The two most important things to know about Joe Manchin:
1. Without him, we don’t have the Senate right now. IOW, without him, many of the good things that Biden has done (and there are tons of them) would not exist. Right now, if Manchin didn’t exist, the Senate would be holding hearings about Hunter Biden 24/7. Manchin is a unicorn — no other Democrat would win in W. Virginia right now. If he wasn’t the Senator from W. Virginia we would have a second Shelley Capito (R). Manchin could switch to the Republican party at any minute. You know McConnell has offered him the moon and stars if we would do it. And he hasn’t. So to reiterate, without Joe Manchin we would not have the Senate and we would not have had the COVID relief bills, the great budgets we have had, and the amazing infrastructure bill. We would not have a Black woman Supreme Court Justice. The list goes on and on…. Joe Manchin is saving us.
2. Joe Manchin is never going to vote with us every time we need him. He is Lucy with that G-damn football. He will promise and promise and string us along time after time and then we will pull the ball. Don’t fall for it. It is a shit move and he does it again and again. It is awful. How often have we watered down bills and spent months and months of time trying to get things done to have him pull things at the last minute? The list goes on and on…. Joe Manchin is destroying us.
Both of these things are simultaneously true. We don’t have anything with Manchin and we don’t get anything with Manchin. It is maddening.
What do we do about it? We eliminate point 1 and point 2. We elect more democrats to the Senate.
The only way to make the second half of Biden’s term successful is to make Manchin’s vote irrelevant. We need two more seats so we can stop bowing to Manchin and Sinema (Sinema we can also primary when the time comes, but that is another story).
We need to fight against the long odds and increase our lead in the Senate and also maintain the house. Nothing is more important.
What can you do?
I set up a place where we can donate and the funds will be distributed evenly between the tossup House and Senate races. Think of it as a one stop shop for using your $$$ to save democracy. Here is the link:
Other things you can do to increase the amount of good that can happen:
And don’t lose hope. Together, we can do this!
With Hard Work, We Can Win in November
This is not going to be easy, but we really can win if we work hard. Here are some reasons for hope and motivations to work!
Something bubbling in the Heartland
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In the local elections held in Wisconsin in April, despite a widely predicted “red wave” in a low turnout election, which traditionally favors Republicans, Democrats won 53% of the 276 contested local elections on the ballot, holding their own in the purple areas in the state. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Governor Evers is leading both Republican candidates fighting it out in the primary, one of them by four and the other by seven percentage points. Ron Johnson -- who has a trail of controversies and damaging quotes a mile-long -- trails three of the four Democrats running in the primary for the Senate seat.
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In Pennsylvania, Republicans are fleeing their far-right extremist gubernatorial nominee as fast as they can, while Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman is running a great populist campaign, and currently sports a 9-point lead in the public polling.
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In Ohio, where Republicans presided over what the Columbus Dispatch called the biggest scandal in the country, the Republican governor is sitting at only 45% in the polls in spite of having universal name ID after a 46-year political career in the state. Meanwhile, the latest public poll has Tim Ryan leading by 44-41 for the open Senate seat, and Democrats had a great year in mayoral races there last year.
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In Iowa, Democratic primary voters surprised the DC Democratic establishment by rejecting former Congresswoman Abby Finkenauer, who had much higher name recognition and a big fundraising start, and picking former Navy Admiral Mike Franken 55-40. Franken’s background and strong presence on the stump is making a big impression on Iowa voters. Given that only 27% of voters wanted 88-year-old Chuck Grassley to run again in an earlier poll, this could be a sleeper race.
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In Missouri, Republicans look likely to nominate Eric Greitens, the former governor forced to resign by the Republican legislature over multiple scandals. Democratic candidate Lucas Kunce, a 13-year Marine veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and has a powerfully populist message, is leading in the Democratic primary. There is polling showing him essentially tied with Greitens right now. In the meantime, an added twist to the race is that a heavyweight Republican lawyer who was a clerk for Clarence Thomas, is entering the race as an Independent, saying he can’t stand the idea of Greitens becoming a senator. So Republicans will be splitting their votes.
