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The Game of Debt Ceiling Chicken Just Got Real
The President and the members of Congress thought they had multiple months left to move and counter-move, spin and counter-spin, feint and counter-feint, and go on Sunday morning talk shows to explain how the politicians on the other side of the aisle are crazy people determined to destroy the U.S. economy. Not so much, as it turns out. Yesterday, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen announced that her current program of smoke and mirrors could stop working as soon as June 1, meaning a potential default is less than a month away.
It should be noted, at the outset, that Yellen is just making her best guess here. Further, if careful juggling does work for just a little bit longer, the government will get an infusion of cash in the first couple weeks of June thanks to the Q2 tax payment deadline. On top of that, there are a couple more bookkeeping tricks that become legal once the calendar year is half over (i.e., on June 30). So, it is at least possible that actual armageddon doesn't arrive until July or August. However, Joe Biden and the members of Congress have to proceed as if June 1 is the date, because it could well be. Further, merely approaching the deadline does harm. So, they really need to think of May 21 (or so) as the real deadline to lift the debt ceiling.
What happens now is anyone's guess, but let us note the imperatives for Joe Biden. As we've written several times, he simply cannot teach the Freedom Caucus the lesson that they can hold the debt ceiling hostage every year and get whatever they want as a result. In case the President has any doubts about that, he can remember back to his time as Barack Obama's VP. In 2011, extreme Republicans (they were called tea partiers back then) held the debt ceiling hostage, Obama gave in, and Democrats were furious. Then, those same extreme Republicans went back on their word and initiated another debt-ceiling hostage situation in 2013. This time, Obama said "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." So, the then-president refused to budge, and the GOP was compelled to cave.
It's also worth noting that the bill that passed the House is utterly unreasonable, and that in exchange for less than a year of debt-ceiling relief, Biden and the Democrats would not only be giving way nearly everything they accomplished during their 2 years in power, but would also be setting the stage, over 10 years, for non-military spending to be cut to the bone. This is just not a real opening bid, and for Biden to treat it as such would be violating every precept of Negotiation 101, since the GOP has "anchored" the negotiations at a place that can never produce anything close to an amenable result for the Democrats.
And then there are McCarthy's imperatives. Thanks to the manner in which he acquired the speakership, he is in the thrall of a small number of extremists. These extremists aren't especially bothered by the possibility of crashing the U.S. economy, either because they think (probably wrongly) that Biden would get the blame, or they are Steve Bannon types who want to burn it all down. If McCarthy betrays these extremists, and agrees to a clean debt-ceiling bill, or to anything less extreme than what has already passed the House, well, it takes just one of the extremists to trigger a vote for his ouster, and it theoretically takes just five of them to join with the Democrats to actually boot him.
In short, we may well be in a situation where an immovable object has met an irresistible force. It is still well within the realm of possibility that if negotiations fail (and Biden has already asked the four party leaders in Congress to come to the White House for a chat), the administration will move on to extraordinary measures, like invoking the Fourteenth Amendment or minting a trillion-dollar coin, or maybe a fist full of them so this problem goes away for many years.
However, our guess is that the more plausible way forward looks like this: The Senate (with some Republican votes) passes a clean debt-ceiling bill. Then, House Democrats get a handful of those Republicans in districts that Biden won to agree to it. If the House Democrats plus a handful of Republicans form a majority, they can file a discharge petition and bring the bill to the floor and pass it, even over McCarthy's objections. And while the Speaker would undoubtedly hoot and holler about the whole thing, to anyone who would listen, he would likely be privately relieved, since this would solve his headache without his having to take personal responsibility. In any case, the eyes of the world are now on the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. (Z)
E. Jean Carroll Is Finished... And Trump Might Be, Too
Yesterday marked the third and (likely) final day of testimony by E. Jean Carroll in her case against Donald Trump. It did not go well for the former president, to say the least.
