The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia will get his pipeline through the state after all, stuffed into the debt ceiling deal so that he doesn't scuttle it.

 

The text of the debt ceiling bill released on Sunday would approve all the remaining permits to complete the stalled Mountain Valley Pipeline, delivering a big win for West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito.

But the backing of the pipeline that would deliver gas from West Virginia into the Southeast is sure to set off bitter complaints from the environmental groups that have fought its construction for years and turned the project into a symbol of their struggle against fossil fuels.

Manchin hailed the bill’s language, saying finishing the pipeline would lower energy costs for the United States and West Virginia.

“I am proud to have fought for this critical project and to have secured the bipartisan support necessary to get it across the finish line,” he said in a statement.

The bill agreed by the White House and House Republicans must still be approved by both chambers of Congress, which is expected to happen in the coming week.

 

This of course will bring Manchin plenty of money after he leaves the Senate. As for the people of WV who will lose their lands and environment in the Wild and Wonderful state, well...you made Manchin a lot of money, so shut up.

Still, he may not actually get what he wants in the end.

 

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) will take steps to strip a new natural gas pipeline project from a bipartisan bill to raise the debt ceiling, his office said Monday—one of several scenarios that could derail the newly announced legislation as party leaders scramble to secure votes to pass it before the country defaults on its debt as soon as June 5.

Kaine’s office said Monday he would file an amendment to remove federal permits for the Mountain Valley Pipeline project from the debt ceiling bill, calling the provision “completely unrelated to the debt ceiling matter,” NBC News reported Monday.

Kaine has long opposed the project backed by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), which would transport gas to East Coast markets via a 300-mile pipeline through West Virginia and Virginia and has faced repeated delays prompted by legal challenges from environmentalists.

Kaine’s push for an amendment is one of several hurdles that could complicate, delay or even change the math for the bill in the Democratic-controlled Senate—where it needs 60 votes to clear a filibuster threshold—before it heads to President Joe Biden’s desk for final approval.

GOP Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) have also vowed to take measures that could stall the legislation in the upper chamber, with Lee taking issue with what he said is an inadequate reduction in overall federal spending and Graham raising concerns about a provision that caps defense spending at the $886 billion Biden requested in his fiscal year 2024 budget.

The Republican-controlled House Rules Committee is expected to vote as soon as Tuesday on the guidelines for debate, including whether the bill will be subject to amendments, but three of the nine Republican members have publicly criticized the bill, meaning their votes against the legislation could stall it in committee if the four Democrats on the panel also oppose. 

So the whole thing could still come undone.

The Drums Of War, Con't

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia thinks his Iran War Powers act actually has a chance in the Senate because the briefing last week by the State Department and Pentagon went so badly that several GOP senators are considering handcuffing Trump on further action against Tehran.

“There were a couple of other problems I thought about that briefing,” Kaine added. “Without getting into classified information, many of us were underwhelmed by the evidence of imminence. Not everybody was, some thought it was fine, but many of us were underwhelmed by that.”

Several legislators left that briefing last week infuriated with what they considered evasive or dismissive answers on a question of war and peace. Memorably, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, a close ally of the president, laced into the briefers—Pompeo, CIA Director Gina Haspel, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire—for “telling us that we need to be good little boys and girls and run along and not debate this in public.” Several others predicted to The Daily Beast that it would cost the administration congressional support over Iran ahead of the upcoming war-powers votes.

Since last week, Kaine has been in talks with GOP senators—including Lee, Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Todd Young (R-IN)—about shaping the text of his resolution in hopes of it garnering as much Republican support as possible. Those negotiations, Kaine said, have yielded compromise—including mutual support of striking text from the resolution that specifically mentions President Trump. “We’re trying to make it as palatable as we can for everybody,” he said.

Such efforts have proven fruitful so far. Young told reporters on Tuesday that he’d be backing Kaine’s resolution—and with Lee and Paul already supportive, only one more GOP senator is needed to support the measure in order for it to pass the Senate.

