Month: January 2022

It’s going to be ugly:

The first Black woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court in history will be a “beneficiary” of affirmative action, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker told a radio show this afternoon. The senior Republican senator from Mississippi made clear that he has no plans to vote for Biden’s yet-to-be-announced pick. 

Biden has vowed to select a Black woman to replace outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced his retirement yesterday.

“The irony is that the Supreme Court is at the very time hearing cases about this sort of affirmative racial discrimination while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota,” Wicker told host Paul Gallo on SuperTalk Mississippi Radio today, referring to a pending U.S. Supreme Court case challenging affirmative action in college admissions. 

“The majority of the court may be saying writ large that it’s unconstitutional. We’ll see how that irony works out.”

Wicker notably did not raise an objection when former President Donald Trump vowed to appoint a woman to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she died weeks before the 2020 election. Instead, the GOP senator enthusiastically supported Trump’s choice, Amy Coney Barrett, a white woman, despite having stated in 2016 that then-President Barack Obama should not be allowed to appoint a U.S. Supreme Court justice in an election year. Studies show that white women benefit more from affirmative action than any other group.

Nobody got more benefit from affirmative action than Barrett who had never tried a case and never argued a case before any court.

Wicker just another braindead Republican:

Despite not knowing who Biden will nominate, Mississippi’s senior senator predicted that Biden’s pick will be less palatable to Republicans like himself than the white, male justice who currently holds the seat. He compared the unannounced nominee to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who became the high court’s first Latina justice when former President Barack Obama appointed her in 2009.

“We’re going to go from a nice, stately liberal to someone who’s probably more in the style of Sonia Sotomayor,” Wicker said. “… I hope it’s at least someone who will at least not misrepresent the facts. I think they will misinterpret the law.”

Then, he lamented that more Republicans did not turn out to help re-elect former President Donald Trump in 2020.

“You know, for those people who vote Republican and were just a little uncomfortable voting for Trump last time because they had a problem with his demeanor, this is what you get. We’ll have 30 years of a left-wing judge when we could have had, at some point, another stellar member like the three we got recently, particularly Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh,” Wicker said, referring to two of the three white justices Trump appointed.

“I guarantee you this, Paul, this new justice will probably not get a single Republican vote, but we will not treat her like the Democrats did Brett Kavanaugh. It was one of the most disgraceful, shameful things and completely untruthful things that the Democratic Judiciary majority has ever, ever done.”

They are going to insult this nominee to her face by asking her to recuse herself from all affirmative action cases. You just know it. And they will do worse than that if they can. It will be a gross display of racism, sexism and partisanship. And, sadly, their voters will love it.

It won’t change anything. They’ll just do it for payback and feel absolutely triumphant if they are able to humiliate a highly qualified Black jurist before the whole country.

There are tens thousands of people like this and it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen:

A Washington State Patrol officer who defied a statewide vaccine mandate and signed off for the last time by telling Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee to “kiss my a–” is dead from COVID-19.

Former Trooper Robert LaMay, 51, who served 22 years with the State Patrol and retired last October, died on Friday.

LaMay garnered attention from Americans across the country after he signed off for the last time as an officer and told Washington Gov. Jay Inslee he “can kiss my a–” over forced vaccine mandates.

Following LaMay’s death, Washington State Patrol Chief John R. Batiste released a statement praising him for his service, which Batiste said “will be long remembered and appreciated.”

“I am deeply saddened over the news that our former friend and colleague Trooper Robert LaMay has passed away,” Batiste said. “This agency’s prayers and remembrances are with his family and loved ones. Rob served honorably for over two decades, and we were disappointed to see him leave the agency this past October. His service to this state and agency will be long remembered and appreciated.”

He was a fool.

Zoom meeting all day. Because our political adversaries are as focused and relentless as they are, I’m re-posting some old advice about what it takes to advance the ball against adversaries in this environment. On the right or the left.

Some of the old boys in party politics see upstart progressives not unlike how white people see brown people encroaching on their turf. They’re threatened. They try to shut out the noobs. Stonewall. If you throw up your hands, say screw this, and leave, the old boys get their club back. It’s a tactic. You fell for it.

That is not a theory of change.

Why do people expect human dynamics inside a political party will be different from any other human organization?

Outwit. Outlast. Outplay. Outorganize.

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 30, 2016

Have been observing the aftermath from the Democratic convention among grassroots supporters of both Secretary Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders. It is a small sample, but feelings are still raw.

