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Today's the Day

Just a few hours after this post goes live, the 118th Congress will commence. There will be many notable milestones; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will overtake Mike Mansfield as the longest-serving party leader in Senate history, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) is going to be elected the Senate's first female president pro tempore, and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) will be the first Black party leader in either chamber of Congress.

Of course, none of these is the main storyline today. No, all the attention is being directed at House Republicans. They've been doing previews of their parade of dysfunction for years, and now they're ready to open on Broadway. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has been bending over backwards to try to get the MAGA Maniacs on board and, by all indications, he has not succeeded. At the close of business on Monday, the far-right holdouts continued to insist that McCarthy would not get their votes.

That means that, barring a last-minute breakthrough of some sort, nobody will be elected speaker in the first round of voting for the first time since 1923. Still, that vote will be fairly consequential, as it will reveal how large the anti-McCarthy vote actually is. If only five Republicans vote against him, then McCarthy will be right on the precipice of the promised land, and he'll probably stay the course for a while as he tries to pry loose that last, crucial vote. On the other hand, if a dozen Republicans vote against him, McCarthy will be in serious trouble. That's particularly true if the opposition holds firm on the (hypothetical) second vote. A member might vote against him once to send a message, and then fall in line. But if they vote against him twice, they mean it. Note, incidentally, that until a Speaker has been seated, it's the clerk of the House who runs the show. So, McCarthy cannot postpone the vote to avoid the embarrassment of not winning.

In a development that should not come as a surprise to any reader of this site, Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), who just so happens to represent one of those crossover districts (NE-02) that went for Joe Biden in 2020, has started making noise about reaching across the aisle. He hinted at that possibility over the weekend, and yesterday he wrote an op-ed for The Daily Caller in which he says:

Much has been made of me saying I would work with moderate Democrats to elect a more moderate speaker. But my actual words were that if the five [MAGA holdouts] refused to coalesce around what the vast majority of the conference wants, I'm willing to work across the aisle to find an agreeable Republican.

We have read this at least a dozen times, and we're still not clear exactly what this clarifies. Unless you believe the Democrats are looking for someone ever further right than McCarthy that they can support, then "a more moderate speaker" and "an agreeable Republican" are the exact same thing. In any event, Bacon has not yet made the "modest" suggestion that he just might be the agreeable Republican that can get the necessary number of votes. But that could be next if a stalemate situation develops.

Even if McCarthy does pull it off, it's going to be a Pyrrhic victory. First of all, because everyone will know that even if he has the fancy office and the ceremonial gavel, it's the MAGA Militia that is really calling the shots. Second, because if McCarthy gets the job, it will require him to accept a rules package that will make governance all-but-impossible. Beyond the fact that the MAGA folks want to be able to fire him at any time, they want other rules changes, like reinstatement of the Holman rule. It's a little abstruse, but the Holman rule would basically allow any member of the House to submit an amendment to budget bills reducing federal workers' salaries, or eliminating federal workers' jobs, or eliminating entire departments. Under current procedure, such things have to be submitted to, and approved, by the Appropriations Committee. If the Holman rule is reinstated then, ipso facto, a small cadre of Republicans could, for example, hold the budget hostage unless 213 of their colleagues agreed to cut the number of FBI officers in half, or to roll back the stronger IRS enforcement adopted in 2022. The Democrats in the Senate won't go for such changes, even if House Republicans are browbeaten into voting for them. Hence, all-but-impossible governance.

In short, even if McCarthy wins, he loses. And you know who else is losing right now? Bigly? That's right, it's Donald Trump. He has already commanded his minions to support McCarthy's bid for the speakership. And his minions are, apparently, ignoring him. If the former president can't move the needle here, even a bit, it is just another reminder that his "power" is largely illusory.

Maybe, by the time we put Wednesday's posting up, this will all be resolved and McCarthy will be picking out fabric for the curtains in his new office. But, based on the scuttlebutt, we really don't think that will be the case. (Z)

Who's Running? (Democratic Edition)

Yesterday, we had a rundown of the 2024 Republican field, as it appears to be shaping up at the moment. Right now, that contest appears to be Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Donald Trump and... everyone else. But it's a long ways until the election, and there is plenty of time for the two "frontrunners" to go the Rudy/Jeb!/Hillary 2008 route, and for someone else to rise to the top of the heap.

