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Is Kamala Harris being shunned by the US president? Politics Weekly Extra – podcast
After reports came out suggesting the vice-president was being underused, the White House came to her defence at the weekend. Jonathan Freedland and Lauren Gambino discuss the various rumours shrouding Biden and Harris’ relationship
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Archive: NBC News, C-Span, CNN Listen to Wednesday’s episode of Today in Focus with Ed Pilkington on Donald Trump. Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com. Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts. More
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Pelosi confident of Build Back Better plan’s passage as bill advances
Pelosi confident of Build Back Better plan’s passage as bill advancesDemocrats have a slim majority on the $2tn package that would offer reduced costs for child care and prescription drugs House Democrats on Thursday moved to advance an ambitious $2tn domestic policy package that would overhaul large swaths of the American economy, with House speaker Nancy Pelosi confident they would ultimately deliver the second pillar of Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.“This is historic; it is transformative,” Pelosi said during a press conference on Thursday, as lawmakers debated the measure on the House floor.After months of gridlock and intra-party warring, Pelosi expressed optimism that the House was on the cusp of passing the measure, just two weeks after the House gave final approval to a separate effort investing in the nation’s aging infrastructure.‘We’re here to deliver’: Biden touts infrastructure win as midterms loomRead moreWith their paper-thin majority, Democrats can spare only a handful of defections on the package, called Build Back Better. Party leaders had hoped to pass the measure in tandem with the infrastructure bill, but a last minute objection from a small band of centrist Democrats concerned over the cost of the package derailed those hopes.Pelosi said the House would proceed to a vote on the measure following the release of a cost estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, as requested by the group of centrists. The agency said it would complete the analysis on Thursday.The package, which would spend nearly $2tn over 10 years, is expansive: it aims to dramatically reduce child care costs, provide universal pre-kindergarten for children, lower the cost of prescription drugs for seniors, expand Medicare to cover hearing aids and provide the largest ever investment in efforts to combat the climate crisis.Biden argues that the plan is fully paid for by a slew of new proposals targeting millionaires and big corporations that currently pay nothing in federal tax.Even if the House approves the legislation on Thursday, it faces a complicated path forward in the Senate, where any single Democrat could upend the fragile state of negotiations.Two of the Senate’s 50 Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have not yet committed to supporting the package, even as negotiators reshaped the climate and tax portions of the package to meet their demands.Opening the debate on Thursday, Democrats touted the historic nature of the legislation. Congressman John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the chair of the House budget panel, which played a critical role in shaping the package, said any single element of the bill alone would be significant, but together they represent the “most consequential legislation for American families since the New Deal”.“It’s a hell of a bill,” he said.Democrats and Republicans sparred on the House floor over the economics of the plan. Republicans assailed it as reckless spending that would exacerbate the trend of rising inflation and slow economic growth. Democrats argued the opposite, that the bill would actually combat inflation while relieving many of the financial stressors Americans face, such as the cost of child care and prescription drugs.Though many of the bill’s provisions remain broadly popular, including among Republicans, boiling economic discontent have sent Biden’s approval ratings tumbling.Despite a mass vaccination campaign, falling unemployment and legislative achievements that include the passage of a nearly $2tn relief package in March and the bipartisan public works bill this month, 63% of Americans say he has not accomplished much after 10 months in office, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.Facing daunting challenges in next year’s midterm elections, Democrats are hopeful that enacting Biden’s agenda in full will bring something of a reversal of fortunes for the party. TopicsUS politicsBiden administrationHouse of RepresentativesDemocratsnewsReuse this content More
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‘Professor or comrade?’ Republicans go full red scare on Soviet-born Biden pick
‘Professor or comrade?’ Republicans go full red scare on Soviet-born Biden pickSenator asks Saule Omarova, nominated to be comptroller of the currency, if he should call her ‘professor or comrade’
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Three decades have passed since their hero, Ronald Reagan, went to Berlin to exhort Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!”, the Soviet Union collapsed and America claimed victory in the cold war.Paul Gosar retweets same video aimed at AOC after House censures him – reportRead moreFor Republicans in Washington, however, these appear to be mere historical footnotes. On Thursday they dusted off the “red scare” playbook to portray Joe Biden’s choice to run one of the agencies that oversees the banking industry as a dangerous communist.Saule Omarova, 55, was nominated in September to be America’s next comptroller of the currency. If confirmed, she would be the first woman and person of colour in the role in its 158-year-history.Omarova was born in Kazakhstan when it was part of the Soviet Union and moved to the US in 1991. For John Kennedy of Louisiana, a member of the Senate banking committee, this was like a red rag to a bull.Questioning whether Omarova was still a member of communist youth organisations, Kennedy said: “I don’t mean any disrespect: I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade.”The remark prompted gasps in the hearing room on Capitol Hill.Omarova replied, slowly and firmly: “Senator, I’m not a communist. I do not subscribe to that ideology. I could not choose where I was born.“I do not remember joining any Facebook group that subscribes to that ideology. I would never knowingly join any such group. There is no record of me actually participating in any Marxist or communist discussions of any kind.”Omarova then told how her family suffered under the communist regime.