The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: strategy
Joe Biden

As Impeachment Fizzles, Republicans Struggle For Effective Attack

Tuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing with special counsel Robert Hur showcased Republican desperation to find some way to attack President Joe Biden.

Despite the release of a full transcript of the interview between Hur and Biden that showed complaints about the president’s memory to be exaggerated, if not outright lies, many Republicans continued to pursue the Biden-so-old route. Texas Rep. Nathaniel Moran went so far as to suggest that Biden should be placed under guardianship for diminished mental capabilities.

At the same time, committee Chair Jim Jordan was one of multiple Republican members who asked Hur to envision fantasy scenarios in which the president was 15 or 20 years younger. That was part of an extended, and sometimes laughably desperate, effort by Republicans to get Hur to say that somehow, somewhen, somewhere in the multiverse, he might have considered charging Biden. They did not succeed.

But the biggest reason for the Hur hearing wasn’t just to give a chance to alternate between asking whether Biden should be in a care facility or if he’s a criminal mastermind. The reason that the Republicans called in Hur is that their big impeachment scheme has fallen apart. Now they are madly searching for something, anything, that they can throw against the walls of the White House.

As Politico reported on Wednesday, the Republican plan to impeach Biden appears to be all but dead. That effort began as soon as Republicans had their hands on the machinery of the House, with Rep. James Comer chairing the House Oversight Committee running a parallel “investigation” with Jordan on the Judiciary Committee and Chairman Jason Smith on the Ways and Means Committee. It reached its ludicrous peak on Sep. 12, 2023, when then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy announced a formal impeachment inquiry in a blatant effort to hang onto his big office. That didn’t work.

By the time Hunter Biden made his way to a closed-door meeting of the inquiry on Feb. 28, 2024, it seemed clear Republicans were only spinning their wheels. Despite hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, Republicans had produced nothing more than some truck payments, family loans, and a heavily debunked claim from an indicted foreign agent.

However, as the Politico article notes, Republicans see it as a high priority to “antagonize the White House.”

It might seem that getting some legislation passed after a session in which Republican infighting resulted in just 27 bills escaping the House (that includes renaming some Veterans Affairs clinics and issuing a commemorative coin). But Republicans are convinced that demonstrating competence in governing doesn’t matter to their voters.

So they are just going to throw crap against the walls of the Capitol in the hopes that some of it might stick.

Among the Republican Plan Bs under consideration are:

  • Sending criminal referrals for Hunter Biden to the Justice Department.
  • Keep investigating, but save any announcements for closer to Election Day.
  • Just keep investigating and making false claims—because that’s worked so well so far.

There’s also a plan to sue the Department of Justice, though it’s not clear why.

There’s even a suggestion that Republicans might do something that seems anathema to them so far—draft legislation. In this case, it would be legislation to tighten rules for financial reporting and foreign lobbying.

However, not only would this require them to break out a pencil stub and do the work they’ve resisted since taking control of the House in 2023, it would also mean drafting something that would pass the Senate. It could be exceedingly difficult to craft a bill on financial reporting that didn’t have a much bigger impact on Donald Trump than Biden. Ditto on issues of foreign lobbying.

The problem for Republicans is that Trump and his family did all the things they’ve been attributing to Biden and his family. Which would seem to make the legislative route difficult without netting the wrong fish.

Other options, like the idea of making a criminal referral on Hunter Biden, would be an obvious exercise in toothless grandstanding. But that hasn’t seemed to bother Republicans so far, so this is likely what they’ll do.

Republicans are reportedly so far away from mustering enough support for a Biden impeachment that even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson can see that such a move would fail. But they’re unwilling—and possibly incapable—of trying to dig their way back to respectability by passing legislation that addresses the nation’s needs.

So they’re going to sit among the ashes of their very fine impeachment inquiry and try to find something else ugly enough to please MAGA voters. So far, they’ve got nothing.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Analysis: Lessons For Democratic Strategists From 2014

Analysis: Lessons For Democratic Strategists From 2014

By Stuart Rothenberg,CQ Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — You could feel it from day one of this cycle. Senate Democratic strategists knew they were smarter than their Republican adversaries. They’d out-think them and out-work them.

