racism to stop using Republican talking points

Also trending from the community:

• Hospitalized for a month with COVID-19, man returns to apologize to ICU staff for being unvaccinated

• Daily Bucket: The sheltering beauty of Plum Island, Massachusetts

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It can be tough to separate the art from the artist, particularly when the artist has separated his own brain stem from his cerebral cortex. Such is the case with Irish rock legend Van Morrison, who’s embraced the COVID-19 death cult with the kind of vigor Donald Trump might embrace a big slab of rotisserie gyro meat in the bathroom stall of a Coney Island Greek restaurant at 3 AM on a random Tuesday.

Sadly, Morrison has followed in the footsteps of fellow rocker Eric Clapton, who has gone out of his way to denigrate basic public health measures in the wake of the worldwide COVID-19 crisis. And now Morrison appears to be in a wee bit of legal trouble for it. In other words, he just received some not-so-”Glad Tidings.”

Damn, I still love that song.

The Associated Press:

Northern Ireland’s health minister is suing Van Morrison after the singer called him “very dangerous” for his handling of coronavirus restrictions.

The Belfast-born singer opposes restrictions to curb the spread of the virus, and has released several songs criticizing lockdowns. He denounced Northern Ireland Health Minister Robin Swann during a gathering at Belfast’s Europa Hotel in June after a Morrison concert was canceled at the last minute because of virus restrictions.

The defamation suit relates to three incidents in which Morrison criticized Swann, calling him “a fraud” and “very dangerous.”

After Morrison released three songs criticizing public health restrictions—“No More Lockdown,” “Born to Be Free,” and “As I Walked Out”—Swann wrote an opinion piece for Rolling Stone last September. In the piece, Swann called Morrison’s claims about COVID-19 mitigation measures “bizarre and irresponsible.”

For example, in the song “No More Lockdown,” Morrison sang, “No more lockdown/No more government overreach/No more fascist bullies/Disturbing our peace/No more taking of our freedom/And our God-given rights/Pretending it’s for our safety/When it’s really to enslave.”

As a result of those lyrics and more, Swann accused Morrison of giving aid and comfort to the “tin foil hat brigade,” and encouraging the spread of their dangerous disinformation: 

Governments across the world are struggling to find the right path through this pandemic. It’s entirely right and proper to debate and question policies. It’s legitimate to ask if the right balance is being found in what is being done; if the right steps are being taken. None of this is easy or straightforward.

But Van Morrison is going way beyond raising questions. He is singing about “fascist bullies” and claiming Governments are deceiving people and wanting to “enslave.”

It’s actually a smear on all those involved in the public health response to a virus that has taken lives on a massive scale. His words will give great comfort to the conspiracy theorists – the tin foil hat brigade who crusade against masks and vaccines and think this is all a huge global plot to remove freedoms.

Swann’s lawyer, Paul Tweed, said legal proceedings “are at an advanced stage with an anticipated hearing date early in 2022.” Morrison’s attorney, Joe Rice, responded that “the words used by him related to a matter of public interest and constituted fair comment.”

I’m not sure how this kind of nonsense has seeped into the brains of people who I once admired, but it’s a disturbing development. Of course, it could be worse. If Donald Trump had succeeded in stealing the 2020 election, Dr. Anthony Fauci might have been fired and replaced with Joe Rogan’s podcast producer. I’m only sort of kidding. 

Let’s make sure that never happens, eh? 

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

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In the final vote count for the so-called “bipartisan” infrastructure bill now sailing towards President Joe Biden’s desk to become the law of the land, there were six Democratic “no” votes—all from a subset of House Democrats who Fox News considers equally interchangeable whenever it’s time to demonize the Democratic Party. They were Reps. Jamaal Bowman of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan—collectively known as “The Squad.”