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In Nebraska, there was a special election a couple of weeks back that was a huge surprise in historically Republican CD 1. In a special election ignored by the DCCC and most Democratically aligned groups, where the Republican heavily outspent the Democratic candidate, Democratic candidate Patty Pansing Brooks lost only 53-47. While this district still leans Republican, it actually got four percentage points more Democratic due to redistricting, and the district includes Lincoln, where the University of Nebraska is located and where Brooks is very strong. A big turnout of young people in the district could put Brooks in the winner’s seat.
Evidence grows of GOP’s potential 2022 candidate problem
On Thursday, The Post’s Philip Bump noted a pretty interesting trend in 2022 election polling: Despite President Biden’s continuing decline in the polls, voters aren’t necessarily punishing the Democratic Party as a whole for it.
Republicans are still favored to pick up seats and are likely to retake both chambers of Congress, given the very slight gains needed to do so. But dimming views of Biden haven’t translated to a further dimming of Democrats’ hopes — at least as much as one would expect or as much as they have in past elections when presidents fell out of favor.
But there’s another aspect of this that’s worth emphasizing: In several races that Republicans probably should win in a good year for them, their candidates are also lagging that national environment. The “generic ballot” hasn’t shifted as much toward Republicans as one might expect, and Republicans are also underperforming that generic ballot in swing states that should be at the top of the GOP’s takeover list. Polls suggest that could even imperil some states that should be sure things for the GOP.
AARP is out with a pair of new, bipartisan polls in the crucial states of Georgia and Pennsylvania. Both went narrowly for Biden in 2020 and would be the kind of states Republicans should win in a good year. But their Senate nominees — Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz — aren’t winning.
In red-trending Ohio, there are few high-quality polls. But almost every poll shows a surprisingly tight Senate race between Democratic congressman Tim Ryan and GOP nominee J.D. Vance. That’s despite the fact that Ohio is the kind of state that should be a slam dunk for the GOP in a good year. As in Georgia, a poll last month showed the GOP Senate nominee badly underperforming the top of the ticket: Gov. Mike DeWine (R) was plus-15, but Vance was just plus-3.
You might not have guessed it, but Biden’s not the one with the approval problem
The media obsession with Biden’s low poll numbers and unproven assumptions about what they mean (e.g., Democrats will all suffer from his ratings in the midterms; Trump is coming back to power) repeats three mistakes endemic in political coverage.
First, in our highly tribal political scheme where tens of millions of people cannot bear to admit their own candidate lost in 2020, any president will automatically lose about half of the country’s support.
Second, the party with the biggest problem is arguably not the Democrats, despite the framing of the Times’s story; rather, it is the Republican Party, which cannot separate itself from the instigator of a violent insurrection who would stand to lose against arguably the weakest incumbent president since, well, Trump.
Third, the assumption that the Democratic Party is doomed to fail misconstrues the party’s strength. Despite Biden’s polling, the generic congressional ballot, which measures which party voters would prefer to run Congress, has narrowed in recent weeks. Democratic enthusiasm is up, and Democratic Senate candidates are running strong even in red states such as Ohio. Maybe the positions that Democrats have taken are resonating. Or maybe their opponents are turning off even disenchanted voters.
History has a lesson
So you probably saw extensive media coverage of a New York Times poll that came out Monday, showing a majority of Democrats saying they want another presidential nominee in 2024. While no one would say it doesn’t show weakness for Biden, it’s an old story; here’s an article in The Post from September of 1982 about a poll showing a majority of voters saying Ronald Reagan shouldn’t run again in 1984. You may remember how that election turned out.
None of this means Biden is a secret political genius. But other presidents — Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama — found themselves in similar situations and recovered to win reelection and leave office in the glow of public affection. The same could happen to Biden, and the good news for him is that if there’s a story the media loves almost as much as the one that says everything is terrible, it’s the one about a dramatic comeback.