Incumbent Democratic senators who run good campaigns rarely lose, I was reminded. Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, who had been appointed to his seat, won a tough race in 2010. So did Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. And Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill did the same in 2012.

This cycle, vulnerable Democratic incumbents in red states such as Alaska, Arkansas and Louisiana had great political names and deep connections to the voters. They knew how to win, just like Democrats Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana did two years ago. (Of course, Heitkamp and Donnelly won in a presidential year, with its different dynamic.)

How many times did I hear or read that Sen. Mark Pryor was no Blanche Lincoln? That comment was meant to highlight Pryor’s political strengths, but also to throw Lincoln (who lost re-election in 2010) under the bus so party strategists didn’t have to look at why she lost and how hostile the Arkansas terrain has become for any Democrat.

“They have their own brands,” I heard repeatedly about Pryor and Sens. Mark Begich in Alaska and Mary L. Landrieu in Louisiana from Democratic operatives and journalists.

But, Bennet, Reid, and McCaskill were victorious because the GOP nominated horrible candidates against them, not because the Democratic candidates had such untouchable brands, Democratic strategists had unique insights, or party operatives knew how to win tough races.

To some Democratic strategists, their candidates weren’t only smarter and better connected to voters. Their campaigns also knew how to identify their voters and turn them out. Democrats were miles ahead of the GOP when it came to “field,” the party’s highly touted ground-game.

I can’t count the number of times I heard or read about the vaunted Democratic field operation, whether in Little Rock or the most isolated areas of Alaska. Even I came to think it might matter.

I was told, for example, Democrats were registering and would boost turnout among African-Americans in Arkansas, which would change the arithmetic in that race and improve Pryor’s prospects.

I wondered why black voters who didn’t turn out for the first African-American president in history were going to flood to the polls for Pryor, or how Pryor would do well enough with whites for the party’s field program to matter. But Democratic Senate operatives had their charts and graphs to show how Pryor could survive the midterm.

As it turned out, African-Americans constituted 12 percent of the Arkansas electorate in 2014 according to the exit poll, the same percentage they constituted in 2008 and 1 point more than they constituted in 2010. (There was no exit poll in Arkansas in 2012.)

But while Democrats did a decent job turning out black voters this year, Pryor received virtually the same percentage of white voters as Lincoln did in 2010 (31 percent) and Obama did in 2008 (30 percent). Not surprisingly, Lincoln’s 2010 statewide performance, 37 percent, wasn’t much worse than Pryor’s 2014 showing or Obama’s 2008 statewide showing (both 39 percent).

And then there was the subject of Republican polling. Democrats seemed shocked that a thinking person would give any weight to GOP polling, which, they noted quite correctly, was seriously amiss in 2012. But Republicans took steps this cycle to correct their errors, and GOP polling often was more accurate than Democratic polling during the 2010 midterms.

At various times throughout the cycle I heard observers — sometimes Democrats, sometimes Republicans, often journalists — announce prematurely one of the GOP’s top-tier Senate challengers was toast, a victim of his or her own weakness or the Democrat’s brilliant campaign.

I heard it about Alaska, where Begich allegedly had localized his race successfully and would win re-election even in a Republican wave, and about North Carolina, where Democrats had defined and destroyed challenger Thom Tillis.

And, of course, there was Arkansas, where Republican Tom Cotton was, so boring, so serious and so charisma-challenged that he couldn’t possibly beat Pryor, who understood how to campaign in the South.

Interestingly, all of this smugness wasn’t apparent on the House Democratic side. Those folks seemed more realistic about their prospects from the start, possibly because House races are more susceptible to a partisan wave and the party was already in the minority.

It will be interesting to see whether Senate Democratic strategists sound more realistic during the 2015-16 cycle than they did over the past two years, as well as how Republicans operate when they don’t have the wind at their backs and a favorable map.

Republicans would be making a mistake to think that they have all the answers and have caught up with Democrats in all aspects of campaigning.

