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Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Ed Kilgore

Second GOP Tax Bill Rubs Voters the Wrong Way in Three Key States

by , September 12th, 2018 6:37 PM EST

Republicans keep trying how to figure out how to help their midterm prospects from Washington. One strategem they’ve hatched may backfire, as I noted at New York this week:

[T]his apparent decision is a risky one.

“House Republican lawmakers introduced legislation Monday that would make the 2017 tax cuts for individuals permanent in a bid to highlight their signature economic policy achievement ahead of the November elections.

“The legislation – released as Republicans are at risk of losing their majority in the House – is seen as a last-ditch effort by GOP lawmakers to convince voters of the benefits of their new tax code. Polls consistently show less than half of Americans approve of the tax cut.”

The bill, to be clear, is not going to be enacted; without the protection of a budget reconciliation vehicle like the one used to pass the first big Trump tax cut last December, it has zero chance in the Senate. So this is an election year “messaging” bill designed to tell voters: Hey, here’s some more money we’ve wrenched from the swamp. Don’t forget to say thank you on November 6.

There’s a problem, though: the original tax bill was very unpopular among higher-income voters in high-income, high-tax states because of its provisions reducing the deductibility of state and local income and property taxes (SALT) — notably California, New Jersey, and New York. Indeed, some Republicans were undoubtedly proud at their success in screwing over these states as havens of godless immigrant-coddling tree-hugging baby-killing liberals. Reminding them of this screwing-over shortly before the midterms has its perils.

Using the Cook Political Report’s ratings, there are 13 highly competitive (Lean D, Lean R, or Tossup) races in Republican-controlled districts in those three states where the SALT provisions are generally hated. There are another six in the Likely Republican category that could become competitive between now and November 6. Democrats need just a net gain of 23 seats to take control of the House.

To be sure, 11 House Republicans from California, New Jersey, and New York voted against the tax bill, mostly because of the SALT provisions. But it’s not going to help them very much if their constituents are reminded their party screwed them over, and if their own protestations grow too loud, “base” voters who love the tax cuts could be annoyed, undermining GOP turnout. As David Dayen put it:

“Brilliant work by the House GOP, forcing suburban Republicans to once again vote to either defy their party or raise taxes on their constituents.”

This could partially be a matter of the many lobbyists for industries and interests benefiting from the original tax cuts wanting to get Republicans locked into making them permanent while the bill is still viewed as a net plus. But if it helps lose them the House, that will be a pyrrhic victory of the highest order.

1 Comment »

September 8: Trump and Scott Attacks On Medicare For All Are Cynical But Predictable

by , September 8th, 2018 1:23 PM EST

There’s a new wrinkle in the GOP attacks on single-payer health care proposals. I wrote about it this week at New York:

Republicans have a built-in contradiction at the core of their politics, and they’re not likely to resolve it any time soon. On the one hand, they really, really want to do something to reduce the cost and scope of the big middle-class “entitlement” programs, Social Security and Medicare — if only to generate more dollars for tax cuts and defense. It’s why their chief fiscal engineer, Paul Ryan, was an early supporter of Social Security partial privatization, and included a Medicare overhaul (replacing defined benefits with “premium support,” or vouchers) in all those Ryan budgets. But Republicans are also afraid to go after these programs because (aside from the fact that they are wildly popular) the chief beneficiaries are seniors, who are the most pro-GOP age group (in part because over-65 voters are whiter than younger age cohorts).

This is why Republicans desperately want bipartisan cover for “entitlement reform” (it was the foundation for all those Grand Bargain negotiations with Barack Obama not that long ago). And it’s also why whenever they can’t get Medicare cuts, they’ll turn on a dime and pose as the stout defenders of the program against Democratic efforts to raid it to give health-care benefits to other people. That’s exactly what we are seeing in new attacks by Donald Trump and Rick Scott, among others, on Medicare for All as a threat to — Medicare!

Here’s Trump on the stump trying this out:

It is true, as I have argued myself, that single-payer proposals flying under the flag of Medicare for All aren’t a simple extension of Medicare as it exists today to the general population. But for the most part, single-payer (at least in the proposals of Bernie Sanders and other leading Democrats) would be a more generous, not less generous, version of Medicare, as Jonathan Cohn notes:

[P]art of their plan is to make Medicare more generous, by eliminating the program’s high out-of-pocket costs that lead many seniors to buy supplemental so-called Medigap plans or to enroll in private alternatives. Sanders and his allies like to talk about “Medicare for all,” but a more accurate moniker for their plans would be “better Medicare for all.”

