This Week in Politics
Masks are back; Kevin McCarthy's misstep, and it's finally Infrastructure Week!
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If someone sent you this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to become a paid subscriber: you can sign up here.
As you can perhaps tell from the picture above … I’m on vacation this week. But there’s so much happening in the news that I felt a catch-up post was necessary.
And yes, I will be hosting a Zoom chat tomorrow at 12:30 to discuss the week’s political events. Link will go out tomorrow morning for paid subscribers.
Masks Are Back
Earlier this week, I had a column at MSNBC Daily making a case for vaccine mandates:
If people want to make the choice not to protect themselves, they can do so. It’s a free country after all, as many of those arguing against vaccination are quick to remind us. But there are also consequences for our choices.
Want to see a movie or play, eat in a restaurant, hear a concert, shop at the mall, visit a museum or board a train or a plane? Then get vaccinated and be prepared to show proof of it. Otherwise, be prepared to miss out on those experiences.
I feared that the ongoing spike in COVID-19 cases would lead to an imposition of mask mandates …
Since unvaccinated people cannot be trusted under the honor system to wear a mask in indoor settings, the rest of us have to go back to the way things were before vaccines became readily available.
Why should the Americans who have done the right thing for themselves, their families and their communities be forced to sacrifice on behalf of those who act as though their “personal choices” have no consequences?
… And here we are. Yesterday, the CDC called on Americans in areas with high levels of COVID transmission to again wear masks inside (about 63% of all counties in America). As Caitlin Owens points out in Axios, “The Biden administration is essentially asking vaccinated Americans to help save the unvaccinated from themselves.”
Like my fellow vaccinated Americans, I am at little risk of testing positive for COVID. Even if I do, the chances are incredibly low that I will become seriously ill. Nonetheless, I will wear my mask. But I’m not happy about it. Close to 70 percent of Americans are vaccinated and, yet, the burden is being put on us for the reckless, irresponsible, and selfish behavior of others. They are the ones who need to suffer the consequences.
That we are 16 months into a pandemic that has killed more than 610,000 Americans, and we are still dealing with people who refuse to get a vaccine that has a near 99 percent effectiveness rate is enough to make me pull my hair out, toss my laptop out the window and beat my now bald head against a wall. I’m so done with all this. If you’re not vaccinated, get vaccinated. If you don’t want to get vaccinated …
McCarthy’s Misstep
Last week, I wrote that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to kick Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection “was a political gift to Republicans.”
“This move,” I wrote, “makes it easier for the GOP to argue to their supporters that the investigation is partisan — and ultimately, the perception among Republican voters is what matters to them most. No Republican, not even Jordan, wanted anything to do with an investigation of January 6, and now they don’t have to.”
But after watching yesterday’s first hearing of the committee — featuring testimony from four police officers who fought off protesters during the insurrection — I’m not so sure anymore.
It’s not just that the hearings packed an emotional wallop or that they laid bear the responsibility of Donald Trump for the violence on January 6; it’s that Republicans had no ability to push back on the Democratic narrative. And it’s going to be that way for the next several weeks. Witness after witness will testify, and they will tell a story that will almost certainly help Democrats and make Republicans look bad. And make no mistake, these hearings will get plenty of press coverage.
I’m not sure if that will have a significant political impact on Democrats because opinions about January 6 are, for the most part, baked in. But it certainly isn’t going to help the GOP. Republicans got their wish and are not going to participate in the insurrection investigation, but sometimes in politics, you have to be careful what you wish for.
Don’t Mess With Texas
On Tuesday night, there was a special election in Texas, and Donald Trump had a lousy night. The candidate he threw his weight behind in the Republican primary, Susan Wright, was defeated by Jake Ellzey. Wright is yet another GOP candidate, endorsed by Trump, who fell short. One might conclude from this election that Trump’s endorsement is perhaps not all it’s cracked up to be. Not so fast.
Though Trump didn’t back him, Ellzey was just as pro-Trump as Wright. So voters could ignore Trump’s endorsement and still support a candidate on the same page as the former president. If Ellzey had been anti-Trump, I’m not so sure he would have done as well.
Don’t get me wrong, most Republicans will want Trump’s support, but what they are truly terrified of is getting his “dis”-endorsement. For the Liz Cheney’s and Adam Kinzinger’s of the world, they’re in trouble in their House primaries not just because Trump’s backing someone else in their race, but because he will attack them directly. Voting for Cheney will be, in effect, a vote against Trump, and in the modern GOP, that is a bad place to be. So if you’re expecting Republicans to change their obsequiousness toward Trump because of Susan Wright’s defeat … think again.
