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Republicans overreach, fall on their faces in Ketanji Brown Jackson Supreme Court confirmation

The U.S. Supreme Court just became more diverse

President Joe Biden‘s historic campaign promise came to fruition yesterday, as the U.S. Senate confirmed Biden’s nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, as the first black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. The final vote was 53-47, including three Republicans. However, Jackson’s confirmation process revealed as much about the Republican Party as it did about the supremely qualified judge. It would be an understatement to say that Senate Republicans in particular made themselves look really bad.

Of course, in any Supreme Court confirmation process of the past 30 years or more, Republican Senators (as well as Democrats to some degree) can be expected to score political points and serve red meat to their respective bases, often with written statements and purported “questions” during the confirmation hearing that read like speeches. These statements frequently are turned into campaign ads and fundraising requests. This time, however, the Republicans took that tactic far into Bizarro Land, and shot themselves in the foot.

The “expensive gas is the price of freedom” meme is b.s.

Relevant sign once more

Vladimir Putin‘s Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused oil prices to skyrocket. That has in turn caused gasoline prices at the pump to increase sharply. This was entirely predictable. We are having yet another war over oil. Apparently the world has learned little since both Gulf Wars. Indeed, even Japan’s attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor over 80 years ago was largely over oil.

But some folks are saying that “expensive gas is the price of freedom.” This meme can be seen all over social media. For example:

Joe Biden wants bipartisanship — on his terms

President Biden speaking at the Port of Baltimore, November 2021

In his first State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Joe Biden talked about national unity, and called for bipartisanship between Democrats and Republicans. Biden has been making such appeals for some time. Indeed, Biden and other leading Democrats routinely call the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which Biden signed into law last November, the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” as Biden did again in his SOTU address, giving credit to Republicans as well as Democrats for its passage.

Given that Republicans generally are so uncooperative that some of them boycotted President Biden’s State of the Union address, and others even heckled Biden, why is Biden calling for bipartisanship? Several reasons come to mind:

Deploy the Liberal Shock Doctrine against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Solar power, a better alternative to fascist Russian gas

The Shock Doctrine is the idea that, when disasters or wars strike, conservatives try to use the events to push their existing agenda, such as privatization of important government functions, in response. Republicans have foisted such policies in places as far-flung as Iraq and New Orleans. We have argued that, in turn, Democrats should institute their policies, i.e. a Liberal Shock Doctrine, when they are in power and disasters and wars occur. That might include, for example, stronger gun safety laws after the shock of a mass shooting, or the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, including government stimulus payments and other federal aid, which Congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden successfully brought about in 2021 after Donald Trump‘s inaction in the face of the COVID pandemic plunged the U.S. into a recession in 2020.

Russia‘s shocking and tragic invasion of Ukraine presents another opportunity for the United States, and countries around the world, to create a liberal version of the Shock Doctrine. First, countries can promote the idea of democracy (which is well-represented by Ukraine) instead of fascist dictatorship, exemplified by Russia and Vladimir Putin. But in addition, there is one specific policy that the U.S. and the world should be pushing right now:

Democrats use MLK Day to push for voting rights

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, Washington, DC

Every year on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we hear platitudes from politicians honoring the fallen civil rights leader. At least Democrats mean their praise of Dr. King sincerely; Republicans clearly do not. Indeed, according to one recent poll, a majority of Republicans do not even think MLK Day should be a national holiday. But yesterday, many Democrats took an effective extra step: they linked Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with voting rights. Specifically, Democrats, including Dr. King’s own children, cited MLK Day to call for passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that has been passed by the U.S. House and is currently pending before the U.S. Senate.

Such linkage between MLK Day and voting rights, for example was all over Twitter:

The Republicans’ War on America

Republican attack on U.S. Capitol

In his February 2021 annual letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett, considered to be the most successful investor of all time, wrote:

Our unwavering conclusion: Never bet against America.

However, looking back at 2021, the Republican Party certainly failed to heed Mr. Buffett’s advice. The Republicans bet against America when they disbelieved and then tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. They bet against America when they incited, supported and funded a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol that was designed to stop the certification of Electoral Votes for then President-elect Joe Biden. They bet against America when they fought, and continue to fight, against sensible COVID protections such as masks, vaccinations, school accommodations, and social distancing. And they bet against America when they side with one of our most dangerous global opponents, Russia, to hurt American democracy.

Surely, the Republicans’ War on America presents some stark campaign fodder for the 2022 elections.

Senator Joe Manchin, worse than a Republican

Sen. Joe Manchin and his Maserati

Last weekend, the U.S. Senate adjourned for the rest of 2021, without passing the Democrats’ signature Build Back Better bill that the U.S. House passed on November 19. Much of the blame for the lack of Senate passage of Build Back Better lies with Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who cynically kept moving the goalposts on what it would take to win his vote, until ultimately he declared that he would not vote for the bill at all.

