CHIPS Will Soon Be Law

On Wednesday, the Senate passed the CHIPS bill, which will cause the government to invest nearly $300 billion into domestic semiconductor production. And Thursday, the House passed the bill, as well. It heads now to Joe Biden for his signature, which he has already promised to apply (presumably once he's COVID-free, and can safely hold a signing ceremony).

The vote in the House was 243-187. One Democrat, Sara Jacobs (D-CA), voted present. This is presumably because her family is in the semiconductor business and so she had something of a conflict of interest. There were also 24 Republican votes in favor. There would have been more if the vote had been held earlier in the week, but House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was whipping votes hard in an effort to punish Democrats for the reconciliation bill announced Wednesday afternoon. That's a pretty good preview of what "governance" will mean in the House if McCarthy becomes Speaker.

And speaking of the reconciliation bill, there was a little bit of news on that front yesterday, as well. House Democrats appear to be on board with the basic framework that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) have announced. Several leading members of the House Progressives Caucus, including caucus chair Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), said that $300+ billion for green energy is too important a step forward to pass up. And members from the Northeast signaled that the positive things the bill does will be enough to cancel out the need immediate action on the SALT caps.

On the other hand, it's still crickets from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D?-AZ), who is apparently waiting for Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to weigh in before saying anything. The Arizona Senator also missed a meeting of the Senate Democratic Caucus yesterday where the reconciliation bill was the main topic of discussion. Reportedly, Sinema regularly misses meetings like this, so while Schumer would surely rather she'd been there, her non-attendance is not a shot across the bow.

In any event, we guessed yesterday that Sinema and MacDonough were the two largest potential obstacles to the reconciliation bill becoming law, and nothing that happened thereafter has given us reason to change that assessment. At this point, we are also inclined to doubt that Sinema is going to tank the whole thing, though she might dig in and insist that the provision regarding the carried interest loophole be excised. Manchin has said that provision is non-negotiable for him, so we shall see what happens if the Arizonan says it has to go. (Z)

RNC Hits Trump Where It Hurts

The Republican National Committee really, really, really doesn't want Donald Trump to announce a presidential run prior to the midterms, due to their very reasonable fear that would turn the 2022 elections into a referendum on him, and so would hurt the GOP up and down the ballot. But the RNC doesn't have a lot of options when it comes to persuading him. They cannot, for example, appeal to his better nature, or his sense of loyalty to the party, or his sense of fair play, since he doesn't have any of those things.

The former president does have an Achilles heel, however: money. He loves, loves, loves it and depending on whose analysis you believe, he may not have much of it anymore. The RNC has been footing most of his legal bills since he left office, to the tune of nearly $2 million. And yesterday, Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel and other RNC pooh-bahs helpfully "reminded" Trump that the party has a neutrality policy, and cannot provide funding for any person who is an actual candidate for office. In other words, it was a reasonably gentle, and yet extremely clear, way of telling Trump that as soon as the S.S. Trump 2024 launches, the RNC gravy train will stop running.

We have no doubt whatsover that the RNC would overlook its neutrality policy if Trump were wildly popular, but he isn't. The Committee has this one card to play, and they just played it, for all to see. Now, it's up to the Donald to decide whether to call, raise, or fold. And as much as Trump loves money, we would guess that this none-too-subtle threat won't influence his thinking very much. If he believes that declaring will keep him from being charged with crimes federally or in Georgia, or he believes that he simply must take some of the wind out of Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R-FL) sails, then he'll pull the trigger. And if the RNC cuts him off, he can use some of that super PAC money he's got, and can probably even pull in more grift money ("Help! Your favorite president is being screwed by the RNC! Send money! And pay no attention to that box that says 'make this a recurring donation'!"). Alternatively, he could just revert to his past practice of stiffing lawyers after they represent him. That's assuming he can find any lawyers who will represent him without payment in advance. (Z)

Andrew Yang, Meet Maurice Duverger

We really don't like writing about Andrew Yang, as he's made it abundantly clear that he's all show and no go. However, he has now followed through on his threat to found a "centrist" third party, and he's gotten a couple of prominent folks—former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and former Florida representative David Jolly—to join him on the letterhead. So, we have to say something about it.

Earlier this week, the trio announced the launch of their new party, called Forward, with an op-ed in The Washington Post. They write:

The two major parties have hollowed out the sensible center of our political system—even though that's where most voters want to see them move. A new party must stake out the space in between. On every issue facing this nation—from the controversial to the mundane—we can find a reasonable approach most Americans agree on...

