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I believe Democrats and the left are lying to everyone every day. I dont believe there is systemic racism in this country. If there is, how did President Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris get elected? I think its all lies and a part of their agenda to divide us all.

Lets face it: The Black crime rate is high. BLM and antifa want to get rid of police so they can do whatever they want and avoid being jailed or shot.

Rep. Maxine Waters, President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others should be prosecuted for jury tampering and inciting violence during the Derek Chauvin trial. What they did is incomprehensible and could be a federal offense.

Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markeys reasoning for packing the Supreme Court is that Republicans stole three seats on the bench. The liberal senator forgot that the GOP just did the same thing Sen. Harry Reid did in the U.S. Senate to appoint judges. Democrats set the precedent, not Republican senators.

All the Democrats do is lie and play on peoples fears. Democrats please note: We conservatives dont scare.

^

Leonard Stanga

Harrison

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Letter to the editor: Democrats' lies | TribLIVE.com - TribLIVE

Has Joe Biden chosen ambition over political sustainability? Photo: Doug Mills/Getty Images

One striking phenomenon that has surfaced since Joe Biden took office is the contrast between the audacious legislative agenda that the new president and his congressional allies are implacably advancing and the anxiety that so many of them (but decidedly not Biden himself) are expressing about their narrow escape from defeat in 2020 and the probable rough electoral sledding ahead. Even as Congress accomplishes things unimaginable in the Obama administration, Democrats keep fretting about the lost opportunities that the expected 2020 landslide could have given them, the traction that many fear Republicans are obtaining with their anti-wokeness crusade, and the baleful history of midterm elections that have shattered the plans of new administrations.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told Punchbowl he figures there is a direct connection between the political anxieties of congressional Democrats and their audacious legislative agenda:

Majorities are not given, they are earned. This is not like 1994 and 2010

[Y]ou had to win 40 seats in 2010 I think everybody knows the majority is in play. So the reason why its different, the majority is in play. In 94 and 2010, at the beginning of those years, they didnt believe the majority was at play in the nation. I believe it is, and the Democrats, I think, believe it is too; thats why theyre going so far left, knowing that theyre gonna lose it.

So basically, McCarthy is charging that Democrats are shooting for the moon in 2021 because they understand that their governing trifecta is fragile and will likely end in 2022. Its a hostile, self-serving hypothesis but nonetheless worth considering.

Any governing party implicitly has to balance, if not choose between, the goals of implementing its desired policies and of sustaining its power by positioning itself to win future elections. Ideally, of course, such parties hope their legislative priorities are popular enough to serve as a future campaign platform. Democrats who understand how ambitious their current legislative agenda is are particularly encouraged that it is polling well so far. And as New Yorks Jonathan Chait has observed, Biden himself has adopted a presidential style that downplays the audacity of the legislation he is promoting, which helps get it enacted while giving the opposition fewer ripe targets.

But at some point very soon, Democrats may no longer be able to avoid a choice between accomplishments and political sustainability. Even if they are able to keep big policy proposals on issues like climate change, police reform, or housing supply from becoming politically fraught right away, they must take into account how they may play into Republican messaging on socialism, wokeness, or class warfare. Do they hold back on legislative audacity, then, in order to maximize the odds of hanging on to Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024? Or do they move ahead as quickly and ambitiously as they can and hope for the best? Id offer four pretty compelling reasons for continuing to shoot for the moon.

Thanks to where 2020 left Democrats in Congress, a screeching halt to their legislative progress is no further away than an unexpected death or the resignation of a single senator, a decision by one senator that going rogue is in her or his self-interest, or an adverse ruling by the unelected Senate parliamentarian on the ability of Democrats to move a major item via the budget-reconciliation process (as has already happened on the $15 mimimum wage and will probably happen soon on immigration reform). Enacting as much legislation as possible before any of those setbacks occurs could be critical, justifying any and all political risks.

Similarly, the Democratic margin in the House is so small that it may be impossible to sustain against the overwhelming historical precedent of midterm losses by the party controlling the White House especially since Republicans will have the upper hand in the decennial redistricting process, which is about to get under way.

If the Democratic trifecta is too weak to rely upon or is doomed anyway, why not get as much done as possible and hope for good luck in 2022 and 2024 and perhaps even better luck down the road?

