Politics | Voter.org

It’s Joe Manchin’s America

July 17, 2022 America, It's, Manchin’s0 comment

On March 6, 2021, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia delivered the decisive 50th Democratic vote to help pass President Joe Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. The stimulus package provided relief checks to most American families, expanded a child tax credit to combat poverty, and bolstered federal support to fight the coronavirus pandemic. That moment briefly raised hopes on the left that Manchin, a centrist if not conservative Democrat, would back Biden’s fledgling effort to usher in a progressive economic transformation not seen since the New Deal. Yet…

The January 6 Committee’s Most Damning Revelation Yet

July 13, 2022 Most, January, committee's, damning, revelation0 comment

The most damning piece of evidence presented at today’s Select Committee hearing on the January 6 insurrection wasn’t a sound bite from a star witness, nor was it another never-before-seen video of the assault on the Capitol. The revelation amounted to a single highlighted sentence in an email sent days after the attack by one of Donald Trump’s lawyers, John Eastman, to another, Rudy Giuliani: “I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.” Eastman, a conservative law professor, has long been…

The Democrats’ New Spokesman in the Culture Wars

July 13, 2022 Democrats, Wars, culture, Spokesman0 comment

On May 4, two days after Politico rocked Washington by revealing the draft of a Supreme Court decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, California Governor Gavin Newsom delivered remarks at a Los Angeles Planned Parenthood office—and triggered a small earthquake of his own. Newsom pledged that, however the Court ruled, California would ensure legal access to abortion. But it was something else he said that really stood out: Republican-controlled states are moving not only to restrict or outlaw abortion if the Court allows it, he said, but also…

America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good

July 13, 2022 America, growing, GOOD, Possibly, apart0 comment

It may be time to stop talking about “red” and “blue” America. That’s the provocative conclusion of Michael Podhorzer, a longtime political strategist for labor unions and the chair of the Analyst Institute, a collaborative of progressive groups that studies elections. In a private newsletter that he writes for a small group of activists, Podhorzer recently laid out a detailed case for thinking of the two blocs as fundamentally different nations uneasily sharing the same geographic space. “When we think about the United States, we make the essential error of…

Democrats Try to Build Back (A Bit) Better

July 13, 2022 Democrats, Better, back, Build0 comment

President Joe Biden’s economic agenda might be back from the dead. If the original proposal was Build Back Better, this is more like Build Back a Bit. Democrats this week took the first formal step toward reviving a stripped-down version of the nearly $ 2 trillion plan that Senator Joe Manchin killed late last year. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asked the Senate parliamentarian to review a proposed agreement that aims to reduce the cost of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices directly—a long-sought Democratic priority that Manchin supports.…

The Incitement Paper Trail

July 13, 2022 Paper, Trail, incitement0 comment

Donald Trump sent thousands of tweets during his four years as president. None may prove as consequential as the one he sent in the wee hours of December 19, 2020: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild,” the president wrote at 1:42 a.m. ET. At the time, Trump’s middle-of-the-night missive deepened a sense of growing alarm about a defeated president who appeared to be unmoored and was fomenting chaos during his final weeks in office. But the tweet’s significance was not fully understood until today,…