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      Ruben Gallego to run for Arizona Senate seat held by Kyrsten Sinema

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      Ruben Gallego to run for Arizona Senate seat held by Kyrsten SinemaDemocratic congressman and ex-marine faces potential three-way race with newly declared independent and a Republican next year The Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego of Arizona announced on Monday that he will run for the Senate, teeing up a potential battle against incumbent Senator Kyrsten Sinema next year.Gallego, a marine combat veteran who has served in the House of Representatives since 2015, made the widely expected announcement in a campaign video that was filmed in his Phoenix area congressional district.Kyrsten Sinema goes independent days after Democrats secure Senate majorityRead moreIn the video, Gallego explains his unlikely journey to the House as the son of an immigrant mother who struggled to make ends meet. If elected, Gallego, who is of Mexican and Colombian descent, would be the first Latino to represent Arizona in the Senate.“Growing up poor, the only thing I really had was the American dream,” Gallego says. “I’m running to be the senator of Arizona because you deserve somebody fighting for you and fighting with you every day to make sure you have the same chance at el sueño americano.”The announcement comes after months of speculation. Whispers of Gallego’s plans grew louder last month, when Sinema announced she would switch her party affiliation from Democratic to independent, although she continues to caucus with Senate Democrats.“At a time when our nation needs leadership most, Arizona deserves a voice that won’t back down in the face of struggle,” Gallego said at the time. “Unfortunately Senator Sinema is once again putting her own interests ahead of getting things done for Arizonans.”Sinema has not yet officially announced whether she will seek re-election. If she does choose to run as an independent, it could set up a three-way race between Sinema, Gallego and a Republican. It is unclear who the Republican nominee will be, although the former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is reportedly considering entering the race. According to the Washington Post, Lake plans to make a final decision at the conclusion of her current court case, which centers on baseless claims of election fraud in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial race.One of Gallego’s potential opponents for the Democratic nomination, congressman Greg Stanton, announced on Thursday that he will not run for the Senate seat. Democrats have notched some important wins in Arizona in recent years, but their candidates have frequently won by narrow margins. Joe Biden carried the state by just 0.3 points in 2020.Some party members fear that Sinema and Gallego may split the Democratic vote in the event of a three-way race. A recent survey conducted by Public Policy Polling on behalf of Gallego’s campaign showed him running neck and neck with Lake in a hypothetical matchup, while Sinema trailed in a distant third.The National Republican Senatorial Committee, Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, mockingly celebrated Gallego’s entry into the race on Monday. The group released a statement attacking Gallego’s “radical” views on immigration, and questioning whether the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, will back Sinema if she runs for re-election.“The Democrat civil war is on in Arizona,” NRSC spokesperson Philip Letsou said.Gallego would probably enter the general election with strong support from progressives, who have repeatedly attacked Sinema over her close ties to Wall Street. Over the past decade, Sinema has received at least $1.5m in campaign contributions from private equity professionals, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists, and progressives say those donors’ policy preferences have substantially affected the senator’s voting record.When Democrats were debating the Inflation Reduction Act last year, Sinema successfully lobbied against increasing the tax on carried interest, which are profits collected by private equity executives. A year earlier, Sinema reportedly pushed to raise the income threshold for a new tax on the wealthiest Americans from $5m to $10m.Most recently, Sinema caught flak for traveling to Davos, Switzerland, to attend the World Economic Forum last week. During one panel discussion, Sinema and fellow senator Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat of West Virginia, shared a high five over protecting the Senate filibuster, a chamber rule that Republicans have repeatedly used to block key pieces of Biden’s legislative agenda.“As she jet-sets with the international elite and does favors for her Wall Street donors at the expense of working Arizona taxpayers, Kyrsten Sinema shows us daily that she is only out for herself, and it’s time for new leadership,” said Sacha Haworth, a spokesperson for the Replace Sinema campaign at the progressive Change for Arizona 2024 Pac.Gallego joined in on criticizing Sinema over her Davos appearance, accusing her of neglecting her duties to Arizonans.“Kyrsten Sinema hasn’t held a town hall in Arizona for years,” Gallego said on Twitter last week. “Instead, she flies to Switzerland for a town hall with the rich and powerful. Not a Joke!”The tweet included a link to donate to Gallego’s potential Senate campaign, although he had not yet officially announced his intention to run. As of late last year, Gallego’s House campaign committee had $1.1m on hand, and he can now use that money for his Senate race.TopicsArizonaDemocratsUS politicsKyrsten SinemaUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      How the US far right and progressives ended up agreeing on military spending cuts

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      AnalysisHow the US far right and progressives ended up agreeing on military spending cutsJoan E GreveProgressives and ‘America first’ Republicans in Congress both want to re-examine US military budget – but for vastly different reasons Progressives have recently found themselves in an unfamiliar position: in agreement with members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.Some of the latter caucus’s members have recently called for re-examining the amount of money spent by the US military, echoing demands that progressives have issued for years. Although progressives are clear-eyed about their ideological differences with “America first” Republicans on foreign policy, they encourage a renewed debate over the Pentagon’s budget.McCarthy may be speaker, but Trump is the real leader of House RepublicansRead more“The idea that effective American foreign policy requires this [level of spending], I think, is not only wrong,” said Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to progressive senator Bernie Sanders, “it’s just absurd and unsustainable.”The Freedom Caucus reportedly pushed for spending cuts as part of their negotiations with Kevin McCarthy, who offered concessions to fellow Republicans to secure the House speakership earlier this month. One of those concessions involved a promise to cap fiscal year 2024 discretionary spending at fiscal year 2022 levels, after Republicans expressed outrage over the $1.76tn omnibus funding bill that Joe Biden signed into law last month.If such a fiscal policy were evenly applied to all federal agencies, the department of defense would see its budget cut by $75bn compared with this fiscal year.That possibility has simultaneously sowed division among House Republicans and attracted the interest of progressives. They hope the latest dust-up over the Pentagon’s budget will spark what they consider to be an overdue conversation over US defense spending, which will hit a record high of $858bn this fiscal year. Among House Republicans, the proposal to cut the Pentagon’s budget has won some support from far-right members who have embraced Donald Trump’s “America first” approach to foreign policy. Speaking to Fox News this month, Congressman Matt Gaetz, one of the Republican holdouts in the speakership battle, partly blamed the Pentagon’s large budget on America’s financial assistance to Ukraine amid its war against Russia.