AFP Photo/Jewel Samad

Jihadists Face Growing Pressure As U.S. Mulls Strategy

Jihadists Face Growing Pressure As U.S. Mulls Strategy

Baghdad (AFP) — Elite Iraqi troops backed by U.S. jets battled jihadists near Baghdad Wednesday as Washington devised a strategy for expanded operations against the Islamic State group.

President Barack Obama prepared to meet with U.S. commanders to decide how to turn the tide on the powerful and brutal extremist organisation while keeping a promise not to drag America into another military quagmire.

The White House scrambled to play down a suggestion that deploying ground forces was an option but expanded air strikes were already turning up the heat on Islamic State group fighters.

According to Iraqi military and tribal leaders, U.S. jets struck three IS targets in an area just south of Baghdad dubbed the “triangle of death”, killing at least four militants.

A leader of the Janabi tribe in the flashpoint region of Jurf al-Sakhr, less than 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Baghdad, said Iraqi soldiers had fought IS militants overnight until early Wednesday.

“The main focus was an area of Jurf al-Sakhr called Fadhiliya. They fought deep into the night but the Iraqi army was not able to enter the place,” he told AFP.

The U.S. military issued a statement late Tuesday that spoke of three air strikes southwest of Baghdad but did not specify where.

The Jurf al-Sakhr region is key because it sits on the Euphrates River between the major Sunni insurgent bastion of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, and the country’s most revered Shiite holy sites south of the capital.

– Ground forces? –

The tribal leader and an army lieutenant said the push was led by the Golden Brigade, which is widely recognized as the best force in the country.

Critics say it may be the only credible fighting force in what is sometimes derided as “a checkpoint army”.

The brigade, which spearheaded an offensive to retake the country’s largest dam north of Mosul last month, has been hopping from one key frontline to another.

The U.S. administration has said that its strategy in Iraq would involve helping to revamp an army it had not finished training when the eight-year occupation ended in 2011.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that US military advisers could “provide close-combat advising”.

But the White House insisted the idea of U.S. troops in battle was a “purely hypothetical scenario.”

The more than 160 air strikes launched by the U.S. since August 8 have achieved some results, apparently forcing top IS leaders to cross the border back into neighboring Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday that nearly 50 people, including seven women and a child, had been killed since Monday in government air strikes on Talbisseh.

The town in the central Homs province has been under siege by the army ever since rebels seized it two year ago.

On Tuesday, Kurdish peshmerga forces — which have been receiving military equipment from Washington and some of its Western allies — retook seven Christian villages east of the second Iraqi city of Mosul with U.S. air support.

The villages had been emptied of their population during an IS offensive in August.

According to a senior Kurdish leader, Roj Nuri Shaways, a top IS military commander known as Abu Abdullah was killed in the fighting.

Calls have been mounting in Iraq for Washington to expand its air support to Sunni tribesmen fighting the jihadists, particularly in the town of Dhuluiyah, north of Baghdad.

– Global threat –

On Wednesday, Obama is to sit down with General Lloyd Austin, chief of U.S. Central Command, at his Florida headquarters.

The president will “discuss the plan for building an international coalition to degrade and destroy (IS),” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

British and French planes have already started surveillance missions over Iraq.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told U.S. lawmakers Tuesday that plans were being laid to hit targets in Syria, where the IS group is holding Western hostages and has a stronghold in the city of Raqa.

“This plan includes targeted actions against ISIL safe havens in Syria, including its command and control, logistics capabilities, and infrastructure,” he said, using an alternative acronym for the militant group.

Over the past month, IS sparked global outrage by releasing video footage of the beheadings of two U.S. reporters and a British aid worker. It also warned it would take the battle to America and its allies.

A U.S. court on Tuesday indicted a Yemeni-born U.S. man for allegedly providing material support to IS by recruiting members for jihad in Syria.

Lawmakers in France — the top purveyor of Western jihadists — the same day approved a new anti-terror bill aimed at preventing potential jihadists from travelling to Iraq or Syria.

Six people, two of them minors, were arrested in the suburbs of the eastern city of Lyon on recruitment suspicions, a judicial source said Wednesday.

AFP Photo/Mohammed al-Shaikh

Interested in more news and analysis? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!