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Schumer and McConnell Have a Deal

After weeks of negotiating, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have finally agreed to an organizing resolution that will allow the Senate to proceed. The most important result is that Democrats will get all the committee chairmanships. It also assigns senators to committees. Each committee will have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, but if the vote on a bill is a tie, the Democrats will be able to force it to the floor for a vote by the full Senate. Now the Senate is finally ready to roll.

Biden Is Willing to Compromise a Little on the Stimulus Checks

During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden supported sending many people a check for $2,000. The first $600 has already been approved by Congress, so the fight is now over the remaining $1,400. He said yesterday that he has no intention of breaking that campaign promise. However, he did introduce a bit of wiggle room. In particular, the first round of checks went to people making under $75,000/year, with phaseouts above that. He is open to perhaps lowering that number to better target the money.

On the other hand, it will not be easy to target it. The data IRS has is for tax returns filed in the Spring of 2020—that is, for the tax year 2019. That was then and this is now. Someone who made $90,000 in 2019 may have lost his job as a result of the coronavirus. And because he was making plenty of money in 2019 (and possibly in previous years), he may have a big house with an equally big mortgage and be in even bigger trouble now. Should that person, who lost his job through no fault of his own, get a check?

From Biden's perspective, reducing the amount of money "rich" people get would be a political twofer. To progressive Democrats he could say: "I prevented rich people from getting a government handout." To Republicans he could say: "Thank you for your suggestion. It was a good idea so I followed it. I like this bipartisanship thingie. If you have any more good ideas, do let me know." They would fume quietly, since reducing government handouts to rich-ish people is not one of their real priorities, but in the ensuing PR battle, Biden would win.

On the other hand, Biden is not buying everything the Republicans are selling. In particular, he has rejected the $600-billion Republican COVID-19 relief bill, saying it is too small. So he is picking and choosing which parts of the Republican offerings he likes. Smart guy. He should go into politics. (V)

The Future of the Republican Party Is Here Now

The modern Republican Party is definitely not the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, or even Dwight D. Eisenhower. Those days are gone forever. But sooner or later it is going to have to decide if it is the party of Ronald Reagan or the party of Donald Trump. And it is definitely going to be sooner rather than later.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) unexpectedly got two hot potatoes in his lap. Trumpish Republicans want to punish Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) for merely being an ultraconservative like Dad, but voting to impeach Trump. Trumpless Republicans want to punish Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-GA) for being a QAnon supporter, bigot, anti-Semite, and all-purpose nutcase. The Republicans would love for the story of their internal problems to go away, but it is everywhere, including:

The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Chicago Tribune, The Hill, AP News, CNN, and Reuters.

McCarthy had a talk with her. What he said hasn't been reported but it changed nothing. The bottom line is that he could have punished her and didn't. The minority leader didn't dare take on a member who has been in Congress for 4 weeks. How's that for a show of power?

Now Democrats see a golden opportunity to put all the Republicans in the House on the spot. They will force a vote today on removing Greene from all her committee assignments. Any Republican who votes "yes" can expect to be primaried in 2022. Any Republican, say named, Smith, who votes "no" can expect the Democrat in the general election to run against the Smith/Greene ticket. In districts so red that a Republican who was found in bed with dead girl and a live boy could still win, the incumbent will vote "no" and take his chances on the general election. But Republicans in pinkish districts have to worry about a primary. This is not a vote anyone in the Republican caucus wants, but Democrats are forcing it on them—for precisely that reason.

One way the Republicans are fighting back is to use that old favorite "whataboutism." They are arguing that Democrats also say bad things and want Rep. Ilhan Omar (R-MN) removed from her committees. They claim that Omar has made anti-Semitic comments and thus also should be punished. Omar did, but there are differences. Her own party called her on the carpet for them and told her she better apologize or else. She did. Republicans have not admonished Greene in any way. Also, in response to Omar's remarks, the House passed a resolution condemning hate speech. Every Democrat (including Omar) voted for it. Many House Republicans have continued to support Greene. Finally, in addition to her racism, Greene has also told lies about school shootings and the election. Omar has restricted herself to straight bigotry and not gone all the way down the rabbit hole. So the main difference between the two is that Democrats are ashamed of Omar and have made that clear over and over. In contrast, many Republicans are proud of Greene.