“We can defend this country and project power more efficiently and more effectively than we do,” Gaetz said. “How about we start with Ukraine?”McCarthy himself previously promised that Republicans would not provide a “blank check” to Ukraine if they won back the House. But aid to Ukraine has continued to win bipartisan support in Congress.“I do not see that money getting taken away from us,” Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said earlier this month. “It is there. It is rock solid through nearly all or all of 2023.”McCarthy has expressed openness to examining the Pentagon’s budget, but the proposal has stoked outrage among many of the more hawkish members of his conference. Republican congressman Tony Gonzales of Texas cited the potential cuts to explain his opposition to the House rules package, saying he thought the proposal was a “horrible idea”.“How am I going to look at our allies in the eye and say, I need you to increase your defense budget, but yet America is going to decrease ours?” Gonzales told CBS News.Republicans’ dysfunction over speaker threatens the health of US governmentRead moreWhile a number of House Democrats have joined Gonzales in rejecting the idea of defense spending cuts, the idea of reconsidering the Pentagon’s budget has long held sway with progressives. When Biden called for an increase in funding for the defense department last year, leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus attacked the proposal as “simply unacceptable”. Progressive activists and their congressional allies note that the US military has a larger budget than the next nine largest militaries combined and urged lawmakers to reallocate some of that funding to other needs, such as healthcare or education.“For far too long, we have blindly and excessively pumped money into the Pentagon, which – despite its massive budget – has yet to pass an audit,” said the progressive congresswoman Barbara Lee, who has long championed fiscal reform at the defense department. “Imagine what we could do with even a fraction of [the Pentagon’s funding]. We need to rethink our foreign policy priorities and invest in diplomacy first and defense second.”Ro Khanna, a progressive congressman from California, said he would welcome a bipartisan conversation about the Pentagon’s budget, but he rejected Republicans’ efforts to tie spending cuts to the looming fight over the debt ceiling. The US hit its debt limit this month, and the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has warned that the government is at risk of defaulting this summer if Congress does not increase its borrowing capacity – a move that would have catastrophic effects on the US economy. Democrats fear that House Republicans will attempt to extract concessions on government spending in exchange for helping to raise the debt ceiling.“I do not support any debate on spending demands that threaten a debt-ceiling showdown. If Republicans want to have conversations about future defense cuts that are strategic, then I am open to that,” Khanna told the Guardian. “While I support the funding for Ukraine’s defense, we need to take ourselves off the path to a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget.”Progressive advocates similarly rejected the notion that the US must choose between cutting the Pentagon’s budget and supporting Ukraine. Stephen Miles, president of the progressive group Win Without War, blamed the Pentagon’s ballooning budget on ineffective weapons systems and excessive contracts to private companies, which have accounted for as much as half of US defense spending in recent years.“The spending on Ukraine is not what’s driving the Pentagon’s growth,” Miles said. “We’re talking about major weapon systems procurement; we’re talking about private service contracting. We’re talking about a lot of things that aren’t being driven by Ukraine.”Duss, now a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the war in Ukraine should not prevent any debate over defense spending. He noted that politicians like Sanders and Lee have demanded reductions in the Pentagon’s budget for years, long before the war in Ukraine began.“There’s always going to be some crisis of the moment that prevents us from thinking about how to spend less on defense,” Duss said. “But this is a conversation that we absolutely have to have.” As of now, the prospects for enacting Pentagon budget cuts appear bleak. Even some of the House Republicans who, like Gaetz, initially opposed McCarthy’s speakership bid have downplayed the possibility. Congressman Chip Roy of Texas, a key negotiator in the talks between McCarthy and his Republican detractors, claimed that “cuts to defense were NEVER DISCUSSED” during the speakership fight.“In fact, there was broad agreement spending cuts should focus on NON-DEFENSE discretionary spending,” Roy’s office said on Twitter.US heads for debt-ceiling standoff as House Republicans refuse to budgeRead moreA funding bill that solely cut non-defense discretionary spending would almost certainly be rejected by Democrats, who still control the Senate and the White House. In addition to the procedural hurdles of Roy’s proposal, Miles mocked the idea of excluding defense spending from potential cuts as utterly unrealistic.“You can’t look at the level of spending that the US government is doing and say we’re going to exempt more than half of discretionary spending,” Miles said. “When you have the Pentagon taking up as much money as it is now, there’s no way to look at cutting government spending without it.”Even if Congress could somehow reach an agreement on the need to reduce the Pentagon’s budget, conservatives would inevitably clash with progressives over what programs to cut and how to reallocate that funding.“The reason Matt Gaetz wants to cut defense spending is not the reason why I would,” Duss acknowledged.Still, Duss argued that progressives and some lawmakers on the right have a “shared interest” in starting a reinvigorated conversation over defense spending. That communal goal could work to progressives’ advantage.“If Republicans want to prize this open and look inside this budget … that’s a debate I think everyone should welcome,” Duss said. “And I think it’s quite telling who’s not welcoming it.”TopicsUS politicsRepublicansUS CongressUS militaryJoe BidenDemocratsUS national securityanalysisReuse this content More

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      ‘We may have lost the south’: what LBJ really said about Democrats in 1964

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      ‘We may have lost the south’: what LBJ really said about Democrats in 1964Bill Moyers was there when Lyndon Johnson made his memorable assessment of the Civil Rights Act’s effects The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in American history, giving protections and rights long denied to Black Americans. Like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Medicare for senior citizens, it was a pillar of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.LBJ OK? Historian Mark Lawrence on a president resurgentRead moreThe Civil Rights Act also had a profound effect on the American political landscape, triggering a reshaping that still influences the fortunes of Democrats and Republicans, particularly in the south.A brilliant political analyst, Johnson foresaw the consequences of his civil rights legislation on the day he signed it into law. He is said to have remarked: “We’ve lost the south for a generation.”Indeed, the south has become steadily more Republican since then, the victories of Joe Biden and two Democratic senators in Georgia in 2020 and 2022 rare blue successes in a Republican stronghold.But did Johnson really say it? He didn’t mention it in his memoir – and he died 50 years ago on Sunday, aged just 64. In his absence, historians debate and write.So the Guardian went to the source: the legendary journalist Bill Moyers. Now 88, he was Johnson’s special assistant when the Civil Rights Act passed.Moyers responded with a detailed e-mail.On 2 July 1964, “the president signed the Civil Rights Act around 6.45pm. Before he went into a meeting in his office with some civil rights leaders and [the deputy attorney general] Nick Katzenbach, he pulled me aside and said, sotto voce, ‘Bird [Johnson’s wife] and I are going down to the Ranch. I’d like you to come with us … I practically ran to my office to pack.’”Moyers made it to the airport in time.