'The NYT editorial today makes it sounds like the burning of the Reichstag...'

From Tana Geneva, on Twitter.

She's talking about this absurd piece at the New York Times, "Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now."

SOURCE: "New polling on January 6 is a MAJOR BUZZKILL to Brian Stelter and many other journos."

Democratic Clashes Hold Up Biden’s Agenda After Rocky Month

Democrats are fucking up --- and it's glorious!

At WSJ, "President weathered fallout from Afghanistan exit, migrants at the Texas border and the Covid-19 pandemic":

WASHINGTON—President Biden’s political standing tumbled in September amid the fallout from the messy Afghanistan withdrawal, the flood of Haitian migrants at the Texas border and the continuing Covid-19 pandemic. The month ended with his legislative agenda caught between clashing Democratic factions, fueling the party’s anxiety about the path forward and their prospects in elections this year and next.

Mr. Biden traveled to the Capitol on Friday afternoon to try to advance his roughly $1 trillion infrastructure plan and a separate healthcare, education and climate package, as leaders expressed optimism for a legislative breakthrough that would unite Democratic lawmakers. Administration officials acknowledged privately that the past few weeks had been the most trying of Mr. Biden’s presidency, but they are holding out hope that the agenda will clear Congress.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s in six minutes, six days or six weeks, we’re going to get it done,” Mr. Biden said after meeting with lawmakers Friday in which he called on House Democrats to delay voting on the infrastructure bill until they reach agreement on the separate spending package.

The clash in Congress followed efforts by Mr. Biden to bridge divides between moderate and progressive Democrats over trillions in infrastructure and social spending, with the roughly $3.5 trillion reconciliation price tag expected to drop. He delayed a planned trip to Chicago this week to keep his focus on talks on Capitol Hill and has held meetings and calls with lawmakers, in particular two moderate Democrats—Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona—who have objected to parts of the program.

The negotiations have brought long-simmering intraparty tensions into the open, with progressives publicly criticizing Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema, and the White House huddling behind the scenes with Democratic congressional leadership. Some progressive lawmakers grumbled earlier in the week that the White House had been paying too much attention to the two senators, but others said the talks were the only way to clinch an agreement that would move both packages forward, an outcome that is the priority for liberals.

Many Democrats see passage of Mr. Biden’s legislative agenda as vital ahead of next year’s midterm elections, which typically favor the party that doesn’t hold the White House. Anxiety has been rising among some in the party, particularly as Mr. Biden’s approval ratings slipped below 50% last month.

“You’ve got to give the enthusiasm gap a real consideration,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil-rights leader who has raised concerns that Mr. Biden’s handling of voting rights, immigration and police reform—Democratic proposals that have stalled in Congress—may depress turnout among Black voters in next year’s midterms. “I don’t think anybody expects him to walk on water, but we do expect that he can swim.”

Mr. Biden’s struggles have coincided with the stretch of this year’s most prominent campaign, in Virginia, where former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, is seeking a return to office against Republican Glenn Youngkin, a political newcomer. The state’s gubernatorial campaign, held in the year after the presidential election, is often a leading indicator of the national political climate heading into the midterms.

Republicans view the Democrats’ legislative plans as an overreach of excess spending and have accused Mr. Biden of careening from one crisis to another, saying both will debilitate the party’s midterm message next year. “Vulnerable Democrats are going to be forced to retire, or they’re going to lose reelection,” said Rep. Tom Emmer (R., Minn.), who leads the House Republicans’ campaign arm.

Heading into the 2022 midterm elections, some Republicans also see potential risks ahead for their party. Among them: that centrist GOP voters and independents may be turned off by efforts to investigate and validate former President Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud, and that laws introduced by Republicans to tighten voting rules may depress voter participation in both parties.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D., N.Y.), who heads the House Democratic campaign effort, said his party is tackling tough problems that Republicans didn’t when they were in power.

After eight months on the job, Mr. Biden is contending with thorny issues that have frustrated past presidents, and questions from both parties about his leadership decisions. The legislative challenges ended a month that was a roller-coaster ride for Mr. Biden’s presidency. The Pentagon’s top military official called the recent Afghanistan exit, which included a drone strike that killed civilians, a “strategic failure,” hampering White House hopes of moving on from questions about the withdrawal. French officials accused the U.S. of betraying a longtime ally after leaving France in the dark over a secret nuclear submarine deal with Australia and the U.K. Democrats and Republicans slammed the handling of Haitian migrants at the Texas border. And mixed messages on booster shot eligibility fueled public frustration with the long-lasting Covid-19 pandemic.

Speaking at a Senate hearing on the Afghanistan exit, Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “from an operational and tactical standpoint, [the evacuation] was successful. Strategically, the war was lost. The enemy is in Kabul.”

The surge of Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Texas, drew bipartisan criticism and tested Mr. Biden’s promises of a more humane immigration policy. During a meeting last week with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, lawmakers pressed top White House aides about the administration’s immigration policies, including the president’s decision to turn back many migrants at the border and deport Haitians to their home country, according to people in the meeting.

“We were very candid. No one bit their tongue,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D., Calif.), one of the attendees. A White House official acknowledged that public frustration with the Covid-19 pandemic and the Afghanistan exit have taken a toll, but said that they continue to make progress with increasing vaccinations and view the public as supportive of the withdrawal overall. Passage of the president’s legislative agenda, Mr. Biden’s advisers hope, will boost the president’s political fortunes, noting that the bills have public support in recent polling.

Mr. Biden told lawmakers last week in a private meeting that he wants the public to see benefits from the spending packages quickly if they pass, according to a person there.

About half of the country supports the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the separate package for spending on healthcare, education and more, according to a September poll by the Pew Research Center. Far fewer oppose the legislation: 20% for the infrastructure package and 25% for the broader one. About a quarter of those polled were unsure about where they stood. Other surveys, including a September Fox News poll, have shown slightly higher support for the bills.

John Anzalone, Mr. Biden’s chief campaign pollster, said he believed the popularity of the policies the president has proposed in the infrastructure and reconciliation packages will help fend off any midterm losses...

Still more.

 

What's Going On in Congress?

The latest on the stalemate is here, "Biden Visits Capitol Hill Seeking to Unite Democrats Around His Agenda."

And what's going on with the congressional circus? Ideologues and incompetence mostly, but here's more, "Four Jagged Puzzle Pieces and a Few Weeks for Democrats to Assemble Them":

The party must keep the government funded, stave off a default, push a $1 trillion infrastructure bill to President Biden and secure the votes for a defining climate change and social policy bill.

WASHINGTON — In a pivotal week, in a make-or-break stretch for President Biden’s domestic agenda, congressional Democrats are trying to assemble a puzzle of four jagged pieces that may or may not fit together.