It was painfully obvious to approximately 99.99% of people, including us, that Trump's lead counsel, Joe Tacopina, was a terrible fit for this trial. First of all, he's not a particularly skillful lawyer, on the whole. Second, his bulldog style does not play well for a jury when the target is an elderly woman who says she was sexually assaulted. This stylistic problem was on full display yesterday as Tacopina badgered Carroll, using every sleazy trick in the book to advance his misogynistic theory of the case that Carroll is just after money and fame, and that to the extent that anything happened between her and Trump, she's making mountains out of molehills.
And it gets worse, at least potentially, when it comes to lawyerly screw-ups. In his second-by-second examination of the incident, Tacopina focused on an exchange between Carroll and Trump wherein he asked her to try on some lingerie for him, and she deflected with jokes and suggested he try it on instead. This is an exceedingly common technique, used mostly by women, in response to what's known as sexual overperception bias (SOB, as chance would have it). SOB refers to the tendency of (almost always) men to overestimate sexual interest on the part of (almost always) women; the targets (again, almost always women) tend to resolve this gently and indirectly, either with little white lies ("Sorry, I have a boyfriend") or jokes. Carroll explained as much on the stand: "Laughing is a very good—I use the word weapon—to calm a man down if he has any erotic intention."
In other words, Carroll once again told a very believable story, and Tacopina would have been well-served to drop it and move on, but he did not. And in so doing, as Salon's Amanda Marcotte points out, he may well have given the jury the final piece of the puzzle. Recall that among the lingering questions here, which Tacopina himself has raised, are: "Why would Trump get so violent, so rapidly, with this particular person?" Recall also that Trump hates, hates, hates to be the butt of jokes, and also that the only other rape accusation made publicly against him came from his ex-wife Ivana Trump, who said she was raped by her then-husband when he was angry about some botched plastic surgery (Ivana later recanted this, though she may have been under financial duress).
What it all points to is this: Trump's controlling emotion here, assuming he's guilty of the acts Carroll accuses him of, might not have been lust but instead anger. This is consistent with most scholarship on sexual violence, which proposes that such acts are not so much about sexual gratification as they are about power. It would also address the question of "Why would Trump get so violent, so rapidly, with this particular person?" Short answer: He was humiliated by her teasing him about putting on women's lingerie and wanted to punish her on the spot. If he had been interested in an actual romantic interlude, he could have invited her to a fabulous dinner at the best restaurant in New York or something like that and had his 90 seconds of fun later in a more relaxed atmosphere, possibly with repeat performances later on. After all, he kept Karen McDougal at it for 10 months.
We weren't in the courtroom, of course, and you can never know for sure what the 9 (in this case) members of a jury might do. But we'll also point out that Trump's legal team tried, and failed to secure a mistrial yesterday, based on the argument that Judge Lewis Kaplan had made "pervasive unfair and prejudicial rulings" against the former president. We did not go to law school, but our sneaking suspicion is that you do not generally ask to start over from scratch if you think your side is winning. (Z)
Let the Senatorial Games Begin, Part I: Justice for West Virginia
Jim Justice, the term-limited Republican governor, that is. He has now announced that he will run for the Senate in 2024. This was expected and indeed, it happened.
Justice was elected governor of West Virginia as a Democrat, but later switched to the GOP. He is a coal billionaire and the richest person in the state. He will also be 73 on Election Day and given that it takes 15-20 years to achieve any real power in the Senate, one might ask whether Justice doesn't have anything better to do. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is chairman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, but Justice would be approaching 90 before he got a shot at that position.
Despite all his money and his name recognition in the state after being governor since Jan. 2017, Justice is no shoo-in for even the Republican nomination, let alone the Senate seat. Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) is also running for the nomination and is backed by the Club for Growth, which has promised to put in at least $10 million for his campaign. The CfG considers Justice to be a RINO and Mooney to be a Real Republican™. West Virginia is a cheap media state and if Mooney ads show 10 times a night, it doesn't really help Justice much if his ads show 40 times a night. The primary is expected to be brutal in a state Donald Trump has won twice by 40 points. His endorsement could matter. Here is a negative ad the CfG is running against Justice.