“When I boarded the Jet Star, the president was reading the latest edition of the Washington Post. We took off around around 11pm … I sat down across from him. Lady Bird was in the other seat by him … the papers were celebrating what they described as a great event.“I said, ‘Quite a day, Mr President.’ As he reached a sheaf of the wire copy he tilted his head slightly back and held the copy up close to him so that he could read it, and said: ‘Well, I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime – and mine.’“It was lightly said. Not sarcastic. Not even dramatically. It was like a throwaway sidebar.”To Moyers, “all these years later”, Johnson’s remark seems “maybe … merely a jest, lightly uttered and soon forgotten”. But after Moyers “repeated it publicly just once, it took on a life of its own.“Unfortunately, various versions appeared: ‘for a generation’, ‘once and for all’. I couldn’t keep up. I finally stopped commenting.”And so a legend grew.As Moyers pointed out, in summer 1964, Johnson’s “immediate concern was to carry the south in his own election for president”, against the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, a hard-right senator from Arizona.“He briefly threatened not to go to the Democratic national convention in Atlantic City, because he was very tense and uneasy about the fight over seating the Mississippi delegation, and especially the role of Fannie Lou Hamer.”Hamer was a legendary civil rights activist, beaten and shot at for registering Black voters in Mississippi. At the convention, she mesmerized a national audience when she testified in an unsuccessful effort to get the new Freedom Democratic Party seated as the official delegation from Mississippi.“As we all know,” Moyers wrote, “Johnson went on to the convention and lapped his nomination … Now he seemed fully in the game and determined to carry the south.“He called meetings with his campaign team, over and again. He talked often to our people on the ground, from Louisiana to North Carolina. He made the campaign south of the Mason-Dixon Line his personal battlefield. He wanted to win there. And he did – in five states.”Johnson won in a landslide. In the south, he took Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.Moyers remembered that “on election night, as the results rolled in, [Johnson] was elated. His dreaded private vision of losing the south … would have cost [him] the election.“I think he had doubled down on not handing Republicans the south. That would come with [Richard] Nixon’s southern strategy, four years later. For now, [Johnson] was spared what would have humiliated him.”TopicsBooksCivil rights movementUS politicsUS domestic policyRaceDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      LBJ OK? Historian Mark Lawrence on a president resurgent

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      InterviewLBJ OK? Historian Mark Lawrence on a president resurgentMartin Pengelly Fifty years after Lyndon Johnson died, the director of the 36th president’s library discusses his politics and progressive idealsFifty years ago on Sunday, Lyndon Baines Johnson died. He was 64, and had been out of power since stepping down as president in 1969, in the shadow of the Vietnam war. Forty-five years later, in 2018, the Guardian marked the anniversary of his death. The headline: “Why Lyndon Johnson, a truly awful man, is my political hero.”Why Lyndon Johnson, a truly awful man, is my political hero | Jack BernhardtRead moreMark Lawrence laughs.“I think I read that one,” he says.It seems likely. Lawrence, a distinguished Vietnam scholar, is director of the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.Johnson was a Texas Democrat who rose through Congress to be vice-president to John F Kennedy, then assumed the presidency when Kennedy was killed. From 1963 to 1969, Johnson presided over great social reform at home and gathering disaster abroad. His legacy has never been less than complex, his place in American culture attracting historians by the hundred and big-name actors in droves. Bryan Cranston, Brian Cox and Woody Harrelson have recently played LBJ.Lawrence continues: “One of the ideas that an awful lot of people hold about LBJ, and I think it’s not wholly incorrect, but it’s problematic, is that he was this vulgar, crude man who used four-letter words and demeaned his subordinates and threw temper tantrums.“There’s no question that Caro” – Robert Caro’s biographical masterwork – “is the go-to source for the uglier parts of his personal style. But I think you can also make an argument, and Caro I think comes around to this view in the later books, that LBJ managed to combine whatever elements of that old caricature hold up with a genuine sense of compassion for ordinary people.“Many biographers see the link between his own hardscrabble youth and the struggles of his family and a peculiar sensitivity to the plight of the downtrodden, which certainly affected his view of racial discrimination. The sensitivity to poverty, whether it affected Black, brown or white, came from his own experience.“My writing about LBJ has largely been critical, but I don’t have any difficulty saying this was a man with a genuine sense of compassion.”Lawrence is speaking to mark the half-century since the 36th president died. LBJ is in the news anyway. He was the architect of the Great Society, overseeing the passage of civil rights protections and a welfare system now under renewed attack. Joe Biden often compares his post-Covid presidency to that of Franklin D Roosevelt amid the Great Depression, but comparisons to Johnson are ready to hand.Lawrence says: “The points of similarity are remarkable. The guy with long service in the Senate” – Johnson from Texas, 1949-1961, Biden from Delaware, 1973-2009 – “the guy who could cross the aisle, the guy who spoke in pragmatic, bipartisan terms. Both of these guys became vice-president to a younger, less experienced but much more charismatic person” – Biden to Barack Obama – “and that was kind of their ticket to the presidency.“But I think some of these comparisons are ultimately unfair to Biden, because the political context is just so different. My own view is, sure, LBJ deserves credit for being this enormously persuasive, forceful guy who knew how to bend people to his will. But at the end of the day, LBJ was pushing an open door.“Even the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, these great achievements, they passed by big margins. There were bipartisan coalitions. LBJ deserves credit for his ability to put those coalitions together. But … I think it’s possible to exaggerate LBJ’s importance and to forget the importance of Hubert Humphrey, Jacob Javits and Everett Dirksen, all key players as well.”Bipartisan players, too. Humphrey was LBJ’s vice-president, Javits a Republican senator from New York, Dirksen, of Illinois, Republican Senate minority leader.“I think that’s precisely what’s lacking now. The situation is so polarised that you could bring LBJ back from the dead and he’d be an utter failure in this political context, because his skills would have been meaningless in the context of 2023.”Biden passed a coronavirus rescue package, an infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, all meant to help the US recover from Covid, with razor-thin margins in Congress and against Republicans gone to extremes. LBJ’s shadow may be long – at a shade over 6ft 3in he is the second-tallest president, after Abraham Lincoln – but Biden does not necessarily labour within it.So how might progressives see Johnson? If they read Caro, they will learn how he came from a world of Texas populism, tinged with socialism, that now seems far gone indeed.