It's crazy that Democrats have let Republicans successfully demagogue on crime. It is not a national issue at all except for interstate trafficking in guns, although some investigation was warranted of why police systematically in many cities could not or would control the criminal violence that accompanied the BLM protests. ARP funds could have been directed at strengthening police training in how to protect protests from criminals who take advantage.
Who among D's are, except maybe some people on your twitter feed? And maybe R's don't "sympathize" with interstate gun traffickers/tax cheats, but if you are part of the solution you are art of the problem.
The idea that one should make a decision on a national office because D's sympathize with criminals" is poorly informed.
Well, don't vote for any of them, ether.:) But I really don't agree that the median Democratic politician where I live (WDC) is pro-criminal. We clearly live in very different cities. But the larger point is that differences over policing strategy should have zero relevance for national politics.
feel like commentators here (and not MY!) forget that like 90% of the reason dems will lose on tuesday is because inflation has been double digits for the last year and outpaced wage growth + it’s a midterm under a dem president.
if you told someone in 2000 who into a coma and just woke up to guess what the midterm results would be, they’d probably guess right.
Two things. I'm a moderate who doesn't generally vote for Democrats, but I'll be voting for Maggie Hassan and Chris Pappas this year for precisely the reasons that Matt outlines. I want an opposition party who is principled and if it takes losing a few elections to get there, I think that's the price to pay. Second, I know it would be politically bad for Biden to say something like: "Whether there are more or fewer police in Detroit, San Francisco, or San Antonio is not something that should be decided by the federal government, but by the citizens of those cities - if you have strong opinions on how to reform policing in your city vote for a mayor and city council who agree with you on those issues", but it would really be a breath of fresh air.
Another point worth making is that senators serve 6-year terms, so somebody voted in in 2022, ostensibly to provide "balance" may actually be contributing to imbalance the other way, should Trump or DeSantis end up winning the presidential race in 2024.
The 2024 Senate map is also also brutal for Democrats, so how well Republicans do in 2022 impacts how big their majority is after 2024, which (depending on how the presidential race goes) impacts what sort of stuff Republicans can force through in 2025. A 52/48 GOP majority under a Republican president likely wouldn't have to votes to do anything *too* drastic, such as a nationwide abortion ban, cutting social security, or completely repealing environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act. But, a 58/42 GOP majority absolutely could, and would not hesitate to eliminate the filibuster to to it. And if the GOP envisions themselves never losing the Senate again, no matter what they do, they could be completely unconstrained.
I agree completely with the narrow points you've been making on crime, but watching you and others dance around the real issue has convinced me that the Democratic party simply isn't ready to fix anything. I cast my first ever vote for a Republican as a result.
The problem is that a powerful minority of Democratic officials are de facto anarchists. Republicans won't actually fix anything on crime but certain Democrats will absolutely work to make it worse. The example that bothers me most personally is how here in Seattle the local county kept the jails on Covid standards until a couple of months ago, well after schools were fully reopened. The "surprise side effect" is that the jail simply couldn't accept as many new prisoners and so quite a few convicted criminals never did any time. Given that the county executive has discussed how he would like to close the jail in five years this doesn't seem accidental!
I understand that you aren't going to argue too strongly against Democrats right before an election but I think you're severely underestimating just how toxic this dynamic is. Just to take one example, it's _clearly_ why the attack on Paul Pelosi was a below the fold article and why it's difficult for Democrats to argue for such common sense measures as giving Nancy a security detail. Imagine the attack ads if she does get one: "There are several thousand mentally ill drug addicts roaming the streets of San Francisco. Democrats believe Nancy Pelosi deserves to be protected from them while the rest of the city has to fend for themselves".
The anarchists have to be purged from the party. There's no other path forward.
One small point of note: the people elected to Congress this cycle will not be the ones certifying the 2024 presidential election. The certification process happens several days after the new Congress is in. So for the 2024 presidential election certification, the folks who will certify the election will be whoever wins in November 2024 and those folks, as one of their first acts for the 119th Congress (which will be sworn in on January 3, 2025), will do that a couple days later (like on Jan 6, 2025). Just to use the last cycle as evidence, the 117th Congress was sworn in on January 3, 2021 and the certification was set for Jan 6 (and we know what happened then).
