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In the effort to reassert some influence over negotiations involving the breadth and scope of Coronavirus relief legislation, Republicans made a bad bet. They played politics, cynically appealing to the threat posed by a ballooning debt at a time when fiscal prudence is a tertiary concern. Republicans were duly savaged in the press and, ultimately, retreated from this indefensible terrain. The magnitude of the crisis demanded it. Democrats observed all this and promptly went about making all the GOPs same mistakes.

On Sunday night, and again on Monday afternoon, Senate Democrats failed to support a motion to open debate on a massive $2 trillion economic assistance bill. That bill, a product of bipartisan negotiations, briefly collapsed amid what the minority party claimed were provisions that provided big corporations with too much relief and not enough oversight. But hours before Sunday nights vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi inserted herself into negotiations by promising to introduce her own relief bill that would compete with the Senates version, helping to scuttle an emerging consensus in the upper chamber of Congress. It was one of the most politically ill-considered documents this crisis has yet produced.

The House legislation was loaded up with giveaways and sops to favored Democratic interest groups. The bill included $33 million for NOAA, $100 million to NASA for construction and environmental compliance, $300 million for PBS, $500 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, $90 million to fund AIDS research, $35 million to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and even a conspicuous $7 million to a Washington D.C.-based charter school to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus.

That bill would compel struggling airlines to substantially offset their carbon emissions. It would force the firms that received relief to maintain officials and budget dedicated diversity and inclusion initiatives. It would establish programs to expand the use of minority banks and minority credit unions, and require federal departments to utilize their services. It would bail out the U.S. Postal Service and strengthen collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions. It would establish federal guidelines for early voting and same-day voter registration.

Some of these are doubtlessly worthy goals. Others are shameless panders to pro-Democratic interest groups. Most of these provisions are of little relevance to the Americans suffering amid an acute crisis that demands immediate action. Pelosis intervention in the process was a reckless act that contributed to yet another day of bloodletting on Wall Street. What mass delusion led Democrats to presume that such an odious document would do anything other than backfire on them? Possibly the same assumption that led Democrats to corral themselves in a box canyon in January of 2018: that the press would always come to their rescue.

Then, amid an impasse over the fate of Barack Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Democrats engineered a government shutdown with the expectation that they could control the narrative and secure a quick political victory. They counted on the press to overlook the fact that Democrats had demanded the restoration of long-term funding for the Childrens Health Insurance Program from Republicans and, when they got it, voted against it. They counted on the voters, to say nothing of the partys more moderate members, to be as committed to the legal status of illegal immigrants as the partys activist class. They counted on the conventional wisdom, which held that the GOP, as the party of limited government, would always get the blame for a government shutdown no matter which party was truly responsible for it. All those assumptions collapsed under Democrats, and, within days, the party sued for peace.

Perhaps Democrats operated under the same presumptions that failed them in 2018. Maybe they expected the press to forgive the obscenities in the House bill because, as Majority Whip James Clyburn reportedly said, This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision. Certainly, some reliably complacent venues like the New York Times editorial board complied, but the risible effort appears to have dissuaded more reputable institutions from following suit. Whatever the flawed premise under which Democrats were operating, its implosion was swift. By Tuesday morning, Pelosi had suddenly warmed to the bipartisan Senate bill. If Democrats have benefited at all from the beneficence of the press, its that theyve managed to avoid being reprimanded for their callousness and scorned for their ignominious retreat.

Link:
Democrats Wrongly Thought Media Would Cover for Their Overreach - Commentary Magazine

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks to the media while visiting the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, which will be partially converted into a hospital for patients affected by coronavirus, March 23, 2020. (Mike Segar/Reuters)Its not out of the question if Biden keeps looking out of touch and irrelevant.

Democrats are publicly talking about contingency options for their July convention in Milwaukee in case the coronavirus persists in being a public-health threat. But privately, some are also talking about needing a Plan B if Joe Biden, their nominee apparent, continues to flounder.

Some Democrats are openly talking up New York governor Andrew Cuomo, whose profile has soared during the crisis, as a Biden stand-in. Yesterday, a Draft Cuomo 2020 account on Twitter announced that Times have changed & we need Gov. Cuomo to be the nominee. Our next POTUS must be one w/an ability to lead thru this crisis.

Charles Pierce, the politics blogger for Esquire magazine, wrote a piece headlined With Two Words, Andrew Cuomo Established Himself as the Leader This Country Needs Now. He enthused that Cuomos news conference last Friday essentially (shutting) down the economy of his state . . . was a master class in leveling with the public.

