Stimulus, Not Surrender
Welcome to a big Wednesday evening edition of Progressives Everywhere!
There is so much news to discuss, including both big national headlines and some more under-the-radar stories. Let’s get going!
An Offer They (Sadly) Can’t Refuse
The old adage is that the United States does not negotiate with terrorists, but Democrats seem more than willing to satisfy all of their demands.
This evening, President-elect Joe Biden endorsed the pitifully inadequate stimulus package negotiated by a band of “centrist” Republicans and hapless Democrats in the Senate, suggesting that it would have to do until he could take office. Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer added that it should be the basis for negotiations, meaning that any changes would be tweaks to the initial agreement.
Democratic leaders are thereby accepting the woeful framework that gives the party little of what it purports to want (and what tens of millions of Americans so desperately need) and fulfills Republicans’ most important policy priorities.
Unlike the CARES Act, the deal does not include stimulus checks. It also cuts expanded unemployment to just $300 a week (and extends benefits for gig workers). Unconscionably, it also provides employers with liability protection, so that if workers get sick with COVID on the job due to their negligence, they cannot be sued. In short, it’s a license to kill people in exchange for a few hundred bucks a week.
The ultimate deal might even be worse — after the $908 billion deal was first announced yesterday, Mitch McConnell came out and said it was a nonstarter, as he wanted an even more miserly, miserable deal that would help even fewer people. By acknowledging that they’d accept the crappy deal, they have to come down even further in negotiations with McConnell. Democrats won’t even be getting half a loaf; it’ll be more like a moldy end piece of a baguette.
I am very well aware that the economy is grinding to a halt and circumstances are becoming increasingly desperate for people — Sunday’s edition of this newsletter outlined the horrifying situation coming our way. And personally, with the media industry having been decimated this year, my own financial situation is more precarious than this time last year, to say the least. But the extent of the economic disaster we’re facing, along with its near-term political implications, is all the more reason for Democrats to stand up and fight for a better deal.
As I’ve written somewhat exhaustively here, the twin Senate runoffs in Georgia next month should be a referendum on a major stimulus package that would significantly and demonstrably make people’s lives better. Instead, it looks like Democrats are going to take co-ownership of a bill that mostly gives money away to major industries and re-ups a PPP that mostly just helped big businesses (including dozens of major chains) and those connected to politicians. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won’t campaign on Republican obstinance and the need to flip the Senate blue to deliver help to people. Most people are going to be left high and dry by this stimulus, while Republicans will be able to claim that they’re doing just as much for them as Democrats.
The wild card is how much McConnell is willing to let the country suffer. I have no doubt that he has absolutely no compunction about watching people starve. He’ll hold a government spending bill hostage if has to do so. But he doesn’t want to lose his majority in the Senate, so I think he’d eventually bend. That Democrats aren’t calling his bluff at all is just pitiful.
McConnell knows that this is a long-term battle. If he keeps the majority, he can stop much bigger legislation and economic stimulus down the line. Democrats don’t seem to be making that obvious calculation. Biden suggested that this stimulus would just be a down payment or first-step bill, to keep things on track until he is sworn in and can pass something much larger. If that sounds familiar, you’re probably remembering when Nancy Pelosi tried the same thing this spring, when she repeatedly accepted pared down bills and insisted that Democrats would make Mitch McConnell pass more of their priorities further down the road.
The House passed the HEROES Act on May 15th and McConnell promptly let it die on the vine.
Unless Democrats take back the Senate, they’re not going to be able to pass some big new stimulus. And if they pass this weak-tea stimulus, their chances of taking back the Senate will precipitously decline.
Instead of forcing McConnell to feel the heat from his own caucus, who are under pressure from constituents to deliver help, the triangulating hydra of Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer are letting him win, giving up on more significant help for millions of Americans, and in effect giving up their best path to winning the Senate.
Georgia On Their Delusional Minds
This year has been a gauntlet of chaos, with a seemingly endless procession of tragedies, indignities, and absurdities adding up to a uniquely terrible trip around the sun. As a fitting capper, the final election of the year has quickly become a synthesis of the very worst elements of 2020, with racism, conspiracy theories, corruption, COVID-19 spikes, and political dysfunction all coursing through an increasingly unpredictable and unstable stretch run that will determine control of the Senate and, in many ways, the fate of Joe Biden’s presidency.
While I think Democrats would be kneecapping Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock with a crappy stimulus deal, Republicans may well be doing even more damage to Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. I wrote a fair bit on Sunday about the GOP civil war and how it’s threatening to sabotage the Republican duo and it’s only gotten messier since.
Today, Donald Trump’s two most unhinged lawyers held a bonkers press conference in which they tossed around a few galaxy-brain accusations about voter fraud and tossed a live grenade at Loffler and Perdue’s campaigns:
To be clear, neither Loeffler nor Perdue are victims here. They’re absolute sleazeballs, cold-hearted financial sharks who have cashed in time and again on the mass death gripping the country. Their stock dumps at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic are well-known at this point, but their crooked dealings go way beyond that.
Today, the New York Times revealed that Perdue has basically spent his entire time in the Senate using his position to rake in piles of cash; in just under six years, he’s made nearly 2600 stock trades, many of which were based on inside information or shaped by policies he pushed through the various committees of which he sits:
The data also shows the breadth of trades Mr. Perdue made in companies that stood to benefit from policy and spending matters that came not just before the Senate as a whole, but before the committees and subcommittees on which he served.
