US Politics

Biden administrationDemocrats ‘thank God’ for infrastructure win after state election warnings
Concerns party will face disaster in midterm elections next year
Trumpism without Trump: how Republicans won in Virginia
0Martin Pengelly in New York@MartinPengellySun 7 Nov 2021 10.59 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 13.56 ESTVoters in Virginia and New Jersey this week sounded a serious warning to Democrats, key players in the Biden administration and Congress said on Sunday: the party needs to get things done or it faces disaster in midterm elections next year.Biden hails ‘monumental step forward’ as Democrats pass infrastructure billRead moreThe energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, said “we thank God” something was done on Friday night: a $1tn infrastructure deal sent to Joe Biden’s desk by the House.Three days after Democrats lost a race for governor in one state Biden won comfortably and barely held the other, House centrists and progressives managed to come together, with some Republican support.Biden hailed a “monumental step forward” and a “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America”. He also said “the one message that came across” in Virginia and New Jersey was: “Get something done.”Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, echoed his boss, telling NBC’s Meet the Press the American people “wanted to see more action in Washington. They wanted to see things move more quickly, and three days later, Congress responded.”But Democrats punted again on the second half of the president’s domestic agenda, the 10-year, $1.75tn Build Back Better package to boost health and social care and to seek to mitigate the impact of the climate crisis.Granholm told CNN’s State of the Union: “I think that the Democrats in the House got the message very loud and clear. Pass the bill and pass the second part too, because these contain things that everyday people care about.“The governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, ran on the phrase ‘Fix the damn roads’. And that’s what this bill does. It fixes the damn roads. It fixes the bridges. It gets broadband to real people. It fixes your homes so that they’re not leaking energy.”Granholm also said the infrastructure bill did not help with childcare and other “costs of living for real people”. That, she said, is the job of Build Back Better, which now awaits analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, a measure demanded by centrists.The New Jersey centrist Josh Gottheimer told CNN he and his allies wanted to make sure the bill was “fiscally responsible and paid for”. He said he was confidant it would pass but dodged when asked repeatedly if his group would vote no if CBO analysis differed from White House and congressional estimates.In New Jersey, the Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, won by an unexpectedly narrow margin. Taking a page from Donald Trump’s playbook, the Republican Jack Ciattarelli has refused to concede.In Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, a former governor, suffered a devastating defeat by Glenn Youngkin, a businessman who kept Trump at arm’s length while campaigning on culture war issues including the place of race in education.Asked if Youngkin could have been beaten had major legislation been passed in Washington before election day, Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia, told CNN: “I wish the House would have moved earlier.”Warner also said voters needed to be told what was in the Biden bills, rather than what they cost. The bills’ cost is regularly condemned by Republicans – and by Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who remains a key obstacle in the Senate.The White House adviser Cedric Richmond told Fox News Sunday Manchin was “a lot more conservative and everybody sees that but he’s been a willing partner to come to the table with constructive dialogue. And we’re confident in where we will go with our Build Back Better framework. We’re optimistic we’re going to get it done. And the truth is we need to get it done.”Richmond also rejected Republican claims that increased spending will add to inflation. Granholm said the administration saw current inflation as “transitory”.Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland and a Republican moderate with presidential ambitions, told CNN Biden had “nearly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory”.The infrastructure bill “should have been an overwhelming win back in August”, Hogan said. “And I think [Biden] should not have let it get sidetracked by the progressives in the House. I think that was bad for Joe Biden. I think that was reflected in the election results because I think they misread the mandate.Joe Biden’s best hope of retaining power is Trump, the ogre under the bed | Michael CohenRead more“You know, Joe Biden won a very narrow election by winning swing voters and they’re not where the progressive caucus is, I can assure you, and the vast majority of Americans are not for the second bill.”Progressives contend otherwise. In tweets on Saturday, the Washington state congresswoman Pramila Jayapal highlighted news from the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow and said: “This is EXACTLY why we need the Build Back Better Act. We will deliver climate action – for our communities, future generations, and our planet.”She also retweeted the Rev William Barber, the leader of the Poor People’s Campaign. He said: “My prayer is that Congress will keep its word and vote to pass Build Back Better, because if not, that political betrayal will be a political crime and integrity breach.”Such a failure, Barber said, “would abandon over 140 million poor and low-wealth people who make up 43% of the nation and 30% of the voting population”.That, he said, “could split the Democratic party in ways that may be irreparable”.TopicsBiden administrationUS politicsUS domestic policyDemocratsHouse of RepresentativesUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