A friend who worked the 2008 Obama campaign (and numerous others since) had some advice for Clinton supporters in the virtual space. They need to be graceful winners and less gloaty:

To my friends that are being mean to BernieOrBusters:

Point I’m trying to make is that most of these BernieOrBusters are either first time voters or sporadic voters, not solid Democrats, with some notable exceptions. And these voters kinda need to be coddled and nurtured into growing from sporadic voters to precinct organizers. And the DNC, to this point, has told them to fuck off. My experience is that more fuck off will not turn their heads. Telling them that they owe us their vote — also not a winner. Telling them that they owe this to themselves — that has a shot.

Remember the recent lesson of G. W. Bush. In 2000 Gore lost New Hampshire partially due to a successful Green Party movement that splintered off enough votes to give the state to Bush. If Gore had won that state, then the fuckery in Florida wouldn’t have mattered, and probably wouldn’t have even taken place. The Democrats first solution was to whine about it for four years. The result was a Bush reelection. Yes, there was some fuckery in Ohio, but Bush won that election.

Enter Howard Dean as chair of the DNC who decreed that we will stop blaming voters whom don’t vote with us and instead, explain why it’s best for them if they do, everywhere. Result: took back both houses of congress and the majority of state governments in the very next cycle and gave the Democrats their first landslide presidential win in a generation the cycle after that.

So please stop calling BernieOrBusters shitheads, ’cause we need them and you are tired of doing all of the precinct organizing and voter registration yourself — you are doing those things, yes?

“Coddled” might not sit well with people. But his point is taken. Bernie Sanders’ grassroots supporters have energy and a fire in their guts that Democrats will need, not just for this coming election, but beyond. Losing is always tough. The trick is to learn from it, to pick yourself up and channel that energy. Besides, as one Sanders delegate told a friend after the convention, “We may have lost the battle, but we won the war.”

Colleague David Atkins (who has won a few and lost a few) seems to concur (above).

The counterpoint to my friend’s comments above is that Sanders supporters are now positioned to leverage the knowledge and experience they’ve gained and the networks they’ve built into party leadership and renewal, and into legislative gains around the country. If. They. Stay. Engaged.

Progressives politics is an unending struggle to advance the ball, to make this world a better, more inclusive place for more people, and to be a check against those corrupted by power. That’s what democracy is. That’s what Bernie supporters have worked for. It is a struggle for the power to enact change and to displace or co-opt those with whom we disagree.

Already some of my Bernie friends are re-registering as independents, unwilling to participate further in the Democratic Party after an election contest in which, one supporter alleged, the party “wouldn’t let Bernie win.”

Seriously? Seriously? Letting your opponent win is called throwing the fight. That’s not how elections work. Think opponents across the aisle will be so nice?

Plus, why would anyone expect human dynamics inside a political party to be different from politics in any other organization? You can find assholes anywhere. Families feud. Clubs have fallings out. Churches have schisms. Team members don’t get along. Parties have internecine struggles. So it goes.

Parties are like unions. Joining doesn’t mean you are signing away your immortal soul. You don’t join a union because every provision of the charter perfectly aligns with your deepest principles, or because you agree with the union president, or because you like everyone you work with or stand beside on the picket line. People join political parties for the same reason they join unions: to find strength in numbers. That’s why I did.

Now, not everybody is a joiner. (By nature, I’m not.) Non-joiners prefer to stand apart, and politically independent. Sometimes defiantly so. That’s their choice. But if having less of a voice in the political process makes them feel marginalized, they are marginalized by choice. They are not being excluded. To riff on that old Irish joke, it’s not a private fight. Anybody can get in. All they have to do to join is register. All they have to do to participate is show up and work. Sometimes alongside people they don’t much like.

Gaining influence, credibility, authority? That is something else. You don’t walk into a church for the first time and expect people to ask you to preach the sermon. You don’t walk in a third time and expect people to ask for your sage counsel. We all understand that. So we don’t get offended when they don’t. So it is in party politics. Bernie friends say they want R-E-S-P-E-C-T. What they really want is to be taken seriously. But credibility is not conferred by registering at the DMV. Credibility, you have to earn over time.

Nothing gets accomplished, resolved or advanced by leaving the game after your first setback. So to those ready to bail, which is truer? Your opponents wouldn’t let you win, or by abandoning the field you let them beat you?

This ain’t the Montessori School. Jumping into this fight, would-be revolutionaries are vying to lead the most powerful country on the planet. You are promising voters you are going to take on and subdue the most powerful corporate entities in the world. Are you going to run home now because Little Debbie was mean to you? Give me a fucking break.