I'm very skeptical the GoP will do anything about Medicare, particularly since their base is older, white, MAGA, and Trump isn't interested. The GoP today is very different from the Paul Ryan GoP, and just note how long he lasted. His ideas are as dead as the dodo.
And really, if cutting Medicare is actually want they want, then the easiest way to achieve that is do nothing, and in a couple of years Medicare will cut itself.
"...we know the GOP both opposes stricter gun rules and also tighter ATF enforcement of rules that exist"
One of Matt Y's most annoying tendencies: The casual slight-of-hand with statements like these.
Show me the block of Republicans who want to allow straw purchases of firearms. Or who want to allow felons to legally possess guns.
All we see from Democrats is ever more proposals to put more burdens on law-abiding, federally-registered gun dealers and their law-abiding customers, and attempts to ban broad categories of firearms of the type that are very seldom used in crimes.
I'm not making any claims about straw purchases or felons. Matt wrote that the "GOP both opposes stricter gun rules and also tighter ATF enforcement of rules that exist."
You then indicated this was "sleight of hand."
The article seems pretty good evidence of the Republican party opposing "tighter ATF enforcement" of gun rules (in this case via more stringent record keeping requirements). I trust you don't need evidence for the first part of Matt's statement (that Republicans oppose stricter rules).
I have not seen any evidence that Republicans oppose enforcement of gun rules. Of course they oppose most stricter gun regulations because most of those are unconstitutional, and/or ignorant.
Matt understates the effect the early Biden administration had on oil and gas companies. The administration basically threatened and scared investors and bankers into believing that oil and gas was now a short-term investment instead of a long-term investment. Yes, oil and gas production in the US is close to pre-pandemic levels, but there is almost no exploration for new reservoirs occurring. All the increase in production is from existing wells. Oil and gas companies aren't exploring for more oil and gas because their investors and lenders are telling them not to, because they don't want to get sucked into a decades-long investment that is not going to pay off. If the Biden administration wasn't so hostile to begin with, oil and gas supply would be even higher right now and gasoline prices would be lower.
The Saudis increased production by a few hundred barrels per day. Over the few preceding years the US increased production by thousands of barrels per day. That is what led to the major increase in supply and drop in oil price. Then US companies adjusted, drastically increasing production again even with low oil prices.
I live in one of the most competitive districts in the country for both state and federal offices. As such, I receive fliers every day, one for the Republican and one for the Democrat. The ones from the candidates themselves are generally positive, while the ones from PACs and outside groups are entirely negative. Reading the comments below, I think it's funny how people describing themselves as living in 'blue' or 'red' states see totally different messaging from each other and from what I see.
Yesterday's fliers were for Congress. The Republican promised to:
- Put parents back in control of schools and 'deal with' CRT
- Keep families safe by making sure the police are funded
- Recognize the hard work of small business owners with a conservative fiscal agenda
So, basically promising that, as our *federal* representative he would make sure the *county* board of education 'deals with' CRT and that our *city* funds it's police department. Oh, and he'll cut taxes... with a Democratic president. All his other fliers are like this; literally listing buzz words, outlining vague conservative values and stringing some talking points into sentences.
Meanwhile, yesterday's flier from the Democrat: Literally just a bunch of pictures of him posing with cops, shaking hands with cops and quotes from cops who endorse him.
So, good job messaging, Democrats! Always great to be playing defense against ridiculous attacks from a candidate that doesn't seem to know the difference between federal, state, county and city governments.
Our Democratic candidate for the state senate were going after her opponent for abortion, but the abortion messaging stopped entirely right when early voting started. This despite the fact that all of the Republicans running in my district (federal and state) are on the record with bat-shit crazy ideas about draconian abortion bans and government 'panels' that would determine if a woman was really raped. Really crazy stuff. And abortion is very relevant to state legislatures now!
My absolute favorite, though, are the lawn signs. During the primary the Republican signs said "Donald J. Trump endorses <candidate>" They were taken down about three seconds after the primaries. Now they say stuff like "Parents and teachers endorse <candidate>" or "<candidate> stands with the police".
