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      Democrats lost Texas because of Covid and Republican voter drive, report finds

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterGet-out-the-vote efforts hampered by the coronavirus pandemic and an 11th-hour voter registration surge for well-funded Republicans thwarted ambitions of a blue wave in Texas during the 2020 election, according to a new postmortem that state Democrats shared with the Guardian.“The majority of Texans, if they were in the ballot box, would vote for Democrats. The problem is that Republicans have a higher likelihood of turning out,” said Hudson Cavanagh, the Texas Democratic party’s data science director who authored the post-election report.Texas generated outsized buzz last year, as a spike in early voting made much of the nation wonder whether its 38 electoral college votes were finally up for grabs. Yet former president Donald Trump still triumphed by more than a five-point margin – a much closer presidential contest than any other in recent years, but one that reinforced Republicans as the state’s dominant party.Now, Democrats are blaming last fall’s defeat mostly on programmatic difficulties, which allowed Republicans to best them in get-out-the-vote operations. “Texas is still the next frontier,” said Abhi Rahman, the communications director for Texas Democrats.Despite record turnout in 2020, Texas ranked 44th out of 50 states in terms of ballots counted as a proportion of the total voting-eligible population, according to the United States Elections Project. High Asian voter participation marked “a major shift”, but still, “the electorate was whiter than projected”, Cavanagh noted in his analysis.Latinos – who are considered a key demographic to move Texas to the left – also eclipsed turnout projections. But Latino Republicans voted at a higher rate than Latino Democrats, and that differential turnout created a largely false impression that Democrats were losing ground with one of their most crucial blocs, too often lumped together as a monolith.One exception was the Rio Grande Valley, a typically Democratic stronghold where Latinos did in fact gravitate more toward Trump at the top of the ticket.While “Latino voters continue to strongly support Democrats,” the party needs “to empower Latino voices at the ballot box”, Cavanagh wrote in his report.On top of Texas’s reputation as a voter suppression state – based on voter ID requirements, a difficult registration process, restrictions on mail ballots and other barriers – Covid-19 added yet another obstacle for Texas voters in 2020. Polling locations closed because of infected workers, while long lines of constituents who weren’t required to wear masks threatened exposure to the virus.“It took a lot of bravery for a lot of these Democrats who understood the risk that, you know, they were putting themselves in to go vote,” Cavanagh told the Guardian. “I’m incredibly proud of the folks that did, frankly.”Amid the public health crisis, Texas Democrats decided against knocking on doors for face-to-face voter engagement, because “even one life lost is too many”, Cavanagh said. Republicans, on the other hand, connected with eligible voters in-person, a clear advantage in one of the few states where residents still cannot register to vote online.In the last months leading up to the election, a gargantuan push by Republicans to register new voters wiped out the gradual advantage Democrats had been honing for years, especially given that almost all of those new Republican registrations turned into net votes.“Their willingness to put people at risk to win the election, you know, made it really hard for us to keep up,” Cavanagh said.As Democrats turned to virtual registration drives and phone banking, they spent too much time speaking with reliable party members who would have voted regardless. Likewise, a dearth of contact information for young and rural Texans – as well as people of color – and the inability to canvas made it difficult to connect with voters who were less likely to turn out.Estimates indicate that there are still more than 2 million solidly Democratic unregistered voters in the state, and Cavanagh said the party needs to focus on registering them, then actually building relationships so they make it to the polls.“We know that that’s how Democrats win across this country,” he said. “We look people in the eyes, we tell them our values, we tell them what we believe in, and that’s how we get people to turn out.” More

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      Neera Tanden confirmation seems unlikely after moderate Republicans oppose her