It’s Finally Infrastructure Week!
Yes, it finally happened — the bipartisan Senate infrastructure caucus finally reached a deal on a $1 trillion infrastructure package. The shocking part is not that the 5 Republicans and 5 Democrats hammered out an agreement (though it is a bit surprising); it’s that Senate Republicans didn’t filibuster the deal in a procedural vote on Wednesday evening. This is a reversal of 12 years of GOP strategy to obstruct and block every major Democratic initiative. Hell, even Mitch McConnell joined 16 other Republicans in supporting the measure. So what is going on here?
First, it appears that a small number of Republican Senators (Murkowski, Collins, Romney, Portman, and Cassidy) wanted to accomplish something. For Murkowski and perhaps Cassidy, there is some political benefit in spearheading a massive infrastructure bill and bringing home bacon to their constituents. Still, for the others, the benefits are less clear. Portman, for example, is retiring. Collins just won reelection. But none of these 5 have larger presidential ambitions, and perhaps they all decided that mindlessly opposing Joe Biden is not what they were elected to do. Novel, isn’t it?
Second, once these five signed on to an agreement, it became that much more difficult for the rest of the Senate GOP caucus to filibuster the legislation. Doing so would not only harm their own members, but since other Republicans had signed on to the agreement, it would leave little doubt as to who was to blame for killing it.
Third, in the background of these negotiations was the threat from Democrats to scrap the bipartisan bill and shove everything into a budget reconciliation package that could be passed with 50 Democratic votes and Vice President Kamala Harris serving as tie-breaker. So this was a bit of a “heads Democrats win and tails Republicans lose” situation. Either way, Congress was likely to pass a massive infrastructure bill. But by not filibustering it, Republicans can at least take a modicum of credit for it.
Whatever the rationale for Republicans in letting this pass, this is a massive win for Joe Biden and the Democrats. Biden fulfills his campaign promise to work with Republicans and get something done in a bipartisan manner. Democrats like Manchin and Sinema get to burnish their moderate bonafides. By signing off on a deal that is less than what they wanted, liberals get leverage in the coming talks on what is shaping up to be an absolutely massive budget reconciliation package. Speaker Pelosi has already demanded that the budget bill be passed in concert with the bipartisan infrastructure package, which means that Manchin and Sinema cannot kill the larger package if they want theirs to pass. In the end, Democrats are likely to get north of $4 trillion in new spending on infrastructure, climate change resilience, health care, and a host of social safety net programs paid for with tax increases on the wealthiest Americans. And for part of it, they will have the support of Republicans.
As a wise man once said …
What’s Going On?
Very smart take by Josh Marshall on Kyrsten Sinema’s performative centrism.
A helpful reminder from Aaron Carroll that the current spike in COVID cases is almost uniformly affecting the unvaccinated.
Cross the Ozarks off my list of places to visit … ever.
This is a fantastic piece of writing from Dan Barry.
There are many awful, cynical politicians in Washington, but Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik takes the cake. She is not a dumb person (she went to Harvard), and when she first ran for office, she positioned herself as a moderate. Yet here she was on Tuesday claiming that Nancy Pelosi bears responsibility for the events of January 6 (in the same speech, she also called Pelosi an “authoritarian.”) Stefanik almost certainly knows this is not true. But, for the most cynical of political reasons, she is spouting this nonsense. She knows it’s what Republican voters and the former president want to hear. She is pathetic.
Yay death!
Musical Interlude
You really can’t ever go wrong with a 1971 Grateful Dead show. Keyboardist Keith Godchaux didn’t join the group until the Fall of that year, and Pig Pen is barely evident on these recordings, outside the songs he sings. Drummer Mickey Hart left the band in February after his father embezzled $70,000 from the band. So for a brief period, the Dead were more or less a four-piece, and the result is a more straightforward rock sound. These shows kill and while people understandably gravitate to the phenomenal February shows from that year in Port Chester, New York, I love this one from the Yale Bowl on July 31. The Playin —> Dark Star —> Birdsong triad is a notable highlight, but I also love the rocking “Bertha” and achingly beautiful “Sing Me Back Home.” Enjoy!
Though not my first show. 07.31.71 was my Road to Damascus moment. The 31st was a Saturday in '71, too.