I would not say it is surprising that we’ve gotten a lot of emails on this “single point of failure” conversation we’re having. After all, it’s really the central issue about what happened in 2021 and why and what that means for the future of the Democratic party and the country. But even with all that, wow … it’s like a flood of emails. And that’s wonderful. I’m going to be publishing more throughout the day. But I’ve developed a feel over the years for the scale and pace of reader emails and this has really struck a nerve. Not a surprise, no. But still stands out.
Readers Respond to Single Point of Failure #3
From TPM Reader SC …
Continue reading “Readers Respond to Single Point of Failure #3”I agree with you on “single point of failure”. I spent most of last year hoping you were right that BBB in some form would pass but also fearing it might not. I put on a pretty good false bravado about it passing; I didn’t fully believe it.
What got my goat was this “trifecta” nonsense.The Democrats NEVER had both houses of Congress. They NEVER had more than nominal control. And therefore it is silly to blame “The Democratic Party” as if it was some monolith. It never was.
Is Outlawing Abortion Nationwide The Next Republican Frontier?
Republicans may soon be the dogs that caught the car.
Continue reading “Is Outlawing Abortion Nationwide The Next Republican Frontier?”The Future of French Politics is Unclear
Commentators are alternatively seeing the French election as a victory for Marine Le Pen, who exceeded her 2017 showing by eight percentage points, or as a death knell for right-wing populism. I’d say it was neither. The results reflected the peculiarity of the times and of French politics.
Continue reading “The Future of French Politics is Unclear”Georgia GOP Debate Was A Pissing Match Over Who Wants To Help Trump Destroy Democracy More
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Perdue Opens Gubernatorial Debate With Big Lie
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) faced off with GOP primary challenger and Trump lapdog David Perdue in a debate on Sunday–and it got pretty ugly.
- Perdue, out to prove his worthiness of the ex-president’s endorsement, immediately dove right into pushing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Like, that was literally Perdue’s first sentence: “First off, folks, let me be very clear tonight: the election in 2020 was rigged and stolen.” (It wasn’t).
- Perdue also blamed his defeat in Georgia’s Senate runoff race on Kemp, one of Trump’s biggest punching bags after the state went to Biden and Kemp refused to overturn the results. Kemp fired back at the former senator, saying that “weak leaders blame everybody else for their own loss instead of themselves.”
- Kemp bragged about passing “the strongest election integrity act in the country” after the 2020 election “because a lot of things were done by other people.”
Hey, remember this?
For what it’s worth, we’re half an hour into the GOP Georgia governor debate, and David Perdue has said about as many true things as he did in the Senate debate against Jon Ossoff where he didn’t show up. pic.twitter.com/1808SNSoCU
— stephen fowler (@stphnfwlr) April 24, 2022
Michigan Far-Right Candidate Says Families Ought To Be All-White
Right-wing radio host Randy Bishop, who’s running for Michigan state Senate, complained on his show last month that commercials were trying to make him “feel guilty” because “I think a family should be a white mom, a white dad and white kids.”
- Bishop also sprinkled his rant with some white nationalist “Great Replacement Theory,” claiming that “[t]hey want us to die and go away,” which “they’re going to try to do […] through politics this year.”
- Bishop, a longtime conservative who was an outspoken advocate of a pro-Trump 2020 election audit, filed to run as a Democrat in the open primary race last week to, by his own admission, discourage actual Democrats from voting in the state GOP’s open primary. However, one of the GOP primary candidates is accusing Bishop of being part of a “pay for play scheme” to help another deeply conservative candidate beat establishment GOP candidates in the race.
Guy Allegedly Sent Violent Threats To Dictionary Over Female Gender Definitions
The Justice Department announced on Friday that a California man had been criminally charged with interstate communication of violent threats for allegedly making “hate-fueled threats” against Merriam-Webster, Inc. online over the dictionary’s definitions of “female,” “girl” and “woman.”
- The man allegedly threatened to shoot up and bomb Merriam-Webster’s headquarters several times, claiming the dictionary had “caved to the cultural Marxist, anti-science tranny [sic] agenda and altered the definition of ‘female’ as part of the Left’s efforts to corrupt and degrade the English language and deny reality.”
- Merriam-Webster shut down its offices in Massachusetts and New York for about five business days as a result of the threats, according to the DOJ.
Warren Roasts ‘Traitor’ McCarthy For Lying About Potentially Asking Trump To Resign
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) a “liar and a traitor” on Sunday after he was caught blatantly lying about a call with fellow House GOP leaders several days after Jan. 6 in which McCarthy said he’d urge Trump to resign over the Capitol attack.