Manchin shouldn't be counted out, especially if Trump endorses Mooney and the Republican primary is really nasty. Manchin won in 2018, only 2 years after Trump carried the state by 40 points. However, he hasn't said what he is going to do. He could (1) run for reelection, (2) run for governor again, or (3) retire. He has said he won't even announce until December. Nevertheless, he is wasting no time bashing the clean energy part of the Inflation Reduction Act that he voted for. Supporting clean energy would be fatal for him and he knows that. He even said he would vote to repeal the bill, which he had a major hand in writing.
One factor that could matter in the Republican primary is that West Virginia is a semi-closed state. Democrats can't vote in the Republican primary and vice versa, but independents can vote in either one. For historical reasons, many West Virginians are registered as Democrats and many of them support Justice. However, unless they formally change their party registration, they won't be allowed to vote in the Republican primary. This could hurt Justice significantly.
If Justice promises to give everyone in the state a lifetime supply of coal if he is elected to the Senate and wins, the Democrats will be in a very precarious position. They will have to win every other Senate race, including difficult races in Montana and Ohio, just to hold 50 seats. It will take a fairly strong blue wave to pull that off. Of course, if the presidential race is Biden vs. Trump, that could well happen. There is no Republican seat up in 2024 where the Democrats have a strong chance of knocking off a Republican. The easiest ones are Texas (more below) and Florida. That ought to say something. (V)
Let the Senatorial Games Begin, Part II: Can a Blue Brown Win Again in Red Ohio
As noted above, Ohio is another red state where a Democrat is facing a tough fight—but who will he face? The Democrat, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), has won three Senate races before, but this will be the first time he will be on the ticket with a presidential candidate who is most likely going to lose the state. Will that drag him down? We don't know.
We also don't know who the Republican candidate for the Senate will be. We do know that two Republicans are already in and two more are likely to follow. State Sen. Matt Dolan and auto dealer Bernie Moreno are in. Both are wealthy and can self-fund their races. In addition, the Club for Growth wants U.S. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) to jump in and will provide lavish funding if he does. So for these three, money won't be a problem. Secretary of State Frank LaRose is acting like a candidate and will probably jump in soon. He won't have as much money as the others, but he has a different advantage: He is much better known than the other three and has won statewide office, which none of the others have. It could be a nasty primary.
Strategists on both sides believe that Dolan would be the strongest candidate in the general election, but he may not be the strongest candidate in the primary. He ran for the Senate in 2022 as a moderate and was the only candidate who didn't aggressively court Donald Trump. He lost to now-Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH). Trump will undoubtedly endorse one of the others, not Dolan. Dolan's family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team. In the past, Trump was a big fan of the New York Yankees. For Trump, that alone could eliminate Dolan.
It is most likely that Trump will endorse Moreno, despite Moreno having called Trump a "maniac" and a "lunatic" in 2016. After all, Vance called Trump even worse things and still got his endorsement in 2022. Moreno's daughter is married to the very Trumpy Rep. Max Miller (R-OH). Moreno, an immigrant from Colombia, hasn't quite gotten U.S. politics down pat. He has suggested there should be reparations to the descendants of white soldiers who fought for the North and died in the Civil War. This didn't go over so big. Moreno is clearly a weak candidate, but if Trump endorses him, that might just be enough.
If all four of the above enter the race, it will be quite a battle. Meanwhile, Brown will be able to spend the primary season running a positive campaign and raising lots of money nationwide. (V)
Let the Senatorial Games Begin, Part III: Cardin Will Avenge the Patriotic Gore No More
"Avenge the patriotic gore" is a line from Maryland's state song. Well, actually, its former state song; they got rid of it in 2021 because the lyrics are a wee bit... insurrectionist. Anyhow, the crabbiest state in the union offered up a mild surprise yesterday: Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) announced that 3 terms is enough for him, and that he won't stand for reelection next year.
The reason it's a surprise is that it's a safe seat, of course, and it's a little on the late side of the cycle when it comes to the normal timeline for retirement announcements. That said, it's only a mild surprise because Cardin will be 81 on Election Day next year, which means he'd be 87 at the end of a fourth Senate term. He may not want to be working right up until he's knocking on the door of 90 years old. Alternatively, he may have watched what's happening with his colleague Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and decided he doesn't want to risk traveling down that road.
