JustOneMinute

Old King Coal

Sen. Joe Manchin puts the kibosh on Biden's clean energy plan:

Key to Biden’s Climate Agenda Likely to Be Cut Because of Manchin Opposition

The West Virginia Democrat told the White House he is firmly against a clean electricity program that is the muscle behind the president’s plan to battle climate change.

The WaPo flagged this a few days back. Manchin's objection seems a bit vague:

Manchin had a frank conversation with White House aides late last week where he said he couldn't support the CEPP in its current form, according to two of the people close to the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions.

The centrist coal-state senator "doesn't see a formulation that could get past his concerns with regard to rewarding utilities for behavior they're already taking," one person said, "and he pretty much conveyed that."

Its not clear where Biden and his crack leadership team are headed with this. But the Times piece concludes with some LOL wish-casting:

It is also possible that Democrats may try to push through the clean electricity program as a stand-alone bill — but the timeline for doing so is narrowing, with the 2022 midterm elections approaching.

Sure. There ought to be plenty of eager Republican votes for this in the Senate.

The Emerging Democrat Debacle

Ezra Klein on David Shor and why the Dems face a looming disaster in the House and Senate. Writing in Politico, Ian Ward also covers the David Shor phenomenon. After describing the eternal Dem enthusiasm for youthful idealists, he notes this:

At its most basic, Shor’s theory goes something like this: Although young people as a whole turn out to vote at a lower rate than the general population, the aforementioned type of young person is actually overrepresented within the core of the Democratic Party’s infrastructure. According to Shor, the problem with this permanent class of young staffers is that they tend to hold views that are both more liberal and more ideologically motivated than the views of the coveted median voter, and yet they yield a significant amount of influence over the party’s messaging and policy decisions. As a result, Democrats end up spending a lot of time talking about issues that matter to college-educated liberals but not to the multiracial bloc of moderate voters that the party needs to win over to secure governing majorities in Washington. 

I'd guess this 'college kids versus the rest of us' dynamic began to divide the Democratic Party in the 'hippies versus hard hats' clashes of the Vietnam War era. The decline of private sector unions and the drift of the working class to Republicans (made famous by the Reagan Republicans) has tilted the balance towards the College kids. Emmet Rensin described the Democrats as the Party of Smug back in 2016, although Conor Friedersdorf observed that Republicans could contest the mantle. (Stewart and Colbert vs. Limbaugh and O'Reilly?).

In a similar vein Matt Yglesias recently exhorted his fellow Dems to give an occasional nod to reality:

The median voter is a 50-something white person who didn't go to college

Cognitive behavioral therapy for Democrats

Its a bitter pill.

Nuke The Debt Ceiling!

Joe Biden gets on board with an idea whose time is coming - use the Senate 'nuclear option' to put debt ceiling legislation beyond the filibuster. Both parties have done this with judges and Cocaine Mitch says he is fine with raising the debt ceiling as long as there are no Republican votes backing it.

Prior to the crushing defeats in the Georgia Senate run-offs that gave Sen. Schumer 50 votes in the Senate, Republicans warned that in such a scenario Democrats would end the filibuster entirely and squeeze through bills on DC statehood and an expanded Supreme Court with 50 votes plus VP Harris. Sen. Manchin has rejected that concept but he was apparently silent on nuking the filibuster:

Senate Democrats discussed carving out the exception at their weekly lunch on Tuesday. No conclusions were reached, but notably, according to participants, the two strongest opponents of filibuster changes, Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, did not speak up in protest. They also did not speak up in support.

This debt ceiling stand-off will be resolved with a gimmicky trick play. My current guess ranks the nuclear option at Number One because it is quick and no more politically painful than reconciliation. Reconciliation is my second guess - its cumbersome and uses a scarce resource since per the current Senate "rules" (LOL) the Dems can only use it twice per session. (Their current plan is to use their second Reconciliation Card on the shrinking $3.5 trillion Social Justice and More bill, but they may do that next January in a new session.)

My third choice is a gadget play to be named later. The fourth choice last gasp is the Trillion Dollar Platinum coin. I don't think the coin is "legal" within the spirit of the law but in the current environment the real question is, can Treasury and Fed lawyers agree its 'legal enough', given the dire alternatives? As a recent example of this mentality, Biden extended the CDC eviction moratorium knowing the courts would eventually shoot it down (The Supreme Court did so, three weeks later.)