Again, solid messaging, Democrats! Republican messaging going into the home stretch is: CRT, Defund the Police, Open Borders. (Sometimes literally those things just listed on a flier next to a grainy photo of a Democrat.)
It blows my mind that, with Walker running a very much national campaign in Georgia, the equally-national Fetterman campaign couldn't drive the message that a) it is flagrantly hypocritical even by today's standards to say that Walker is fit for the Senate, but not Fetterman and b) that Fetterman—unlike Walker—will recover and be a fully functional, rational human being in a few months.
Worse, they managed to drag the debate to 'abelism', a word that is too niche even for my spellchecker and is a huge gift to the 'radical woke Democrats' narrative. I mean, do his staffers and surrogates think that swing-state elections are won and lost on Twitter? Are they doing some kind of TikTok challenge to see how poorly they can do their jobs? Do they think that these arguments bolster the tattoos, hoodies and pickup truck image? Is the ableism angle going to differentiate him from the New Jersey crudité guy? I just... have no words.
That is too broad a statement. Strokes affect different structures in the brain and come in many forms and magnitudes, which is the putative reason for the calls for him to release his medical records.
Regardless, we are talking about messaging here and the assertion that the aphasia will lessen with time is defensible and draws contrast with the irreversibly-crazy Republicans that are running for office.
R C claimed the Fetterman campaign talked about ableism and you seemed to second it.
Do you have an example of the Fetterman paid media being bad? The last ad I saw was about the "local elected officials" gaffe and said Oz was going to try to ban abortion
Is there truth to the crime surge point I've seen that violent crime isn't defined differently between "red" and "blue" states? Basically that some assaults or other things that would be crimes in Oklahoma aren't in California? There's also the "why would you report getting robbed in NYC" argument I've heard but that sounds less convincing to me.
There's something conspicuously absent from this analysis of what will or won't happen if GOP takes both houses of Congress. What happens with Ukraine funding? McCarthey has already signaled that he's open to cutting Ukraine funding if he's Speaker.
Now this could just be postering and a negotiating tactic. It seems right now there are plenty of votes to keeping funding for Ukraine going. But I would NOT count on that continuing on the GOP side. There's the obvious, who on the GOP side is getting Russia money. I know, I know, it's a rabbit hole that can lead to not so helpful places. But considering what we know about the NRA, considering how many GOP officials spent July 4th in Moscow in 2017*, considering previous comments made by Paul Ryan, I feel pretty confident that the number of GOP officials who have some sort of financial connections to Russia is more than zero.
But even beyond that, even if GOP officials are not at all connected financially to Russia, they are very interested in making sure they win re-election in 2024. And given the dynamics of gerrymandering, the biggest danger to re-election is losing a primary. And GOP primary voters seem to be very alarmingly pro-Putin. Purely from saving your own political hide aspect, wouldn't be shocked if some of the pro giving Ukraine aid start to flip. What happens if Tucker Carlson does a weeklong special program live from Moscow (given his statements about Putin and given that he already did this in Hungary, a real possibility btw) and GOP House members started getting feedback from the large contingent of GOP primary voters who are Tucker fans? And then there are the GOP House members who are likely just flat-out Pro-Putin out of personal preference.
Beyond the actual dynamics of the war itself, there's the secondary effects. Voters say the number one issue is inflation. You know what's a huge driver or at least impact on inflation? The war in Ukraine. It seems extremely clear that Putin is hoping a GOP controlled Congress can do the work his army clearly is not capable of doing. Aid to Ukraine is likely going to be a huge impact on Putin's next move which will obviously impact the trajectory of energy markets.
It's just odd to me that Matt would leave out a pretty big issue where who controls the House and/or Senate could have a huge impact.
* I'm aware that foreign policy is almost always way down on the list of voter concerns in any election barring a situation where there are significant numbers of American troops involved (and most importantly dying) in a "hot" war. But I feel extremely confident that the typical median voter is pretty anti-Putin at this point (as opposed to GOP base). And I also feel pretty confident that the typical median voter is not aware that large swathes of the GOP, including Ron Johnson, spent July 4th, 2017 in Moscow. If Mandela Barnes (or other Dem candidates) hasn't had any ads or brought up this fact about Johnson or the other GOPers who went to Moscow, that is a real failure to me.
