Month: March 2023

Taking ‘national divorce’ seriously

Here’s a chilling thought for a Sunday morning: What if Vice President Pence had done what Donald Trump demanded and supported his Jan. 6 coup? David French ponders the consequences in The New York Times:

In that moment, American peace and unity depended on the force of will of one single person, a man who stood up to a president, to the lawmakers in his own party who challenged the election, and to the howling mob that was crying out for his head.

Just that is enough to make you pull the covers over your head and go back to sleep.

French critiques Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s proposed “national divorce” in light of the last attempt at one in the 19th century. Yes, it’s unworkable. And yes, it’s insane. But what’s sanity got to do with it?

I’m haunted by James McPherson’s account of the prewar period in his seminal work, “Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era.” Describing the South in the run-up to secession and war, he says it was possessed by an “unreasoning fury.” The immediate cause was Northern celebration of John Brown, the abolitionist who attempted to provoke a slave rebellion by seizing the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

In McPherson’s account, Northern support for Brown’s cause “provoked a paroxysm of anger more intense than the original reaction to the raid.” Southern paranoia was so profound that Texas’ secession declaration even included claims that Northern “emissaries” were distributing “poison” to slaves for the purpose of killing white citizens.

The South separated from the North and started a ruinous and futile war not because of calm deliberation, but rather because of hysteria and fear — including hysteria and fear whipped up by the partisan press.

So my question is not “Is divorce reasonable?” but rather, “Are we susceptible to the unreason that triggered war once before?”

Had Pence chosen allegiance to Trump rather than to the Constitution that day, we might have found out.

We still might. The fever that spawned the Jan. 6 insurrection has not ebbed, French writes. CPAC may be a shadow of its former self, but the froth of the authoritarian fanboys remains. The demographic shifts fueling their hatreds is not going away. Greene may be clownish, but the audience for her nonsense is serious.

“Accelerationists” are trying to instigate Civil War 2.0. Digby on Saturday referenced a report by the Anti-Defamation League on the threat posed by right-wing extremism:

“White supremacists who consider themselves accelerationist believe that there’s no way they will ever be able to reform or change society to reflect what white supremacists want [and] the only option really is to actually destroy society and from the ashes, build a new white-dominated or white only society,” said Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the ADL.

French adds:

America is in the grips of a simply staggering amount of partisan animosity. As I wrote in my newsletter last week, overwhelming majorities of Republicans and Democrats believe that their opponents are “hateful,” “racist,” “brainwashed” and “arrogant.” Half of the respondents to a 2022 University of California Davis survey agreed that “in the next several years, there will be civil war in the United States,” and roughly 20 percent agreed that political violence was “at least sometimes justifiable.” A recent Rasmussen Reports poll found that 34 percent of likely voters (including a plurality of Republicans) think red and blue states need a national divorce.

“At this moment in history, there is not a single important cultural, religious, political or social force that is pulling Americans together more than it is pushing us apart,” French wrote in 2020.

Animosity is so entrenched (stoked daily by right-wing media) that I wonder if even an alien invasion could mend our fences. Left and right might just as soon default to accusing the other of being alien collaborators. “Unreasoning fury” that once tore the country apart remains a threat, French warns.

With exceptions, however, hatred seems too strong a word for the culture of grievance infecting our politics. It’s more on the right than the left, if conservative merch and Jan. 6 are any indicators. Personally, I wouldn’t expend the energy on hating even Trump.

People are deluded, misguided, and propagandized. Mostly, the right fears change and loss of social status. Theirs is, Isabel Wilkerson writes, a zero-sum view of the world. For their defined lower caste to rise means loss to the shrinking white majority more deeply personal than economic. Which is why I wince at the “voting against their best interests” dismissal of Republican voters. Equality under law or at all is not an American value the right embraces, no matter what the Declaration and Pledge say.

So it was. So it will be. How the hell do we live together without killing each other?