That's why we're proposing the first "open" party. Americans of all stripes—Democrats, Republicans and independents—are invited to be a part of the process, without abandoning their existing political affiliations, by joining us to discuss building an optimistic and inclusive home for the politically homeless majority.

The headline for the op-ed is "Most third parties have failed. Here's why ours won't." And the answer they give to that headline is... there are a lot of independents today, and a lot of people unhappy with the two major parties.

And that brings us to Maurice Duverger, the French social scientist who is responsible for Duverger's law. What the "law" says is that political systems like the U.S. has, which use single-ballot plurality-rule elections, only have room for two viable political parties. The reason is not especially hard to figure out; when elections are winner-take-all, there's little value in voting for longshot, third party candidates.

In other words, despite the claim that Yang, Whitman and Jolly make to the contrary, there is zero chance that the new party catches on in a meaningful way. To start with, most "independents" aren't really independents, and the Forward trio is either being ignorant or dishonest in suggesting that there are vast numbers of free-agent voters out there, available for the taking. It just isn't so, and never has been. For a hundred years, political scientists have been studying this, and have concluded that even those voters who state confidently that they're going to vote third party overwhelmingly revert back to one of the two major parties when it comes time to actually vote.

Further, the Forward founders are embracing the notion that the Democrats are far-left, the Republicans are far-right, and there's no current political party in the center. Again, this is either ignorant or dishonest. The Democrats are nowhere near as far-left as the Republicans are far-right, and there is much representation of centrist views on the blue team (and also still some on the red team; see Gov. Larry Hogan, R-MD, for example). To illustrate this, consider gun control, which is one of the issues on which the Forward Party promises "commonsense" and "moderate" positions. The Democrats overwhelmingly favor incremental adjustments to current gun laws, including bans on particularly lethal weapons, expanded background checks and limits on concealed carry. What, exactly, is the position that "commonsense" and "moderate" but is different from what the Democrats are already advocating?

This is par for the course for Yang, in particular. He flatters himself that he's an "ideas man," but ideas are not much use if you have no plan for actually making them into reality. In his entrepreneurial career, he developed a reputation for burning through lots of cash while achieving little return. During his presidential campaign, he pushed for a Universal Basic Income. That seems like a fine idea, but he could never explain how he was going to get it through Congress. During his mayoral campaign, he said it would be swell if New York City had less crime and fewer homeless people, but he couldn't make clear what new solutions he had to those problems. And now, he's asserting that he's going to create a meaningful third party. But just announcing that doesn't make it so. The Green Party, the Libertarian Party and the Peace and Freedom Party, among others, have been around for a much longer time, and enjoy much greater support than Forward does. And yet, none of the three have come remotely close to threatening the dominance of the two major parties.

That said, there is one effect that the Forward Party could have. There is no question that Yang, Whitman, and Jolly, if forced to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, would all be Biden voters. So, if the trio manages to actually come up with a presidential nominee in 2024, and to get their party on the ballot in some states, then Forward is likely to take votes from the Democrat, particularly if the Republican is Trump. If it's close, Yang & Co. could join Ralph Nader and Jill Stein on the list of spoilers who handed the White House to a member of the red team. And in this particular case, that member of the red team could be a dangerous authoritarian with little regard for democracy and even less regard for the rule of law. (Z)

Vote by Mail Is Expanding in the Northeast

Republican-controlled states all over the South and Midwest (plus Arizona) are passing all manner of laws making voting more difficult in many ways. In something of a demonstration of Newton's Third Law (for every force in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction), and somewhat under the radar, states in the Northeast are passing laws making it easier.

In 1638, white, propertied men in Massachusetts got together on Election Day to pick a governor. Over the years, more people were allowed to vote, but the tradition of voting only in person on Election Day lasted (with minor exceptions) through 2018, when 99% of the votes there were cast that way. Then, in 2020, an invisible virus changed everything. In that year, the Bay State mailed every registered voter an application for an absentee ballot—and turnout zoomed up. It was so popular that the Democratic legislature just passed a law—which Republican governor Charlie Baker signed—mandating that the state mail every registered voter an absentee ballot application for every election. No excuse or reason is required. If you want a ballot sent to you, you get one.