"Some 30% of respondents overall said in the new survey they believe the administration is doing too much to help Ukraine, up from 6% in a March Journal poll. The change was driven by a big shift among GOP voters: 48% of Republicans now say the U.S. is doing too much, up from 6% in the previous survey."
I wish it was true that Republicans cared about balanced budgets. Indeed, I wish it was true that someone in a position of authority cared about them. Sure, when you are out of power, it's a great line to use - "The other team is ballooning the federal deficit! We will bring back balanced budgets!" But - other than cheap talk - I don't see any evidence that anyone in Congress or the executive branch does. Once either team gets the chance to actually address the problem, they always decide they like spending a lot more better than making difficult choices. Since a serious effort at a balanced budget likely requires both real, not cosmetic, spending cuts and tax increases (and real ones, not just fantasy "we can tax only the rich" plans), I think we will keep kicking the can down the road no matter who is running the Senate, the House or occupies the WH.
It's crazy that Democrats have let Republicans successfully demagogue on crime. It is not a national issue at all except for interstate trafficking in guns, although some investigation was warranted of why police systematically in many cities could not or would control the criminal violence that accompanied the BLM protests. ARP funds could have been directed at strengthening police training in how to protect protests from criminals who take advantage.
Who among D's are, except maybe some people on your twitter feed? And maybe R's don't "sympathize" with interstate gun traffickers/tax cheats, but if you are part of the solution you are art of the problem.
The idea that one should make a decision on a national office because D's sympathize with criminals" is poorly informed.
Worth holding against those Democrats in California. It has zero to do with whether we have a another debt ceiling stunt or not.
Well, don't vote for any of them, ether.:) But I really don't agree that the median Democratic politician where I live (WDC) is pro-criminal. We clearly live in very different cities. But the larger point is that differences over policing strategy should have zero relevance for national politics.
feel like commentators here (and not MY!) forget that like 90% of the reason dems will lose on tuesday is because inflation has been double digits for the last year and outpaced wage growth + it’s a midterm under a dem president.
if you told someone in 2000 who into a coma and just woke up to guess what the midterm results would be, they’d probably guess right.
Two things. I'm a moderate who doesn't generally vote for Democrats, but I'll be voting for Maggie Hassan and Chris Pappas this year for precisely the reasons that Matt outlines. I want an opposition party who is principled and if it takes losing a few elections to get there, I think that's the price to pay. Second, I know it would be politically bad for Biden to say something like: "Whether there are more or fewer police in Detroit, San Francisco, or San Antonio is not something that should be decided by the federal government, but by the citizens of those cities - if you have strong opinions on how to reform policing in your city vote for a mayor and city council who agree with you on those issues", but it would really be a breath of fresh air.
Another point worth making is that senators serve 6-year terms, so somebody voted in in 2022, ostensibly to provide "balance" may actually be contributing to imbalance the other way, should Trump or DeSantis end up winning the presidential race in 2024.
The 2024 Senate map is also also brutal for Democrats, so how well Republicans do in 2022 impacts how big their majority is after 2024, which (depending on how the presidential race goes) impacts what sort of stuff Republicans can force through in 2025. A 52/48 GOP majority under a Republican president likely wouldn't have to votes to do anything *too* drastic, such as a nationwide abortion ban, cutting social security, or completely repealing environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act. But, a 58/42 GOP majority absolutely could, and would not hesitate to eliminate the filibuster to to it. And if the GOP envisions themselves never losing the Senate again, no matter what they do, they could be completely unconstrained.
" I can’t believe Republicans did so badly with this inflation happening — they probably shouldn’t have nominated all these kooks and charlatans"
The problem is dems overall policies are just as stupid.
So its a lose lose situation
If Democrats lose the Senate this cycle: they will be out of power in the Senate until 2034. Mark my words.
I agree completely with the narrow points you've been making on crime, but watching you and others dance around the real issue has convinced me that the Democratic party simply isn't ready to fix anything. I cast my first ever vote for a Republican as a result.