Nearly half of Mr. Perdue’s FireEye trades, for example, occurred while he sat on the cybersecurity panel, a role that potentially could have provided him with nonpublic information about companies like FireEye. During that period, FireEye landed a subcontract worth more than $30 million with the Army Cyber Command, which had operations at Fort Gordon, in Mr. Perdue’s home state. In 2018, Mr. Perdue reported capital gains of up to $15,000 from FireEye trades.
And as a member of the Senate banking, housing, and urban affairs committee since 2017, Mr. Perdue bought and sold shares of a number of financial companies his panel oversaw, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Regions Financial.
The whole story is very worth reading. The stock trades are extreme only in their volume — taken one by one, they embody the regular and mundane corruption that has turned the United States government into an ATM for the rich.
Loeffler, meanwhile, kept quiet while her uber-wealthy husband tried to cash in on the stimulus, like he needed the money. (See why we need stimulus checks sent directly to everyone instead of these business slush funds?!)
Sadly, it’s unclear whether the GOP in-fighting or revelations of outrageous greed will actually make a difference. Over 70 million people voted for Donald Trump, the most nakedly (and proudly!) corrupt public official in American history. Tribalism rules all.
Right now, white voters own a higher share of absentee ballot requests for the runoff election than they did for the general election, and even more disconcertingly, seniors 66+ account for 63% of ballot requests. It’s early, but still — yikes.
More after this…
A Quick Pause Before We Continue…
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Important News and Notes
Wisconsin: Sure, Biden hasn’t even been sworn in yet, but it doesn’t hurt to start looking toward the next campaign cycle — the reality is that our finance system requires that candidates never stop planning and fundraising.
Republicans will again be defending a majority of Senate seats and given Wisconsin’s shift blue in 2018 and 2020, the deceptively deranged aristocrat Ron Johnson will be a prime target. On Tuesday, Johnson officially joined the dead-ender Trump Train, questioning assertions made by Attorney General William Freakin’ Barr, a man who is singularly devoted to undermining democracy to advance the Republican agenda, that there was no wide-spread voter fraud.
Johnson loves peddling conspiracy theories, as county executive Thomas Nelson, his only declared Democratic opponent thus far, pointed out in this sizable and disturbing Twitter thread:
It’s amazing how much crap these people pull without any consequences. If only Democrats were as bold (with policy, not pulling crap).
By the way, speaking of Wisconsin, here’s a good piece on why Democrats continue to fall further behind in rural America and how they can get back on track.
Blazing Initiative: After Floridians voted to raise the minimum wage via ballot initiative earlier this month, activists are setting their sights on legalizing marijuana via popular referendum in 2022. Medical marijuana was passed via initiative in 2016. Ballot initiatives have become the only real way to pass progressive policy in Florida these days, though Republican control of all facets of the state government put even those accomplishments at risk (see the Jim Crow poll tax).
In fact, activists in a number of GOP-controlled states are already planning on getting legalizing recreational weed on the ballot in 2022. We could see voters in Ohio, North Dakota, and Oklahoma choose to green-light legal green… if only Democrats would take a hint and embrace that as part of their platform…
Supremely Thankful: Democrats face-planted hard in their attempts to win back the state legislatures in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan, in no small part due to gerrymandering of legislative districts (also, not knocking on doors). The conventional wisdom has held that those losses will lead to another decade of unfair redistricting, but thanks to their success with ballot initiatives and statewide elections, they’re in a much better place in those states than they were 10 years ago.
Pennsylvania is a particularly good example of how much has changed.
This time, the Democrats have Gov. Tom Wolf, who could veto a congressional map sent to him by the GOP-controlled legislature. Perhaps even more important, Democrats have a 5-2 majority on the Supreme Court.
That will almost certainly give the party an advantage in drawing new state legislative maps for the 203 districts in the House and 50 in the Senate.
That process is controlled by a five-member commission that includes the four floor leaders in the General Assembly — two from each party. If they can’t agree on a fifth member, that person is chosen by a majority of the Supreme Court.
Alas, they’ll have less control over the state legislative districts, but considering how close Congress will be this year, and how much of a difference the Supreme Court made when it redrew districts in 2018, these advantages should prove essential.
Here in New York: Things are about to get very dire, with landlords now suing to evict hundreds and hundreds of small businesses, with more evictions likely to come after the new year. Thankfully, Democrats just took a supermajority in the state Senate, which gives them veto power over Gov. Andrew Cuomo, so we’ll be fighting to finally enact a wealth tax and legalize marijuana over his veto. I’m hopeful that we’re entering a period of actually effective progressive governance and we can be a shining example for the rest of the country. Luckily, we don’t have a French Laundry here, so that’s one temptation for lawmakers off the board.
Game of Inches: The final two undecided Congressional races are both headed for litigation, so it may be a little while before we know who will be headed to the House to represent New York’s 22nd district and Iowa’s 2nd district.
The race in Iowa is especially bonkers — Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks has a six vote lead over Rita Hart, who is suing to ensure that uncounted votes are tabulated before a winner is officially declared.
In upstate New York, Republican Claudia Tenney has a comparatively robust 22 vote over Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi, with at least 809 contested votes left to be sorted and decided on.