Yes, Medicare for All would shut down the privately run Medicare Advantage plans that about a third of Medicare beneficiaries choose, though as Cohn says, many do so because they offer enhanced benefits that the government would provide in single-payer systems — along with many more benefits such as dental and even long-term care that Medicare does not provide at all. At a fundamental level, Medicare for All would make the inherent socialism of traditional Medicare more systematic, and then make eligibility universal.

If Republicans were strictly attacking Medicare for All because of the tax increases it will most definitely require (though they’ll be more than offset, say proponents, by savings in private health-insurance premiums, out-of-pocket expenses, and coverage denials), that would be one thing. There are other vulnerabilities as well, such as the impact of single-payer on health-care providers, many of whom dislike Medicare as it exists today.

But what Trump and Scott are doing is asking seniors to selfishly (or resentfully) oppose giving younger people the same kind of health coverage they enjoy because it might somehow put their own “socialist” benefits at risk. And as with the attacks on Obamacare, there is more than a bit of a whiff of racism involved, as Cohen observes:

[T]aken literally, Trump was saying that Democrats want to raid socialism to pay for socialism, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

But Trump was probably making a clumsy version of the pitch that helped him get elected and that continues to keep his base loyal ― namely, that Democrats want to shift money and status away from the kind of people who voted for him and give those things to others.

His message to supporters, in other words, was that Democrats want to raid your socialism to pay for theirs.

It’s not crazy to hear a racist dog whistle in there, given Trump’s history. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a Republican tried to rally white voters by telling them that Democrats were going to take their money and give it to nonwhite people.

You could argue that Republicans are simply appealing to the innate conservatism of old folks who fear change even if they would be helped very directly by that change. But the country could do without the lies told by those with bad intent towards Medicare posing as its champions.

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Trump & Scott Attacks on Medicare For All Are Cynical But Predictable

by , September 8th, 2018 1:08 PM EST

There’s a new wrinkle in the GOP attacks on single-payer health care proposals. I wrote about it this week at New York:

Republicans have a built-in contradiction at the core of their politics, and they’re not likely to resolve it any time soon. On the one hand, they really, really want to do something to reduce the cost and scope of the big middle-class “entitlement” programs, Social Security and Medicare — if only to generate more dollars for tax cuts and defense. It’s why their chief fiscal engineer, Paul Ryan, was an early supporter of Social Security partial privatization, and included a Medicare overhaul (replacing defined benefits with “premium support,” or vouchers) in all those Ryan budgets. But Republicans are also afraid to go after these programs because (aside from the fact that they are wildly popular) the chief beneficiaries are seniors, who are the most pro-GOP age group (in part because over-65 voters are whiter than younger age cohorts).

This is why Republicans desperately want bipartisan cover for “entitlement reform” (it was the foundation for all those Grand Bargain negotiations with Barack Obama not that long ago). And it’s also why whenever they can’t get Medicare cuts, they’ll turn on a dime and pose as the stout defenders of the program against Democratic efforts to raid it to give health-care benefits to other people. That’s exactly what we are seeing in new attacks by Donald Trump and Rick Scott, among others, on Medicare for All as a threat to — Medicare!

Here’s Trump on the stump trying this out:

It is true, as I have argued myself, that single-payer proposals flying under the flag of Medicare for All aren’t a simple extension of Medicare as it exists today to the general population. But for the most part, single-payer (at least in the proposals of Bernie Sanders and other leading Democrats) would be a more generous, not less generous, version of Medicare, as Jonathan Cohn notes:

[P]art of their plan is to make Medicare more generous, by eliminating the program’s high out-of-pocket costs that lead many seniors to buy supplemental so-called Medigap plans or to enroll in private alternatives. Sanders and his allies like to talk about “Medicare for all,” but a more accurate moniker for their plans would be “better Medicare for all.”

