Senate Democrats are saving Trump for last

Connecticut’s senior US senator made news twice this week. In the first case, he made it sound like he was open to someone new being the next Senate majority leader when said that the Democratic Party needs “new energy and ideas.” If you know Richard Blumenthal the way we Nutmeggers do, you know something was lost in translation. He’s not a boat-rocker within his party. So when he clarified, saying that no, he does support Chuck Schumer, that’s more like what we expect from our Dick.

The other news item is more important. After the Congress is seated on January 3, Blumenthal will be the head of the permanent subcommittee on investigations. He will be the hub of the Senate Democrats’ accountability agenda. In Hartford, he said investigations will begin “with urgency,” and that they will focus not only on the corruption of the president but also on the corruption around him, the implication being that the billionaires and corporations that bribed Trump are in trouble. Blumenthal listed inquiries already underway: “crypto scams and corruption,” “[Elon] Musk and Starlink,” “vanities projects” and “the pay-for-play schemes of big corporations that have donated to the East Wing ballroom boondoggle.”

More important is that Blumenthal communicated a theory of accountability. He said, “I think the votes may be there to impeach [Pete] Hegseth” in the Senate, but the votes are not yet there to impeach Trump. Then he added a little shuck and jive: “Americans voted for affordability and accountability. They want to end corruption, because corruption increases costs. Taking money from foreign governments, and the president is beholden to them, increases the costs for average everyday Americans.”

That’s shuck and jive, because if Blumenthal and Democratic investigators find that the president took bribes – and he almost certainly has, given information already available to the public – then that would be grounds for impeachment. That said, I think Blumenthal might be right when he said “impeachment might be a blind alley.” The Democrats can inflict much more damage on the Republicans, and on anyone who might run to replace Trump, by leaving Trump alone for now – by making him the last man standing after the others fall.

I don’t want to make this sound like a thoroughly considered plan of attack. I think the Democrats are figuring things out as they go, and making calculations along the way. However, I would not be surprised if the Democrats in the Congress drag out coming after Donald Trump for as long as possible, and letting investigations spill into the next election, Benghazi-style. He can’t run again. They can only affect Republicans who have a future.

Again, Bidenomics was working

Inflation rose higher than expected last month. A former Federal Reserve economist told the Associated Press that the central bank should be worried. “Using rough estimates for last October’s data, Riccardo Trezzi calculates that consumer prices rose 4 percent in October from a year ago, up from 3.7 percent in September,” the AP said. “Core prices rose 2.8 percent, he estimates, up from 2.6 percent.”

Simon Rosenberg, who writes the Hopium Chronicles, said that “inflation has more than doubled since Trump took office. The scale of the policy failure that America is experiencing right now is hard to put into words.”

So he made a graph.

A picture is worth a thousand words and every one of them says Bidenomics was working. As stubborn as it was during Joe Biden’s tenure, inflation was nonetheless falling thanks to his policies. It started rising again almost immediately after Donald Trump returned, ending Bidenomics. Add illegal war, illegal taxes (tariffs) and illegal deportations, all that pressure is pushing prices up. An AP poll of 100,000 midterm voters found that about two-thirds blamed Trump’s policies for higher costs. Ninety percent said affordability was a “crucial” or “major” factor in voting.

Don Leonard’s game

I don’t know what Don Leonard hopes to accomplish, but I do know he’s not going to get it. The representative-elect from Ohio alleged today that “senior members of the Democratic House” told him “in no uncertain terms” that if he does not support the speakership of Hakeem Jeffries, they will make his life “a living hell.” In a video, he said the conditions for his support are a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United and ending support for Israel and the Iran war. The implication is that Democratic leadership opposes both, and has therefore resorted to intimidation.

The allegations are getting a lot of attention among “progressives,” but they are almost certainly fantasy. Why? Jeffries already has the votes he needs. There are currently 214 Democrats in the House. He needs just four more to reach the threshold of 218. That’s no problem given that the caucus is going to balloon to nearly 260. Leonard might think Jeffries is thinking a lot about his vote, but fact is, Jeffries is probably not thinking much about it at all. I suppose if the margins were narrow, he might resort to intimidation. As it is, however, there’s no point.

Is Leonard lying? Maybe. I would guess charitably that he was lobbied by Jeffries’ leadership team, which is standard operating procedure in Washington, and that Leonard took normal politicking as a threat, or he decided there was an opportunity to portray it as such for his own purposes. He seems to be appealing to “progressives” who trade in the conspiracy that Jeffries is a shill for Israel. Leonard’s video was picked up by Drop Site News, which is Ryan Grim’s outfit. Grim was one of the loudest anti-Democratic voices pushing the candidacy of Graham Platner. The Tennessee Holler made the video go viral, adding “is this Trumpian politics the change people voted for?” Sarah Kendzoir, a writer with a huge following who believes the Democrats are as “Trumpian” as the GOP, expanded the video’s reach.

There are agents of chaos in this country who operate in tandem with the Democrats but who are not interested in organizing power for the purpose of bringing greater freedom, equality and justice to all. They are interested in advancing their own cynical interests. Those interests are often pursued by sowing division among the Democrats, in particular the idea that Jeffries in the House, and Chuck Schumer in the Senate, are somehow illegitimate leaders. I hope Don Leonard figures out that that’s a fool’s game. Otherwise, he’s going to be podcasting in two years.

Chuck Schumer’s future

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said today that “there’s only one candidate in the race” to be the next speaker, I knew there wasn’t much to the idea that “progressives oppose Jeffries.” If AOC is on board, it’s a done deal.

However, here is competition in the Senate, or at least the appearance of it. Bernie Sanders said today that he does not support Chuck Schumer as leader. Chris Van Hollen said Schumer’s leadership shouldn’t be assumed. He said two new senators would not be coming in “if Schumer and the DSCC [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] had had their way.” Like Sanders, Van Hollen is calling for an open process by which to determine the next leader.

They might get what they want, but the outcome will probably be the same. In the House, the entire body votes for speaker. In the senate, only the majority votes for majority leader. Schumer almost certainly has a majority of those votes already, despite the objections of a few.

Does that mean this is meaningless? Perhaps not. Some suggest that what we are seeing is a beginning of the end for Schumer – that he’s being nudged out of the leadership before the next session of Congress, the presumption being that there will be a Democratic president by then, at which point truly transformational legislation can take place.