Beto O’Rourke broke a Texas fund-raising record with a $27.6 million haul, his campaign said.
Beto O’Rourke set a new Texas fund-raising record for state office with a $27.6 million haul over four months in the governor’s race, his campaign announced on Friday, saying that it had outpaced Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican incumbent, in the tightening contest.
Democrats are doing great things
Meanwhile, we continue to do great things. Here are some:
Biden Vows Executive Action on Climate If Senate Doesn’t Act
President Joe Biden vowed to take executive action on climate change after Senator Joe Manchin put a sweeping tax and energy bill on hold, telling congressional Democrats to move ahead on a smaller measure to rein in drug prices and stop premium hikes for Obamacare.
Manchin said Friday he’d be willing back a prescription drug pricing package tied to a two-year extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies before a scheduled August recess.
“If the Senate will not move to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean-energy industry, I will take strong executive action to meet this moment,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House Friday while the president was in Saudi Arabia. “I will not back down: the opportunity to create jobs and build a clean-energy future is too important to relent.”
Biden administration says hospitals must provide abortions in emergencies
The Biden administration said Monday that federal law allows women access to abortion in emergencies, even in states that banned the procedure after last month's Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
The Department of Health and Human Services said that in cases of health emergencies, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act — a 1985 law that ensures access to emergency care regardless of a person’s ability to pay — takes priority over state laws banning abortion.
“Under the law, no matter where you live, women have the right to emergency care — including abortion care,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement Monday. “Today, in no uncertain terms, we are reinforcing that we expect providers to continue offering these services, and that federal law preempts state abortion bans when needed for emergency care.”
Elizabeth Warren Launches Plan to Get More Young People to Vote
As election laws continue to come under attack in Republican-controlled states, Congress has struggled to pass voting-rights reforms due to the delicate 50-50 Senate. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is trying to change that with a new bill targeting a historically low-turnout voting group: young people.
Warren’s new proposal, which she plans to introduce Monday, would expand voter registration at public colleges and universities, ensure all states allow 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, require colleges and universities to have polling places on campus and ensure that all states include student IDs as a form of voter ID, among other proposals, according to a draft of new legislation obtained by The Daily Beast.
Justice
Justice isn’t always fast, but it is great when she arives!
Statue honoring Black educator replaces Confederate general at U.S. Capitol
A statue of Black educator Mary McLeod Bethune replaced the statue of a Confederate general in the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.
Why it matters: Mary McLeod Bethune is the first Black American to have a state statue in the hall. She replaces Edmund Kirby Smith, who was among the last to surrender at the end of the Civil War in 1865.
Accused Tops shooter indicted on 27 federal counts
The man charged with the mass shooting at the Tops on Jefferson Avenue has been indicted on 27 counts.
The federal indictment came down on Thursday, exactly two months after 10 people were killed and three others were injured. Every person killed was Black and the accused shooter is a suspected white supremacist.
Good Economic News
Inflation dominates the headlines because (a) the news loves bad stories and (b) it is really bad and hurting a lot of us. But inflation isn't the only story. Here is some good economic news
Stocks end tumultuous week with a rally
US stocks surged Friday as an end-of-week rally gained momentum and sent the Dow up over 600 points.
A new batch of bank earnings and economic data Friday morning increased investors’ optimism about the state of the economy and lessened worries that the Federal Reserve could raise rates by a full percentage point at its meeting later this month.
The Dow unofficially closed the day up 658 points, or 2.2%. The S&P 500 (DVS) added 1.9% and the Nasdaq rose by 1.8%.
Biden gets the jobs report he wanted
In a chat with economics reporters on Thursday afternoon, a senior White House official previewed today’s jobs report by essentially acknowledging what everyone already knew: The administration wanted a strong but not super strong employment report for June.