Thus far, the only Democrat in the race is Jerome Segal, a perennial candidate who runs for some office nearly every cycle, sometimes as a member of the Democratic Party, sometimes as a member of the Bread and Roses Party (a socialist party founded by... Jerome Segal). However, Segal will soon have company. Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks will definitely mount a campaign, as will Rep. David Trone; both have promised an official announcement is coming. Other members of Maryland's House delegation who might run from the blue side of the aisle include Jaime Raskin, Kweisi Mfume and John Sarbanes. Alsobrooks is the only woman candidate to express serious interest so far, Trone's a bland but safe white guy, Raskin probably has the biggest name recognition, Mfume is Black and progressive and Sarbanes is from the all-important city of Baltimore. State Del. Jon Cardin might also toss his hat in the ring; if he does he will presumably have Uncle Ben's endorsement. Note that is Uncle Ben the incumbent senator, not Uncle Ben the racist rice mascot.
The Republican bench is quite a bit thinner. Larry Hogan has shown he can win statewide in Maryland, but he already said he is taking a pass on this race. It's possible that Cardin's retirement could cause Hogan to rethink that, but probably not. And if Hogan doesn't jump in, well, it will probably be Rep. Andy Harris, who is the only current Republican member of the state's Congressional delegation. On the other hand, Harris could decide that a safe House seat (his district is R+11) is better than a largely hopeless run for the Senate, and skip it. At that point, the Maryland GOP would be looking under rocks for candidates. Maybe they can dig up Spiro Agnew and run him.
Whoever the Republicans find, Maryland's recent political history does not bode well for a wannabe GOP senator. Although the state has elected a couple of Republican governors in recent memory (Hogan and Robert L. Ehrlich), Republican senators have been rather more scarce. The last member of the Party to win a Senate election in the Old Line State was Charles Mathias, and he did it more than 40 years ago, in 1980. J. Glenn Beall was the last Republican to win an open seat in Maryland; his first and only election win came in 1970. That's a long time ago.
And so, while a party always hates to lose an incumbent, this is not a seat the Democrats will spend much time fretting about, we would imagine. If they lose this one, it won't be "the one" that cost them their majority. No, it will be "one of the six or seven" that cost them their majority, because something went terribly, terribly wrong for them in 2024. (Z)
Let the Senatorial Games Begin, Part IV: No Left Turns in New York
Speaking of seats that the Democrats really don't want to spend time worrying about, since they've got plenty of seats they have no choice but to worry about, things are lining up very well in New York for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) as she gears up for her reelection bid.
A lot of things would have to go wrong for a Democrat to lose in the deep blue Empire State, and the "what went wrong?" sequence would almost certainly have to start with a strong challenge from the left, forcing the Senator to move away from the center in order to secure her flank. However, it does not appear that such a challenge will be coming. Yesterday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said she is not running for the Senate in 2024 (not much of a surprise, as AOC is waiting for Chuck Schumer to age out of his seat). Reps. Mondaire Jones, Jamaal Bowman and Ritchie Torres (all D-NY) have also said they are out. That's pretty much a comprehensive list of the state's prominent progressive politicians.
The only plausible threat remaining to Gillibrand in her party would come not from the left, but from the center. Former governor Andrew Cuomo has hinted that he might mount a bid, since he's desperate to return to political prominence. That said, given how his time as governor ended, he might not get a single vote from a woman voter up against Gillibrand. Last we checked, they are half the population, and more than half of the Democratic Party. Many male voters would be none-too-enthused about Cuomo, either. So we doubt he runs.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans don't have anyone yet. Lee Zeldin has said he's considering it, but if he couldn't beat Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), he's not going to beat the much more popular Gillibrand. Alternatively, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis might jump in, but she'd probably have to give up her House seat (not legally required, but politically necessary), and may not want to do that to tilt at windmills. If neither Zeldin nor Malliotakis is interested, the Republicans will try to find a sacrificial lamb... er, "strong candidate" who can self-fund. Maybe the people who dig up Spiro Agnew (see above) could then swing by the Rockefeller Family Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow and excavate the corpse of Nelson Rockefeller. He could certainly self-fund, and then 2024 could be known as the year of the zombie former VPs. (Z)
Let the Senatorial Games Begin, Part V: Will Cruz Cruise in Texas?
