Jim Eagle is swooping in for the kill
What a day
Welcome to a premium Thursday edition of Progressives Everywhere!
Lots to talk about tonight, forget the small talk, let’s get to it!
Important News You Need to Know
Voting Rights
It’s been a busy day, largely packed with bummer headlines. Still, there are a few happier items to report, so let’s start out with a few good items.
New Jersey: Democrats are set to make voting dramatically more accessible with a slate of bills that Gov. Phil Murphy is eager to sign. The proposals will include:
Expanding early voting to 10 days and introducing weekend voting
Distribute drop boxes more widely
Fund new voting machines and more poll workers.
New Jersey Democrats still operate on a machine system, but expanding access to voting could help reduce the dominance of that old-school way of doing politics.
Iowa: The state House unanimously approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would return the right to vote to former felons, should voters approve it in a ballot initiative in 2022. The 94-0 margin of victory is pretty great to see, but the House also passed this bill in 2019 and 2020, only to have the state Senate refuse to take it up for consideration. Gov. Kim Reynolds returned voting rights to some former felons last year via executive order and has called for the Senate to pass the measure, but it’s unclear whether they’ll take her up on it this time around.
National: In his first press conference as the big dog of the White House, President Joe Biden today came out swinging on both the filibuster and voting rights. He gave his most aggressive comments on Republican obstruction yet, sounding little like the institutionalist who insisted that bipartisan comity would ensue when Democrats took over the federal government. Seemingly resigned to his party having to go it alone to enact his ambitious agenda, he ripped Republicans for their obstruction and again said that he’s come around on at least reforming the filibuster.
On voting rights, he projected a bit more idealism while still taking Republicans to task for their assaults on democracy. He called the many state bills aimed at making it more difficult for people of color to vote “un-American,” which is certainly a rosy view of American history. Biden also called the suppression bills “despicable,” which was more accurate.
On a lighter note, if that’s possible, Biden uncorked a zinger of a grandpa joke, remarking that Republicans were “making Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.”
In my dream scenario, he was alluding to Sam the Eagle, the toxically patriotic and haughty muppet, but I think Biden was just trying to underline the severity of these voter suppression laws.
It’s a funny little turn of phrase, the sort of thing baseball great Casey Stengel might have said back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, though it’s hard to really laugh all that much when these assaults on voter rights are sailing through as we speak.
OK, now on to the not-so-great stuff…
Georgia: The endgame has arrived. This afternoon, the state Assembly voted to approve a 96-page omnibus bill stacked with various clauses that will make it harder for people in urban areas (ie Black people) to vote. The state Senate then quenched its thirst for anti-democratic racism by following up with its own vote to approve the same bill, sending it to Gov. Brian Kemp, the king of the voter purge, who signed it into law.
After all the sneaky treachery of early morning hearings and last-minute bill drops, Republicans wound up striking the ban on Sunday voting and kept Sunday early voting. Still, plenty of terrible provisions survived, including:
Moving runoff elections from nine weeks to four weeks after Election Day, which will create far more work for election administrators and disproportionately curtail voting by Black Georgians;
Requiring voter ID on absentee ballots, which hundreds of thousands of voters do not have;
Permitting unlimited ballot challenges by partisan observers;
Giving broad powers to the state legislature to take over local elections.
A bunch of white guys surrounded Kemp as he signed the bill, while a Black Democratic legislator was arrested for showing up to the ceremony:
We’re truly watching the resurrection of autocracy rise before our eyes. The only way to stop it, as Biden suggested, is passing voting rights legislation in the Senate. So what’s the status on that?
D’oh Manchin: I know that Joe Manchin feels like he needs to play it moderate and look like the ultimate Democratic holdout, but voting rights shouldn’t be part of this act. They’re too sacred and urgent and Manchin’s approach has been truly damaging thus far.
Today, Manchin released a long statement on the For the People Act and voting rights generally, and while it’s not entirely egregious, some of what he says — and all of what he leaves out — is more proof that he’s either astoundingly ignorant or so driven by ego that he’d rather watch American democracy burn than make minor concessions.
Here’s a sampling:
Even though our democratic institutions have survived foreign interference and a violent attempt to enter the United States Capitol during the counting of Electoral College votes, America’s declining trust in the government and each other makes it harder to solve key problems. That trust will continue to diminish unless we, as members of Congress, transcend partisanship to strengthen our democracy by protecting voting rights, implementing commonsense election security reforms, and making our campaign finance system more transparent.
The timing of the above statement is painfully ironic, given not only what happened in Georgia today, but what’s happening all over the country. Republicans in Michigan, for example, just introduced 39 separate voter suppression bills, which would become law if it weren’t for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s veto pen.
In short, Republicans aren’t going to compromise. And that’s not conjecture — the AP reported earlier this week that Sen. Ted Cruz is rallying the troops and making sure they make no “concessions” on voting rights. In fact, the entirety of the vast right-wing infrastructure is mobilizing around voter suppression in states across the country, making it their number one priority.
Here’s an excerpt from that AP story:
Asked if there was room to compromise, Cruz was blunt: “No.”
“H.R. 1′s only objective is to ensure that Democrats can never again lose another election, that they will win and maintain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate and of the state legislatures for the next century,” Cruz said told the group organized by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed, conservative group that provides model legislation to state legislators.
