Over a Hundred CEOs Met to Discuss Voting Bills

On Saturday, more than 100 top CEOs and business leaders met virtually to discuss the flood of bills in state legislatures intended to depress (Black) voting, and what their companies should do about this, if anything. Representatives of airlines, manufacturers, and retailers were present. Among other topics on the agenda were halting donations to politicians who voted for the laws and delaying investments in the states where they passed. The meeting is an aggressive response to the ongoing attempts in many states to restrict voting, not just in Georgia.

Just a few days ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that corporations should stay out of politics. Does that mean he opposes corporations donating money to the RNC, NRSC, NRCC, and Republican candidates? He wasn't explicit, but the next time he tries to hit up some CEO for money, it would be ironic if the CEO said: "You told us to stay out of politics, so we are following your instructions. So no money." The meeting showed that the CEOs are not intimidated by McConnell. Of course, taking part in a giant Zoom meeting and actually taking action are different things. Still, the fact that corporate leaders are even addressing the issue of voter suppression is a game changer from the past, when CEOs routinely donated large amounts of money to the Republicans without even thinking twice about it. (V)

Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules against Purging Voters

The Republican war on voting has many facets. The restrictive laws many state legislatures are working on (see above) is one of them, but not the only one. Another hot-button issue is trying to purge as many people as possible from the voting rolls, especially in cities and other areas that vote Democratic. One state where a battle has been ongoing for years is Wisconsin. There the Republican Party has been trying to purge 69,000 people who haven't voted recently. The Party has claimed they must have moved, so they should be banished from the voting rolls. Democrats oppose purging people just because they haven't voted recently. Maybe they were busy on Election Day or didn't like any of the candidates. Not voting this time or even the past two times doesn't mean they moved and are thus ineligible to vote in the future.

A total of 69,000 voters may not seem like a lot, but Joe Biden carried the Badger State in 2020 by only 21,000 votes. That number withstood recounts in two heavily Democratic counties. In 2019, a state judge ruled that the voters had to be removed immediately. In Feb. 2020, a state appeals court overruled the judge. On Friday, the state Supreme Court upheld the appeals court ruling and said that voters must not be purged. The vote was 5 to 2, with two conservative justices siding with the three liberals on the court.

Originally, the state wanted to remove 234,000 voters, but over time some of the cases were resolved when the voters registered elsewhere or were noted to have died. In the end, the fight was about the final 69,000, who might have moved or perhaps just didn't want to vote in recent elections.

The state Elections Commission is now considering sending potential movers mailings four times a year asking if they are still there. This will help determine who is still at their old address and who is not. (V)

The Country Remains Deeply Divided

Doug Sosnik, Bill Clinton's former political director and now a political consultant, has made an interesting slide deck full of graphs showing how badly the country is divided, how badly deadlocked it is, and how little faith people have in the federal government. Let's start with how much faith people have in the government. It is close to an all-time low, way down from the 70+% of the 1960s, which were also tumultuous times:

If you look at the results of the elections since 2006, in all of them except 2012, the voters wanted change, either by kicking the incumbent party out of the White House or severely clipping its wings in Congress. The reason that change seems impossible is that the country is so evenly balanced. In 2016, if 77,000 votes had flipped in three states, the presidential results would have been different. In 2020, a change of a mere 45,000 votes in three states (out of 155 million votes cast nationwide) would have given Trump a second term. That's about as close to a tie as you get in politics outside of IA-02.