If Greene were to be removed from her committees, it wouldn't be the first time this happened, but it is rare. In 2001, Democrat Jim Traficant voted for Dennis Hastert (R) for speaker and he was stripped of his committee assignments. In 2006, William Jefferson (D) was kicked off the House Ways and Means Committee after the FBI found $90,000 in bribes he had accepted in the form of cold hard cash—hidden in his freezer. In 2007, Larry Craig (R) was caught playing footsie with a cop in a mens' room at the MSP airport and voluntarily gave up his committee assignments and didn't seek reelection in 2008. In 2018, Chris Collins (R) and Duncan Hunter (R) were stripped of committee assignments—after they were indicted for financial crimes. In 2019, Steve King (R) was stripped of his committee assignments for saying white supremacy isn't so bad.

As to Cheney, the Republicans met yesterday afternoon to discuss kicking her out of her leadership role. She survived easily, with 145 votes to keep her in place, 61 votes to remove, and 1 vote of "present." Since the ballot was secret, nobody knows who sided with Cheney and who opposed her, but the tally—not to mention the tolerance of Greene—speaks to a party that is trying to have it both ways, and to be simultaneously the party of Reagan and Trump. Best of luck with that, Reagrumplicans. (V)

Warren Will Join the Senate Finance Committee

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) got herself a seat on the Senate Finance Committee while keeping her seat on the Senate Banking Committee. This puts her in a strong position to not only ride herd on the banks, but also to push for a wealth tax on fortunes of over $50 million. The Finance Committee, along with the House Ways and Means Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), writes the nation's tax laws. It also has some jurisdiction over health care, Social Security, and trade.

The Finance Committee is chaired by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is a progressive, but not so much as Warren. She will be egging him every day to tax the rich so there will be funding for programs that help all Americans. Wyden commented on Warren's joining the Committee by saying: "Income inequality will be a major focus of my legislative and investigative work, and Senator Warren will certainly play a significant role in advancing this agenda.

Another progressive senator, Bernie Sanders (I-VT), is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Consequently, progressive senators will have a lot of power in both taxing and spending. However, because it is unlikely that any Republican will vote for any of their bills, the Democratic caucus has to stick together to get to 50 votes in order for the President of the Senate, Kamala Harris, to break ties. De facto, this means that the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, Joe Manchin (D-WV), gets a veto over everything. And even that is only when reconciliation is being used and/or if the filibuster's wings get clipped.

While progressive Democrats aren't fond of Manchin, most are aware that if they damage him too much, he could be replaced by a Republican far to his right in 2024. That any Democrat, let alone one who has an 87% lifetime rating from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; a 94% lifetime rating from the AFL-CIO; and a 100% lifetime rating from the American Federation of Teachers, could be elected senator from West Virginia is no mean feat. There is no Sen. B, so Democrats have to humor him. However, as these ratings suggest, he is extremely pro-worker (especially pro-coal miner), so bills that help workers can generally count on his support. Oddly enough, the most progressive member of the Democratic caucus (Sanders) and the most conservative member (Manchin) actually agree on quite a bit. (V)

Ocasio-Cortez Is Threatening to Primary Schumer

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has been in Congress only 2 years but she has already figured out that if you want to get things done, you need either carrots or sticks. She has quite a long agenda and has been nothing short of amazing getting Chuck Schumer to sign onto many elements of it, including pushing for clean cars, canceling student loans, and more. Has she cultivated a carrot garden in her office? No. She's figured out that sticks work better with Schumer, and so is threatening to primary him in 2022. She is popular enough in New York that while she probably wouldn't win the primary, it's not out of the question. In any event, he doesn't want to spend the next year worrying about his own seat, especially not from someone who is younger than his own daughter but who could probably raise $100 million form a national audience. So the mere threat of a primary challenge is giving AOC power that few second-term representatives could even dream about.

