Thank you Bill and Andrew for a great podcast. A comment on Bill's conversation with David Axelrod: The line from Casablanca is the Americans blundering into Berlin, not Paris, in 1918. And of course the irony is that the Allies never blundered into Berlin or were anywhere close when Germany surrendered in 1918. Not to take anything away from the greatest movie ever made. Again, thank you!
The Republican base are loving how much they are holding their elected representatives hostage. Its like a reverse Stockholm syndrome (where the victims - GOP congress members - identify with and empathize with the GOP base (their captors and abusers).
Forgive me i don't know how these things work but if there's a vote on removing the Speaker couldn't the Dems just decline to participate? Or vote for Jeffries? Then it be entirely up to the Republican caucus whether Mike lose his job. Which i would reckon there wouldnt be enough votes?
As before, there would be two separate votes (at least one other vote in the scenario in which the first vote succeeds):
1. Motion to vacate
2. Vote(s) for the successor speaker
The Democrats could absent themselves from the vote on the motion to vacate. By doing so, they would decline to provide the muscle that MTG et al need to remove the speaker and plunge the House into chaos.
Really, though, the urgent thing is to get the funding to Ukraine. Time is running out.
So long as Johnson, cowering under the threat of removal, keeps Ukraine funding bottled up, the likelihood that Ukraine will survive diminishes. Were Johnson confident that Democrats would not participate in his removal, perhaps he would have the confidence to proceed with funding for Ukraine.
This is the crucial dynamic. Can the Democrats provide the assurance that he seems to need to move forward with Ukraine funding? Or will they continue with the usual playbook and let Putin destroy Ukraine.
I discussed this in a comment (copied to a Substack note) this morning:
Yep. The Dems will all vote for Jeffries. So if Johnson loses two Republican votes (strong likelihood) he is out and we go through another exhausting period of indeterminate time while the Republicans pick another Speaker. The trouble is the government can’t really function without a speaker. Last time it took weeks for them to replace McCarthy.
I just gave myself the pleasure of listening to Jeane Kirkpatrick's speech to the 1984 Republican Convention. Man, does it wear well! And man, would today's Republicans be humiliated by it! For anyone else who'd like a lift, here it is:
Toward the end of the speech, Ambassador Kirkpatrick quotes French writer and thinker Jean-François Revel. His are words that can help us win through over the next several months; may we take them to heart:
“Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”
As much as I want to run against MJ in 2024, I'm ready for him to have his Boehner moment. I'm so happy he is in this vise - and I hope it turns him into a Boehner like neocon squish before the door hits him on the rear.
Are we making too much of the import of those "unrestricted" votes in Wisconsin and elsewhere. In 2020, Joe Biden received only 63% of Democrat votes in Wisconsin. Most of the rest went to Bernie Sanders, but 5.4% went to a long list of candidates who had withdrawn by then, including Elizabeth Warren, Tom Steyer, and Tulsi Gabbard. Even with all those other alternatives to Biden, "unrestricted" still was the preference of 3600 Democrats. Yes, there are some folks who want to make their statement. But in November they came out for Biden. Why should this year be much different?
Mike Johnson should just bring the Senate bill for aid to the floor and after it passes, tell his conference, "you want to vacate the chair? Go ahead. Good luck finding the next chump."
Bet they back down, and if they don't, small loss.
Fair point,`but Ukraine is at a different level in terms of the consequences, and they know it. I keep thinking the point will be reached where the caucus fractures, and this would seem to be it, but apparently it's party over country even for the ones who claim otherwise.
Oh I totally agree with you. Without a question. I have just come to the conclusion that they don’t and never really cared. Don’t get me wrong some do but they aren’t ever willing to do what the anti’s are willing to do
Thinking about how Trumpisim has been injected into the political bloodstream, maybe A.B. Stoddard should emulate her father with a new "The Day After" depicting life after a Trump re-election. Maybe a good taste of it would make people realize how foul it really is.
He will die. Trump. And that will take a lot of juice out of his movement because it is about one man and one man's personality. MAGA is just a bunch of nitwits doing nitwitty stuff without Trump. While conservative media has for decades programmed voters on the right to think a certain way, and that will remain, the fundamental inability of MAGA to function will end it.
