This was all blatantly deliberate. It was, IIRC, Nielsen who declared that the SOTU address required extra security measures (so they weren’t “false security concerns”; she was simply going by what had already been asserted by the security people themselves). Those specific security measures involve people who are not currently getting paid.
Not only does Pelosi get to point out to Donald that the reason he can’t have his Special Moment where and when he wants is the government shutdown he owns (and could end any time), but the message sent out by Nielsen saying that they can still provide security personnel for an event that isn’t critical to the running of the country and could easily be moved is that the Trump administration are willing to still demand the government services they want for what would be a vanity event, but everyone else suffering from the shutdown was still out of luck.
That 4D chess Trump supporters claimed he was playing? This is what it looks like.
I think Stephen Miller is probably thrilled at the prospect of a SOTU that will be delivered in writing. Finally his perfect prose will get out to the world without first being mangled by Trump!
Seriously, Pelosi is a genius and knows exactly what she is doing.
If all demographics vote in the same percentages and partisan splits as they did in 2016, Donald loses in '20. Now, that’s by no means a given that it will happen and it’s also distressingly possible that he could win again, at least in part because of our bizarre electoral system. But with 3-4 million of his '16 voters dead by '20 and 15 million new potential voters coming online – a demographic which doesn’t vote at high rates but is definitely a non-Trump demo – the pressure will be on The Don to find new votes, not the Dems.
Congressman Andy Harris, Maryland’s lone Republican, was on morning drive time news radio here in Baltimore today and was asked why Trump and Congress didn’t get their wall done when they had a majority in both houses for two years. The answer was, naturally, “Democratic obstruction in the Senate.” I guess this is normal politics by today’s standards but stuff like that should discredit anyone who actually voices it or believes it.
Welcome to the Trump age. Before you can complain about her actions, you’ve got several years of Trump’s actions to be outraged about. Pelosi’s just playing hardball.
We’ve recently seen what happens when Orangestain tries to deliver a speech from the Oval Office without his adoring sycophants cheering him on – he sounds like a hostage reading off his captors’ demands. Even he knew it was a failure (for which he predictably blamed his underlings).
It’s not like there’s a joint session of Congress that’s going to happen with or without the SOTU. At the time the SOTU would have been held, the House chamber will likely be empty. Or maybe the cleaning crew will be in there, emptying wastebaskets and vacuuming the carpets. Knock yourself out, POTUS.
You rather misrepresented your link. It’s reporting that before the speech Trump thought it would be a waste of time but his underlings insisted not that he knew it was a failure and the failure was his underlings fault.
I think what Quartz is getting at is that any time from January 21 on, there will be less than 2 years remaining in Trump’s term, so if he resigned on or after January 21, Pence would not only finish out Trump’s term, but would be eligible for 2 terms of his own, per the 22nd Amendment.
Removing barriers to voting seems to be a necessary precondition for this approach. With reforms like AVR, same-day registration, abundant early voting sites, absentee voting without a need to provide a reason, the % of eligible voters who vote goes way up.
In the absence of those reforms, every few years a candidate says something along the lines of how he’s going to get the nonvoting majority to vote for him, and it never pans out.
You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but it amounts to precisely nothing when determining which jobs are “essential” vs non-essential. That decision is ultimately up to … President Trump.