Making them work as a whole is critical for the party’s agenda and political prospects, and how quickly they can assemble the puzzle will determine whether the government suffers another costly and embarrassing shutdown — or, worse yet, a first-ever default on its debt that could precipitate a global economic crisis.

Here are all the moving parts.

Piece 1: Government funding.

At a second past midnight on Friday morning, the parts of the government that operate under the discretion of Congress’s annual spending process will run out of money if a stopgap spending bill does not pass. Oct. 1 is the beginning of the fiscal year, and with larger issues dominating their attention, the Democratic House and Senate have not completed any of the annual appropriations bills to fund the Departments of Defense, Transportation, Health and Human Services, State and Homeland Security, to name a few.

This is not unusual. More often than not, the individual funding bills do not pass until winter. In the interim, Congress passes “continuing resolutions” to keep departments open at current spending levels, with perhaps a few tweaks for urgent priorities and emergencies like hurricane response and, this year, Afghan refugee resettlement.

By Thursday, Congress could easily pass such a resolution to avoid a lapse in funding that could furlough federal workers and force “essential” employees, like those at the Transportation Security Administration, to work for no money. But on Monday, such a stopgap measure was blocked by Republicans in the Senate because it was attached to …

Piece 2: The debt limit.

The federal government has for decades operated under a statutory ceiling on the amount it can borrow — in common parlance, the debt limit. The $28 trillion federal debt climbs inexorably, not only because the government spends so much more than it recoups in taxes, but also because parts of the government owe money to other parts, mainly most of the government owing money from Social Security after decades of borrowing.

In essence, raising the debt limit is akin to paying off your credit card bill at the end of the month, because a higher borrowing ceiling allows the Treasury to pay creditors, contractors and agencies money that was already extracted from them in Treasury bonds and notes or contracts. It is not for future obligations.

The last time the issue surfaced, in August 2019, Congress and President Donald J. Trump suspended the debt limit through July 31 of this year. On Aug. 2, the Treasury reset the debt limit to $28.4 trillion, and the government crashed through it days later. Ever since, the department has been shuffling money from account to account to make sure its bills are paid, but sometime in mid- to late October, such “extraordinary measures” will be exhausted, and the bills will go unpaid. This would be a shock to the international economy, since U.S. government debt is a global safe harbor for all kinds of cash and investments.

During Mr. Trump’s presidency, Republicans and Democrats did not fight over debt limit increases, in part because large spending increases for the coronavirus pandemic and other priorities were bipartisan — although the large tax cut of 2017 was not.

This year, Republican leaders have declared that because Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House, they and they alone must raise the debt ceiling.

Republicans have made it clear that they intend to filibuster an ordinary bill to raise the debt ceiling, as they did on Monday. For Democrats to do so unilaterally, they would most likely have to use a budget process called reconciliation that shields fiscal measures from a filibuster.

Doing so is a complex and time-consuming affair. It all has to be done in the next two to three weeks, to beat the still unknown but rapidly approaching “X date” when the government defaults. Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, told Congress on Tuesday that the deadline is Oct. 18.

Piece 3: Infrastructure.

In August, with rare bipartisan swagger, the Senate passed a $1 trillion bill to build or fortify roads, bridges, tunnels, transit and rural broadband networks. The 69 “yes” votes included Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and 18 others from his party.

Then it got more complicated.

Pressing for a quick vote on the bill, nine conservative-leaning Democrats in the House threatened to withhold their votes for the party’s $3.5 trillion budget blueprint until the Senate-passed infrastructure bill cleared their chamber.

The budget blueprint was needed to move Mr. Biden’s sprawling social policy and climate change agenda past a Republican filibuster in the Senate, through the reconciliation process. So in a signature maneuver, Speaker Nancy Pelosi cut a deal with the nine moderates: Vote for the budget resolution to get the social policy bill underway, and she would take up the infrastructure bill by Sept. 27, three days before a host of existing transportation and infrastructure programs are to exhaust their legal authorization.

Ms. Pelosi hoped that by then, the reconciliation package would also be ready for action. But that has not happened, and now liberals in the House are threatening to withhold their votes for the infrastructure measure.

Sept. 27 came and went on Monday without a vote or a deal among the factions, with the speaker securing agreement from her moderates to put off action until Thursday. The question is whether enough liberal Democrats in the House will vote for it as they wait for the final details of …

Piece 4: Social policy reconciliation.

Democrats’ exceedingly ambitious social policy bill, which Mr. Biden calls his “Build Back Better” plan, is packed with longstanding party priorities...

 

Morning Briefing: Late-Night Turnabout for Democrats (VIDEO)

 At the New York Times, "Democrats, Divided: House Democrats delayed a vote on a major infrastructure bill, a sign of divisions within the party":

For more than a decade, congressional Democrats have been a notably unified and functional bunch.

They responded forcefully to both the financial crisis that began in 2007 and the Covid-19 pandemic. They passed Barack Obama’s signature health care law, succeeding on an issue that had bedeviled Washington for decades. And they remained almost completely united against Donald Trump’s legislative agenda and attacks on democracy.

But the era of productive Democratic unity is now in doubt — as is President Biden’s domestic agenda.

This morning, I’ll explain last night’s developments on Capitol Hill and look at where things may go from here.

Shortly before 11 p.m., Steny Hoyer of Maryland — the second-ranking Democrat in the House — announced that “no further votes are expected tonight,” an acknowledgment that the party did not have the votes to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been insisting throughout the day that the vote would happen. It was one of the few times in her almost two decades as the leader of House Democrats that she did not appear to be in control of her caucus, reminiscent of the chaos that has instead tended to surround House Republicans this century.

“It’s a serious setback,” Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, told me, “but I don’t think it’s the end of the effort.”

Perhaps the most surprising part of last night’s developments is that many analysts believe that congressional Democrats have made progress toward a deal over the past 24 hours — even if they are not there yet, and the talks could still collapse.

The background

The Senate has already passed the infrastructure bill, and Democrats overwhelmingly favor it. But House progressives have refused to vote for it without assurances that moderate Democrats also support the other major piece of Biden’s agenda — a larger bill (sometimes called a “safety net” bill) that would expand health care access and education, fight climate change and reduce poverty, among other measures.

Progressives are worried that if they pass the infrastructure bill, moderates will abandon the safety-net bill, which is a higher priority for many Democrats.

These are precisely the sort of disagreements that Democrats managed to surmount in recent years. During the debate over Obama’s health law, for example, moderates were worried about its size and ambition, while progressives were deeply disappointed about what it lacked (including an option for anybody to buy into Medicare). Yet nearly all congressional Democrats ultimately voted for the bill, seeing it as far preferable to failure.