After the starship Enterprise’s first disastrous encounter with the Borg, the entity Q tells Captain Jean Luc Piccard:

Q: If you can’t take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It’s not safe out here. It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it’s not for the timid.

People’s futures are on the line. The world is. If you expect to win at this game, first learn how to play it. If you expect to advance your agenda and defeat your rivals inside your own party – any party – you’d best learn how they play it. Better yet, cooperate with and win them over. Or else outwit, outlast, and outplay them. But this isn’t “Survivor.” This is for real. And in the long run, that’s what it takes to win. Plus allies. Lots of allies.

This is democracy, warts and all. At the end of the day (and on Election Day it is the end of the day) we count votes. That’s how we determine winners and losers. There is math involved. We don’t count passion or ideology or likeability or past decisions or check-off boxes on candidate questionnaires. Politics is a competition. It’s a contest. You must be present to win. If you don’t show up to play, you forfeit.

Hand it to our conservative neighbors. They are many things, but what counts is that their leaders are strategic and relentless. Against a left organized around its own ideological certainty, but fickle, it’s no contest.

Conservatives want to rule. They see their grip on power eroding to relentless demographic change. Like Iraqi Sunnis after De-Ba’athification, they are angling to lock in any control for themselves while they still can. They are working it in plain view just as the plotters behind the Jan. 6 insurrection did. And there’s nothing they like so much as a twofer.

Ron Brownstein explains at The Atlantic that Republican machinations to restrict voting and efforts to censor what’s taught in schools are two fronts of the same war:

The two-pronged fight captures how aggressively Republicans are moving to entrench their current advantages in red states, even as many areas grow significantly more racially and culturally diverse. Voting laws are intended to reconfigure the composition of today’s electorate; the teaching bans aim to shape the attitudes of tomorrow’s.

“This is the next wave of voters, so the indoctrination that we see occurring right now is planting the seeds for the control of that electorate as they become voters,” Janai Nelson, the associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told me recently. “They are trying to manipulate power and exert their influence at both ends of the spectrum by limiting those who can cast ballots now, and by indoctrinating those who can cast ballots later.”

The schools putsch, Brownstein explains, is perhaps “the last battlefield” between the GOP’s “coalition of restoration,” made up of people most unsettled by rapid societal change, and Democrats’ “coalition of transformation” assembled from people most adaptable to the changes.

Chris Hayes Friday night noted the sophistication of the coup plot for presenting Vice President Mike Pence with seven alternate slates of Trump electors on Jan. 6. These guys are not fooling around with street protests and handmade signs. Like the phony electors plot, these efforts are coordinated and happening in multiple states at once.

In 2021, nine Republican-controlled states approved laws limiting the discussion of racism (and in many cases gender inequity), and four others imposed restrictions through the state’s board of education. This year, the pace “has clearly accelerated,” Jeffrey Sachs, a political scientist at Acadia University, in Nova Scotia, told me. Of the 122 state bills that Sachs has tracked for PEN America, a free-speech organization, since January 2021, more than half have been introduced just in the past three weeks as state legislatures have reconvened for this year’s session. So many proposals are surfacing so fast that Sachs said his “gut instinct” is that all 23 states where Republicans control both the governorship and the state legislature eventually “will see a [censorship] bill passed.”

These school measures, like voting restrictions are introduced “exclusively” by Republicans, says Jeffrey Sachs, a political scientist at Acadia University, in Nova Scotia. They are being passed through state after state on party-line votes backed “by influential conservative groups such as Heritage Action for America.”

Where the courts fail to support conservative causes, they do not quit. The decades-old fight over women’s reproductive autonomy is proof of that. They keep at it. They appoint conservative judges and change the courts.

And rewrite the rules to “reconfigure the composition of today’s electorate.” Ari Berman has news on that from Georgia:

“States are not engaging in trying to suppress voters whatsoever,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared last year.

Facts on the ground in Georgia tell a different story. A new data analysis by Mother Jones shows that the number of voters disenfranchised by rejected mail ballot applications skyrocketed after the GOP-controlled legislature passed sweeping new restrictions on mail voting last year. The law enacted in March 2021 shortened the time people have to request and return mail ballots, prohibited election officials from sending such applications to all voters, added new ID requirements, and dramatically curtailed the use of ballot drop boxes, among other changes. 