Clearly, bipartisanship isn’t going to happen on this. But it’s not actually the delusional calls for bipartisanship that are the most frustrating part of Manchin’s long statement. It’s this quote from Manchin that has me eating my proverbial hat:
Pushing through legislation of this magnitude on a partisan basis may garner short-term benefits, but will inevitably only exacerbate the distrust that millions of Americans harbor against the U.S. government.
Manchin is repeating a cynical Republican talking point that is being used to justify voter suppression. He must know that, right? He is echoing and legitimizing the BS about distrust in election systems that was born out of the GOP’s Big Lie. This is the absolute worst thing he could be doing.
The rest of his piece highlights some important elements of the For the People Act, such as expanding early voting and helping historically oppressed people gain access to the ballot. But he says nothing about gerrymandering, which is the most important part of this whole thing. Republicans have control of far more state governments than Democrats and are already beginning to stack the deck to gerrymander legislative and Congressional districts even further, as we’ve seen in states like Arizona.
A handful of other Democrats may be iffy on ending the filibuster, but they’re also firm on needing to pass the For the People Act. In an op-ed published in the Washington Post yesterday, Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said that he considers voting rights to be so important that he would approve a special rule that removes the 60 vote threshold in order to pass protections.
“I should mention that I believe voting rights are a special case that we must address in light of the nakedly partisan voter-suppression legislation pending in many states,” Sen. King wrote. “All-out opposition to reasonable voting rights protections cannot be enabled by the filibuster; if forced to choose between a Senate rule and democracy itself, I know where I will come down.”
I hope someone can get a copy of this op-end in front of Manchin, and quick.
Health Care
Missouri: It was a big deal last year when voters in Missouri approved a ballot initiative to expand Medicaid, even though the GOP tried to sabotage it by sticking during a low-turnout August election. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen time and again, Republicans no longer respect democracy and they’ve never really been into implementing the will of voters in ballot initiatives, and Missouri Republicans are proving no different.
Today, GOP legislators blocked a bill that would fund the voter-approved Medicaid expansion from reaching the floor of the state House. Instead of giving some specious argument about process, they basically straight-up just said they didn’t want to give 230,000 low-income Missourians health care.
“Rural Missouri said no,” said Rep. Sara Walsh, a rural Republican, said. “I don’t believe it is the will of the people to bankrupt our state.”
Apparently, only the voices of rural voters in Missouri, which has two major cities in St. Louis and Kansas City, actually count. (A third of rural voters said yes to the initiative, by the way.) It’s a cruel, racist, and flatly fascist stance to take, especially when you look at the barbaric terms of Missouri’s current Medicaid program:
Missouri’s Medicaid program does not currently cover most adults without children. Only the disabled, children and parents with incomes under 18% of federal poverty level — less than $5,800 a year for a family of four — are eligible. It is one of the lowest eligibility thresholds in the nation. The expansion will allow adults earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level to be covered.
Just astonishingly awful.
Horror Shows
Amazon: Today marks the 110th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, one of the grisliest tragedies of the late 1800s and a seminal moment in labor history. Predicting the table of contents in future history books is always dicey, but it feels safe to say that the Amazon unionization drive in Bessemer, Alabama, which ends early next week, has a shot at being another huge moment in labor history.
Amazon is doing whatever it can to stop unionization (read this latest report), fearing that it could spur other campaigns and force it to recognize the humanity of warehouse employees. It’s obviously getting desperate because the company’s normally disciplined PR department is making silly mistakes and how should I say this, really shitting the bed. Or, pissing the bottle, if you will:
This went wildly viral last night, leading to nearly 24 hours of jokes and, thanks to intrepid reporter Ken Klippenstein at The Intercept, confirmation that overworked Amazon employees at their warehouses really are often forced to pee in bottles to keep up with the impossible demands of supervisors. It’s a gnarly story, but one that is essential reading to understand just how awful things have gotten for millions of workers.
Rush Limbaugh: After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered flags lowered to half-mast to honor the late demon king of hate speech radio and Wisconsin Republicans passed a resolution to recognize the vile right-wing AM dial terrorist, Republicans in Missouri today pushed forward a bill to create an actual Rush Limbaugh Day. They truly set the standards for sociopathic legislating today, didn’t they?
Polls
Florida: Despite being inexplicably hailed as some kind of conquering hero by the national press, Gov. Ron DeSantis isn’t fairing particularly well with voters in the state right now. My guess? It’s probably got something to do with the disastrous unemployment system, the giant mobs of spring breakers in Miami, and the radically corrupt vaccine distribution he’s overseen. In any case, a new poll released today finds DeSantis in a dead heat with one of his most likely 2022 Democratic challengers, state Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried.
The poll found the incumbent Republican Governor and the potential Democratic challenger both taking about 45% of the vote. A close look shows DeSantis winning 45.2% to Fried’s 44.6%, a difference far smaller than the survey’s 2.2% margin of error.
The poll finds DeSantis holding 76% Republican support, while Fried has less than 72% among Democrats, showing the incumbent performing better with his own base. But 46% of independents favor Fried, compared to 42% who prefer DeSantis.
The fact that Fried isn’t doing as well with her own party likely has something to do with the state’s shift to the right, as long-time Democrats began boarding the Trump train in 2020. But so long as the Florida Democratic Party can clean up its mess and begin actually reaching out to voters and delivering a cohesive message (as we outlined on Sunday), that number should go up, giving Fried a real shot at unseating DeSantis.
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