This time, moderates and progressives are having a harder time coming to an agreement. The left, unhappy about the compromises it needs to make, has decided to use tougher negotiating tactics than in the past — thus the lack of an infrastructure vote last night. And the moderates, like Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have been publicly vague about what they are willing to support in the safety-net bill.

Encouragingly for Democrats, Manchin’s stance did become clearer yesterday, potentially allowing the party to come to a deal on both major bills. It is not out of the question that a deal could come together quickly and the House might vote on the infrastructure bill today or next week.

Manchin said yesterday that he favored a safety-net bill that cost about $1.5 trillion, rather than the $3.5 trillion many other Democrats, including Biden, favor. He also listed several policies that he could support in the bill, including higher taxes on the rich; a reduction in drug prices; and expansions of pre-K, home health care, clean energy and child tax credits.

These are many of the same priorities that progressives have, even if Manchin’s proposed cost means that the party will need to make hard choices about what to exclude from the bill. But the terms of the negotiations now seem clearer than they have been.

Manchin himself suggested as much. “We need a little bit more time,” he said yesterday, according to Chad Pergram of Fox News. “We’re going to come to an agreement.”

Several political analysts echoed that confidence:

* Matt Glassman of Georgetown: “Oddly, now that the progressives have done their flex, I think the prospects for a deal increased a bit.”

* Russell Berman, The Atlantic: “These setbacks are not final or fatal, and time is still on their side. The deadlines Democrats missed this week were largely artificial, and House leaders said a vote on the infrastructure bill could still happen as early as Friday.”

* Karen Tumulty, Washington Post: “My theory: We are moving toward a deal. … What everyone is waiting for at this point is an announcement by Biden of a deal, and a call from the president for Democrats to rally around it.”

The Democrats have enormous incentives to come to agreement. If they fail, Biden’s domestic agenda is largely sunk, and the party will have forfeited a chance to pass major legislation while controlling the White House, the Senate and House — a combination that does not come along often. Democrats will also have to face voters in next year’s midterms looking divided if not incompetent. 

Infrastructure Bill in Peril as Democrats Strain to Unite Party

Tomorrow's going to be a laugh riot as the $3.5 trillion social welfare climate change boondoggle is flushed down the toilet. Some folks online, I've forgotten whom, suggested that Pelosi won't even put the infrastructure bill to a vote tomorrow, so it'll be back to the drawing board.

With luck, Manchin and Synema won't cave. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "Party leaders meanwhile work to bridge gaps between moderates, progressives on $3.5 trillion bill on social policy and climate; Biden’s agenda under threat":

WASHINGTON—Democrats hurtled toward a deadline for passing a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure plan in the House, with the bill’s fate in jeopardy as they struggled to mend intraparty rifts threatening to derail President Biden’s domestic agenda.

Party leaders are racing to unify Democrats around changes to a separate $3.5 trillion healthcare, education and climate package, which progressives want to see advance as a condition of supporting the infrastructure bill in the narrowly divided House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) so far has stuck to her plan to bring the infrastructure bill up for a vote Thursday, saying she was taking it “one hour at a time,” though she opened the door to further delay if talks don’t progress.

“We’re obviously at a precarious and important time in these discussions,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “Members of Congress are not wallflowers. They have a range of viewpoints. We listen, we engage, we negotiate.”

The Thursday deadline for the infrastructure vote is one of several scheduling crunches Democrats face in the coming days. They are also rushing to pass a stand-alone measure extending government funding, currently set to expire on Friday at 12:01 a.m., through Dec. 3.

Republicans and Democrats in the Senate reached an agreement to pass the spending patch Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said, and then send it to the House.

On the eve of the possible infrastructure vote, Mr. Biden met Wednesday evening at the White House with Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer. Mr. Biden also has held a series of meetings with moderate Democrats in recent days in a bid to lock down their support for the social-policy and climate bill. That, in turn, could mollify progressives’ fears that moderates would block that legislation.

Those efforts so far have fallen short: Critical centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) said Wednesday that he didn’t think he could reach an agreement with the White House soon. Democrats need all 50 senators in their caucus to remain united to pass the $3.5 trillion package through a process called reconciliation, which requires just a simple majority rather than the 60 usually needed to advance in the chamber.

Mr. Manchin repeated his concerns about additional spending fueling inflation and called for the bill’s measures to be means-tested. He didn’t outline a possible compromise with other Democrats.

“While I am hopeful that common ground can be found that would result in another historic investment in our nation, I cannot—and will not—support trillions in spending or an all or nothing approach that ignores the brutal fiscal reality our nation faces,” he said in a lengthy statement.

Mr. Manchin’s statement sparked outrage among liberal House Democrats, who said it had expanded the ranks of lawmakers willing to oppose the infrastructure bill, if a vote is held Thursday. Progressives see threatening to oppose the infrastructure bill in the House as a way to pressure moderate Democrats, particularly Mr. Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.), to agree to the contours of the education, healthcare and climate package.

“This is why we’re not voting for that bipartisan bill until we get agreement on the reconciliation bill and it’s clear we’ve got a ways to go,” said Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.).

In comments later Wednesday, Mr. Manchin said he wanted to overhaul the 2017 tax law and continue the expanded child tax credit.

The White House has met repeatedly in recent days with Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema. Each has voiced opposition to a bill costing $3.5 trillion. Neither of the two lawmakers, though, have publicly indicated what size bill they would support.

Mrs. Pelosi after initially tying the two bills together, reversed course earlier this week and said that the infrastructure bill would come to the floor Thursday independent of the status of the other legislation. But she changed tack again Wednesday,appearing to condition consideration of the infrastructure bill on an agreement on the social-policy and climate effort.

“I think if we come to a place where we have agreement in legislative language, not just principle, in legislative language, that the president supports, it has to meet his standard, because that’s what we are supporting, and then I think we will come together,” Mrs. Pelosi told reporters Wednesday, referencing the $3.5 trillion proposal.

She held out the possibility of the House delaying a vote on the infrastructure bill for the second time. She previously had reached an agreement with moderate House Democrats to hold a vote on the infrastructure bill this past Monday.

“We take it one step at a time,” she said...

Still more.

Previously: "Kyrsten Sinema Faces a Growing Revolt From Her Former Supporters."

Kyrsten Sinema Faces a Growing Revolt From Her Former Supporters

Followingp-up, "Kyrsten Sinema Is Enigma at Center of Democrats’ Spending Talks."

This lady's got tremendous power, and radical leftists hate it. 

At the New York Times, "Kyrsten Sinema Is at the Center of It All. Some Arizonans Wish She Weren’t":

PHOENIX — Jade Duran once spent her weekends knocking on doors to campaign for Senator Kyrsten Sinema, the stubbornly centrist Democrat whose vote could seal the fate of a vast Democratic effort to remake America’s social safety net. But no more.