Yes, Medicare for All would shut down the privately run Medicare Advantage plans that about a third of Medicare beneficiaries choose, though as Cohn says, many do so because they offer enhanced benefits that the government would provide in single-payer systems — along with many more benefits such as dental and even long-term care that Medicare does not provide at all. At a fundamental level, Medicare for All would make the inherent socialism of traditional Medicare more systematic, and then make eligibility universal.

If Republicans were strictly attacking Medicare for All because of the tax increases it will most definitely require (though they’ll be more than offset, say proponents, by savings in private health-insurance premiums, out-of-pocket expenses, and coverage denials), that would be one thing. There are other vulnerabilities as well, such as the impact of single-payer on health-care providers, many of whom dislike Medicare as it exists today.

But what Trump and Scott are doing is asking seniors to selfishly (or resentfully) oppose giving younger people the same kind of health coverage they enjoy because it might somehow put their own “socialist” benefits at risk. And as with the attacks on Obamacare, there is more than a bit of a whiff of racism involved, as Cohen observes:

[T]aken literally, Trump was saying that Democrats want to raid socialism to pay for socialism, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

But Trump was probably making a clumsy version of the pitch that helped him get elected and that continues to keep his base loyal ― namely, that Democrats want to shift money and status away from the kind of people who voted for him and give those things to others.

His message to supporters, in other words, was that Democrats want to raid your socialism to pay for theirs.

It’s not crazy to hear a racist dog whistle in there, given Trump’s history. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a Republican tried to rally white voters by telling them that Democrats were going to take their money and give it to nonwhite people.

You could argue that Republicans are simply appealing to the innate conservatism of old folks who fear change even if they would be helped very directly by that change. But the country could do without the lies told by those with bad intent towards Medicare posing as its champions.

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September 7: Lindsey Graham Lifts the Veil on Kavanaugh’s Instructions To Gut Roe v. Wade

by , September 7th, 2018 6:27 PM EST

While following Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee from gavel to gavel, I saw a strange unscripted moment that told us a lot. I wrote about it at New York:

Throughout the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, Democratic senators have challenged his acceptance of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion. He’s become adept in reciting a sort of formula acknowledging (in language also used by Chief Justice John Roberts at his own confirmation hearing) Roe as “settled law” and an important SCOTUS precedent — and then refusing to answer questions about Roe’s original legitimacy (the key to a possible future reversal by SCOTUS itself, which is not bound to its own precedents the way lower courts are) because his answers might prejudge a future case.

But Republican Lindsey Graham threw Kavanaugh a curve today by asking him to criticize Roe on the standard grounds that conservatives like both of those men have heard (and almost certainly agreed with) thousands of times in their adult lives.

Graham went back to basics:

GRAHAM: Is there anything in the Constitution about the right to an abortion? Anything written in it …

KAVANAUGH: Senator, the Supreme Court recognized the right to an abortion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, and has reaffirmed it many times.

GRAHAM: Look, my question is, did they find a phrase in the Constitution that says the state cannot interfere with a woman’s right to choose, until medical viability occurs? Is that in the Constitution?

KAVANAUGH: The Supreme Court, applying the liberty —

GRAHAM: This is pretty simple: “No, it’s not, Senator Graham.”

KAVANAUGH (laughing): I want to be very careful …

Kavanaugh tried to talk about the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the constitutional “liberty cause,” but Graham wasn’t having any of it:

GRAHAM: What are the limits on the Court’s ability to find a penumbra of rights to apply in a particular situation? What are the checks and balances for people in your profession, if you can find five people who agree with you, to confer rights, whether the public likes it or not, based on this concept of a penumbra of rights? What are the limits to this.

Graham is alluding to the famous “penumbra” doctrine of unenumerated but implied rights contained in Justice Willam O. Douglas’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 SCOTUS case that struck down a state ban on contraception as violating a right to privacy the Court had never explicitly identified before. It was, more importantly, the chief precedent cited by the Court majority in Roe v. Wade. Every American who has ever taken a constitutional law class knows all about Douglas, “penumbras,” Griswold, privacy rights, and Roe, and has heard the standard conservative complaint, echoed by Graham, that the whole thing is the epitome of illegitimate “judicial activism.”

