It isn’t just moderates who oppose Biden’s border plan
“I’m a dad, a senator, a pastor. But a magician? I’m not.” This is the, er, inventive approach taken by Georgia senator Raphael Warnock in his most recent TV commercial. Warnock tells voters that his lack of supernatural powers is why he hasn’t managed to fix Washington in “just a year.” Instead he touts bread-and-butter achievements: jobs, infrastructure and healthcare. “That’s not magic, that’s doing the job for Georgia.”
This may be an unusual way for a first-term senator to frame his track record, but it is of a piece with Warnock’s strategy ahead of what promises to be a tough re-election battle, probably against Herschel Walker, who leads polls in the Republican primary. Joe Biden has sought to make Georgia the frontline in the battle for the future of American democracy, endorsing the MLB’s decision to move the All-Star game from the state last summer after the passage of new voting laws. While Warnock is on board with the president’s voting-rights rhetoric, he knows it isn’t a vote winner. In other areas, Warnock finds himself at odds with Biden. The biggest is immigration. Warnock is one of the growing number of Democrats who does not support lifting Title 42 for fear of a surge of illegal immigration at the southern border. He has also criticized Biden’s military budget and plans to close an air base in Savannah.
Warnock’s recent interventions make for an opportunity to consider the meaning of “moderate” in the Democratic Party. Last year’s row over Build Back Better, with its intense focus on Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, drew too many Democrats into a caricatured belief of their party as a united block frustrated by one or two moderate holdouts. As the immigration row has heated up, there’s been a similar tendency to oversimplify.
To many, the issue is a headache to a handful of Democrats in border states — Sinema and Mark Kelly in Arizona, Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, to pick a few high profile examples. But the opposition to Title 42 reveals the breadth of the “moderate” revolt. Geographically, it spreads from the southwest to the northeast. As I mentioned recently, New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan has been down to the southern border to bemoan Biden’s immigration plans (or lack thereof). But the spread is also ideological and factional: John Fetterman, blue-collar progressive Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, wants to keep Title 42. Warnock, a black pastor-politician, personifies the core of the party’s support in the South. Even Delaware’s Chris Coons, loyal member of the small but loyal Joe Biden faction of the party, is against scrapping Title 42.
In other words, most of those who oppose the move aren’t “Blue Dog Democrats” or even especially moderate. Warnock, for example, favors scrapping student loan debt and approves of several other key progressive policy priorities. The breadth of the coalition opposed to Biden’s steps on immigration is an indictment of the White House’s handling of this politically sensitive issue. And the fact that it isn’t just outliers like Joe Manchin seeking to distance themselves from the president is a sign of just how deep a hole he finds himself in.
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What McCarthy and McConnell really thought of January 6
Today sees the publication of yet more juicy snippets from Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin’s forthcoming book on the last few years of US politics. This time the focus is on the actions of senior Republicans in the days after the January 6 riot at the Capitol. Burns and Martin report that both Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, the two top Republicans on the Hill, said they thought Trump was responsible for the incident and wanted him gone from politics for good. “I’ve had it with this guy,” McCarthy told colleagues, saying the president should resign.
McConnell reportedly told his advisors that, “The Democrats are going to take care of this son of a bitch for us,” adding, “if this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is.”
McCarthy’s team denies that McCarthy ever said Trump should resign while McConnell’s team declined to comment.
Capitol confusion
An alarming announcement was issued by the Capitol Police yesterday evening ordering an immediate evacuation of the Capitol building. The statement said that authorities were tracking “an aircraft that poses a probable threat to the Capitol Complex.” Panic ensued. Then two parachutes emerged over the rooftops of southeast DC and it became clear that there had been an unfortunate mix up. The aircraft was heading to Nationals Park, where two members of the army’s parachute team were landing as part of the Washington Nationals’ military appreciation night. Nancy Pelosi issued a statement last night claiming that the FAA failed to notify anyone at the Capitol of the plan. Oops. A bad day at the office for some poor bureaucrat.
What you should be reading today
Bill Zeiser: What @LibsOfTikTok exposed
Stephanie Slade: What people get wrong about fusionism
Teresa Mull: The white guilt in your coffee
Batya Ungar-Sargon, RealClearPolitics: The new class chasm in the culture wars
Melinda Haring and Jacob Heilbrunn, Foreign Affairs: Ukraine after the war
Anna Hirtenstein, Wall Street Journal: Russian oil flows, but increasingly under the radar
Poll watch
President Biden Job Approval
Approve: 41.3 percent
Disapprove: 51.6 percent
Net approval: -10.3 (RCP Average)
Direction of the country
Right direction: 34 percent
Wrong direction: 66 percent (Politico/Morning Consult)