“At least by the standards of the era,” Lawrence sees in LBJ “a genuine willingness to think hard about poverty and how to insulate people against economic forces over which individuals had no control whatsoever.”Whether teaching in a dirt-poor school in Cotulla in 1928 or working “for the National Youth Administration in the 1930s, LBJ shows glimmers of his willingness to cross racial lines and to think seriously about the situation of African Americans and Mexican Americans”.1968: the year that changed AmericaRead moreTo Lawrence, the Texas years “indicate that LBJ was an unusual person, for a southern white man who came of age in the 1920s and 30s.”In the 1950s, when Johnson led the Senate, he defended white supremacy. As president, he oversaw the Vietnam disaster. But Charles Kaiser, a Guardian contributor and author of 1968 in America and The Gay Metropolis, also sees the bigger picture.“In 1968, I hated Lyndon Johnson with all my heart, because I was 17 – and lived in fear of being drafted. Fifty years later, it is clear three other things about his presidency were much more important than the war that destroyed him.“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 made him the most courageous president since Lincoln. Johnson may or may not have said ‘We have lost the south for a generation’ after he signed the 1964 law, but he certainly knew that was true. By fighting for those two laws, he did more to redeem the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation than any president before him.“Medicare is the third prong of a noble legacy. It did more to improve the lives of senior citizens than anything else except Franklin Roosevelt’s social security. A hundred years from now, I think Johnson will be considered one of our greatest presidents.”To Lawrence, Johnson’s reputation is “mixed. But I think the mix of impressions is quite different from what it was certainly 30 years ago.“When he died, and for many years thereafter, Vietnam hung so heavily over LBJ that he was a little bit radioactive … it was something conservatives and the left could agree on. Vietnam was a debacle and LBJ bore principal responsibility for it. But I think in the last decade and a half, there’s been a gradual reappraisal.Turn Every Page: a peek into Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb’s long creative relationshipRead more“The level of dysfunction and partisanship in Washington has led people to take another look at LBJ and how he was able to work across the aisle and achieve so much. There’s a kind of longing, I think, for that kind of political effectiveness.“So many of the issues that LBJ worked on are back with us, and I think this has led at least parts of the political spectrum to have a new appreciation for him.“In a period when immigration and the environment and voting rights are under threat in a profound way, people are rediscovering LBJ as someone who maybe didn’t have perfect answers but worked very effectively, at least by the standards of recent decades, and achieved real results.”TopicsBooksUS politicsPolitics booksHistory booksDemocratsUS domestic policyUS foreign policyinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Ron Klain to reportedly step down as Biden chief of staff

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      Ron Klain to reportedly step down as Biden chief of staffNew York Times reports Klain to announce departure in coming weeks, following two grueling years since president took office Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s chief of staff, is reportedly set to step down from his position, in what will be the biggest change to the US president’s inner circle of advisors since he took office two years ago.Klain will announce his departure in the coming weeks, according to the New York Times, after telling colleagues that he is ready to move on following a grueling period of successes and frustrations that stretch back to Biden’s successful 2020 election campaign.Trump is trying to make a comeback. It’s not working | Lloyd GreenRead more“Two hard years,” Klain tweeted on Friday, marking the second anniversary of Biden’s inauguration. “So much to be done. But so much progress.”The impending exit of Klain follows a period where the chief of staff worked to secure Biden’s legislative priorities, including the bipartisan infrastructure bill and last year’s inflation reduction act, which was achieved following 18 months of often torturous negotiations between the White House and lawmakers, most notably Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia.More recently, Biden has come under scrutiny for alleged improper handling of federal documents, as well as fresh pressure from Republicans in their new majority in the House of Representatives. The new chief of staff is expected to have to mount a defense of Biden’s victories so far, as well as oversee the lead-up to a likely re-election bid by the 80-year-old president.Klain, who is 61, has a long record in Democratic political circles, having been involved in both of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, acted as chief of staff to both Al Gore and then Biden when the men served as vice president previously. Klain, a lawyer by training, also oversaw the Obama administration’s response to an outbreak of Ebola in 2014.He was named as Biden’s chief of staff just a few days after the 2020 election victory was secured.TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Joe Biden has been constantly underestimated’: Chris Whipple on his White House book

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      Interview‘Joe Biden has been constantly underestimated’: Chris Whipple on his White House bookDavid Smith in Washington Fight of His Life author on Kamala Harris’s struggles and growth, Afghanistan, a strong second year … and if Biden will run againThere are those who believe that at 80, Joe Biden is too old to serve a second term as president. Yet few clamour for him to hand over to the person who would normally be the heir apparent.The Fight of His Life review: Joe Biden, White House winnerRead moreTwo years in, Kamala Harris, the first woman of colour to be vice-president, has had her ups and downs. Her relationship with Biden appears strong and she has found her voice as a defender of abortion rights. But her office has suffered upheaval and her media appearances have failed to impress.Such behind-the-scenes drama is recounted in The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, written by the author, journalist and film-maker Chris Whipple and published this week. Whipple gained access to nearly all of Biden’s inner circle and has produced a readable half-time report on his presidency – a somewhat less crowded field than the literary genre that sprang up around Donald Trump.“In the beginning, Joe Biden liked having Kamala Harris around,” Whipple writes, noting that Biden wanted the vice-president with him for meetings on almost everything. One source observed a “synergy” between them.Harris volunteered to take on the cause of voting rights. But Biden handed her another: tackling the causes of undocumented immigration by negotiating with the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.“But for Harris,” Whipple writes, “the Northern Triangle would prove to be radioactive.”With the distinction between root causes and immediate problems soon lost on the public, Harris got the blame as migrants kept coming.One of her senior advisers tells Whipple the media could not handle a vice-president who was not only female but also Black and south Asian, referring to it as “the Unicorn in a glass box” syndrome. But Harris also suffered self-inflicted wounds. Whipple writes that she “seemed awkward and uncertain … she laughed inappropriately and chopped the air with her hands, which made her seem condescending”.An interview with NBC during a visit to Guatemala and Mexico was a “disaster”, according to one observer. Reports highlighted turmoil and turnover in Harris’s office, some former staff claiming they saw it all before when she was California attorney general and on her presidential campaign. Her approval rating sank to 28%, lower than Dick Cheney’s during the Iraq war.But, Whipple writes, Biden and his team still thought highly of Harris.