Josh Marshall
Israel Has a New Government
Literally in the final hour, members of the so-called ‘change coalition’ have finalized an agreement to form a coalition government and presented it to the President. Caretaker Prime Minister Netanyahu has one more card to play but it’s hope and against hope and veering increasingly into Jan 6th territory. A Netanyahu ally, Yariv Levin, is the Speaker of the Knesset. And he and Netanyahu’s supporters have said he will simply refuse to hold the vote that confirms the new government. That is not really a thing. It’s pretty close to the Israeli system’s version of refusing to accept the electoral college ballots. It’s not clear how long he can he do that legally. Some have said he could conceivably delay for as long as a week. To what end? The coalition is so fragile that the hope is that a few more days might break it apart. Then Netanyahu gets to remain perpetual Prime Minister.
Really, though, this almost certainly means Netanyahu is through. Or at least through as the incumbent Prime Minister. The reality of the situation may lead to them jettisoning that plan.
TPM Inside Briefing With Paul Krugman 
Yesterday we held an Inside Briefing with Paul Krugman in which we discussed pretty much all the economic policy questions (and the political debates growing out of them) of the early Biden presidency. We talk about the Biden infrastructure plan, inflation, chronic under-investment, Larry Summers, whether deficits matter and more.
If you’re a member, you can watch our discussion after the jump. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Remarkable. Ex-President Trump appears to have had a tantrum and shut down his blog. This appears to come after news reports that it was receiving only a tiny amount of traffic. It ran for about 30 days. Sad.
According to Maggie Haberman and Byron York, ex-President Trump is telling associates he expects to be reinstalled in the White House in a coup some time this summer. This is best seen as an open invitation and encouragement of more January 6th style political violence focused on the late summer of 2021.
Thunder in the Distance
With Texas Democrats refusing to attend a state legislative session in an effort to block the state’s election crackdown law it reminded TPM Reader MR of a similar instance 18 years ago. It was a story I covered closely at TPM, and MR dropped me a note this morning reminding me. It’s more than just a trip down memory lane. What happened in 2003 in Texas was a preview, prologue to almost everything that would happen over the subsequent two decades. It presaged the debt ceiling hostage taking; it presaged Merrick Garland; and it presaged Donald Trump.
As we know from looking forward to the 2022 midterm, once a decade there’s a federal Census, a reapportionment of congressional seats and redistricting in every state that has more than one representative. It happened in 2010, setting the ground work for Republicans storming back into the majority in the House. Democrats rightly fear something similar will happen next year.
We had an Inside Briefing this afternoon with Paul Krugman where we talked about Biden’s agenda, inflation, under-investment, deficits, infrastructure, the fed and a lot more. I was really looking forward to this discussion because … well, we’re on totally different policy and economic terrain than we were two years ago. And I’ve been trying to get my head around new debates about inflation, distinguishing between nonsense and scare talk on the one hand and concerns which may be overblown but are also reasonable. We also talked about Paul’s concern that Biden’s medium to long term spending policies may not be aggressive enough.
Anyway, fascinating conversation, I think. If you’re a member, we’ll be posting it tomorrow here in the Editor’s Blog.
Also, for podcast listeners, this week’s episode will be dropping Thursday rather than Wednesday this week.
Some Thoughts on the COVID ‘Lab Leak’ Theory
Are you having trouble keeping up on the press discussion of a ‘lab leak’ theory of the origins of COVID? Here are a few pointers.
Broadly speaking, there’s seldom been an example of a more rapid shift in public opinion or rather elite conventional wisdom in the face of so little changing evidence. A bunch of right wing or right-adjacent columnists are running around high-fiving each other and patting themselves on the back about how “the media” got it wrong.
On balance, this isn’t true. What happened is that from the outset China-hawks who were largely out to defend Donald Trump made a series of baseless accusations about COVID either being a bioweapon or the accidental release of a Chinese biological warfare weapon. When that got shot down (there’s strong genomic evidence against this), they retreated to a more conventional lab accident as their pet theory. The best one can say is that most journalists became reflexively skeptical to all such claims since they were mainly coming from people who are professional liars with obvious axes to grind.
I took a peek at Joe Biden’s poll numbers yesterday evening. They’re holding up pretty well four months into his presidency. 538 has a composite approval rating this morning of 53.6%. By longterm historical standards that’s anemic for an incoming president. It’s decent by more recent standards. But what jumps out more than anything is the stability. Biden’s support has undulated only slightly in a narrow two or three point band. Indeed, Biden looks like the inverse of Donald Trump – with support in the low-mind 50s and disapproval hovering just over 40%. The same basic division is in place from last year to this, as though nothing had happened – except that that narrow majority – mid-low-50s – has their president in office.
Bibi’s Insurrection
If it were anyone else but Benjamin Netanyahu it would be 100% clear his Prime Ministership is over and a new government will be sworn in later this week. That still seems highly likely. But since it is Benjamin Netanyahu, who has 900 political lives and has managed to remain Prime Minister after multiple losses and stalemate elections, no one can be sure.
Even with all this it is remarkable to watch the wild and desperate moves from Netanyahu and his supporters to upend what seems increasingly close to inevitable. They have unleashed a fusillade of attacks and incitement against Naftali Bennett and his political ally Ayelet Shaked, both members of the religious zionist Yamina party. Not a few have compared the current climate of incitement against these two and Yair Lapid, the architect of the new government, to that in weeks preceding the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, has ordered increased security for Bennett and Shaked. Lapid already has a security detail as head of the opposition.
Here’s an article in Ha’aretz describing concerns about Israeli national security and foreign policy officials about the extent of damage to the country’s relationship with the Democratic party during Benjamin Netanyahu’s long reign. Not surprisingly they are less concerned about the high profile criticism of AOC or Rashida Tlaib than the uncharacteristically muted and equivocal support from stalwarts like Jerry Nadler and Robert Menendez.