And dreaming about a new flying car initiative

Donald Trump gears up for his campaign:

Holed up at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida, former President Donald Trump spends many mornings golfing and then, in the afternoons, plots his political comeback.

Maybe he’ll shoot videos on policy proposals for his latest presidential campaign. But much of his and his team’s time is spent bemoaning his lack of coverage by Fox News and other cable networks, griping about his 2020 reelection defeat — something he’s very much not letting go — and workshopping new nicknames for his chief rival in GOP politics, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Trump, allies say, seems set on “Ron DeSanctimonious,” even though others around him don’t think it’s a bullseye. Some of the new ideas the former president’s entertained: “Ron DisHonest.” “Ron DeEstablishment.” Or even, “Tiny D.”

His team has spent weeks trying to dig up dirt on DeSantis’s record as governor; his wife, Casey, a former television journalist; his year teaching at a boarding school in Georgia and his record as a member of Congress, including support for raising the US retirement age and partly privatizing Medicare as part of then-Speaker Paul Ryan’s conservative budget plan.

Yet while Trump’s competitors for the nomination — announced and unannounced — spend their time traveling to key primary states, courting wealthy donors and lining up top staff, the former president’s more lackadaisical approach has concerned some allies. He has acknowledged the criticism, telling supporters at recent events that his campaign activity is accelerating and he’s taking the contest seriously. 

He’ll be the featured speaker on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, which DeSantis is skipping, and he’ll speak on education policy — an issue closely associated with the Florida governor — in Iowa on Monday.

Taking down DeSantis before he attains too much momentum and donor cash is a priority for Trump’s allies, who aim to sully the governor enough to dent his poll numbers and support within Republican circles. Two of Trump’s top campaign aides previously worked for DeSantis. One Trump adviser said that in his CPAC speech, the former president will seek to draw a strong contrast with his top rival.

They hope to portray the sitting governor and former representative as the establishment candidate and “Republican-in-Name-Only,” and the former president as the populist outsider — despite his four years in the White House and his familiarity among voters.

If they can deflate DeSantis and the field of rivals remains broad, Trump’s allies believe he can once again win the nomination simply because his longstanding grip on about 30% of Republican voters. Should another three or four people split the remainder, no single candidate would have enough support to challenge Trump until it’s too late.

That was Trump’s strategy in 2016, down to derogatory nicknames for his rivals and efforts to divide the opposition. His intention is to run the same playbook, even if US politics has evolved and a majority of Republicans say they want a different leader for their party. It’s a scenario feared by many GOP donors who believe Trump, who remains deeply unpopular among most Americans, and can’t win another general election against any Democrat.

Also, flying cars…

Former President Donald Trump on Friday proposed building up to 10 futuristic “freedom cities” on federal land, part of a plan that the 2024 presidential contender said would “create a new American future” in a country that has “lost its boldness.”

Commuters, meanwhile, could get around in flying cars, Trump said – an echo of “The Jetsons,” the classic cartoon about a family in a high-tech future society. Work to develop vertical takeoff and landing vehicles is already underway by major airlines, auto manufacturers and other companies, though widely seen as years away from reaching the market.

“I want to ensure that America, not China, leads this revolution in air mobility,” Trump, who announced his third bid for the presidency in November, said in a four-minute video detailing his plan.

What????

And it’s right wing

Via Salon:

Domestic extremists killed at least 25 people in the United States last year and all of them had ties to forms of right-wing extremism, including white supremacy, anti-government extremism and right-wing conspiracy theorists, according to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League. 

Domestic extremist-related mass killings have increased in the past 12 years with most of them being tied to right-wing extremists, the ADL found. Researchers say the most concerning incidents are shootings inspired by white supremacist “accelerationist” propaganda urging such attacks. 

“White supremacists who consider themselves accelerationist believe that there’s no way they will ever be able to reform or change society to reflect what white supremacists want [and] the only option really is to actually destroy society and from the ashes, build a new white-dominated or white only society,” said Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the ADL.

