Dave A Hopkins/blog:
Trump's War with Congress Is Just Getting Started
But salvaging what's left of the GOP's legislative agenda will still require extensive collaboration and cooperation between Congress and the White House. Unfortunately for Republicans, this relationship has been deteriorating rapidly over the past few weeks. The failure of health care reform in the Senate prompted a series of critical remarks from Trump, who also unsuccessfully demanded the abolition of the legislative filibuster. During the Senate health care debate, a member of Trump's cabinet threatened Senator Lisa Murkowski with retribution against her home state of Alaska if she did not support the ACA repeal plan backed by the White House. (She cast a decisive vote against it.)
Republican members of Congress have likewise become more open in distancing themselves from the president. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley publicly warned Trump not to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Senate Finance Committee chair Orrin Hatch rejected Trump's demands that Republicans continue to work on hammering out a health care bill, and Senator Jeff Flake published a bookcontaining sharp criticism of Trump. On Monday, Mitch McConnell blamed Trump for creating unrealistic expectations about the ability of Congress to quickly deliver significant legislative achievements ahead of "artificial deadlines"—even though McConnell himself had promised swift action on the party agenda during the Republican retreat in January. McConnell's remarks, in turn, provoked sharp counterattacks from White House aide Dan Scavino and Trump loyalist Sean Hannity.
Though Trump critics wish for an even less deferential Congress, this is still a very unusual degree of tension between two branches under control of the same party—especially since the Trump presidency is barely six months old. And it's about to get worse.
Betsy Woodruff/Daily Beast:
The ‘No-Nonsense’ Judge Who Could Decide Trump’s Fate
Judge Beryl Howell might be on her way from behind-the-scenes player to household name.
Robert Mueller may be the face of the independent investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election, but a cybersecurity wonk on the federal bench may help decide Trump & Co.’s fate.
Simon Maloy/The Week:
Paul Ryan is about to bang right into the debt ceiling
Because D.C. is a terminally stupid place that is powered by ridiculous acts of political theater, Ryan responded to Boehner's magnanimity by attacking the outgoing speaker and saying nasty things about the budget deal (while also making it clear that the deal would pass). Promising a break with the Boehner era, Ryan said that the debt limit would be dealt with differentlythe next time. "Under new management, we are not going to do the people's business this way," he said. "As a conference we should have been meeting months ago to discuss these things, to have a unified strategy going forward."
Well, guess what? The time Boehner bought for Ryan has just about run out, and Ryan — promises to have a "unified strategy" notwithstanding — is about to blunder into another debt-limit crisis just like his predecessor did.
Some great (different) perspectives on Democratic infighting:
Briahna Joy Gray/Current Affairs:
HOW IDENTITY BECAME A WEAPON AGAINST THE LEFT
There are therefore both principled and pragmatic reasons why people on the left might be skeptical of a [Kamala] Harris candidacy. There’s a serious question about whether Harris can be counted on to advance progressive values when doing so might require political sacrifices. But there’s also a question of strategy: from a leftist perspective, it’s unwise to run yet another presidential candidate whose ties to banks could make them “untrustworthy” in an era of low public trust in elected officials. Given the crushing defeat of November 2016 (which was all but predicted by certain insightful progressives), it would seem obviously beneficial for the Democratic Party to listen to progressive criticism early and adapt candidates and their messaging accordingly.
Yet progressive critiques of Harris were met with swift and unyielding hostility. After a Mic article documented the lack of left-wing enthusiasm for a Harris candidacy, investigative journalist Victoria A. Brownsworth suggested that a better headline for the article would be: “Kamala Harris, biracial senator and former Attorney General of the most populous state, faces misogynist white men defaming her.” (This despite the fact that every critic quoted in the piece was female, and one was a woman of color.) Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden, a close Clinton ally and frequent defender of the Democratic Party, declared she found it “odd” that “these folks” (meaning Bernie Sanders supporters) “have [it] in for Kamala Harris and Cory Booker” in particular. “Hmmmm,” she said, implying that criticisms of Harris and Booker were racially motivated. MSNBC host Joy Ann Reid said the Mic article simply reported the opinions of “3 alt-left activists,” “alt-left” being a term used to brand leftists as racist analogues of the neo-Nazi alt-right. In Cosmopolitan, Brittney Cooper wrote that the left in general, but in particular the “Sanders Left,” “has a black-woman problem,” a charge I’ve addressed elsewhere. Cooper said that those criticizing Harris “think that black women who care about establishment politics lack vision” and that the debate “isn’t about Harris, but about the emotional and political labor that black women are expected to do to save America’s soul.” “Angry white Sanders voters,” she said, must “get off [Harris’s] back.” In large part, responses to skepticism about Harris have simply dismissed the substance of the analysis, instead suggesting a “targeting” of Harris because of her gender and/or race.