Another factor that leads to an enormous "us-vs-them" feeling is the geographic distribution of the votes. Trump carried 2,586 counties or county equivalents and Biden carried only 527 as this map shows:

However, 70% of GDP is produced by the blue counties, so each side feels it deserves to win. Republican voters think "most of the country is on our side" and Democrats think "buffalo don't vote." One interesting note that occurs in these county maps every time is the crescent-shaped blue band running from North Carolina through South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and ending in Arkansas and Louisiana. This marked the edge of the continent tens of millions of years ago. The shallow waters there resulted in an extremely rich soil very well suited to growing cotton. This, in turn, led to millions of people being imported in chains from Africa to plant and harvest it. These counties have much larger numbers of Black people than the surrounding poor-soil counties, and the descendants of the enslaved people are strongly Democratic. The area has been known as the Black Belt for well over a century. If climate change keeps up the way it is going, in another few hundred or so years, the oceans may rise again and the Black Belt could once again be at the edge of the continent, with a few tall buildings in Miami sticking out of the ocean hundreds of miles from the shoreline.

Sosnik also notes that polarization is not going away any time soon. For example:

• For both parties, the unifying force is a hatred of the other party
• The vast majority of House and Senate seats are not competitive
• Republican incumbents in most of them don't fear Democrats, but a primary challenge from the right
• Democratic incumbents in most of them don't fear Republicans, but a primary challenge from the left
• The news media are polarized like never before
• Progressives are driving the donkey now at the federal, state, and local level (see below)
• Trumpists are driving the elephant at all levels as well
• If Republicans take the House in 2022, there will be total gridlock for at least 2 years
• The country is transitioning from a national, top-down, manufacturing economy to a global decentralized digital one
• Half the country thinks the transition is going too fast and the other half thinks it is going too slow
• Voting rights will be where the poop hits the ventilator in the next 2 years

None of these factors are going to change any time soon. Donald Trump's slogan of "Make America Great Again" resonated perfectly with people who don't like where the country is headed. But it antagonized people—especially Black and brown people, LGBTQ+ people, and women—who can't wait until it gets wherever it is headed, and who want to get there right now. All of these factors suggest there will be a vicious polarization for years to come, with no relief probably within 10 years, as each side alternately ekes out tiny victories until demographic change finally picks a winner years from now. It's a bleak picture. (V)

Where Did Senator Biden Go?

During his 30 years in Congress, Joe Biden was a cautious, moderate senator. No one would have mistaken him for a closet leftist. Similarly, during his primary campaign, he was one of the least progressive candidates, along with John Hickenlooper, Steve Bullock, and a few others. But starting on Jan. 20, 2021, something strange happened. Senator Moderate became President Leftish. Not a clone of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), to be sure, but his COVID-19 relief bill and infrastructure bill contain quite a few items taken from the progressives' wish list. No one expected this. Although Biden downplays this, it is really an amazing and abrupt change. What got into Joe? Did Bernie give him some really potent weed, or what?

Ezra Klein at the New York Times has four theories of what is going on. They are just guesses, but something changed Biden and these conjectures are as good as anything else we have seen out there. Here's a summary:

• He gave up on the Republicans: Back in the 20th century, the Republicans were a sensible conservative party. They had clear policy goals (e.g., lower taxes, small government, individual freedom, etc.). When they were in power, they tried to enact them. When they were not in power they negotiated in good faith with the Democrats to try to prevent the Democrats from moving too far to the left, with the implicit promise of taking the Democrats' wishes seriously the next time they were in power. Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill argued furiously over policy during the daytime, but were friends after 6 p.m. Those days are long gone.
  
  Biden knows this, although he probably wishes it weren't the case. He also knows that no matter what he does or offers to do, he won't get any Republican votes. The actual policy or bill in question doesn't matter. In that case, Biden may have decided that trying to get Republican votes on anything is futile. So, why make compromises hoping to get them when it is not going to happen, no matter what? In that case, it makes political sense to move sharply to the left and try to please the progressive wing of his own party. In effect, the real negotiating now is not between Biden and Mitch McConnell, but between Biden and other Democrats, especially on the left, to keep the party unified.
  