Of course, Republican Senators were not going to vote for Build Back Better, because it is a Democratic bill that helps President Biden and elected Democrats politically, and helps millions of people across the United States. That means that all 50 Democratic Senate votes (plus, most likely, the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris) would have been needed to pass the bill. And Senator Manchin had at least been going through the motions of negotiating over the Senate bill for weeks, repeatedly proposing cuts to various spending portions and whittling the bill down in size. However, every time an item got cut based on Manchin’s objections, Manchin would name new items that were obstacles to getting his vote, including everything from paid family leave to methane emissions to taxes. Manchin then complained that the bill itself would add to inflation, when in fact experts said the opposite. It eventually became apparent that nothing was going to get Manchin’s vote.

Internet finally blows up over January 6 U.S. Capitol attack

Scene of the Trump crime

Republican Mark Meadows is in the lead to be this week’s Villain of the Week, although he has competition from cohorts such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham of Fox “News,” and as always, Donald Trump. That’s because, after many months of the mainstream media ignoring or downplaying the January 6, 2021 terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol that sought to overturn the election of Joe Biden as President, regular folks finally got fed up enough to light up the airwaves and share incriminating information about the Republicans.

In particular, word got around very quickly on Tuesday, by a vote of 222-208, the U.S. House of Representatives held Meadows in criminal Contempt of Congress. The vote took place after Meadows, a former Republican Congressman and White House Chief of Staff to Trump, who had originally cooperated with the House Committee, suddenly stopped cooperating, defying a subpoena to appear for a deposition, and indeed sued the committee and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attempting to defeat the subpoena for both his deposition and phone records. Before that happened, Meadows had turned over to the Committee a Republican PowerPoint presentation recommending Trump to declare a “National Security Emergency” in order to remain in the presidency rather than turn over power to Biden on Inauguration Day. Meadows had also given the committee text messages he received on January 6 while serving as Trump’s Chief of Staff, including ones from Hannity, Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade of Fox, and several from Donald Trump, Jr. These texts all had the same desperate tone, begging Meadows to get Donald Trump to stop the insurrection at the Capitol. For example, one of Ingraham’s texts read:

Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.

Likewise, Hannity’s January 6 text to Meadows, talking about Trump, was:

Can he make a statement? … Ask people to leave the Capitol.

It’s a Biden Boom: share the news

The Biden Boom

One of the most important stories of 2021 is one that does not get told enough: the Biden Economic Boom. Specifically, in less than 11 months, following the Trump Recession in which millions of jobs were lost, President Joe Biden has presided over a historic economic and jobs recovery. This includes:

–Extraordinary economic growth, estimated to be 7.8 percent this year.

–Income, wage and salary growth all way above the figures for 2018 and 2019.

–Unemployment falling from 6.3 percent in January 2021 (Donald Trump‘s last month in office) to just 4.2 percent last month, a historic drop in such a short time. And jobless claims just hit a new 52-year low.

Indeed, The Hill calls this “the fastest economic recovery in history.”

Moreover, the Biden Boom is no accident, but rather, a result of the Biden administration’s phenomenal efforts to vaccinate Americans against COVID; the American Rescue Plan which put money in the pockets of many Americans; and now the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (which may soon be followed by the Build Back Better Act). It turns out that Americans really do like competence in government, or what we call Good Government, and that is part of the Democratic Party’s brand.

Messaging Maxim #9: Call out the Straw Man

Thanksgiving dinner with a side of Straw Man?

If your Thanksgiving dinner included any lively political discussion, chances are someone brought up a Straw Man argument. This is a type of logical fallacy whereby:

someone takes another person’s argument or point, distorts it or exaggerates it in some kind of extreme way, and then attacks the extreme distortion, as if that is really the claim the first person is making.

In the political arena, Republicans often use the Straw Man against Democratic proposals by making false, overbroad generalizations about the proposals, and then going after the fictional scenario they just concocted. For example, President Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats have proposed, in the Build Back Better legislation that was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, to raise income taxes only on households with over $400,000 annual income. Indeed, many Americans would see lower taxes under the Democratic proposal. But you are hearing Republicans say instead that President Biden and the Democrats want to raise taxes on “middle class Americans.” A similar Republican Straw Man from the past is the PolitiFact Lie of the Year 2010 that President Barack Obama‘s Affordable Care Act was “a government takeover of healthcare,” when in fact the law left our private healthcare and health insurance systems in place. Note that such Straw Man arguments often feed existing political narratives, such as the Republican narratives that Democrats favor “Big Government” and “higher taxes.”