Historically, it was western states that pioneered vote-by-mail for everyone. Oregon went first in 2000, then Washington in 2011, and Colorado in 2013. Now California, Hawaii, Nevada, and even Utah mail every voter an actual ballot (not an application) weeks before the election, with multiple options for returning it. Some of them even allow voters to "cure" mistakes, such as having forgotten to sign the envelope. Part of the reason for this east-west split is that in the pioneer West, people didn't trust the government so much, so state Constitutions gave voters broad powers to put constitutional amendments on the ballot. These ballot initiatives (or the threat thereof) is why all-mail voting flourished in the West, because it was rather important that people have every opportunity to speak up about these issues.

What is happening now is that the pandemic forced states in the Northeast to go all-in for a mail-in election. It worked just fine and the voters liked it, so now the laws are being changed to make the changes permanent. Vermont, for example, has gone even further than Massachusetts. Gov. Phil Scott (R) just signed a bill requiring that every voter be sent an actual absentee ballot, not just an application for one.

Other states in the region are also working on it or have already done so. For example, New York now has the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York, which is patterned after the H.R. 4 bill that passed the House but failed in the Senate. It addresses, among other things:

• Dilution of the votes of protected classes through gerrymandering
• Voter-suppression laws
• Voter intimidation, deception, or obstruction
• Language assistance for people who don't speak English
• Preclearance, to prevent cities or counties from enacting rules designed to disenfranchised voters

And it is not just the Northeast where changes are happening. There are four levels of "easiness" concerning absentee voting:

1. States where absentee voting is restricted to a small group of voters with a good reason
2. States that have no-excuse absentee voting, but you have to ask for a ballot application yourself
3. States where every voter is sent an application automatically
4. States where every voter is sent an actual ballot automatically

In the past 2 years, states that are least at level 2 have greatly expanded. Currently. 36 states have no-excuse absentee voting and more are working on it. Of these, eight run all-mail elections. Here is a map showing where no-excuse absentee voting is the law. As you can see, every state west of the Mississippi except Texas has it:

In some states, like Delaware and Connecticut, the state Constitution specifies who may request an absentee ballot. Changing that requires a two-thirds majority of each chamber of the state legislature, so Republicans have blocked changes. However, in Connecticut, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) has signed an order redefining what the words "sick" and "absent" in the state Constitution mean.

One big issue is when the absentee ballots are counted. In many elections, the voter is sent a ballot, a white envelope (or sleeve), and a brown envelope. The voter is told to fill out the ballot, put it in the white envelope, seal it, then insert the white envelope in the brown envelope and sign the brown envelope. When a brown envelope arrives at its intended destination, an election worker scans the bar code on the envelope, which brings up the voter's registration card and signature on the worker's monitor. If the signature looks valid, the brown envelope is opened and the white inner envelope is dropped in an actual ballot box.

The biggest fight is over when the various steps occur. The Maryland legislature recently passed a bill allowing signature checking to happen as the envelopes arrived. Then, early on Election Day, the white envelopes could be opened and the ballots scanned immediately. This would eliminate the "red mirage" that allows Republican candidates to claim victory on Election Night (because the heavily Democratic absentee ballots are still sitting in their brown envelopes awaiting signature verification). Larry Hogan vetoed the bill, thus proving that he is no RINO.

If most of the states in the East and West are able to work out these various kinks in the system, and make mail-in voting the norm, Republican-dominated states in the South and Midwest will not be able to hold out forever. Every year there will be video footage of long lines on Election Day in red states and people just dropping a ballot in a dropbox in blue states. Sooner or later, the voters in red states are going to have enough of that. Voters in Idaho are going to ask why they have to stand in line to vote while voters in four states that border Idaho (Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and Utah) don't. In other words, we expect that at some point voter convenience is going to pressure even Republican-controlled legislatures into widening vote-by-mail laws. (V)

Does the Constitution Ban Restrictions to Voting Rights?

Having states in the Northeast expanding voting doesn't make up for states in the South curtailing it. However, the Constitution itself might supply a (largely unnoticed) remedy. Here is Sec. 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment (with our emphasis):

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

This brings up several thorny issues, including these:

• Who gets to decide if and when this section can be invoked? Does Congress have the power? If not them, who?
  
  
• What about 18, 19, and 20 year olds? Do they count? The Twenty-Sixth Amendment gives 18 year olds the right to vote, but it doesn't say: "Globally replace all occurrences of "21" by "18" everywhere in the Constitution and in its amendments.
  
  
• How bad does a restriction have to be before it qualifies as an abridgement? For example, is a law making it a crime to give a free bottle of water to a person who has been standing in line to vote for 4 hours an abridgement in the sense of the Amendment?
  