  
• New staffers are leftier than the old staffers: The people who actually do the work in Congress are not the senators and representatives. The same holds for the Executive Branch to some extent. They are the 20-something and 30-something staffers who write the bills, run the numbers, and brief the principals. Since Bill Clinton left office, a whole new generation of staffers have taken over and they are typical of young people in the country at large: much more progressive than the previous generation of staffers. All of them saw how the free market failed in the 2008 economic crisis and the 2020 COVID crisis. For example, Brian Deese was a young economic prodigy a few years ago. Now he is running the National Economic Council. He is much more concerned about inequality than about how markets function. That applies to many other staffers up and down the line and they have huge influence on what their bosses get to see and how issues are presented.
  
  
• Biden doesn't trust economists: Biden is a practical politician and is annoyed that economists don't understand what is politically possible and what is not. He doesn't seem to think their advice is worth all that much. During the Obama administration, economists Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Peter Orszag held tremendous sway. If they argued that the markets would not respond well to some policy, Obama would generally shelve it. There are no economists with that kind of clout in the administration now. The only one with any real power is Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, and she is busy doing her job rather than lobbying Biden on this policy or that. Also, Biden has seen how economics failed in 2008 and also how economists have no good plan for stopping climate change. He knows that raising the gas tax is putting a band-aid on the problem and won't do the job. He is looking at the problem from a political standpoint rather than merely an economic one. Economic standpoints invariably come back to "will the markets buy it?" and so move you to the right. He is simply rejecting that entire viewpoint. He doesn't care what the markets want.
  
  
• Biden is a true politician: That is not meant as an insult. He is good at reading the country's mood and adapting to it. He knows that most of the progressives' wish list is hugely popular with the voters, even if it is not popular with 50 Republican senators. As a politician, he understands that doing what a large majority of the voters want is good for him and his party, even if he has to run roughshod over 50 Republican senators to do it. Obama never had that. He was too worried about people seeing him as a wild-eyed Black radical, so he was rather timid. Biden doesn't have to be concerned with that at all.
  

As a consequence of some (maybe all) of these factors, Biden is quietly, but unmistakably, moving to the left. He would rather it not be noticed, but he's doing it anyway. The Republicans will scream, but they are like the little shepherd boy who yelled "socialist" whenever he saw a pack of wolves cooperating as a group to get a nice dinner of mutton. At some point, nobody pays attention to the screaming any more. Well, except maybe the folks who already believed that all wolves are socialists, and have been since at least the days of Wolfdrow Wilson and Franklupin Delano Roosevelt. Biden may have reached that point of ignoring the screaming already. (V)

Trump Calls McConnell a "Dumb Son of a Bitch"...

On Saturday, Donald Trump hosted a gathering of wealthy Republican donors at Mar-a-Lago (for which the Republican Party paid him $100,000). He also spoke to the group. Did he tell them to open their checkbooks and make sure the RNC, NRSC, and NRCC are well funded going into 2022? Nope. So what did he do? Attack Joe Biden as a pinko Commie socialist? Nope again. He demonstrated that he is a one-trick pony. He called the nominal leader of his party, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a "dumb son of a bitch" for not trying to overturn the election result. He said (with no evidence) that if the tables had been turned, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) would have fought to overturn the election. Actually, in 2016, when Trump did win, Hillary Clinton conceded the next day and no Democrats fought to overturn the results.

Some of the donors cheered, but most likely they just wanted to be polite guests and stay in Trump's good graces. The kind of people who donate millions of dollars to the Republicans do so because they want policy results, like lower taxes for rich people and corporations and less regulation of business. Relitigating lost causes is not high on their "to-do" lists.

Trump didn't actually talk much about the high points of his presidency, such as the 2017 tax cut. He mostly just griped and whined. One thing he said that gives some insight into how he views the presidency is another comment he made about McConnell: "I hired his wife. Did he ever say thank you?" It is true that Trump appointed McConnell's wife, Elaine Chao, to be Secretary of Transportation. However Trump views this as a special favor to someone in power whose support he wants, and who is expected to grovel in return. All things considered, Chao's appointment was perfectly reasonable given that she had already served as a cabinet official (Secretary of Labor) for 8 years in the administration of George W. Bush. If Trump wanted an experienced, conservative, Asian-American woman, Chao would have been a fine choice no matter who she was married to. But Trump views government the way Andrew Jackson did: the spoils system. The purpose of getting elected is to help your friends (or at least put them in your debt) and punish your enemies. Chao was not present for this weekend's event and neither was McConnell. In fact, McConnell has told insiders that he plans never to speak to Trump again. Trump's calling him names probably is not going to make him change his mind.

