6.19.22: Hanging On by a Horse-Haired Thread

In the 4th century B.C., the king Dionysius would let his loyal soldier Damocles sit on the throne so that he could experience what it was like to be king. However, to illustrate more clearly the responsibility, the fear, the pending danger, Dionysius hung a sword over his thrown by a single horse hair. Precariously hanging over the throne by a single hair, ready to fall at anytime, Damocles could no longer take the pressure and stopped taking to the seat.

We mention this little bit of ancient history because it seems like that is where we are now, a metaphoric sword hanging over our country, by a single horse-hair thread. The sense of impending danger and dread.

President Biden said in an interview with the Associated Press that he knows the American people are "really, really down." Americans are down because what they witnessed this week during the Select Committee's January 6th hearings this week and that in fact our democracy was hanging by a thread. Despite knowing the fact that he lost and that the plan for the vice president to dispute the electoral count was illegal, the former president persisted in perpetuating that there was election fraud.

Not only that, but we also learned of the utter callousness (and that's being generous) the fmr. president had for his vice president's well-being and life. It's understandable that committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) wouldn't give away any details, especially when pressed by Mr. Todd on why Mike Pence didn't trust his secret service detail; he's not at liberty to say. 

What we do know:

John Eastman knowingly attempted to commit a crime against the Constitution of the United States.

The fmr. president, knowing he lost the election, perpetrated a fraud against the people of the United States by lying about the election results to raise $250 million dollars for a non-existent defense fund, in which the monies went to the fmr. president's personal interests.

There was a tremendous pressure campaign, lead by the president, for Mike Pence to ignore the Constitution by not certifying the vote on January 6th. So much pressure that when Mr. Pence upheld the Constitution, his life and the lives of his family members were put in jeopardy.

The president broke his oath to the Constitution of the United States and abandoned his duty as president on that day.

If that wasn't enough to make the thin threads more taut, there's the economy, which this, that and the other thing that President Biden points to, two things are clear. One, the signs of a coming recession are ominous and the Biden Administration totally dropped the ball and is now playing catch-up.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Sommers said that while nothing can be forecast with complete certainty, the indicators that he's seen are leading him to believe that a recession is coming.

Demand is way outpacing supply for energy which has been disrupted by war and oil companies cutting back on refining during the pandemic. The supply chain disruptions continue and are exascerbated by high fuel costs have made everything more expense. Not enough micro-chip manufactures, the list goes on. But the bottom line is the Biden Administration reacted too slowly and now the Fed is going to do what it can, but really it just has to run its course.

Mr. Sommers suggested three potential initiatives that could lessen the pain in the short term, while providing a plan for the longer-term. He suggested repealing some of the Trump era tax cuts, reduce the price of prescription drugs and take an 'all of the above' approach to energy in the short term and transition to clean energy.

Here's the rub. Repealing any part of a tax cut is a non-starter for Republicans. They'll message it as a tax hike and that message will get through. The 'all of the above' approach on energy gets a lot of support but any introduction of clean energy initiatives is another none starter. And lastly, we simply don't understand how Congress can't get the price of prescription drugs down. It's such a political winner for everyone, you'd think it's a no-brainer. Alas, to paraphrase Warren Zevon, big pharma brings lawyers, drugs, and money.

All this, on top of coming out of a mindbending, two-year pandemic where over 1 million Americans died then right into a catastrophic war in Europe and it's no wonder we're all hanging on by a horse-haired thread.

Panel: Betsy Woodruff Swann, Politico; Peter Alexander, NBC News; Brendan Buck, Republican Advisor and Strategist; Maria Teresa Kumar, Voto Latino

6.12.22: The Tragic Choice and the January 6th Commission

It is true that Americans' votes won't be decided by the January 6th Hearings. Not this year at least, but maybe in 2024. Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) said he did think there was too much information that he didn't already know, which may be the case for a member of Congress, however, for the American public there was almost too much to take it. 

The Special Committee on January 6th, 2021, as Representative Elaine Luria (D-VA) stated, has only presented and will be presenting statements backed up by hard evidence.  And the hard evidence will be damning, no bullshit, unlike how fmr. Attorney General William Barr describe the fmr. president's election fraud claims.

Unfortunately, Professor Eddie Glaude, Jr. of Princeton may be correct in assessing it as a tragic choice. 