Fueled by favorable national publicity that governors rarely get, Cuomo has quickly become the standard-bearer for liberals who dont want to quickly open up parts the economy at the same time we combat the coronavirus. This Tuesday, the governor tweeted: We are not willing to sacrifice 1-2% of New Yorkers. Thats not who we are. We will fight to save every life we can. I am not giving up. Last weekend, Cuomo told reporters he might go into Manhattan himself to yell You are wrong at people defying his lockdown.

Democrats are increasingly worried that Joe Biden will have trouble being relevant and compelling in the long four months between now and when he is nominated in July. Lloyd Constantine, who was a senior policy adviser to New York governor Eliot Spitzer from 2007 to 2008, puts it bluntly: Biden is a melting ice cube. Those of us who have closely watched as time ravaged the once sharp or even brilliant minds of loved ones and colleagues, recognize what is happening to the good soldier Joe.

Indeed, Biden seemed to disappear when the virus began dominating the news cycle early in March. Bidens media presence abruptly shriveled, writes Kalev Leetaru, a senior fellow at the George Washington University Center for Cyber & Homeland Security. In contrast, daily mentions of Cuomo as of last Sunday accounted for 1.4 percent of online news coverage compared with 2.9 percent for Trump.

In an attempt to remain relevant, Bidens campaign team hastily built a TV studio in the basement of his Wilmington, Del., home and began streaming daily appearances by him from it this week. They have not gone well.

In his first outing on Monday, Biden looked as he were lost somewhere on the set of Waynes World, the 1990s comedy movie that pretended it was a public-access cable show broadcast from a basement.

Biden stumbled, slurred his words, misnamed one of the nations governors, lost his train of thought, and had to desperately signal to staff for help while he was on camera.

A Tuesday appearance went no better, even though it was with a friendly liberal group of interviewers from ABCs The View. We have to take care of the cure. That will make the problem worse no matter what no matter what, Biden asserted to universal head scratching. He attempted to pick up on Cuomos assertion that lives must be the absolute priority in the crisis but with limited success:Idont agreewith thenotionthatsomehow its okaytoletthe let people dieand Im not surethatwould happen.

Liberal pundits arent even trying to defend Bidens recent media performances. Alex Wagner, a former MSNBC anchor and current co-host of Showtimes political-magazine show The Circus, wrote a piece this week for The Atlantic magazine called: Stay Alive, Joe Biden: Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence. She discussed Bidens current status as if he barely existed: Biden was never really convincing anyone on the stump his political power at this point is an idea, held collectively, about how to defeat Trump.

Of course, the mathematics of how Governor Cuomo could be drafted to become the Democratic nominee are daunting. He has zero delegates and no campaign and cant be seen as being distracted by politics during a crisis. But Emily Zanotti of The Daily Wire says that if states continue to postpone or cancel upcoming primaries, a window of opportunity could be there: Cuomomay be able to fill a hole for needy Democrats who are concerned that neither of the two frontrunners, [Bernie] Sanders and Biden, are within striking distance of winning a majority of delegates and the Democratic nomination outright.

And strange things happen in politics. In 1940, businessman Wendell Willkie didnt enter a single primary, his supporters pinning their hopes on a receptive audience of delegates at the Republican convention. Skeptic Alice Roosevelt Longworth sneered that his support came from the grass roots of 10,000 country clubs.

Then the Nazi blitzkrieg struck. Adolf Hitler overran the Low Countries and France in May and June of 1940. The French signed an armistice on June 22, the day Willkie arrived in Philadelphia for the Republican convention. The international crisis and how the party should respond to it dominated delegate deliberations. After a series of carefully orchestrated spontaneous demonstrations of delegate support, Willkie was nominated on the sixth ballot. His campaign stumbled in the fall and he lost 55 percent to 45 percent to incumbent Franklin Roosevelt. But he achieved something no one had thought possible by even getting nominated.

Of course, much has changed since 1940, and conventions are no longer such free-wheeling affairs as they were then. But Democrats know that politics has again become fluid and surprising in recent years witness the strength of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in their respective parties.

Joe Biden began his presidential campaign as the front-runner last year. Then he was almost eclipsed by crushing losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, only to be rescued by a landslide victory in South Carolina. He of all people knows that if we look at how the nomination battle has gone so far, nothing is really over until its over.

Follow this link:
Could a Draft Cuomo Movement Be in the Democrats Future? - National Review

Voters heading to the polls in November will see three Democratic options for three Summit County Council seats, almost certainly assuring the body will remain unanimously Democratic.

The real race for the candidates in the two contested races, then, is getting their name on the November ballot, something that will be decided in a June primary or, if candidates get enough delegate support, at the Democratic county convention next week.

