Damon Linker explains in his column at The Week: The West Wing is what you get if you take the outlook of the most committed Democrats during the two terms of Bill Clinton’s presidency, add an overlay of rhetorical grandiosity derived […]
Joe Biden
Do GOP lawmakers REALLY want to vote against Biden’s infrastructure plan?
Ron Brownstein thinks it is a bad political move: With their opposition to President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan, Republicans are doubling down on a core bet they’ve made for his presidency: that the GOP can maintain support among its key […]
Biden sets-up a commission on Supreme Court reform
Here is Michael D. Shear and Carl Huse at The New York Times: President Biden on Friday ordered a 180-day study of adding seats to the Supreme Court, making good on a campaign-year promise to establish a bipartisan commission to […]
Why is “President Biden making such a sharp break with Joe Biden?”
Here is Ezra Klein at The New York Times: Joe Biden didn’t wake up one day and realize he’d been wrong for 30 years. I covered him in the Senate, in the Obama White House, in the Democratic Party’s post-Trump […]
Amtrak will expand routes if Biden’s American Jobs Plan passes
Joe Biden spent most of his senate career commuting to Wilmington, Delaware to Washington D.C. via Amtrak. His new infrastructure plan will give $80 billion to the rail line. Here is Joseph Spector and Joey Garrison at USA Today: How […]
Racism and interstate highways
Joe Biden’s new infrastructure plan singled out the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans as a “racist highway. The plan sets aside $20 billion to “reconnect” neighborhoods that were racially divided by highway construction. Over at NPR, Noel King interviews New […]
Obama 2.0?
As my piece today at Current suggests, I see a lot of continuity between the Obama and Biden presidencies. Obama inherited the 2008 recession. Biden inherited COVID-19, an economic recession, racial tensions, and the Trump-induced threats to American democracy. Both […]
“The ‘only 5 percent’ counts as ‘real infrastructure’ talking point is utterly bogus”
I wrote last week: “The opponents of Joe Biden’s new bill think “infrastructure” is just roads and bridges.” Paul Waldman nails it: First, let’s be clear that the “only 5 percent” counts as “real infrastructure” talking point is utterly bogus. It defines infrastructure […]
What is infrastructure?
The opponents of Joe Biden’s new bill think “infrastructure” is just roads and bridges. Yes, infrastructure was focused largely on roads and bridges in the early 19th-century, but it also included new innovations like railroads and the telegraph. Today those […]
Biden chief of staff Ron Klain on the president’s new infrastructure bill: “The president was elected to do a job”
Politico’s Ryan Lizza interviewed Klain yesterday. Here is one of the takeaways: BIPARTISANSHIP IS NOT THE GOAL: On attracting Republican votes for the infrastructure bill, Klain’s rhetoric sounded similar to how the administration discussed the Covid relief bill:“ Let’s work together […]