Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
“After the chaos of the first week of the 118th Congress, many Americans wondered: If it took them 15 ballots just to choose a speaker, how could Republicans possibly govern? Now we know. They are going to govern by fantasy and legislate on the basis of fiction,” Dana Milbank writes.
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“Dozens of voting members of the Democratic National Committee met Friday to organize a new voting bloc to push for changes to the internal governance of the national party and send more money to state party groups,” The Washington Post’s Michael Scherer reports.
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“According to statistics from the Brookings Institution and CQ Roll Call’s own calculations, the 116th Congress was actually the most productive since the 80th in 1947–48, the farthest back Brookings’ data goes,” Jim Saksa writes for CQ Roll Call.
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Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg writes: “The Republican threat to America’s constitutional experiment has led me to ask: What is our plan to save it? Here’s mine.”
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“Republicans will claim they’re on the side of parents and family values, but they will do nothing for actual parents … nothing on child care, nothing on paid leave … they’ll ban books but do nothing about guns,” Clinton said.
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“According to the Miami Herald’s tally, 5,428 people’s party affiliation changed between the October and January registration files. Many of the changes were concentrated in multi-family residential buildings, often low-income housing, raising questions about whether the changes are part of a targeted effort,” reporters Bianca Padró Ocasio and Claudia Chacin write.
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“He clearly doesn’t care about being labeled a hypocrite. It just doesn’t bother him. He is brazen about it. That’s one of the cynical sides of Mitch. He doesn’t care. If it’s expedient, he’ll do it,” U.S. Representative John Yarmuth said.
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“The reality is that politics is complex and somewhat unpredictable — with a lot of voters who are regularly changing or just forming views on issues and also changing who they vote for or whether they vote in the first place,” Perry Bacon Jr. writes.
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“The neoliberal order seems to be collapsing. A generation of young activists is trying to insure that it’s replaced by progressive populism, not by the fascist right,” Andrew Marantz writes for The New Yorker.
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Many in the Republican Party want public policy that is explicitly tied to fundamentalist Judeo-Christian religious beliefs. But they don’t even practice what they preach.
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The move signifies that Biden is a team player committed to the Democratic Party. In 2009, Barack Obama and his advisers chose to keep campaign data in the hands of a semi-separate outfit called Organizing For America.
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Speaking to The Washington Post, Amy Edmonds explained what has happened to her since she started questioning Donald Trump’s deep web of lies following the 2020 presidential election.
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“Increasingly the Democratic Party is divided into two camps: those who favor the ideas of Warren/AOC/Sanders now, versus those who will favor these same Warren/AOC/Sanders ideas in 3-4 years, when those ideas are more in the political consensus,” Perry Bacon Jr. writes.
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“Twenty-nine Democratic National Committee members have joined a call for structural reforms to increase transparency and ensure fairness in the nominating process,” David Moore writes.
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Writer Edward-Issac Dovere takes a look at the Democratic Party’s plan to win the Wolverine State in 2020 after losing to Donald Trump by less than 11,000 votes in 2016, which emphasizes facets of big organizing and local control.
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A Slate columnist says that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is taking an increasing number of progressive positions, aligning himself with Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, and Ron Wyden, and going further than Joe Biden has in embracing policy directions we need.
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This joint event hosted by the Washington State Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Oregon showcased progressive leaders from the Pacific Northwest like U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal on the eve of the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
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“No one, even McConnell can herd these cats. The party – from top electeds to think tankers to party officials to voters — has become one big swarming mass of hack pundits competing to go viral.”
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Jennifer Epstein and Tyler Pager of Bloomberg: “This cycle, Biden’s team is working more closely with the DNC than any candidate in recent history, according to interviews with more than 20 veteran Democratic operatives. The two teams coordinate strategy on advertising, fundraising and messaging and share operational costs in ways that Clinton and Barack Obama did not do with the party.”
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“Expect to understand more about the best in modern political campaigning, and a chance to hear some inside stories from this year’s campaign.”
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Republican consultant Stuart Stevens: “Trump was the moral test, and the Republican Party failed… It’s an utter disaster for the long-term fate of the Party. The Party has become an obsession with power without purpose.”
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