Trump also expressed his disappointment with Mike Pence for certifying the election after the Jan. 6 riot. To say Trump bears grudges is putting it mildly. If Pence decides to run for the GOP nomination in the Trump lane, he will most likely have to do it without Trump's endorsement. That means that if Trump is out of prison and still a force in the Republican party in 2024, Pence has a very steep hill to climb, especially against rivals like Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), whom Trump clearly likes.

All in all, the meeting was pure Trump and is likely to be repeated over and over in the months ahead. The takeaway here is that Trump is at war with two of the top figures in the Republican Party, McConnell and Pence. Do you recall how after her loss in 2016, Hillary Clinton blamed it on Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer? Neither do we.

A sidelight to the meeting is that two candidates for the Ohio Senate seat that Rob Portman is vacating in Jan. 2023 showed up, Jane Timken and Josh Mandel. However, Mandel was escorted off the property, while Timken was allowed to remain. The reason might be that Trump prefers Timken. On the other hand, Timken is a major Republican donor and Mandel is not, so that could be all there is to it. Nevertheless, this gives Timken some favorable PR and Mandel some negative PR. If the real reason is Trump's personal preference, then Timken is probably the favorite to win the GOP senatorial primary next year. (V)

...But He loves Marco Rubio

Don't fret that Donald Trump hates all Republicans. Nope. He just endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) for reelection in 2022. Trump said Rubio is a "tireless advocate for the people of Florida." Actually, Rubio is notoriously lazy, not a tireless advocate for anything, and not an effective senator at all. But we know what his campaign theme will be on account of this photo:

In other words, rather than running on his (nonexistent) achievements, Rubio is going to run against socialism. That could work in Florida, where there are many refugees from miscellaneous Latin American left-wing dictatorships. Those voters, many of whom may not be up on the details of American politics, do know one thing: Socialism is bad and if Rubio is against it, he must be good. Sounds pretty simple, after all.

Of late, Rubio has become somewhat Trumpy. Back in 2016 he certainly wasn't. Here are a few of his choice comments about the Donald back then:

• Donald Trump will never be the nominee of the party of Lincoln and Reagan.
• Well I don't know anything about bankrupting four companies. You bankrupted four companies.
• He says I'm a choker, he's a con artist.
• Donald Trump likes to sue people, he should sue people for whoever did that to his face [referring to his "tan"].
• ... we're about to turn over the conservative movement to a person that has no ideas of any substance on the important issues.
• Donald Trump has been perhaps the most vulgar—no, I don't think perhaps—the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency in terms of how he's carried out his candidacy.

Another thing Rubio has going for him is lack of a high-profile Democratic opponent. Rep. Stephanie Murphy (nee Dang Dung), the first Vietnamese-American woman elected to Congress, is exploring a run, but she represents only a portion of Orlando and is not known statewide. The only statewide elected Democrat in Florida, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, is planning to run for governor, so the Democrats' bench is fairly thin in Florida. (V)

Buttigieg: Biden Is Open to Changes on Infrastructure

Not surprisingly, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is emerging as the key spokesman for Joe Biden's infrastructure plan. He seems like an earnest young man and is determined to make people's first association when they think of him be "fixed the potholes" or "got me Internet," and not "he's gay." If he succeeds, he could be a force in 2024 and beyond, since many elements of the bill (especially the "hard" infrastructure parts) are not controversial and are very popular. Both Democrats and Republicans hate LaGuardia Airport. If the bill flies, there are votes to be had there.

