U.S. Warns Putin about Consequences if Navalny Dies

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan went on CNN's "State of the Union" yesterday. He didn't do it to talk to Jake Tapper, though, he did it to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who probably wasn't even watching. Sullivan said that if Putin's critic, Alexei Navalny dies, there will be consequences. Navalny was poisoned by Putin's henchmen and is now imprisoned in the notorious IK-2 prison camp about 60 miles north of Moscow. He went on a hunger strike and is said to be days away from death due to kidney failure. His wife, Yulia, visited him last week and talked to him by telephone through glass. She said he had difficulty speaking and was too weak to hold the telephone for long and had to lie down because he was so weak.

Sullivan said that the U.S. is already looking at ways to punish Putin if Navalny dies, but didn't want to describe them in public. Sullivan, along with EU President Ursula von der Leyen, called for Putin to immediately provide Navalny with the necessary medical care to save his life.

If Navalny dies, Joe Biden will have to find new ways of punishing Putin. Last week he announced a raft of new sanctions against Russia for the SolarWinds hack of the U.S. government, including a provision banning U.S. banks from buying Russian bonds. That will make it more expensive for Russia to borrow needed money and will hurt the Russian economy.

What the new punishment might be is not clear. As a rule, Putin is generally not moved by sanctions. They may hurt some of his cronies and the Russian people, but until he feels the pain personally, he tends not to react much. There are things the U.S. could do that would definitely get Putin's attention if Biden is willing to escalate matters, though. For example, he could negotiate a deal with Latvia to build a large, state-of-the-art, fully equipped NATO base on Russia's border, only 400 miles from Moscow. Putin would most definitely not like that. And there are no doubt other plans in the works that Sullivan knows about but isn't authorized to discuss in public. Might we be heading toward a new Cold War? It's a real possibility. (V)

Manchin Doesn't Like the Infrastructure Bill

Keep reading. It's not what you think. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-Abandoned Coal Mines) does not like the infrastructure bill. That is, the $800-billion bill proposed by the moderate Republicans. He wants it to be bigger. Much bigger. He literally said: "We're going to do whatever it takes. If it takes $4 trillion, I'd do $4 trillion, but we have to pay for it." In other words, the Republican moderates put together a skimpy $800-billion infrastructure bill as a response to Joe Biden's $2-trillion bill in order to get Manchin's vote, and Manchin is not only happy with Biden's bill, but would be OK if the price tag were doubled.

The Senator's only condition is that it be paid for and not put on the national credit card. He wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 25%, which is lower than the 28% that Biden wants, so money has to be found elsewhere. From an economic and mathematical point of view, that is not hard to do, but politically it is something else, of course. For example, England has a 0.5% transaction tax on all stock sales. Nevertheless, the London Stock Exchange does quite well, thank you. The value of stocks traded on the NYSE daily is very roughly $100 billion, so a 1% transaction tax would generate $1 billion a day. Add in NASDAQ, commodities, and other financial transactions and the tax could easily generate $3-4 billion a day or over $1 trillion a year without affecting ordinary Americans very much. That should satisfy Manchin, but Wall Street would be very cranky.

Somewhat ironically, the person pushing the mini-infrastructure bill the hardest is the other West Virginia senator, Shelley Moore Capito. Maybe there aren't any abandoned coal mines in the part of the state where she lives. Or maybe somebody thought she held sway over Manchin because she speaks fluent West Virginian. Or something.

Capito got a boost when Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) suggested first passing Capito's $800 billion bill in a bipartisan manner and then coming back and passing the rest of the $2-trillion bill using budget reconciliation. But other Senate Democrats don't see the point of this stunt and doubt that the Republicans would even sign up for Part I if they knew the next day there would be a Part II. The other Democrats are worried that some of the momentum will be lost if they first pass the minibill. Even Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), who is definitely a moderate, said: "It's a really important moment to go big and I worry that talk that focuses on scaling things down is negotiating against the goal that we all have." In short, "Sorry Shelley, I'm not interested in your plan." And if moderates like Casey are not buying and Manchin would be happy if it were twice as big, the odds of a watered-down plan passing seem slim at the moment.