When Ms. Sinema famously gave a thumbs down to a $15 minimum wage and refused to eliminate the filibuster to pass new voting rights laws this year, Ms. Duran, a Democrat and biomedical engineer from Phoenix, decided she was fed up. She joined dozens of liberal voters and civil rights activists in a rolling series of protests outside Ms. Sinema’s Phoenix offices, which have been taking place since the summer. Nearly 50 people have been arrested.

“It really feels like she does not care about her voters,” said Ms. Duran, 33, who was arrested in July at a protest. “I will never vote for her again.”

Ms. Sinema, a onetime school social worker and Green Party-aligned activist, vaulted through the ranks of Arizona politics by running as a zealous bipartisan willing to break with her fellow Democrats. She counts John McCain, the Republican senator who died in 2018, as a hero, and has found support from independent voters and moderate suburban women in a state where Maverick is practically its own party.

But now, Ms. Sinema is facing a growing political revolt at home from the voters who once counted themselves among her most devoted supporters. Many of the state’s most fervent Democrats now see her as an obstructionist whose refusal to sign on to a major social policy and climate change bill has helped imperil the party’s agenda.

Little can proceed without the approval of Ms. Sinema, one of two marquee Democratic moderates in an evenly divided Senate. While she has balked at the $3.5 trillion price tag and some of the tax-raising provisions of the bill, which is opposed by all Republicans in Congress, Democrats in Washington and back home in Arizona have grown exasperated.

While the Senate Democrats’ other high-profile holdout, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, has publicly outlined his concerns with key elements of the Democratic agenda in statements to swarms of reporters, Ms. Sinema has been far more enigmatic and has largely declined to issue public comments.

Mr. Biden, White House officials and Democrats have beseeched the two senators to publicly issue a price tag and key provisions of the legislation that they could accept. But there is little indication that Ms. Sinema has been willing to offer that, even privately to the administration.

On Wednesday afternoon, she and a team from the White House huddled in her office for more than two hours on another day of what a spokesman for Ms. Sinema called good-faith negotiations.

“Kyrsten has always promised Arizonans she would be an independent voice for the state — not for either political party,” John LaBombard, a spokesman for the senator, wrote in an email responding to questions for the senator about her standing at home. “She’s delivered on that promise and has always been honest about where she stands.”

That posture helped her win election to the Senate in 2018 from a state whose voters are roughly 35 percent Republican, 32 percent Democratic and 33 percent “other.” And for all the passions of the moment, Ms. Sinema is not up for election again until 2024...

I love the senator at this point. If she can piss off left-wing nutjobs like this, and with so much hilarious gusto, I can dig it. 

More.

 

Kyrsten Sinema Is Enigma at Center of Democrats’ Spending Talks

She's an enigma alright. 

I blogged about her almost 10 years ago, when she, umm, came off a bit less moderates. See, "Kyrsten Sinema, Bisexual Israel-Hating Antiwar Radical, is Face of Today's Democrat Party."

And now, folks are tripping on her role of an extra-"moderate" senator who easily switch parties.

An engima alright.

At WSJ, "Arizona senator says $3.5 trillion price tag is too high, holds discussions with Biden, party leaders":

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—Senate Democrats trying to pass a sweeping education, healthcare and climate package must first crack an enigma: What does centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema want?

Ms. Sinema, a key vote in the evenly divided Senate, has made clear she won’t support the package’s current $3.5 trillion price tag, announcing her opposition in July and reiterating it since then. The first-term senator from a swing state has held meetings with party leaders to discuss the legislation, but she hasn’t publicly suggested specific changes. Many Democrats remain uncertain over her policy stance and her political calculations.

Ms. Sinema is constantly engaged in “direct, good-faith discussions,” said Sinema spokesman John LaBombard. He shared a list of more than two dozen meetings or calls she has had to discuss the legislation.

Six of those conversations were with President Biden directly and three were with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.). The rest were with Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), who is a member of the Finance and Budget committees, and White House and Democratic leadership staff. Representatives for Messrs. Biden, Schumer and Warner didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“Given the size and scope of the proposal—and the lack of detailed legislative language, or even consensus between the Senate and House around several provisions—we are not offering detailed comments on any one proposed piece of the package while those discussions are ongoing,” Mr. LaBombard said.

The package under discussion would represent a vast expansion of the country’s safety net, including paid family and medical leave, universal prekindergarten for three- and four-year-olds, affordable housing, and an expansion of Medicare benefits, among other measures. It would also increase taxes on companies and high-income households. Democrats hope to tackle climate change with provisions aimed at reducing carbon emissions in the electricity sector by 80% and economywide by 50% by 2030.

Republicans are united in opposition to the proposal, calling it wasteful and potentially damaging to the economy. Democrats are aiming to pass the package through a process called budget reconciliation that allows a bill to advance in the Senate with a simple majority, rather than the 60-vote supermajority usually needed.

In private negotiations, Ms. Sinema has been focused on targeting how the funding of new programs will be distributed among income levels, according to Senate Democratic aides. Narrower targeting of benefits could lower the overall cost. Ms. Sinema has also expressed concerns centering on the structure of the proposed tax changes, aides said.

In a recent interview with the Arizona Republic, Ms. Sinema expressed interest in climate proposals, which she said would directly affect the desert state which is already experiencing droughts, wildfires and damaged infrastructure.

The focus on Ms. Sinema comes amid a broad negotiation within the party between the moderate and progressive wings. While some senators have expressed concerns about parts of the proposal and haven’t committed to funding the entire $3.5 trillion, Ms. Sinema and fellow centrist Sen. Joe Manchin of deep-red West Virginia have been the only members of the caucus to rule out supporting that level of spending.

In a meeting Wednesday at the White House with Mr. Biden where both centrists were present, lawmakers discussed reducing the size of the package to below $3 trillion, according to two people familiar with the discussion.

“The main goal is to get all 50 of us together which means that we really need to get down to what are the things that will enable Joe and Kyrsten to say yes,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D., Hawaii). “I personally am not sure what it is programmatically that they can support. I’d like to get that identified.”

Rep. Scott Peters (D., Calif.), a centrist Democrat and close friend of Ms. Sinema from their days serving together in the House, said Ms. Sinema will be pivotal in the talks. “I certainly think that everyone is well advised to be listening to her. She’s got strong opinions and she’s not going to be pushed around.”

Others note that along with the thin control of the Senate, Democrats can afford to lose just three votes in the House, and Mr. Biden can’t afford to take his eye off any lawmakers...

I dare say I like that woman. *Shrug.*

Still more.