I admit it’s almost impossible to fathom what these folks could possibly have in common that might raise the blood pressure of the average Fox News viewer, but after much deliberation I’ve tentatively concluded it must be their fiendish political skills. As it turns out, their refusal to vote for the “socialist” (BiF) bill on principle has apparently driven the remainder of the GOP caucus over the edge with apoplexy. Because by withholding their votes in a display of unison, they helped lure in 13 GOP House members to vote for the bill, rescuing the beleaguered Democratic president from floundering in the eyes of the American public.

In their rush to condemn the now-expanded Squad for its apparent apostasy in failing to support the bipartisan bill, many Democrats apparently overlooked a subtle but unmistakable consequence: The votes were obvious trade-offs that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had pocketed in full knowledge that enough Republicans who actually supported its provisions would end up supporting the bill, risking fallout to themselves and their own party in the process.

As reported by Aaron Blake, writing for The Washington Post:

Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed late Friday night and is headed for his signature after months of intense wrangling over the details — particularly whether it would be tied to a larger spending plan that progressives insisted upon passing alongside it. But in the end it wasn’t really those progressives who provided the key votes, but rather the 13 Republicans. The final vote count was 228 to 206, meaning if no Republicans had voted for the bill, it wouldn’t have passed.

The reaction from the vast majority of House Republicans was as predicable as it was vehement; Florida Man Rep. Matt Gaetz was no exception.

Others, such as Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, called the 13 Republican defectors “traitors” to their party. Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina declared that he would “primary the hell” out of anyone who voted for the infrastructure legislation. It’s not entirely clear how Cawthorn would carry out his threat, but since many of the defectors—such as Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania—occupy moderate “swing” districts, Democrats are doubtlessly applauding Cawthorn’s stated intentions.

The final vote also proved an embarrassment to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who had confidently predicted last week that he expected very few Republicans to vote for it, and that it would most certainly “fail” as a result. Blake quotes the right-wing National Review, which excoriated those Republicans for their “betrayal,” and accused them of “rescu[ing] Biden’s failed agenda.” That publication also suggested that the Republican caucus consider ousting McCarthy for his failure to keep his colleagues in line.

Meanwhile, the Squad can relax in the knowledge that each of its members voted exactly the way they always said they would. It’s not that they didn’t trust President Biden or Speaker Pelosi. It’s the simple fact that the understanding all along was that both infrastructure bills—the so-called “bipartisan” bill as well as the Build Back Better (BBB) bill—were always conceived as being executed in tandem, in order to prevent certain Democratic senators from backing out of the reconciliation package. This suspicion was amply confirmed early on by two Senate Democrats, Joe “Maserati” Manchin and his corporate sidekick, Kyrsten Sinema, both of whom broke faith with the original agreement (with Manchin in particular insisting that the bipartisan bill be voted on first and separately). After months of moving the goalposts at regular intervals, neither of those two erstwhile Democrats has ever committed themselves to the broader “human infrastructure” package, and there is legitimate speculation that both may still abandon it altogether. 

Ultimately, with Pelosi’s help, the Squad members are the ones who stood on principle, honoring the original agreement and doing exactly what they’d spent months telling their constituents they would do. They succeeded in bringing 13 Republicans under fire from the rest of the GOP caucus, while carefully allowing enough votes from the rest of the Progressive Caucus for the BiF to pass. In fact, one Republican House member who voted for the BiF expressly said she did it in order to see the Squad “sidelined:”

“I weakened their hand. They have no leverage now,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), who had shaped a GOP-friendly spin on her vote by the time she exited the chamber: “I voted against AOC and the squad tonight.”

Uh-huh. Meanwhile, President Biden has a huge win, and the GOP is going berserk at its own membership. If Manchin and Sinema continue to betray the Democrats on BBB, those six Squad members are going to look mighty prescient, and if the two conserva-Dems actually decide to come on board, the House has already extracted commitments from enough members to vote for BBB after the Congressional Budget Office scoring. If anything, the Squad should be getting high fives rather than criticism from the rest of the Democratic caucus. 