Buttigieg appeared yesterday on "Fox News Sunday." He told moderator Chris Wallace, who is an actual journalist, that Biden is open to suggestions for improvements (English translation: "We don't have the votes yet and some sausage making may be needed to get there.") He noted that Biden wants action on the bill before Memorial Day.

When Wallace asked if a whole new bill would be needed, Buttigieg strongly denied that. He also backtracked when asked about his previous statement that the bill would create 19 million jobs, admitting that the number is more like 3 million. The discrepancy is due to a calculation by Moody's that if the bill passes, 19 million jobs will be created, but if it fails, 16 million jobs will still be created. The slip is embarrassing, but it won't be fatal since talking about 3 million new jobs is also going to be a strong argument in favor of the bill.

Wallace also interviewed Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), who complained about how Biden was mishandling the arrival of thousands of unaccompanied children at the Mexican border. Abbott said that sexual abuse was rampant at the camps there. Wallace then pointed out that there were thousands of complaints about sexual abuse at the border during the Trump years, and he couldn't find a single instance of Abbott calling that out then. Abbott replied that he wanted to talk about the future, not the past. No doubt about that. (V)

Pelosi Wants to Split the Infrastructure Bill

Although Pete Buttigieg is the cheerleader-in-chief, a person who may ultimately have more influence on the infrastructure bill is Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). And she wants two separate bills, one for "hard" infrastructure (roads, bridges, airports, broadband, etc.) and one for "soft" infrastructure (developing human capital). Progressives are strongly against the two-bill approach. They know that many Republicans don't want to be seen as opponents of fixing up dilapidated roads, unsafe bridges, and so on, so the first bill might possibly get Republican votes, leaving the second bill (which the progressives want more than the first one), to twist in the wind. By packaging better wages for child care workers along with repairing rusting bridges, the former can piggyback on the popularity of the latter. As two separate bills, the "soft" bill might not make it.

In the end, it is Congress that writes the bills, not the president. Pelosi has a pretty good idea of what might get passed and what might not. She is also no doubt in constant communication with Chuck Schumer and has a good feel for what might happen in the Senate in both the one-bill and two-bill scenarios.

There is little doubt where Pelosi's heart lies. She said her goal is to get bipartisan support for both bills but "especially the infrastructure bill that invests in highways, mass transit, water, schools, broadband, housing and more." Even though she is not a senator, she understands how the budget reconciliation process works, and she also understands that getting virtually total unity in the House and absolutely total unity in the Senate will be needed to go that route. From her statement, one suspects that she doesn't think that is doable as a single bill, so she is willing to settle for a hard-infrastructure bill, which will primarily create jobs for blue-collar men, and abandon the soft-infrastructure bill, which would emphasize creation of jobs for pink-collar (especially minority) women. This will not make her universally popular within her caucus, but she really wants to get some bill passed.

The chairwoman of the House Progressive Caucus, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), disagrees with Pelosi. Jayapal said: "Our preference is for a single, ambitious package that would include both physical infrastructure and care infrastructure—these investments go hand-in-hand, and we need both to restore our economy and empower families." Pelosi is taking a risk here as she has almost no margin for error. She needs just about every Democratic vote to get the bill through the House. But she also knows that Schumer needs every single Democratic vote to get it through the Senate, even using reconciliation. Threading the needle won't be easy, but Pelosi is a master at that. Conceivably she could try to have it both ways by having the House pass three bills: (1) hard infrastructure, (2) soft infrastructure, and (3) combined infrastructure. Then it would be up to the Senate to choose. On the one hand, if this is what happens, then Jayapal shouldn't complain since her preferred bill will be sent over to the Senate. But on the other hand, she knows what will happen over there: Schumer won't even bother with the combined bill and just add a few billion more dollars for cleaning up toxic abandoned coal mines to the hard infrastructure bill to get the vote of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and be done with it. (V)

Yang for...Mayor?

