Imagine if POTUS and the Senate GOP had worked as fast on an effective national testing system for #COVID19 as they will for this SCOTUS confirmation.
Julian Zelizer
30.2K posts
Julian Zelizer
@julianzelizer
Princeton Professor. Also—The Long View, Substack; Foreign Policy; NPR. New York Times Best Selling Author. julianzelizer.substack.com
Joined September 2008
- Many reporters keep talking about congressional Republicans as scared of Trump's base. The reality is that they are aligned with Trump's base.
- When people say don't "politicize" mass shootings by calling for stronger gun control, they are literally doing just that.
- In 3/20, all the Senate Democrats voted for Trump's Covid stimulus/relief bill. In 12/20, nearly every Senate Democrat voted for Trump's second Covid stimulus/relief bill. In 3/21, no Senate Republicans voted for Biden's Covid stimulus/relief package. Asymmetric Polarization.
- We are witnessing a massive failure of presidential leadership.
- Just to be clear, conservatives are complaining that @JoeBiden won’t take a position on changing the size of SCOTUS—which happened several times before 1869—but it's ok for POTUS to vacillate about a peaceful transition of power? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
- On 9/26, POTUS announced Amy Coney Barrett's nomination. Judiciary held hearings and voted. This week, the Senate is prepared to confirm. That's how quick the Senate Majority can act when @senatemajldr wants to. That's not what happened with pandemic relief. Gridlock is a choice.
- Protect the filibuster or protect the right to vote. That’s the choice.
- The trial is not really about whether the former president abused his power. The trail of evidence is very clear. Trump did everything in broad daylight. The trial is about which senators are willing to take a stand about what he did and who is willing to say this is the new ok.
- The Republican backlash to @POTUS's stimulus bill will occur regardless of the substance or the overall amount. It will be a backlash against a Democratic president—not a backlash against the particulars of the bill./1
- POTUS would rather have a 24-hour news cycle with pundits criticizing (rightly so) his use of the word lynching than another 24 hours of the media discussing further testimony/evidence of how he manipulated foreign policy for his own political self-interest.
- With Watergate, the question was whether Democrats could find "smoking gun" evidence that would prove President Nixon was guilty. With Ukraine-gate, the question is whether smoking gun evidence can have any political impact among congressional Republicans anymore.
- It’s not just racism, it’s presidential racism. This means that at this key point in U.S. history, we are seeing a convergence of presidential power and white racism. Equally relevant, this use of political power is not undercutting his support within the GOP.
- Americans do not need the Mueller report to understand whether obstruction happened. Nor do they need any smoking gun tapes. Much of what happened took place in broad daylight. Unlike Nixon, @realDonaldTrump desensitizes the public by doing what he does right in front of them.