Oh, and on top of that, Capito decreed that raising the corporate tax rate at all was a nonstarter. She said: "I think that is a non-negotiable red line." The Democrats are never going to buy into that. First of all, finding all the money somewhere else won't be easy because the Republicans are sure to balk at a stock transaction tax as well. Second, polls show that a large majority of people want the corporate tax rate to go up, even if the money simply went to paying down the national debt. Most people think the corporate rate is too low. This means "We raised the corporate tax rate" is a winning slogan for the Democrats in 2022, irrespective of where the money goes. And if it went to paying for popular infrastructure projects, that is a double win for them. Capito's plan is going to be a very tough sell. (V)

Was There a Reverse Coattails Effect?

Traditionally in politics, presidential candidates have a "coattails effect" and help their partymates downballot. A new study shows that the reverse may have happened in 2020. Instead of Joe Biden helping Democrats running for lower offices, those candidates may have helped Biden. Specifically, in many deep red areas of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas, Democrats didn't bother even running candidates for local office since they had no chance of winning. But surprisingly enough, in areas where at least one local Democrat ran for something, Biden did 0.3% to 1.5% better than in areas where all the Republicans ran unopposed. The study controlled for factors like education, etc., but the conclusion was clear: Democrats running for lower offices in hopeless districts brought voters to the polls who most likely would not otherwise have voted.

Does this make sense? It might. The hypothesis is that a Democrat running for anything in an R+20 or R+30 district knows that he or she is going to have to run a grass-roots campaign, talk to the voters one-on-one, and get them enthusiastic. When they voted, they didn't carry the local Democrat to office, but their votes for Biden did add to his statewide totals. In a state like Georgia, where Biden won by only 12,000 votes, a few hundred here and a few hundred there could have made the difference between winning and losing. This concept is not new, but this is the first time a serious study has actually looked at the data closely.

When Howard Dean was chairman of the DNC, he wanted to run a 50-state strategy, to build up local parties in every state. But when he tried to execute it, there was an enormous blowback from people who said that every dollar wasted in Alabama was a dollar that could better be spent in Florida. Same for Kentucky and Ohio, Utah and Nevada, and many others. Dean never had a chance. But it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Democrats don't even try to make their case in most of the country and don't even put up candidates in many races, they are definitely not going to win in those places.

This study could have an effect on the DNC as it looks toward 2022. One place where the theory could be tested is Kansas, where Gov. Laura Kelly (D-KS) will be running for reelection in a very red state and will need all the help she can get. If fielding candidates for the state House and Senate all over Kansas could help her, the DNC might decide to give it a shot. But sometimes it is hard to find an enthusiastic candidate who will campaign hard knowing that it's hopeless. That will be as much of a challenge as the money. (V)

Trump's Spy Can't Spy on the Spies Anymore

On the morning of Jan. 16, in one of his last major actions as president, Donald Trump ordered NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone to appoint Michael Ellis, a Republican operative with close ties to Trump, as the NSA's top lawyer. The position does not require Senate confirmation. Nakasone followed orders and appointed Ellis to the position, where he could spy on all the other spies and report back to Trump.

In the afternoon of Jan. 20, on orders from Joe Biden, Nakasone placed Ellis on administrative leave effective at 6 p.m. that day. That meant that although Ellis was still on the payroll, he was not allowed to come to the office or conduct any agency business by phone or video. Nakasone doesn't have the power to fire him. Only the Pentagon's general counsel has that power.

Since then, the Pentagon's inspector general has been looking at whether Ellis mishandled classified information. The investigation has apparently been going on for 3 months, with no word to anyone, including Ellis, about how far along it is. Ellis did figure out that the investigation was going to take a long time, and maybe a very long time. He got tired of being in limbo, so he has officially resigned in a letter to Nakasone.