That raised the stakes for the Summit County Democratic Party caucus, which on Tuesday decided the roughly 100 people who will vote at the county convention and was held remotely for the first time due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Meredith Reed is the chair of the Summit County Democratic Party and she reported some ups and downs with the unprecedented call-in caucus, but that overall it was a success and the party might want to use some aspects of the system in the future.

Turnout was tremendous, Reed said. We were blown away. We had lots of people saying thank you.

More than 400 people registered to participate in the caucus, more than 200 indicated interest in serving as a delegate for their respective precincts and 340 called in Tuesday to vote for a delegate to represent their neighborhood at the county convention.

There are 45 voting precincts in Summit County and two people are selected from each to serve as voting delegates at the county convention, scheduled to take place on Thursday. The precincts are geographically bound and roughly correspond to neighborhoods. For each area that had more than two people interested in becoming a delegate, voters were asked to list their preferences in a ranked-choice voting process.

That led to a long night of vote tabulating, Reed said. Once the dust settled, 104 people had been selected as delegates 82 precinct delegates and 22 publicly elected officials and party officeholders.

Since no Republicans are running for county elected office, there will only be Democratic names on the ballot, barring a write-in candidacy. Summit County Republicans canceled their caucus and county convention, chair Jennifer McDonald said.

There are five people running for three County Council seats: Council Chair Doug Clyde is running unopposed; Snyderville Basin Planning Commissioners Malena Stevens and Canice Harte are vying for the seat currently held by Kim Carson, who is retiring; and two-term County Councilor Roger Armstrong is running against newcomer Jill Fellow.

Clyde is virtually assured of his partys nomination. The other two races would go to a June 30 primary unless one of the candidates gets 60% of the vote at the county convention.

That would mean a threshold of 63 of the 104 delegates, but Reed said there will likely be fewer than 100 delegates who vote. The threshold is 60% of voters, not of total delegates.

The four candidates received a list at noon on Monday of the 410 people who had registered to participate in the caucus. In the end, those people selected 82 delegates from the more than 200 who had indicated interest in serving. In years past, the candidates would travel to three county caucus sites one each in Park City, North Summit and South Summit and deliver short speeches to each precinct. This year, that couldnt happen, and the candidates had limited time to make their pitches.

Reed noted a truncated calendar was not set by the county party, with the deadline to file for office being Thursday, March 19, and the caucus the following Tuesday.

Stevens said the constraints on the caucus made it more challenging to interact with individual members of each precinct.

Emails and phone calls became even more critical components of the campaign with the virtual caucus and will continue to be as we move forward to the Democratic Convention, Stevens wrote in an email.

Harte said that, while he was making as many phone calls as he could, the abbreviated schedule increased his reliance on friends and family to help communicate his message to potential delegates.

Armstrong said he had some late nights trying to communicate with his fellow Democrats, estimating he wrote 350 or 400 emails over four days.

Fellow took a more hands-off approach, saying the change motivated her to spread a message of community engagement and that the unusual circumstances might bring more voices to the table.

At some point, telling people which neighbor to vote for just seemed like interfering with community engagement, Fellow wrote in an email. I was hoping neighbors would call each other and talk about the issues.

It appears the convention will go ahead as scheduled on April 2, Reed said, though exactly how that will happen has yet to be determined.

She said shed like to run the convention in a similar way as the caucus, with people calling in, but that presents logistical challenges like how to keep votes anonymous. She also noted the county party has less control over how to run the convention, taking cues from the state party. She said it appears likely convention voting will be done by mail.

Though the caucus was grueling for executive committee members, Reed said there were some benefits to the change. For one, it increased access for those who couldnt spend multiple hours in a school gymnasium on a weeknight. Another benefit was that people announced their intention to run as delegates before the day of the caucus, potentially allowing others in their neighborhood to weigh their choices more carefully.

Weve really tried hard to make it as accessible as possible, Reed said.

Read this article:
Turnout 'tremendous' for the Summit County Democrats' call-in caucus, influencing two County Council races - The Park Record

Right-wing broadcaster Josh Bernstein, who claimed just last month that the only options on the November ballot were Trump or death, now wants to cancel the presidential election altogether because Democrats dont deserve to challenge Trump.

In times like this, you should be kissing the ground that President Trump walks on, Bernstein said. You have a true leader in the White House that is handling this thing and doing the best job possible. If this was a Democrat? Forget it. There would be hundreds, thousands of more people dead already.

Sure. By firing the pandemic team, downplaying the seriousness of the threat when he could have acted, and claiming the virus is no worse than the flu, Trump saved lives.

Everything makes sense when facts dont matter.