But instead of agreeing or disagreeing with Graham, Kavanaugh tried to go off on a tangent about later Supreme Court cases about privacy rights being rooted in the country’s history and traditions. After mocking that idea, Graham got back to his basic objection of “five people” (justices) using “one word” (privacy) to “tell everybody elected in the country you can’t go there” (in restricting abortion).

GRAHAM: The only real check and balance is a constitutional amendment, to change the ruling. Would you agree with that?

This was a treacherous question, since most of the conservatives backing Kavanaugh would begin rioting in the streets if he conceded the Court had no power to “fix” Roe v. Wade. After a brief pause, Kavanaugh objected that he did not want to “comment on potential constitutional amendments,” and then mostly fell silent as Graham continued to offer the standard conservative rant about “judicial activists” robbing legislative bodies of their power to determine public policies. At the end, recognizing that Kavanaugh wasn’t going to comment, Graham concluded: “All I ask is that you think about it,” as though the veteran conservative jurist never had.

This near-comical exchange was revealing in that the well-rehearsed Kavanaugh had the discipline to act as though Graham, in enunciating tenets of liberal judicial overreaching that are part of his own philosophical inheritance, was handing him a rattlesnake to cuddle. There is no way Kavanaugh would have passed the Federalist Society vetting process if he didn’t at the very least broadly share Graham’s point of view about Roe. And if he is confirmed to the Court and blandly follows Roe as unshakable precedent, there will be hell to pay in conservative circles — from white-shoe law offices to small Evangelical churches — that will burn all the Republicans who voted to confirm him, and will even scorch Donald Trump if he is still in office at that point.

Everyone on the Judiciary Committee understands the deceptive game that he and Republican senators are playing on this subject. And that’s probably why Lindsey Graham felt secure in just making a speech to the galleries.

It was a true “teaching moment.”

 

No Comments »

Lindsey Graham Lifts the Veil on Kavanaugh’s Instructions to Gut Roe v. Wade

by , September 7th, 2018 6:25 PM EST

While following Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee from gavel to gavel, I saw a strange unscripted moment that told us a lot. I wrote about it at New York:

Throughout the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, Democratic senators have challenged his acceptance of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion. He’s become adept in reciting a sort of formula acknowledging (in language also used by Chief Justice John Roberts at his own confirmation hearing) Roe as “settled law” and an important SCOTUS precedent — and then refusing to answer questions about Roe’s original legitimacy (the key to a possible future reversal by SCOTUS itself, which is not bound to its own precedents the way lower courts are) because his answers might prejudge a future case.

But Republican Lindsey Graham threw Kavanaugh a curve today by asking him to criticize Roe on the standard grounds that conservatives like both of those men have heard (and almost certainly agreed with) thousands of times in their adult lives.

Graham went back to basics:

GRAHAM: Is there anything in the Constitution about the right to an abortion? Anything written in it …

KAVANAUGH: Senator, the Supreme Court recognized the right to an abortion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, and has reaffirmed it many times.

GRAHAM: Look, my question is, did they find a phrase in the Constitution that says the state cannot interfere with a woman’s right to choose, until medical viability occurs? Is that in the Constitution?

KAVANAUGH: The Supreme Court, applying the liberty —

GRAHAM: This is pretty simple: “No, it’s not, Senator Graham.”

KAVANAUGH (laughing): I want to be very careful …

Kavanaugh tried to talk about the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the constitutional “liberty cause,” but Graham wasn’t having any of it:

GRAHAM: What are the limits on the Court’s ability to find a penumbra of rights to apply in a particular situation? What are the checks and balances for people in your profession, if you can find five people who agree with you, to confer rights, whether the public likes it or not, based on this concept of a penumbra of rights? What are the limits to this.

Graham is alluding to the famous “penumbra” doctrine of unenumerated but implied rights contained in Justice Willam O. Douglas’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 SCOTUS case that struck down a state ban on contraception as violating a right to privacy the Court had never explicitly identified before. It was, more importantly, the chief precedent cited by the Court majority in Roe v. Wade. Every American who has ever taken a constitutional law class knows all about Douglas, “penumbras,” Griswold, privacy rights, and Roe, and has heard the standard conservative complaint, echoed by Graham, that the whole thing is the epitome of illegitimate “judicial activism.”