He will eventually die, but Pandora's box is now open. Trump has created a '5th column' that is here to stay. It took his celebrity and particular skill set to bring out the ugliness in tens of millions of Americans. But now that it's unleashed, hatred, political violence and conspiracy theories will continue to infect America. Disinformation is coin of their realm. Almost half of Americans don't trust the courts. Gen Z thinks this is normal. And the hunger for authoritarianism isn't going away anytime soon.
I disagree because I don't see Americans longing for misery. We like convenience a whole lot better. There won't be another leader they can rally around, and they're just sheep.
RE: The price we're already paying for Trump's renomination.
We, as a liberal democratic nation - a nation supposedly of laws and not men - have been, and are continuing to, engage in deep deficit spending when it comes to the price of all things Donald Trump, depleting our reserves of norms and traditions and seriously taxing the rule of law due to the tardiness of the Justice Department in dealing with the sonofabitch vis a vie J6 and the waffling of the courts in bringing him to heel in the cases that have finally been brought against him. It's time for the judges to take the effin' gloves off and treat this criminal as they would any other, threats or not.
Either he's actually answerable to the law or he isn't, and the sooner we decide on that the better. What's transpired so far is one notch above outright appeasement; it is shameful and could easily lead to the complete bankruptcy and failure of this experiment called America.
In MAGA land, a place with 50 million inhabitants, actions and words mean little. The folks there seem to exist in a bubble, where life is all about them and their grievances. With that being the case, it will be very difficult to reach them in any meaningful way. Even if JB wins in November the road back to normalcy will be a long one.
Trump wasted no time attacking E Jean Caroll after being sued a second time. If it is indeed that money is the only thing that gets his attention, a ten million dollar fine for every violation of the gag order might get his attention. Somehow, I suspect a weekend in Rikers might have an effect as well.
I'm not frustrated. I expected this and it's part of a systemic dissolution of the judicial system. He knows what he's doing.
Thank you Bill and Andrew for a great podcast. A comment on Bill's conversation with David Axelrod: The line from Casablanca is the Americans blundering into Berlin, not Paris, in 1918. And of course the irony is that the Allies never blundered into Berlin or were anywhere close when Germany surrendered in 1918. Not to take anything away from the greatest movie ever made. Again, thank you!
The Republican base are loving how much they are holding their elected representatives hostage. Its like a reverse Stockholm syndrome (where the victims - GOP congress members - identify with and empathize with the GOP base (their captors and abusers).
Forgive me i don't know how these things work but if there's a vote on removing the Speaker couldn't the Dems just decline to participate? Or vote for Jeffries? Then it be entirely up to the Republican caucus whether Mike lose his job. Which i would reckon there wouldnt be enough votes?
You ask the right questions.
As before, there would be two separate votes (at least one other vote in the scenario in which the first vote succeeds):
1. Motion to vacate
2. Vote(s) for the successor speaker
The Democrats could absent themselves from the vote on the motion to vacate. By doing so, they would decline to provide the muscle that MTG et al need to remove the speaker and plunge the House into chaos.
Really, though, the urgent thing is to get the funding to Ukraine. Time is running out.
So long as Johnson, cowering under the threat of removal, keeps Ukraine funding bottled up, the likelihood that Ukraine will survive diminishes. Were Johnson confident that Democrats would not participate in his removal, perhaps he would have the confidence to proceed with funding for Ukraine.
This is the crucial dynamic. Can the Democrats provide the assurance that he seems to need to move forward with Ukraine funding? Or will they continue with the usual playbook and let Putin destroy Ukraine.
I discussed this in a comment (copied to a Substack note) this morning:
https://substack.com/@decencyandsense/note/c-53094439
.
For more recent coverage of MTG's threats, there is this from this afternoon:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/03/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-speaker-johnson/index.html
Yep. The Dems will all vote for Jeffries. So if Johnson loses two Republican votes (strong likelihood) he is out and we go through another exhausting period of indeterminate time while the Republicans pick another Speaker. The trouble is the government can’t really function without a speaker. Last time it took weeks for them to replace McCarthy.
I just gave myself the pleasure of listening to Jeane Kirkpatrick's speech to the 1984 Republican Convention. Man, does it wear well! And man, would today's Republicans be humiliated by it! For anyone else who'd like a lift, here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv8L-cuq17s
Toward the end of the speech, Ambassador Kirkpatrick quotes French writer and thinker Jean-François Revel. His are words that can help us win through over the next several months; may we take them to heart:
“Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”
As much as I want to run against MJ in 2024, I'm ready for him to have his Boehner moment. I'm so happy he is in this vise - and I hope it turns him into a Boehner like neocon squish before the door hits him on the rear.