“Ron Klain [chief of staff] was personally fond of her. He met with the vice-president weekly and encouraged her to do more interviews and raise her profile. Harris was reluctant, wary of making mistakes.“‘This is like baseball,’ Klain told her. ‘You have to accept the fact that sometimes you will strike out. We all strike out. But you can’t score runs if you’re sitting in the dugout.’ Biden’s chief was channeling manager Tom Hanks in the film A League of Their Own. ‘Look, no one here is going to get mad at you. We want you out there!’”Speaking to the Guardian, Whipple, 69, reflects: “It’s a complicated, fascinating relationship between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.“In the early months of the administration they had a real rapport, a real bond. Because of Covid they were thrown together in the White House and spent a lot of time together. He wanted her to be in almost every meeting and valued her input. All of that was and is true.“But when she began to draw fire, particularly over her assignment on the Northern Triangle, things became more complicated. It got back to the president that the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, was complaining around town that her portfolio was too difficult and that in effect it was setting her up for failure. This really annoyed Biden. He felt he hadn’t asked her to do anything he hadn’t done for Barack Obama: he had the Northern Triangle as one of his assignments. She had asked for the voting rights portfolio and he gave it to her. So that caused some friction.”A few months into the presidency, Whipple writes, a close friend asked Biden what he thought of his vice-president. His reply: “A work in progress.” These four words – a less than ringing endorsement – form the title of a chapter in Whipple’s book.But in our interview, Whipple adds: “It’s also true that she grew in terms of her national security prowess. That’s why Biden sent her to the Munich Security Conference on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She spent a lot of time in the meetings with the president’s daily brief and Biden’s given her some important assignments in that respect.”A former producer for CBS’s 60 Minutes, Whipple has written books about White House chiefs of staff and directors of the CIA. Each covered more than 100 years of history, whereas writing The Fight of His Life was, he says, like designing a plane in mid-flight and not knowing where to land it. Why did he do it?“How could I not? When you think about it, Joe Biden and his team came into office confronting a once-in-a-century pandemic, crippled economy, global warming, racial injustice, the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol. How could anybody with a political or storytelling bone in his body not want to tell that story? Especially if you could get access to Biden’s inner circle, which I was fortunate in being able to do.”Even so, it wasn’t easy. Whipple describes “one of the most leakproof White Houses in modern history … extremely disciplined and buttoned down”. It could hardly be more different from the everything-everywhere-all-at-once scandals of the Trump administration.What the author found was a tale of two presidencies. There was year one, plagued by inflation, supply chain problems, an arguably premature declaration of victory over the coronavirus and setbacks in Congress over Build Back Better and other legislation. Worst of all was the dismal end of America’s longest war as, after 20 years and $2tn, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.“It was clearly a failure to execute the withdrawal in a safe and orderly way and at the end of the day, as I put it, it was a whole-of-government failure,” Whipple says. “Everybody got almost everything wrong, beginning with the intelligence on how long the Afghan government and armed forces would last and ending with the botched execution of the withdrawal, with too few troops on the ground.”Whipple is quite possibly the first author to interview Klain; the secretary of state, Antony Blinken; the CIA director, Bill Burns; and the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, about the Afghanistan debacle.“What became clear was that everybody had a different recollection of the intelligence. While this administration often seems to be pretty much on the same page, I found that there was a lot more drama behind the scenes during the Afghan withdrawal and in some of the immediate aftermath,” he says.The book also captures tension between Leon Panetta, CIA director and defense secretary under Barack Obama, who was critical of the exit strategy – “You just wonder whether people were telling the president what he wanted to hear” – and Klain, who counters that Panetta favoured the war and oversaw the training of the Afghan military, saying: “If this was Biden’s Bay of Pigs, it was Leon’s army that lost the fight.”Whipple comments: “Ron Klain wanted to fire back in this case and it’s remarkable and fascinating to me, given his relationship with Panetta. Obviously his criticism got under Ron Klain’s skin.”Biden’s second year was a different story. “Everything changed on 24 February 2022, when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Joe Biden was uniquely qualified to rise to that moment and he did, rallying Nato in defiance of Putin and in defence of Ukraine. Biden had spent his entire career preparing for that moment, with the Senate foreign relations committee and his experience with Putin, and it showed.“Then he went on to pass a string of bipartisan legislative bills from the Chips Act to veterans healthcare, culminating in the Inflation Reduction Act, which I don’t think anybody saw coming.“One thing is for sure: Joe Biden has been constantly underestimated from day one and, at the two-year mark, he proves that he could deliver a lot more than people thought.”Biden looked set to enter his third year with the wind at his back. Democrats exceeded expectations in the midterm elections, inflation is slowing, Biden’s approval rating is on the up and dysfunctional House Republicans struggled to elect a speaker.But political life moves pretty fast. Last week the justice department appointed a special counsel to investigate the discovery of classified documents, from Biden’s time as vice-president, at his thinktank in Washington and home in Delaware.Whipple told CBS: “They really need to raise their game here, I think, because this really goes to the heart of Joe Biden’s greatest asset, arguably, which is trust.”The mistake represents a bump in the road to 2024. Biden’s age could be another. He is older than Ronald Reagan was when he completed his second term and if he serves a full second term he will be 86 at the end. Opinion polls suggest many voters feel he is too old for the job. Biden’s allies disagree.Whipple says: “His inner circle is bullish about Biden’s mental acuity and his ability to govern. I never heard any of them express any concern and maybe you would expect that from the inner circle. Many of them will tell you that he has extraordinary endurance, energy.“Bruce Reed [a longtime adviser] told me about flying back on a red-eye from Europe after four summits in a row when everybody had to drag themselves out of the plane and was desperately trying to sleep and the boss came in and told stories for six hours straight all the way back to DC.”During conversations and interviews for the book, did Whipple get the impression Biden will seek re-election?“He’s almost undoubtedly running. Andy Card [chief of staff under George W Bush] said something to me once that rang true: ‘If anybody tells you they’re leaving the White House voluntarily, they’re probably lying to you.’“Who was the last president to walk away from the office voluntarily? LBJ [Lyndon Baines Johnson]. It rarely happens. I don’t think Joe Biden is an exception. He spent his whole career … thinking about running or running for president and he’s got unfinished business. Having the possibility of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee probably makes it more urgent for him. He thinks he can beat him again.”
