Democrats Split on Capitol Hill

All eyes are focused on Capitol Hill this week as the debt ceiling, government funding, ...

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All eyes are focused on Capitol Hill this week as the debt ceiling, government funding, and infrastructure talks continue to heat up in both houses of Congress. Also happening in both chambers is testimony on Afghanistan from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and U.S. Central Command Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie. Sarah has the week off, so Steve, David, and Jonah discuss it all on this week’s episode. And for dessert: the future of the Republican Party. 

Show Notes:

–TMD on Afghanistan testimony

–Uphill on what the heck is going on in Congress

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  1. Rob Walton

    Hailey has to break her verbal tick of “you know”. It is really annoying.

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    Ben Connelly

    Alright, you guys now have to have Josh Rogin, I mean Joe Rogan, on the Dispatch Pod Weekend Interview Edition.

    Biden came in as the guy who supposedly knew how legislation got passed. He knew the Senate and pork and deal making. Seems like that was just as much BS as his “empathy.”

    David to your point about 99.9%. I think you’re right generally. Maybe it’s 95%. But I think you should have expanded on that. Sounds to me like civics education (or lack thereof) is a big part of the problem. This has been a pet issue of mine recently and something that I have thought for years has played into Trump and the state of our politics today.

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  3. Ryan King

    In listening to the podcast it got me thinking about how Republican senators and senate candidates have really gone downhill since Trump has taken over the party. Just think about it. Rob Portman, one of the hardest working, thoughtful GOP senators is going to be replaced with some absolute buffoon in either JD Vance or Mandel. Yikes! Then move to Pennsylvania. Pat Toomey, another solid Senator IMO will be replaced with a Democrat who’s a pronounced socialist or some non serious GOP figure. Marco Rubio has turned full populist. When will this madness end?

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    (1) Another worthwhile podcast ... in which description, lies the seeds of my longest-running criticism of podcasts generally, and podcasts on TheDispatch.com in particular: You're choosing to write your message in the digital equivalent of sands on the beach.

    The digital world offers remarkably capable voice transcription software now, which with only light editing by an intern or volunteer could produce quite serviceable transcripts — transcripts that are search-engine searchable and therefore potentially accessible by others who may lack access or, especially, patience to listen to the actual podcasts.

    When competing obligations permit, I enjoy listening to these folks weaving their punditry even more than I would enjoy reading a transcript thereof. But I'd like to have the option to read rather than listen to that punditry. And it's a genuine crime to be consigning all that punditry to an audio and generally un-searchable oblivion in this digital age.

    (2) I wish that David French had chosen another term to describe Prof. Eastman, author of the infamous coup memo, than "court intellectual." I know from context that both times Mr. French used that phrase, Mr. French meant the word "court" to describe the sort of gathering of sycophantic arse-lickers who surround a monarch (real or self-imagined) — like the Sun King or Donald Trump. I hope others weren't misled, though, into thinking that Mr. French was describing the drivel being fobbed off as legal scholarship in his memo as being the sort of thing which might ever get traction before the judicial sort of "court." It's the sort of thing which would not only get a failing grade if submitted as coursework at any decent law school, but also get you an interview with the dean in which he/she politely suggests that you ought to choose a new profession, because you're embarrassing yourself badly while trying to impersonate a functioning lawyer making a coherent legal argument.

    (3) Kagan is a good writer and sharp thinker, but he's mistaken in attributing exclusively to Trump and Trumpkin insurrectionists all of the pushback in red-state legislatures after the last election cycle. He discounts to zero — ignores — the possibility that in at least some states, election reforms were (and in some, still are) genuinely needed, not in order to facilitate a Trump coup but to keep Democratic public officials from willfully and deliberately breaking the election laws they are charged with enforcing.

    To take a very prominent example, illustrated on October 7, 2020, by the introduction to one of the most extraordinary opinions ever written by the Texas Supreme Court, in a case styled Texas v. Hollins (footnotes omitted):

    ===begin quote===

    Voting by mail in Texas is limited by statute to certain groups. To obtain a mail-in ballot, a registered voter must assert eligibility on an application form that meets statutory requirements. Election officials must make a form application produced by the Secretary of State available to voters. The Harris County Clerk proposes to mail unsolicited ballot applications to all registered voters under 65 years of age, only a fraction of whom are eligible to vote by mail. Because no other election official in Texas is doing or has ever done what the Clerk proposes, his plan threatens to undermine the statutorily required uniform operation of election laws across the state. The State contends that such a mass mailing is not authorized by the Election Code. The Code contains no express authority. The issue before us is whether authority is implied.

    Whether voting by mail should be restricted has been a subject of intense political debate, in this State and throughout the country. For more than a century, the Texas Legislature "has been both engaged and cautious in allowing voting by mail." There are concerns that mail-in ballots can be marked fraudulently without the voters' knowledge or consent and "harvested" — returned by someone else, sometimes in bulk. There are countervailing concerns that requiring in-person voting discourages some from participating who otherwise would because it is harder and, especially in the current pandemic environment, not as safe. We, of course, take no side in these policy debates, which we leave to legislators and others. The question before us is not whether voting by mail is good policy or not, but what policy the Legislature has enacted. It is purely a question of law.