The idea that pulling legislative punches will improve future electoral outcomes may be a vestige of a bygone era of swing-voter hegemony and plausible bipartisanship. Its not clear exactly who in the electorate will award Democrats for moderation in fully pursuing their policy goals. To put it another way, no matter what Biden and congressional Democrats do, McCarthy and the conservative-media machine are going to accuse them of going so far left. That was the great lesson of the Obama administration, in which every conciliatory gesture simply gave the GOP incentives to radicalize its demands and ramp up the volume of its protests against alleged Democratic extremism.

It also offers an alternative interpretation of the relative disappointment of Democratic underachievement in 2020. Instead of neurotically looking around to see which woke or socialist pol gave Republicans the opportunity to shriek about the terrible consequences of Democratic power, as many Democrats are doing now, it may make more sense to recognize that the Donkey Party can do nothing short of surrender that would undermine such messaging. The Republican base is clearly in a state of cultural panic that has little to do with the specter of the Green New Deal or the Iran nuclear pact or anything else Democrats say or do. Sure, Democrats can try to lower the temperature of political conflict as their chill president is doing, but they may as well use their current leverage as not. Joe Manchin will ensure that they dont go hog wild.

Intense partisan polarization isnt the only feature of the contemporary political landscape that makes caution inadvisable for Democrats. Quite obviously, the coronavirus pandemic and its economic and social by-products built a highly conducive atmosphere for the Biden administrations first bold and theoretically risky venture, the American Rescue Plan. And even if the sense of emergency fades and Biden-esque normalcy begins to reign, there could be a significant residual appetite within and beyond the Democratic Party for legislative activism after four years in which the GOP lost its already minimal interest in solving problems through public policy and submitted itself to the chaotic, often pointless rage-based leadership of Donald Trump.

Theres a lot to get done, and, among those who arent fantasizing about a vengeful comeback for the 45th president, theres just one party offering much of anything. Scary as socialism seems to many Americans, nihilism is scarier yet.

As Ron Brownstein has convincingly argued, some form of voting-rights legislation may no longer be optional for Democrats if they want to remain politically viable in the short-term and long-range future:

If Democrats lose their slim majority in either congressional chamber next year, they will lose their ability to pass voting-rights reform. After that, the party could face a debilitating dynamic: Republicans could use their state-level power to continue limiting ballot access, which would make regaining control of the House or the Senate more difficult for Democrats and thus prevent them from passing future national voting rules that override the exclusionary state laws.

Its pretty clear Republicans understand that the power to limit ballot access for Democratic constituencies is something they need to exploit to the fullest right now. If Democrats demur from pursuing every avenue to preempt Republican voter suppression via federal legislation on grounds that its too partisan, the far more cynical GOP will have the last laugh, potentially for a long time. Loyalty to the young and minority voters most endangered by voter suppression should be enough to make voting rights job one in this Congress, even if that means risky tactics like filibuster reform. But it may also be a matter of political survival.

In general, this is no time for Democrats to be afraid of taking risks; like it or not, everything they do right now is risky business. The ancient arguments between progressives and centrists on the best way to appeal to swing voters are largely moot at this moment. They had best make hay while the sun shines.

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Democrats Are Shooting for the Moon in 2021, and Thats Okay - New York Magazine

The longtime Democratic strategist James Carville knows a thing or two about winning an election.

As the chief strategist of former President Bill Clinton's successful 1992 campaign, he helped the Democratic Party end a 12-year streak of GOP control of the White House.

In a recent Vox interview, Carville pushed back against suggestions from some Democrats that the party, no matter the consequences, should be passing its highest-priority legislation since it has control of the House and Senate.

Carville spoke of Sen. Joe Manchin, the moderate West Virginian who opposes axing the filibuster and has called for more bipartisan cooperation on President Joe Biden's proposed infrastructure bill, in arguing that the party currently has a limit for what it wants to pursue.

"The Democratic Party can't be more liberal than Sen. Joe Manchin," he told Vox. "That's the fact. We don't have the votes."

House Democrats have passed a raft of legislation praised by progressives, including the sweeping H.R.1. voting rights legislation as well as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, but both bills face resistance in the evenly-divided Senate.

Many Democrats, fearing their agenda will get bogged down by gridlock, have sought to end the filibuster, but Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have so far resisted such calls.

Read more: Prosecuting Trump does not look like a DOJ priority under Biden's attorney general. But watch Georgia and New York.

Instead, Democrats should use every opportunity to hammer the GOP about the Capitol riot on January 6, Carville told Vox.

"Two of the most consequential political events in recent memory happened on the same day in January: the insurrection at the US Capitol and the Democrats [Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff] winning those two seats in Georgia," he said. "Can't overstate that."