OpinionJoe BidenJoe Biden’s best hope of retaining power is Trump, the ogre under the bedMichael CohenDespite Friday’s win in Congress, little is going right. But with the ex-president around, anything is possible Sun 7 Nov 2021 02.30 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 04.06 ESTIf there is one truism of modern American politics, it’s that good fortune is a fleeting thing. Almost a year to the day after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, his Democratic party was dealt a body blow on election day 2021.In Virginia, former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe lost to Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, as the Republicans won every statewide race and took control of the state’s house of delegates. In New Jersey, incumbent governor, Phil Murphy, barely held on in a state that went for Biden by 16 points. Meanwhile, the powerful Democratic president of New Jersey’s state senate was defeated by a Republican truck driver who spent a mere several thousand dollars on his campaign.Does this mean that the bloom is off the rose for Biden and America is on its way to another Trump presidency? It’s too soon to tell, but it does not look great for Democrats, even though the House passed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill on Friday. While social media sizzled with red-hot takes on why the party underperformed in Virginia and New Jersey, the reality is more boring. For 40 years, the candidate of the president’s party has gone down to defeat in Virginia’s off-year gubernatorial election. From that perspective, McAuliffe losing in Virginia was the expected outcome.Moreover, the approval ratings of the president have a trickle-down effect on party candidates and, right now, Biden is deeply unpopular. His approval ratings, at this point in his presidency, are the lowest in modern polling history, save one past president – Donald Trump. That’s not good company to keep.Since the end of August, Biden has been buffeted by one bad news story after another. The image of ignominious US withdrawal from Afghanistan cast a pall over his presidency and punctured his aura of competence. As Covid vaccinations levelled off, cases again began to rise, forcing many Americans, who believed just a few months ago that the pandemic would be soon over, to go back to masking and social distancing. Meanwhile, in Washington, Democrats bickered among themselves about the size of Biden’s “build back better” agenda, and the president who ran on his ability to get things done in Washington looked like a helpless bystander.In short, this White House has not had a good story to tell for months and in Virginia and New Jersey they paid the price. But if there is one silver lining for Democrats, it’s that midterm elections are a year away and there is time to right the ship.For all the sturm und drang in Congress over the president’s massive, multitrillion spending packages, a second major bill is also likely to pass, joining the infrastructure bill.The second would devote an estimated $1.75tn to much-needed social safety net programmes, including universal pre-kindergarten subsidies for childcare, an expansion of Medicare benefits for senior citizens and Medicare coverage for the poorest citizens and, potentially, billions for the country’s first paid family and medical leave programme. Half-a-trillion dollars are also budgeted for fighting climate change. Passage of both bills will not only thrill Democratic voters but could spur further economic growth.While September was the worst month for Covid cases and deaths since vaccines became readily available, there was a significant decline in new cases in October. More than 70% of eligible adults are now fully vaccinated and vaccines for children aged five to 11 were rolled out last week.However, the combination of strong economic growth, a return to pre-pandemic normality and legislative success will not guarantee political success. Indeed, the same traditional political forces that contributed to Democratic underperformance on Tuesday will weigh on the party next year.Historically, the party in power gets shellacked in midterm elections, losing an average of 26 House seats. With Democrats holding a razor-thin majority in the House, it’s hard to imagine the party outrunning that history. And as much as Biden’s legislative agenda might seem like a winner for Democrats, voters don’t always reward the party in power for getting stuff done, particularly if they don’t feel it. The 63 House Democrats who lost their seats in 2010, months after the passage of Obamacare, can attest to that.Democrats also face a larger set of structural problems: a constitutional system that favours small rural states (usually won by Republicans); a rival political party that is restricting voting rights and aggressively gerrymandering congressional maps to maintain power; and an energised Republican electorate.Ultimately, what should perhaps be most disturbing for Democrats about Tuesday’s elections is that their voters came out in droves, but they couldn’t overcome huge Republican enthusiasm.All this may change in 2022, when Trump will probably play a more prominent role and Democratic candidates can use him as a foil to attack Republicans. In fact, one of the likely reasons Youngkin prevailed in Virginia is that he successfully distanced himself from Trump and made it difficult for McAuliffe to link him to the ex-president. That may be harder to do for Republican congressional candidates, many of whom regularly boast about their support for Trump.Trump is likely to remain the gift that keeps on giving for Democrats – the living, breathing bogeyman under the bed who keeps their voters up at night. As much as Democrats may want to run on their legislative agenda, the spectre of Trump could be their most effective strategy for maintaining power and is probably Biden’s best hope for re-election. The structural impediments to electoral success will remain, however, particularly as Senate Democrats, led by West Virginia’s JJoe Manchin, seem unwilling to enact the kind of far-reaching political reforms that would undo them. Moreover, the Republicans’ unabashed assault on democratic norms and voting rights is likely to continue. The short-term road ahead for Democrats is rocky.Still, as John Maynard Keynes famously quipped, in the long run we are all dead and if Trump is the path to Democratic success, so be it. After all, there is one other important truism of all politics – winning is better than losing.