The same is true for the Democratic field, excepting that instead of two frontrunner candidates, there's just one. And that one, Joe Biden, is rather less likely to be knocked from his perch than either DeSantis or Trump. But he's hardly a sure thing, especially since nobody, even an incumbent, is a sure thing. So, here's a rundown of the 2024 field, in our view, from most to least likely to secure the blue team's nomination. Note that, despite the headline, none of these folks (beyond Biden) has given the slightest indication they are running. We just have to speculate that they might be doing a little maneuvering behind the scenes:

We are working on a tracking poll idea, of sorts, once we clear the backlog of content we've got. So, keep an eye out for that. (Z)

Back to the Future, Part I: Bad Predictions Abounded for 2022

Politico editor Zack Stanton makes a list of predictions about politics and things politics-adjacent gone wrong every year. This one was no exception. He notes that bad predictions fall into three rough categories. First, sometimes someone carefully looks at all the data and makes a careful prediction, but the world has different ideas. Many pundits looked at inflation, gas prices, general dissatisfaction in the country, and historical trends and concluded there would be a huge red wave. They were all wrong. Second is wishcasting, where someone is predicting something that they want to happen, even if the facts suggest otherwise. Third is "I know better but I have to rally the troops." Here is a selection from the complete list, sorted on date:

Of course making predictions is hard—especially about the future. Tomorrow, we will take a look at the list of pundit predictions that we compiled at the start of 2022. (V)

2023 Elections, Part II: Foreign Elections

Last week, we took a look at the biggest domestic elections scheduled for 2023. Now, let's run down the biggest foreign elections (and recall that, unlike the U.S., many nations allow snap elections, so there could plausibly be a surprise entrant or two to the list next year):

Those are the biggies, at least for now. Again, it's well within the realm of possibility that other nations will have to hold currently unscheduled elections sometime in 2023. Heck, these days, you can pretty much already pencil in the U.K. and Israel for that. (Z)

The Word Cup, Part XI: Group E (Reactionary Slogans), Round Two

Let's get this back on track! We've had so much material in the last couple of weeks that there just wasn't room. Recall that since ties are relatively common in soccer, we've decided that any matchup decided by less than 5% of the vote will count as a tie. And with that said, here are the results (winners in bold):

Slogan 1 Pct. Slogan 2 Pct.
The Chinese Must Go! 43.2% Kill the Indian, Save the Man 56.8%
The Chinese Must Go! 9.7% Better Dead than Red 90.3%
The Chinese Must Go! 20.1% Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever 79.9%
Kill the Indian, Save the Man 17.4% Better Dead than Red 82.6%
Kill the Indian, Save the Man 22.3% Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever 77.7%
Better Dead than Red 39.2% Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever 60.8%

That produces these results for Group E, Round One:

Slogan W L T
Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever 3 0 0
Better Dead than Red 2 0 1
Kill the Indian, Save the Man 1 0 2
The Chinese Must Go! 0 0 3

Somewhere, the ghost of Denis Kearney is shedding a tear. Once again, slogan A (Better Dead than Red, in this case) had the better performance against common opponents, but slogan B (Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever, in this case) had the far better performance head-to-head.

Here are some reader comments on this round:

B.S. in Ottawa, ON, Canada, writes: I would be blown away if "Better Dead Than Red" didn't come out of this group as the top seed. The first two are fairly well aged, and while they were impactful for the time, perhaps didn't linger around in popular memory so much. "Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever!" made a big splash at the time but it was the scream of someone about to take their biggest loss with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Whereas "Better Dead Than Red" still plays today, almost a hundred years later, any time a Republican wants to paint a Democrat as a freedom-hatin', money-redistributin', social class-upliftin' socialist (and ensure that the base ignores that they're suddenly in favor of Russia).


G.M. in Vista, CA, writes: Although George Wallace's statement is emblematic of its time, it is definitely not the most famous or impactful of the four. It was the battle cry of an already failing cause with less time in service than the F-80. By 1967, Governor (Lurleen) Wallace's attempt to stall integration by making it a school-level function had backfired, with one suit victory before the Supreme Court forcing immediate integration in all schools. Even new Georgia governor Lester Maddox, who explicitly ran on a pro-segregation platform in '66, turned out to be not quite as bad as feared (not terrific, but not quite as bad).