Kaine said he wasn’t sure how large the pool of possible GOP ‘yes’ votes is. “Probably a dozen, but I could be surprised,” he said. Lee, meanwhile, predicted to reporters that it would probably be close to the bloc of seven who voted with Democrats on the Yemen resolution.

But of course, making it palatable means making it toothless.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a similar Iran war powers resolution by a 224 to 194 margin. That resolution, led by Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin, is unlikely to receive a Senate vote, however. It is what’s known as a “concurrent” resolution—which, owing to obscure parliamentary procedure, doesn’t provide an obvious mechanism for senators to get it onto the floor for a vote.

Slotkin’s measure, as a concurrent resolution, also doesn’t require a presidential signature to pass. House Democratic leadership considered that a strength, since it avoids a presidential veto—something Trump exercised when Congress voted to get the U.S. out of the Yemen war. But avoiding a veto has an upside for Trump, argued Matt Duss, the chief foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT).

“If Trump wants to veto the second War Powers Resolution of his presidency and assert a unilateral right to escalate conflicts as he’s sending thousands more troops to the Middle East, he can do that, but it will just further reveal that he’s lying when he says he wants to end our country’s endless wars,” Duss told The Daily Beast.

Does anyone here think Trump gives a damn about that should the measure survive a near guaranteed filibuster?

Last Call For That's Real White Of You, Con't

As I mentioned earlier this week, Virginia Democrat and Hillary veep pick Sen. Tim Kaine is running for re-election and his opponent is Republican/Actual White Supremacist™ Corey Stewart, who is already calling for Kaine to be investigated and jailed because of the crime of being Hillary's veep pick, or something.

After responding to his victory rally crowds’ “Lock her up” chants by saying it “might just happen,” the Republican Senate candidate who won the GOP primary in Virginia on Tuesday evening, Corey Stewart, again suggested that his opponent should be jailed. 

During a turbulent interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Wednesday night, Stewart suggested that his opponent, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) was at the “center” of reports that a government informant was deployed to meet with members of the Trump campaign to probe their contacts with Russian officials at the start of what we now consider the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. President Donald Trump, Stewart —who claims he won because he fully aligned himself with Trump — and other far-right Republicans have seized on reports of the informant as evidence that a spy was sent to infiltrate Trump’s campaign. The President himself has dubbed the whole ordeal “spygate.”

“’ll tell you something, I really do believe that Tim Kaine has been at the center of all this stuff that you’re seeing with regard to the FBI, you know the whole problem is having the FBI spying by federal agency on a presidential campaign,” Stewart told Cuomo, who interrupted him to say there was “no proof” to back up his allegations. 

Stewart shot back: “We’re not in a court of law are we?” 

“That doesn’t mean the truth doesn’t apply, my brother,” Cuomo said. 

Stewart then repeated his claim that Kaine and the entire commonwealth of Virginia were at the “center” of the informant controversy. 

“I would not be surprised if there’s an investigation of Tim Kaine before the year is out,” Stewart said. “Look here’s the question, at the end of the day people have to ask themselves, what has Tim Kaine accomplished in his six years in the United States Senate? Tim Kaine can’t point to a single accomplishment in the United States Senate for Virginia or Virginians. The only thing that Tim Kaine has done in the past six years is run for vice president, and he didn’t even do a very good job at that, I might add.”

Then this morning, Stewart tweeted that Kaine is a terrorist.

Virginia's sitting senator approves of and even applauds his son's participation in a known terrorist organization, #Antifa.

Let that sink in. https://t.co/7foEPLKYHT

— Corey Stewart (@CoreyStewartVA) June 14, 2018

It's only Thursday.  Stewart has been the GOP candidate for Senate for less than 48 hours.  And when I say Stewart is a white supremacist, I'm 100% not being hyperbolic.

He once stood proudly before a Confederate flag, declaring it was not a symbol of hatred, but “about our heritage.” 

After the march of torch-carrying white supremacists in Charlottesville last year, which led to the death of a counterprotester, he criticized “weak Republicans” who “couldn’t apologize fast enough.” 