Due to this extremist belief, accelerationist white supremacists often encourage acts of violence, like shooting sprees that target minority communities so that they can destabilize or weaken groups they view as a threat, he added.

The report highlighted that while white supremacists have committed the greatest number of domestic extremist-related murders in most years, the percentage increased in 2022 – with 21 of the 25 murders being linked to white supremacists. 

This is primarily due to mass shootings. Almost all the killings in 2022 (93%) were committed with firearms, according to the report.

Five extremist-related murders were committed by members or associates of white supremacist prison gangs such as the Universal Aryan Brotherhood, the United Aryan Brotherhood or the Nazi Low Riders

While these efforts shifted under the Obama administration, Beirich added, once Donald Trump took office, programs focused on combatting white supremacy and far-right extremism were undercut once again.

“He made light of white nationalism,” Beirich said of the former president. “The government itself has essentially allowed this situation to metastasize regardless of the warnings.”

One of the main factors motivating white supremacist violence is related to demographic change, Beirich said. This threatens extremists who worry that white Americans will become a minority by the 2040s. 

When this prediction first came to light, the number of hate groups started to rise, she added. What made it even worse was when “the Trump era very much emboldened these actors, mainstreamed racism [and] bigotry against various populations [and] was rapidly anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim,” Beirich said.

She added that “all of this was fuel for the fire for these groups.” 

Meanwhile, you’ve got the US House running interference for these weirdos, making excuses, making sure they have easy access to weapons and accusing the government of being partisan by investigating them. It’s a very dangerous development.

This insufferable wingnut James Comer tries to wriggle out of a creepy comment by trying to say that he never said it. But it’s on tape:

House Oversight Committee James Comer angrily denied lamenting that Beau Biden, the late son of President Joe Biden, should have faced criminal charges over a campaign finance scandal in which he was found not to have committed any wrongdoing whatsoever.

Mr Comer, a Kentucky Republican, made the incendiary comments during an appearance on disgraced ex-Fox News host Lou Dobbs’ podcast last week, citing a years-old campaign finance scandal centered around a powerful Delaware beverage distributor, Christopher Tigani, who was sentenced to prison in 2012 for illegally funneling contributions to First State political campaigns. The investigation which led to his incarceration was led by David Weiss, a veteran prosecutor whom former president Donald Trump appointed as the US Attorney for Delaware in 2018.

Mr Weiss, who is also investigating the president’s surviving son, Hunter Biden, has been allowed to remain on the job by the elder Mr Biden in order to avoid the appearance of any political influence on the ongoing probe. The House Oversight chair implied that Mr Weiss’ failure to charge Beau Biden or his father for any crime arising from Tigani’s illegal campaign donations indicates impropriety on the part of the prosecutor.

Mr Comer’s remarks drew a strong rebuke from veterans groups as well as the White House.

But when approached by The Independent at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, the Kentucky Republican accused the press and the Biden administration of mischaracterising his comments.

“You need to watch the tape, that is a lie –the White House said that, that is not true,” he said.

He claimed that “all” he’d said was that Mr Weiss “had an opportunity to look into Joe Biden for campaign contributions” in response to a prompt from Dobbs, and argued that his only reference to the president’s late son was an observation that he was Delaware’s attorney general at the time of the probe into Tigani.

“I just said he was attorney general during a case … Lou Dobbs asked about the attorney, the US Attorney in Delaware. And I said, all we know is … there was one opportunity… he had an opportunity to look into Joe Biden for campaign contributions. He didn’t, [and] the person that made the contributions was sent to jail, Beau Biden was attorney general at the time, and nothing happened. I never said anything negative about Joe Biden, and I never said Joe Biden should be indicted, which is what the White House said — that’s a complete lie,”

But Mr Comer’s attempt to disclaim having ever suggested that Beau Biden should have faced criminal jeopardy doesn’t match what he actually said on Dobbs’ podcast.