Democrats smelled a rat from the very beginning. Ellis got his law degree only 10 years ago and has no experience at all running a large legal team, and certainly not one involved with national security issues. They were not able to stop his appointment, but apparently they got the word to Biden that there was not a minute to waste and Ellis had to go on day 1 of the Biden administration. Putting him on administrative leave didn't get rid of him, but did keep him from acquiring and leaking any sensitive information to Trump. Under questioning from the House Intelligence Committee last week, Nakasone would say only that the inquiry into Ellis was ongoing. The NSA specializes in eavesdropping and other digital spying. It has the largest budget of any intelligence agency within the federal government but what it actually does is extremely well guarded. As Washington insiders sometimes joke, the initials NSA stand for "No Such Agency." (V)

A Hells Angel in the Senate?

Well, not literally, but kind of. John Fetterman is 6'8", bald with a goatee, covered with tattoos, and every inch looks the stereotype of a Hells Angel. He also dresses the part. And owns a gun. And lives practically next door to Andrew Carnegie's first steel mill, which is still operating and pouring out smoke all day. Only he's not a Hells Angel. He's the Democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and running for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA).

Fetterman poses an interesting quandary for Democrats, so Politico wrote a long profile piece on him. On the one hand, if Democrats want to win the blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania, it's hard to imagine a better candidate than Fetterman. He doesn't talk much about his Masters degree in Public Policy from Harvard, or his MBA from the University of Connecticut; those must be up in the attic somewhere. And aside from the sheepskins, he looks and acts like a blue-collar guy and he is not faking it. Both of his parents were teenagers when he was born and were extremely poor. He can feel people's pain as well as anyone since Bill Clinton. And another detail: He is really good at fundraising from small donors, having pulled in $4 million already this year. What's not to like?

The problem is that he lies at the center of the Democrats' current directional dilemma. Do they want to move to the right and go after blue-collar workers, or stay safely on the left and go after suburban women (both housewives and non-housewives)? This is not to say that a giant covered in tattoos won't be able to get suburban women to vote for him, but a Stacey Abrams clone might do better there.

Fetterman's story is certainly interesting. At 31 he moved to Braddock, PA—a crime-ridden dying steel town that once had 21,000 residents. He helped rejuvenate it and later ran for mayor, styling himself as JKF (his middle name is Karl). He helped build housing units, brought in restaurants, and even created a "free" store that gave away diapers and other necessities to poor people. He got reelected as mayor three times, all by landslides. He appeared on television talking about how he had brought Braddock back from the brink. In 2018, he won the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor and then the general election. His most quoted statement in that position was that Donald Trump is "no different from any other random Internet troll."

For some Democratic Party members, the problem with Fetterman is that he is not all that progressive. He's OK with fracking and is neutral on the Green New Deal, likely because Pennsylvania has a substantial fossil fuel industry and many voters whose jobs depend on it. Fetterman doesn't have much of a relationship with the Black Caucus in the state legislature. He would like to raise the minimum wage, though.

Fetterman is not a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination. There are already seven other declared candidates, including a batch of people who hold lower office in the state. But none of them quite measure up to him, either figuratively or literally. Still, it is early in the race and an open Senate seat in a bluish state could attract some serious competition, especially on the left. One person he doesn't have to worry about is term-limited Gov. Tom Wolf (D-PA), who has said he won't run for the seat. Nor will the ambitious AG, Josh Shapiro, who wants Wolf's job. Obviously, this is a race to watch. Oh, and in case you are wondering, Fetterman would not be the tallest member of Congress ever. That honor goes to former representative and ten-year NBA player Tom McMillen, who is 6'11". He wouldn't even be the tallest senator; Luther Strange, who was appointed to Jeff Sessions' seat, and then was knocked off in the special election primary by Roy Moore, is 6'9". Still, Fetterman would be very near the top of the list, and undoubtedly would be welcome on the Democrats' intramural basketball team. (V)