As officials around Virginia have grappled with whether to remove Confederate statues, he has compared those politicians to leaders of the Islamic State. 

Now Corey Stewart, a county official who for years has played to the hard-right fringe, captured the Republican nomination for Senate in Virginia. 

He did so in a low-turnout primary on Tuesday when many centrist Republicans apparently stayed home, unhappy with a three-way race among candidates all professing strong loyalty to President Trump and given to fiery culture war pronouncements. 

Mr. Stewart, the chairman of a county board of supervisors who briefly led Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign in Virginia, received a congratulatory overnight tweet from the president, who called Mr. Stewart’s Democratic opponent, Senator Tim Kaine, “a total stiff.” 

Tellingly, though, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the party’s campaign arm, said it would not support Mr. Stewart, who lags far behind Mr. Kaine in fund-raising and has a history of cozying up to white supremacists and anti-Semites that threatens to make him an albatross for down-ballot Republicans. 

White House officials said the president was unlikely to cross the Potomac River to campaign personally for Mr. Stewart unless there were signs that his race against Mr. Kaine had become competitive. 

The real worry for national Republicans — and the hope for Democrats — is that Mr. Stewart’s nomination may cost some incumbent Republicans in Virginia their seats in Congress.

When he loses, I hope he takes the rest of the Virginia GOP down with him.

Primary Motivations, Con't

A good night for Democrats last night as primary contests were held in Virginia, Maine, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Nevada, plus a couple of special elections in Wisconsin. Overall, it was a pretty good night for Team Blue, especially for women.

Virginia is quietly one of the most important states in the race for the House — at least four seats should be competitive in November — and Democrats have now nominated a woman as their candidate in every one of those important elections.

In the Virginia Second, they nominated veteran Elaine Luria to challenge Rep. Scott Taylor, In the Seventh, Abigail Spanberger got the nod and is now tasked with toppling Dave Brat, one of the most conservative members of the House. And Jennifer Wexton emerged from a crowded primary and will now face Rep. Barbara Comstock, long considered to be one of the most vulnerable House Republicans in the country, in the 10th.

And prior to primary day, in a local Democratic convention, the party picked Leslie Cockburn in the campaign to replace outgoing and scandal-plagued Republican Rep. Tom Garrett. Each of this races is pegged by election forecasters to be either a toss-up or to lean slightly toward the Republicans. These seats would absolutely be in play in a wave year, especially in a state that is consistently trending bluer all the time.

We’ve seen again and again this year that Democratic primary voters want women to be their candidates. Virginia is maybe the starkest evidence yet.

This is a good thing.  Increasing the percentage of women in Congress has been badly needed for, I dunno, 240-plus years or so and Democrats in Virginia are leading the way. Oh, and Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's veep pick in 2016, lucked out last night too as Virginia Republicans decided on white-supremacist adjacent Corey Stewart as their party's candidate for challenging Kaine in November, not that Kaine was in real trouble before.

Wisconsin was also a place for Dems fighting back against GOP Gov. Scott Walker.

After two Republican state lawmakers stepped down to take spots in Walker’s administration, the Wisconsin governor decided to just not call special elections as state law seemed to clearly demand. His lawyers cooked up a farcical literal reading of state law to justify the decision, but Democrats — led by former Attorney General Eric Holder — intervened, the state courts laughed off Walker’s case as absurd, and so the elections were called.

That was the first part of the liberal win, and the second part came on Tuesday, when Democrats prevailed in one of those special legislative elections. Caleb Frostman won in Senate District 1, where Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 17 points in 2016.

One out of two isn't bad considering both special elections were considered safe seats a year ago.  And Walker himself?  He's got to be feeling nervous as he runs for a third term in November.

Last month we found Scott Walker trailing Democratic front runner Tony Evers 49-45 for reelection. Between the polling, the Supreme Court race, and these legislative specials, it's really looking like the climate is such that Walker could lose

— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) June 13, 2018

Oh, and as I mentioned this morning, Mark Sanford did indeed lose his primary contest.  Don't feel too bad for him though.

