Can Anything Actually Be Built Back Better in 2021?
Hi Hackaroos!
Another interesting week ahead for us Hacks. Last week didn't have to focus much on the potential government shutdown for two reasons: one, cooler heads prevailed because no one smart enough wanted a shutdown and two, the solution to funding the government for the next few months was fairly easy to get done. Now comes the hard stuff (which I’m sure many of Senator Manchin and Sinema’s colleagues will also be drinking in the coming days). So, we begin with the latest from Washington before turning to Georgil-vania and Murphy remembers the late great Senator Bob Dole.
(cover photo cred: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images News)
Let’s begin!
The Legislative Sprint Continues…
Gibbs:
Well, while we might have averted a shutdown for now, we’ve still got the debt ceiling, the defense bill and Build Back Better ahead of us. And with Manchin and Sinema suggesting that it's not happening this year, despite Schumer continuing to say he wants to get it done by Christmas, it seems like if there's one sure thing in politics, it's that Congressional deadlines are simply never going to be met. There is a lot going on to get the debt limit done by December 15th when Treasury Secretary Yellen believes the legislation must be passed and signed by President Biden. While I don’t think this will be anywhere close to as easy as government funding, there has been a fairly remarkable decrease in the rhetoric on this than we experienced earlier this year and that is a good thing.
Murphy:
It just grinds along, which is Congressional normal I know, but creepers I want to know who the genius in the White House staff is who thought they could wrap this whole thing up in one nice, fast, neat package. Instead, we had the train wreck where the shining star, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, was plunged into this typical legislative morass, thinking that somehow putting them together would increase the political positive impact for Biden was insane. Now the Build Back Better thing looks just like typical legislative stuff, and it definitely won’t happen until next year. I know the internal argument was, well, if we don't do it the disastrous way it won't get done. But I'm not sure that was a great trade off. And I think if Biden had a time machine he would have tried to do what he should have done from the beginning, which is put infrastructure through a lot earlier and try to turn that into a political win, rather than this mud show we're dealing with right now. But it is what it is. Legislatures move at their own speed and I have no doubt you're right about the beginning of next year. Maybe that'll turn into a midterm reset, but the companion problem is the branding of Build Back Better (Isn't that a chain a chiropractor offices?) has been so generic and awful there's just no upside to it – at least so far.
OUR WEEKLY GEORGIL-VANIA UPDATE
Murphy:
So, we talked last week about how important Georgia and Pennsylvania will be in the coming months, but before we go there (introducing a brand-new Hacks on Tap newsletter exclusive weekly feature: “Georgil-vania), we should mention what’s afoot in North Carolina. In what could be yet another bad evolution of the modern Republican party, the Orange Menace has summoned the various Trump suck up GOP candidates running in the U.S. Senate primary to his lair in Mar-a-Elba and taken over the whole thing, instructing various candidates to drop out of the senatorial race and run for other Congressional offices, putting candidates into districts like a four-year-old playing with blocks. The whole thing is about, you guessed it, a warped ego orgy for the ever-needy Trump as well as a crude way to unite the Trumpy faction of the state GOP behind one candidate to defeat primary front-runner former Governor Pat McCrory (who Trump hates since he’s running ahead in the polls.) This consolidation move will probably work and that is bad news for the less Trump boot-licky former Governor. It would be nice to let the primary voters actually decide all this, but in the Trumptatorship they are only pawns and marks.
Gibbs:
The interesting juxtaposition that Pat McCrory, the former more centrist, moderate Republican and mayor of Charlotte, who became much more stridently conservative to run for Governor and win, now finds himself on the outside looking in on Trump's world, returned as the less Trump candidate. So, lesson to all these guys over the past few years as they try to cling to these Trump forces, many unleashed by the likes of a moderate turned firebrand like McCrory, who finds himself now wondering how to navigate in this political environment.
Now onto Georgia, where former Senator David Perdue announced he’s running against Brian Kemp for Governor. The back and forth on Twitter with the dueling spokesperson statements cutting each other down reminded me of Reagan's Eleventh Commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” That didn't last the first eleven minutes of the new gubernatorial GOP Republican primary. This primary will be epic and very, very scorched Earth. And the damage it does could be huge. Perdue got into the race via video saying the GOP needed unity, apparently oblivious to the idea that challenging a sitting Governor isn’t the likeliest path to unity. But, this is no average sitting GOP Governor! Former President Trump, unsurprisingly, has already endorsed Perdue. I can only imagine that Stacey Abrams and Georgia Democrats have prepared a full bowl of popcorn and are watching with utter glee. Again, this is a state that we’ll focus on and watch carefully, as it will be fascinating over the course of the next 11 or so months.
Murphy:
Yeah, this is a real tarantula and scorpion locked in a bottle situation, although I'm for Kemp – normally not my kind of candidate –
but he's shown real gumption against Trump. So I guess if FDR has to send regular mash notes to Joseph Stalin during World War Two, we Never Trumpers can hold our noses and root hard for Kemp to prevail. You take the ally you can get, in the name of the wider causes of freedom and a return to sanity for the Republican Party. So it's important that Purdue lose. The good news is former Senator Purdue had a well-honed insider reputation as one of the biggest jerks in the U.S. Senate (not to mention some nasty insider trading allegations that didn’t help his image), so I think Kemp will have a fighting chance in this primary, even with Trump’s opposition.
RIP Senator Bob Dole
Murphy:
RIP Senator Bob Dole. I worked with great pride for Bob Dole in both the 1988 primary and, briefly, in the 1996 general election. The campaigns were bumpy, but like every Dole staffer I know, I held the Senator in very high regard. We don’t have the space here for me to go into one of my many Dole stories, so let me just say he was an old school patriot in every way and a true politician; in the very best sense of the word. Practical, fair and honest. Dole did what evades so many Republicans today; he got stuff done to help regular people and to improve his country.
He was also funny as Hell. Check out his (fantastic) Senate farewell address:
I highly recommend Richard Ben Cramer’s What it Takes for anybody who wants to really understand running for President. The Dole stuff is amazing:
Also, Dole’s WW2 memoir, One Soldier’s Story, is also excellent.
See you on Friday!
Murphy and Gibbs