If the evidence is too overwhelming, the Department of Justice may have no choice but to prosecute and if they do, Prof. Glaude predicts a steep rise in violence. However, if they do not prosecute, then what we're saying is that there are some who are above the law in the most glaring fashion. As for the 2024 presidential election, we of the same mind as Rep. Bacon in that he and also Republicans will be "looking for another candidate." 

Representative Bacon also mentioned the temperment of the former president being a disqualifier as well, which bring us to the whole episode with Vice President Mike Pence. How the former president said that the VP deserved the punishment of the crowd, which was hanging is truly sad on so many levels. However much we disagree with Mike Pence's policies and positions, we know for a fact that this is a man who has pledged an oath to the Constitution many times and did not break that oath. How many times has the fmr. president taken that oath - once. (The write of this week's column has taken multiple times.)

The panel agreed that the hearing really resonated with independents and though the frustration and perhaps anger may subside over time, the facts will not be forgotten. At the end of this road, whenever that is, there will not be a conviction, at most political radioactivity and exile... maybe.

What we're revved up about is all the Congressmen asking for pardons, specifically Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) who was named during last Thursday's hearing. Who else was asking for a pardon? Why would these individuals feel they needed them? What did they do? If any convictions do come, they're going to be from this crop of jokers. Resignations at the least. 

Who can say for sure if these hearings will affect the mid-term elections later this November, but maybe, just maybe it will be one small step in cleaning a little house and cleaning up some of the doodoo-kaka-poo-poo the fmr. president left behind.

On the breaking front...

At the end of today's program, Lee Ann Caldwell of The Washington Post had breaking news that Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) have reached a deal on gun safety legislation. We'll wait and see but it's said to include state crisis intervention laws (red-flag), mental health provisions, upgrading school safety.  Small things around the margins of the problem, but things nonetheless. There Mr. Todd had a moment, reminding us that nothing's been announced and more importantly nothing has been voted on. Being skeptical is a truly tiresome fashion that simply will never go away. 

Panel: Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report; Eddie Glaude, Jr., Princeton University; David French, The Dispatch; Lee Ann Caldwell, The Washington Post

6.5.22: It is Us and Not Just Washington That Has to Decide

"Meet The Press" is preempted today by The French Open.

Since Wednesday, this has been top of mind for this week's column and that is if we should apologize for providing what we thought was a snide, hyperbolic, ludicrous example of a tragic mass shooting and three days later that exact scenario occurs. In Tulsa, Oklahoma a man bought an AR-15 and then hours later entered a hospital to kill the doctor who performed a surgery on him, along with anyone who tried to stop him. 

A group of Senators has ten days to come up with something bipartisan, bipartisan meaning cojoling 10 Republican Senators that it is in their political interest to pass some form law, a package of laws, that will slow the steady stream of mass gun violence EVERYWHERE in America. The aforementioned package puts on the table red flag laws, waiting periods, expanded background check (not universal) and raising the age to 21 to purchase an assault weapon.

All those proposals would be steps in the right direction, but frankly, at this point it's like holding back a flood with a two-foot wall. And if this group of senators do not come up with a proposal they can bring to the floor, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will bring a House bill to the floor which Republicans and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) will surely not vote for. As Americans, we can only hope these Republican Senators are being sincere in their negotiating efforts because we've seen this tragic theater play out too many times.

If no common sense gun-ownership legislation gets passed through Congress and Republicans win control of Congress in the fall, we are truly living in a broken democracy where the minority is in control. Our Constitution was constructed to respect the rights of the minority vote, not to have the minority vote control the majority.

If Congress does manage to pass something, anything, it will not serve as any kind of adequate panacea for the anxiety parents across this country feel who fear simply dropping their kids off a school, especially if mass shootings continue in spite of new legislation.

Make no mistake, if nothing stems the tide of these mass shootings and gun violence writ large, we, not only the politicians, we will have decided to put the Second Amendment and access to guns over our very own lives. 

5.29.22: Helplessly Hoping in the Face of Hopelessness

Write about a mass shooting, take a week off, and write about another mass shooting... 

