Congress gets busy
You may not have stuck to all of your New Year’s resolutions, but you probably got more done than Congress in January. The first month of 2022 wasn’t exactly productive for the legislative branch. The Democrats’ election law push was over before it had begun, while discussions of what, if anything might, the party might be able to glue together, wave around and call “Build Back Better” got nowhere.
But developments both at home and overseas mean Capitol Hill faces a far busier February. First on the agenda is Russian sanctions. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Bob Menendez and Jim Risch, the ranking Republican on the committee, are leading a bipartisan team working on various sets of measures to counter whatever Vladimir Putin does next. And the mood music about an agreement is pretty positive.
Then there’s the not insignificant matter of selecting a Supreme Court justice. Here too, there is a surprising, though very faint whiff of bipartisanship. Lindsey Graham, the never-knowingly-predictable South Carolina Republican, has united with Democratic House kingmaker and fellow South Carolinian Jim Clyburn to sing the praises of federal District Judge J. Michelle Childs. Both have pushed for the Palmetto State judge forcefully in recent days. “I can’t think of a better person for President Biden to consider for the supreme court than Michelle Childs,” said Graham on Face the Nation Sunday. “She has wide support in our state. She’s considered to be a fair-minded, highly gifted jurist. She’s one of the most decent people I’ve ever met.” (Graham was also one of the three Republicans — along with Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins — to vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson, another front-runner, to her current position on the DC circuit.) Regardless of what the few Republicans in play decide to do, expect the Democrats to waste no time in securing a liberal justice’s place on the court.
Elsewhere, House Democrats are putting together their version of a competition bill that passed the Senate with a healthy number of Republican votes last year while a deadline of February 19 must be met to avoid a government shutdown. Optimists on the Democratic side of the aisle also have Build Back Better negotiations on their February to-do list.
Unlike last year’s never-ending Build Back Better merry-go-round, things might actually move quickly for once on the Hill. The seriousness and combustibility of the situation in Ukraine adds urgency to the sanctions negotiations, while Democrats will have been reminded by the White House that it would be good for Joe Biden to have a few accomplishments to point to when he delivers his State of the Union speech on March 1.
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The affirmative action gap
Is there any issue on which the gap between elite opinion and public sentiment is wider than affirmative action? The question of whether anything other than a candidate’s merit is worth taking into consideration is back at the forefront of US politics thanks to Joe Biden’s pledge that the he will pick a black woman to replace outgoing Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer.
An ABC poll confirms what more or less every survey ever says about the issue. Seventy-six percent of Americans want Biden to consider “all possible nominees” for the vacancy while only 23 percent want the president to follow through with his promise. In 2020, Californians voted against Proposition 16, which would have scrapped the state’s ban on affirmative action in government institutions.
For voicing the popular sentiment that race, religion or gender should not be prerequisites for a position on the Supreme Court, albeit doing so in an inelegantly phrased tweet for which he has since apologized, legal scholar Ilya Shapiro is staring down the barrel of a gun at Georgetown Law School. (Bari Weiss has a write-up of the brouhaha here.)
Meanwhile, with the Supreme Court about to hear two affirmative action cases dealing with college admissions, the prospect of a great irony looms over 2022 judicial positive: Biden could be explicit in his positive discrimination for the most important legal vacancy in the land only for the court to declare such an approach, at least when it comes to college admissions, to be unconstitutional.
Justice for Babydog
West Virginia governor Jim Justice delivered a defiant, barnstorming State of the State speech last week. The 6’7” Man Mountain from the Mountain State had an especially blunt message to those who treat his state with scorn — including Bette Midler. The actress had called West Virginia “poor, illiterate and strung out.” Justice lifted his English bulldog, Babydog, turned her around so her backside was facing the audience, and said: “Babydog tells Bette Midler and all those out there: kiss her hiney.”
“He could have overturned the election!”
In the long afterlife of January 6 as a political issue, an amusing disconnect exists between Donald Trump and some of his most loyal defenders. Those keen to stay in the former president’s good graces tend to push back forcefully on any suggestion that Trump was serious about actually overturning the results of the election. Then along comes Trump and makes perfectly clear that he hoped to do exactly that. In his latest missive, he takes efforts to reform the Electoral Count Act as evidence that Mike Pence could have blocked certification of the Electoral College results if he had wanted to. Of those involved in reform efforts his statement says: “Actually, what they are saying is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away.” Trump is then straightforward about what Pence failed to do: “He could have overturned the election!”
What you should be reading today
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Energy is the most important issue in the world
Micah Mattix: The age of the media explainer
Grace Curley: The year left-wing ideas came home to roost
Ross Douthat, New York Times: Will a mask debate split blue America?
Tevi Troy, Washington Examiner: Barking at the press
Sophie Haigney, Politico magazine: How the Biden presidency became a cultural black hole
Poll watch
President Biden Job Approval
Approve: 41.6 percent
Disapprove: 54.5 percent
Net approval: -12.9 (RCP Average)
Voter satisfaction with their own life versus the country
Proportion who say they are satisfied with the way their own lives are going: 85 percent
Proportion who say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the US: 17 percent (Gallup)
