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I woke up Wednesday morning, feeling good, and I thought it was time for Nina Simone,
https://youtu.be/oHRNrgDIJfo?is=_lfBWHRQcEFkQ4KY
Needless to say the rest of the weeks been busy with reading and listening to election comments, the best below,
Jamelle Bouie, on “What Happened,”
For the Republicans, it was as close as an American political party gets to total collapse — not a defeat but a catastrophic rout.
There is an obvious question to ask here: What happened? How, two years after its first presidential popular vote win in a generation, did the Republican Party disintegrate on renewed contact with voters?
Of the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ten Crack Commandments,” Number 4 is probably the most important: Never use what you sell, never get high on your own supply. Doing so is an easy way to lose perspective, act recklessly and make choices that threaten the entire enterprise.
But if there is a single diagnosis you might make of the Republican Party’s generational defeat at the ballot box, it is that from Trump down, the party got high, ruinously high, on its own supply. And so, in addition to heeding Biggie Smalls’s fourth crack commandment, Democrats should also take the advice of another hip-hop luminary, Big Daddy Kane. In a fight such as this one — a fight for the survival of American democracy — there simply ain’t no half-steppin’.
Maureen Dowd. in her latest, captures our sentiment,
Our country — in the grip of a vengeful, Constitution-shredding president and his inner circle of sadistic stooges and rapacious tech allies — was becoming unrecognizable to us and to our former friends around the world.
Immigrants beloved in their communities, and those who defended them, were hunted and gunned down in the streets. Voting rights were eroded at the expense of Black Americans who had fought so hard for them. The Supreme Court, granting Trump near-total immunity and allowing his Ozymandias monuments to himself, has seemed rotten. Tech lords, taking A.I. as their new religion, lavished Crypto King Trump with lucre and received free rein, leading us toward a world especially pernicious to young people and vulnerable to rogue A.I. agents.
Trump, JD Vance, Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth saw themselves as the guardians of the white manosphere.
After a decade of bloviations and delusions offered by the grifter, there was a refreshing strain of morality on the Democratic side, with the onetime seminarian James Talarico in Texas and the Christian pastor Adam Hamilton in Kansas openly talking about their faith. (The Democratic 2028 prospect Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, began all the chapters of his new memoir with biblical quotations.)
At long last, will some decency be restored to politics?
Jared Bernstein on his excellent substack https://econjared.substack.com/p/election-reflection?r=d5466&utm_medium=ios suggests policies and concerns,
So, while the ultimate goal is enacting smart, effective affordability legislation, there’s a path to get there. For the next two years—probably more like, one year, if we’re being honest—Ds must show the voters a) they heard them and they’re building out the very agenda (as in passing bills in one or both chambers) that will help them, and b) who’s blocking that agenda.
—Sure, but which bills? Well, that too shouldn’t be that tricky. As I’ve stressed, and will continue to do so, no one should say they’re going to lower everyone’s prices. This decisive electoral group appears to have a good nose for BS. The reason affordability was kryptonite to Trump and his R enablers was that they couldn’t pull off their usual false-reality play wherein inflation was falling, prices are down, and everything’s fine. When it comes to prices, people know which way is up.
So, it’s time to reup the affordability serenity prayer:
Keynes, grant me the serenity to accept the prices I cannot influence,
the courage and policy acumen to influence the prices I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Concretely, that means intervening in markets that are broken or insufficient, which includes healthcare (broken), housing (affordable building doesn’t pencil out and thus requires subsidies to builders), childcare (insufficient; the families that need it the most can’t afford it). Energy and food costs will benefit from ending the war, a fact that voters well understood. Raising the minimum wage should be early out of the gate
And, of course, Paul Krugman in an interview with a Financial Times journalist .https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/talking-to-martin-wolf-about-the
Chuck Schumer, in an hour long interview goes into the details of how the Dems carefully planned (“Fighting Costs, Chaos and Corruption”) and executed their campaign, fascinating.
The House of Representatives now has about 260 Dems, 218 needed for a majority and in the Senate from 54 to 56 depending on the outcomes in Mississippi and Alaska.
The Speaker in the House is elected by the House membership is God-like, s/he appoints members to committees, controls the flow of legislation and the Rules Committee, which means the time allotted for debate and whether or not amendments from the floor will be allowed, and, impeachments begin in the House, an impeachment is an indictment, the impeachment is tried in the Senate.
In the Senate the Dems moved from 47 seats to between 54 and 56 seats, the Majority Leader is selected by the Senate members. Senate rules require, in most cases, 60 votes for a bill to come to the floor for a vote, called cloture.
The newly elected House Dems will select their Speaker candidate November 18-19 and the Senate the first week in December, they formally take office the first week in January.
There is an orchestrated attempt, thousands of emails and other online postings virulently opposing Schumer and Jeffries, by whom? Make your guesses. The only voters are the incoming Congress members and they will elect Schumer and Jeffries.
The Congress will begin passing bills as soon as they are sworn in, and questions,
* Will the Repubs provide the votes necessary to bring bills to the floor in the Senate? A third of the Senate is up for election in 2028, will they risk their seat by opposing popular bills, for example, raising the minimum wage? The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, NYC minimum wage is $17.00 an hour.
* Will Trump veto bills? The Congress can override a veto with a 2/3 vote in each House: 290 votes in the House and 67 votes in the Senate.
* Will the Dems move to impeach Hegseth?
* Will the Congress move speedily to resolve the current Social Security funding issue?
The investigations: the democratic controlled Congress with subpoena powers can investigate whomever they choose, and the list is long, only the Justice Department can bring charges; however, states can bring charges.
There is a ticking clock, the first democratic primary is scheduled for January 22, 2028 in South Carolina, the Republicans have yet to set specific dates, a year from now who knows how many candidates will be contending.
Postscript: The leaders of Congress, both Brooklyn bros, can drive dollars to a New York City with serious financial issues, and, with contract negotiations beginning probably in the Spring, a definite positive.Next week’s post: Impeachment and a Schumer story.