I'm sure Mark Sanford's MSNBC contract has already been drafted.

— Steve M. (@nomoremister) June 13, 2018

Onward towards November.

Last Call For Virginia Is For Voters

We're just five weeks away from Election Day 2017, and the eyes of the country will be on Virginia's races with state offices ranging from Governor to Attorney General commanding the nation's attention.  But this year Democrats finally have realized that the GOP was able to take over America by winning at the state legislature level, and in the Trump era, Team Blue is looking to take states back one by one ahead of 2018 and 2020's crucial battles.

If you want a sneak preview of how the 2018 election is shaping up for Democrats, you should pay attention to people like Schuyler VanValkenburg. 

The 32-year-old VanValkenburg is a high school civics teacher at a public school in Henrico County, Virginia. As part of his civics duties, he coaches his team in a statewide “We the People” constitutional competition, in which students are grilled, Senate-hearing-style, by a panel of judges about America’s system of governance. “I’m teaching this really idealistic and really sophisticated program, and the kids are working at a really high level—really taking in the Constitution and working with it—and meanwhile they’re seeing this election going more and more into the gutter,” he says. So not long after President Donald Trump won, with prodding from another teacher and support from a new progressive political outfit called Run for Something, which helps first-time millennial candidates do exactly that, he decided to run for the House of Delegates in the state’s 72nd district. 

Even in an off-year, elections have consequences. On November 7 voters will go to the polls to pick mayors in New York, Atlanta, Detroit, and Birmingham. New Jersey will get a new governor, and a state Senate election in Washington state could give Democrats full control of the state government. But the elections in swingy Virginia, where all 100 seats in the House of Delegates are up for grabs (along with the offices of governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general), could be the clearest demonstration yet of Democratic political power in the age of Trump—and a barometer for the party’s strength heading into next year’s midterm election. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the Virginia Senate but a 2-to-1 supermajority in the House of Delegates, and have used their numbers to block term-limited Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe from expanding Medicaid in the state. Taking back the House of Delegates is a long shot, but candidates like VanValkenburg demonstrate how they’ll try. 

VanValkenburg’s platform is what you’d expect from a suburban Democrat running against intransigence—he’s pledging more money for public schools, passage of Medicaid expansion, and a rejection of the conservative culture war. What’s different is that it’s happening in Henrico. The 72nd, which comprises the northwest suburbs of Richmond, is Republican by habit. Three years ago, Republican primary voters in Henrico County replaced House Majority Leader Eric Cantor with Ayn Rand-quoting economics professor Dave Brat. Democrats have long approached the district with the attitude that you can’t lose a fight you never join. The current Republican delegate Jimmie Massie, who is retiring at the end of this term, won reelection in 2015 without any Democratic opposition. Just like the Republican nominee in 2013. And 2011. And 2009. And 2005. And 2003. And 2001. And 1999. And 1997. And 1993. And 1991. 

But this year, Democrats have put the 72nd in their sights. VanValkenburg has raised $150,000 as of September, nearly as much as his Republican rival, Eddie Whitlock. The Cook Political Report named his race a “toss-up,” the outcome of which will hinge on the strength of the Democratic Resistance. After the disappointment of 2016, progressive politicos sought to rebuild their party’s bench through strength in numbers—by coaxing a record number of candidates to seek down-ballot offices. (Run for Something, which was founded by a Hillary Clinton campaign alum, has assisted seven Democratic delegate candidates in Virginia alone.) Seven Republican retirements have strengthened Democrats’ chances there. Virginia will be the first real test of whether the strategy is working.

Democrats have had very good success in state-level special elections so far.  If they can do well next month in Virginia's House of Delegates, it just may be the turning point that leads to another 2006 and 2008 model of victories across the country.  2005 saw Tim Kaine winning the governor's race, and hopefully 2017 will see Ralph Northam win as well.

I'm betting it will be a good day for Democrats.