“I grew up without knowing half of my family. My grandmother herself escaped death twice under the Stalin regime. This is what’s seared in my mind. That’s who I am. I remember that history. I came to this country. I’m proud to be an American and this is why I’m here today, Senator.”Omarova has worked mainly as a lawyer and most recently as a law professor at Cornell University. She has testified often as an expert witness on financial regulation and even worked briefly in the administration of George W Bush.But in a letter to Omarova after she was nominated, Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania requested a copy of a graduation paper she wrote about Karl Marx when she was an undergraduate at Moscow State University – “in the original Russian” .At Thursday’s hearing, Toomey noted that Omarova has written several academic papers that propose sweeping changes to the banking system.“Taken in totality, her ideas do amount to a socialist manifesto for American financial services,” he said.The attacks, echoed by rightwing media, earned rebuke from the Democratic chairman of the committee, Sherrod Brown of Ohio.He said: “Senate Republicans have a formula. Start with a passing and inaccurate reference to her academic work, distort the substance beyond recognition, mix in words – Marx, Lenin, communism. End with insinuations about Professor Omarova loyalties to her chosen country.“That’s how Republicans turn a qualified woman into a Marxist boogeyman … Now we know what happens when Trumpism meets McCarthyism.”This was a reference to the 1950s “red scare”, when the Republican senator Joseph McCarthy, of Wisconsin, insisted hundreds of communists had infiltrated the US government, pursuing a witch-hunt that reached into the army and Hollywood.On Thursday, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts added: “This is a vicious smear campaign, coordinated by Republicans who are doing the bidding of the large banks.“Sexism, racism, pages straight out of Joe McCarthy’s 1950s red scare tactics … welcome to Washington in 2021.”TopicsUS politicsUS SenateBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More - in US Politics
Why are Americans so unhappy with Joe Biden? | Robert Reich
Why are Americans so unhappy with Joe Biden?Robert ReichOne answer might be that expectations were so high that hopes were bound to be dashed America is overflowing with good news. Unemployment is down, wages are up, consumer confidence is rebounding, and consumers are spending more (retail sales jumped 1.7% in October, the third monthly increase). Covid seems to be in retreat, at least among those who have been vaccinated. And two big parts of Biden’s legislative agenda – last spring’s $1.9tn American Rescue Plan, and his recent $1.2tn infrastructure plan – have been enacted.So what’s not to be happy about? Apparently, plenty. Biden’s job approval rating is 12 points lower than when he took office – now just 41% (around where Trump’s was for most of his presidency). Most registered voters say that if the midterm elections were today, they’d support the Republican candidate. Even Trump beats Biden in hypothetical matchups. More than 60% of Americans say the Democrats are out of touch with the concerns of most Americans. And Republican congressional candidates now hold their largest lead in midterm election vote preferences dating back 40 years.How can the economic and pandemic news be so good, and so much of Biden’s agenda already enacted – yet the public be so sour on Biden and the Democrats?Some blame Biden’s and the Democrat’s poor messaging. Yes, it’s awful. Even now most Americans have no idea what the “Build Back Better” package is. It sounds like infrastructure, but that bill has been enacted. “Human infrastructure” makes no sense to most people.Yet this can’t be the major reason for the paradox because the Democrats’ failure at messaging goes back at least a half century. I remember in 1968 after Nixon beat Humphrey hearing that the Democrats’ problem is they talk policy while Americans want to hear values – the same criticism we’re hearing today.Some blame the media – not just despicable Fox News but also the corporate mainstream. But here, too, the problem predates the current paradox. Before Fox News, Rush Limbaugh was poisoning countless minds. And for at least four decades, the mainstream media has focused on conflict, controversy and scandal. Good news doesn’t attract eyeballs.Some suggest Democrats represent the college-educated suburban middle class that doesn’t really want major social change anyway. Yet this isn’t new, either. Clinton and Obama abandoned the working class by embracing trade, rejecting unions, subsidizing Wall Street and big business and embracing deregulation and privatization.So what explains the wide gap now between how well the country is doing and how badly Biden and the Democrats are doing politically?In two words: dashed hopes. After four years of Trump and a year and a half of deathly pandemic, most of the country was eager to put all the horror behind – to start over, wipe the slate clean, heal the wounds, reboot America. Biden in his own calm way seemed just the person to do it. And when Democrats retook the Senate, expectations of Democrats and independents soared.But those expectations couldn’t possibly be met when all the underlying structural problems were still with us – a nation deeply split, Trumpers still threatening democracy, racism rampant, corporate money still dominating much of politics, inequality still widening, inflation undermining wage gains, and the Delta variant of Covid still claiming lives.Dashed hopes make people angry. Mass disappointment is politically poisonous. Social psychologists have long understood that losing something of value generates more anguish than obtaining it generated happiness in the first place.Biden and Democrats can take solace from this. Hopefully, a year from now the fruits of Biden’s initiatives will be felt, Covid will be behind us, bottlenecks behind the current inflation will be overcome, and the horrors of the Trump years will become more visible through Congress’s investigations and the midterm campaigns of Trumpers.Most importantly, America’s irrational expectations for quick deliverance from all our structural problems will have settled into a more sober understanding that resolving them will require a huge amount of work, from all of us.Then, I suspect, the nation will be better able to appreciate how far we’ve come in just two years from where we were.
