Good Morning!!

Winter landscape, by Pablo Picasso

Yesterday, the Boston area was supposed to get up to a foot of snow. For several days, meteorologists predicted a huge winter storm was on the way. They were confident it would happen. But at the last minute, Mother Nature changed her mind. There was a big storm, but its path shifted to the South, and guess what we got where I live? Nada. Some sleet and rain.

I really love snowstorms, and I was looking forward to this one. In addition, the entire Boston school system was shut down and many businesses closed for the day. That has to be expensive, right?

We’ve had several of these failed predictions this winter. What is the problem? Are meteorologists predicting these storms too many days ahead? I don’t know. But I’m disgusted. I’m never believing their forecasts again. There is supposedly another snowstorm on the way. I’ll believe it when I see it.

On with today’s reads.

Yesterday’s Special Elections

Democrats got some good news last night as they won special elections in New York and Pennsylvania.

The Washington Post: Suozzi wins New York special election, replacing George Santos.

Democrat Tom Suozzi won a hotly contested special election for Congress on Tuesday, the Associated Press projected, retaking a seat in suburban New York and offering his party some reassurance amid high anxiety about President Biden’s political vulnerabilities.

Suozzi beat Republican nominee Mazi Pilip to replace Republican George Santos, who was indicted on a charge of fraud and then expelled from Congress late last year amid revelations that he fabricated much of his life story. The race for New York’s 3rd District — long viewed as a dead heat — played out in a suburban part of Long Island that favored President Biden by eight points in 2020 but then swung toward Republicans, backing Santos by the same margin.

With more than 93 percent of the vote counted early Wednesday, Suozzi led Pilip by nearly eight percentage points.

National issues dominated the campaign, making Tuesday’s vote this year’s first high-profile test of the parties’ messages on abortion, the economy and, above all, immigration. Suozzi represented the area for six years previously and campaigned as a moderate who wanted to work across the aisle. But with New York City struggling to absorb more than 100,000 migrants arriving from the southern border, much of the campaign centered on what polling suggests is Democrats’ toughest issue….

In New York, Suozzi’s victory capped a long list of Democratic wins in recent special elections, which have showcased the party’s ability to turn out its base and tap into anger at GOP-backed abortion restrictions since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Democrats spent millions of dollars attacking Pilip’s “pro-life” stance even though she said she would not support a national ban on abortion.

Road in the Village of Baldersbronde, Winter Day 1912, by Laurits Anderson Ring

I’m not sure immigration will be the Democrats’ “toughest issue” anymore, since Republicans in Congress refused to pass an immigration bill that was supported by the Border Patrol Union and the U.S. Chamber of Congress simply because Donald Trump order them to vote no.

Gregory Krieg at CNN: Takeaways from New York’s high-stakes special election.

Democrat Tom Suozzi is heading back to Congress after defeating Republican Mazi Pilip in the special election to replace serial fabulist and expelled former GOP Rep. George Santos. The result will further narrow the GOP’s already thin House majority and hand President Joe Biden’s party a boost as the general election campaign comes into focus….

Both parties poured cash into the race for New York’s 3rd congressional district, but Democrats’ fundraising and registration advantage combined with Suozzi’s brand – he’s spent most of the last 30 years at or around the center of Long Island politics – and a fired-up base, angry over the Santos fiasco, delivered a victory that means the House GOP will now become even harder to corral.

For Pilip, who has vowed to run again in the fall, defeat meant an almost immediate rebuke from Trump, who called her a “very foolish woman” in a social media post Tuesday night. Pilip refused until the final days of the campaign to say whether she voted for Trump in 2020, though she did follow his lead in dissing a highly touted bipartisan Senate border bill – a decision that helped Suozzi tie her more tightly to the former president over the last week….

The campaign was staked on a series of issues from the beginning: immigration, inflation, Israel and abortion. Suozzi talked about reproductive rights but didn’t make it a centerpiece of his campaign. Inflation has mostly leveled out. And there was no political or policy space to speak of between the candidates who both fully backed Israel.