 

Donald Trump at CPAC (VIDEO)

UPDATE: YouTube has banned and removed all videos of Donald Trump's speech at CPAC 2021. I noticed this happening in real time, as the ABC News video of Trump's speech I posted was taken down, and I replaced it with on from the Independent U.K., which was still available at the time. Now, as you can see, it's gone. 

*****

Clicking around the channels yesterday, CNN wasn't going live with Trump speech at CPAC (at least when I click over), while Fox News livestreamed it. CNN, of course, came out immediately after with "fact checks," and MSM newspaper coverage, at LAT, for example, is full of lies and distortions of what Trump actually said, here: "Trump blasts GOP lawmakers who voted to impeach: ‘Get rid of them all’."

I thought is was a great speech. Trump probably should have laid off on the election fraud claims to the extent that he did, because although there was rampant fraud, I never considered there to be enough fraudulent ballots to ultimately overturn the results of the election.

That said, Trump's attacks on "RINOs" and the radical left Dems was right on, and his speech was clearly electrifying for the CPAC hordes crammed into the hall in Orlando. I would have loved to have been there.

In any case, Trump teased the notion of his own run for the presidency in 2024, and that's the left's biggest fear, especially all the lamestream media hacks at CNN, and no doubt elsewhere. (I haven't checked NYT's coverage yet, but I'm sure it's pathetic.)

Arizona Republican Party Censures Doug Ducey, Jeff Flake, and Cindy McCain; Narrowly Reelects Kelli Ward as State Party Chairwoman (VIDEO)

The video report at ABC News 15 Phoenix is from yesterday.

And see the Arizona Republic this morning, via Memeorandum, "Ariz. GOP censures Cindy McCain, Jeff Flake, Doug Ducey; narrowly reelects Kelli Ward":

Kelli Ward, the fractious leader of the Arizona Republican Party, narrowly beat back significant competition on Saturday to win another two-year term as the organization's chairwoman despite the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.

The closely watched result offers an early, state-level indication that Trump retains sway over the activist base of the GOP, though it is more tenuous. The election also suggests the longstanding divisions in the state party in the Trump era have not abated.

Ward’s reelection was considered a foregone conclusion weeks ago, but many in the GOP had misgivings about the party’s past electoral performance on her watch and an uncertain future heading into the 2022 midterm elections.

The party members later passed three resolutions censuring high-profile Republicans: Gov. Doug Ducey, former Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain. It was another sign of the party's move to the right...

 

The Rise of Political Sectarianism

Actually, this is just new and even more dramatic terminology for our growing domestic cold war and political polarization.

It's Thomas Edsall, a tried-and-true leftist, at NYT, "America, We Have a Problem":

Viewing recent events through a Trump prism may be too restrictive to capture the economic, social and cultural turmoil that has grown more corrosive in recent years.

On Oct. 30, a group of 15 eminent scholars (several of whom I also got a chance to talk to) published an essay — “Political Sectarianism in America” — arguing that the antagonism between left and right has become so intense that words and phrases like “affective polarization” and “tribalism” were no longer sufficient to capture the level of partisan hostility.

“The severity of political conflict has grown increasingly divorced from the magnitude of policy disagreement,” the authors write, requiring the development of “a superordinate construct, political sectarianism — the tendency to adopt a moralized identification with one political group and against another.”

Political sectarianism, they argue,

consists of three core ingredients: othering — the tendency to view opposing partisans as essentially different or alien to oneself; aversion — the tendency to dislike and distrust opposing partisans; and moralization — the tendency to view opposing partisans as iniquitous. It is the confluence of these ingredients that makes sectarianism so corrosive in the political sphere.

There are multiple adverse outcomes that result from political sectarianism, according to the authors. It “incentivizes politicians to adopt antidemocratic tactics when pursuing electoral or political victories” since their supporters will justify such norm violation because “the consequences of having the vile opposition win the election are catastrophic.”

Political sectarianism also legitimates

a willingness to inflict collateral damage in pursuit of political goals and to view copartisans who compromise as apostates. As political sectarianism has surged in recent years, so too has support for violent tactics.

In a parallel line of analysis, Jack Goldstone, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, and Peter Turchin, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut, contend that a combination of economic and demographic trends point to growing political upheaval. Events of the last six weeks have lent credibility to their research: On Sept. 10, they published an essay, “Welcome To The ‘Turbulent Twenties,’” making the case that the United States is “heading toward the highest level of vulnerability to political crisis seen in this country in over a hundred years.” There is, they wrote, “plenty of dangerous tinder piled up, and any spark could generate an inferno.”

Goldstone and Turchin do not believe that doomsday is inevitable. They cite previous examples of countries reversing downward trends, including the United States during the Great Depression:

To be sure, the path back to a strong, united and inclusive America will not be easy or short. But a clear pathway does exist, involving a shift of leadership, a focus on compromise and responding to the world as it is, rather than trying desperately to hang on to or restore a bygone era.

The Goldstone-Turchin argument is based on a measure called a “political stress indicator,” developed by Goldstone in his 1991 book, “Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World.” According to Goldstone, the measure “predicted the 1640s Puritan Revolution, the French Revolution of 1789, and the European Revolutions of 1830 and 1848.”

Goldstone wrote that

popular mobilization is more likely when the population is experiencing declining material conditions, plus urbanization and youth; when social competition for elite positions become heightened, political polarization and factionalism will be more likely as groups struggle for power and positions; and when state expenses fall behind revenues, as states become less capable of meeting expected demands and thus less legitimate, as well as more likely to enter conflicts with elites over taxation. And I argued that only when all of these factors coincide does a state face rising risks of major upheavals.

Turchin, in a 2017 book, “Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History,” graphed political stress in this country, showing that from 1970 to 2012 it shot up sharply, increasing fortyfold. In the eight years since then, stress has continued to surge, Goldstone wrote, “as income inequality, political polarization and state debt have all risen further.”

While the United States is particularly vulnerable to violent upheaval, Turchin argues, a disaster “is not foreordained. On the contrary, we may be the first society that is capable of perceiving, if dimly, the deep structural forces pushing us to the brink.”

There's still more at top, but here are links to a couple of those research pieces, "Political Sectarianism in America," and "Welcome to the 'Turbulent Twenties'."

Democrats Freak Out

At AoSHQ, "LOL: Democrats Panicking Over Prospect of Having to Run With Soviet-Loving Socialist Bernie Sanders at the Top of the Ticket."

Drawn-Out Fight Is More Likely Than Ever for Dems

It looks like it.