Michael Cohen’s most recent book, co-authored with Micah Zenko, is Clear and Present Safety
TopicsJoe BidenOpinionDemocratsUS politicsDonald TrumpRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

BooksBoth/And review: Huma Abedin on Clinton, Weiner and a political lifeThe close aide to Hillary Clinton has written a tale spliced with pain but blind to her boss’s weak spots

Abedin: Kiss from unnamed senator was not sexual assault
Lloyd GreenSun 7 Nov 2021 02.00 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 02.02 ESTIn 2015, Hillary Clinton’s brains trust deliberately elevated the stature of the “extreme” Republican contenders, the “pied pipers”, Donald Trump included. On election night in 2016, Clintonworld stared into the abyss.In Trump’s Shadow: David Drucker surveys the Republican runners and riders for 2024Read more“It was sheer disbelief,” Huma Abedin writes in her new memoir. “More like shock.”Clinton, Abedin as campaign vice-chair and other aides failed to grasp that Trump was spearheading a movement, his mien his message. Clinton branded half of his supporters “deplorables”.Not surprisingly, in her memoir Abedin shows a blind spot to Clinton family shortcomings. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, for example, “it seemed very likely” to her that it “was untrue”. Somehow, an intern who rose to become one of Hillary’s closest confidantes forgot that even before Lewinsky, Bill Clinton’s sexual conduct had almost throttled his White House ambitions. Bill and Hillary even appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes to salvage his viability.“I’m not sitting here some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” Hillary said.Not surprisingly, as Hillary’s so-called “second daughter”, Abedin has a problem coming to grips with an immovable likability deficit that cost her boss both times she ran for president.“Why was HRC not likeable?” Abedin asks. “This was particularly difficult to understand for those who knew her, since as far as we were concerned that was a quality she had in abundance.”Others have plumbed such waters – and found Clinton wanting. Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post, for example, a Pulitzer Prize winner, portrayed Hillary sporting a “foul mouth” and being loathed by the agents who protected her. After members of her Secret Service detail overheard Chelsea Clinton calling them “pigs”, Leonnig wrote, the first daughter was reminded that their job was to “stand between you, your family and a bullet”.Chelsea reportedly responded: “Well, that’s what my mother and father call you.”Abedin does not discuss how, out of office, Hillary scooped up windfalls in the commodities market and easy millions in Wall Street speaking fees, all while doing her best impersonation of Mother Teresa.Clinton’s second run for president tarnished her image. In December 2017, a Gallup poll pegged her favorability at 37%. But unlike Mandy Grunwald, an adviser to both Clintons, Abedin refuses to admit that Hillary has foibles.According to Grunwald, Clinton could sound like she “DOESN’T think the game is rigged” against normal Americans, mustering only recognition that the “public thinks so”. Said differently, Clinton conveyed obliviousness to the Great Recession of 2008-09, its casualties and anxieties.In April 2015, nearly half of the US self-identified as working- or lower-class. Between November 2007 and late 2016, white Americans in that bracket lost more than 700,000 jobs.Abedin describes sitting with Clinton in Iowa, watching Trump “ramble incoherently about himself”. She captures Clinton saying: “I just don’t get it.” Similarly, Abedin mocks Bernie Sanders’ call for a “revolution” and glosses over the fact that Clinton only beat the Vermont senator to clinch the nomination in early June 2016, more than a week after Trump wrapped up the Republican nod.“With each contest, she methodically racked up the number of delegates she needed to secure the nomination,” Abedin writes. That’s pure spin. It was supposed to be a coronation. They didn’t plan on winning the Iowa caucuses by a razor-thin margin or getting walloped in New Hampshire, where Clinton won on her first go-round.A youth-driven movement helped propel Sanders’ rise. Aspiration and grievance counted. The bankers had gotten their bailouts. Sanders supporters were staring at a future bleaker than their parents had known. Clinton had gone from the “beer track” candidate of 2008 to the pick of the wine drinkers, the coastal establishment. And yet, according to Abedin, defeat by Trump still came as a bolt from the blue.Both/And lets the reader play voyeur and counselor too. Abedin delivers the skinny on her courtship by, marriage to and traumatic estrangement from the former congressman Anthony Weiner. She shares that they attended couples’ therapy, and that he possessed darker secrets than she first thought.She also describes how an unnamed senator shoved his tongue down her throat and pinned her against a couch while the pair were in his apartment for late-night coffee. Abedin writes that she repressed memories of the event until they came rushing back amid Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, when the supreme court nominee was accused of, and denied, sexual assault.Asked by CBS if the senator had committed a sexual assault, Abedin paused.“Did I feel like he was assaulting me in that moment?” she told Nora O’Donnell. “I didn’t, it didn’t feel that way. I was in an uncomfortable situation with a senator and I didn’t know how to deal with it.”‘A xenophobic autocrat’: Adam Schiff on Trump’s threat to democracyRead moreThis does not appear to be the final word. Members of the Senate worry about who else the unnamed senator may have abused. Philippe Reines, a former Clinton aide, says it is up to Abedin “alone to decide what to share, with whom, how and when”.Abedin’s eye for style asserts itself throughout her memoir – even as she deals with how her husband made damaging headlines. In May 2011, she woke up in Buckingham Palace and surveyed the room. Her “long, fitted gown for the evening’s white-tie dinner hung on the bathroom door”. An “elegant chestnut-brown writing desk” stood at the “foot of the bed”. The same weekend, Weiner alerted his pregnant wife to his sexting habits. Weiner went to prison but he and Abedin are not completely estranged.Both/And is also a story of Abedin’s life before and outside politics. She tells of being born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of spending most of her youth in Saudi Arabia, a father and mother who held doctorates, of family ties in the Middle East, the subcontinent and the US. It is the strongest part of the book, a tale of an immigrant, of an upward arc.
Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds is published in the US by Scribner
TopicsBooksHuma AbedinHillary ClintonUS politicsAnthony WeinerPolitics booksDemocratsreviewsReuse this content More

GeorgiaIn Trumpland parallel reality, election was stolen and racism was long ago Monroe county, Georgia, where Donald Trump won 74% of the vote, is home to views on everything from education to vaccines that are untethered from factsTimothy Prattin Monroe, GeorgiaSun 7 Nov 2021 02.00 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 02.02 ESTIt’s a gray afternoon, promising rain and with temperatures in the 50s, people have taken their jackets out of the closet.The streets of downtown Monroe, Georgia, a town of about 14,000 residents 45 miles due east of Atlanta, are quiet for a Saturday. It’s the county seat of Walton county and a monument honoring Confederate veterans stands tall outside the county courthouse. The soldier carved from granite looks across Broad Street to the town’s police station and is flanked to the south by the Walton Tribune’s office and a district office for representative Jody Hice.Locator map of Monroe, GeorgiaHice, a Republican and former pastor and talkshow host, has announced his candidacy for Georgia’s next secretary of state and is one of three candidates for statewide offices in next year’s national elections who have received Donald Trump’s endorsement. Unsurprisingly, 74% of Walton county’s residents voted for Trump last November.And, although Monroe had the opportunity on 2 November to vote for Democrat Emilio Kelly as the town’s first Black mayor in its 200 years of history, residents three days before election day wanted to talk about what one man called the “disastrous” state of affairs they see in the US. (Kelly would go on to lose.)A year on from an election Trump lost, they believe they’re living in a country where Joe Biden was not legitimately elected, the government is paying people not to work and the state is contaminating children’s minds in public schools, while violating the rights of parents by insisting on teaching about racism that “happened a long time ago”. Some are pretty sure Covid was created in a lab, that “natural” immunity works fine and that vaccines could make you sicker.The situation is so dire that the current administration has “possibly damaged our country permanently”, said Patrick Graham, owner of the Tribune and author of a recent editorial titled, “Y’all Biden Folks Proud Yet?”Poll chart showing 32% of US adults, 57% of Republicans, 38% of Independents and 4% of Democrats believe Joe Biden won the 2020 election due to voter fraud.None of the Trump supporters picking up pizza or visiting candle and antique stores downtown believed the presidential vote tallies announced a year ago were accurate. They pointed to the allegations made prominent in Trump’s failed lawsuits across the country and in Georgia.“With everyone screaming, ‘Let’s Go Brandon’, there’s no way in the world he had 81m votes,” said Mark Kramer, a 68-year-old retiree who moved from nearby Lawrenceville a year ago.A couple of blocks south, Mike, a 53-year-old, self-described “good ol’ country boy” who didn’t want his last name known, had stopped at a gas station before heading home to watch the Atlanta Braves in the World Series. He believes the 2020 election was “fixed”.“I’m not a conspiracy person … but the more thought I put into it … not in the state of Georgia, I don’t believe it happened,” he said, referring to Biden winning the popular vote.“I don’t want to go so far as to say it was stolen, but ballots were trashed and a lot of things went wrong – including here in Georgia,” said a 54-year-old legal assistant at an Atlanta corporate law firm who was walking her dog Henry in the late afternoon drizzle.About half the people the Guardian spoke to in Monroe had been vaccinated, a figure in line with Georgia as a whole, consistently in the bottom of national rankings for vaccination rates. Graham, the Tribune editor, expressed concern over the “government forcing an experimental chemical into people’s bodies to keep them employed … If we keep going in this direction, it’s going to erode our freedoms.”“I don’t care for masks or vaccines,” said Jason Mealer, a 38-year-old McDonald’s employee. “We had Ebola here and that was deadly. Why do something about it now? I say, just live your life.”Retiree Mark Kramer said “there’s no ingredients you can read” in Covid vaccines, and that they are “poison – they’ll cause you more disease than anything else”. No one in his family had been vaccinated, he added, pointing to a restaurant nearby where they were waiting for him. Kramer didn’t want his picture taken; his son-in-law standing nearby explained their objections: “You have BLM, antifa – you have no idea what they might do” if a photograph were to appear online.The personal impacts of global or macroeconomic forces were also on people’s minds in downtown Monroe, without much interest in the global or macro sides of the equation. High gas prices, bottled supply chains, short staffing – consensus was, they are all due to the current administration.“I went to Ihop and their schedule had changed to 7am to 4pm due to staff shortages,” said Holland. “People in my own town are staying at home instead of working,” she said. “Biden is paying people to stay home.”The notion that radical changes have taken place in how students from kindergarten through grade 12 are taught about race and racism in US history – tagged as CRT or critical race theory – is not absent among Trump supporters in Monroe, where most Black and white residents live in separate parts of town to this day. CRT is an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society. It is not taught in Georgia schools.“I don’t agree with what’s being taught in schools,” said Holland. “Parents should have a say, and teaching kids that white people are racist is the wrong thing. It’s almost like they want to recreate history,” she said.