Last Call For The Junior Varsity

Observations of tonight's Kaine vs Pence debate:

• The Vice-Presidential debate was mostly a wash, as they tend to be.
• Tim Kaine did a better job of defending Hillary Clinton than Mike Pence did defending Trump, but that's because Pence wasn't defending Trump, he was running for the GOP nomination in 2020.
• I have no idea what Elaine Quijano was doing, but it wasn't moderating this fight either.
• Kaine let some huge fastballs over the plate go and didn't swing at them.  Pence's record as Governor in Indiana should have been fertile ground for him, but Kaine let Pence get away with it.
• Having said that, Pence spending the entire night pretending that Donald Trump didn't exist isn't going to stop Trump's fall in the polls.
• Neither man is very exciting, huh.  Kaine comes across as that cool dad in accounting that you wish would stop talking about how awesome vaping is, and Pence comes across as the asshole lawyer at the sports bar who had one beer too many and is now asking very loudly to see the manager. They're about as telegenic as watching a video of a fireplace in 4K HD.
• This debate maybe moved the needle a fraction of a point at most, and flip a coin to see in which direction.
• I'm going to miss Joe Biden.

Last Call For The Upper Chamber Going Down

Time to check in with the Senate election forecast for November with Nate Silver, and as you can imagine, the odds of the GOP holding their 54-46 control of the chamber is running directly into the orange buzzsaw that is Donald Trump.  Democrats are taking aim at picking up eight GOP seats or more this year, and they are well on their way.

Democrats need to gain a net of four or five seats to win control of the Senate, depending on whether Hillary Clinton or Trump wins the presidency.¹ Before the conventions, polling in the 10 states whose Senate seats were most likely to flip between parties this November showed a pretty close race. Democratic candidates led in Illinois and Wisconsin, both of which would be pickups for their party. The Republican candidate was leading in Nevada (a seat that Democrats currently control). I didn’t include Indiana in my pre-convention analysis because of Democrat Evan Bayh’s late entrance into the race — we had just one partisan poll that included Bayh — but Democratic chances seemed good there (it would be another Democratic pickup). And Republicans led in the other competitive Senate races, all seats the GOP currently holds, so Democrats looked like they could pick up a net of two seats if everything stayed as it was and the polling leader in each state went on to win. 

Since the conventions, however, Trump’s polling has worsened — overall and in states with key Senate races. In the eight states with competitive Senate races and both pre- and post-conventions polling,² Trump had previously been down an average of about 6 percentage points; he’s now down an average of 9 points.³ And while Republican Senate candidates had been up by an average of a little more than 1 percentage point before the conventions in these eight states, they are now down by a little more than 1 point. That is, Republican Senate candidates in key states are still running ahead of Trump, but that cushion may no longer be enough to win now that Trump’s fortunes have worsened.

Just how bad is it for the Senate GOP?  This bad.

Six of the eight Republican candidates for Senate are polling worse than they were before the conventions. Nothing has changed in Florida, according to the polls. And Sen. Rob Portman in Ohio is the only Republican whose fortunes have improved. (That may be partially because he has a massive fundraising edge over his Democratic opponent, Ted Strickland.) The biggest shifts have been in Illinois, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, and in the latter two, the leader flipped. 

Among the eight states, the most precipitous drop for both Trump and the GOP Senate candidate happened in New Hampshire, where Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte had led in most polls before the conventions. Since then, she has trailed in all four polls of the state that have been released. MassINC pollster Steve Koczela, who conducted one of the surveys in the New Hampshire average, had told me that Ayotte’s troubles are at least partially because of “how closely tied the Ayotte and Trump vote are” and that he saw that “as evidence that Trump is hurting her.” 

Republicans have also seen their prospects worsen in Pennsylvania. Trump is now down 10 percentage points in the state, a headwind that may be too much for Republican Sen. Pat Toomey to overcome. Toomey, like Ayotte, had been leading in most polls before the conventions. But he has trailed in four of the five polls conducted since the conventions. Toomey’s slide, in particular, should worry Republicans. He has made it clear that he is not a Trump fan and has avoided appearing with Trump when he visits the Keystone State. And yet, their fates still seem tied. It may be that down-ballot Republicans can only do so much to keep themselves from getting swept up in an anti-Trump tide. 

