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On this, the occasion of my 25th anniversary (or so) covering the news, I share with you Halperin’s Seven Rules (with corollaries) that I have learned during my career.
HALPERIN’S FIRST RULE: Congress never acts until it absolutely has to – and sometimes not even then.
Item:
Privately, some Democrats fear that the sprawling [reconciliation] bill could spill over into the December of hell, when the party will also need to pass a trillion-dollar government spending bill and avoid a debt crisis. (Politico)
COROLLARY: Christmas would seem like the ultimate forcing mechanism, but Bernie Sanders is not big on Christmas.
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HALPERINS’ SECOND RULE: When events suddenly pop up on a president’s schedule related to something that has been in the news, it usually means the president’s pollster has pulled the fire alarm.
Item:
COROLLARY: A Democratic president who doesn’t wake up every day determined to do at least five things to keep the American business community on her side will lose the support and confidence of the American business community. (See the very different examples of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.)
Item:
White House officials, scrambling to relieve global supply bottlenecks choking U.S. ports, highways and railways, warn that Americans may face higher prices and some empty shelves this Christmas season.
The supply crisis, driven in part by the global COVID-19 pandemic, not only threatens to dampen U.S. spending at a critical time, it also poses a political risk for President Joe Biden.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll shows the economy continues to be the most important issue for Democrats and Republicans alike.
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HALPERIN’S THIRD RULE: It is always safer to assume the Dominant Media is wrong about Donald Trump than to assume it is right.
Item:
Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) enthusiastic appearance at a Trump event in Iowa over the weekend shows that the former president has further strengthened his grip on the GOP following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The Iowa senator’s eagerness to stand next to former President Trump at a boisterous rally in Des Moines only days after Trump repeatedly trashed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — a friend and ally of Grassley's — served as a wakeup call to some Republicans that Trump is back and very much in charge of the party. (The Hill)
COROLLARY: It is always safer to assume the members of the Dominant Media are missing certain issues that are resonating outside of Chevy Chase (say, immigration, or political correctness, or disgust with the Dominant Media) than to assume they are traveling and reporting widely enough to appreciate the traction of those issues.
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HALPERIN’S FOURTH RULE: Ross Douthat is the exception that proves that rule that conservative writers and pundits don’t understand the left.
Item: From Douthat’s latest essential reading column:
One problem with the emergency thinking that Trump inspires in his opponents — and one reason to resist it — is that it occludes real understanding of the political conditions that put him in power, and that might do so again. This is what you saw happen to the Democrats after 2016: The sense of being lightning-struck sent the center-left wandering into a maze of conspiracies, a haunted wood where villains like Vladimir Putin and Mark Zuckerberg loomed larger than the swing voters they had lost and savior figures like Robert Mueller were supposed to unmake Trump’s power for them.
COROLLARY: There remains no known cure for Trump Derangement Syndrome – which ironically is the factor that makes another Trump term the most likely.
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HALPERIN’S FIFTH RULE: Washington is no more able to curb the power of Big Tech than a blind goat is able to solve a Rubik’s Cube.
Item:
The brain drain has seen more than a dozen senior Democratic tech and telecom policy staffers leaving their posts this year, according to a POLITICO review of recent exits, with many taking lobbying roles at powerhouses including Facebook, Verizon, Apple, Charter Communications, the National Association of Broadcasters and the cloud company VMware. They’re leaving members’ personal offices as well as the Senate and House committees that oversee agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, along with topics like broadband, online speech and data privacy. (Politico)
COROLLARY: Big Tech will always hire enough top lawyers, PR pros, and ex government officials to stay three more steps ahead of Big Government than Big Government thinks Big Tech is ahead.
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HALPERIN’S SIX RULE: All news starts in the New York Post. (See, for instance, their three (!) stories on Hunter Biden today, and then read Ben Schreckinger’s Politico piece on how the First Son’s business dealings might finally become a story too big for the Dominant Media to ignore).
COROLLARY: Dominant Media formula: Joe Biden not being Donald Trump = Hunter Biden not being the Trump children.
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HALPERIN’S SEVENTH RULE: Paul McCartney has not lost his capacity to get a rise out of Mick.
Item:
COROLLARY: Only one band is the greatest in the world – and it is manifestly not the Rolling Stones.
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