During municipal elections in November, Georgia voters were 45 times more likely to have their mail ballot applications rejected—and ultimately not vote as a result—than in 2020. If that same rejection rate were extrapolated to the 2020 race, more than 38,000 votes would not have been cast in a presidential contest decided by just over 11,000 votes.

Municipal election voters tend to be more engaged than general election voters. So, the impact could be worse in 2022 and 2024.

Bottom line, these players think long-term. They are patient. They are relentless. They are determined and well-funded. Good vibes and purity of intent won’t beat them. It will take years of hard work in the face of setbacks.

Good news for us cat lovers:

The long-awaited White House cat has joined the Biden family — and her name is Willow. Michael LaRosa, a spokesman for first lady Jill Biden, confirmed the 2-year-old, gray-and-white short-haired tabby’s arrival, saying the cat is “settling into the White House with her favorite toys, treats and plenty of room to smell and explore.”

Willow is named after Jill Biden’s hometown of Willow Grove, Pa. The cat comes from an unnamed Western Pennsylvania farm where the Bidens made a campaign trip in 2020.

“Willow made quite an impression on Dr. Biden in 2020 when she jumped up on the stage and interrupted her remarks during a campaign stop,” wrote LaRosa in a news release. “Seeing their immediate bond, the owner of the farm knew that Willow belonged with Dr. Biden.”

The cat joins Commander, the German shepherd puppy the Bidens adopted last month, following the death of their dog Champ and the rehoming of their dog Major, both German shepherds.

Their other German Shepherd mix, Major, has reportedly been re-homed to a family friend and I hope they love him and will take good care of him. The White House isn’t for everyone. I think I’d bite people if I had to be there too.

In the meantime, there’s a beautiful grey tabby White House cat.

May I just say that my own Dino is thrilled — and you can imagine why:

In a new interview, Trump says that the insurrection on J6 was instigated by “agitators” in the crowd that were “probably Antifa and Black Lives Matter.” (Audio) pic.twitter.com/Ygpz2j04jr

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 28, 2022

You knew he would publicly end up blaming it on Antifa and Black Lives Matter eventually, right?

And this is one of the most outrageous lies he tells but I guess his damaged psyche needs to say it:

The former president of the United States once again tried to reignite a public battle with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday in an interview with Lou Dobbs, a former Fox News host.

Speaking on the latter’s podcast, Donald Trump reiterated his claim that the long-serving senator from Kentucky only won re-election against his well-funded Democratic opponent, Amy McGrath, due to his endorsement as de facto leader of the GOP.

His remarks came in response to a question from Dobbs about whether Mr McConnell was attempting to drive “friction” between Mr Trump and Ron DeSantis, the GOP governor of Florida who like Mr Trump is widely seen as a potential 2024 candidate for president.

The claim is pure speculation, and likely not valid given that Mr McConnell easily won re-election by nearly 20 per cent of the vote despite Ms McGrath receiving fundraising support from around the nation.

“I get along very well with [Ron DeSantis], McConnell is another story,” Mr Trump said. “Look, I endorsed him, he only won re-election because of me too.”

“If I didn’t endorse him, he would’ve lost,” Mr Trump added. “If I don’t endorse Mitch McConnell, he loses.”

It’s utterly ridiculous. Mitch McConnell has been in that seat since 1985 and is the most powerful Republican in the congress. Trump’s bottomless need to attribute his influence to the success of every Republican in the country is embarrassing, particularly since when he took office they had the White House, the House and Senate and now they have nothing.

This is had to be done, I’m afraid. We may have the most notorious case of election fraud in American history on our hands:

The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob has issued subpoenas to 14 individuals who cast bogus electoral votes for the former president in seven states won by Joe Biden in 2020.

The move comes as two Democratic attorneys general have asked federal prosecutors in recent days to investigate whether crimes were committed in assembling or submitting the “alternate” Trump slates. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco this week confirmed prosecutors’ consideration of what she termed the “fraudulent elector certifications.”

In a statement Friday, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the select committee investigating the Capitol attack, said the panel had obtained information that multiple advisers to former president Donald Trump or his campaign had used the actions of the bogus electors to “justify delaying or blocking the certification of the election during the Joint Session of Congress on January 6th, 2021.”

“The Select Committee is seeking information about attempts in multiple states to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including the planning and coordination of efforts to send false slates of electors to the National Archives,” Thompson said. “We believe the individuals we have subpoenaed today have information about how these so-called alternate electors met and who was behind that scheme.”

He encouraged the 14 individuals to cooperate so that the committee can “help ensure nothing like that day ever happens again.”