At the time, he said Mr Weiss “had an opportunity to go after the Bidens years ago”.

“In fact, it was Beau Biden, the president’s other son, that was involved in some campaign donations from a person that got indicted as well,” he said “But, you know, nothing ever happened. So I don’t know much about this U.S. attorney [Weiss] other than he’s had an opportunity to investigate the Bidens before and he chose not to”.

The Independent pointed out that Beau Biden had recused himself from any involvement in a state-level probe into Tigani and named a special prosecutor who later found that neither Beau Biden, Joe Biden, nor any of the other candidates who recieved illegal contributions had been aware of the donations’ illegality or committed any wrongdoing in relation to Tigani’s scheme.

Mr Comer replied: “So what’s your point?”

He later claimed that he “never said anything negative about Joe Biden” and “certainly didn’t suggest Joe Biden should have been indicted”.

“I just stated the obvious, that this US attorney who seems to be taking a long time in prosecuting Hunter Biden has been around a long time and there was one other opportunity when the Bidens were involved in something he was investigating,” he said. “I never suggested Joe Biden did anything wrong. I just stated the obvious — the guy that Joe Biden received campaign donation from ended up going to jail. That’s all I know”.

The Republican congressman’s outrageous claim about Beau Biden, an Army National Guard Judge Advocate who died from the effects of brain cancer in 2015 after serving in Iraq, have largely gone uncondemned by Mr Comer’s fellow Republicans at the annual conservative confab.

Multiple GOP representatives approached by The Independent at the event site declined to condemn Mr Comer, but none would defend his remarks either.

“I haven’t seen the remarks so I’m probably not going to comment,” said Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida.

His Sunshine State colleague, freshman Representative Kat Cammack, also told The Independent she had neither seen nor heard the Oversight Committee chair’s comments about the president’s late son.

Liars, all of them.

As I have said before, going after Biden’s family is an attempt to make him get emotional in public and destroy himself. Whether that’s what was going on with this jerk is unknown. But it is certainly part of what’s driving the Hunter Biden obsession and I’m sure this is being whispered about in wingnut circles. Disgusting.

The wingnuts aren’t hearing anything about the Dominion lawsuit revelations — not even from Fox’s rivals:

Fox News and its sister network, Fox Business, have avoided the story. Newsmax and One America News, Fox’s rivals on the right, have steered clear, too. So have a constellation of right-wing websites and podcasts.

Over the past two weeks, legal filings containing private messages and testimony from Fox hosts and executives revealed that many of them had serious doubts that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election through widespread voter fraud, even as those claims were made repeatedly on Fox’s shows. The revelations, made public in a defamation lawsuit against Fox brought by Dominion Voting Systems, have generated headlines around the world.

But in the conservative media world? Mostly crickets.

On 26 of the most popular conservative television news networks, radio shows, podcasts and websites, only four — National Review, Townhall, The Federalist and Breitbart News — have mentioned the private messages from Fox News hosts that disparaged election fraud claims since Feb. 16, when the first batch of court filings were released publicly, according to a review by The New York Times.

The majority — 18 in all, including Fox News itself — did not cover the lawsuit at all with their own staff. (Some of those 18 published wire stories originally written by The Associated Press or other services.)

Four outlets mentioned the lawsuit in some way, but did not mention the comments from Fox News hosts. One of those, The Gateway Pundit, published three articles that included additional unfounded allegations about Dominion, including a suggestion that security vulnerabilities at one election site using Dominion machines could have led to some fraud, despite no evidence that votes were mismanaged.

“These results are shocking,” one article asserted.

The Gateway Pundit did not respond to requests for comment.

Even in a media world often divided along partisan lines, the paucity of coverage stands out, media experts said. And it means that many of the people who heard the conspiracy theories about election fraud on Fox’s networks may not be learning that Fox’s leaders and on-air stars privately dismissed those claims.