I say we just cancel the election, he added. Give President Trump until 2024 to not only get the economy back roaring again, but get rid of this virus. But you know what, Democrats? You havent earned the right to even challenge this man. Why? Because you tried to usurp his power from the beginning with your Russian coup. Then you tried again with the Ukraine coup. Then you tried to impeach him for absolutely nothing. And now we have this.

I dont recall anyone making this argument when Bill Clinton was impeached. The fact that Bernstein dismisses, entirely, the backbone of the impeachment case, the numerous instances of corruption uncovered in it, the corruption that occurred before the election, and the endless examples of Trumps lack of character and integrity, theres no reason to keep him in office at this point.

Weve suffered enough.

You have stolen the first term away from this president, and hes still been successful despite all your bull, and all your garbage, and all your horrible rhetoric, and all your opposition, and all the horrible things youve done with the deep state and everybody else, Bernstein fumed. You dont deserve the right to even run in 2020. How dare you even have the audacity to run anyone against this president.

As for successful, hes wrong on every count, but just look at what Trump has done to the stock market his favorite measure of success to see why even his usual base may be turning away.

Of course, elections are written into the Constitution. That used to matter to Republicans once upon a time. Somehow, criticizing Trump and rightfully so gives him power to rule as a dictator even though free speech, too, is in the Constitution.

This is a fringe view, but make no mistake, it wont just be people like Bernstein saying it in coming months. Republicans love changing the rules if it gives them more power. Theyll try to cancel the elections if it looks like theyre going to lose. Dont fall for it.

***Update***: This is hilarious. After Bernstein realized Trump would no longer be president if an election doesnt take place, he took back everything he said about canceling the election.

He admits what he said earlier wasnt 100% accurate.

(via Right Wing Watch)

Read the original:
MAGA Cultist: We Should Cancel the Elections Since Democrats Haven't Earned It - Patheos

Progressives are demanding that the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives prioritize removing a little-noticed provision in the massive Senate-passed coronavirus stimulus bill that would allow employers to stop paying into Social Security for at least the rest of the yearpotentially threatening the program's long-term financial health.

"If Trump and Republicans retain power after November's elections, they will make sure that corporations never repay Social Security." Michael Phelan, Social Security Works

Section 2302 of the nearly 900-page legislation would let companies defer until next year their payment of the employer payroll tax, one of the primary funding mechanisms for Social Security. The bill would require that companies pay 50% of their owed 2020 payroll taxes by December 31, 2021.

While the section has thus far received little media attention, advocacy group Social Security Works said the language authorizes an "insidious attack" on the New Deal-era program and must be stripped out before final passage.

The House is expected to vote on the bill as early as Friday.

"The Democrats are walking right into the trap," Michael Phelan, deputy director of Social Security Works, warned in an email Wednesday night ahead of the Senate vote. "If Trump and Republicans retain power after November's elections, they will make sure that corporations never repay Social Security. Then, Republicans will use the reduced trust fund as an excuse to destroy our Social Security system."

"The only way to escape this trap is to avoid stepping into it in the first place," said Phelan. "That's why the House must remove the cut to Social Security's dedicated funding before this bill passes."

Social Security Works urged the public to call their representatives and pressure them to remove the employer payroll tax deferral:

The Senate bill would let corporations stop paying into Social Security for the rest of the year. But the House can still fix it.

Call your Rep. at 202-224-3121 TODAY. Tell them:

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1. Remove the cut to Social Securitys funding

2. Increase Social Security benefits by $200/month

SocialSecurityWorks (@SSWorks) March 25, 2020

In a letter to senators last week, Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, denounced the proposal to defer employer payroll taxes as a serious threat to "Social Security's ability to pay future benefits to 64 million Americans."

"Social Security is an earned benefit fully funded by the contributions of workers throughout their working lives," said Richtman. "A payroll tax suspension or deferral chips away at that fundamental idea, making it easier each time it is enacted to turn to it again to meet some future crisis, until the payroll tax is permanently eliminated."

Linda Benesch, communications director for Social Security Works, told Common Dreams Thursday that whether or not the attack on Social Security is stripped from the Senate bill, the group plans to fight alongside its allies in the Congressional Progressive Caucus to ensure that an expansion of Social Security benefits is included in an expected fourth stimulus package.

Social Security Works president Nancy Altman last week called on Congress to adopt a proposal introduced by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that would increase by $200 the monthly Social Security benefit for all recipients through the end of 2021.

"This will help beneficiaries afford housing, food, medicines, and other vital needs during this challenging time," said Altman. "As a byproduct, it showcases Social Security's efficiency and reach, which are so needed in this moment."

Read the original:
House Democrats Urged to Remove 'Insidious Attack' on Social Security Hidden Within Senate Coronavirus Bill - Common Dreams