      The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House is published in the US by Scribner
      TopicsBooksJoe BidenBiden administrationKamala HarrisUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Biden honors Roe v Wade’s 50th anniversary as anti-abortionists rally in Washington – as it happeend

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      Today is the 50th anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, which protected abortion rights nationwide until it was overturned by the conservative-dominated supreme court last year. The White House has issued a proclamation honoring the formerly precedent-setting case, and promising to continue fighting for abortion access.“The Court got Roe right 50 years ago. It was a balanced decision with broad national consensus that the majority of Americans have continued to support for the last 50 years. And it was a constitutional principle upheld by justices appointed by Democratic and Republican Presidents alike,” Joe Biden wrote in the proclamation, which honors “generations of advocates who have fought for reproductive freedom, to recognize the countless women whose lives and futures have been saved and shaped by the Roe v. Wade decision, and to march forward with purpose as we work together to restore the right to choose.”“I continue to call on the Congress to pass legislation to make those protections the law of the land once and for all. Until then, I will continue to use my Executive authority to protect women and families from harm in the wake of the Dobbs decision,” which overturned Roe, the president said.But just blocks from the White House, anti-abortion advocates are gathering for the annual March for Life rally, the first since the supreme court ruling in Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization allowed states to ban the procedure. They’ve changed up their route this year and will finish near the Capitol, a recognition that the latest front in the abortion debate is in Congress and state legislatures nationwide.The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino is on the scene at the rally:Abortion opponents are beginning to gather on the mall before the annual March for Life rally and march, the first since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. The theme this year is “Next Steps: Marching Forward into a Post-Roe America.” pic.twitter.com/aQnnE5SLiT— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) January 20, 2023
      Today was the 50th anniversary of the supreme court handing down Roe v Wade, and the first since its conservative justices reversed that ruling last year and allowed states to ban the procedure. Joe Biden marked the day with a proclamation restating his administration’s commitment to protecting reproductive rights, while blocks from the White House, anti-abortion activists gathered for the annual March for Life – the first since Roe was overturned. The route for their march this year finished near the US Capitol, a signal that swaying legislatures nationwide is the next task for their movement.Here’s what else happened today:
      The supreme court will next week issue the first opinion of its current term after an unusually long period of silence.
      Donald Trump has warned Republicans not to cut the popular Social Security or Medicare programs after the party’s leaders vowed to reduce government spending in exchange for raising the debt limit.
      Today marked the halfway point of Biden’s first term in office, and reports indicate he still intends to seek a second term, with an announcement planned for after the 7 February State of the Union address.
      Democrats breathed a big sigh of relief when Virginia senator Tim Kaine said he would seek re-election. Had he opted to retire, the party’s quest to hold on to the Senate in the 2024 election could have become more complicated.
      Arizona’s new Democratic administration has paused executions and announced a review of the state’s use of capital punishment.
      Joe Biden will host the leaders of Congress at the White House next week, Bloomberg Government reports.He’ll also meet separately with Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker, about raising the debt limit:NEWS: House, Senate Democratic leaders to White House Tuesday to talk about new session w BidenBiden says he’ll have a separate discussion w GOP Leader #McCarthy about US #DebtLimit soon but gives no detailsUS default would be “unprecedented calamity,” Biden says— Nancy Ognanovich (@NOgnanovich) January 20, 2023
      In Arizona, newly elected Democratic governor Katie Hobbs has announced a review of the state’s procedures for applying the death penalty, and the attorney general has moved to pause executions.“If Arizona is going to execute individuals, it should have a system for doing so that is transparent, accountable, and faithful to our Constitution and the rule of law,” Kris Mayes, the Democratic attorney general elected in November, said in a statement that announced the withdrawal of a pending warrant of execution for a death row prisoner.Hobbs said she had signed an executive order creating a Death Penalty Independent Review Commissioner, who is tasked with evaluating “lethal injection drug and gas chamber chemical procurement process, execution protocols, and staffing considerations including training and experience.”“With the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) now under new leadership, it’s time to address the fact that this is a system that needs better oversight on numerous fronts,” Hobbs said. She noted that Arizona “has a history of mismanaged executions that have resulted in serious questions and concerns about ADCRR’s execution protocols and lack of transparency.”Looks who’s at the March for Life in Washington DC.It’s white nationalist group the Patriot Front, according to two independent photographers documenting the anti-abortion event:Members of patriot front heading out flyers once again at March for life in Washington DC today pic.twitter.com/fWD5MTHJT3— Zach D Roberts – Photojournalist (@zdroberts) January 20, 2023
      Groups of men in flannel and face masks handing out Patriot Front flyers at March for Life in DC today. pic.twitter.com/lu2hKayMxk— Nathan Howard (@SmileItsNathan) January 20, 2023
      In a lengthy reply to Republican House judiciary chair Jim Jordan, the justice department laid out some conditions for its cooperation with the committee, CNN reports:News: DOJ responds to GOP Rep. Jim Jordan’s requests for documents & info related to House Judiciary Committee probes. Makes clear department unlikely to share information about ongoing criminal investigations but will work to accommodate other requests. pic.twitter.com/mbS2zSpKbZ— Zachary Cohen (@ZcohenCNN) January 20, 2023
