On Politics: It’s groundhog day. It’s anti-woke week. It’s messaging bill fall.
Good evening! Tonight, my colleague Annie Karni takes us to Capitol Hill, where lawmakers staring down a looming government shutdown are focused on other things. Plus, we're watching North Carolina and digging deeper into today's new poll.
It's groundhog day. It's anti-woke week. It's messaging bill fall.
The latest, with 47 days to go
Sometimes in Congress, there are suspenseful and consequential votes that are exciting to witness. Think of an ailing John McCain, the former Republican senator from Arizona, and the dramatic thumbs-down he gave late at night on the Senate floor in 2017 when he voted against repealing Obamacare. Recall the surprise 2008 revolt on the House floor when lawmakers defied senior congressional leaders of both parties and the sitting Republican president and rejected a $700 billion bank bailout, rocking the Capitol and the global financial markets. This week's vote in the Senate on a bill that would guarantee federal protections for in vitro fertilizations was not one of those gasp-worthy moments. In fact, there was absolutely no drama at all — because the Senate had already held the same exact vote on the same exact piece of legislation three months ago, when everyone voted the same exact way. (Both times, all but two Republicans present voted no, leaving Democrats short of the 60 needed to begin debating it.) The point of this repeat exercise: forcing Republicans to take yet another unpopular vote on an issue that continues to be their biggest vulnerability, in a tense election season where Democrats are counting on reproductive rights to carry the day. So they did the I.V.F. vote. Again. Why mess with success? When messaging bills fall like autumn leavesWith just 47 days to go before the election, Show Vote Summer in Congress is turning into Messaging Bill Fall. Democrats who control the Senate are using the floor to force an ongoing conversation about G.O.P. opposition to abortion and reproductive rights. And in the Republican-controlled House, leaders are using the dwindling number of legislative days left on the calendar to pass bills targeting "wokeness" and immigrant crime — legislation that has no chance of passage in the Senate, but works to animate their base and highlight the issues they consider Democrats' greatest liabilities. Yes, there is the ever-looming threat of a government shutdown that could come in just 11 days if Congress does not meet its only real obligation, passing spending legislation, by Sept. 30. And sure, there are judges to confirm in the Senate. But with little more than six weeks left before the election, nobody in the Capitol is trying very hard to pretend that there is much left to do in Washington besides posture for voters with competing campaign messages. It's an election-season tradition in Congress. Still, even veteran lawmakers like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of the two Republicans who crossed party lines to vote with Democrats in favor of the Right to I.V.F. Act this week, said they were peeved by the exercise. "We voted for the second time on the exact same bill on I.V.F. — what was that?" she said on Wednesday as she urged Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and majority leader, to take up spending bills on the Senate floor. "That's not what the Senate should be doing at this critical time. That was simply an attempt by the majority leader to score political points, and I think that's highly unfortunate." A barrage of D.O.A. bills in the HouseAcross the Capitol, members of the Republican-led House spent this week — one of their last full weeks in Washington ahead of an election in which they could lose their slim majority — on what they were calling "Anti-Woke Week." On the docket were the "End Woke Higher Education Act," the "Prioritizing Economic Growth Over Woke Policies Act," and the "Protecting Americans' Investments from Woke Policies Act." Those measures, which are culture-war fare targeting companies that factor climate and social considerations into their investment decisions and colleges and universities that have diversity, equity and inclusion policies, have no chance of passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The White House released official statements of opposition to the measures that stopped just short of threatening a veto if they reached President Biden's desk, a prospect that all involved are well aware will never happen. Then there's a bill from Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, entitled the "Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act," which would mandate the deportation of any noncitizen convicted of a sex offense or domestic violence. Mace sees her legislation as a twofer designed to highlight the issue of lawless immigration and push back on the notion that Republicans, many of whom have opposed the extension of the Violence Against Women Act, do not care about women. She says it is "addressing the border crisis" but also "exposing this administration and the left's callous disregard for the safety and well-being of American women and girls." It also has no chance of being signed into law. No matter. At this late stage of a fairly hapless Congress — last year, the House did more voting and less passing of laws than any other time in the last decade — the season has come for politics and theatrics, even if there's not much wow factor left by now because we've seen it all before. What the North Carolina governor's race could mean for the presidential electionThe news is moving fast in North Carolina, where Lt. Gov Mark Robinson is vowing to stay in the race for governor after CNN reported he made lewd and racist comments on a porn website. Here's analysis from my colleagues on what it could all mean for the presidential race:
Trump doesn't want to debate again. The numbers suggest he shouldn't.Last week, Donald Trump ruled out participating in another presidential debate — in capital letters on his social media site. I was curious what the most recent poll tells us about who would benefit from another debate. Here's what I found. The latest poll from The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College found that Vice President Kamala Harris's performance in the first debate overwhelmingly impressed voters — and that the race remains stubbornly tied, just about where it was before the debate. But even though the debate did not give her a major polling bounce, a deeper look at the responses shows that it still may have helped her — and that she has every reason to want a second one. The debate seems to have left more voters viewing Harris as presidential. Immediately after the event, slightly larger shares of voters described Harris as "intelligent" and as having "the temperament fit to be an effective president" than they did when The Times asked those questions about her in late July. What's more, 50 percent of voters said they learned either a lot or some about Harris during the debate, compared with just 32 percent of voters who said that about the much better known Trump. A quarter of voters said they still wanted to learn more about Harris. That's barely less than the 28 percent of voters who said that just before the debate, suggesting she may have missed an opportunity to tell more voters about herself — but it also lays out a clear objective for her in a potential second debate. All of this gives Trump good reason to refuse a second debate against Harris, which would give his opponent another opportunity to cast herself as presidential and fill in more of what voters want to know about her. — Jess Bidgood Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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