“Bringing in CRT is not what teaching is all about,” she said. “Preparing for college, for the real world, is what it’s about. Not about race, or anything else.”But race – and racism – is woven into Monroe’s history.A few miles from where Holland spoke, in 1946, a mob of several dozen white people shot and lynched two Black couples, by Moore’s Ford Bridge, which crosses the Appalachee River.The gruesome act of violence led a 17-year-old Martin Luther King Jr to write a letter to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and President Harry Truman ordered the FBI to investigate. No one was found guilty. In an ongoing lawsuit, the 11th circuit US court of appeals ruled in March of last year that grand jury records from the case must remain sealed, keeping all of us from potentially learning what happened that day, and who was responsible.The Moore’s Ford lynching persists not just in the courts, and the memories of many; only two months ago, Monroe’s current mayor, John Howard, presented a statement to the town’s city council publicly acknowledging it for the first time. One Black city council member refused to sign the statement, calling it a political stunt aimed at currying favor among the town’s Black voters in Howard’s bid for re-election.Should schools in Monroe teach children about the lynching at Moore’s Ford? If so, how? “That sort of history – though it was ghastly – should be taught,” said Jeff Blackstone, a 58-year-old who owns a company that installs hotel TV systems. “But – we have all learned from our mistakes. Although there are still some outliers who go back to the horrid ways of previous years, that should not be tolerated. And I … don’t agree with what the government is trying to do with our lives – like CRT – trying to teach us societal views.”“I think we need to move beyond Black, white and brown,” Blackstone said. “I hire and fire people and don’t judge by their color, but what they can do to help me.”James “Trae” Welborn III, associate professor of history at Georgia College & State University, says racism and its expression has changed over time.“Racism now takes seemingly benign forms – talk of personal liberties, colorblindness … The idea is that racism is people running around in white hoods, burning white crosses. So you say, ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ and anything that falls short of that isn’t racism.”Welborn also pointed to the idea that racism happened a long time ago, the shared urgency among Trump supporters to “deny and marginalize the issue of race and racism, in favor of ‘the beacon of liberty and freedom’ narrative in American history”. A civil war historian, Welborn sees parallels between the views and rhetoric of Trump supporters and those of the Confederacy. “There’s even similar language – the threats of violence: ‘Come to the Capitol and give ’em what for,’” he said.Meanwhile, in the present, many Trump supporters in Georgia are following Garland Favorito and his organization, VoterGA, which has two lawsuits in state courts tied to last year’s elections. Favorito’s organization is 15 years old and works on election integrity – a term which was then used in public discourse in reference to issues such as how to employ audit methods that could truly verify elections results, and now is mostly used to underline any supposed evidence that Trump won. Until last year, VoterGA was primarily supported by progressive Democrats. Now, Favorito receives social media followers, and donations, from thousands of Trump supporters, in Georgia and elsewhere.As for last year’s election, he said, “the truth is, nobody knows who won. The secretary of state [in Georgia] can tell you he knows, but he has no idea.” This is because, he said, allegations of ballot stuffing have not been satisfactorily investigated by the state and a “forensic analysis” of election system servers in the state’s 159 counties has not been performed. The problem is that “nobody wants to get to the truth”.Asked about the process followed in Arizona, where a group called Cyber Ninjas took months to review election materials from the state’s largest county – and still concluded that Joe Biden won – Favorito said that the group’s work was never really completed, because the state didn’t supply them with everything they sought to examine. This means “we will never know who won in Arizona”, he said.Asked if it concerns him that many of the Trump supporters supporting his work in Georgia are the same people who hold positions such as the vaccine being “poison”, he said, “No, it doesn’t concern me to speak truth … Trump supporters have just as much a right to say Trump won as the secretary of state says Biden won, because we don’t know the truth.”TopicsGeorgiaUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

OpinionUS politicsIt’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working classRobert ReichResults in Virginia and New Jersey do not make Republican dog-whistle politics the future. The left must do more to help Sun 7 Nov 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 01.03 EDTAfter Tuesday’s Democratic loss in the Virginia gubernatorial election and near-loss in New Jersey, I’m hearing a narrative about Democrats’ failure with white working-class voters that is fundamentally wrong.Is this a presidency-defining week for Biden? Politics Weekly Extra – podcastRead moreIn Thursday’s New York Times, David Leonhardt pointed out that the non-college voters who are abandoning the Democratic party “tend to be more religious, more outwardly patriotic and more culturally conservative than college graduates”. He then quotes a fellow Times columnist, the pollster Nate Cohn, who says “college graduates have instilled increasingly liberal cultural norms while gaining the power to nudge the Democratic party to the left. Partly as a result, large portions of the party’s traditional working-class base have defected to the Republicans”.Leonhardt adds that these defections have increased over the past decade and suggests Democratic candidates start listening to working-class voters’ concerns about “crime and political correctness”, their “mixed feelings about immigration and abortion laws”, and their beliefs “in God and in a strong America”.This narrative worries me in two