The above is long and good (and good and long). Don’t miss David Dayen on this, either.
And lest you think the left is the only group talking identiy politics:
That piece is so bad it left me speechless.
Michael Tomasky/Daily Beast:
The Voices on the Left Who Said Clinton Was as Bad as Trump Helped Get Us ‘Fury and Fire’
The world rooted in the conviction that Democrats and liberals, not Republicans and conservatives, are the real enemies of progress helped elect this guy president.
WaPo:
The high-profile stars of the Democratic Party’s populist wing have steered the agenda their way on Capitol Hill this year, but the fight over the party’s direction is far from settled.
As the party faces great expectations of big gains in the 2018 midterms, Democratic centrists are increasingly worried that the disproportionate share of attention shown to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the agenda pushed by his anti-establishment allies will do more harm than good.
That direction, the thinking goes, will energize liberals in places that Democrats are already winning by big margins. But it might drive away the voters needed to win inland races that will shape the House majority and determine which governors and state legislators are in charge of redrawing federal and state legislative districts early next decade.
Enter a group called New Democracy, a combination think tank and super PAC trying to reimagine the party’s brand in regions where Democrats have suffered deep losses.
NY Times:
Democratic Fight in California Is a Warning for the National Party
But in recent weeks, California Democrats have emerged as something else: a cautionary tale for a national party debating how to rebuild and seize back power. Even at a time of overall success, state Democrats are torn by a bitter fight for the party leadership, revealing the kind of divisions — between insiders and outsiders, liberals and moderates — that unsettled the national party last year and could threaten its success in coming years.
“What we are seeing in California is similar to what we are seeing on the national level,” said Betty T. Yee, the Democratic state controller. “If we don’t do our work to really heal our divide, we are going to miss our chance to motivate Democrats.”
The above is a reminder that most people don’t care a fig about ‘fairness of the process’. It’s about whether they won or not. And when you lose, not accepting the loss can be horribly divisive. So it goes.
Unless, of course, you are a conservative. See Maximilian Kasy:
Much normative (or value-based) reasoning by liberals (and mainstream economists) is about the consequences of political actions for the welfare of individuals. Statements about the desirability of policies are based on trading off the consequences for different individuals. If good outcomes result from a policy without many negative consequences, then the policy is a good one. When Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) remarked on the Affordable Care Act this spring, for example, she said, “I feel strongly that when we’re talking about our sick, when we’re talking about our poor … and we’re talking about something that would deny those in need with the relief and the help that they need, that they want and deserve, it does put in place a question about our moral values.” In other words, if a policy will harm the welfare of individuals in need, it’s a bad policy.
Meanwhile, much conservative normative reasoning is about procedures rather than consequences. For example, as long as property rights and free exchange are guaranteed, the outcome is deemed just by definition, regardless of the consequences. People are “deserving” of whatever the market provides them with. For instance, Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) seemed to center the idea of unfairness in his argument against the Affordable Care Act: “The idea of Obamacare is,” he said, “that the people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick.”
and after discussing estate/death traxes:
Not all political debates are so clear cut as this example. But they all require both facts and values from both liberals and conservatives. Instead of bemoaning other’s intransigence and ignorance of facts, it would often be more productive to reflect on our different value assumptions, and to devise corresponding ways of arguing.
Michael S. Sparer writing at Vox:
Now that the Affordable Care Act seems likely to survive the Republican effort to repeal and replace it (for now), many liberals are mobilizing around the idea of a “single-payer” insurance system, built off Medicare, the federal program that now covers the aged and disabled. Among the liberal luminaries who have signed on or expressed support are US Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris.
I have a better idea: Medicaid for more! Contrary to the rhetoric on Capitol Hill, Medicaid, not Medicare — or, for that matter, the ACA exchanges — offers the most plausible path to an American version of affordable universal coverage.
Medicaid has grown incrementally and continuously since the late 1980s, under both conservative Republican and liberal Democratic administrations. That pattern continues today, and more than a dozen Republican governors have been fighting to protect Medicaid expansions created by the ACA.
A reminder that Medicare is far from the only way to do this health coverage expansion thing. Downside is providers get paid very little and won’t want this.
Why? Because Medicaid reimburses providers (particularly office-based physicians) far less than private insurers (and less than Medicare as well). While some provider complaints about inadequate reimbursement are legitimate, we should be at least as concerned with the high price paid by private insurers as with the low price paid by Medicaid.
That argument won’t win over providers. It might be an argument they/we need to lose, but be clear about it.