The problem is that a powerful minority of Democratic officials are de facto anarchists. Republicans won't actually fix anything on crime but certain Democrats will absolutely work to make it worse. The example that bothers me most personally is how here in Seattle the local county kept the jails on Covid standards until a couple of months ago, well after schools were fully reopened. The "surprise side effect" is that the jail simply couldn't accept as many new prisoners and so quite a few convicted criminals never did any time. Given that the county executive has discussed how he would like to close the jail in five years this doesn't seem accidental!
I understand that you aren't going to argue too strongly against Democrats right before an election but I think you're severely underestimating just how toxic this dynamic is. Just to take one example, it's _clearly_ why the attack on Paul Pelosi was a below the fold article and why it's difficult for Democrats to argue for such common sense measures as giving Nancy a security detail. Imagine the attack ads if she does get one: "There are several thousand mentally ill drug addicts roaming the streets of San Francisco. Democrats believe Nancy Pelosi deserves to be protected from them while the rest of the city has to fend for themselves".
The anarchists have to be purged from the party. There's no other path forward.
One small point of note: the people elected to Congress this cycle will not be the ones certifying the 2024 presidential election. The certification process happens several days after the new Congress is in. So for the 2024 presidential election certification, the folks who will certify the election will be whoever wins in November 2024 and those folks, as one of their first acts for the 119th Congress (which will be sworn in on January 3, 2025), will do that a couple days later (like on Jan 6, 2025). Just to use the last cycle as evidence, the 117th Congress was sworn in on January 3, 2021 and the certification was set for Jan 6 (and we know what happened then).
I'm very skeptical the GoP will do anything about Medicare, particularly since their base is older, white, MAGA, and Trump isn't interested. The GoP today is very different from the Paul Ryan GoP, and just note how long he lasted. His ideas are as dead as the dodo.
And really, if cutting Medicare is actually want they want, then the easiest way to achieve that is do nothing, and in a couple of years Medicare will cut itself.
"...we know the GOP both opposes stricter gun rules and also tighter ATF enforcement of rules that exist"
One of Matt Y's most annoying tendencies: The casual slight-of-hand with statements like these.
Show me the block of Republicans who want to allow straw purchases of firearms. Or who want to allow felons to legally possess guns.
All we see from Democrats is ever more proposals to put more burdens on law-abiding, federally-registered gun dealers and their law-abiding customers, and attempts to ban broad categories of firearms of the type that are very seldom used in crimes.
The GOP does oppose both those things.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/republicans-atf-groundwork-backdoor-federal-gun-registry
It's actually rather difficult to exaggerate their utter extremism on firearms.
That article says nothing at all about straw purchases or felons. Go ahead and read it if you don't believe me.
I'm not making any claims about straw purchases or felons. Matt wrote that the "GOP both opposes stricter gun rules and also tighter ATF enforcement of rules that exist."
You then indicated this was "sleight of hand."
The article seems pretty good evidence of the Republican party opposing "tighter ATF enforcement" of gun rules (in this case via more stringent record keeping requirements). I trust you don't need evidence for the first part of Matt's statement (that Republicans oppose stricter rules).
I have not seen any evidence that Republicans oppose enforcement of gun rules. Of course they oppose most stricter gun regulations because most of those are unconstitutional, and/or ignorant.
“Chesa Boudin & Co. aren’t in favor of shoplifting. How dare you suggest otherwise!”
Do you see how that argument looks when applied to Republicans in Congress?
It looks remarkably ill-informed.
Matt understates the effect the early Biden administration had on oil and gas companies. The administration basically threatened and scared investors and bankers into believing that oil and gas was now a short-term investment instead of a long-term investment. Yes, oil and gas production in the US is close to pre-pandemic levels, but there is almost no exploration for new reservoirs occurring. All the increase in production is from existing wells. Oil and gas companies aren't exploring for more oil and gas because their investors and lenders are telling them not to, because they don't want to get sucked into a decades-long investment that is not going to pay off. If the Biden administration wasn't so hostile to begin with, oil and gas supply would be even higher right now and gasoline prices would be lower.