      Jordan’s committee is one of several in the House that Republicans are using to launch inquiries into the Biden administration, and it has already sent several requests for documents on various subjects to the White House, justice department and elsewhere.The supreme court is well into its 2022-2023 term, but hasn’t released any opinions yet, in what court observers say is an unprecedented period of silence.That’s set to change Monday morning, when the justices finally release their first decision, SCOTUSblog reports:NEW: The Supreme Court expects to issue one or more opinions on Monday morning. It will be the first opinion-release of the 2022-23 term.— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) January 20, 2023
      As NBC News points out, there’s no telling which opinions they will release:Court heard some big cases in the fall but generally its first rulings are in lower-profile cases in which the justices are (mostly) unanimous— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) January 20, 2023
      US vice president Kamala Harris is due to give a speech on Sunday in the Florida state capital of Tallahassee, to mark the 50th anniversary of the US Supreme Court making abortion in the US a constitutional right, with its 1973 decision in the case Roe v Wade.It would have been a celebration for those in favor of reproductive rights in America, including personal choice in the matter of abortion.Instead, the anti-abortion movement is holding its annual rally and march in Washington in an atmosphere of triumph for the anti-choice school because of last June’s decision by the now-conservative-dominated supreme court overturning Roe.That decision in the so-called Dobbs case out of Mississippi ripped up Roe and threw away federal abortion rights, returning the power to make law on abortion back to individual states.On Sunday, Harris will make a pro-choice speech and moments ago, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the veep chose Florida partly because it has tough restrictions on abortion – though less so than its neighboring states. “Florida’s restrictions are not as tough as neighbors,” said Jean-Pierre, but noted that Florida “is considering an even more extreme ban which would be devastating for women.”Harris and Joe Biden have been in office for exactly two years today.In the wake of a federal judge ordering Donald Trump and one of his attorneys to jointly pay nearly $1m in penalties for pursuing a frivolous lawsuit that accused Hillary Clinton and others, the former president today also withdrew his lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James.The case against James, in federal court in Florida, had also been before US district court judge Donald Middlebrooks, the Associated Press reports.Just in: Trump withdraws suit against NY State AG Letitia James — the type of frivolous case that was cited by the judge who last night imposed sanctions of nearly $1 million against Trump and his lawyer Alina Habba— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) January 20, 2023
      Trump sued James in November in response to her lawsuit alleging he and his company mislead banks and others about the value of assets in a practice she dubbed “The art of the steal” [a parody on Trump’s best-selling book about getting rich as a New York real estate mogul, The Art of the Deal.]Trump, a Republican, also sought to prevent James, a Democrat, from having any oversight over the family trust that controls his company.His 35-page complaint rehashed some claims from his previously dismissed lawsuit against James in federal court in New York, irritating Middlebrooks.Middlebrooks wrote in an order in December:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This litigation has all the telltale signs of being both vexatious and frivolous.”Today is the 50th anniversary of the supreme court handing down Roe v Wade, and the first since its conservative justices reversed that ruling last year and allowed states to ban the procedure. Joe Biden marked the day with a proclamation restating his administration’s commitment to protecting reproductive rights, while blocks from the White House, anti-abortion activists have gathered for the annual March for Life – the first since Roe was overturned. In a sign of the struggle ahead, the route for their march this year will finish near the US Capitol, a signal that legislatures nationwide are now the main battlefields for their movement.Here’s what else has happened today:
      Donald Trump has warned Republicans not to go after the popular Social Security or Medicare programs after the party’s leaders promised to cut government spending in exchange for raising the debt limit.
      Today marks the halfway point of Biden’s first term in office, and reports indicate he still plans to seek a second term, with an announcement planned for after the 7 February State of the Union address.
      Democrats breathed a big sigh of relief when Virginia senator Tim Kaine said he would seek a third term. Had he opted to retire, the party’s quest to hold on to the Senate in the 2024 election could have become more complicated.
      Ron DeSantis violated the law when he suspended a Florida state attorney for saying he wouldn’t enforce the state’s restrictive new 15-week abortion ban, a judge has ruled.But district court judge Robert Hinkle says he doesn’t have the authority to overturn the Republican governor’s decision and reinstate Hillsborough county state attorney Andrew Warren to office.DeSantis removed Warren in August after the Democrat said he wouldn’t enforce the abortion law, or prosecute providers of gender transition treatment for young people. Accusing Warren of following a “woke” agenda, the governor said he had put himself “above the law”.But in a scathing 59-page ruling released Friday, Hinkle said it was DeSantis, a likely candidate for the Republican party’s 2024 presidential nomination, who had broken the law.He rejected DeSantis’s assertion that Warren had a blanket policy of not prosecuting certain cases, and that Warren had every right as a state attorney to “exercise prosecutorial discretion at every stage of every case”:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The governor violated the first amendment by considering Mr Warren’s speech on matters of public concern as motivating factors in the decision to suspend him.
