On Tuesday night, Democrats swept two critical special elections. One, in a New Hampshire district that had gone for Trump, brought Democrats to within one seat of flipping the statehouse. The other, outside Pittsburgh, gave Democrats control of that statehouse. Throughout 2023, Democrats have been outperforming their traditional margins in special elections by more than 10 points.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party in Washington is in free fall, tumbling uselessly toward a government shutdown at the end of the month.
The House Freedom Caucus has insisted the chamber use regular order to pass all 12 appropriations bills to keep the government open, yet on Tuesday a group of them blocked the House from even voting on the Defense bill, which should be the easiest one for them. They have also made clear they won’t allow Kevin McCarthy to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open. And if he works with Democrats to do it, they say, they’ll oust him from the job. In other words, they are foreclosing all of the possible options to fund the government, while proposing none. They want a shutdown, though it’s not clear why. On Democracy Now I made the case that they’re doing it because the new interest groups that pressure Congress are influencers and YouTubers – Yes, I know my show is on YouTube – who benefit from theater rather than legislation. It’s quite a situation we’ve gotten ourselves into.
Here’s Chip Roy, one of the most far-right Republicans in the House, telling reporters even he can’t understand what some of his Freedom Caucus friends are up to: “I honestly don't know what to say to my fellow Republicans other than you're going to eat a shit sandwich and you probably deserve to eat it.” Ok then!
We talked about this pickle on Counter Points today, and my co-host Emily Jashinsky noted that Roy was actually Ted Cruz’s chief of staff back when he triggered a government shutdown in 2013 for basically no reason. Now Roy’s befuddled at his House allies doing the same.
That Republicans are collapsing doesn’t necessarily mean Democrats can beat them – and by leaving Biden at the helm, they seem to be doing everything they can to keep Republicans in the game – but it sure does give them an advantage going into 2024.
Things are going well for the UAW, though. We led the show with the news that autoworkers have given the Big Three until noon Friday to make serious progress in talks, or they’ll strike additional plants. My colleague Daniel Boguslaw has a delightful story on the way that the UAW outsmarted the Big Three in the runup to the strike, making them think they were going to strike at certain plants, which led the automakers to shift production at great expense, only to strike at different plants. CNBC trumpeted the fake list, it was glorious.
The link to today’s ad-free, full episode is below for subscribers. Most of today’s segments can be found here for free.
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