AOC and progressive organizations have noticed that Schumer is moving to the left on a host of issues, so they want to give him some breathing room to make up for past "sins." In the view of many progressives, these including voting for the Iraq War and the bill to repeat the Glass-Steagall Act, two issues that burn brightly on the left. One thing that Schumer did to win brownie points with the left is give his first interview after becoming majority leader to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. He told her: "America needs bold change."

Schumer is not quaking in his boots, however. He knows that while AOC would run well in NYC, she wouldn't run so well upstate. In the suburbs, he's regarded as liberal enough, but not too liberal. Also, he won't be caught be surprise, as Joe Crowley was when AOC beat him in the Democratic primary in 2018.

In a way, Ocasio-Cortez is strongest now. As long as she threatens Schumer but doesn't actually jump in, she has a lot of leverage over him. Once she announced her candidacy for the Senate, they would be enemies and he would do everything he could to sabotage her. Few of her priorities would become law then. She apparently understands this and will exploit it to the hilt. (V)

Senate Won't Vote on Merrick Garland's Nomination

No, we are not running out of news and recycling stories from 2016. It's simply déjà vu all over again. Some people just can't get a break.

But indeed, the Senate is not planning to vote on the nomination of Merrick Garland to be AG any time soon. Right now, the upper chamber is busy with the budget, preparing it for the budget reconciliation process. It can interrupt that and take up a confirmation only with unanimous consent, and that is not going to happen. Starting next week is the trial of one Donald J. Trump, and nothing is going to interrupt that, for sure. After the trial, the Senate is taking a much-needed vacation since it has been working so hard and all the members are so tired. So Garland will be twisting in the wind for a number of weeks, at least. Fortunately, he's used to it.

This situation has led to a lot of finger-pointing, incidentally. Democrats are blaming Republicans for not giving unanimous consent. Republicans are blaming Democrats for moving ahead with the budget reconciliation process. They're both right.

Garland isn't the only cabinet nominee whose confirmation will be seriously delayed. Others include Gina Raimondo (Commerce), Denis McDonough (Veterans' Affairs), Xavier Becerra (HHS), Marcia Fudge (HUD), Tom Vilsack (Agriculture), Marty Walsh (Labor), Jennifer Granholm (Energy), Deb Haaland (Interior), and Miguel Cardona (Education). In addition, a whole raft of cabinet-level nominations and an alphabet soup of heads of agencies like CFPB, CIA, EPA, FEMA, OMB, SEC, and SBA are also in abeyance. Under secretaries, assistant secretaries, and deputy secretaries by the dozen are still waiting (but not deputy assistant secretaries, who do not require confirmation). None of them will even get hearings until the end of February at the earliest. Republicans are saying to Democrats: "It's your fault for putting Trump on trial," conveniently overlooking the fact that Trump refused to have a smooth transition during which nominees could have been screened and interviewed by Senate committees. (V)

Bills about Voting Are All the Rage in State Legislatures

State legislatures in 44 states are back in session with their newly sworn in members and are getting to work—churning out bills to make voting either harder or easier. Republicans in 28 states have already introduced 106 bills to restrict voting (compared to 35 bills in 15 states in February 2020). On the other hand, in 35 states, 406 bills to make voting easier have been introduced (compared to 188 bills in 29 states a year ago). It is possible for Democrats and Republicans in a state to introduce competing bills, of course, which is why the total here (28+35) is greater than 50.

As you might expect, Republicans are trying to limit voting and Democrats are trying to expand it. In practice, where Republicans have the trifecta (including Arizona, Texas, Florida, and Georgia), some of bills restricting the franchise are bound to pass. Similarly, in states where Democrats have the trifecta (including California, Illinois, and New York), some of the bills expanding the franchise are bound to pass. In split states (including Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania), all the voting bills will die because the governor will veto them. Unfortunately for the Democrats, Arizona, Texas, Florida, and Georgia are all (potential) swing states.

Among the key targets of the Republican bills are these.