Key Analysis
“Kevin McCarthy and the intoxication of power” – The Washington Post
US Diplomats To Return To Ukraine
After an unannounced visit to Kyiv, Ukraine this weekend amid Russia’s invasion of the country, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Monday that the U.S. would resume sending its diplomats to Ukraine next week and would be looking at reopening the U.S. embassy in Kyiv.
- Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveled to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They were the highest-ranking officials to visit Ukraine since Russia began its assault on the neighboring country.
- Biden officially nominated a new ambassador to Ukraine on Monday morning. The nominee, Bridget Brink, will be filling a post that’s been empty for more than two years.
An Air Force General Gets Convicted For First Time
Air Force Maj. Gen. William T. Cooley became the first-ever Air Force general to be convicted in a court martial on Saturday after he was found guilty of abusive sexual conduct.
- Cooley was convicted for forcibly kissing his sister-in-law in 2018. She had also alleged that the general groped her and forced her to touch him over his clothes in the same incident, but he was found not guilty of those allegations.
- The general faces up to seven years in prison, plus dismissal from the Air Force. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for today.
Macron Fends Off Far-Right Challenger
French President Emmanuel Macron defeated challenger Marine Le Pen on Sunday in a decisive victory in France’s widely watched presidential race.
Sen. Orrin Hatch Dies At 88
88-year-old Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the longest-serving Republican in Senate history, died on Saturday due to complications from a stroke he suffered on April 15, according to one of his sons.
- One bizarre paragraph in Hatch’s obituary in the New York Times describes the senator as “a gentlemanly conservative rock” who also “blocked labor law reforms and fair housing bills with filibusters, tying up Senate business for weeks” and “voted against the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have enshrined gender equality as a bedrock civil right.”
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Correction: An original version of this post misidentified Bishop’s party affiliation. He’s running as a Democrat.
France
Everyone is breathing a sigh of relief if not for the fact that Emmanuel Macron won the French election than the fact that Marine Le Pen was defeated — and fairly handily. You can be cheered that he won with almost 60% of the vote or sobered by the fact that she got more than 40% and significantly increased her 2017 margin. To me the more striking reality is that there now seems to be in effect two parties in France — a big-tent civic democratic party and a rightist nationalist, revanchist party. The former is winning the elections for now. But no one wins every election.
In 2017 it all seemed contingent. But now it seems more like the norm, the structure of French politics as opposed to a one off situation driven by a series of surprise events.
Continue reading “France”Readers Respond to Single Point of Failure #2
From TPM Reader EF …
Continue reading “Readers Respond to Single Point of Failure #2”Like many others, I am disappointed and frustrated that BBB did not pass or that Manchin played Lucy with the football so that he could occupy center stage for a year. I also worry about the demoralizing effects of the process. But, c’mon folks, get real. FDR had 70 senators when the New Deal was passed. Obama barely got the ACA passed with 60 (and then 59 after Kennedy died near the finish line). Getting BBB done in even its skinnier form was always a longshot with a tied Senate.
GOP Rep: McCarthy’s Lying Won’t Ruin ‘Very Strong Support’ To Become Speaker
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on Sunday said Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) chances of becoming speaker if the GOP retakes the chamber remain “very strong” even after McCarthy lied about his previous plans to ask then-President Trump to resign after Jan. 6.
Continue reading “GOP Rep: McCarthy’s Lying Won’t Ruin ‘Very Strong Support’ To Become Speaker”Readers Respond to Single Point of Failure #1
TPM Reader RS responds to PT and myself on the single point of failure …
Continue reading “Readers Respond to Single Point of Failure #1”What both you, Josh, and reader PT failed to point out explicitly was that every Democratic leader – President Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi – said repeatedly and publicly, that these two bills, BIF and BBB, were linked. That both would pass Congress or neither would reach the President’s desk. Biden even said that he would only sign BIF if BBB also passed both houses of Congress.
They ALL LIED, and unlike GOP voters, there are electoral consequences for blatantly lying to Democratic voters.
Blunt: ‘Sort Of Surprised’ McCarthy Thought Trump Resigning Would Be ‘Realistic’
Retiring Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) on Sunday said he was “sort of surprised” that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) considered asking then-President Trump to resign after Jan. 6, following McCarthy getting caught red-handed after denying that he planned to tell Trump to resign after the deadly Capitol insurrection.
Continue reading “Blunt: ‘Sort Of Surprised’ McCarthy Thought Trump Resigning Would Be ‘Realistic’”