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      Neera Tanden, president of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, seemed unlikely to be confirmed as budget director in the Biden administration after Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, two moderate Republican senators, said they would not vote in her favour.In a statement on Monday, Collins said Tanden was unfit to run the Office of Management and Budget, which plays a powerful role in overseeing federal finances and regulation.“Neera Tanden has neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency,” the Maine senator said.The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, backed Tanden, who she said was “an accomplished policy expert who would be an excellent budget director”.“We look forward to the committee votes this week and to continuing to work toward her confirmation through engagement with both parties,” Psaki said.But then a spokesperson for Romney said the Utah senator would not back Tanden. Romney had been “critical of extreme rhetoric from prior nominees”, the spokesperson said, “and this is consistent with that position. He believes it’s hard to return to comity and respect with a nominee who has issued a thousand mean tweets.”Such a position might seem paradoxical for a party that just endured four years of Donald Trump’s offensive and intemperate tweets. But much of the Republican attack on Tanden, who has strong links to Hillary Clinton, has focused on her social media record.Collins noted Tanden’s decision quietly to delete more than 1,000 tweets in the days after the election. Several of the tweets attacked Republican members of Congress, including Collins, whom Tanden described as “the worst”. Collins said the deletion of the tweets “raises concerns about her commitment to transparency”.Collins and Romney’s opposition delivered a blow to Joe Biden as he struggles to fill his cabinet. Several other key nominations are lining up for confirmation in the Senate but Collins made her move just three days after the Democratic senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, said he would vote against Tanden.With the Senate split 50-50, Manchin’s defection meant the administration already needed to persuade at least one moderate Republican to come on board. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a possible vote for Tanden, has not yet indicated her intention.The White House is on tenterhooks with its efforts to fill cabinet posts. On Monday one of the most critical positions – that of attorney general, the country’s top prosecutor – went before the Senate judiciary committee.It was an especially poignant moment for the nominee, Merrick Garland, who five years ago was denied a confirmation hearing for a seat on the supreme court by the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell.Beyond Garland, Deb Haaland is up for confirmation hearings as interior secretary and Xavier Becerra as health and human services secretary. More

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      Merrick Garland vows to target white supremacists as attorney general

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      At his Senate hearing on Monday, attorney general nominee Merrick Garland will pledge to prosecute “white supremacists and others” who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January, in support of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat.The pledge was contained in Garland’s opening testimony for the session before the Senate judiciary committee, released on Saturday night.“If confirmed,” Garland said, ‘I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on 6 January – a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”Five people including a police officer died as a direct result of the attack on the Capitol, before which Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” against the result of the presidential election. Trump lost to Joe Biden by 306-232 in the electoral college and by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. More than 250 participants in the Capitol riot have been charged. As NPR reported, “the defendants are predominantly white and male, though there were exceptions. “Federal prosecutors say a former member of the Latin Kings gang joined the mob, as did two Virginia police officers. A man in a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ sweatshirt took part, as did a Messianic Rabbi. Far-right militia members decked out in tactical gear rioted next to a county commissioner, a New York City sanitation worker, and a two-time Olympic gold medalist.”In his testimony, Garland made reference to his role from 1995 to 1997 in supervising the prosecution of the perpetrators of the Oklahoma City Bombing, a white supremacist atrocity in which 168 people including 19 children were killed.Trump was impeached for a second time on a charge of inciting an insurrection but was acquitted after only seven Republicans joined Democrats in the Senate in voting to convict, 10 short of the majority needed.“It is a fitting time,” Garland said, “to reaffirm that the role of the attorney general is to serve the rule of law and to ensure equal justice under the law.”The 68-year-old federal appeals judge was famously denied even a hearing in 2016 when Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell blocked him as Barack Obama’s third pick for the supreme court.Biden’s selection of Garland for attorney general is seen as a conciliatory move in a capital controlled by Democrats but only by slim margins, the Senate split 50-50 with Vice-President Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote.In his testimony, Garland said he would be independent from Biden, being sure to “strictly regulate communication with the White House” and working as “the lawyer … for the people of the United States”.Trump pressured his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to do his bidding, then saw his second, William Barr, largely do so, running interference on the investigation of Russian election interference and ties between Trump and Moscow. If confirmed, Garland will face sensitive decisions over matters including Trump, now exposed to criminal and civil investigation, and Hunter Biden, the new president’s son whose tax affairs are in question as he remains a target for much of the right.Some on the left have expressed concern that Garland might be too politically moderate. Black Lives Matter founder LaTosha Brown, for example, told the Guardian: “My concern is that he does not have a strong civil rights history … even when Obama nominated him, one of the critiques was that he was making a compromise with what he thought was a ‘clean’ candidate to get through.”In his testimony, Garland said justice department civil rights work must be improved.“Communities of colour and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system,” he said, “and bear the brunt of the harm caused by pandemic, pollution, and climate change.”Garland is expected to be confirmed. More