Ten of the subpoenaed individuals had gathered Dec. 14, 2020, the day of the electoral college vote, in the capitals of five states that Biden had won: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin. They declared themselves “duly elected and qualified” and sent signed certificates to Washington purporting to affirm Trump as the actual victor.

The remaining four individuals cast “alternate” electoral votes for Trump in Pennsylvania and New Mexico and sent certificates explicitly stating that they were to be considered only if the election results were upended.

At the time, Trump’s allies claimed that sending rival slates to Washington echoed a move by Democrats in a close race in Hawaii six decades earlier. They said they were merely locking in electors to ensure they would be available if courts determined that Trump had won any of those states.

But election experts have noted that unlike the Democrats in Hawaii in 1960, Trump had no plausible basis for challenging Biden’s clear and legitimate win in 2020. Multiple courts, recounts and audits have found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Here’s the story of the Hawaii situation back in 1960, which shows that Richard Nixon had much more integrity that Donald Trump:

— John F. Kennedy barely edged Richard Nixon in the 1960 popular vote, winning by fewer than 117,000 votes, or less than two-tenths of 1 percentage point. He won enough states, though, that when Congress convened on Jan. 6, 1961, to officially certify who would be inaugurated two weeks later, Kennedy had an undisputed lead of nearly 100 votes in the Electoral College.

That meant three disputed electoral votes from Hawaii, which could have been a source of controversy in a close contest and tested our political system, didn’t really matter.

How Nixon handled those disputed votes is worth remembering, however, at a time when President Donald Trump is telling his supporters that the only way he loses is if there’s rampant fraud, and lawyers around the country are scrambling to brush up on the intricacies of the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

Hawaii was a new state in 1960 holding its first presidential election — a concept that’s also worth remembering as the possibility of adding Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia to the union is portrayed as somehow outrageous. 

Turnout topped 93 percent in Hawaii. The state’s result was close, just as the nation’s was overall. Nixon initially appeared to be the winner by 141 votes, and the Republican governor declared him the winner. But a judge granted the Kennedy team’s request for a recount. As it dragged on, the judge rejected GOP attempts to stop the count. When the mid-December date came for the Electoral College to meet — this year it’s Dec. 14 — both Republican and Democratic electors sent their votes to Washington to be counted. 

Kennedy eventually was declared the winner in the Hawaii recount by 115 votes, but the two sets of certifications were waiting when the joint session of Congress convened. Democrats, including Rep. Daniel K. Inouye, were ready to lodge an objection if the GOP slate was counted, but the presiding officer — the Senate president, who also is the vice president: i.e., Nixon — pushed the issue aside.

“He resolved it in a rather statesmanlike way by using parliamentary procedure,” State University of New York professor James A. Gardner said in a recent webinar organized by the New York State Bar Association. “He asked for unanimous consent that the votes of the Democratic electors would count. So he resolved this against himself.”

Nixon wasn’t the first vice president who had to preside over the opening of electoral votes that declared his opponent the winner, and he wasn’t the last. The most recent was Al Gore, who had conceded the 2000 election after the Supreme Court stopped a recount in Florida, effectively handing the state’s electoral votes, and the presidency, to George W. Bush. At that joint session in 2001, House Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus tried to object to the acceptance of Florida’s electoral votes. But their complaint did not have a Senate co-sponsor as required by law, and it was dismissed by Gore.

Bush’s victory hinged on 537 votes in one state also, as you’ll recall. Gore won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes.

Donald Trump lost by tens of thousands of votes in the states he was contesting and he lost the popular vote by 7 million votes. He has had to create the fantasy of a massive national conspiracy encompassing thousands of people at all levels of government, including members of his own party, to justify his claims that the election was stolen. And yet he has managed to convince tens of millions of his followers that it’s true. Some of them are now facing subpoenas for what they did, as they should. A few are already in jail.

When is it going to occur to these people that this man does not care about anyone but himself?

I hate this sort of thing. It’s depressing and enervating. But sometimes it just has to be said. Voters believe a lot of contradictory thing and it’s very important that people not fool themselves into believing they have a strong point of view that tracks closely with your own. There are a few, of course. But most Americans are all over the place and many don’t even know what politics actually are. They often say what they think they are supposed to say when queried by pollsters.

So, I’m afraid this from David Lauter at the LA Times is correct and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise but rather face it and figure out ways to deal with it:

One of the enduring beliefs of progressive voters and officials is that public opinion invariably favors their side. The corollary is that if their plans fail to pass, unreasonable obstruction must be to blame.