19 Children - Second. Third. Fourth. Graders. 

2 Teachers

17 Others injured... 

Hopelessness immediately comes to mind because we know that America will do nothing on guns to abate the exceptional carnage we've wrought upon ourselves. It's the hopelessness that our leaders will run out the clock while pontificating on the need for more mental health treatment, the absence of God, violent video games, the hardening of schools, and arming more citizens; while other leaders pack healthcare spending and untenable economic proposals into a background check bill so that it will never pass. 

Why would a person want to become a teacher? To learn the use of firearms? Why would that person just become a policeman? 

How about this heinous hypothetical. A surgeon and a medical team are in an operating room then a deranged person comes into the operating room and shoots them with a gun.  If only the surgeon and the medical team had been armed, right? We need to 'harden' operating rooms in all hospitals around the country by posting armed security outside the doors.

We'll do this after we accomplish this in all the schools in the country. Seriously?

It's nauseating to watch conservative politicians and commentators say everything, anything, with the exception of 'regulation' and 'firearm' in the same sentence, except to say no to it. For some, the 2nd Amendment has become a twisted 11th commandment for lost souls - dogma beyond reproach. However, always conveniently never are those two words in the Amendment that we constantly fixate on - well-regulated. That we are definitely not.

In the meantime, how many of these tragedies do Americans have to endure? 

We've put the right to own a firearm over the collective safety of the society. It's who we are, it's what we do, it's what we refuse to change, it's what we have to live with. Hard stop.

On this Memorial Day, we apologize to you because we're thinking about the extremely well-trained, brave men and women to fight for our democracy and we give them the best weapons of war to shorten the fight. The same kind of war of weapons we give our citizens to destroy that democracy. 

Have a good meal and hug your family today.

Panel: Ashley Parker, The Washington Post; Ali Vitali, NBC News; Cornell Belcher, Democratic Strategist; Pat McCrory, fmr. Governor North Carolina (R)

5.15.22: The Loss of Rights and Lives Will Continue Unabated

It's too frustrating and painful to regurgitate the same things we've written for years with regard to mass shootings, guns and right-wing extremism in this country. Chuck Todd said each time one of these mass shootings occurs, we get the same wash, rinse, repeat sort of rhetoric in Washington and nothing happens. We would contend that we're not even getting the empty rhetoric anymore. It's the silence on the right that Republican strategist Al Cardenas referring to that now exists. 

And why? Because the Republican base is rapidly growing in extremism? Not necessarily, but it's loudest voices have been breathing the words of intolerance and grievance steadily for years. Reverend Al Sharpton made an interesting point in as much as the 18 year-old shooter in Buffalo, NY yesterday was an impressionable 15 year-old at the time of Charlottesville, with the president at the time saying there are good people on both sides. It's a bit speculative but certainly logically.

However, there were two comments by Rev. Sharpton and The Washington Post's Matt Bai respectively that were incomplete in their reasoning. Rev. Sharpton said that President Biden should call a summit of minority leaders in our country to confront this kind of extremism and Mr. Bai explained that our political leaders have to stand up and look in the mirror. However, in an aforementioned summit, white politicians primarily from the Republican side of aisle need to be forced to listen to these cultural leaders as well. And for Mr. Bai, how about the press looking in the mirror - he should point that at himself. 

This individual had a manifesto teeming with hate speech, white nationalism, anti-semitism and screeds about white replacement theory. The panel, of journalists, said this was a heinous theory, but it is pushed into the mainstream by the biggest name in their profession, Tucker Carlson and hence by his benefactor Rupert Murdoch who is only concerned with the profit margin.

Now, we're not saying that they can't have their biased opinions, but what they're pushing on air to millions of people is beyond irresponsible. What we are saying now is that legitimizing of a heinous theory like that got 10 people killed yesterday, 9 of whom were African-American.

Governor Kathy Hochal of New York, who is from Buffalo, explained that New York has very strick gun laws, but because laws vary state to state, you can never fully enforce your state's laws. She called for national gun legislation, and therein lies the rub.

If we're being honest with ourselves, and Americans writ large are not, Democrats vote for gun legislation and overreach and Republicans have no interest in gun legislation whatsoever so there is no compromise to arrive at a place where 60 senators will vote in favor. 

As "Meet The Press" is alway wont to do, it's all discussed through the prism of elections and most assuredly 'guns' will not be on the proverbial ballot. However, given how the Supreme Court is trending, now that we all know, womens' reproductive health most certainly will be. 