Here are some of the features of the Democrats' bills, as they work to make voting easier:

State laws aren't the only game in town. Congress is considering two new Voting Rights Acts (H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act).

One other area that affects voting is the Nebraskafication of allocating presidential electors—just as Nebraska is considering switching to a winner-take-all system. If a blue state switches to allocating electors by congressional district, this helps the Republicans because they could then pick up some electoral votes that are otherwise beyond reach. If a red state does it, it helps the Democrats.

Oklahoma is considering allowing the state legislature to pick the presidential electors until there is a federal voter-ID law. And finally, 11 states have bills to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and one state (Maryland) has one to leave it. (V)

You, Too, Can Gerrymander

Ever had a strong urge to gerrymander a state congressional map? Here's your chance. Dave's Redistricting is a web-based application that allows you to gerrymander a state as you please. It is not a toy. It is the real McCoy and similar to the software tools that real gerrymanderers use. It currently contains the 2010 data but will soon be updated to use the 2020 data and number of House seats per state. You can aim for fair districts, compact districts, partisan districts, districts that help/hurt minorities, and more. There are lots of tools to help you achieve whatever your goal is. When you have a great map, you can publish it or send it to your favorite state legislator and suggest that he or she submit the map to the group tasked with drawing the actual map for your state.

You can start with a blank map or load the current map or a map someone else has done. The goal is to assign every precinct to a district subject to some rules, mainly that all districts must be contiguous, have roughly the same population, and no district is located in a hole inside another district. You assign a precinct (or an entire county) to a district by painting it the same color as the other precincts and counties in the district. You can have districts be displayed by partisan lean, percentage minority, and other demographics. You can also view tables showing the population, demographics, and other characteristics for each district. Once you have made a first cut at a map, you can go back and fine tune it, adding and removing individual precincts one by one. It is this step that gives some districts their peculiar shapes.

The program is extremely powerful, but there are some tutorials available, including YouTube videos. You might want to practice on a somewhat rectangular state like Colorado or Arizona before tackling Texas. Once you have finished the congressional map, you can next do the state legislature. At the very least, trying out this program will give you an idea of how the deed is done.

Below on the left is the actual current congressional Colorado map. On the right is a map that (V) drew with Dave's program.

Actual CO map on left, hypothetical map on right

Now onto the demographics. The program provides detailed demographic and partisan information to tailor the map as you wish. Here is the demographic information for the map (V) drew.

District Whites Blacks Latinos Asians
1 77.7% 1.2% 18.1% 1.1%
2 82.5% 1.5% 11.4% 3.7%
3 66.4% 3.7% 27.2% 1.9%
4 67.2% 5.0% 23.2% 4.3%
5 46.8% 13.6% 34.4% 5.6%
6 74.4% 4.2% 16.0% 5.0%
7 75.2% 5.7% 14.4% 5.3%


The districts (V) drew have quite different shapes that the real ones, but they have roughly equal population. The program makes this easy. Every time you add a precinct, the total population of the district you are working on is updated instantly in a panel to the left of the map, as is the number of people you need to add or subtract to get the correct number for a district in the state.

Partisan mapmakers will typically have an idea of the demographics they want for each district and tinker with it, adding and deleting precincts one at a time (which is easy with this program) to get what they want. Nonpartisan commissions may have different goals, such as compactness.

Gerrymandering this year is going to be harder than usual because it is difficult to factor out the Trump effect. For example, if some precinct with 1,000 voters went 55% for Biden in 2020, some of those 550 voters may actually be Trump-hating Republicans and may revert to the GOP in 2022. On the other hand, some of the 450 Trump voters may be infrequent voters and may not show up in 2022 without Trump to motivate them. In addition, the battles over Marjorie Taylor Greene may continue to drive suburban women into the Democratic Party, so the results in suburban precincts could be bluer in 2022 than in 2020. If the gerrymanderers put, say, 60% Republicans in House districts they want to win, they will burn through the supply of Republican voters faster than if they put 55% in each district. This is a judgment call the program can't help with. It doesn't know how fast the GOP is bleeding suburban voters. It is a powerful tool but the user has to provide the political insight..