2024 Fundraising Has Started

The Q1 FEC reports make it clear that the 2024 fundraising race is already in full swing. Two of the top moneygrubbers are Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who pulled in $3.6 million, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who raised $3 million. Cruz is not up in 2022, but in 2024 he has to stand for reelection if he wants to stay in the Senate, or he may run for president. The same is true for Hawley. Thus in both cases, the money is for a 2024 run, although neither one has to choose which race until 2024. Here are the Q1 numbers for some of the Republican senators thinking about a 2024 presidential run.

Candidate	Q1 2021	Cash on hand	Up in 2022?
Ted Cruz (TX)	$3.6 million	$5.6 million	No
Josh Hawley (MO)	$3.0 million	$3.1 million	No
Rand Paul (KY)	$1.9 million	$3.1 million	Yes
Marco Rubio (FL)	$1.6 million	$3.9 million	Yes
Rick Scott (FL)	$0.96 million	$2.2 million	No
Tom Cotton (AR)	$0.40 million	$6.5 million	No
Ben Sasse (NE)	$0.13 million	$2.1 million	No

It goes without saying that 2024 is not quite upon us yet, and first quarter fundraising 3 years before the primaries doesn't say a lot. It may give some small idea of who might be viable and who might not be, but keep in mind that in politics, a week is a long time.

As an aside, although he is not likely to run for president in 2024, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) is also interested in raising money—for his 2022 Senate race. He's pretty good at it, too, having pulled in $5.7 million in Q1 2021. He's spent his whole career passing the collection plate around, so no wonder he's good at it.

Fundraising is not the only guide we have to 2024, though. There are also the betting odds. Paddy Power (sorry, link won't work in the U.S. unless you have a VPN) is now accepting bets on who will get the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations. Here are the top 10 candidates for each party and the odds expressed as an implied probability. (The Democrats have a 5-way tie for 10th place.)

Democrats Candidate Probability Kamala Harris 0.36 Joe Biden 0.31 Pete Buttigieg 0.07 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 0.06 Beto O'Rourke 0.06 Bernie Sanders 0.06 Stacey Abrams 0.06 Andrew Yang 0.04 Cory Booker 0.04 Elizabeth Warren 0.03 Gavin Newsom 0.03 Jason Kander 0.03 John Hickenlooper 0.03 Jon Ossoff 0.03

Republicans Candidate Probability Donald Trump 0.22 Nikki Haley 0.15 Ron DeSantis 0.13 Mike Pence 0.08 Kristi Noem 0.06 Ivanka Trump 0.06 Ted Cruz 0.06 Tom Cotton 0.05 Paul Ryan 0.05 Tucker Carlson 0.05

It is interesting to note that: (1) Bettors think that Kamala Harris is more likely to be the Democratic nominee in 2024 than Joe Biden, and (2) Donald Trump is estimated to have only about one chance in five of being the Republican nominee (presumably due to his not running, rather than his being beaten in the primaries). (V)

McDaniel Urged to be Less Trumpish

Donald Trump hosted a gathering of big Republican donors at Mar-a-Lago last week, for which the RNC paid him $100,000. This was the meeting in which he called Mitch McConnell a "dumb son of a bitch." One of the attendees, naturally, was the RNC chairwoman, Ronna Romney McDaniel. Trump joked with her about the 2024 race, saying: "She's neutral like I'm neutral." Everybody laughed politely. Well...not everybody.

One person who didn't get the joke, apparently, was RNC member Henry Barbour of Mississippi. Henry is the nephew of Haley Barbour, a former governor of Mississippi and RNC chairman who is about as plugged into traditional Republican politics as anyone. Maybe Haley had a few words with Henry before the meeting because Henry said something that he definitely didn't get from Trump: "We've got to be clear-eyed about the last cycle. We lost." Then he added that holding the meeting at Mar-a-Lago was a mistake and that Trump was not helping the Republican Party. Seems like a dissenting opinion. Barbour went on and asked people to imagine what would happen if the RNC held a big party for wealthy donors at the house of Ted Cruz or Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT).