  
• How can anyone determine how much the reduction should be? How could anyone tell how many people were disenfranchised by a state law banning all dropboxes or making it a crime to take your ailing 93-year-old mother's absentee ballot to the polling place? It's a wild guess at best. But since this provision is literally part of the Constitution, the originalists on the Supreme Court can hardly say: "The words in the Amendment don't count for anything. We'll just ignore them."
  
  
• Who has standing to sue? Can a random 21-year-old in, say, New Jersey, claim that if this provision of the Constitution is invoked, the weight of his vote goes up a little, so not invoking it hurts him and thus gives him standing?

All this notwithstanding, a Montana environmental lawyer who worked in the U.S. Dept. of Justice until early 2017, when he got a new boss he didn't want to work for, is giving it a shot. The lawyer, Jared Pettinato, has sued the Census Bureau because part of its job is to announce how many House seats each state gets after it has finished counting noses every 10 years. He claims the Fourteenth Amendment forces the Bureau to take abridgments into account when allocating seats and it has failed to do so. Since the words are right there, he says the Bureau can't just ignore them because it might be tricky.

Pettinato picked an easy case to present: Wisconsin. In 2011, the state legislature passed a law requiring ID to vote, and further specified what counted as valid ID. A federal judge has determined that 300,000 otherwise eligible Wisconsinites lack the ID and were thus disenfranchised. That is 9% of the electorate and so Wisconsin should lose one House seat. Further analysis by a data scientist showed that seven other states would gain a representative if the Fourteenth Amendment were applied nationwide.

However, Pettinato may have bitten off more than he can chew, because he claims laws requiring voters to register to vote also invoke the penalty clause. He might have been better off leaving those out since the government has a clear purpose in requiring registration, namely, preventing people from voting twice.

In any case, the federal government is trying to get rid of this pesky suit, but the judge has scheduled a trial on the merits for December. Judges sometimes look at history for a guide and there are two examples. The 1870 census asked inhabitants of every state if their right to vote had been abridged. States in the South actively opposed this question, so the results are meaningless. In 1970, the NAACP asked the courts to apply the penalty clause, but the D.C. Court of Appeals dismissed the case with a ruling that said the new Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the 24th Amendment ("no poll taxes") should be given a chance to work first.

Pettinato's suit is different. He wants more than a simple court ruling on the meaning of the Amendment. He wants to force the Census Bureau to redo the House apportionment taking the penalty clause into account. Given the timing of the trial, the case won't affect the 2022 elections, but it could conceivably affect the 2024 elections if he wins on time. It is a longshot, but the Supreme Court can't very well say: "Yeah, the words are literally part of the Constitution, but we don't like them so we are going to pretend they aren't there." Although they did that with "well-regulated militia" from the Second Amendment, so maybe they can. (V)

This Week in Schadenfreude

It is more than a little icky when a politician turns to bullying in order to score political points. Such behavior is often enough to get someone fired in the real world, so it's not very nice when a politician uses the fact that they are basically unfireable in order to get away with such behavior.

As an example, we give you Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). He is one of the sleaziest members of Congress, given his Marjorie Taylor Greene-like bomb-throwing, not to mention his alleged habit of having sexual relations with underage minors. We would suggest that it's also instructive that more readers sent us this particular story than any other in the history of "This Week in Schadenfreude." Most people who find Gaetz disagreeable are really happy when something happens to wipe the near-perpetual smirk off his face. Which, incidentally, is the very definition of schadenfreude.

Anyhow, given his track record, if there's anyone who should avoid verbal abuse of women, particularly teenage women who do not occupy political office, it's Gaetz. However, if there is anyone who is likely to take advantage of his privileged circumstances, and to do some really reprehensible punching down, it's Gaetz. And so it is that he's made it into one of his talking points that women who are pro-choice are invariably fat and ugly.