Here, for example, is Sen. Bernie Sanders in a recent appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” talking about the Democrats’ bill to increase social spending and combat climate change, which has stalled in the Senate:

“What is in the reconciliation bill … is enormously popular,” the Vermont independent said. “It’s what 70%, 80% of the American people … the American people want us to take on the greed of the drug companies to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Ask people whether they want to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and eyeglasses. Ask people whether they want to improve home healthcare, whether we want to deal with climate change. All of those pieces of legislation are enormously popular, the bill itself in its entirety.”

It’s certainly possible to find polls that appear to back up that statement.

But such surveys don’t give a true picture of what the public wants, unfortunately for Sanders and his fellow progressives — and for President Biden, who spent much of the first year of his term pushing the spending bill to no avail.

The reasons why and the implications for progressives are worth a closer look.

Ask people if they want Congress to “take on the greed of the drug companies to lower the cost of prescription drugs,” as Sanders put it, and a substantial majority almost surely will say yes. People like lower costs, don’t approve of greed and aren’t terribly fond of the drug industry, so a question worded that way will reliably produce the expected result.

Advocacy groups routinely produce polls with wording only slightly less subtle than that. Often, they’re testing language for potential campaigns to see what phrases best connect with the public. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that; the danger comes only when people, including elected officials, come to believe their own propaganda.

The public does side with Democrats on some major issues, but not all, by any means.

A Pew Research Center survey this week, for example, found that Americans gave Democrats a big advantage over Republicans when asked which party they more often agreed with on climate change (44%-22%), healthcare (42%-26%) and COVID-19 (41%-27%), but not on economic policy, guns and immigration, on which the two were basically even. Consistently, about 30% said they agreed with neither party.

Despite a lot of Republican efforts to profit from Americans’ anxieties about schooling during the pandemic, the survey found that Democrats held a small edge over the GOP on which party they more often agreed with on education.

A survey from Fox News, whose polling unit is widely respected in both parties, asked a slightly different list of issues and pushed those who initially said they didn’t favor either party to say which side they leaned toward. That produced different numbers, but a similar lineup:

Democrats have a strong advantage, roughly 20 points, as the party likely to do a better job on climate change, racism and healthcare. They also have a smaller, but still significant, single-digit margin on the pandemic, education and bringing the country together, Fox found.

Republicans have a strong advantage on national security, the border, immigration, crime, the economy, the federal budget deficit and taxes. The two came out roughly equal on protecting American democracy — a finding sure to frustrate Democrats who see Republican eagerness to push former President Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election as a major threat.

So what does that tell us about the Democrats’ big spending plan? As Sanders would point out, the public sides with Democrats on healthcare and favors ideas such as expanding Medicare to provide hearing aids and dental coverage. That majority for Democrats melts away, however, when the question turns to taxes to pay for all that and the impact on the budget. The public gets pulled in both directions.

A second, less-obvious issue involves what political scientists call salience.

Ask people in January to name their favorite ice cream flavor, and the results will be accurate (chocolate routinely edges out vanilla in most surveys). But that doesn’t mean most Americans have a strong hankering for a cone in the midst of winter; there’s a reason ice cream production in June typically runs 70% to 80% higher than in December. (Biden’s all-season taste for ice cream marks him as an exception.)

A similar truth applies to politics: Voters might favor or oppose a policy but not consider it a top priority at the moment. Unless a survey measures both dimensions — support and salience — it’s only giving part of the picture.

On the big Build Back Better bill that Sanders touted, for example, a Monmouth University poll released Wednesday found that 61% of Americans said they supported the social spending at least somewhat — not quite the 70% to 80% that Sanders cited, but still a majority. Similarly, 56% supported spending to combat climate change.

But asked “how important it is,” those surveyed gave a very different verdict: Only 24% said passing the bill was a top priority while 37% said it was “important, but there are other more pressing matters for Congress to deal with,” and another 37% said it either wasn’t important or shouldn’t be passed.

Americans have been consistent about what they see as the top priorities right now: The economy, especially rising prices, and the continued COVID-19 pandemic. A majority of voters see the Democrats’ plans as largely unrelated to those two concerns.

Biden has pointed to economists who say his program would reduce inflation over time, but voters either haven’t absorbed that message or doubt its truth.