Barbour is not the only RNC member who doesn't like how things are developing for the Party. Bill Palatucci, an RNC member from New Jersey, said: "some of us in purple states sit back and just roll our eyes" at events like the retreat. Then he went on to blame Trump personally for the loss of the two Georgia Senate seats. To make it worse, Palatucci and others are now starting to aim their fire at McDaniel for worshiping at Trump's feet instead of doing what is best for the Republican Party. There has been grumbling about her before, but insiders are now starting to say it out loud and to the media.

The RNC members aren't the only ones starting to pipe up about Trump, either. Earlier this year, Nikki Haley was even more clear about Trump when she said: "He went down a path he shouldn't have, and we shouldn't have followed him, and we shouldn't have listened to him. And we can't let that ever happen again." Huh? Haley kind of said no one should ever listen to Trump again. That's not much of an endorsement. She sorta changed her mind last week, but you can't unring a bell. If she runs in 2024, she is certainly not going to get his endorsement in the primaries.

McDaniel is clearly upset about people going public with their complaints about her. She defended the decision to give Trump $100,000 by saying: "The RNC accepts the support of former Presidents." Of course, she didn't mention that George W. Bush is alive and well and has a nice ranch in Texas, where there is also good weather this time of the year (just don't visit in February, particularly if you like electricity and running water). McDaniel is definitely in a bind because she sees that Trump is not retreating in the slightest and she doesn't want the Republican Party to fragment on her watch. She's smart enough to know he is lying when he claims he won the election, but she also knows that 65% of Republicans believe that Joe Biden "won" the election due to fraud.

Ultimately, her job is to help reelect all incumbent Republicans, but Trump is actively trying to defeat Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA), Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), Romney, and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) the next time each one is up for reelection. How is she going to both do her job and please Trump, not to mention the increasingly restive members of the RNC and the donors? It won't be easy and we'll soon find out if she is up to it. (V)

America First Caucus Is Dead

On Friday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that she was starting an "America First Caucus" for House members. On Saturday, she announced that the plan was dead. That didn't take very long.

The original plan called for a caucus that would pursue an America First agenda, would respect Anglo-Saxon political traditions, and would push to ban mass immigration. But even for most Republicans, that was a bridge too far. Maybe ten bridges too far. After all, you couldn't do a much better job of distilling the agenda of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan down into a single sentence:

Even Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy—not someone known for bravery—said that the party of Lincoln was not the party of nativist dog whistles. Former Speaker John Boehner said: "I can tell you that this so-called America First Caucus is one of the nuttiest things I've ever seen." Cheney was more direct and said: "Racism, nativism, and anti-Semitism are evil." Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) called it the "White Supremacy Caucus." Rep Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) noticed the same thing we did, and said: "It sounds like the Ku Klux Klan Caucus to me." Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) wanted to know if non-Aryans will be allowed to join. So, Greene tucked her tail between her legs and skulked off.

Then the excuses began coming. First she said the proposal was from an outside group and she hadn't read it. Then she blamed the media for creating false narratives. Finally she said: "The scum and liars in the media are calling me a racist by taking something out of context." Nice to know that Greene has the courage of her convictions. Or maybe not. (V)

Poll: Ending Lifetime Appointments for Justices is Popular

Last week, two Democrats introduced bills in the House and Senate to increase the size of the Supreme Court to 13 justices. The bill is not likely to go anywhere, but was meant as a warning to the current justices: "If you make any unpopular decisions ahead, be ready to duck because we're going to throw some of those famous checks and balances at you." However, there is another way to make Supreme Court appointments less than total war: Give the justices fixed terms and term limits. That idea is actually quite popular. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that 63% of U.S. adults want term limits for justices, while only 22% support lifetime appointments. The poll also showed that 38% want to increase the size of the Court while 42% oppose this idea.