“Even something below consensus would still suggest a strong labor market,” the official said, adding that a figure in the 200,000 range “would be very reassuring.”
Ordinarily, you’d expect any sitting president and his staff to root for the biggest, splashiest, most awesome jobs numbers they could get. Especially a president with approval ratings as dismal as Joe Biden’s, both overall and on the economy.
But these are weird economic times. And the biggest White House fears center on rampant inflation that is both emiserating consumers and pushing the Federal Reserve to quickly raise interest rates to cool the economy and tame price hikes. A giant jobs number today might have goaded the Fed into even faster hikes that could easily trigger an incumbent-crushing recession.
In the event, the June number , barely below May’s quite strong 384,000. But it wasn’t so scalding that it upset markets worried that something over 400,000 or so would tip the Fed into panic mode about the labor market being way too hot.
It wasn’t quite the cliched “goldilocks” figure — not too hot, not too cold — but it was close. Unemployment remained at 3.6 percent and wage gains continued to moderate.
Consumer Spending Still Strong
Consumer spending also appears to be strong as confirmed by today’s retail sales number which came in slightly stronger than expected, up 1% for June vs. expectations of an increase of 0.8%.
Other Good News
Is the World Really Falling Apart, or Does It Just Feel That Way?
Has the world entered a time of unusual turbulence, or does it just feel that way?
Scanning the headlines, it’s easy to conclude that something has broken. The pandemic. Accelerating crises from climate change. Global grain shortage. Russia's war on Ukraine. Political and economic meltdown in Sri Lanka. A former prime minister’s assassination in Japan. And, in the United States: inflation, mass shootings, a reckoning over Jan. 6 and collapsing abortion rights.
That sense of chaos can be difficult to square with longer-term data showing that, on many metrics, the world is generally becoming better off.
War is rarer today, by some measures, than it has been for most of the past 50 years — and, when it does occur, is significantly less deadly. Genocides and mass atrocities are less common all the time, too. Life expectancy, literacy and standards of living have all risen to historic highs.
Also steadily declining in recent decades: hunger, child mortality, and extreme poverty, liberating hundreds of millions from what are, by sheer numbers, among the pre-eminent threats facing humanity.
Webb Telescope Can Inspire Hope When We Need It Most
In a world filled with too much bad news (e.g., the global pandemic, war, social and legal injustice, and political turmoil), NASA provided a much-needed boost to our spirits by sharing the first images from its James Webb Space Telescope this week.
Consequently, people from diverse walks of life viewed these images with giddy excitement. In addition to providing a psychological lift for us all, the Webb Telescope highlights ways to bring people closer despite so many societal forces fighting against human unity.
The images released on July 12 from the Webb Telescope were breathtaking: the formation of stars in the Carina Nebula, amazingly detailed images of the five galaxies featured in the holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life, analyses of an exoplanet hundreds of light years away from us that appears to have water in its atmosphere, and thousands of galaxies viewed for the first time ever. Launched just six months ago, the Webb Telescope did not disappoint on its opening day.
NASA’s new images represent humanity — and government — at its best
For anyone who has stared up at the stars and contemplated how small we are in the grand scheme of the cosmos, the photos are nothing short of mind-blowing. That the telescope, which was calculated to have no fewer than 344 single points of possible failure, successfully launched into orbit and works even better than planned is a miracle to behold and a testament to human ingenuity. In a time plagued by rampant cynicism, Webb’s stunning images give us reason to hope: for scientific progress, for the potential of life on other planets, for inspired young scientists who will lead us into the future — and, to bring things back down to Earth, for the success of the U.S. government when it works as it should.
It’s a remarkable achievement on all fronts: effective government, innovative technology, groundbreaking discovery. The James Webb Space Telescope is just getting started.
On The Lighter Side
I am so lucky and so proud to be in this with all of you ✊🏼✊🏾✊🏽🧡💚💛💜✊🏾✊🏽✊🏻