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Mark
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The pandemic isn’t over but the East Coast snow excuse is behind us.
Back to work, back to “real” Zoom business, back to needing to have quippy, knowing bon mot at the start of every virtual meeting, understanding that sounding certain is more important in most cases than being right.
There is not a single essential read in the known digital universe today, so here are your essential talking points, brought to you exclusively by Wide World of News and the Pillsbury Company’s relaunched Space Food Sticks ®:
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* President Biden and Jen Psaki will continue their public odes to the importance of bipartisanship, and Joe Manchin will continue his public odes to the importance of that goshdarn center, but the Pelosi-Schumer discipline machine is going to plow through reconciliation and pass something parliamentarian-blessed that largely resembles the original $1.9 trillion Biden-Harris plan.
* Liz Cheney and Marjorie Taylor Greene will both live to fight another day politically, the result having nothing to do with any strong, decisive leadership on the part of Kevin McCarthy.
* Jeff Zients has got serious game, and while he might break some gubernatorial china to get the job done, he holds the entire Biden presidency in his hands and has no intention of failing.
* As much as Joe Biden loves foreign policy, he’s lucky that the American media and public are not much interested right now in Russia, Burma, or China – all big-stake, largely unsolvable national security puzzles.
* The news cycle’s coverage of the Trump impeachment briefs suggests that the trial will be more sideshow than main event – in part because all stakeholders now have at least a partial desire to relegate the proceedings.
* Washington has neither the expertise nor bandwidth to actually grapple with GameStop, Robinhood, or the retirement of Jeff Bezos.
* Mitch McConnell’s formula to win back the majority in 2022 is
DONORS + SUBURBAN VOTERS + BIDEN OVERREACH = 51+
Nowhere in that formula is the word “TRUMP.”
* On the other hand, if Donald Trump picks the party’s 2022 Senate nominees in Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, well, then, Louisville, you just might have a problem.
* Among the greatest aspect of the political genius of Nancy Pelosi is understanding what will interest and morally outrage both her caucus and the Capitol Hill press corps and riding those ponies to daylight and green pastures.
* If you try to hold your breath until there is a true frontrunner in the New York City mayoral race, you will pass out.
* Adam Schiff is to ambition what Honey Smacks are to sugar.
* There is a way for Secretary Buttigieg to garner negative coverage from the Dominant Media – but no one has figured out what that way is yet.
* The bolt from the blue is coming from a New York prosecutor sooner than you think.
* Joe Biden is not a bystander or participant in the cultural wars exploding all around him.
* The wonders are many that can be accomplished fighting a pandemic when you put the scientists in charge.
* Take Brady and the points.
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Read the new Walking Duck for the latest news AND/OR send us an email at mhfg@walkingduck.com if you want to participate in an upcoming focus group I will moderate.
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CLARIFICATION: Tuesday, I referred to PlayStation 2 when I clearly intended to reference PlayStation 5. What a horrible, horrible error that was.
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