It was very, very well played.

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The Washington Post has published a quasi-profile of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It is a halfhearted attempt at pretending that the man who led the Republican Party to do nothing except deregulate and lower taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations while fostering the rabid bigotry of a disenfranchisement-fearing white voter base (which led to electing Donald Trump) is somehow in a weird place now. He’s the head of the minority party but the GOP’s base dislikes him now more than ever, in no small part because Donald Trump likes using him as a punching bag.

The story hinges on this concept: “Yet in the months since the Jan. 6 attack, a different portrait of McConnell has taken shape. At 79, safely reelected last year to a seventh term and in his 16th year as the Senate’s top Republican, McConnell is nonetheless increasingly playing the role of a conflicted and compromised booster of Trump’s interests — not a leader with his own vision.” What is this grand McConnell vision? According to the Post, it was his abilities at “leveraging chamber rules to thwart much of President Barack Obama’s agenda and to block judicial nominees, including a key Supreme Court seat.” Funny. That’s not a “vision,” that’s just an individual’s power grab using the most nihilistic machinations to achieve … what, exactly?

Buried in this strange profile is one interesting nugget of information. It points to McConnell’s greatest failure through the years: his 180-degree turnaround on the Voting Rights Act.

Campaign Action

McConnell has reportedly rewritten his ideological history. During an anniversary celebration for the Voting Rights Act in 2008, instead of speaking about how he had voted for Lyndon Johnson and had supposedly been frustrated by anti-civil rights political operatives in the late 1960s, he told the audience that what he had learned from Lyndon B. Johnson was how to “amass power and how to use it.” At least he has rewritten it to reflect that craven person he has become.

But probably the most telling tidbit about Mitch McConnell is the social media back-and-forth within his own family. His youngest daughter, Porter McConnell, a liberal-leaning, campaign director for Take on Wall Street, had this to say about the For the People Act (H.R. 1) in February.

“We need to pass #HR1 & fight like hell against these bills. Because if they win, we can kiss democracy goodbye for another generation.”

Two weeks later McConnell gave his response: “This is the worst bill I’ve observed in my time in the Senate.” 

Since that time, McConnell has done his best to try and take apart any meaningful voting rights legislation. Besides his normal fundraising schedule and frequent calls to Sen. Joe Manchin, McConnell’s biggest public statements in the past few months have attacked any attempts at coming to a nonpartisan agreement … on voting. The only end game here is oligarchical rule. 

The story points out how McConnell, who may or may not have been very angry about being the target of the MAGA mobs trying to take over the government on Jan. 6, 2021, received nothing in return for protecting Donald Trump. In fact, Trump described McConnell like this: “He’s a stupid person. I don’t think he’s smart enough.” Trump was reportedly talking about McConnell’s refusal to completely end the filibuster during his administration. Is Mitch McConnell not “smart enough”?

No, Mitch McConnell is just smart enough. But what the Post misses is that Mitch McConnell’s greatest blindspot, in his craven crawl to the top of his party, is that he has never had any true vision for anything more than his power. Because to have true vision as a leader, one must be able to see a world in which one no longer exists. 

In creating a world that demands individuals look out only for themselves with no regard for anyone or anything else, Mitch has helped to create a base of voters who don’t care about anyone but themselves. In fostering a fear-mongering and anger-baiting platform of completely impotent policies, Mitch has just created a voting base that will blindly follow whoever tells them it’s not their fault, and will attack whomever that false idol points at. McConnell is just reaping what he’s sown.

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As chair of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee, Sen. Maria Cantwell has a lot of work to do on nominations and not much time to do it. There are several weeks of purely concentrated hell before the Senate, starting when they return next week (they’re taking this week off) and then resuming again after they take the Thanksgiving week off. There’s the budget reconciliation bill for Build Back Better (BBB), which damn well better pass before the end of the year; the debt ceiling hike, which has to pass, preferably as part of BBB; and keeping the government open after Dec. 3 by funding it.