From Ronald Brownstein, at the Atlantic:

"Bernie’s got good-news bad news. He’s doing well, but he’s not doing well enough to win”: Compared with 2016, Sanders’s coalition in New Hampshire was both more narrow and more shallow, writes @RonBrownstein https://t.co/J0Mm4c0NFK

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) February 12, 2020

Senator Bernie Sanders’s unexpectedly narrow victory in New Hampshire underscored the splintering of the Democratic presidential field that was evident in last week’s murky Iowa caucus—and left two of his opponents facing grim questions about their future viability.

Just as in Iowa, the results illuminated the inability of any of the contenders to build a coalition broad enough to span the party or establish much separation from rival candidates. The roughly 26 percent share of the total vote that Sanders captured represents much less than half of his winning 60 percent just four years ago. And similar to former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s performance in Iowa, Sanders won the smallest share of voters ever garnered by a Democratic winner of the New Hampshire primary. (The previous low was nearly 29 percent, for Jimmy Carter in 1976.)

The New Hampshire results confirmed Sanders and Buttigieg as the field’s top-tier contenders and elevated Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who surged from a fifth-place finish in Iowa to a strong third here after a widely praised debate performance on Friday night. But the outcome may end up diminishing two of the field’s previous leaders more than it boosts the candidates who came out on top.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who were widely considered the race’s principal contenders for most of last year, were staggered by showings even weaker than anticipated. “I think everyone thought two weeks ago that Biden probably had the best chance of building the coalition that could pull everybody together,” Simon Rosenberg, the founder of the Democratic advocacy group NDN, told me. “And right now, assuming that Biden is weakened, it’s not clear that anyone is going to be strong enough” to amass a coalition that can produce a delegate majority for the convention this summer.

Biden’s campaign says it is ready to fight on in Nevada and especially South Carolina, with its large population of African American voters. But the extent of Biden’s collapse in New Hampshire, where he won less than 9 percent of the vote, has many Democratic strategists questioning whether he can forge a path back to relevance in the race. “I don’t see how he carries forward,” the veteran Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg told me. “I think it’s too much of a repudiation.”

Biden’s precipitous decline will immediately shift more focus to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg among party centrists skeptical of Sanders. Yet the release yesterday of an audio tape capturing Bloomberg defending in stark language the controversial stop-and-frisk policing tactic he employed in New York City underscores the ideological and racial obstacles he may face as the media and other candidates zero in on his record.

All of this stands in stark contrast to the past four Democratic nominating contests, when the race effectively resolved to a two-person battle after Iowa and New Hampshire. This year, the party faces the prospect of sustained uncertainty not only after the first two states, but even after the Nevada and South Carolina competitions still to come in February—and maybe even after Super Tuesday on March 3, when 14 states will vote.

“We’ll head into Super Tuesday without a lot of clarity and with Bloomberg representing an entirely new dynamic in all of this,” the Democratic pollster Geoff Garin told me. “This race is very, very different, where these first four states are setting the table for Super Tuesday but they are not the main event.”

If anything, the New Hampshire results spotlighted the obstacles confronting each of the candidates...

Great Essay on Walking Away from the Democrat Party

It's Karlyn Borysenko, "After Attending a Trump Rally, I Realized Democrats Are Not Ready For 2020":

What an interesting reflection. "I’ve been a Democrat for 20 years. Here’s what I experienced at Trump’s rally in New Hampshire." by @DrKarlynB https://t.co/m3aC4ZsXKp

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) February 13, 2020

I think those of us on the left need to take a long look in the mirror and have an honest conversation about what’s going on. If you had told me three years ago that I would ever attend a Donald Trump rally, I would have laughed and assured you that was never going to happen. Heck, if you had told me I would do it three months ago, I probably would have done the same thing. So, how did I find myself among 11,000-plus Trump supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire? Believe it or not, it all started with knitting.

You might not think of the knitting world as a particularly political community, but you’d be wrong. Many knitters are active in social justice communities and love to discuss the revolutionary role knitters have played in our culture. I started noticing this about a year ago, particularly on Instagram. I knit as a way to relax and escape the drama of real life, not to further engage with it. But it was impossible to ignore after roving gangs of online social justice warriors started going after anyone in the knitting community who was not lockstep in their ideology. Knitting stars on Instagram were bullied and mobbed by hundreds of people for seemingly innocuous offenses. One man got mobbed so badly that he had a nervous breakdown and was admitted to the hospital on suicide watch. Many things were not right about the hatred, and witnessing the vitriol coming from those I had aligned myself with politically was a massive wake-up call.

Democrats have an ass-kicking coming to them in November, and I think most of them will be utterly shocked when it happens. 

You see, I was one of those Democrats who considered anyone who voted for Trump a racist. I thought they were horrible (yes, even deplorable) and worked very hard to eliminate their voices from my spaces by unfriending or blocking people who spoke about their support of him, however minor their comments. I watched a lot of MSNBC, was convinced that everything he had done was horrible, that he hated anyone who wasn’t a straight white man, and that he had no redeeming qualities.

But when I witnessed the amount of hate coming from the left in this small, niche knitting community, I started to question everything. I started making a proactive effort to break my echo chamber by listening to voices I thought I would disagree with. I wanted to understand their perspective, believing it would confirm that they were filled with hate for anyone who wasn’t like them. 

That turned out not to be the case. The more voices outside the left that I listened to, the more I realized that these were not bad people. They were not racists, nazis, or white supremacists. We had differences of opinions on social and economic issues, but a difference of opinion does not make your opponent inherently evil. And they could justify their opinions using arguments, rather than the shouting and ranting I saw coming from my side of the aisle.

I started to discover (or perhaps rediscover) the #WalkAway movement. I had heard about #WalkAway when MSNBC told me it was fake and a bunch of Russian bots. But then I started to meet real people who had been Democrats and made the decision to leave because they could not stand the way the left was behaving. I watched town halls they held with different minority communities (all available in their entirety on YouTube), and I saw sane, rational discussion from people of all different races, backgrounds, orientations, and experiences. I joined the Facebook group for the community and saw stories popping up daily of people sharing why they are leaving the Democratic Party. This wasn’t fake. These people are not Russian bots. Moreover, it felt like a breath of fresh air. There was not universal agreement in this group — some were Trump supporters, some weren’t — but they talked and shared their perspective without shouting or rage or trying to cancel each other.

I started to question everything. How many stories had I been sold that weren’t true? What if my perception of the other side is wrong? How is it possible that half the country is overtly racist? Is it possible that Trump derangement syndrome is a real thing, and had I been suffering from it for the past three years?

And the biggest question of all was this: Did I hate Trump so much that I wanted to see my country fail just to spite him and everyone who voted for him?

Fast-forward to the New Hampshire primary, and we have all the politicians running around the state making their case...

RTWT.