As an aside, 11 states have nonpartisan redistricting commissions. If your state has a nonpartisan commission, you could try to get on it, although it may be too late for 2021. Still, if you practice drawing maps for the next 10 years, you might be able to get on the 2031 commission. But even if you aren't on the commission, you can propose a map to it.

On a slightly different note, from the viewpoint of people in other Western democracies, the U.S. election system, in which partisans can write election laws to make it harder for people to vote (previous story) or manipulate single-member first-past-the-post districts (this story), looks extremely corrupt and undemocratic. It's better than Russia, but that's a pretty low bar. Just about everywhere else election laws are designed to be fair and maximize turnout (in Australia, there is even a fine for not voting). And elections are administered by nonpartisan civil servants. Imagine what the U.S. would think of a country in which the schools, tax administration, or Dept. of Motor Vehicles were run by partisans hell-bent on punishing their political opponents. That's how the U.S. looks abroad. (V)

Could Ivanka Trump Beat Marco Rubio in a Primary?

It is an open secret that Ivanka Trump is considering a primary challenge to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) next year. Election analyst Nathan Gonzales has weighed in on how successful such a challenge would be. The former first daughter is certainly interested in the job, even though it pays a mere $174,000/year. However, she is unlikely to take the plunge unless she is convinced she could beat Rubio in the primary. If she ran and lost, she would be a loser in her father's eyes and he already has enough children he regards as losers; he doesn't need another one. Unlike her father, she is quite capable of looking at all the factors to see what her chances are before jumping in.

For starters, beating an incumbent senator in a primary is very tough. It has happened only nine times in the past 40 years. That's a renomination rate of 99.9% for over 500 senators. Clearly, it takes some fairly unusual circumstances to take down a senator in a primary. Three of the nine times were when senators didn't take the challenger seriously and didn't bother to campaign. Rubio would fight like hell and is probably already gearing up for it. Two of the other cases involved appointed senators who had never won a statewide election being beaten. Rubio has won statewide twice. One time (Arlen Specter in 2010), the senator had just switched parties and his new party didn't trust him. Twice when an incumbent senator lost the primary, he (Joe Lieberman in 2006) or she (Lisa Murkowski in 2010) ran as a write-in candidate and won the general election anyway as an independent.

In other words, on eight of the nine occasions in the last 40 years where a senator has been successfully primaried, there was either something wonky going on, or the defeated senator didn't stay defeated. Well, what about that ninth time? Even that is not encouraging for Ivanka. In 2002, then-senator Bob Smith (R) was defeated in the GOP primary by John Sununu (R). However, in 2000, Smith had temporarily left the Republican Party to run for president as an independent. Furthermore, Sununu already represented half the state in the House and his father was previously governor. In other words, Sununu had very deep ties to New Hampshire and had already won an election covering half the state.

It is true that Ivanka would benefit from universal name recognition, but so would Rubio. And although she is a Trump, she doesn't have any of her father's outward hatred for elites and foreigners, which is Dad's biggest selling point. Are angry, sullen, resentful white men going to vote for a blonde female multimillionaire over a guy with working-class roots?

Further, The Donald is a natural candidate. Everything he said or did was big news. Ivanka has never been tested. Can she drive huge crowds into a frenzy of hatred? Can she raise the huge amounts of money needed to run for the Senate in Florida?

And then there is this: Rubio was born in Miami, went to grade school and high school there, got a bachelors from the University of Florida and a J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law. How do you say "carpetbagger" in Spanish? Might come in handy. Finally, the Latino vote is all Rubio's (since he'll get all the Cubans for being Cuban, while the Puerto Ricans loathe the Trumps). What's Ivanka's base? Well-off Jewish ladies who live in New York in the summer and live in Broward County in the winter? Gonzales' summary: "I'm smart enough not to rule out Ivanka defeating Rubio and winning a Senate seat. But I think this would be a much more difficult race for her in reality than what it looks like on paper." (V)


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