But instead of agreeing or disagreeing with Graham, Kavanaugh tried to go off on a tangent about later Supreme Court cases about privacy rights being rooted in the country’s history and traditions. After mocking that idea, Graham got back to his basic objection of “five people” (justices) using “one word” (privacy) to “tell everybody elected in the country you can’t go there” (in restricting abortion).

GRAHAM: The only real check and balance is a constitutional amendment, to change the ruling. Would you agree with that?

This was a treacherous question, since most of the conservatives backing Kavanaugh would begin rioting in the streets if he conceded the Court had no power to “fix” Roe v. Wade. After a brief pause, Kavanaugh objected that he did not want to “comment on potential constitutional amendments,” and then mostly fell silent as Graham continued to offer the standard conservative rant about “judicial activists” robbing legislative bodies of their power to determine public policies. At the end, recognizing that Kavanaugh wasn’t going to comment, Graham concluded: “All I ask is that you think about it,” as though the veteran conservative jurist never had.

This near-comical exchange was revealing in that the well-rehearsed Kavanaugh had the discipline to act as though Graham, in enunciating tenets of liberal judicial overreaching that are part of his own philosophical inheritance, was handing him a rattlesnake to cuddle. There is no way Kavanaugh would have passed the Federalist Society vetting process if he didn’t at the very least broadly share Graham’s point of view about Roe. And if he is confirmed to the Court and blandly follows Roe as unshakable precedent, there will be hell to pay in conservative circles — from white-shoe law offices to small Evangelical churches — that will burn all the Republicans who voted to confirm him, and will even scorch Donald Trump if he is still in office at that point.

Everyone on the Judiciary Committee understands the deceptive game that he and Republican senators are playing on this subject. And that’s probably why Lindsey Graham felt secure in just making a speech to the galleries.

It was a true “teaching moment.”

 

No Comments »

August 31: House GOP Kicking Weak Incumbents To the Curb

by , August 31st, 2018 5:28 PM EST

All sorts of big things begin happening in election cycles around Labor Day. I discussed one of them at New York:

There comes a time in any campaign cycle when parties and the donors affiliated with them review their investments and cut their losses. It can be an especially painful process in a potential “wave” election year, particularly a midterm when the party in power knows it’s going to lose House seats but is focused on maintaining control.

For Republicans right now, that means holding the line at 22 net lost House seats at worst. Since there are very, very few vulnerable Democratic seats that could offset GOP losses (of the 66 House races the Cook Political Report considers competitive, only four are in districts held by Democrats), Republicans must triage their most afflicted incumbents. And as Politicoreports, the process is fully under way:

“Behind the scenes, senior party strategists have begun polling to determine which incumbents may be beyond saving. Among those most in jeopardy of getting cut off, they say, are Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, Pennsylvania Rep. Keith Rothfus, and Iowa Rep. Rod Blum, all of whom are precariously positioned in their districts.

“The party has to date reserved millions of dollars of future advertising time to buttress Comstock and Rothfus. Yet those funds are not guaranteed — they still might be diverted to other incumbents viewed as more likely to win in the fall.”

Cook rates the Comstock and Rothfus races as “Lean Democratic,” but still has Blum’s race as a toss-up. The three districts are illustrative of the range of problems the GOP is having this year. Comstock’s district is a classic suburban enclave loaded with college-educated voters who are hostile to Donald Trump. Rothfus was stricken by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s remapping of the state’s congressional districts to erase the effect of an earlier GOP gerrymander. He was tossed into a district with Democrat Conor Lamb, fresh from his astonishing special election win in more difficult terrain. And Blum is a conservative ideologue who won and was reelected in Iowa’s very good Republican years of 2014 and 2016, but is endangered by what appears to be a Democratic comeback in that state.

But these incumbents are just the low-hanging spoiled fruit, and others may soon get the financial heave-ho:

“The anxiety is already rising among lawmakers and their allies. Kansas Rep. Kevin Yoder, an imperiled suburban congressman whom Democrats are spending heavily to defeat, has recently complained to allies that the national committee hasn’t done enough to help him in his reelection bid, according to four people familiar with the conversations.”

Such complaints, however, go in both directions:

“During a House GOP Conference meeting this spring, NRCC [the party’s House fundraising committee] Chairman Steve Stivers told members not to expect the party to bail them out later in the campaign if they failed to pull their weight. He pointed out that the party had already waged a costly and ultimately unsuccessful effort to rescue an underperforming candidate in a Pennsylvania special election.