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
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‘A bold leader’: White House defends Kamala Harris after reports say she’s struggling
‘A bold leader’: White House defends Kamala Harris after reports say she’s strugglingJen Psaki fires back after several media outlets portray a vice-president struggling to make her mark John Nance Garner, vice-president to Franklin D Roosevelt from 1933 to 1941, famously said the office “wasn’t worth a bucket of warm piss”. Kamala Harris may now agree.Biden’s approval ratings continue to plunge amid crisis over inflationRead moreThe White House was moved to defend her on Sunday night, after leading US media outlets portrayed a VP struggling to make her mark.“For anyone who needs to hear it,” said the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, Harris “is not only a vital partner to [Joe Biden] but a bold leader who has taken on key, important challenges facing the country – from voting rights to addressing root causes of migration to expanding broadband.”Psaki was firing back on multiple fronts.On Friday, as Harris wrapped up a visit to France, the New York Times said: “Ten months into her vice-presidency, Ms Harris’s track record on delivering on the administration’s global priorities has been mixed.”Célia Belin, of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, told the paper: “I think she’s been really hidden this whole time and out of the sight of most Europeans. I think she’s been quite under the radar.”Then, late on Sunday, CNN published a lengthy report headlined: “Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice-president.”The report contained supportive voices, including the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, who said Harris was “off to the fastest and strongest start of any vice-president I have seen”.CNN said Klain emphasised Harris’s work on Covid vaccine equity and foreign policy, and said: “Anyone who has the honor of working closely with the vice-president knows how her talents and determination have made a big difference.”But CNN also said Klain was “known as a Harris defender in the West Wing”. Like much in the piece, it was unattributed. CNN said it spoke to “nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors and outside advisers”.Its report began with a stark statement: “Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at [Harris] and her staff – deciding there simply isn’t time to deal with them right now, especially at a moment when Biden faces quickly multiplying legislative and political concerns.”Success on one of the biggest such concerns, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, will see the White House host a signing ceremony on Monday, a chance for the president to bask in public victory at a time when his poll ratings – and Harris’s – are sliding.Reports on Harris’s fortunes generally include discussion of her own political future.As the first Black and Asian woman to be vice-president, she is assured of her place in history. But Biden is nearly 79 and may not run for re-election. Speculation continues to mount over Harris’s chances in a contest for the next Democratic nomination, perhaps in opposition to Pete Buttigieg, who ran much more strongly in 2020 and who as transportation secretary has made a confident start to Washington life.Like Harris, Buttigieg has been attacked by the right – if not so bizarrely as in claims last week that Harris spoke with a French accent while in Paris. Buttigieg recently took paternity leave after he and his husband adopted twins. Criticised by Fox News hosts and others, he was defended by the White House.An unnamed “former Harris aide” told CNN it was “hard to miss the specific energy that the White House brings to defend a white man, knowing that Kamala Harris has spent almost a year taking a lot of the hits that the West Wing didn’t want to take themselves”.There is also a typically outlandish Washington rumour that Biden might remove Harris as VP by appointing her to the supreme court.Trump ally Michael Flynn condemned over call for ‘one religion’ in USRead moreSpeaking to the Times, the former Connecticut senator Chris Dodd, a close Biden friend, said: “I’m hoping the president runs for re-election, but for whatever reason that might not be the case, it’s hard to believe there would be a short list without Kamala’s name on it. She’s the vice-president of the United States.”CNN reported perceived missteps by Harris, struggles to form a relationship with Biden beyond “an exhausted stalemate” and problems with staff. But one of the most widely discussed quotes was attributed to “a top donor to Biden and other Democrats”.“Kamala Harris is a leader but is not being put in positions to lead,” the donor said. “That doesn’t make sense. We need to be thinking long term, and we need to be doing what’s best for the party.“You should be putting her in positions to succeed, as opposed to putting weights on her. If you did give her the ability to step up and help her lead, it would strengthen you and strengthen the party.”TopicsKamala HarrisJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
