“The shadow campaign to lead House Democrats next year has been underway for months — and in many ways years — as a new generation of leaders quietly makes a play for the top positions,” the Washington Post reports.
“But an eleventh-hour push by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) in recent weeks has taken Democrats by surprise and raised questions about how the caucus wants to mirror the diversity that makes up its party’s base.”
Stevie Van Zandt is the latest New Jersey celebrity helping Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman (D) troll rival Mehmet Oz (R).
“Sorry, Jared, there is nothing I can do.”
— Rupert Murdoch on the phone to Jared Kushner, quoted by the New York Times on Election Night 2020.
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched her political career being tough on China — a new congresswoman who dared to unfurl a pro-democracy banner in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square during a 1991 visit with other U.S. lawmakers shortly after the student massacre,” the AP reports.
“More than 30 years later, her interest in traveling to Taiwan presents a powerful diplomatic capstone. It has also contributed to tensions at the highest levels in Washington and Beijing among officials who worry a trip could prove provocative.”
NBC News: Empty threats? Fears grow as China fumes over possible Pelosi visit to Taiwan.
CNN: Pentagon working to develop security plan for Pelosi ahead of possible trip to Taiwan.
“The numbers are in and it’s official: The attack on Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D) backfired,” Politico reports.
“The Michigan Republican state senator who falsely described McMorrow as a ‘groomer’ in an April fundraising email raised less than $300 in the days following the solicitation, according to campaign finance filings. McMorrow, on the other hand, raised more than $1 million.”
Former Trump White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is scheduled to testify Thursday before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, CBS News reports.
Politico: “Gasoline prices may have peaked too soon to remain the lethal campaign weapon for Republicans that they seemed to be a month ago.”
“It’s an open question, though, whether voters will give more weight to the declining fuel prices, or to the fact that they spiked so high to begin with.”
“The US economy may have eked out modest growth in the second quarter, skirting back-to-back quarterly contractions, but rising at a tepid enough pace to feed concerns of an eventual downturn,” Bloomberg reports.
Fed chairman Jerome Powell told CNBC that he does not think the U.S. is currently in a recession: “There are too many areas of the economy that are performing too well. This is a very strong labor market… It doesn’t make sense that the economy would be in a recession with this kind of thing happening.”
Playbook offers two bits of caution around the surprise tax and climate deal announced by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) yesterday:
“Though Democrats on the Hill and at the White House are celebrating, there’s still the Sen. Kyrsten Sinema-sized hurdle they need to clear. She hasn’t publicly signed off just yet, and the bill includes some provisions she has previously told leadership were no-gos for her, like taxing carried interest.”
“How will moderate House Dems of the Josh Gottheimer variety react to the exclusion of the SALT deductions they sought to restore, which were make-or-break for them in last year’s talks?”
A new SurveyUSA poll in Georgia finds Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) leading challenger Herschel Walker (R) by 9 points, 48% to 39%.
In the race for governor, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) leads challenger Stacey Abrams (D) by just one point, 45% to 44%.
“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said last month that he wouldn’t allow the Senate to pass a bipartisan bill on computer chips if Democrats tried to revive their ‘Build Back Better’ agenda,” the HuffPost reports.
“On Wednesday, the Senate approved the bipartisan tech manufacturing bill, and hours later Democrats announced a breakthrough on their big domestic policy legislation.”
“In other words, McConnell’s gambit failed.”
“The brazen plan to create false slates of electors pledged to former President Donald Trump in seven swing states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. was arguably the longest-running and most expansive of the multiple efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election,” the New York Times reports.
“It was also one of the most confusing, involving a sprawling cast of pro-Trump lawyers, state Republican officials and White House aides in an effort that began before some states had even finished counting their ballots. It culminated in the campaign to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use the false slates to subvert congressional certification of the outcome on Jan. 6, 2021 — and in the violent attack on the Capitol that unfolded as he refused to do so.”
“The scheme had a vague historical precedent and was rooted, at least in theory, in a post-Reconstruction Era law designed to address how to handle disputed elections. But it was deemed illegal by Mr. Trump’s own White House Counsel’s Office. Even some of the lawyers who helped come up with the idea referred to it as fake and acknowledged that it was of dubious legality.”
“Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) has spent the summer out of the spotlight. That’s now going to change,” Axios reports.
“Solving the Democrats’ tax and spending puzzle in the Senate — where President Biden’s agenda has stalled for over a year — has always involved two key pieces: Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).”
“But much of Washington is flying blind on whether she’ll back spending $369 billion on climate and another $64 billion on health care by raising the corporate minimum tax rate to 15%.”
NBC News: Manchin makes his deal but what will Kyrsten Sinema do?
“The House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, has been engaging with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he could sit for a closed-door deposition with the panel as soon as this week,” CNN reports.
“Dozens of former Republican and Democratic officials announced on Wednesday a new national political third party to appeal to millions of voters they say are dismayed with what they see as America’s dysfunctional two-party system,” Reuters reports.
“The new party, called Forward and whose creation was first reported by Reuters, will initially be co-chaired by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey. They hope the party will become a viable alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties that dominate U.S. politics.”
“The Justice Department obtained a second warrant to search the cell phone of right-wing lawyer John Eastman as part of a January 6-related criminal inquiry,” CNN reports.
Washington Post: “In a forthcoming memoir, Jared Kushner alleges that former president Donald Trump’s second chief of staff, John Kelly, was viewed within the White House as a bully with a ‘Jekyll-and-Hyde’ demeanor who once shoved his wife, Ivanka Trump, out of his way after a volatile Oval Office meeting. Kelly denies the allegation.”
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) “announced that he had struck a deal with Democratic leaders on a domestic spending package that includes climate and energy programs and tax increases, less than two weeks after abruptly upending hopes for such a deal this summer,” the New York Times reports.
“In a statement, Mr. Manchin, who had been his party’s main holdout on an expansive social policy, climate and tax package, confirmed his support for the measure in a statement that did not provide detail on its precise elements. But in the statement, he signaled support for climate and energy programs, as well as some tax provisions, all of which he had previously suggested he could not support because of concerns about inflation.”
“It was not clear what had changed his mind about the plan, which only weeks ago he had said he could not back until he saw more economic data next month.”
Washington Post: “The new agreement opens the door for party lawmakers to try to advance the measure as soon as next week, capping off months of debate, delay and acrimony that some Democrats came to see as detrimental to their political fate ahead of this fall’s elections.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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