“As proof of that approach, the House GOP campaign arm has barely budged despite pleas for additional financial support from endangered Iowa Rep. David Young and his campaign team — at least partly because they view him as a sluggish campaigner, said two senior Republicans familiar with the party’s deliberations.”

It’s true that incumbents are likely to get a thumb on the scales in such calculations as opposed to open seat candidates or those challenging Democrats, since the party committees are supervised by incumbents and the “outside” groups tend to follow their lead. But when all those chairmanships and other perks of the majority are in danger, collegial solidarity will only go so far:

“‘The NRCC isn’t going to be able to help those who haven’t helped themselves,’ said former Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Phil English, who was involved with the committee during his House tenure. ‘These are very Darwinian decisions. It means selection of the fittest.'”

Donald Trump’s party can’t expected to do too much for “losers.”

 

No Comments »

House GOP Kicking Weak Incumbents to the Curb

by , August 31st, 2018 5:27 PM EST

All sorts of big things begin happening in election cycles around Labor Day. I discussed one of them at New York:

There comes a time in any campaign cycle when parties and the donors affiliated with them review their investments and cut their losses. It can be an especially painful process in a potential “wave” election year, particularly a midterm when the party in power knows it’s going to lose House seats but is focused on maintaining control.

For Republicans right now, that means holding the line at 22 net lost House seats at worst. Since there are very, very few vulnerable Democratic seats that could offset GOP losses (of the 66 House races the Cook Political Report considers competitive, only four are in districts held by Democrats), Republicans must triage their most afflicted incumbents. And as Politicoreports, the process is fully under way:

“Behind the scenes, senior party strategists have begun polling to determine which incumbents may be beyond saving. Among those most in jeopardy of getting cut off, they say, are Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, Pennsylvania Rep. Keith Rothfus, and Iowa Rep. Rod Blum, all of whom are precariously positioned in their districts.

“The party has to date reserved millions of dollars of future advertising time to buttress Comstock and Rothfus. Yet those funds are not guaranteed — they still might be diverted to other incumbents viewed as more likely to win in the fall.”

Cook rates the Comstock and Rothfus races as “Lean Democratic,” but still has Blum’s race as a toss-up. The three districts are illustrative of the range of problems the GOP is having this year. Comstock’s district is a classic suburban enclave loaded with college-educated voters who are hostile to Donald Trump. Rothfus was stricken by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s remapping of the state’s congressional districts to erase the effect of an earlier GOP gerrymander. He was tossed into a district with Democrat Conor Lamb, fresh from his astonishing special election win in more difficult terrain. And Blum is a conservative ideologue who won and was reelected in Iowa’s very good Republican years of 2014 and 2016, but is endangered by what appears to be a Democratic comeback in that state.

But these incumbents are just the low-hanging spoiled fruit, and others may soon get the financial heave-ho:

“The anxiety is already rising among lawmakers and their allies. Kansas Rep. Kevin Yoder, an imperiled suburban congressman whom Democrats are spending heavily to defeat, has recently complained to allies that the national committee hasn’t done enough to help him in his reelection bid, according to four people familiar with the conversations.”

Such complaints, however, go in both directions:

“During a House GOP Conference meeting this spring, NRCC [the party’s House fundraising committee] Chairman Steve Stivers told members not to expect the party to bail them out later in the campaign if they failed to pull their weight. He pointed out that the party had already waged a costly and ultimately unsuccessful effort to rescue an underperforming candidate in a Pennsylvania special election.

“As proof of that approach, the House GOP campaign arm has barely budged despite pleas for additional financial support from endangered Iowa Rep. David Young and his campaign team — at least partly because they view him as a sluggish campaigner, said two senior Republicans familiar with the party’s deliberations.”

It’s true that incumbents are likely to get a thumb on the scales in such calculations as opposed to open seat candidates or those challenging Democrats, since the party committees are supervised by incumbents and the “outside” groups tend to follow their lead. But when all those chairmanships and other perks of the majority are in danger, collegial solidarity will only go so far:

“‘The NRCC isn’t going to be able to help those who haven’t helped themselves,’ said former Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Phil English, who was involved with the committee during his House tenure. ‘These are very Darwinian decisions. It means selection of the fittest.'”

