Today is Wednesday, December 18, 2024. In an online article for Raw Story, longtime political analyst John Heilemann predicted that the overreach of the incoming Dump administration would open the door to Democrats to gain back voters they lost in the recent election. The article is named “Trump will hand Democrats an opportunity ‘to get their mojo back’: analyst.” Let’s pray that this expert’s prediction does come to fruition in due time.

The longtime analyst made his prediction during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program (which I don’t watch any more, by the way) in which he said that Democrats have suffered from an image problem that depressed turnout for Vice President Kamala Harris, but that it’s not an insurmountable problem.

Heilemann said, “It started with weakness with white working-class voters and now with Latino working-class voters and increasingly with working-class Black men and that’s not a position that allows for the Democratic Party to be the majority party in America.” In another quote, Heilemann provided the true reason why Harris lost the election: “We still have a country where, you know, 60 percent of the country is not college-educated and if you are not able to compete for working-class votes, you cannot be a majority party.” Heilemann elaborated that the Democratic Party has to figure out that it has become the party for a lot of people of the establishment, of the institutions, and of the rich, to some extent, and that it has to do something to counter that image.

The analyst sees an opportunity for Democrats to capitalize from Dump practically giving it away to American plutocrats and thus opening up pathways for Democrats on both fronts. Only time will tell if this guy’s predictions will come true in the very foreseeable future.

In an insane measure of how this incoming administration will burn down America’s most august institutions, the action by MAGA Mike Johnson to scrap a last-minute measure to keep the government funded into spring and avoid a shutdown as he faced a revolt from his fellow repugnicans and an increasing number of allies – including president-elect Orange Turd himself – is just representative of one of them even before the Orange Menace promises to uphold the Constitution (LOL). This latest outrage by conservative members of the House is covered in a CBS News article by Kaia Hubbard, Caitlin Yilek, and Caitlin Huey-Burns entitled “House conservatives revolt over GOP-backed spending bill to avoid shutdown.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, confirmed that the stopgap funding measure released yesterday is dead and that the path forward is unclear.

Stating the obvious, Scalise said, “There’s no new agreement right now.”

Lawmakers are facing a Friday deadline to approve new spending. The measure released yesterday would have extended funding through March 14, but it also included disaster aid, health care policy extenders, and a pay raise for members of Congress, among other provisions. The disaster relief portion of the bill alone carried a price tag of $110 billion.

As you would expect, it was Republicans who criticized the bill for giving Democrats everything they wanted. Democrats called for House repugnicans to increase the debt ceiling, which limits how much the government can borrow to pay its bills. And repugnicans typically oppose raising it. But this mounting fight taken up by the majority party only adds more tension to trying to come up with a compromise before funding lapses altogether.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries indicated that it was repugnicans who torpedoed the measure and said, “Republicans have now unilaterally decided to break a bipartisan agreement that they made.” He concluded, “House Republicans will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown or worse. An agreement is an agreement. It was bipartisan. And there is nothing more to say.” No, Mr. Jeffries said it all here. If there is a shutdown – God forbid – will Americans then punish Republicans for what they have done? Probably not, because they will have forgotten it in less than a month.

Now it seems that certain repugnicans are directing their anger toward the House Speaker, MAGA Johnson, and have vowed not to vote for him as speaker again when the new Congress convenes on January 3. It would not affect me one bit if Johnson is removed as speaker; the only problem is what more insane MAGA nut would be considered for the role? There are no more moderate repugnicans in Congress anymore; if there are, they’re hiding under their desks.

And so it went!