So it’s Biden and not the Saudis opening the spigots every couple of years to break America’s fracking industry? Hum….
I’m pretty sure it’s mostly the Saudis.
I'm not sure if Saudi oil production has affected American oil production. It has affected the price of oil for sure, but not American production.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qhrz_EIqG-o4795LnNYaVnk5LRGm5sgD/view?usp=share_link
The Saudis flooded the market to drive the frackers out of business. Now drillers and their financial backers know they will do it again.
Again, where in the graph that I shared have the Saudis "flooded the market" in the past 10 years?
When oil went from 100 to 25 back in 2016?
The Saudis increased production by a few hundred barrels per day. Over the few preceding years the US increased production by thousands of barrels per day. That is what led to the major increase in supply and drop in oil price. Then US companies adjusted, drastically increasing production again even with low oil prices.
On oil production, yup, we’re pumping a lot: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=M
I live in one of the most competitive districts in the country for both state and federal offices. As such, I receive fliers every day, one for the Republican and one for the Democrat. The ones from the candidates themselves are generally positive, while the ones from PACs and outside groups are entirely negative. Reading the comments below, I think it's funny how people describing themselves as living in 'blue' or 'red' states see totally different messaging from each other and from what I see.
Yesterday's fliers were for Congress. The Republican promised to:
- Put parents back in control of schools and 'deal with' CRT
- Keep families safe by making sure the police are funded
- Recognize the hard work of small business owners with a conservative fiscal agenda
So, basically promising that, as our *federal* representative he would make sure the *county* board of education 'deals with' CRT and that our *city* funds it's police department. Oh, and he'll cut taxes... with a Democratic president. All his other fliers are like this; literally listing buzz words, outlining vague conservative values and stringing some talking points into sentences.
Meanwhile, yesterday's flier from the Democrat: Literally just a bunch of pictures of him posing with cops, shaking hands with cops and quotes from cops who endorse him.
So, good job messaging, Democrats! Always great to be playing defense against ridiculous attacks from a candidate that doesn't seem to know the difference between federal, state, county and city governments.
Our Democratic candidate for the state senate were going after her opponent for abortion, but the abortion messaging stopped entirely right when early voting started. This despite the fact that all of the Republicans running in my district (federal and state) are on the record with bat-shit crazy ideas about draconian abortion bans and government 'panels' that would determine if a woman was really raped. Really crazy stuff. And abortion is very relevant to state legislatures now!
My absolute favorite, though, are the lawn signs. During the primary the Republican signs said "Donald J. Trump endorses <candidate>" They were taken down about three seconds after the primaries. Now they say stuff like "Parents and teachers endorse <candidate>" or "<candidate> stands with the police".
Again, solid messaging, Democrats! Republican messaging going into the home stretch is: CRT, Defund the Police, Open Borders. (Sometimes literally those things just listed on a flier next to a grainy photo of a Democrat.)
It blows my mind that, with Walker running a very much national campaign in Georgia, the equally-national Fetterman campaign couldn't drive the message that a) it is flagrantly hypocritical even by today's standards to say that Walker is fit for the Senate, but not Fetterman and b) that Fetterman—unlike Walker—will recover and be a fully functional, rational human being in a few months.
Worse, they managed to drag the debate to 'abelism', a word that is too niche even for my spellchecker and is a huge gift to the 'radical woke Democrats' narrative. I mean, do his staffers and surrogates think that swing-state elections are won and lost on Twitter? Are they doing some kind of TikTok challenge to see how poorly they can do their jobs? Do they think that these arguments bolster the tattoos, hoodies and pickup truck image? Is the ableism angle going to differentiate him from the New Jersey crudité guy? I just... have no words.
The effects of a stroke are, in most cases, usually not reversible.
That is too broad a statement. Strokes affect different structures in the brain and come in many forms and magnitudes, which is the putative reason for the calls for him to release his medical records.
Regardless, we are talking about messaging here and the assertion that the aphasia will lessen with time is defensible and draws contrast with the irreversibly-crazy Republicans that are running for office.