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      The Ten Year War review: Obamacare, Trump and Biden's battles yet to come

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      Once upon a time, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was unpopular, viewed by many as welfare redux. Barack Obama’s promise that “If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan”, didn’t exactly work out. By the middle of the 2010s, so-called Obamacare had cost the Democrats both houses of Congress.
      Yet one great recession and one raging pandemic later, the ACA is liked, if not necessarily loved, by a majority of Americans.
      The political process “doesn’t stop just because a bill becomes a law”, according to Jonathan Cohn.
      As if to prove Cohn’s point, the US awaits a ruling by the supreme court on another challenge to Obamacare, this one brought by the Trump administration and Republican state attorneys general. If they prevail, more than 20 million Americans may lose health coverage. Nearly a half-million have died from Covid. Markets don’t always deliver what is needed.
      The Ten Year War is a look back at the “crusade” for universal healthcare coverage, and a sequel to Cohen’s earlier book, Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Healthcare Crisis. Cohn is a senior correspondent at the Huffington Post. His take remains informed and nuanced, not breathless. The Ten Year War also captures acrid and tectonic shifts in US politics.
      Cohn persuasively argues that the combatants in the healthcare fight operated with less than perfect knowledge, and that preconceived convictions too often clouded their judgment. Cohn aims at both policy wonks and political junkies. Laced with interviews and quotes from both sides of the aisle, his book is definitely newsworthy.
      Obama and Tom Price, Donald Trump’s short-tenured health secretary, speak on the record. David Axelrod, Obama’s counselor, and Michael Carvin, a veteran conservative litigator who unsuccessfully argued against Obamacare’s constitutionality, also talk to the author. Years earlier, in the 2000 election, Carvin was on brief in George W Bush’s winning supreme court gambit.
      Obama admits his surprise over Republicans not moving on after the ACA passed, unlike Medicare in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson. “We got no take-up on any of that stuff,” he says. Left unsaid is that blue and red are more than just colors – they are tribes.
      By the same measure, Obama acknowledges “that there were those … who suggested that we shouldn’t do anything other than the economy”. That is an understatement.
      One of those “outsiders” was Chuck Schumer, now the Senate majority leader. Even then, Cohn writes, the New Yorker grasped the political consequences of going all-in on healthcare amid a meltdown in the jobs and housing markets.
      Indeed, after the Democrats lost the Senate in 2014, New York’s senior senator unloaded on Obama before the National Press Club: “After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle-class-oriented programs.” Said differently, the ACA highlighted the inherent instability of the Democrats’ upstairs-downstairs coalition.
      Instead, in Schumer’s telling, “we took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem – healthcare reform.” Apparently, there are few things more gratifying in politics than telling a sitting president: “I told you so.”
      Of course, political myopia is not the sole province of any one party. Price admits that Republicans too operated in their own universe.
      “I think there was a lack of appreciation on the part of all of us in the administration about how difficult” repealing Obamacare would be, he says. Price is a physician as well as a former Georgia congressman.
      Price criticizes Trump for fashioning policy to comport with the last voice to whisper into his ear, and for a fundamental lack of understanding of healthcare and insurance.
      “We would make concrete decisions about what we were going to do,” he says, “get presidential sign-off, and then within 24 hours the decision would change.”
      For Price’s boss, pulling the rug out from under others was standard operating procedure. More

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      Biden tackles white supremacy in town hall: Politics Weekly Extra

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      As Joe Biden visited Milwaukee, Wisconsin this week, our guest presenter Kenya Evelyn spoke to the state representative David Bowen about the administration’s early obligations to the Black voters who swung the election in the Democrats’ favour, racial equity in pandemic and vaccine plans, and how the president should combat white supremacy

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      Joe Biden took the stage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this week for his first town hall since entering the White House. For some, it was a necessary first step toward combatting racial inequities in the economy and healthcare made worse by the coronavirus. People in the audience asked the president how he was going to make sure everyone got a vaccine, and how he planned to combat white supremacy in the country. Watching intently was David Bowen, a state lawmaker and one of the young progressive Democrats leading the party forward. He told Kenya about his thoughts on the new Biden administration. Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More