He added: "But the Democrats can't f--- it up. They have to make the Republicans own that insurrection every day. They have to pound it. They have to get people towrite op-eds. There will be all kinds of investigations and stories dripping out for God knows how long, and the Democrats should spend every day tying all of it to the Republican Party. They can't sit back and wait for it to happen."

If the shoe were on the other foot, Carville said, the GOP would use the Capitol attack as a racially-charged wedge issue.

"Hell, just imagine if it was a bunch of non-white people who stormed the Capitol," he said. "Imagine how Republicans would exploit that and make every news cycle about how the Dems are responsible for it. Every political debate would be about that. The Republicans would bludgeon the Democrats with it forever."

He concluded: "Whatever you think Republicans would do to us in that scenario, that's exactly what the hell we need to do them."

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James Carville says Democrats 'don't have the votes' to be 'more liberal' than Joe Manchin - Business Insider

WASHINGTONSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) is now leading the slimmest House majority since World War I, putting a premium on party unity as leaders this spring craft trillions of dollars of infrastructure and antipoverty legislation.

A handful of Democratic lawmakers have said they would try to block any tax changes proposed by President Biden that dont also restore state and local tax deductions. Others, including members of the outspoken progressive wing, are lobbying for Medicare expansion, longer-lasting child benefits and more spending to address climate change, although for now they have emphasized cooperation rather than issuing ultimatums.

The narrow margin gives each House Democrat an unusual amount of potential leverage. With the House split at 218 Democrats to 212 Republicans with five vacancies, Mrs. Pelosi can lose just two votes to pass legislation if no Republicans cross over. The number will become three after the swearing-in of Troy Carter, who won a special election in Louisiana over the weekend. In the event of a tie, legislation fails.

The $2.3 trillion infrastructure package outlined by Mr. Biden in March provides billions of dollars for transportation, housing and manufacturing, among other provisions, while proposing an increase in corporate taxes to pay for it. A second package, released Wednesday by the White House, focuses on education and antipoverty efforts, with a price tag of about $1.8 trillion, paid for by higher taxes on high earners.

No Republican support is expected for the spending plans as now laid out. The White House has held talks with Republicans on making changes to the infrastructure package, but it has said it is prepared to move ahead without GOP support if needed.

Read more:
Democrats Thin House Majority to Be Tested by Multitrillion-Dollar Plans - The Wall Street Journal

With roughly a month before they plan to complete the weighty task of drawing new maps that will determine the lines of political power for the next decade, Illinois Democrats say they have not determined what data theyll use.

Whatever that data is were going to use, we havent made that decision yet, Sen. Elgie Sims, a Chicago Democrat who serves as the vice-chair of the chambers redistricting committee, said Tuesday on Chicago Tonight while giving assurances that the drawing of district boundaries will be done in a transparent way.

The Republican spokesperson of the House redistricting committee, Rep. Tim Butler of Springfield, said the Republican Party has asked questions about what Illinois population data will be used during the redistricting process, but has received no answers.

We have huge concerns about what data is going to be used, Butler said, and whether it reflects truly the diversity of Illinois.

Typically, Illinois and other states would use information from the census.

But due to the pandemic and changes made by President Donald Trumps administration during a particularly embattled census enumeration process last year, the federal government isnt set to deliver the census results until August or September --- after the Illinois legislatures scheduled May 31 adjournment date.

READ:Illinois to Lose Congressional Seat as States Population Declines

State Rep. Will Davis, D-Hazel Crest, said the blame lies with Trump.

Wed be well on our way had the previous administration not done what it had done to delay this process and I think our objective is to try to pass something by May 31, Davis said.

An August or September arrival of the census data would also come after a June 30 deadline in the state constitution that would hand over map-making power from the Democratic-controlled legislature to a panel of eight lawmakers four Democrats, and four Republicans who would then have until Aug. 10 to approve a map on a bipartisan basis.

Video:Lawmakers weigh a ComEd rate hike nearly a year after a bribery scandal broke. Our discussion continues on that topic and more with state Sens. Sue Rezin (R-Morris) and Elgie Sims (D-Chicago); and state Reps. Tim Butler (R-Springfield) and Will Davis (D-East Hazel Crest).

Past that, Illinois constitution effectively leaves to chance which party gets the upper hand in drawing districts that could give its candidates an advantage in future political races: The constitution calls for the secretary of state to draw by random selection a ninth legislator to serve as the tie-breaking vote on the panel.

The constitutions drop-date is Oct. 5 for the map-making work to be completed.