Y'know Bill, there's this old saying, "History is always in our rear view mirror." It's a
good idea to take a look in
that mirror at times and
compare it to what you see
in front of you.
Our republic has been here
before. Not necessarily in the
exact same way, but comparatively speaking.
There are many good people
who believe in our democratic
constitutional way of life here. Don't anyone count us
out.
Regarding polls: read this https://www.politicususa.com/2024/04/03/wsj-swing-state-poll.html The poll was paid for by Murdoch and done by Trump's pet pollster. Now can we stop with the doomsday poll reporting?
Thank you, Ms. Seifert.
Are we making too much of the import of those "unrestricted" votes in Wisconsin and elsewhere. In 2020, Joe Biden received only 63% of Democrat votes in Wisconsin. Most of the rest went to Bernie Sanders, but 5.4% went to a long list of candidates who had withdrawn by then, including Elizabeth Warren, Tom Steyer, and Tulsi Gabbard. Even with all those other alternatives to Biden, "unrestricted" still was the preference of 3600 Democrats. Yes, there are some folks who want to make their statement. But in November they came out for Biden. Why should this year be much different?
On Christian Visibility Day, Trump should be keeping a very low profile I’d think. Along with his 2 Corinthians.
Mike Johnson should just bring the Senate bill for aid to the floor and after it passes, tell his conference, "you want to vacate the chair? Go ahead. Good luck finding the next chump."
Bet they back down, and if they don't, small loss.
He's too much of a coward.
Fair point,`but Ukraine is at a different level in terms of the consequences, and they know it. I keep thinking the point will be reached where the caucus fractures, and this would seem to be it, but apparently it's party over country even for the ones who claim otherwise.
Oh I totally agree with you. Without a question. I have just come to the conclusion that they don’t and never really cared. Don’t get me wrong some do but they aren’t ever willing to do what the anti’s are willing to do
Thinking about how Trumpisim has been injected into the political bloodstream, maybe A.B. Stoddard should emulate her father with a new "The Day After" depicting life after a Trump re-election. Maybe a good taste of it would make people realize how foul it really is.
He will die. Trump. And that will take a lot of juice out of his movement because it is about one man and one man's personality. MAGA is just a bunch of nitwits doing nitwitty stuff without Trump. While conservative media has for decades programmed voters on the right to think a certain way, and that will remain, the fundamental inability of MAGA to function will end it.
He will eventually die, but Pandora's box is now open. Trump has created a '5th column' that is here to stay. It took his celebrity and particular skill set to bring out the ugliness in tens of millions of Americans. But now that it's unleashed, hatred, political violence and conspiracy theories will continue to infect America. Disinformation is coin of their realm. Almost half of Americans don't trust the courts. Gen Z thinks this is normal. And the hunger for authoritarianism isn't going away anytime soon.
I disagree because I don't see Americans longing for misery. We like convenience a whole lot better. There won't be another leader they can rally around, and they're just sheep.
RE: The price we're already paying for Trump's renomination.
We, as a liberal democratic nation - a nation supposedly of laws and not men - have been, and are continuing to, engage in deep deficit spending when it comes to the price of all things Donald Trump, depleting our reserves of norms and traditions and seriously taxing the rule of law due to the tardiness of the Justice Department in dealing with the sonofabitch vis a vie J6 and the waffling of the courts in bringing him to heel in the cases that have finally been brought against him. It's time for the judges to take the effin' gloves off and treat this criminal as they would any other, threats or not.
Either he's actually answerable to the law or he isn't, and the sooner we decide on that the better. What's transpired so far is one notch above outright appeasement; it is shameful and could easily lead to the complete bankruptcy and failure of this experiment called America.
Yes, take the 'effin gloves off. He should be in jail awaiting trial.
In MAGA land, a place with 50 million inhabitants, actions and words mean little. The folks there seem to exist in a bubble, where life is all about them and their grievances. With that being the case, it will be very difficult to reach them in any meaningful way. Even if JB wins in November the road back to normalcy will be a long one.
Trump wasted no time attacking E Jean Caroll after being sued a second time. If it is indeed that money is the only thing that gets his attention, a ten million dollar fine for every violation of the gag order might get his attention. Somehow, I suspect a weekend in Rikers might have an effect as well.
I'm not frustrated. I expected this and it's part of a systemic dissolution of the judicial system. He knows what he's doing.