Trump Revs Up Campaign

At LAT, "Flush with cash and confident after impeachment, Trump campaign revs up the road show":

WASHINGTON —  Four years after his hostile takeover of the White House, President Trump’s second campaign bears little resemblance to the first — he’s flush with cash, buoyed by an uptick in poll numbers, and brimming with confidence after surviving investigations, an impeachment and myriad controversies that have helped unite once-wary Republicans behind him. 

Unlike his slapdash, anything goes 2016 campaign, Trump now can rely on a massive, professionalized apparatus that has helped raise more than $200 million, deployed eager surrogates to early primary states, and built an extensive field operation and advertising network months before Democrats are likely to choose their nominee.

He also has found new ways to break political taboos, seeking to overshadow Democratic candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire just before they held their nominating contests and playing with voters’ already frazzled nerves. At a primary-eve rally in Manchester, N.H., the president even urged supporters in the state who were registered independents, and thus able to vote in either party’s primary, to vote for the weakest Democrat.

“My only problem is I’m trying to figure who is their weakest candidate — I think they’re all weak!” he said with a broad grin.

It’s an in-your-face strategy hashed out largely by campaign manager Brad Parscale and, of course, the president, an intense manager of his own brand who is determined to remain on offense and to create the appearance of dominance and popularity that, he hopes, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in November.

“He will not give the Democrats a free pass any day of this campaign. They don’t get to have their day where they dominate the news,” said Matt Schlapp, a veteran GOP operative whose wife, Mercedes, works for the Trump campaign. “He’s stepping into their days and talking about why he should get four more years.”

“The more Democrats smear President Trump, the more enthusiasm we see for him and his many accomplishments,” Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement.

There is some evidence for that. A Gallup tracking poll from the last two weeks of January, during the Senate impeachment trial, showed Trump’s approval rating at 49%, its highest point ever. And the campaign raised $1 million in online donations for 10 straight days during the trial. More recent polls show the president’s approval number back in the low-to-mid 40s, where it has hovered for most of his term, although his support among Republicans is sky high.

None of that makes his reelection as inevitable as his campaign suggests. He is running well behind the top Democratic contenders, according to a Quinnipiac University poll this week that showed the president losing a hypothetical head-to-head race to Michael Bloomberg by nine points, Bernie Sanders by eight and Joe Biden by seven.

He also trailed Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar by at least four points, according to the survey.

More.

The Big Winner of Impeachment: Partisanship

An excellent piece, at LAT, "News Analysis: Trump’s impeachment and acquittal please partisans on both sides":

News Analysis: Trump's impeachment and acquittal please partisans on both sides https://t.co/3aAONcX2ON w/ @Noahbierman

— Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) February 5, 2020

WASHINGTON —  Minutes after President Nixon resigned in disgrace and left the White House in August 1974, Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as president and sought to heal a traumatized nation, declaring, “Our long national nightmare is over.”
Although President Trump was acquitted by the Senate on Wednesday and allowed to remain in office, a similar attempt at reconciliation or closure is difficult to imagine.

Americans are instead left with toxic images from Trump’s State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, with Trump refusing to shake House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s outstretched hand, and Pelosi later publicly ripping up the text of Trump’s speech in disgust.

A nation stewing with partisan fury has grown angrier, with Democrats bitter over a president they believe got away with abusing his office and Republicans incensed that he was impeached at all.

The final Senate votes reflected that vast gulf: No Democrats broke ranks, and only one Republican — Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee —condemned what he called “an appalling abuse of the public trust” and voted to convict Trump on one of two articles of impeachment.

Yet many caught in the maelstrom of the last 4½ months — first in a rancorous House impeachment inquiry and then an acrimonious Senate trial — believe their party emerged victorious, exciting passion among their core constituencies.

“The politics in America are so polarized right now that I think both sides probably think they’ve done well politically,” said Tad Devine, who served as a senior advisor to three Democratic presidential campaigns. “They’re talking to entirely different audiences.”

The lack of a consensus has left the long-term lessons of this impeachment unsettled, at least until Trump and Republican lawmakers face the voters in November, and perhaps beyond that.

Nixon resigned before he was impeached over the Watergate scandal after public opinion turned against him and senior Republican senators warned they would vote to remove him from office if he did not leave first. In 1999, President Clinton survived impeachment, publicly apologized, and saw his popularity rise as Americans largely decided he should not be removed for lying about an affair with a White House intern.

But Democrats paid a price the following year when Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, lost the presidential election to George W. Bush by a razor-thin margin ultimately decided by the Supreme Court.

“In the Nixon case, the president left office ... because of a national bipartisan sense that he should,” said Timothy Naftali, founding director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda. “So there was a resolution of the scandal, as much as you can have in a complex republic. There was a consensus he needed to be removed before the end of his term. That consensus doesn’t exist today.”

No president before Trump has been impeached and then gone on to seek reelection. That gives Americans a chance to weigh in more directly, but it also widens the political and social divisions that have defined the turbulent Trump presidency.

“What’s at stake is not just Trump’s reelection or the future of the Republican Party,” said William Howell, a University of Chicago professor who has written extensively about executive power. “It’s about Congress’ ability to check presidential power.”

Historians, constitutional scholars and Democratic lawmakers say Trump’s acquittal in the Senate has almost certainly weakened the authority of Congress to oversee and provide a check on the executive branch. Even if Trump isn’t reelected, future presidents are likely to cite his precedent in refusing to honor congressional subpoenas, blocking witnesses and evidence, without consequence.

Not only did the stonewalling thwart House investigators during the impeachment inquiry, but the Trump administration has also regularly declined to attend routine oversight hearings in Congress.

“Unfortunately, yes, that’s the precedent and everybody seems to love precedents more than they love laws,” said Brenda Wineapple, author of “The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation.” “Suspending the issue of right and wrong, when people get away with things, it’s incentive to do it again.”

The result, in some ways, is likely to be the reverse of the post-Watergate experience.

After Nixon resigned, Congress moved to sharply curtail the president’s authority and create direct oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies for the first time, among other reforms. But many of those changes have weakened in recent decades as Congress has handed more power back to the White House, giving Trump a freer rein than his predecessors.

Few scholars think Trump’s episode heralds a new “age of impeachment,” as former special prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr argued in his defense of the president. The most zealous partisans on each side often threaten impeachment but seldom muster the political power to force the grueling process.

Pelosi resisted several attempts to impeach Trump before acceding to her base in September when a White House whistleblower accused Trump of seeking Ukraine’s help in smearing Joe Biden, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, while withholding a White House meeting and $391 million in military aid as leverage...

Bernie Sanders Internal Numbers

CNN's reporting the Iowa results right now, as are the other networks, no doubt.