The same issue of salience affects other items high on the Democratic agenda. An NBC News poll this month found, for example, that while 42% of Americans cited jobs and the economy as one of the top two problems facing the country, and another 23% cited the cost of living, only 15% listed social and racial justice, 14% climate change and 12% voting rights.

That doesn’t mean Democrats should stop pursuing issues they care about: A political party can’t let polls entirely guide its direction, or it won’t end up standing for anything. And elected officials can raise the salience of an issue by focusing on it, although the power of the presidential pulpit is often overrated.

But if a party is going to try to persuade voters about its priorities, it’s important to recognize that persuasion is called for and not insist that the public already believes in the program.

Consider the voting rights bill that Democratic leaders brought to the Senate floor this month in a doomed effort to break a Republican filibuster: The Monmouth poll found that 26% of the public supported it, 24% were opposed, 19% had no opinion and 31% knew nothing about it.

Equally important: If a party is going to spend time and energy on topics that voters don’t see as job number one, then it’s crucial to ensure that voters believe job one is under control. On both those counts, Democrats this last year have conspicuously failed.

Perhaps the most frightening number for Democrats in that NBC News poll was this: Asked to characterize the year 2021, 44% called it “one of the worst years” for the U.S., and another 37% called it below average. Only 18% called the year about average or better.

When you’re the party in charge, you can expect to suffer when voters have that grim a view of current conditions. Telling yourself that despite it all, the country really agrees with your side is a form of denial that can only deepen the problem.

This is politics and it can be dealt with. You contrast yourself with the other side, tout accomplishments that affect people in their own lives, give people reason to hope, make good policy decisions when you have the chance.

People are worn out from the Trump era divisiveness (which is a feature not a bug for the GOP) and they are exhausted from the pandemic. Inflation is immediate and obvious and it’s causing real hardship especially for people who have never experienced it before which is most people under the age of 50. It’s a shock. Hopefully it will be temporary and average folks will begin to feel the fruits of an expanding economy without the price shocks of inflation when things settle down.

I wish that the Democrats had been able to push through BBB because it was the right thing to do and it would have benefited vast numbers of people over the long haul. But I’m not sure it would have been the magic political bullet we all thought it should have been. Our politics right now are operating on another level and good progressive policy is something you just have to do without putting too much store in its immediate political salience.

“This time there is no need for any rush. We can take our time, have hearings, go through the process … It is a lifetime appointment after all.”

— Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) on filling Justice Breyer’s seat on the Supreme Court pic.twitter.com/jgLes1qqdc

— The Recount (@therecount) January 27, 2022

No rush now? Unlike last time, when they insisted on ramming through the confirmation of Barrett in order to get it under the wire before the election — the exact opposite of the previous opening when they refused to even hold hearings for 9 months because it was supposedly too close to the election. Collins went along with both of those radically unethical decisions and she voted for both of the right wing judges McConnell foisted on the country.

She is playing a cynical game. She knows very well that the Democrats are very concerned that one of the ancient mariners in the caucus is going to shuffle off their mortal coil and leave the Senate in McConnell’s hands. She is clearly hoping that will happen.

Susan Collins needs to shut up. Biden and Schumer can move at whatever pace they choose and her opinions are completely irrelevant.

Last week the highest-rated show on cable news was Fox News’ “The Five,” a gossipy round table of smart-alec right-wingers led by the network’s recently promoted to primetime pundit Jesse Watters, best known as Bill O’Reilly sidekick who stalked people on the streets and harassed them for profit. But last week was unusual. Normally, the highest-rated show on Fox News is “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” 

I doubt, however, that Carlson has anything to worry about. His is the most popular Fox News show most weeks and his influence on Republican Party politics is matched only by former president Donald Trump himself. And lately, Carlson’s been outdoing himself with appalling, provocative commentary that must make Trump feel very much off of his game.

This week he hosted COVID crank Alex Berenson, who shared this outrageous lie with the Fox News audience:

“The mRNA COVID vaccines need to be withdrawn from the market. No one should get them. No one should get boosted. No one should get double boosted. They are a dangerous and ineffective product at this point.”

Carlson didn’t refute that blatant lie. In fact, he said it was demonstrably true that the vaccines don’t work. It doesn’t get any more shockingly irresponsible than that.

Of course, Carlson’s long history of racist rhetoric is well known. He has relentlessly pushed the “Great Replacement Theory” lamenting that the Biden administration is trying “to change the racial mix of the country — in political terms, this policy is called ‘the great replacement,” the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries.” Former KKK leader David Duke was thrilled to hear him endorse this theory, which he and everyone else recognize for exactly what it is.