Democrats now lead in enough states to take back the Senate — so long as Clinton holds on to her large lead. If the favorites in the polls win, the Democrats would flip and pick up the seats in Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Republicans would pick up Nevada and hold onto Florida, North Carolina and Ohio. Of course, many of these races are close, and there’s plenty of time before Election Day. The fight for the Senate isn’t over by a long shot. Republicans and Trump — or Republicans without Trump — could rebound.

So, right now, the Dems pick up 5 seats, and the GOP picks up Harry Reid's seat in Nevada, giving the Dems a 50-50 tie, where a Clinton White House win would mean Tim Kaine would serve as VP and Senate tiebreaker.

North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida aren't out of reach, either.  Marco Rubio, Rob Portman, and Richard Burr are all in real trouble at this point, and this was before Trump went the full Breitbart this week.

It would be nice to see the Dems have a decent cushion in the Senate, but right now I'll take the 50-50 tie if it means kicking Mitch the Turtle's ass out of the Senate majority leader's office.

The Case For His Successor

Last night several big names in the Democratic Party (and for some unfathomable reason, Michael Bloomberg) laid out their respective cases for Hillary Clinton's election at the Democratic National Convention in Philly, including arguably Clinton's most powerful proponent, the current POTUS himself.

President Barack Obama painted an optimistic picture of America's future and offered full-throated support for Hillary Clinton's bid to defeat Republican Donald Trump in a speech that electrified the Democratic National Convention.

He urged Democrats to enable Clinton to finish the job he started with his election nearly eight years ago in a rousing speech that capped a night when party luminaries took to the stage to contrast the party's new standard-bearer with Trump, whom they portrayed as a threat to U.S. values.

"There has never been a man or woman, not me, not Bill - nobody more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States," Obama said to cheers at the Philadelphia convention on Wednesday night.

Hillary Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, will accept the party's White House nomination in a speech to end the convention on Thursday night. The election is on Nov. 8.

Her address will be closely watched to see if she can make a convincing argument for bringing about change while still representing the legacy of Obama, who is ending his second term with high approval ratings.

"Tonight, I ask you to do for Hillary Clinton what you did for me. I ask you to carry her the same way you carried me," Obama said. When he finished, she joined him on stage where they hugged, clasped hands and waved to the crowd.

I saw this speech and as far as Obama speeches go it was pretty decent, not among his top ten by any means, but a good one nonetheless.  But he did what he set out to do, which was to endorse Clinton as someone who can and should follow him, and to go after Donald Trump, hard.

In fact that was the theme of the night. VP Joe Biden, Clinton running mate Sen. Tim Kaine, and retiring Senate minority leader Harry Reid all ripped Donald Trump to bits. Even Bloomberg got in on the festivities, declaring that as a New Yorker, he knew a con when he saw one.

All in all it was a good night for the Dems.  We'll see what Clinton herself has to say tonight.

Last Call For Kaine Do Attitude

So I read way too much into the Tim Kaine as a smokescreen theory, turns out he really is Clinton's VP pick and I should have taken the stories at face value.

Kaine, from Virginia, would give Clinton a running mate with wide governing experience but picking the self-described "boring" senator could anger progressive groups hoping for a more liberal choice.

Kaine had a clear edge over two other candidates among the final contenders: Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a Democratic source with knowledge of the discussions said.

Clinton's campaign declined to comment.

Clinton is expected to announce her running mate through a text message or Twitter, possibly as early as Friday when she has two afternoon events scheduled in Florida. NBC News said she would make the announcement on Friday.

That text message came out around 8:15 PM this evening confirming Kaine as the pick and on social media.

I'm thrilled to announce my running mate, @TimKaine, a man who's devoted his life to fighting for others. -H pic.twitter.com/lTVyfztE5Z

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 23, 2016

So, no surprises, no guesswork, Kaine was always the choice apparently and had been the top contender for weeks.  

Well, here we go.