We begin today’s roundup with Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s piece at The Atlantic on Republican leader Mitch McConnell and the filibuster:
The filibuster is in trouble. President Joe Biden has come out in favor of reforming it, and Democrats in the Senate are weighing alternatives. But the strongest sign that its days are numbered is that the Republican leader Mitch McConnell is threatening Armageddon if the other party touches it. No one presently—or perhaps ever—in the Senate has practiced the dark art of obstruction as relentlessly as the current minority leader. And the Kentucky senator’s most effective weapon, requiring 60 votes for virtually everything the opposing party wants to do, has been the filibuster. Democrats can propose legislation that voters strongly support—a higher minimum wage, a path to citizenship for Dreamers, background checks for gun purchasers, safeguards for Americans’ ability to cast ballots—and McConnell can strangle it off camera with a minimum of notice or fuss.
Joan Walsh at The Nation writes about the Republican attacks on voting rights:
...Cruz did sound one truthful alarm: If Democrats achieve their goal of easier voter access with HR 1, “they will win and maintain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate and of the state legislatures for the next century.” Cruz is exaggerating, but his claims is premised on fact: Republicans do worse when voting access expands, and better when they can suppress it. That’s why GOP lawmakers have proposed, according to the Brennan Center, 250 voter-restriction bills in 43 states since Trump’s defeat. Is there any room for compromise with Democrats, someone asked Cruz on the ALEC call. “No,” he said. [...]
Republicans intend to fight even harder to block HR 1, and the Democrats’ entire voting rights agenda. If it passes—it’s still got a tough road through the Senate because of filibuster rules—Americans will become addicted to free and fair voting, and Republicans will be as endangered as their repeal-ACA crusade. Existential threats to the GOP, if nothing else, apparently scare Cruz into telling the truth.
At The New Yorker, David Rohde discusses the moves Attorney General Merrick Garland can take to hold Trump accountable:
Garland’s January 6th dilemma is a microcosm of the one that Joe Biden faces. Should the Attorney General adopt an aggressive approach, vigorously investigate the former President and his associates, and crack down on far-right groups and militias? Or should he follow a more cautious path, try to appeal to centrists, and avoid stoking far-right conspiracy theories regarding overreach by the federal government? A core part of Trump’s political project was the discrediting of the idea that nonpartisanship is even possible. In his dark vision of public life, nonpartisan public servants, from public-health experts to prosecutors, were politically biased, incompetent, or corrupt. Gillers told me that he hoped Garland would prove to be a “legal romantic” who “truly believes” that “law is a distinct space, with its own methodology and responsibility, and it must be divorced from political considerations.”
A federal criminal investigation is a comparatively blunt instrument, but it is the last, best route to uncovering the truth about one of the most violent attempts to overthrow a Presidential-election result in American history. During his confirmation hearing, Garland said, of the siege, “This was the most heinous attack on the democratic processes that I’ve ever seen, and one that I never expected to see in my lifetime,” and vowed to pursue leads “wherever they take us.” The risks for the new Attorney General, though, are significant. Justice Department prosecutors could struggle to find enough evidence to prove a conspiracy beyond reasonable doubt. Stone, other Trump associates, and Trump himself have adeptly operated in legal gray areas for decades.
Jeffrey Rosen at The Atlantic writes about mob violence and the January 6th insurrection:
with many people continuing to embrace the false belief that the 2020 election was stolen, the question of whether and when online extremism will veer into mob violence again remains an urgent political concern. But where is the line between illegitimate mob violence and a legitimate act of political protest?
As it happens, this was a question the Founders thought about extensively. Their political and moral philosophy was based on what they considered a self-evident truth: Only by using our powers of reason to moderate our selfish, ego-based passions and emotions can we achieve the classical virtues—prudence, temperance, justice, and courage—necessary for personal and political self-government. A mob, by contrast, is animated by vices: rashness, self-indulgence, vulgarity, vanity, ambition, boastfulness, buffoonery, and envy, as listed by Aristotle. These are just the sort of traits inculcated online, with likes and clicks rewarding the worst of human instincts.
On a final note, Jonathan Chait describes how disingenuous the arguments against D.C. statehood are:
When Republicans attempt to make principled arguments against statehood, they usually grasp for some distinction between the district’s demographic character and that of the 50 current states. Last year, Senator Tom Cotton argued that Wyoming is deserving of statehood but D.C. is not, because the former “has three times as many workers in mining, logging, and construction and ten times as many workers in manufacturing.” Did the Founders believe resource extraction is a key qualification for representation? Would any modern theorist of democracy argue that people with jobs in mining or logging deserve political rights that should be denied to shopkeepers or cab drivers? The question answers itself.