    We conclude that the Election Code does not authorize the mailing proposed by the Harris County Clerk. Accordingly, we grant the State's petition for review, reverse the court of appeals' judgment, and remand the case to the trial court to issue a temporary injunction prohibiting the Harris County Clerk from mass-mailing unsolicited ballot applications to voters.

    ===end quote===

    link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11452376273573709223

    Did you follow that? The State of Texas had to sue the then-Harris County Clerk, Democrat Chris Hollins, for an injunction to keep him from making good on his promise to DELIBERATELY BREAK THE TEXAS ELECTION LAWS he is charged, by state constitution, state law, and oath, to enforce and administer according to those laws' precise terms. Collins' position was that he could disregard the indisputable fact that the Texas Legislature had passed laws which foreclosed him from mass-mailing unsolicited ballot-by-mail applications. He didn't contend that those laws were unconstitutional; he just thought the Legislature was wrong.

    And so Hollins had announced that laws or no laws, oath of office or no oath, he was damn well going to do as he pleased in Harris County. And nothing short of a mandatory injunction — violation of which would have landed him directly in handcuffs for his ride to jail for criminal contempt of court — was able to stop him.

    When I read that decision, I said aloud — alarming my dog — "That son-of-a-b!tch should be in jail! He's a defalcator — an oath-breaker openly violating the public trust!" And it appears that a great many other Texans, including a sufficient number of state legislators of both chambers and the governor, agreed with me. The State of Texas shouldn't HAVE to get an injunction to keep its county officials from openly defying the laws of the State of Texas. So now there are also criminal penalties for future oath-breakers like Hollins.

    Linking to a left-wing discussion of the new Texas election laws, Kagan writes in his essay: "Some state legislatures seek to impose criminal penalties on local election officials alleged to have committed 'technical infractions,' including obstructing the view of poll watchers." This is so blatently untrue that I can't call it anything but an outright lie. There's no "alleged" to it: the lawbreaking county clerks were calling press conferences to BOAST about their refusal to follow the election laws on live TV!

    Friends and neighbors, there's not a dime's worth of difference between Chris Hollins and Donald Trump when it comes to dangerous disdain for the Rule of Law and their respective willingness to abuse the power entrusted to them through their public offices to break the law in order to achieve their own ends.

    Yet Kagan would presumably count me as being among those whose adherence to Trump's personality cult leads them to attack the Rule of Law. In that, he's not being wicked, which is how I characterize both Trump's and Hollins' conduct in the 2020 elections. But he is spectacularly wrong.

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    Will Bates

    Steve, you did a very fine job playing Sarah today.

    Still, I look forward to her return (and hopefully she will feel refreshed).

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    Kbwilliams54

    David, your colleagues need to be a little more alarmed and not just say Kagan is ‘directionally right but’

    This grassroots movement that you so clearly see …. The next person who harnesses it doesn’t have to be the lazy & venal Trump. It could be a much more shrewd politician who will have the GOP apparatus working with him in every state that the GOP controls at the state level.

    GOP apparatus + change in voting laws + true believers … what could go wrong?

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    Mary

    Well that was cheerful. Y’all are going to make me start day drinking.

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    BW

    Maybe I didn’t read your newsletters right, or it’s just the audio medium versus text. But your point David, about the GOP and the individuals who believe this hot garbage, being good people that we all know, is spot on. I know them. It’s still crazy to me when I talk to them how reasonable they are on every other topic, and then when you talk about Trump, Qanon, or any of these wild conspiracies, I’m shocked how much they believe. To me it’s like a bad fan-fiction that they think is reality. Or the kid from the movie Galaxy Quest. Who goes to all the comic conventions, when told it’s real shouts, “I knew it!”

    Thanks David, you do a great job covering this. Not many do. If any.

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  9. Zack Frank

    "Both parties now think that we live in a parliamentary democracy, and if you take over parliament by one seat, that means your agenda gets to pass without any negotiation or obstruction of any kind."

    Congress acted like this more often than not only 30 years ago. For example, the 1994 assault weapons ban passed the Senate with 52 votes. Democrats got absolutely destroyed over it and it was allowed to expire. "Gun control" became a bad word for 20 years because it was identified as political suicide. This 60 vote threshold crap makes it all performative, without resolving the political conflict.

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    Pastorfbt

    "I picked a h*ll of a time to stop doing drugs" (Hunter S. Thompson?)

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    1. Richard Kennedy

      Wasn’t that Lloyd Bridges in Airplane?

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        Pastorfbt

        Probably but I imagine I recall a similar line in Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas?

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        1. Richard Kennedy

          But did he really quit using at that point? The legend is that he was seriously jacked during that episode and pretty much ever there after…

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            Pastorfbt

            Oh HST was high as a kite on something pretty much full time. No matter - the thought is what counts

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