Yeah, Andrew Yang. Universal basic income Andrew Yang. He is running for office again—for mayor of New York City. Being mayor of New York is almost as tough as being president, except the only foreign policy you have to worry about is the United Nations over by the East River. Not only is Yang running, but according to some polls, he is leading.

The comparisons with Donald Trump have already started. Both are outsiders with absolutely no qualifications whatsoever for the job. Neither had ever been elected to anything before running. Both have celebrity and charisma. One of them won once; for the other, we'll know more after the June primary.

When reporters asked Yang's supporters what they saw in him, the answers were "change," "energy," "he's young," and "I'm tired of the old guard." People think he will be able to shake up the well-entrenched city bureaucracy. But then again, Trump supporters in 2016 thought the same thing of their candidate and he didn't do it, despite having a lot more power than a mayor. That said, Yang is clearly much smarter than Trump, which matters.

Yang's campaign slogan is: "Hope is on the way." His main pitch seems to be to make New York a fun place again. People respond to that, but that doesn't mean he will be able to pick up the garbage on time or fix broken traffic lights out in Queens, which are actually part of the job description. Of course, Yang could pick members of his administration who actually have experience in picking up garbage and fixing traffic lights and let them do their work without interference, while he focused on cheerleading and bringing back businesses and tourists.

If people look closer at Yang (and his opponents may help out here), they will quickly notice that he is much more conservative than most New York Democratic politicians. He favors charter schools and is no fan of the teachers' union. He wants to offer tax breaks to companies to have them bring their workers back to the office and is not a supporter of taxing the rich.

Some of the other candidates are far more progressive than Yang. These include Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, who is very progressive; Maya Wiley, a Black activist and former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio; and Dianne Morales, another Black activist who is probably the most progressive of all. The presence of so many candidates on the left could end up splitting the progressive vote. However, there is a twist this time. New York is using ranked-choice voting for the first time in June. That means if progressive voters pick Stringer, Wiley, and Morales as 1-2-3, in any order, then after two of them are eliminated, the remaining one may get over 50% and become the Democratic nominee, also known as the new mayor. But for this to happen, voters have to understand how ranked-choice voting works.

Also a factor here is Eric Adams, who is also Black and is the Brooklyn borough president. He is less progressive than Stringer, Wiley, and Morales, but he is better known than any of them, especially in Brooklyn. Adams can, and will, make the point that he represents 2.6 million people in what—if it were a city—would be the fourth-largest city in the country. He will also note that the mayor has to manage 325,000 people and handle a budget of $90 billion, not a job for an amateur, no matter how cheerful. Will the voters pick competence over charisma? And to further complicate things, there are multiple other candidates running and one of them could conceivably catch fire in the next 10 weeks. It's far from over. (V)

Janey Will Run for Mayor

As long as we are looking at mayoralty elections, here is another interesting one, albeit less contentious. For 200 years, Boston has had a succession of white men, many of them of Irish descent, as mayor. That suddenly changed on March 22, when Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a white man whose parents were born in Ireland, resigned after being confirmed by the Senate as secretary of labor. He was immediately succeeded by president of the Boston City Council, Kim Janey, a Black woman, who as acting mayor will fill out the rest of his term.

Last week, Janey announced that she will run for a full term later this year. Boston has a racist past, but the city is already majority-minority, so she has a decent chance of winning. Needless to say, there will be plenty of competition, but incumbents always have a leg up on the challengers.

Janey comes from a prominent family that has lived in Boston for generations. Her father, Clifford Janey, was a teacher who later became superintendent of the D.C. school system. Although coming from a successful family, she has not forgotten her roots, which she can trace back to slaves in the South. Among others things, in her first 3 weeks as mayor she announced a program supporting women and people of color competing for city contracts.

Janey isn't the first Black woman to lead a big city. Currently Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Charlotte, Chicago, D.C., New Orleans, San Francisco, and St. Louis all have Black women as mayors. If nothing else, this demonstrates that Black women can win elections in big cities. (V)

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