As to the platinum coin, I agree with this from Krugman:

Would any of these approaches basically mean using silly gimmicks to avoid catastrophe? Possibly yes. But given the stakes, who cares if the approach sounds silly?

Would using any of these gimmicks involve violating the spirit of the law even if they technically obey the letter? Of course — but Republicans are already doing that through their abuse of the debt ceiling.

Would any attempt to do an end run around the debt ceiling face court challenges? Yes. But the legal process would at the very least buy time to devise a better solution.

Well, yes - the trillion dollar coin is a terrible idea (per SecTreas Yellen!) but maybe not compared to the other terrible ideas on the menu. As to legal challenges, there is a real question about just who might have standing to sue if a coin were issued.

We should find out soon enough. My money is on nukes.

ERRATA: Rohan Grey, a young progressive professor, has a solid piece on the legal background to a platinum coin. We chatted on Twitter and I came away agreeing that the coin is legal enough that Federal Reserve lawyers could make a political decision to go either way. On the one had, I'd say that accepting the coin calls into question their independence. OTOH, rejecting it puts them in the role of refereeing a partisan Executive-Legislative showdown during a bond market meltdown. Both paths are perilous.

 

Clash Of Titans

Brady v. Belichick! And by the time their Sunday night game begins MLB should have settled the AL wild card races and the NL West title.

Drama In DC!

Debt ceilings, government shutdowns, trillions in spending and taxes - AND playoff positions up for grabs in Major League Baseball. Something for everyone.

A Majority Of Republicans HAVE Been Vaccinated

David Leonhardt of the Times:

Red Covid

Covid’s partisan pattern is growing more extreme.

During the early months of Covid-19 vaccinations, several major demographic groups lagged in receiving shots, including Black Americans, Latino Americans and Republican voters.

More recently, the racial gaps — while still existing — have narrowed. The partisan gap, however, continues to be enormous. A Pew Research Center poll last month found that 86 percent of Democratic voters had received at least one shot, compared with 60 percent of Republican voters.

The political divide over vaccinations is so large that almost every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than almost every reliably red state:

At one time the Red/Blue divide based on vote share was blurred by Black hesitancy in the (Red) southern states. Headline-grabbing NBA athletes notwithstanding, it has turned out that by and large Blacks were hesitant but persuadable. Hard core Trumpers, not so much.

Leonhardt is interesting on messaging:

How might more conservative Americans be persuaded to get vaccinated?

One intriguing anecdote involves the football team at the University of Mississippi, which is entirely vaccinated even though the state has one of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates. Coaches there emphasized the tangible, short-term costs of getting Covid, rather than the more remote chance of death: The players might have to miss a game, and the team might have to forfeit it, if they tested positive.

A related message is duty, Timothy Carney has written in The Washington Examiner. If Carney had refused to get vaccinated, he explained, he would have risked loading more work onto his wife, his colleagues and his partner in teaching Sunday school, as well as forced his children to miss school.

Getting vaccinated to help out your family, friends and community?!? Whoa! This is breakthrough thinking!

 

Saturday Afternoon

Are you ready for some football?!? Or baseball!!!

How about some yard work...

Scandal Watch

Captain Ed Morrissey keeps a weather eye on a couple of scandals the media would rather bury.

First, the Durham indictment of Clinton attorney Sussman may - I say MAY - be the start of something from Durham, finally. The notion that the Russian Collusion scandal was launched as a Hillary dirty trick and carried by sympathizers in the FBI, CIA and mass media is not a story the mass media has been eager to probe.

We all spent a lot of time waiting for Durham. Maybe he has more.

And, in other non-surprises, a Politico reporter is confirming the obvious - the Hunter Biden e-mails financially implicating "the big guy" look legit. Yet another "not in front of the kids" moment of infamy for the media, bith social and mainstream.

Here We Go Again

Are you ready for some football?

On the college side, a weary and divided nation once again wonders - can anyone beat Alabama?

There Are No Adults

I'll say this - if Team Trump had handled the submarine deal with Australia so clumsily we'd be hearing talk of Russian collusion and Impeachment III. And politicizing the science by announcing what the FDA would decide before the data was in? OMG and LOL. And let's not even mention Afghanistan.

I did not expect much from Sleepy Joe but I thought he brought with him an experienced team that had been together for years and could deliver a professional sheen to the operation. Ooops.