Even if the Democrats manage to maintain control of the House of Representatives, it won't move the needle enough in the Senate unless the filibuster is amended. Republicans will put in that and the Republican majorities in individual state houses are going anywhere.

We're not sure what kind of wake-up call it will take for this country to change it's tone and become less polarized, but may be a day that none of us want to experience. Until then, the loss of rights and lives will continue unabated.

Panel: Ashley Parker, The Washington Post; Susan Page, USA Today; Matt Bai, The Washington Post, Reverend Al Sharpton

5.8.22: Let's Talk The Court and Codification

 As we have said so many times in this column, if the big luxury cruiseliner that is the United States turns too hard and too fast to the left or too hard and too fast to the right, the boat will tip over and you'll sink us all. 

The fate of Roe v. Wade, if the leaked draft opinion with by Justice Samuel Alito holds course, the landmark decision will be overturned. Will this one Supreme Court decision tip us all over? No, but it has certainly assisted in sharpening the degree in the hard right turn Republicans steer us toward.

There are so many points to be considered in discussing this decision it's difficult to know where even to begin, so we'll try this starting point. Since Politico's Josh Edelstein broke this earthquake, Democrats have focused on the substance and Republicans have focused on the leak of the draft. This is a bit of a big sweep but by and large that is how the dividing line has fallen. Both do tremendous damage but do not carry equal weight. When you take away a right that over have the population has had for the past 50 years, knowing now or later isn't changing that fact. 

There is no doubt that the leak of the draft has done tremendous damage to the integrity of the court and their ability to deliberate forthrightly about Constitutional issues. For as much as people may not look favorably upon the Supreme Court, we have to have the belief in it to maintain the rule of law. However, the court is partisan because of disgracefully partisan manipulation in the form of a cynical power grab on the part of Senator Mitch McConnell, a skilled politician but the worst national leader for Americans in its modern history. So what did we expect? 

This exercise of raw ideological power is going to take us all to a dark place if it continues, and once again the Supreme Court is opening the door to the curtailing of other rights. Justice Alito did make it clear in the draft that abortion is a unique case, as did the Governor of Mississsippi Tate Reeves, and that striking down the right to privacy only should apply in the case of abortion. You're being naive if you believe that some interest group or Republican controlled state houses won't try to push it as far as they can, and you're being stupid if you think a Republican politician is going to own that at this point. 

Going back to the leak for a moment, what's interesting to us is that Republicans have expressed outrage about it, which is justified, but they're coming at it as if the leak came from the left. We don't know who leaked the draft yet so we don't really know that person's motivations for doing so. Mr. Todd brought up the fact that it seemed The Wall Street Journal had some inside knowledge of the deliberations and some justices were on the fence. As conservative law professor Jennifer Mascott said, this leak won't change the court's decision, they 'won't be bullied,' a refrain that we're hearing repeatedly. But maybe the leak served to solidify, or codify, some of the justices on the fence. Point being, we just don't know. 

And as much as we would like to believe that the state of Mississippi is going to improve its prenatal care services, its foster care and adoption system, and its job training system as Governor Reeves said because they are all in need of it, in his state one in three children live in poverty and it has the highest infant mortality rate in the country. None of what he said about what needs fixing in his state will get fixed. 

All this ideology and talking about standing up for 'children' who can't speak for themselves; no one is thinking of the real world consequences and what this will do to womens' health in America. The only person who has the right to speak and stand up for a fetus is the mother, not the freaking governor of Mississippi, who is basically imposing his religious beliefs onto state law. 

And one last thing, codification, as term getting thrown around a ton. Democrats in the House and Senate are talking about trying to 'codify' a woman's right to choose into law. Codify: to refine and standardize. Let's us tell you something about codification, making it happen for a woman's right to choose isn't going to happen in this Congress or any other Congress any time soon and in fact there is more of a chance that it could codify and calcify the other way. 

What has been codified is our inability for consensus; what has been codified is the view that anyone who doesn't share your point of view is the enemy; what has been codified is that Republicans need to 'own the libs' even for the most nonsensical reason; what has been codified is Democrats thinking all conversatives are extreme right wingers.

The fact that 1 million Americans have now died becasue of Covid-19 has been codified into the back of our brains.

Laws and Judicial precedence? Not so much.