“Choosing not to do stories is a form of bias,” said Tom Rosenstiel, a veteran press critic and a journalism professor at the University of Maryland. “The things you ignore and the things you choose to highlight are an important part of how you show whether you are a serious news organization.”

Mainstream news organizations often report on themselves when they are at the center of a scandal, Mr. Rosenstiel said, because they get “much more credit when they expose the lens on themselves as aggressively as they would anyone else.”

This just shows how homogenous the right wing media sphere is. Even Fox’s competitors won’t show their audience what Fox did. And the reason Fox did what they did was because the audience was leaving them and going to those very competitors! I guess the right is just now all about the grift and actual competition and capitalism are no longer relevant. Amazing.

He’s speaking today. Here’s a preview:

Former President Trump plans to draw a sharp ideological contrast between his MAGA movement and Bush-era Republicans in his speech at CPAC on Saturday — and will urge GOP voters to finish the job of remaking the party by backing him for president.

The CPAC conference, now dominated by the MAGA movement, offers Trump a home-field advantage. He first spoke there in 2011, where he previewed many of the populist themes that fueled his 2016 campaign.

Trump’s keynote address, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. ET Saturday, is expected to last about 90 minutes.

“The issues that brought Trump to the fore in 2016 are still with us,” one Trump aide told Axios. “These issues have never left. He’s going to remind people of the bigger picture. There’s a longer struggle here — in terms of finishing the job.”

 Trump’s finish the job rhetoric is somewhat reminiscent of President Biden’s message in his State of the Union speech last month, in which he called on lawmakers to “finish the job” of rebuilding the economy and unifying the country.

Trump’s approach is provocative for a former president accused of inspiring an insurrection aimed at overturning the results of an election he lost.

Crowds during the first three days of CPAC — at a massive convention complex in National Harbor, Md., just outside Washington — reflected the divide Trump fosters among Republicans.

They’re smaller than in the past — but heavily pro-Trump..

 “Trump has completely remade the party since he’s become president,” another Trump aide told Axios. “He realized there’s a difference between what grassroots activists thought and what Bush Republicans in Washington, D.C., were trying to enact.”

 In coming days, Trump plans to step up his attacks on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely viewed as his biggest threat to the Republican nomination. But Trump’s CPAC speech isn’t likely to go after any specific presidential opponents, aides say.

The speech will blast establishment GOP leaders, including former House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Even as a former president, Trump remains eager to portray himself as a political outsider against the establishment of both political parties.

He’s expected to take shots at Republican hawks as “warmongers,” and say that support for additional aid to Ukraine threatens a third World War.

Trump’s former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and his UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, both spoke at CPAC this week and offered more traditional, hawkish Republican messages.

This primary campaign promises to be one of the weirdest we’ve ever seen. Get your popcorn ready.

Trump now unveils his latest scheme to hold a contest to award people who come up with the best proposals to build 10 new ‘Freedom Cities’ in the US on federal land. pic.twitter.com/L7VW8cctkv

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) March 3, 2023

Better David Dale than you

CPAC is in session, and the lies, smears, and distortions are flying. Liberally, ironically. There’s a whole lotta fabulizing goin’ on.

If like me you are seeing a flood of conservative tweets and memes that make you baroo and think, That can’t be right, you’re right. I’ve wasted too much time already chasing down where the truncated quotes, ugly rumors, inaccurate statistics, and other RW nonsense originated.

Thankfully, CNN’s new, oft-derided CEO Chris Licht has not fired fact-checker Daniel Dale. Not yet. Dale is still doing the debunking so you don’t have to. CPAC has kept him busy:

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio uttered two false claims about President Joe Biden. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia repeated a debunked claim about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama used two inaccurate statistics as he lamented the state of the country. Former Trump White House official Steve Bannon repeated his regular lie about the 2020 election having been stolen from Trump, this time baselesly blaming Fox for Trump’s defeat.

Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida incorrectly said a former Obama administration official had encouraged people to harass Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina inaccurately claimed Biden had laughed at a grieving mother and inaccurately insinuated that the FBI tipped off the media to its search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence. Two other speakers, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka, inflated the number of deaths from fentanyl.

That’s just Dale’s high-level summary. The details of the debunking go on for pages.

Bookmark the link and save yourselves some time.

NC Republicans announce Medicaid expansion

The vote is not planned until later this month. Until then anything can happen. On Thursday, however, Tar Heel State Republicans in firm control of the state legislature announced a deal for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. North Carolina would be the 40th state to expand Medicaid after a decade of Republican resistance.

The Washington Post reports:

The deal marks a stark turnaround for Republican leaders that played out over years in North Carolina and in states across the country, as more and more governors and legislatures expanded Medicaid to low-income residents. When that stopped working years ago, advocates put the measures on the ballot in seven conservative-leaning states, and voters approved expansion in every one. 

Associated Press:

“This is something that we can all be very proud of,” House Speaker Tim Moore said at a Legislative Building news conference with Senate leader Phil Berger. “What a huge announcement this is for North Carolina. What a huge policy direction this is that will provide help for so many in this state, but it’s going to do it in a way that’s fiscally responsible.”

Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, will of course sign the bill if it makes it to his desk.

Gov. Cooper Statement on Medicaid Expansion: pic.twitter.com/0XOoASkfTG

— Governor Roy Cooper (@NC_Governor) March 2, 2023

Passage would extend Medicaid coverage to 600,000 of the state’s poor citizens. That’s huge. Stopping the closing of even more rural hospitals is a relief (although little consolation to the dead). “Since 2005, 11 North Carolina rural hospitals have closed or been converted to some other type of facility,” North Carolina Health News reported in August 2022 . 

Call me cynical, but my first question is: Why now?

North Carolina has no ballot measure process. Perhaps Republicans are simply “capitulating to … fundamental financial logic” on Medicaid expansion, as Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent suggest in the Washington Post. Meanwhile, Republicans on Capitol Hill are are still looking at cutting Medicaid or turning it into a system of block grants and at reducing funding.

That tension will prove thorny for the party’s 2024 presidential nominee:

The eventual GOP nominee will surely want to keep the debate over the ACA as abstract as possible. He or she will likely rail that “Obamacare” represents Big Bad Government in some undefined sense while vaguely committing to repeal to keep the base and conservative thought leaders happy.

But the Medicaid expansion in places such as North Carolina will make the stakes a lot more concrete. The repeal vow will threaten the coverage of hundreds of thousands in that state. The expansion would deliver a big lift to struggling rural hospitals there, as it has in other expansion states. These gains will also be threatened.

All of that won’t be easy for the GOP nominee to navigate in a state that Republicans have been winning lately, but only by very slim margins.

But it’s not likely the 2024 presidential race on the minds of Moore and Berger, but the governor’s mansion. Roy Cooper is the only person standing between them and complete and utter GOP control in North Carolina for decades to come, and Cooper is term limited.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein has announced a run for governor and is the presumptive Democratic nominee. The leading Republican candidate for governor in 2024 is Lt. Governor Mark Robinson. If you need reminding who Robinson is (from November 2021):

When clips of a speech by North Carolina Republican lieutenant governor went viral this week, many will not have recognized the dominionism behind his promise that “Christian patriots will own and rule this nation.” But when he declared non-Republicans “our enemies” and the most populous state in the U.S. “Commie-fornia” [timestamp 8:10], what he put on public display was Christofascism.

All that will be fodder for outside campaign ads against Robinson in 2024.

“Since becoming attorney general in 2016, Stein has secured landmark legal victories against drug makers and tobacco companies,” WRAL reports. Stein is one of the few North Carolina Democrats to win statewide office in recent years:

Robinson could also be vulnerable, Democrats say, because of his affiliation with former President Donald Trump, whose support is seen by some to have hindered far-right gubernatorial candidates in other states last year. Arizona’s Kari Lake and Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano lost their races despite support from Trump, who praised Robinson last year as the two shared a stage in Wilmington.