On the immigration issue:

Understanding this, Pilip and Republicans set about hammering Suozzi over the migrant crisis in New York City, claiming he caused it along with Biden – a line that ultimately didn’t quite wash with voters who have long recognized Suozzi as a moderate or centrist. When Pilip suggested he was in league with the progressive “squad,” Suozzi at their debate was prepared.

“For you to suggest I’m a member of the squad,” he said, “is about as believable as you being a member of George Santos’s volleyball team.” (And that was before a knowing reference to Rick Lazio, which only seasoned New York voters would appreciate.)

Most notably, though, Suozzi and state Democratic leaders didn’t repeat their mistakes from 2022. They aggressively countered Pilip’s migrant message and it never felt like the issue, typically a winner for the GOP, put Suozzi on the backfoot.

The weather was a factor in this election. Many Democrats vote early or by mail, while Republicans mostly vote on election day. The snowstorm may have kept Republicans from getting to the polls.

If you’re interested, there’s another good analysis of the NY 3 election by Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice: NY-03 gives Republicans lots to worry about.

Super Moon, by Jef Bourgeau

NBC News on the Pennsylvania special election: Pennsylvania Democrats pad narrow state House advantage with special election win.

Democrats won a state House special election in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, preserving the party’s narrow majority in the closely watched battleground state, The Associated Press projected.

In the race for the open seat in the 140th state House District, Democrat Jim Prokopiak, a school board member in Bucks County, defeated Republican Candace Cabanas.

Prokopiak’s victory gives Democrats a narrow 102-100 majority in the state House, preventing another tie in the chamber.

The party had a one-seat majority, 102-101, before Democratic Rep. John Galloway resigned after he won a judgeship in November. 

His departure created a tie. But another resignation Friday, by Republican Joe Adams, gave Democrats a fresh 101-100 advantage.

Republicans control the state Senate, while Democrats hold the governorship.

The win in Bucks County — a purple slice of the northern suburbs of Philadelphia — was hailed as positive news by national Democrats, some of whom had viewed the contest as an early bellwether of the party’s fortunes among suburban voters ahead of the 2024 election.

Even the Biden campaign weighed in on the victory, touting it as evidence that Bucks County voters would reject Donald Trump in the fall.

“With control of the state House on the line, Pennsylvanians again defeated Republicans’ anti-abortion agenda and voted for Jim Prokopiak, a Democrat who has stood up for women and working people,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.

More News:

House Republicans spent yesterday impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas based on zero evidence.

David Kurtz at TPM Morning Memo: Congrats On Your Bogus Impeachment, Champ.

The GOP-led House finally got its act together enough to stage an impeachment performance last evening, claiming the scalp of Biden Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The same three Republican members who stymied the effort last week voted against impeachment again, but Rep. Steve Scalise’s return from cancer treatment gave the Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) the critical vote he needed to complete the flimsiest impeachment in history:

• no claims of high crimes or misdemeanors;

• no evidence of wrongdoing or graft;

• no shame in using impeachment to salve the hurt feelings of Donald Trump over his two impeachments and to boost Republicans’ signature election year issue: immigration xenophobia.

It’s totally appropriate to categorize these kinds of maneuvers by Republicans as performative or as playing politics or as engaging in political stunts. All true. But it’s also fundamentally an abuse of power. House Republicans are hikacking the levers of power that come with the offices they hold to advance their own partisan political aims and hold on to that power.

Not every example of an alignment between official acts and partisan political advantage is an abuse of power. But when you strip away any ostensibly objective motive for the official act, when you offer no pretense for the official act, when you’re only using the powers of the office to further your own political aims, when you stretch the law and the rules and bend them to your own grubby ends, you’re engaged in abuse of power. When, at the same time, you’re engaging in the wholesale breaking of government and institutions for the sake of it, all you’re left with is politics of the grimy, self-serving, and self-perpetuating variety.

There will have to be a trial in the Senate, but the “impeachment” is dead there. This is disgusting.

Sven Kroner, Hocuspocus

President Biden condemned Trump’s attack on NATO and his encouragement to Russia to attack our European allies.