Panel: Kimberly Atkins Stohr, Boston Globe; Ali Vatali, NBC News; Josh Edelstein, Politico; ZSara Fagen, Republican Strategist 

5.1.22: It's All About the Issues, Not the Solutions

How much should the U.S. aid Ukraine in its fight for sovereignty against Russia? Fifty billion dollars, the new total sum of the U.S.'s committment to Ukraine won't be enough, but Putin has to lose this war. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) is correct when he said that the international world order is at stake in this fight. When President Zelenskyy states that his country is fighting for democracy so that the West doesn't have to has tons of truth packed into it.

And the war is expanding to the western part of Ukraine as Russia tries to build a land bridge from the east all the way to Moldova, having already started the bombing of the historic city of Odesa. So if it takes $100 billion, the United States needs to go there. Also, Senator Menendez was correct in providing nuance to Mr. Todd's question as to whether this is a proxy war, in saying that it isn't necessarily because this effort is to support a country in a fight for its freedom, but on the more macro level, the international world order is at risk.

Spend the money on this righteous cause. And how do we know it is one because Republicans are in support of the United States' aid to Ukraine. The support mostly comes from their collective silence. It's not an issue in which the opposing side (Putin's) is politically tenable. As with immigration, we agree for the most part with the New Jersey Senator in as much as Republicans are looking for the issue and not the solution. 

As for Putin saying he will officially declare war on Ukraine on May 9, the rhetoric is meaningless as the two countries are already at fully scale war against one another. Only that Putin has convinced himself that by declaring war, you can deploy more extreme measures of destruction on the civilian population. 

Speaking of empty rhetoric, there is way too much on both sides of the aisle, however it is true that no matter what happens are the southern border Republicans will make it an issue. Case in point, during the Obama years, illegal immigration was around historic lows and the president deported a lot more people than was publicized. However, as it is now, the border was a 'mess' then. 

Say what you will about the job that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas is doing, but if you actually listen to what he is saying, Title 42 which rejects asylum seekers based on covid health concerns, allows for immigrants to repeatedly come back to try to cross, and he is following the laws as they are set. And Congress refuses to act in reforming immigration because any compromise on the part of the Republicans is a deal breaker with their fringe.

Former Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) accurately described the Republicans' singular drive for power over actually creating solutions for the American people. Exhibit A is minority Kevin McCarthey who blatantly lied about his disgust with the former president after the 2020 election. His colleagues are more upset that McCarthy is a bad liar than that he lied in the first place. 

To say that the American people are cynical is an understatement.

The country's days are numbered as a democracy if Republicans can't alter their course because the voters will put them in control of Congress in November. The solutions are secondary to the issues, the means to a poltical power the primary goal. 

Panel: Helene Cooper, The New York Times; Claire McCaskill, fmr. senator (D-MO); Stephen Hayes, The Dispatch; Garrett Haake, NBC News

4.24.22: The Chaos Putin has Unleashed on the World and Why Republicans Always Win The Culture Wars

Thank you for bearing with us and our intermittance these past weeks, life getting in the way as we're all too familiar with...

And on a programming note, Kristen Welker was filling in for a birthday-celebrating Chuck Todd - Happy Birthday to the moderator - but it should be mentioned that Ms. Welker's questions today punctuated the trend of journalist asking questions to raise conflict instead of obtaining a guest's opinion and perceived solution to the important issues that face us. The salvation caveat is that is not the case with American journalists interviewing foreign leaders (for the most part). We'll provide illustrations below.

The one thing that Americans can agree on is that stepping up aid to Ukraine is in our national interest and providing them the weapons to push back the Russian army and the chaos that Putin has unreleashed upon the world, and if you've been paying attention that's not hyperbole with eighty percent of the world's wheat comes from Ukraine and the adjacent land in Russia. Food shortages have already exascerbated conflicts in Africa - Senegal and Ethiopia being among them. And obviously, energy costs around the world have been affected dramatically. The geopolitical ramifications of Putin's invasion will be felt for decades. Wrap your head around all that and then ask, why aren't they discussing that?

Though it's prudent to ask the Deputy Head of Office to the President of Ukraine, Igor Zhovkva, about the status of Mariupol given Putin has said that the Russians control it, which Mr. Zhovkva said was false. However, to have him speculate on Moldova is searching for the minorly sensational. Even with the Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, you should first ask broadly about intelligence of intention and then go there. That would be our critique, but not our instruction...