Sounds easy, no? The problem is that Congress can increase the size of the Court by just passing a law whereas ending lifetime appointments probably requires a constitutional amendment. That means not only must Congress approve of the idea, but also 38 state legislatures. Since Republican-controlled legislatures are happy with the status quo, it won't be easy to get 38 legislatures on board with any change.

Congress could try some monkey business here if it wants to push things. The lower courts have something called "senior status" for older judges. Congress could pass a law declaring that any Supreme Court Justice over 65 is automatically moved to senior status. Such justices would continue to get full pay, have an office, a secretary, and law clerks. They would get all the briefs on all the cases and could attend all conferences and advise the "junior" justices. They could do everything except vote on cases, somewhat like Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), who is effectively a congresswoman in all ways except she can't vote on bills. Once a justice moved to senior status, the president could fill the vacancy. Whether this arrangement would pass muster would be, er, tricky, since a case involving it would make it to the Supreme Court within a year. Could the justices who suddenly found themselves as voteless seniors vote on it? Could the Court make a decision at all on a case where every member had a conflict of interest? What would happen if the Court ruled the law unconstitutional, but Biden nevertheless nominated and the Senate confirmed replacements for Justices Stephen Breyer (82), Clarence Thomas (72), Samuel Alito (71), John Roberts (66), and Sonia Sotomayor (66) anyway? Talk about the mother of all constitutional crises.

Alternatively, if Democrats really wanted to play hardball, they could create a seven-judge constitutional court superior to all the appellate courts and grant it final authority over all questions of constitutional interpretation. This is very definitely within Congress' powers. Of course, the Democrats don't really have the fortitude for this sort of maneuvering.

Joe Biden created a blue-ribbon commission to study the problem and report back. However, there is little they might report that is not already known. It might well be that giving future appointees limited terms while allowing the current justices to stay until they die or retire might be the easiest path politically, but it still wouldn't be easy. (V)

People Are Tired of Waiting for Godot

The North Carolina Senate race is like Waiting for Godot with Lara Trump playing the part of Godot. Everyone is waiting for her to show up, but so far there is no sign of her. The thought here is if she decides to run, she would be the odds-on favorite to win the GOP nomination for the Senate seat Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) will be vacating in Jan. 2023. But no one really knows if she would clear the field. There is actually a fair amount of evidence that candidates Donald Trump supports don't always win, but that hasn't been tested with an actual Trump (well, someone married to an actual Trump, even if it is the dumbest actual Trump).

The election is only 19 months away, and there are few campaigns that require more money and planning than a run for a North Carolina Senate seat, so the politicians are getting itchy already. Two Republicans are already definitely in: former governor Pat McCrory and former representative Mark Walker. But it now appears that two more Republicans are about to jump in, Lara or no Lara: Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) and Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R-NC). If Trump's daughter-in-law jumps in, some of these four might jump out, but that is not a sure thing as Lara Trump has never run for office before and might turn out to be a real dud. In any event, even four candidates would make for a bruising and bitter primary.

The candidates are already swinging at each other. Walker said: "With taking back the Senate majority hinging on our success in North Carolina, why would we gamble on Pat McCrory— career politician who has lost more statewide races than he's won?" Then he helpfully pointed out that when in the House, he voted with Trump 97% of the time. However, his Q1 haul of $208,000 isn't going to scare anyone. McCrory said: "No one knows the state better than I do. No one has solved the problems that I have solved both as a mayor and a governor."

If Budd enters the race, he would have a powerful ally in the Club for Growth, which is often a big player in Republican primaries. David McIntosh, the Club president, is actively encouraging Budd to make the plunge. If he does, he'll have plenty of money. It is expected that Budd will make a decision soon. As to Lara Trump, who knows, though keep in mind that the original Godot never did arrive. (V)

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