BBC News: Biden slams Trump criticism of Nato as ‘shameful.’

President Joe Biden has blasted criticism of Nato by his likely 2024 election challenger, Donald Trump, as “dumb”, “shameful” and “un-American”.

The Democrat assailed Mr Trump for saying he would “encourage” Russia to attack any Nato member that did not meet its defence spending quota.

Mr Biden said the remarks underscored the urgency of passing a $95bn (£75bn) foreign aid package for US allies.

The bill just passed the Senate, but it faces political headwinds in the House.

At the White House on Tuesday, Mr Biden said a failure to pass the package – which includes $60bn for Ukraine – would be “playing into Putin’s hands”.

He said the stakes have risen because of Mr Trump’s “dangerous” remarks over the weekend.

“No other president in history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator,” Mr Biden said.

“Let me say this as clearly as I can. I never will. For God’s sake. It’s dumb. It’s shameful. It’s dangerous. It’s un-American.”

Lindsey Graham, to his everlasting shame, voted against aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza.

The Washington Post: Lindsey Graham, a longtime foreign policy hawk, bows to Trump on Ukraine.

Last May, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, warmly embracing the embattled leader and later urging President Biden to “do more” to help the nation as it fights off Russia’s invasion.

But this week, Graham voted repeatedly against sending $60 billion in aid to that nation as well as against other military funds for Israel and U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific. The longtime hawk dramatically announced on the Senate floor that he also would no longer be attending the Munich Security Conference — an annual pilgrimage made by world leaders to discuss global security concerns that’s been a mainstay of his schedule.

“I talked to President Trump today and he’s dead set against this package,” Graham said on the Senate floor on Sunday, a day after the former president said at a rally that he would let the Russians do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies that did not spend enough on defense. “He thinks that we should make packages like this a loan, not a gift,” Graham said.

Claude Monet, A Cart on the Snowy_Road at Honfleur, 1865 or 1867

Graham’s about-face on Ukraine aid sends a stark warning signal to U.S. allies that even one of the most aggressive advocates for U.S. interventionism abroad appears to be influenced by the more isolationist posture pervading the Republican Party.

It marked a departure for the senator who was harshly critical of Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy when he ran against him for president in 2015, in part on a message of launching a U.S. invasion of Syria. And even as he cozied up to Trump once he became president on numerous other issues, the Air Force veteran continued to criticize Trump on foreign policy, including for wanting to withdraw from Afghanistan and Syria….

The episode has also eroded Graham’s credibility among colleagues who worked closely with him to shape a bipartisan package of border policy reforms that Republicans demanded be attached to the foreign aid in exchange for their votes — only to backtrack and help kill it in the end.

What an asshole.

According to Newsweek, Merrick Garland’s Future Looks Bleak.

Merrick Garland is highly unlikely to serve a second term as attorney general amid mounting criticism of the Biden classified documents report, a law professor has said.

Professor Anthony V. Alfieri, a law professor at the University of Miami in Florida, was reacting to Garland’s appointment of Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate President Biden’s handling of the documents.

Garland has been under pressure for the perceived unfairness of the report and his silence in its aftermath.

The report said that Biden claimed he couldn’t remember details of classified documents he held after leaving the White House as vice president, and would likely claim forgetfulness if put on trial.

“Garland’s lack of fairness in this case, and the ensuing political fallout, renders a second term of service highly unlikely,” Alfieri told Newsweek.

“Attorney General Garland’s appointment of Robert Hur as Special Counsel, despite a notably conservative pedigree and record, is less controversial than Garland’s conclusion that Hur’s report was neither ‘inappropriate’ nor ‘unwarranted’,” Alfieri said.

“That conclusion and his release of the report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees without addition, redaction, or modification, both explicitly and implicitly approves formally descriptive but substantively gratuitous, ad hominem and politically charged language prejudicial to Mr. Biden.”

Read more at the link.

That’s all I have for you today. What are your thoughts on all this? What stories have you been following?

https://skydancingblog.com/2024/02/14/wednesday-reads-49/