The Fetterman campaign doesn't talk about ableism. I think the people you're mad at are journalists or activists or something, so firing staffers might not help https://twitter.com/search?q=ableism%20(from%3AJohnFetterman)&src=typed_query
R C claimed the Fetterman campaign talked about ableism and you seemed to second it.
Do you have an example of the Fetterman paid media being bad? The last ad I saw was about the "local elected officials" gaffe and said Oz was going to try to ban abortion
Is there truth to the crime surge point I've seen that violent crime isn't defined differently between "red" and "blue" states? Basically that some assaults or other things that would be crimes in Oklahoma aren't in California? There's also the "why would you report getting robbed in NYC" argument I've heard but that sounds less convincing to me.
Thanks for the response! That makes sense.
There's something conspicuously absent from this analysis of what will or won't happen if GOP takes both houses of Congress. What happens with Ukraine funding? McCarthey has already signaled that he's open to cutting Ukraine funding if he's Speaker.
Now this could just be postering and a negotiating tactic. It seems right now there are plenty of votes to keeping funding for Ukraine going. But I would NOT count on that continuing on the GOP side. There's the obvious, who on the GOP side is getting Russia money. I know, I know, it's a rabbit hole that can lead to not so helpful places. But considering what we know about the NRA, considering how many GOP officials spent July 4th in Moscow in 2017*, considering previous comments made by Paul Ryan, I feel pretty confident that the number of GOP officials who have some sort of financial connections to Russia is more than zero.
But even beyond that, even if GOP officials are not at all connected financially to Russia, they are very interested in making sure they win re-election in 2024. And given the dynamics of gerrymandering, the biggest danger to re-election is losing a primary. And GOP primary voters seem to be very alarmingly pro-Putin. Purely from saving your own political hide aspect, wouldn't be shocked if some of the pro giving Ukraine aid start to flip. What happens if Tucker Carlson does a weeklong special program live from Moscow (given his statements about Putin and given that he already did this in Hungary, a real possibility btw) and GOP House members started getting feedback from the large contingent of GOP primary voters who are Tucker fans? And then there are the GOP House members who are likely just flat-out Pro-Putin out of personal preference.
Beyond the actual dynamics of the war itself, there's the secondary effects. Voters say the number one issue is inflation. You know what's a huge driver or at least impact on inflation? The war in Ukraine. It seems extremely clear that Putin is hoping a GOP controlled Congress can do the work his army clearly is not capable of doing. Aid to Ukraine is likely going to be a huge impact on Putin's next move which will obviously impact the trajectory of energy markets.
It's just odd to me that Matt would leave out a pretty big issue where who controls the House and/or Senate could have a huge impact.
* I'm aware that foreign policy is almost always way down on the list of voter concerns in any election barring a situation where there are significant numbers of American troops involved (and most importantly dying) in a "hot" war. But I feel extremely confident that the typical median voter is pretty anti-Putin at this point (as opposed to GOP base). And I also feel pretty confident that the typical median voter is not aware that large swathes of the GOP, including Ron Johnson, spent July 4th, 2017 in Moscow. If Mandela Barnes (or other Dem candidates) hasn't had any ads or brought up this fact about Johnson or the other GOPers who went to Moscow, that is a real failure to me.
"Some 30% of respondents overall said in the new survey they believe the administration is doing too much to help Ukraine, up from 6% in a March Journal poll. The change was driven by a big shift among GOP voters: 48% of Republicans now say the U.S. is doing too much, up from 6% in the previous survey."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/republican-opposition-to-helping-ukraine-grows-wsj-poll-finds-11667467802
It's super depressing.
I wish it was true that Republicans cared about balanced budgets. Indeed, I wish it was true that someone in a position of authority cared about them. Sure, when you are out of power, it's a great line to use - "The other team is ballooning the federal deficit! We will bring back balanced budgets!" But - other than cheap talk - I don't see any evidence that anyone in Congress or the executive branch does. Once either team gets the chance to actually address the problem, they always decide they like spending a lot more better than making difficult choices. Since a serious effort at a balanced budget likely requires both real, not cosmetic, spending cuts and tax increases (and real ones, not just fantasy "we can tax only the rich" plans), I think we will keep kicking the can down the road no matter who is running the Senate, the House or occupies the WH.