      The governor [also] violated the first amendment by considering Mr Warren’s association with the Democratic party.Hinkle conceded that DeSantis would still have removed Warren without the violations, and because they didn’t affect the outcome, he couldn’t provide injunctive relief.DeSantis’s violation of the Florida state constitution did affect the outcome, Hinkle said. But he noted the 11th amendment prohibited a federal court awarding relief against a state official based only on a violation of state law, and that he had no alternative to dismiss Warren’s request for reinstatement.In an earlier stage of the legal case, Hinkle ordered DeSantis to testify in defense of his decision, but backed down in November.With his legal path to reinstatement now apparently blocked, Warren is expected to lay out his next steps to reporters later today.The demise of Roe v Wade was unusual in that Americans knew it was coming weeks in advance.That’s because somebody obtained a draft of the decision in the Dobbs case and leaked it to Politico, a highly unusual development for an institution whose inner workings are almost never revealed. Chief justice John Roberts ordered an investigation into the leak, but yesterday, the court’s marshal said they could not figure out who did it.That hasn’t sat well with some. Republican senator John Kennedy deployed his trademark colorful language in an interview with Fox News, blaming the leaker for putting a supreme court justice in danger:“Congratulations, butthead.”— Sen. John Kennedy’s (R-LA) message to the leaker of the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion on overturning Roe v. Wade pic.twitter.com/m6XMognn70— The Recount (@therecount) January 20, 2023
      He doesn’t name him, but Kennedy is likely referring to Brett Kavanaugh,a conservative who was among the justices voting to overturn Roe. Last summer, a 26-year-old man was arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate Kavanaugh.The sentiment among March for Life attendees is a mixture of politics, prayer and poetry, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports from the rally:Signage is similar to last years: “I am the post-roe generation.” “Love them both” with an image of a pregnant woman. Also spotted some Trump 2024 signage and attire and at least one “let’s go Brandon” flag.” pic.twitter.com/pXD0iUvD8S— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) January 20, 2023
      The Dr. Seuss quote is also a popular one in signs pic.twitter.com/OB2ArfeMBF— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) January 20, 2023
      The Irish musician performing at the rally is asking women to pray for the men in the audience who are here standing up for women and children pic.twitter.com/sSrHQoLQ3j— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) January 20, 2023 More

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      Kevin McCarthy’s debt ceiling standoff is yet more Republican madness | Richard Wolffe

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      Kevin McCarthy’s debt ceiling standoff is yet more Republican madnessRichard WolffeThe new House speaker is just a small man, talking a big game, taking a long walk off a short pier Kevin McCarthy might not look stupid.In the privacy of his home, far away from the TV cameras and the Maga bozos in his Republican caucus, he might not always sound stupid.US heads for debt-ceiling standoff as House Republicans refuse to budgeRead moreBut the new House speaker has fully embraced the politics of stupid.Stupid is picking a political fight you know you are going to lose. Stupid is taking the economy and the markets to the brink of debt default before caving like it’s no big deal. Stupid is pretending to look tough about deficit spending after waving through every budget-busting dollar that Donald Trump wanted to spend.Stupid is what Kevin McCarthy does. Because Kevin McCarthy was stupid enough to want the job of leading this motley crew of House Republicans in the post-Trump era.Still, our Kevin is something of a conundrum. He is smart enough to know he’s acting dumb.After all, he was present and on the job when the House Republicans first tried to prove their macho bona fides. Back in the heady days of 2011, when the Republican party was drunk with the Tea Party, McCarthy was the House majority whip – the third in command – as they thought the unthinkable about defaulting on Treasury debt.After months of pointless crisis, the Republicans caved and ended up with a package of budget cuts that were vastly outweighed by the billions of dollars in extra costs incurred by the crisis itself. According to the Government Accountability Office, the debt ceiling fiasco cost Treasury an extra $1.3bn in just one year, and billions more in higher borrowing costs for years to come.But saving money was never the point of this particularly predictable game of chicken. A chicken’s brain is the size of two peanuts, which is at least one peanut bigger than the political brains behind the debt ceiling crisis.Naturally, the House Republicans fared badly in the polls after 2011, and their attempt to wound then President Obama succeeded so well that he sailed to re-election the following year.Having learned precisely no lessons from their failures, they repeated the same chicken run in 2013, when they caved again with even less to show for the self-inflicted crisis than they salvaged two years earlier.Kev was still majority whip for that second Hail Mary, but why stop when you’re losing?This is the Republican leader who just lost 14 votes to grab the job of speaker, and succeeded only at the 15th attempt by offering what was left of his peanut-sized dignity as a ritual sacrifice to the craziest collection of Trump-inspired loons outside Florida.There’s a reason why Marjorie Taylor Greene has been handed a seat on the House homeland security committee. It’s either because of her desire to investigate the gazpacho police or the Jewish space lasers. Only time, and some delicious cold soup, will tell.In his private moments, Kevin can probably make sense of this insanity by telling himself that goddamit he’s all that stands between us and the end of civilization. Who else could possibly bridge the divide between the Trumpy-trons and regular, white middle America?If it weren’t for our Captain Kevin, they would still be voting for a House speaker and Marjorie Taylor Greene would have seized control of all the lasers.So what if he had to humiliate himself to get the job? It wasn’t the first time. He had to humiliate himself by groveling to Trump after that nasty insurrection thing got out of hand on January 6. Sometimes you have to take one for Team America.But these delusions can only take you so far: to the end of the cliff, where the lemmings finally realize the folly of their decisions.At the very point where the debt ceiling crisis ends, the speaker’s real suffering starts to kick in.Because that’s when the Kev-meister stares down the reality of the deal he made with the devil to get his job in the first place. This is the so-called motion to vacate, giving one single, unhinged House Republican the ability to call for a vote to fire their so-called leader.You see, the debt ceiling crisis is not, in fact, a show of strength by the House Republicans and the political mastermind who sits in the speaker’s office. It is a demonstration of weakness, unfolding over many months, with only one destination: the debt ceiling lifted, and the end of Kevin McCarthy’s career.For now, McCarthy is the only one at the negotiating table over the debt ceiling. Even his Republican partner in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, will have nothing to do with this nonsense.“I would like to sit down with all the leaders and especially the president and start having discussions,” said the incredible shrinking speaker. “Who wants to put the nation through some type of threat at the last minute with the debt ceiling? Nobody wants to do that.”Nobody, except Kevin. Nobody knows the trouble Kevin has seen. And nobody but Kevin knows how lonely he feels.It was his old boss, John Boehner – the House speaker who tried and failed to stare down President Obama over the debt ceiling – who put it best: a leader without followers is just a man taking a walk.Kevin McCarthy is just a small man, talking a big game, taking a long walk off a short pier.
      Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist. He is the author of Renegade: The Making of a President
      TopicsRepublicansOpinionUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsDemocratsKevin McCarthycommentReuse this content More