So it was a bit rich to hear the white nationalist Carlson condemn “identity politics” over President Biden’s promise to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court, shedding crocodile tears about how it harms the women who are being considered while suggesting that George Floyd’s sister be nominated because Biden allegedly requires no qualifications except race and gender. That’s a lie. Biden said:

“I’ve made no decision except the one person I will nominate someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity. And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court. It’s long overdue.”

Apparently, Tucker Carlson doubts that such a person exists. In fairness, Carlson isn’t the only right-winger making this grotesquely racist critique, but nobody can do it with the slithery unctuousness that he can.

It’s pointless to mention the shameless hypocrisy in these complaints by noting that presidents of both parties going back decades have taken diversity into consideration with their appointments, from naming the first Jews and Catholics to the first Black justice to the first woman among others. Carlson and his cronies didn’t say a word when Trump promised to name a woman to the court or when he picked the highly inexperienced Amy Coney Barrett but, of course, she isn’t Black.

Equally disturbing, as Salon’s Jon Skolnik reported, Carlson’s views on the possible Russian invasion of Ukraine (he often parrots the Russian government line) have taken the activist base of the GOP by storm. Here’s more from Axios: 

GOP offices have been fielding numerous calls from voters echoing arguments they heard on Carlson’s 8 p.m. ET show. Carlson has been telling his viewers there is no reason why the U.S. should help Ukraine fight Russia.

Even Democratic offices have been fielding these calls from Carlson’s viewers. Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) tweeted that he got “calls from folks who say they watch Tucker Carlson and are upset that we’re not siding with Russia in its threats to invade Ukraine, and who want me to support Russia’s ‘reasonable’ positions.”

Russian state TV is impressed but reportedly concerned that Carlson might be going too far:

Russians Say Tucker Carlson’s Pro-Putin Bias Is Too Blatant:

State TV fawns over Carlson's obvious pro-Kremlin slant, but worries he'll be “marginalized.”

"Sometimes it seems that he attends advanced training courses at the Russian Foreign Ministry." https://t.co/8FmSEjzSQo

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) January 26, 2022

Carlson told Axios that he doesn’t care if people call him a Russian pawn (or in old-fashioned parlance, “useful idiot”) because he doesn’t speak Russian, has never been to Russia and is not that interested in Russia. That is probably true. He seems to be much more interested in what the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent has dubbed “an alignment with a kind of right-wing Internationale, a loose international alliance of authoritarian nationalists who despise liberal internationalist commitments.”

The modern right’s romance with Putin is nothing new, of course and Carlson certainly didn’t invent it. All the way back in 2015 I wrote about Donald Trump’s embrace of the right’s Putin fever which had been building for some time. He’s not the only one who loves a strong man.

Carlson’s real affinity is for Viktor Orbán, the president of Hungary who has the distinction of being the progenitor of the modern “soft fascism” that Carlson and many of the thought leaders of the right are so taken with these days. Last summer I wrote about Carlson taking his show to Budapest and he is planning another trip soon. While he was there he put together a “documentary” for his streaming show called “Hungary vs. Soros: The Fight for Civilization” which Media Matters described as “a ham-handed propagandist screed that heavily recycles the same antisemitic tropes that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán used to get reelected in 2018.” As Media Matters’ Andrew Lawrence quipped on Twitter, “[it] could be a thread on daily stormer but its actually the centerpiece of fox news streaming platform.” It’s that bad.

Here are a couple of short clips to give you the flavor.

it's not subtle. pic.twitter.com/pEmi37ZErf

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) January 26, 2022

He also spends a great deal of time extolling the virtues of Orbán’s push for women to have as many children as possible so as to preserve the purity of the “legacy” Hungarians rather than depending on immigration for labor. The visuals are chock full of white children everywhere. No wonder Carlson feels so at home there.

Everyone says that it’s all about ratings for Tucker Carlson and nothing more, that he pushes the envelope for attention. I’m sure that has a lot to do with it. He clearly is reveling in his celebrity and power. But this obsession with Orbán is obviously driven by something more than that. There is just no way that the same Fox audience that whines about Dr. Seuss and loves Donald Trump is really all that interested in some Hungarian politician.

No, Carlson has a game plan and he’s using his platform to promote a specific brand of white nationalism for his own purposes. What those purposes are is unknown. But as long as he continues to push this propaganda on the most-watched news channel in the country, there’s a good chance we’re going to find out what it is. And I don’t think we’re going to like it very much. 

Salon