But some political analysts see a Stein-Robinson contest as being tighter than those other swing states.

“Robinson has some potential to be a toxic general election candidate,” J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said in an email. “But NC is a fundamentally tougher state for Democrats” than Pennsylvania or Arizona, he said.

Unlike Lake and Mastriano, Robinson has won a statewide race — receiving more votes for lieutenant governor in 2020 than Stein did for attorney general. Last year’s midterm elections also showed positive signs for Republicans as they won a big U.S. Senate race and improved their performance in some of the Democrats’ long-held rural counties.

North Carolina Democrats’ new state chair, Anderson Clayton, 25, has declared her intention to contest those rural counties aggressively in 2024.

NC Democrats' new state chair, Anderson Clayton, 25, made MSNBC's Morning Joe today.
I know her campaign team. Do NOT underestimate Gen Z. https://t.co/Fp9rJIMyko

— @TomSullivan@mstdn.social (@BloggersRUs) March 2, 2023

Republicans have reason to bolster Robinson. The N.C. governor’s race is the only toss-up on Sabato’s map as of this morning. Moore and Berger will want to give their eventual candidate every edge they can. Republicans need something like Medicaid expansion to, you know, show 2024 voters they care.

About more than absolute power.

UPDATE: Why you should care about North Carolina’s governor’s race. How the Fall of Roe Turned North Carolina Into an Abortion Destination

Here they go again:

When President Joe Biden called out Republicans recently during his State of the Union for trying to cut Social Security, GOP lawmakers were so offended they literally booed and jeered the president, challenging him to name a single Republican who was targeting Social Security.

Even when the White House later enumerated many such Republicans, the GOP made a big show that Biden was unduly vilifying Republicans for proposals coming from an unserious corner of their party.

But less than a month later, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are suddenly having very serious conversations that would, in fact, cut Social Security—with a bipartisan group of senators quietly looking at raising the target retirement age for most Americans from 67 to 70.

While lawmakers caution everything is preliminary, the mere idea of raising the retirement age is already sounding alarms in the Capitol.

The news, which was first reported by Semafor, comes amid heightening tensions over Social Security, as Republicans seek ways to cut government spending.

After a forceful pushback to the idea that the GOP was sizing up Social Security for a trim, it seemed like the sacred entitlement of the New Deal was on surer political footing than at any point in the last few decades. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), the modern-day boogeyman of Social Security, even amended his controversial “plan to rescue America” to exclude Social Security (and Medicare) from a proposal to sunset all federal legislation and require it to be re-passed.

But the problem for Social Security is that the political reality is running up against a practical reality: Without some sort of Social Security reform, the program is currently slated to hit a cliff in coming years. Members of Congress acknowledge the need to address the issue, but there’s a reason why Social Security is called the “third rail of politics.”

The reported mention of increasing the retirement age is an example why.

Even though members of the working discussions are urging people not to panic, senators are now desperately trying to downplay the prospect of changes.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) described the talks as a “problem solving discussion” and dubbed them as “very preliminary,” noting they’re yet to be “socialized” with the broader Senate. He said any member is welcome to join in.

To him, the primary gist of the talks, which are being led by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Angus King (I-ME), is about considering a new sort of fund to support retirement savings. When asked about news of the retirement age being part of the negotiations, Kaine brushed the idea aside.

“People immediately rushed to that or they rushed to the tax thing. The real origin of the discussion is this new idea,” he said, referring to the fund. “So, every idea that anybody’s ever thought of, yes, has been mentioned. But the purpose of the discussion is this new idea.”