ways. First, if “cultural” messages top economic ones, what’s to stop Democrats from playing the same cultural card Republicans have used for years to inflame the white working class: racism? Make no mistake: Glenn Youngkin focused his campaign in Virginia on critical race theory, which isn’t even taught in Virginia’s schools but comes out of the same disgraceful Republican dog-whistle tradition.The other problem with this “culture over economics” narrative is it overlooks the fact that after Ronald Reagan, the Democratic party turned its back on the working class.During the first terms of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. They scored some important victories, such as the Affordable Care Act and an expanded earned income tax credit.But both Clinton and Obama allowed the power of the working class to erode. Both ardently pushed for free trade agreements without providing the millions of blue-collar workers who thereby lost their jobs any means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.They stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the working class. Both refused to reform labor laws to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violated them or enable workers to form unions with simple up-or-down votes. Union membership sank from 22% of all workers when Clinton was elected to fewer than 11% today, denying the working class the bargaining leverage it needs to get a better deal.The Obama administration protected Wall Street from the consequences of its gambling addiction through a giant taxpayer-funded bailout but let millions of underwater homeowners drown.Both Clinton and Obama allowed antitrust to ossify – allowing major industries to become more concentrated and hence more economically and politically powerful.Finally, they turned their backs on campaign finance reform. In 2008, Obama was the first presidential nominee since Richard Nixon to reject public financing in his primary and general-election campaigns. He never followed up on his re-election campaign promise to pursue a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United v FEC, the 2010 supreme court opinion that opened the floodgates to big money in politics.What happens when you combine freer trade, shrinking unions, Wall Street bailouts, growing corporate power and the abandonment of campaign finance reform? You shift political and economic power to the wealthy and you shaft the working class.Adjusted for inflation, American workers today are earning almost as little as they did 30 years ago, when the American economy was a third its present size.Biden’s agenda for working people – including lower prescription drug prices, paid family leave, stronger unions and free community college – has followed the same sad trajectory, due to the power of big money. Big Pharma has blocked prescription drug reform. A handful of Democratic senators backed by big money have refused to support paid family leave. Big money has killed labor law reform.Resilience: the one word progressives need in the face of Trump, Covid and more | Robert ReichRead moreDemocrats could win back the white working class by putting together a large coalition of the working class and poor, of whites, Blacks and Latinos, of everyone who has been shafted by the huge shift in wealth and power to the top. This would give Democrats the political clout to reallocate power in the economy – rather than merely enact palliatives that paper over the increasing concentration of power at the top.But to do this Democrats would have to end their financial dependence on big corporations, Wall Street and the wealthy. And they would have to reject the convenient story that American workers care more about cultural issues than about getting a better deal in an economy that’s been delivering them a worsening deal for decades.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
TopicsUS politicsOpinionDemocratsUS CongressVirginiaNew JerseyRaceUS domestic policycommentReuse this content More

Elon MuskElon Musk asks Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of Tesla stockEntrepreneur refers to US proposal for ‘billionaires tax’Nearly 56% of respondents say Musk should sell shares Reuters in New YorkSat 6 Nov 2021 17.38 EDTLast modified on Sat 6 Nov 2021 21.05 EDTElon Musk on Saturday asked his 62.5 million followers on Twitter if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock.Let them eat space! Elon Musk and the race to end world hunger | Arwa MahdawiRead more“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,” Musk wrote in a tweet referring to a “billionaires’ tax” proposed by Democrats in the US Senate.Musk tweeted that he would abide by the results of the poll. It received more than 700,000 responses in the hour after Musk posted it, with nearly 56% of respondents approving the proposal to sell the shares.Musk’s shareholding in Tesla comes to about 170.5 million shares as of 30 June and selling 10% of his stock would amount close to $21bn based on Friday’s closing, according to Reuters calculations.Analysts say he may have to offload a significant number of shares anyway to pay taxes since a large number of options will expire next year.The comments from Musk come after the proposal in Congress to tax billionaires’ assets to help pay for Joe Biden’s social and climate-change agenda. Musk is one of the world’s richest people and owner of companies including SpaceX and Neuralink. He has criticized the billionaires’ tax on Twitter.“Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere,” Musk said. “I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.”Tesla board members including Elon Musk’s brother Kimbal have recently sold shares in the electric carmaker. Kimbal Musk sold 88,500 shares while fellow board member Ira Ehrenpreis sold shares worth more than $200m.TopicsElon MuskTeslaUS taxationUS domestic policyUS politicsBiden administrationUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

US Capitol attackHouse 6 January panel to issue new round of subpoenas for Trump allies
Focus on events at Willard hotel ‘command center’
John Eastman among about 20 individuals in committee’s sights