That’s not much floor time for nominations, and Cantwell has a few in front of her committee right now that can’t wait. Literally, they can’t wait because if she puts it off into next year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could revert to Republican control, which would not only be searingly embarrassing for everyone involved from President Joe Biden on down to her and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, but would be really bad for all of us, the consumers.

The story at the FTC right now is absolutely wild and really not the way any governing should be happening. A month ago, one of the Democratic commissioners on the panel, Rohit Chopra, left for his new job as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one week after he was confirmed in the new role and where he is already being amazing. His departure left the FTC with a 2-2 partisan split, but with his “zombie votes” outliving him.

He cast as many as 20 votes on upcoming commission actions before he left on Oct. 8—votes sent by email, because that’s a thing that can happen on the FTC. Under the FTC’s interpretation of its rules, commissioners can cast pre-votes and then move on, and those votes count toward making new policy. That’s how FTC Chair Lina Khan, who is using Chopra’s zombie votes to keep a Democratic majority, interprets the rules and how the FTC is moving forward with actions. So far just one of those votes has been used to approve a policy statement about mergers.

While the creativity involved in keeping this functional majority in place is to be commended—more Democrats need to act as brazenly in the pursuit of good as Republicans do to steal it all—it really isn’t a sustainable way to operate. There’s an expiration date on the zombie votes, for one thing, according to current and former FTC staffers who told Politico the vote can “remain in effect for up to two months.” Here’s how it works: “Any of the five commissioners can introduce a motion for a vote. If no one responds, the motion fails after a month. But if another commissioner seconds it, the motion can live on for another 30 days.”

That works for relatively inconsequential things, like agreeing to and sending out policy statements. But the FTC Democrats are opening themselves and the administration up to some big legal fights if they try to extend the zombie voting to any important regulatory action. Biden has an ambitious agenda for the FTC, included in his anti-trust executive order from July.

That includes working with the Department of Justice to enforce antitrust laws; protecting workers by banning or limiting noncompete agreements; banning unnecessary occupational licensing restrictions; preventing employers from collaborating to suppress wages or benefits; establishing rules for Big Tech on surveillance and the accumulation of data; and enforcing “right to repair” regulations to limit equipment manufacturers from restricting customers’ ability to either do DIY repairs or take their equipment to independent repair shops. Corporate America hates all this, the Republican-packed courts will hate all this. It’s already under threat from those courts—no point making the unforced error of giving them the excuse of opaque and questionable votes.

Biden nominated Alvaro Bedoya, a privacy expert who worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee and is the founding director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law, to that fifth seat in September. His exposés on the harms of facial recognition technology have helped usher the passage of facial recognition restrictions across the country, which led the National Institute of Standards and Technology to conduct the first comprehensive bias audit of facial recognition algorithms and paved the way for a federal law requiring bias testing in airport facial recognition systems, section 1919 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018. He would be an excellent addition to the commission.

As with the FCC nominations Biden finally made a few weeks ago, getting these nominations processed and appointments completed is essential by the end of the year. Without confirmation, acting Director Jessica Rosenworcel’s term will be over, and between that and a current Democratic vacancy for which Gigi Sohn has been nominated, the FCC would revert to Republicans.

The plans for the FCC are as critical as for the FTC. The broadband components of that sweeping anti-trust executive order called for a restoration of the 2015 net neutrality rules and encouraged the FCC to prevent internet service providers from making exclusive deals or collusive arrangements with landlords to shut out competition from other ISPs, leaving tenants with only one option.

It also asks the FCC to revive another Obama-era effort, a “Broadband Nutrition Label” that “provides basic information about the internet service offered so people can compare options,” increasing transparency and requiring providers to report prices and subscription rates to the FCC. The order also asks the FCC to limit excessive early termination fees that ISPs charge for people switching providers.

This stuff needs to happen and it needs to happen soon.