Donald Trump’s party can’t expected to do too much for “losers.”

 

No Comments »

August 29: We Sure Are Missing the Voting Rights Act Right Now

by , August 29th, 2018 7:50 PM EST

While reading about the debacle involving Randolph County, Georgia’s, efforts to close polling places, the most important point about it occurred to me, and I wrote about it at New York.

Literally “seconds” into a special Friday meeting on the subject, the two-member Elections Board of Randolph County, Georgia, responded to a firestorm of internal and external criticism by scrapping a plan to close seven of the small jurisdiction’s nine polling places. As Sam Levine reports, the board offered a bit of a lame-o rationalization for its prior action but acknowledged it had stepped into a rattlesnake next:

In a statement released after the meeting, the board of elections said the county’s population and tax base had declined in recent years and said there had been discussions about the number of polling places for years as a way to save money. Still, it acknowledged the controversy prompted by the proposal and said it would not approve it.

At different points in the brief but intense and nationally renowned controversy, the election board or the “consultant” working for it cited cost concerns, Americans With Disabilities Act compliance, or the availability of early and absentee ballot option as reasons for shutting down the precincts, which enraged African-American residents in the majority-black county and attracted the attention of voting-rights activists. The case developed a particularly lurid political dimension when it transpired that the consultant had been recommended by the office of Georgia secretary of State Brian Kemp, now the GOP nominee for governor, who has a reputation for being cavalier about if not actively hostile toward voting-rights concerns. The consultant also suggested that Kemp favored the kind of polling-place consolidations Randolph County was pursuing, which motivated Kemp and his office to very quickly join the whole world in urging the county to back off its plans.

But the big takeaway is that this is precisely the sort of change in voting procedures that would have until recently triggered an automatic review by the Justice Department, which would conduct an investigation and then either grant or deny a “preclearance” before it could be implemented, under the provisions of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 2013, however, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Shelby County v. Holder  decision, basically gutted Section 5 (by voiding Section 4, which identified the jurisdictions subject to preclearance), liberating the mostly former Confederate jurisdictions involved from having to get the Feds’ permission for voting changes potentially affecting minority voters.

So instead of a set process with national guidelines, and a pretty strong disincentive for mucking around with voting rights, you have the kind of situation the Randolph County case epitomizes: questionable decisions made by individual jurisdictions with little or no transparency, requiring an army of lawyers, activists, journalists, and local citizens to flush it all out into the light of day

 

No Comments »

We Sure Are Missing the Voting Rights Act Right Now

by , August 29th, 2018 7:49 PM EST

While reading about the debacle involving Randolph County, Georgia’s, efforts to close polling places, the most important point about it occurred to me, and I wrote about it at New York.

Literally “seconds” into a special Friday meeting on the subject, the two-member Elections Board of Randolph County, Georgia, responded to a firestorm of internal and external criticism by scrapping a plan to close seven of the small jurisdiction’s nine polling places. As Sam Levine reports, the board offered a bit of a lame-o rationalization for its prior action but acknowledged it had stepped into a rattlesnake next:

In a statement released after the meeting, the board of elections said the county’s population and tax base had declined in recent years and said there had been discussions about the number of polling places for years as a way to save money. Still, it acknowledged the controversy prompted by the proposal and said it would not approve it.

At different points in the brief but intense and nationally renowned controversy, the election board or the “consultant” working for it cited cost concerns, Americans With Disabilities Act compliance, or the availability of early and absentee ballot option as reasons for shutting down the precincts, which enraged African-American residents in the majority-black county and attracted the attention of voting-rights activists. The case developed a particularly lurid political dimension when it transpired that the consultant had been recommended by the office of Georgia secretary of State Brian Kemp, now the GOP nominee for governor, who has a reputation for being cavalier about if not actively hostile toward voting-rights concerns. The consultant also suggested that Kemp favored the kind of polling-place consolidations Randolph County was pursuing, which motivated Kemp and his office to very quickly join the whole world in urging the county to back off its plans.