This “new idea,” according to news reports, is to create a sovereign-wealth fund stocked with $1.5 trillion in borrowed money. If the fund failed to generate an 8 percent return, according to Semafor, the maximum taxable income for Social Security—currently capped out around $160,000 a year—and the payroll tax rate would automatically be increased.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) echoed Kaine’s sentiment. He described the talks as very up in the air, and suggested any sort of policy changes could be fine tuned. When asked about discussions over the retirement age, he was evasive. “They’ve just presented a multitude of options and all of them can be dialed,” he said.

“But that’s pretty irrelevant unless we have the political will to do what we need to do to save Social Security. So there have been no agreements, no commitments, just mainly listening,” Cornyn added.

It’s unclear how many senators are currently taking part in the working group, but the existence of any working group at all runs contrary to the platitudes Biden just recently laid out. During his State of the Union, Biden said Social Security and Medicare should be “off the books.” And he further elaborated by saying the way to pay for both programs was by “making sure the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share” in taxes.

That proposal would also come at a political cost, as the 2017 tax reform that Republicans passed under President Donald Trump cut taxes for the wealthy and big corporations—and there’s little reason to believe either party is all that serious about raising taxes. There’s even less reason to believe it’d happen under the type of bitterly divided government we have now.

But as some politicians have continued to point out, Social Security faces a number of challenges. When the program was enacted in 1935, there were 45 workers for every beneficiary. Now there is only a 3-to-1 ratio, with that number projected to go to 2-to-1 by 2034.

To be sure, proponents of Social Security point out that the program isn’t actually going bankrupt. And the choice to not pay Social Security is just as political of a decision as any other government spending decision—only Social Security is supposed to be insulated from those annual spending choices of Congress.

Still, if the retirement age provision were to make it through the working group, it’s guaranteed to cause an uproar among congressional Democrats.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who’s up for a tough re-election next year, told The Daily Beast that Republicans “don’t negotiate in good faith here,” and that increasing the retirement age would equate to a cut in Social Security. He pointed toward past suggestions by Republicans to privatize the program, which Democrats have remained adamantly against.

“The Wall Street Journal and these newspaper publishers that weigh in on this, or the right-wing think tanks that weigh in, and they can work ‘til they’re—I’m 70—they can work ‘til they’re 70, because they got these inside jobs. But a whole lot of Americans can barely work to 60 or 65,” Brown said.

Much of the Democratic resistance to changing the retirement age predates news of the idea coming up in reform talks. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tweeted last month that every time she hears someone suggest raising the Social Security retirement age, “I think, there’s someone who didn’t work construction all their life. Who didn’t carry little kids around as a preschool teacher. Who didn’t help patients in and out of beds as a nurse.”

For others, it was a much simpler answer. Asked on Thursday if he’d consider increasing the retirement age as part of Social Security reform, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) had a one-word response: “No.”

A common sentiment among senators, including those in and outside of the group, is that nothing is going to get done in the Senate alone. Members expressed a need for collaboration with the White House in order to make sure any deal on Social Security has support from the administration.

“Unless there’s a pathway to actually get the bipartisan political support and the president’s signature, then it’s all for [nothing],” Cornyn said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was doubtful actual solutions would come out of the group unless the president got involved.

“Even if it’s a good bipartisan group with well intention, nothing is going to happen until you get the White House involved,” Grassley said.

Asked about the idea of raising the retirement age in particular, Grassley gave a characteristically Grassley answer, stopping mid-walk to explain why he won’t speak on any specifics.

“I never give a substantive answer to Social Security because nothing you’re asking me is ever going to happen unless we get a Reagan-O’Neill like they did in 1983,” Grassley said, referring to a deal on Social Security between President Ronald Reagan and then Speaker Tip O’Neill. (Grassley later suggested The Daily Beast reporter he was speaking with would be “too young” to know any of this).

“Remember, they reformed Social Security. It was busted then, and because of that work, it’s been good for the next 60 years up to 2033. So don’t ask me about this or that. You’ve got to have people sit down and put everything on the table and work something out,” he said.

As long as they don’t raise the cap so rich people pay in more than a school teacher he’s open to anything.