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THE STATE OF…
THE WAR
The Washington Post’s Thursday morning update:
Battles escalated across Ukraine on Thursday as Russia laid siege to major cities, stepping up assaults in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance. Explosions continued to rock the capital, Kyiv, lighting up the sky as air raid sirens sounded and a massive convoy of Russian ground forces drew within 20 miles of the city’s center.
Moscow’s troops have pushed into the Black Sea port city of Kherson — where Russian state media said Kremlin forces had taken control, but Ukrainian defense officials were adamant that the fight rages on. Russian troops filled the streets and stormed into the city council building, according to the mayor, but “the flag above us is Ukrainian,” he wrote on Facebook.
The Ukrainian response, bolstered by scrappy civilian militias, continues to slow its opponent’s advance. After days of heavy shelling, Ukraine has defied the odds to hold cities under fire, including Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol, according to the British Defense Ministry — as the Russian convoy rumbling toward Kyiv struggles with low morale and botched planning. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was defiant on Thursday: “So many times they wanted to destroy us. But they couldn’t. Wanted to wipe us from the face of the earth. But weren’t successful. Beat our backs. But we are standing on our feet.”
HALPERIN SAYS: While we hope for the best, let’s all plan our government policies and journalism (and, dear Gang of 500, our European holiday summer plans) around the possibility that Putin could start to win more on the ground.
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ANY MEANINGFUL CHANGE WITH NATO’S RESPONSE IN UKRAINE OR WITH THE ENERGY POSTURE
Take in the essential reading New York Times op-ed piece by Andriy Yermak, head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine, written from inside a Kyiv bunker sitting next to President Zelensky, and you will find that his government wants an aggressive NATO-enforced no-fly-zone and “a full embargo on Russian oil and all Russian exports to the United States and Europe.”
Then turn to the essential reading Wall Street Journal story on how NATO officials and Western governments completely rule out a no-fly-zone role (and a lot of other military options).
HALPERIN SAYS: Don’t count on a cinematic riding-to-the-rescue (a/k/a flying to the rescue) by the West. Although hawks and chicken hawks can beat their chests and call Joe Biden a weak wimp all they wish, NATO cannot get into a shooting war with Russia over Ukraine. It isn’t going to happen and/but that reality could end up being very politically painful for Biden, Boris, and other NATO bigs. As for energy, that could happen, but not today.
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A SOTU BOOST FOR BIDEN
Democratic pollster Mark Mellman is an honest man whose essential reading romp through the history of the impact State of the Union addresses on a president’s job approval ratings shows that the bounce is that of (to use the famous political expression) a dead cat – if there is a bounce at all.
HALPERIN ASKS: Can we once and for all please stop treating the SOTU like it is some make-or-break moment? Or would that put too many pundits out of business on one of their biggest nights of the year?
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UNDERSTANDING THE BIDEN-HARRIS MIDTERM MESSGAE
The Washington Post smartly says the SOTU suggests it is this:
Biden offered an overarching narrative of the situation that was steeped in a blend of populism and patriotism — blaming wealthy and foreign entities for the swirl of crises and voicing support for working-class people.
The New York Times, with equal accuracy, says it is this:
[M]ore centrist language in a nod to disaffected moderate Democrats who have pushed for their party to focus on the daily concerns of voters ahead of midterm elections they are expected to lose.
The Associated Press has quotes galore demonstrating why Team Biden-Harris-Klain-Donilon-Pelosi-Schumer have spent most of the Biden presidency avoiding getting on the wrong side of the left:
“Our party often, we target the white moderate, we target the white independent. And I get it, right. Those are the swing voters and we want to get them. But we continue to underestimate Black and brown people,” said Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y. “I liked 95% of the speech, maybe even 97%, but he missed an opportunity to bring Black voters in more and voters of color in more.”
Beyond Washington, Melina Abdullah, a grassroots director for Black Lives Matter, was more frank in her criticism. Slapping down those on the left wanting to “defund” the police, Biden three times called for funding as Democrats and Republicans gave him a standing ovation.