Roadmap to a coup: inside Trump’s plot to steal the presidency
Hugo Lowell in WashingtonSat 6 Nov 2021 13.10 EDTLast modified on Sat 6 Nov 2021 13.12 EDTThe House select committee investigating the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January is poised to issue subpoenas to top Trump lieutenants involved in attempting to subvert the 2020 election results from a “command center” at the Willard hotel in Washington, according to a source familiar with the matter.Trumpism without Trump: how Republican dog-whistles exploited Democratic divisionsRead moreThe subpoenas, which could be issued as soon as next week, reflect the select committee’s interest in events at the hotel just across from the White House, where Donald Trump’s most loyal aides plotted to keep him in office.The select committee is targeting about 20 individuals connected to the Trump command center at the Willard, among them the legal scholar John Eastman, who outlined ways to deny Joe Biden the presidency, the source said.The subpoenas seeking documents and testimony are aimed at obtaining the legal advice offered to Trump on how he could manipulate events on 6 January to stop certification of Biden’s election win, the source said.House investigators are moving to pursue Trump lieutenants who gathered at the Willard to uncover the “centers of gravity” from which Trump and his advisers conspired, the source said – and whether the former president had advance knowledge of the Capitol attack.The select committee appears to be seeking a full account of what transpired in several suites at the Willard in the days leading up to 6 January and during a final “war room” meeting the night before the Capitol attack.The select committee is targeting Eastman after it emerged that he outlined scenarios for overturning the election in a memorandum presented at a White House meeting on 4 January with Trump, former vice-president Mike Pence and Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.At that meeting, according to a source close to Trump, Eastman ran through the memo that detailed how at the joint session of Congress on 6 January Pence might refuse to certify electoral slates for Biden and thereby hand Trump a second term.The former president seized on Eastman’s memo and relentlessly pressured Pence in the following days to use it to in effect commandeer the largely ceremonial electoral counting process, the Trump source said.Trump was not successful in convincing Pence to reject Biden’s election win – an outcome top Trump aides blamed on the then vice-president’s chief of staff, Marc Short, the Trump source said – and Congress certified Biden as president after the Capitol attack.Eastman has distanced himself from the memo, telling the Guardian the scenarios he outlined were not intended as advice. He also told the National Review he wrote the memo at the request of “somebody in the legal team” who he could not recall.But Eastman appears to be a witness of importance, given he regularly attended meetings at the Willard with Giuliani and former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, acting effectively as a liaison with the White House, the Trump source said.Eastman undermined his attempts to distance himself from the memo last week after he told the activist reporter Lauren Windsor that Pence declined to overturn the election, even though he had provided the legal reasoning, because “Pence is an establishment guy at the end of the day”.The select committee is also considering a subpoena for Giuliani, the source said, since the former New York mayor and Trump lawyer led the legal effort from the Willard that involved trying to find and publicize allegations of electoral fraud.Giuliani pressured state legislatures to challenge Biden victories and, even as the Capitol attack unfolded, cajoled Republican members of Congress to object to states’ electoral college votes, the Trump source said.A spokesperson for the House select committee declined to comment about the targets or scope of forthcoming subpoenas. Neither Eastman nor a lawyer for Giuliani immediately responded to requests for comment.The new line of inquiry centered on the Willard comes after the chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, last week told reporters that he intended to subpoena Eastman, before later revealing that he had signed about 20 subpoenas.Thompson said on Friday that he had hoped to issue the subpoenas to Eastman and other Trump lieutenants, but the timeline slipped as Democrats became consumed with crisis talks before the House passed Biden’s $1tn infrastructure package shortly before midnight.Almost one in three of Republicans say violence may be necessary to ‘save’ USRead moreThe select committee remains in the evidence-gathering phase of its inquiry and has conducted interviews and depositions with more than 150 witnesses, according to the vice-chair of the panel, Liz Cheney.“It is a range of engagements – some formal interviews, some depositions,” the Wyoming Republican said. “There really is a huge amount of work under way that is leading to real progress for us.”Several former Trump officials, including Bannon, have resisted subpoenas. A former justice department official, Jeffrey Clark, on Friday refused to answer questions at a deposition, citing attorney-client privilege.In a statement, Thompson raised the possibility of holding Clark in contempt of Congress. “Mr Clark’s complete failure to cooperate today is unacceptable,” he said. “We are willing to take strong measures to hold him accountable to meet his obligation.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

The ObserverJoe BidenBiden hails ‘monumental step forward’ as Democrats pass infrastructure billThe president will sign $1tn package into law after House ended months-long standoff by approving bipartisan deal

‘She betrayed us’: Arizona voters baffled by Kyrsten Sinema