Bernie's leading the popular vote totals, but Buttigieg has won more voters around the state, and hence took a larger share of the delegates.

Joe Biden absolutely crashed last night, and I expect he'll bomb in New Hampshire as well. (And Nia-Malika Henderson, on CNN earlier, questioned the strength of Biden's "wall" in the South Carolina primary coming later this month.

I love it.

In any case, at the Intercept, "SANDERS CAMPAIGN’S INTERNAL CAUCUS NUMBERS SHOW THEM LEADING IOWA, WITH BIDEN A DISTANT FOURTH."

BREAKING: The Iowa Democratic Party has released 62% of its caucus results.

Pete Buttigieg leads with about 27% in the State Delegate Equivalent count.

Bernie Sanders follows with about 25%.

More here:

BREAKING: The Iowa Democratic Party has released 62% of its caucus results.

Pete Buttigieg leads with about 27% in the State Delegate Equivalent count.

Bernie Sanders follows with about 25%.

More here: https://t.co/glyEmOk8dS pic.twitter.com/Kjej9p4q5y

— NPR (@NPR) February 4, 2020

Democrats Are Decadent and Depraved

It's true.

At the Other McCain, "Disaster in Iowa: The Democratic Party Is Decadent and Depraved":

The way Democrats run their Iowa caucuses is difficult to explain briefly, but the result Monday was clear. Within an hour of the beginning of the complicated process, the totals of the first-round voting began to be reported via social media, and from precinct after precinct came the same phrase: “Biden — not viable.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden has based his campaign on the argument that he’s the most “electable” Democratic candidate, but the voters of Iowa shot a torpedo through the hull of that argument. Due to a technical glitch that delayed the state Democratic Party’s counting process, we still don’t have official results. But by 10:30 p.m. Eastern time Monday, it became apparent to caucus-watchers that Biden was headed for a fourth-place finish in the Hawkeye State, behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders; South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Buttigieg’s strong second-place showing is a big story — the young mayor out-performed expectations — but Biden’s humiliating defeat is much bigger. . .

Media Roundup Slams Democrats for Iowa Disarray (VIDEO)

Via Free Beacon:

Impact of the Iowa Chaos

From Jonathan Last, at the Bulwark, an excellent analysis.

It's been a perfect storm burying Iowa in negative coverage, and even the experts are saying the Hawkeye State's special role as "first in the nation" is at risk.

Iowa: Ded https://t.co/MTydnoHpQd

— Jonathan V. Last (@JVLast) February 4, 2020

Added: See also AoSHQ, "The Soyciety Pages: Bill Kristol Declares, 'We Are All Democrats Now'."

Black Americans Deeply Pessimistic Under Trump

Well, more than 95 percent of blacks voted for Obama, twice. If Dems can't maintain those numbers in November it could be trouble for the party.

There is a "blexit" exodus going on, with lots of black conservatives leading the movement to get African-Americans off the Democrat plantation.

I love it.

At WaPo, FWIW, "Black Americans deeply pessimistic about country under Trump, whom more than 8 in 10 describe as ‘a racist,’ Post-Ipsos poll finds":

“If I’m in a room with white women, I know that 50 percent of them voted for Trump and they believe in his ideas,” said a university researcher. “I look at them and think, ‘How do you see me? What is my humanity to you?’ ” https://t.co/LP1BCOj0G4

— Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) January 17, 2020

President Trump made a stark appeal to black Americans during the 2016 election when he asked, “What have you got to lose?” Three years later, black Americans have rendered their verdict on his presidency with a deeply pessimistic assessment of their place in the United States under a leader seen by an overwhelming majority as racist.

The findings come from a Washington Post-Ipsos poll of African Americans nationwide, which reveals fears about whether their children will have a fair shot to succeed and a belief that white Americans don’t fully appreciate the discrimination that black people experience.

While personally optimistic about their own lives, black Americans today offer a bleaker view about their community as a whole. They also express determination to try to limit Trump to a single term in office.

More than 8 in 10 black Americans say they believe Trump is a racist and that he has made racism a bigger problem in the country. Nine in 10 disapprove of his job performance overall.

The pessimism goes well beyond assessments of the president. A 65 percent majority of African Americans say it is a “bad time” to be a black person in America. That view is widely shared by clear majorities of black adults across income, generational and political lines. By contrast, 77 percent of black Americans say it is a “good time” to be a white person, with a wide majority saying white people don’t understand the discrimination faced by black Americans.

Courtney Tate, 40, an elementary school teacher in Irving, Tex., outside Dallas, said that since Trump was elected, he’s been having more conversations with his co-workers — discussions that are simultaneously enlightening and exhausting — about racial issues he and his students face everyday.

“As a black person, you’ve always seen all the racism, the microaggressions, but as white people they don't understand this is how things are going for me,” said Tate, who said he is the only black male teacher in his school. “They don’t live those experiences. They don’t live in those neighborhoods. They moved out. It’s so easy to be white and oblivious in this country.”

Francine Cartwright, a 44-year-old mother of three from Moorestown, N.J., said the ascent of Trump has altered the way she thinks about the white people in her life.

“If I’m in a room with white women, I know that 50 percent of them voted for Trump and they believe in his ideas,” said Cartwright, a university researcher. “I look at them and think, ‘How do you see me? What is my humanity to you?’ ”

The president routinely talks about how a steadily growing economy and historically low unemployment have resulted in more African Americans with jobs and the lowest jobless rate for black Americans recorded. Months ago he said, “What I’ve done for African Americans in two-and-a-half years, no president has been able to do anything like it.”

But those factors have not translated positively for the president. A 77 percent majority of black Americans say Trump deserves “only some” or “hardly any” credit for the 5.5 percent unemployment rate among black adults compared with 20 percent who say Trump deserves significant credit.

In follow-up interviews, many said former president Barack Obama deserves more credit for the improvement in the unemployment rate, which declined from a high of 16.8 percent in 2010 to 7.5 percent when he left office.

Others said their personal financial situation is more a product of their own efforts than anything the president has done.

“I don’t think [Trump] has anything to do with unemployment among African Americans,” said Ethel Smith, a 72-year-old nanny who lives in Lithonia, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. “I’ve always been a working poor person. That’s just who I am.”

Black Americans report little change in their personal financial situations in the past few years, with 19 percent saying it has been getting better and 26 percent saying it has been getting worse. Most, 54 percent, say their financial situation has stayed the same...

Remember, all polls are questionable in the current era --- because "shy" voters don't want to reveal their real preferences, and that goes for blacks too.

If 20 percent of blacks vote for Trump in the key Midwest battleground states in November, the Dems can kiss it goodbye.

Lots of folks are talkin' about a Trump landslide. I can't wait.

Still more.