But the big takeaway is that this is precisely the sort of change in voting procedures that would have until recently triggered an automatic review by the Justice Department, which would conduct an investigation and then either grant or deny a “preclearance” before it could be implemented, under the provisions of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 2013, however, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Shelby County v. Holder decision, basically gutted Section 5 (by voiding Section 4, which identified the jurisdictions subject to preclearance), liberating the mostly former Confederate jurisdictions involved from having to get the Feds’ permission for voting changes potentially affecting minority voters.

So instead of a set process with national guidelines, and a pretty strong disincentive for mucking around with voting rights, you have the kind of situation the Randolph County case epitomizes: questionable decisions made by individual jurisdictions with little or no transparency, requiring an army of lawyers, activists, journalists, and local citizens to flush it all out into the light of day

 

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August 24: Don’t Be Fooled By Kavanaugh’s Assurances on Roe v. Wade

by , August 24th, 2018 7:03 PM EST

The questioning of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by senators is uncovering some allegedly reassuring, but not terribly revealing, statements, as I observed at New York:

The battle to nail down every Senate Republican vote for Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation took a significant, albeit somewhat predictable, turn today, as the Washington Post reports:

“Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) told reporters on Tuesday that she asked President Trump’s pick about whether he considered Roe to be settled law. Collins said Kavanaugh told her he agreed with current Chief Justice John Roberts, who said during his 2005 confirmation hearing that Roe was “settled as a precedent of the court.” Collins and Kavanaugh met for more than two hours on Tuesday morning.”

This is likely the “cover” Collins sought and secured in order to square her own pro-choice position with the vote for Kavanaugh her party expects her to cast. But if she claims it means Kavanaugh won’t participate in an effort to overturn or significantly modify Roe, she’ll likely be cooperating with Kavanaugh — and with John Roberts — in more than a bit of a scam.

It’s actually a bit of a no-brainer to say that the constitutional right to choose, decided 45 years ago in Roe v. Wade and emphatically reconfirmed (not in every detail but in its constitutional fundamentals) by Planned Parenthood v. Casey 26 years ago, is “settled law.” That means lower courts must follow it as a binding precedent. But for SCOTUS itself it simply indicates a degree of deference unless some stronger constitutional consideration is found to override it. So it does not guarantee that the “settled law” will be respected by the justices that acknowledge it. And as Irin Carmon recently observed, that’s demonstrably true of Chief Justice John Roberts:

“Not necessarily. On favored causes such as money in politics and this term’s union-fees case, Roberts has helped leave precedents and principles in tatters. You don’t even have to look past abortion itself: In 2000’s Stenberg v. Carhart, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cast the deciding vote to strike down a state ban on “partial birth abortion,” citing the court’s precedent in Casey. By the time the federal version of the same law reached the court, in 2007’s Gonzales v. Carhart, O’Connor had been replaced by Samuel A. Alito Jr., and with his help, the court’s conservatives, including Roberts, eagerly teamed up to overrule the precedent.”

And even if Roberts and Kavanaugh are reluctant to support the kind of frontal assault on abortion rights that, say, Clarence Thomas is eager to undertake, that hardly rules out an incremental gutting of Roe. As recently as 2016, Roberts was in the minority in a key decision protecting abortion rights from state laws aimed at driving abortion providers out of business. And as Carmon points out, Roberts patiently used two cases — one in 2009, another in 2013 — to wreck the “long-settled” enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The most important thing to keep in mind in parsing this carefully constructed assurance Kavanaugh offered to Collins is the broader context of Kavanaugh’s nomination (and before him, that of Roberts, Alito, and Gorsuch): the iron determination of Republicans since at least the George W. Bush administration to atone for the GOP-appointed justices — the longest-lasting being Anthony Kennedy — who supported abortion rights. Uncertainty on this score was a major factor in the conservative uprisingagainst Bush’s second Court nominee Harriet Miers. And the search for certainty on hostility to the “liberal judicial activism” epitomized by Roe led eventually to Donald Trump’s smart decision to let conservative legal beagles vet his own SCOTUS list. It would be shocking if this process and the politics behind it produced a justice who looked at SCOTUS precedents on abortion and pronounced them unassailable.

Yes, Kavanaugh, like Roberts, might be inclined to undertake the project of overturning abortion rights carefully and with an eye to avoiding any open contempt for the eventual victims of a counter-revolution on this subject, particularly given strong public support for Roe. But no one should believe the precedent is safe.

 

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