Republicans accuse Democrats of rushing the process so they can maintain control and predict Democrats will use data from the American Community Survey (ACS) a survey performed by the U.S. Census Bureau thats done on a significantly smaller scale than the once-every-decade census.

As long as my colleagues across the aisle want to use the ACS as a point for drawing the map, this is not a fair map. ACS data is simply an estimate, state Sen. Sue Rezin of Morrisonville said. There should be no rush using this estimated data from the ACS.

Sims said its misleading to reduce the gravity of the June 30 deadline because its clearly delineated in the states constitution, he said, adding that if it gets the point that a legislators name is effectively drawn out of a hat, the result would be totally partisan.

He repeatedly committed to the General Assembly, in which Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers, passing a bill containing a new set of maps before June 30.

If there is a map that the Republicans want to propose we certainly want to see it, but you cannot just say no, Sims said. We want you to be partners with us.

Republicans allege Democrats amassed those supermajorities in part thanks to the 2011 maps Democrats drew slanted in their favor and believe Democrats will again gerrymander districts with the next set.

The maps are being drawn by the party in control as we speak, Rezin said.

Trying to undermine Democrats plans for designing the 2021-2031 maps is the Republican Partys best chance for getting to control the process, by triggering the 50/50 name-out-of-a hat, last-chance option.

The high-stakes nature of the political gamesmanship and potential long-term consequences for races down the road has led various outside organizations to call for Illinois to remove any responsibility from legislators to draw their own maps, and instead leave that to a commission of independent residents.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker, at an unrelated news conference earlier Tuesday, signaled, in response to reporters repeated questions, that its too late for that option.

The legislature is working on the map for the next 10 years, Pritzker said.

As a candidate, Pritkzer responded to a 2018 survey by the political online forum Capitol Fax by saying that he would veto any map that is in any way drafted or created by legislators, political party leaders and/or their staffs or allies.

We should amend the constitution to create an independent commission to draw legislative maps, but in the meantime, I would urge Democrats and Republicans to agree to an independent commission to handle creating a new legislative map, Pritzker wrote. That designated body should reflect the gender, racial, and geographic diversity of the state and look to preserve the Voting Rights Act decisions to ensure racial and language minorities are fully represented in the electoral process.

On Tuesday, Pritzker recommitted to vetoing an unfair map while praising the last, 2011 version designed by members of his party.

As Ive said, I will veto an unfair map. Ive also said that in order for us to have an independent commission, we needed to have a constitutional amendment, something that would actually change the way the process operates today in the constitution. That did not happen. So now, as we reach the end of this session, I look to the legislature for their proposal for a redistricting map. Ill be looking to it for its fairness, Pritzker said. The map that was put together for the last 10 years started out with a very strong leaning toward fairness,

Pritzker also accused Republican legislators of not engaging in the current redistricting process, which has included dozens of legislative hearings in which members of the public have testified about their aspirations for future districts.

For the first time, the state also has a portal that allows individuals and organizations to digitally submit their own ideal maps.

I hope that Republicans will choose to work with Democrats on the map. Right now, it looks like theyre just saying no, theyre not really engaging and all theyre doing is fighting in these redistricting hearings, Pritzker said.

Republican Butler rebuffed the accusation, saying that hes been part of many of the hearings.

Even so, Butler said he has unanswered questions: Whether ACS data will be used, and what the process for citizen involvement will be once the maps are unveiled.

For the governor to say that were not coming to the table is ludicrous, Butler said.

The state learned Monday that it will lose one seat in Congress, leaving the state with a 17-member delegation to the U.S. House.

Expectations are that Democrats will design the new boundaries in a manner that leaves one of the states five Republican members of Congress without a district in which they could viably compete.

Illinois was one of only three states to lose residents in the past decade.

Still, Pritzker signaled that the early census results made public this week arent bad, considering the carnival barkers and critics who have bemoaned Illinois losing throngs of residents due to their frustration with Illinois political and tax climate.

There are many carnival barkers and people who have run down this state for years who have said, talked about, weve lost hundreds of thousands of people over the last 10 years. As it turns out its about 7,500 people, he said.

Pritzker said the states efforts to provide residents with health care, opportunities for job creation through new businesses, and scholarships and grants to attract and retain students are among the reasons residents are moving to and staying in Illinois.

Follow Amanda Vinicky on Twitter:@AmandaVinicky

Read more from the original source:
Democrats Committed to Remap in May, But Uncommitted on Data to Draw From - WTTW News