As for Wallace's personal fortunes, '68 turned out to be his swan song. For immersive purposes, I read the local paper every day from 55 years ago. And as I write this, today, December 7, 1967, he is in my hometown stumping for votes for his Presidential bid. In a decade, he's going to get shot and then personally recant for his awfulness.

So my vote is for any of the other three for causing the most damage rather than reflecting the most damage.


J.M. in Stamford, CT, writes: This one was easy: "Better Dead Than Red" is both the catchiest and easiest to remember, and had at least as much impact on U.S. history as any of the others. As you noted, can we say "Korean War," "McCarthyism," and "Vietnam War" without thinking that it's better that many people die or have their lives ruined than risk the onset of Godless Communism either at home or abroad?

Second is "The Chinese Must Go!", not because it's memorable or catchy but because it does capture the long and hateful career of anti-East Asian sentiment among nativist Americans in the 19th and well into the 20th centuries. Short on memorability but long on impact, in other words.

"Segregation Now, etc." is memorable for its rhetorical flourishes of triple repetition and hyperbole, but its impact is actually quite minimal, as your writeup concedes. Segregation barely made it to Tomorrow, much less to Forever. 10 points for rhetoric and memorability, 0 points for impact on American life.

The slogan about the attempted assimilation of the American Indian was new to me, for all that it refers to a fraught and long-term issue in our history. So it's Numbah Foah in my book (I'm originally from the Boston area). I am surprised you didn't propose instead the even less ambiguous and much better known alternative in a parallel vein about the same social issue: The Only Good Indian is a Dead Indian.


S.S. in West Hollywood, CA, writes: The "Reactionary Slogans" did not sit well with me. Why would you make a game out of these racist and offensive slogans that had done so much harm to so many? I don't find that entertaining and I really don't think it provides a benefit to the readership. I think it's in poor taste and respectfully ask you to consider that before moving forward on something like this next time. (Maybe I'm being hypocritical for even voting, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for any of the overt hateful slogans, so I voted for "Better Dead than Red" only and left all the others blank.)


P.W. in Springwater, NY, writes: It's amazing—sadly—how many of these slogans resonate today. Today we have "Build the Wall" and the "crisis" at the southern border. Although the arguments are different, the focus still seems to be on who is deserving of entry into the U.S. The attitude that immigrants from south and central America are not welcome—both those seeking a better life, as well as asylum seekers fleeing so that they can stay alive—has similar racial undertones to "The Chinese Must Go." Instead of "taking gold that 'belonged' to the white man" they are supposedly taking their jobs (and bringing in all manner of diseases and drugs). Labeling some people as "the other" has not changed in over 170 years.

"Better Dead than Red" seems almost quaint given the end of the Cold War, until you listen to Republicans who call every program the Democrats put forth socialist and who attempt to scare the population that the U.S. is only a few years away from losing "our culture" and turning into a communist nightmare. And while they are not actively promoting cultural genocide ("Kill the Indian, Save the Man"), Christian Nationalism certainly seems to suggest that the country would be better off if we all simply accepted the idea that the only "right" culture is one defined by right-wing Christianity and that the government should actively promote (or enforce?) that.

Finally, there is "Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever." Echoes of that can be heard in the recent attempts to suppress voters of color, but the bottom line is that the slogan suggests that the rights of some should supersede the rights of others, be they the rights of minorities, the rights of women, the rights of the LBGTQ+ community, etc. So maybe the impact, as you suggested, was nebulous, but I would argue that the sentiment that some of us are privileged and others are not has never died.


S.D.R. in Raleigh, NC, writes: Time Magazine has repeatedly said over the years that their Person of the Year is intended as acknowledgment of impact, not an award for positive impact. The general public still views it as the latter, and Time itself has made some obvious concessions to this fact over the years (for example: their 2001 Person of the Year was not Osama bin Laden). By a similar token, I expect your comment that "the standard here is impact, not necessarily positive impact" will have little effect. Once any of these slogans get out of group play, they will likely fall in fairly short order no matter who they're up against, simply because no one wants them to win.

The ballot, pitting the martial slogans against the reactionary slogans, is here. And we are very glad to receive comments on this round here.


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