One of the particular targets he chose was a 19-year-old Latina pro-choice activist named Olivia Julianna, and there was some sparring between the two of them on Twitter. Julianna, it should be pointed out, clearly outdueled Gaetz. For example, she observed that, at 19 years of age, she's probably a little too old for him. She also decided to try to extract something more useful out of their exchange besides some Twitter likes. So, she started a fundraiser for pro-choice causes. And in less than a week, she's raised nearly $1.5 million. In case you'd like a little taste of her Twitter game, here is the tweet she sent out when the fundraiser crossed the $50,000 mark:

Well @mattgaetz, I have to hand it to you. I didn’t think you cared about us abortion rights activists, but your spotlight on me has helped raise $50K for abortion funds in the last 24 hours! So I made you a special thank you card
It almost feels like #MattGaetzIsProAbortion pic.twitter.com/sCxGVT4vzz

— Olivia Julianna (@0liviajulianna) July 26, 2022

Incidentally, Gaetz is also obsessed with tearing down Whoopi Goldberg. Wonder what she and Julianna have in common, besides being pro-choice women? Hmmmmm...

And this is one of those twofer schadenfreude weeks, because there was some similar bullying more than 1,000 miles north of Florida, with similar results. Michigan state Sen. Lana Theis (R) proposed a bill that would ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory in the state's classrooms. Theis did not appreciate it when her colleague, Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D), opposed the bill. And so, Theis sent out a fundraising e-mail accusing McMorrow of being a "pedophile" who was "outraged" that she "cant groom and sexualize kindergartners" or teach that "8-year olds are responsible for slavery."

Theis' e-mail inspired McMorrow to deliver a speech lamenting Theis' e-mail in particular, and the red team's propensity for nastiness in general. The 5-minute remarks began with this:

I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom who knows that the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining or systemic racism means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense.

The speech went viral, and marked McMorrow as a rising star in the Michigan Democratic Party. Don't be surprised if she gets promoted to the governor's mansion or the U.S. Senate in due course of time. And since the speech, she's raised well over $1 million, which is a staggering sum for a state legislator in a mid-size state. Meanwhile, the original e-mail from Theis raised... $300.

By our math, that's $300 for the bullies, and nearly $2.5 million for those who were bullied. And if that is not schadenfreude time, we don't know what is. (Z)

Insert Headline Here

As regular readers will recall, "This Week in Schadenfreude" was prompted by a suggestion from a reader. And we think the feature has worked out pretty well—certainly we have lots of feedback from readers who like it.

That said, there is at least a little bit of negativity in smiling upon others' misfortune, even if those folks deserve it, and even if we keep things like death, disease, and pain off limits. So, we've been thinking about adding a counterpart to TWIS that's more positive—uplifting, funny without the humor being at someone's expense, hopeful—that general vibe. A couple of weeks ago, reader E.K. in Patchogue had the same thought. So, we've decided to move forward with it, such that each week's coverage from us always ends on a positive note.

We launch this new feature with a suggested story from another reader, namely C.B.L. in Warwick, RI. As most politics-followers know, in October of last year, an NBC Sports reporter was interviewing NASCAR driver Brandon Brown after a race. The crowd, knowing their words were going out over live TV, starting chanting "F**k Joe Biden!" The reporter misheard it as "Let's Go Brandon!", and from that time forward "Let's Go Brandon" has been a "clever" right-wing insult of the President. Among 21st-century Republican slogans, it's rivaled only by "Make America Great Again" and "Deplorable."

That brings us to Sheletta Brundidge, who has three children with autism (and four overall), and who decided to write children's books in honor of each of them. Cameron Goes to School was written for her daughter, and Daniel Finds His Voice was written for one of her sons. However, she was struggling to come up with an idea for a book in honor of her other autistic son, Brandon. Inspiration finally struck when she saw how pleased he was by all the "Let's Go Brandon" signs he was seeing on TV, and around town, thinking they were addressed to him. "These are my fans," Brandon says. "They know me. They love me." That was all it took, and Sheletta Brundidge had written Brandon Spots His Sign within a few days.

And that's not all. Brandon Brown, the original "inspiration" for the phrase, learned about the book and the Brundidge family. He invited them to a race, had a picture of the book placed on the top of his car, and the two Brandons have become fast friends, speaking regularly about weighty matters like... the computer game Minecraft. Needless to say, if more Americans' instincts leaned toward building people up like this, rather than tearing them down, the country would be much better off.

Finally, note that we actually intended to launch this feature last week, but we couldn't come up with a good, recurrent headline. We could have used "On the Lighter Side," but that would be a ripoff from Reader's Digest. We also thought about Happy Endings, but that's also a sexual double entendre. So, we decided to open it up to suggestions. Do you have an idea for something that would encapsulate this feature, and the possibility that it could go in multiple directions (funny, inspirational, hopeful) in any given week? Let us know. We also welcome suggestions for future items we might write up in this space. (Z)

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