“It’s appalling that he would say it, that he would repeat it, and he would say it with such exuberance,” Abdullah said, warning of dire political consequences. “They think we don’t have a choice. Maybe we won’t vote for Republicans, but we will stay home. And that’s something that Democrats can’t afford to have happen….”
“I’m not going to change how I feel,” Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., said Wednesday. “I’m not going to stop saying defund the police at all….”
John Paul Mejia, a spokesman for the Sunrise Foundation, a national youth organization focused on climate change, criticized Biden for largely ignoring that issue and other priorities for young people including student loan debt.
“Biden needs to have some respect for the people and issues that got him into power,” he said.
And like other activists, Paul Mejia said he was most disturbed by Biden’s call to fund the police. He called it “absolutely disgusting.”
“I understand the messaging tactic there,” he said. “But I don’t think Biden should be stabbing the backs of loads of organizers and activists who participated in the uprisings over the summer and got him into office.”
HALPERIN SAYS: Embattled moderate Democrats are happier now than they were before SOTU (and happier, as you see, than progressives with the speech and reframed message), but there still is little on the horizon that suggests that Joe Biden is going to help Democrats win in November, in terms of approval ratings, message, or new legislative accomplishments. And if progressives don't turn out to vote for the Ds, the Red wave will get a lot wavier.
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UNDERSTANDING THE TEXAS PRIMARY RESULTS
Karl Rove, Henry Olsen, and the Washington Post newsroom all see roughly the same thing:
* massive Republican turnout
* strong GOP performance with Hispanic voters
* a better day for establishment Republicans than Trump Republicans (but with indications that the two camps can both have good results in November)
* indications of rising progressive strength within the Democratic Party (at the potential cost of losing seats in the general election)
HALPERIN SAYS: When New Hampshire’s resident expert on Texas politics, Greg Abbott adviser Dave Carney, predicts that his candidate “will carry the Hispanic vote in November,” no one serious can say he is definitively wrong – and that reflects one of the biggest short- and medium-term challenges for the Democrats, in Texas and nationally.
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INTRA-DEMOCRATIC PARTY NEGOTIATIONS OVER BUILD BACK BETTER BY ANY OTHER NAME
1. Until the current budget negotiations are resolved, the intra-Democratic Party battle over the remnants of Build Back Better will largely be deferred.
2. Those current budget talks, already complicated enough, now also have to resolve the amount and mix of Ukraine funding as well as the negotiations over additional monies to deal with COVID.
3. On the latter, Mitt Romney has his Bain green eyeshades on, and, along with his colleagues, is demanding an accounting of past pandemic funds before he is willing to consider new spending.
4. On the former, while most everyone on the Hill supports more military and humanitarian aid, actually reaching a deal about how much to spend and on what is as simple as most everything when it comes to Congress – which is to say, not simple at all.
5. When Democrats DO get around to addressing a new run at reconciliation, they will have to deal with the widely mixed views of Senator Manchin’s latest proposal, as well as the difficulty of jumpstarting enough momentum to get an identical piece of legislation passed through both chambers, with Democratic-only votes and the clock ticking. As the Wall Street Journal news department blares:
HALPERIN SAYS: Analysis of where AOC, Bernie Sanders, Joe Manchin, and Kyrsten Sinema might eventually agree on one pile of cash is going to have to wait until we see where Mitch McConnell, Pat Leahy, Steny Hoyer, and Nancy Pelosi agree on a different pile of cash.
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DONALD TRUMP’S POTENTIAL INDICTMENT
A new legal filing from the special House investigative committee suggests that Hill Democrats (plus Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) believe the evidence is in and Donald Trump should be in prison for his role around the events of 1/6/21.
HALPERIN SAYS: The Dominant Media’s apparent view to the contrary, Liz Cheney is not judge, jury, appellate court, or the last word here. As we learn more about the committee’s work, we are going to all be in shocking-but-not-surprising mode over what Donald Trump and his comrades said and did. And/but none of which will necessarily keep him from being the Republican nominee for president in 2024.