0Martin Pengelly in New York and David Smith in WashingtonSat 6 Nov 2021 12.41 EDTFirst published on Sat 6 Nov 2021 10.45 EDTJoe Biden saluted a “monumental step forward as a nation” on Saturday, after House Democrats finally reached agreement and sent a $1tn infrastructure package to his desk to be signed, a huge boost for an administration which has struggled for victories.Trumpism without Trump: how Republican dog-whistles exploited Democratic divisionsRead more“This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America,” Biden said, “and it’s long overdue.”There was also a setback, however, as Democrats postponed a vote on an even larger bill. That 10-year, $1.85tn spending plan to bolster health, family and climate change programmes, known as Build Back Better, was sidetracked after centrists demanded a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Biden said he was confident he could get it passed.Walking out to address reporters at the White House, the president began with a joke at the expense of his predecessor, Donald Trump.“Finally, it’s infrastructure week,” he said.Under Trump, the administration’s failure to focus on infrastructure amid constant scandal became a national punchline.“We’re just getting started,” Biden said. “It is something that’s long overdue but long has been talked about in Washington but never actually been done.“The House of Representatives passed an Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That’s a fancy way of saying a bipartisan infrastructure bill, once-in-a-generation investment that’s going to create millions of jobs, modernise our infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our broadband, a range of things turning the climate crisis into an opportunity, and a put us on a path to win the economic competition of the 21st century that we face with China and other large countries in the rest of the world.”The House approved the $1tn bill late on Friday, after Democrats resolved a months-long standoff between progressives and centrists. The measure passed 228-206. Thirteen Republicans, mostly moderates, supported the bill while six progressive Democrats opposed it, among them Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.Approval sent the bill to the desk of a president whose approval ratings have dropped and whose party struggled in elections this week. Biden said he would not sign the bill this weekend because he wanted those who passed it to be there when he did so.“We’re looking more forward to having shovels in the ground,” Biden said. “To begin rebuilding America.“For all of you at home, who feel left behind and forgotten in an economy that’s changing so rapidly, this bill is for you. The vast majority of those thousands of jobs that will be created don’t require a college degree. There’ll be jobs in every part of the country: red states, blue states, cities, small towns, rural communities, tribal communities.“This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America, and it’s long overdue.”This week, Democratic candidates for governor lost in Virginia and squeaked home in New Jersey, two blue-leaning states. Those setbacks made leaders, centrists and progressives impatient to demonstrate they know how to govern a year before midterm elections that could see Republicans retake Congress.At the White House, Biden said: “Each state is different and I don’t know but I think the one message that came across was, ‘Get something done … stop talking, get something done.’ And so I think that’s what the American people are looking for.“All the talk about the elections and what do they mean? They want us to deliver. Democrats, they want us to deliver. Last night we proved we can on one big item. We delivered.”The postponement of a vote on the spending bill dashed hopes of a double win. But in a deal brokered by Biden and party leaders, five moderates agreed to back the bill if CBO estimates of its costs are consistent with numbers from the White House and congressional analysts.The agreement, in which lawmakers promised to vote by the week of 15 November, was a significant step towards shipping the bill to the Senate. Its chances there are not certain: it must pass on the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris and with the approval of Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, centrists who have proved obstructive so far.The spending bill “is fiscally responsible”, Biden said. “That’s a fancy way of saying it is fully paid for. It doesn’t raise the deficit by a single penny. And it actually reduces the deficit according to the leading economists in this country over the long term. And it’s paid for by making sure that the wealthiest Americans, the biggest corporations begin to pay their fair share.”Republicans have highlighted what they say will be the bill’s effects on dangerous economic inflation.Why does the media keep saying this election was a loss for Democrats? It wasn’t | Rebecca SolnitRead more“According to economists,” Biden said, “this is going to be easing inflationary pressures … by lowering costs for working families.”He also said: “We got out of the blue a couple of weeks ago a letter from 17 Nobel prize winners in economics and they determined that [the two bills] will ease inflationary pressures not create them.”Biden acknowledged that he will not get Republican votes for the spending bill and must “figure out” how to unite his party. Friday was an exhausting day for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. She told reporters: “Welcome to my world. This is the Democratic party. We are not a lockstep party.”Biden said he was confident he could find the votes. Asked what gave him that confidence, the president alluded to his legislative experience as a senator and vice-president, saying: “Me.”On Friday night, Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, delayed travel to Delaware as the president worked the phones. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters Biden even called her mother in India. It was unclear why.“This was not to bribe me, this is when it was all done,” Jayapal said, adding that her mother told her she “just kept screaming like a little girl”.
Associated Press contributed to this report
TopicsJoe BidenThe ObserverBiden administrationUS politicsUS domestic policyUS taxationUS economyUS CongressnewsReuse this content More