In Mr. Zhovkva's description of the armaments Ukraine needs, there was one that stuck out the most, which was the air-craft defense systems. Supplying jets isn't easy, and neither are tanks for that matter. Yes, the U.S. has lots of tanks, but think of the logistics of moving several. They are tanks after all, and their not Soviet tanks so there's the training aspect. But air-defense should have been bolstered a month ago. With air defense and the Horwitzers that are current on the way can provide the cover for battles that they can win.

And it's heartening to hear Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) to broadly share the administration's line of thinking in terms of support. We also agree with him that you should show an opponent your hand in terms of your red lines and no one saw Western Europe and NATO showing any spine, which it has. 

Which brings us to the spineless... The Secretary General of the United Nations is travelling to Moscow for meeting with the Russian president, and Putin is going to stick it in his face. Russia's on the security counsel and can veto any peacekeeping troops or huminatarian aid or corridors. Is the Secretary General going to talk about a world order that Putin flatly rejects? Let's see how that goes and though we're not wont to speculate, we can imagine it won't end well.

To the feckless... House minority leader Kevin McCarthy is a squid, and The New York Times Peter Baker aptly described his actions and Republican politician writ large in that he's more concerned about the backlash of the former president than the backlash from a bald-faced lie. If it isn't obviously, Mr. McCarthy simple contorts himself and patronizes to whatever audience he's is in front of, whether 1 person on the phone or 100 people in a room. Squid.

Who's not a squid and but not entirely as right as she thinks is Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), with whom we agree that Democrats need to keep pushing on legislation, but not all that she is proposing, namely an across the board student debt cancellation of $50,000. Understanding that student loans hit minorities and the disadvantaged harder and that's why it should be an application process. Why? Because personal responsibility for your choices. Many here have incurred college debt and paid it off. Makes us inclined to ask for it back. Also, it's prudent to air on the side of caution if there is the prospect that it will only add to the deficit and inflation overall.

Here's also another example of asking the wrong question in terms of pertinance. Ms. Welker asked Senator Warren about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not initially endorsing a ban on stock trading by members of Congress, but she came around after some poilitical pressure. To the question of whether Senator Warren had faith in the Speaker, she said yes with a shrug, but what about the more important matter of the would-be leader Mr. McCarthy, ne did Ms. Welker ask her about that, which she should have, because it's necssary to hold our political leaders to their words, no?

Lastly, the war on words, or more broadly the culture wars in America are always won by Republicans. Period. Hard Stop.

Republicans represent a narrower constiuency of groups so their special interests are much more targeted, and much more cynical, and much more effective because of the continued vagueness of the bills they pass. Contrast that with Democrats who seek to represent a much broader coalition of groups, in which the loudest voices are never satisfied with the result because a particular group is under represented in the response.

Here's the winner in the controversial Florida legislation on parental rights, known popularly as the 'don't say gay' bill. It prohibits the instruction of sex, gender and sexual orientation in grades kindergarten through three. On it's face, that's reasonable and ration, but it doesn't account for the third grader who draws or shows a picture of his or her two moms or dads. What happens then when a student has a question of why that is. Have you ever met a third grader that didn't ask you why a thousand times? It's incumbant upon the teacher to explain it clearly without making it a big deal, but just that simply act can cost a teacher his or her job. 

That's the broader societal implication, to our detriment we might ad. Same-sex marriage, like toothpaste, genies and farts, it's out and it is not going back in. Knowing this, Republicans like the governor of Florida use every opportunity to make life suck for the people with those rights, or anything else they don't agree with. Just ask Disney.

Panel: Errin Haines, The 19th; Carol Lee, NBC News; Sara Fagen, fmr. Bush Administration offical; Peter Baker, The New York Times

4.10.22: Issues to Govern On, Issues to Run On...

The Boston Globe's Editorial Board member, Kimberly Atkins Stohr summed it up best explaining that Democrats search for issues to govern on while Republican search for issues to campaign on. It brakes down this way on practically everything in our collective civil life these days. The byproduct is that it leaves everyone dissatified.

Said in another and accurate way is that Democrats know how to govern and Republicans know how to campaign which plays out both in domestic policy and foreign policy.

