I think the safest prediction for the House going forward is that it’s going to be worse than what we’ve had. The Rs have a majority in name only, made up with a cohort of “normal” politicians fearful of being primaried and a cohort of the unhinged and insane whose goal is tear down the federal state and give the power to the red states so they can do what you’d presume they’d do or worse.
So the problem there is anyone who could get chosen by the Rs will be (or should be) unacceptable to the Dems.
As for TFG’s deposition in the Cohen case, leaving NYC is unlikely to be related to that. In the normal course, a deposition that needs to adjourned is rarely adjourned to a few days later or, in this case, the day after TFG stops attending the trial.
Too, TFG had better reasons for attending the trial than just blowing off his deposition in the Cohen case. Said reasons: make statements in the courthouse to support his grift; micromanage his legal team; and make his idiotic, infantile faces to rattle the judge into making some sort of reversible error.
Ben Wittes, amongst others, is proposing a new "Grand Bargain" between the Dem minority and a "consensus" GOP SOH not from the MAGA wing, in order to advance the peoples business in the next ca. 15 mos. Theoretically, this sounds promising, to us who want good governance, but that scheme runs into the same problem as faced McCarthy: the "Move to vacate" sword of Damocles hanging over any R Speaker. Sure, the motion can be defeated with numbers initially, but each time some decent, non-MAGA legislation is passed, out comes MTV...there will be a time when the threat to "primary" the R recusants over a bill may in fact cause them to fall back into line, and on a straight party-line vote, out goes the "consensus Speaker - wash/rinse/repeat. How many Adam Kinzingers or Lynn Cheneys are amongst the "moderate" lot within the R Conference? My guess is ZERO, and chaos resumes. Between a rock and a hard place, methinks.
David Kurtz wrote (quoting his own email response to a reader email about the possibility of the Democrats making common cause with reasonable Republicans):
*****I get the impulse. I really do. But it’s all illusory, I’m afraid. While there’s a core radical group that drives a lot of the House GOP madness, their numbers grow dramatically when faced with the prospect of cooperating with the Democrats whom they have vilified and demonized to the point of caricature. So any cooperation or prospect thereof collapses pretty quickly.
But even if you don’t buy that, what you describe has already happened: Any Republicans who cooperated with Dems or weren’t totally MAGA lost primaries or didn’t run again over the course of many cycles. This is what’s left. So it’s already played out as you imagined and this is where you end up.*****
.
The Problem Solvers Caucus consists of 64 members evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. These Republicans have summoned the fortitude to work with Democrats on legislation, including advocating for and proposing frameworks to resolve the budget standoffs in the contexts of both the debt ceiling and the end of the fiscal year.
Just as a few Democratic votes together with the overwhelming majority of Republican votes could have saved McCarthy's speakership, the overwhelming majority of Democratic votes together with a few Republican votes can elect the next speaker. I propose that Democrats join with the 32 Republican members of the Problem Solvers Caucus (and perhaps some others) to elect the group's Republican co-chair, Brian Fitzpatrick.
I wrote about this on Defenestration Day (see the essay at the link below).
Enjoy the holiday MM.
I think the safest prediction for the House going forward is that it’s going to be worse than what we’ve had. The Rs have a majority in name only, made up with a cohort of “normal” politicians fearful of being primaried and a cohort of the unhinged and insane whose goal is tear down the federal state and give the power to the red states so they can do what you’d presume they’d do or worse.
So the problem there is anyone who could get chosen by the Rs will be (or should be) unacceptable to the Dems.
As for TFG’s deposition in the Cohen case, leaving NYC is unlikely to be related to that. In the normal course, a deposition that needs to adjourned is rarely adjourned to a few days later or, in this case, the day after TFG stops attending the trial.
Too, TFG had better reasons for attending the trial than just blowing off his deposition in the Cohen case. Said reasons: make statements in the courthouse to support his grift; micromanage his legal team; and make his idiotic, infantile faces to rattle the judge into making some sort of reversible error.
Links:
Wednesday in court:
https://ohai.social/@Teri_Kanefield@law-and-politics.online/111182740489507537
TFG’s deposition in the case being tried:
https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Just-Security-N.Y.-Civil-Fraud-Trump-Clearinghouse-—-Transcript-of-video-deposition-of-Donald-J.-Trump-Aug.-30-2023.pdf
I suppose he testifies the way he does as a potential defense to perjury: he’s not lying, he’s just too stupid to answer correctly.
Ben Wittes, amongst others, is proposing a new "Grand Bargain" between the Dem minority and a "consensus" GOP SOH not from the MAGA wing, in order to advance the peoples business in the next ca. 15 mos. Theoretically, this sounds promising, to us who want good governance, but that scheme runs into the same problem as faced McCarthy: the "Move to vacate" sword of Damocles hanging over any R Speaker. Sure, the motion can be defeated with numbers initially, but each time some decent, non-MAGA legislation is passed, out comes MTV...there will be a time when the threat to "primary" the R recusants over a bill may in fact cause them to fall back into line, and on a straight party-line vote, out goes the "consensus Speaker - wash/rinse/repeat. How many Adam Kinzingers or Lynn Cheneys are amongst the "moderate" lot within the R Conference? My guess is ZERO, and chaos resumes. Between a rock and a hard place, methinks.
David Kurtz wrote (quoting his own email response to a reader email about the possibility of the Democrats making common cause with reasonable Republicans):
*****I get the impulse. I really do. But it’s all illusory, I’m afraid. While there’s a core radical group that drives a lot of the House GOP madness, their numbers grow dramatically when faced with the prospect of cooperating with the Democrats whom they have vilified and demonized to the point of caricature. So any cooperation or prospect thereof collapses pretty quickly.
But even if you don’t buy that, what you describe has already happened: Any Republicans who cooperated with Dems or weren’t totally MAGA lost primaries or didn’t run again over the course of many cycles. This is what’s left. So it’s already played out as you imagined and this is where you end up.*****
.
The Problem Solvers Caucus consists of 64 members evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. These Republicans have summoned the fortitude to work with Democrats on legislation, including advocating for and proposing frameworks to resolve the budget standoffs in the contexts of both the debt ceiling and the end of the fiscal year.
Just as a few Democratic votes together with the overwhelming majority of Republican votes could have saved McCarthy's speakership, the overwhelming majority of Democratic votes together with a few Republican votes can elect the next speaker. I propose that Democrats join with the 32 Republican members of the Problem Solvers Caucus (and perhaps some others) to elect the group's Republican co-chair, Brian Fitzpatrick.
I wrote about this on Defenestration Day (see the essay at the link below).
https://decencyandsense.substack.com/p/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-the