When You Have To Deny It...

Probably not helpful:

Justice Amy Coney Barrett argues Supreme Court isn't 'a bunch of partisan hacks'.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In the wake of a controversial decision on abortion rights, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett told a crowd of more than 100 here that she doesn't believe the highest court in the land is politically driven.

“My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” she told the guests at a Sunday celebration of the 30th anniversary of the opening of the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville.

Barrett, who was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020, spent much of her talk at the Seelbach Hilton Hotel arguing the court is defined by "judicial philosophies" rather than personal political views.

"Judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties," she said, noting that she identifies as an "originalist" and citing fellow Justice Stephen Breyer as an example of the other main school of thought, "pragmatism."

Yet fifty years of bi-partisan shouting about Democratic judges and Republican judges and here we are.

No word on whether the justices have stopped beating their significant others.

9/11 Twenty Years On

Open thread to get started.

Biden Backpedaling On ATF Chief

Senate to Biden - Send less crazy crazies.

I like these occasional reminders that Biden campaigned as a moderate. Nice to see his Dem colleagues in the Senate remember too.

Gain Of Function, Loss Of Credibility

The Intercept has used the Freedom of Information Act to pry documents from the NIH. The topic is NIH grants to study bat viruses in a partnership of EcoHealth and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Some of the "news" is old since the grants were mentioned in already-published studies. But some details ave been added.

Its a bit of a blow to Dr. Fauci's remaining credibility on the question of whether the US funded 'gain-of-function' research conducted by the Chinese. I'll gloomily guess this won't matter - the battle lines around Fauci have been clear for a while and I doubt there are many willing to shift sides. Just to recap, back in May Sen. Rand accused Dr. Fauci of approving gain of function research and Fauci denied it, vehemently. Over time the gist of his defense seem to be, it couldn't be gain of function research because the NIH review board OK'ed it. The BBC and the WaPo explain (I'll come back to the WaPo below.)

Still, here is Caroline Downey at the National Review:

Newly released documents appear to contradict Dr. Anthony Fauci’s repeated claims that the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

The internal documents detail the work of EcoHealth Alliance, an American research non-profit which used NIH funding to research novel bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. Among the documents, which were obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request, is a previously unpublished EcoHealth Alliance grant proposal filed with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which is run by Fauci.

...

Fauci has repeatedly insisted during his Senate testimony that the research being funded by the NIH at the WIV did not qualify as “gain-of-function” under the NIH’s current definition. But critics, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, have accused Fauci of playing semantic games by excluding research which makes bat coronaviruses more transmissible — the commonly accepted definition of “gain-of-function” — from his more convenient definition.

Dr. Richard Ebright, biosafety expert and professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University, has also disputed Fauci’s claims. Primarily, he has rebutted Fauci’s chief declaration that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV]” as “demonstrably false.”

Ebright told National Review that the NIH-financed work at the WIV “epitomizes” the definition of gain-of-function research, which involves working with “enhanced potential pandemic pathogen (PPP)” or those pathogens “resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen.”

We'll see if these latest revelations move the needle.

BACK TO THE WAPO: They are very intent on defending Fauci and nod along to what I find to be an utterly convincing explanation about gain of function research. The emphasis is on intent rather than results, which seems to me to be beside the point:

Update, May 19: The National Institutes of Health issued a statement to The Fact Checker which in part said: “NIH has never approved any grant to support 'gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans. The research proposed in the EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. grant application sought to understand how bat coronaviruses evolve naturally in the environment to become transmissible to the human population.” When gain-of-function research was paused, “this grant was reviewed again and determined by experts to fall outside the scope of the funding pause.”

The gist of the controversial experiments was to mix and match different segments of different existing bat viruses to see if any of the resulting combinations could be dangerous. Its a fair and relevant questions since bats, and consequently their viruses, tend to co-mingle. But their defense, roughly paraphrased, amounts to 'this is not gain-of-function because we didn't know whether these recombinations would be infectious or not'. C'mon, man. "I wasn't playing with explosives, I was playing with random chemicals and never guessed they'd explode." No Nobel prizes there.

To be fair, the viruses the Chinese have told us about don't look enough like SARS-Cov-2 to be a smoking gun. But have they done undisclosed, unpublished work? Ah, well...