Editors’ Blog

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the sudden forward lurch of the reconciliation negotiations that has Democrats feeling optimistic about reaching a deal potentially by the end of the week.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

We are back in this guessing game on what is up with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Mostly it doesn’t matter. She has the vote and Democrats need that vote. And that’s really 90% of the story and quite likely 100%. I’ll just revisit what I’ve learned trying to get to the bottom of this mystery myself.

One thing I hear again and again is that Sinema is doing some version of a mafia bust-out, paying off lobbyists in every way she can think of and the pay off is a cushy perch on K Street as a lobbyist herself. This version of the story presents a wonderful morality tale about Washington. But I’m pretty certain it’s not true. It would all be much easier to understand. But again I’m pretty certain this is not true.

Kate Riga with the latest state of play on reconciliation.

It’s a tale as old as time for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI).

The Republican senator is reportedly using his leverage as a senator to, at least temporarily, block the confirmation of Matt Graves, whom President Biden named as his pick to lead the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. Since January of this year that office has overseen more than 600 prosecutions related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. So far, more than 100 insurrectionists have pleaded guilty to charges related to the attack.

Everything I’ve seen over the 24 hours since I wrote the post below tells me that yesterday was the best day Democrats have had in months. As I said yesterday, the headlines are about things that are being dropped. But the real story is the concreteness and specificity of these reports and the authority of the people sending the message. Those all tell us that the real negotiation is now underway. Kate Riga and I discussed this in the new episode of the podcast which should be out this afternoon.

A few points.

There’s a bunch of news out of today’s Democratic caucus meetings about specific programs being dropped from the reconciliation bill altogether or cut by this or that fairly dramatic amount. Unsurprisingly this is generating a lot of anger and gnashing of teeth. Tuition free community college is out, for instance, according to reports of what President Biden told House and Senate progressives. I have a different take on it. This is actually some of the most promising news I’ve heard in some time: Because these details are clearly coming from a real negotiation.

I’m not saying these programs don’t matter. Far from it. It’s more that I’ve already discounted or accepted the fact that a lot of these things are going to be cut dramatically. The bigger danger I see is that the whole thing falls apart and nothing happens at all. So actual negotiations happen is a big deal.

Let me just preface this by saying, I don’t have a lot of answers. But it wasn’t for a lack of trying: I reached out to Michael Cohen this afternoon for some clarification on WTF is going on and got crickets, so I will update you if I hear back.

But.

Michael Cohen and rapper and (one-time?) MAGA fan Kanye West (who recently legally changed his name to his rapper pseudonym “Ye”) were spotted getting coffee together today in New York City’s Upper East Side, according to Page Six. The rapper was wearing some bizarre prosthetic mask, apparently similar to ones he’s worn before. It’s a white mask. It’s really spooky looking. I don’t know enough about West’s aesthetic or marketing campaigns to give you a clear answer on why or how this originated, but check out the picture below.

TPM Reader JB strikes back!

I noted a couple of your correspondents at TPM objected to the idea that Democrats in the House and Senate drive themselves into a legislative cul-de-sac with respect to the infrastructure bill, either because they doubt the reality of the cul-de-sac or because they didn’t think Democrats had a choice.

They did have a choice, and it centered around process.  Use of the reconciliation procedure for the bulk of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda was a given, with all Republicans in the House and Senate united in opposition to action on anything except building more roads and a few other elements of physical infrastructure and most Republicans opposed even to these.  This did not mean that Democrats had to use an entirely closed process, with hardly any public hearings or committee votes on legislative language or amendments.

The story here is not complicated, at least in broad strokes. Mid-summer Delta, economic knock-on effects of Delta and finally Afghanistan started sapping Biden’s popularity. Manchin saw that ebbing power and started pumping the brakes on the President’s agenda. This was of a piece with DC insider culture, which Manchin is the ultimate creature of, turning hard on the President. The big reporters changing their view of him and the lobbies sensing weakness.

All political power is unitary and it’s played out over the last two or three months in a very damaging way.

I confess that I have completely given up on making sense of what is going on on Capitol Hill right now. Is there going to be a reconciliation bill? Is the BIF going to pass? I have no idea on either. I also have no clue about the continuing appearance of a lack of urgency. A few days ago Rep. Jayapal said there’s nothing set in stone about the October 31st deadline. And just yesterday Joe Manchin said it didn’t seem at all realistic that anything would be done by then. That is, to put it mildly, deeply unfortunate because the public is drifting away from the President and his party in significant part because they cannot seem to act on the agenda they say is so important. They are also sowing a creeping disillusionment and demoralization among their own partisans. This is fundamentally the fault of Democratic voters who missed the chance to elect two to four more senators last November. But the problem is Joe Biden’s to solve.