That brings us to the war in Ukraine and what Chuck Todd aptly described as 'calculated cruelty.' One could say that if George W. Bush were in office, the world would have to worry about the fate of NATO and the response, outside of minor strategic differences, would be the same - pour as much support, military and otherwise, into the defense of Ukraine. But that's not the Republican party that we have anymore.

Had the last Republican president still been in office, the administration's presumed response would have been tepid at best, NATO would be completely ineffectual, Europe nations would focus on their self interests and their reliance on Russian energy and Putin would have won the Battle of Kyiv. But Putin didn't win this battle, the Ukraine did.

Unlike Afghanistan, the Biden Administration has done as well as any U.S. Administration can to support Ukraine and push back on Russian aggression, which the West has finally woken up to. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that he and Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Milley are personally coordinating with Ukraine's Ministry of Defense. As we mentioned in a previous column, European and the U.S. governments all have an ax to grind when when it comes to Putin or some nefarious Russian entity violating countries' sovereignty. 

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba  explained that in 2008 the United States had pushed for Ukraine to join NATO, which was during the Bush Administration, with France and Germany rejecting the idea. So here we are with Russian forces indescriminating bombing civilians - women and children fleeing the war.

Russian forces are regrouping in the eastern part of the country so it's a race to get arms into the hands of the Ukrainians, some of which Mr. Sullivan explained are being delivery at the moment of this writing. 

Mr. Kuleba explained the deal that Ukraine wants, give us what we need to fight and win this war against Putin's Russia so that NATO and the west won't have to. The seems a bit hyperbolic in the cynical sense, but the Foreign Minister is not wrong. If Ukraine doesn't succeed, that larger confrontation will be inevitable.

Republicans, realizing that the Biden Administration's response politically and materially is better than anything the former administration could muster in terms of competency have turned their attention to domestic issues - practical and cultural.

On the practical issues, inflation is a slamdunk for Republicans to slap the Democrats with, and Republicans always profit historically from when Democrats take control, they over reach and their base becomes discouraged.

As fmr. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers explained, the inflation in gas prices is due to the increased demand, the bottleneck in the supply chain caused by covid, and the unforeseen war in Ukraine. In this were the only daily commodity which was seeing a price increase, Americans would be more optimistic about the economy because they see one of the major causes on their television screens everyday. 

However, inflation is running through the price of everything and anyone who checks their bank account more than twice a week has altered one's spending [read: middle and lower-middle class]. That along with big bright lights every other mile on American roads flashing red steep gas prices and Republicans have something to point to.

Mr. Summers also explained that by creating so much demand combined with so many Americans having pent up cash, from the pandemic, he foresaw the inflation that we're seeing now, admittedly, not at this level but he did see it coming. He also explained that nothing is certain in economics but that historically after a period of high inflation, a recession usually follows one to two years later. Translate that into - Do what you can this year to pay off as many debts as much as possible because the next few years could be tight.

Mr. Summers explained what is happening with economy very clearly and fixes to alter the course so for that reason, we've included his entire interview below.

Former Florida Congressman Carlos Curbelo said that Republicans are definitely winning the culture wars, and he's not wrong. Republicans, and yes lead by Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis, are pushing Democrats buttons with divisive policies and they have the state legislations and the death-proof majority in the Supreme court to push their agenda as far as they can imagine. 

As Mr. Todd reminded us, and we're paraphrasing more poetically, overreach is the inevitability of too much power. This brings us to the Supreme Court.

Congratulations to newly-confirmed Associate Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson who after 232 years and 115 appointments, we finally have a black woman on the highest court of the United States. This should be celebrated uniquovocally despite the despictable, cynical, gutter level attacks that Republican Senators throw at her. F**k them, she shined.

However, as we know all too well, it doesn't change the balance of the court and that Mississippi abortion ruling is coming down the pike. If the Court rules in favor of Mississippi, which most legal prognosticators believe to be the case, a wave of abortion bills will be voted into the law. 

Given the Republicans ruthless efficiency in enacting such overreaching policies, it could work to Democrats' advantage. Such sweeping policy that effects over half the U.S. population is a pretty motivating factor - for and against, but in this case mostly against.

Panel: Kimberly Atkins Stohr, The Boston Globe; Anna Palmer, Punchbowl News; Josh Lederman, NBC; Carlos Curbelo, fmr. Florida Congressman (R)