Yesterday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) got an opponent for his reelection bid. It's Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX), who has been prepping a run for months, and who made it official with a Monday afternoon announcement.
Allred is, in many ways, Cruz's nightmare opponent. He's Black, charismatic, and an excellent public speaker. He played college football in Texas (Baylor) and pro football in relatively nearby Tennessee. He is well connected in Democratic circles, having served in the Obama administration and on former speaker Nancy Pelosi's leadership team. He is a prodigious fundraiser. And he first got to Congress by unseating an entrenched Republican.
Could Cruz actually be in danger, though? After all, Texas has failed to live up to its supposed blue shift so many times, it's become a cliché. That said, Cruz won his first Senate race by 16 points, but his second (against Beto O'Rourke, of course) by just 2.6 points. So, the trendlines aren't great for the Senator, to the extent that you can make a trendline out of two data points. Since the O'Rourke election, Cruz has moved further right and has been involved in a number of high-profile missteps (e.g., Cancun). Also, in contrast to his previous elections, he'll be violating his two-terms-and-done pledge this time. And it's a presidential year, which tends to favor Democrats, whereas Cruz vs. O'Rourke was a midterm year, which tends to favor Republicans.
At the moment, Cook and Inside Elections have the Texas race as "Solid R" while Sabato has it as "Likely R." We think that was really too generous to Cruz, given his 2018 result, even before Allred got into the race. And now, well, let's see how Allred performs under a much larger microscope. If he stands up to the scrutiny, this one could get very interesting, indeed.
As a reminder, a run-down of all the Senate races can be found using the "Click for Senate" link in the blue bar above the map. (Z)
E-V.com Tracking Poll, May 2023, Senate Edition
We had a bunch of stuff to think about in order to make our tracking-poll concept useful and interesting, which is why it went on hiatus for a short while. However, we've figured everything out, and so it will make its return today (and tomorrow), and will run monthly henceforth.
One of the big decisions, as implied by what you already read, is that we're going to expand it and split it into two; there will be a Senate tracking poll and an presidential tracking poll. Each will have three questions each time; the first two will be static and the third will vary.
The first question in each Senate poll will ask you to rank 1-2-3 the three seats you think are most likely to switch parties in 2024. The second will ask you to make your best guess as to how many seats the Democrats will end up controlling. The third, this month, asks when you think the debt ceiling situation (see above) will be resolved.
As a reminder, before you vote, here is a quick list of Senate seats that might plausibly be considered in danger in 2024. They are colored based on which party the current holder caucuses with, and are presented in alphabetical order by state:
| State | Occupant | Reason It Might Flip |
| Arizona | Kyrsten Sinema | Three-way race with Sinema, a Democrat, and a Republican |
| California | Open (Dianne Feinstein) | Feinstein is retiring |
| Florida | Rick Scott | Scott looked at his state's aged population, decided to come out against Social Security |
| Maryland | Open (Ben Cardin) | Cardin is retiring |
| Michigan | Open (Debbie Stabenow) | Stabenow is retiring |
| Montana | Jon Tester | Red state, blue candidate |
| Nevada | Jacky Rosen | She's only moderately popular in a swingy state |
| Ohio | Sherrod Brown | The state has veered hard-red in the past decade |
| Pennsylvania | Bob Casey | Swingy state, and Republicans want this one badly |
| Texas | Ted Cruz | Cruz is an a**hole |
| West Virginia | Joe Manchin | Manchin's bag of tricks might finally be empty |
| Wisconsin | Tammy Baldwin | She's only moderately popular in a swingy state |
If you would like to participate, the ballot is here. The presidential version is on tap for tomorrow. (Z)
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