WaPo's Rankings

It still seems like it oughta be a bit of a stretch to try handicapping a political race almost 2 years down the road.

But then again, since Campaigning is big business, there's a boatload of slickers and drummers and pimps who need the work, so they'll always be pushing for some action.

And since Campaigning is big business, so is Campaign Media. Political Drama sells dick pills and panty liners by the metric fuck ton.

WaPo: (pay wall)

The front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination is Donald Trump. But he may no longer be the most likely nominee.

For as long as we’ve been doing our quarterly rankings of the Republicans most likely to be the party’s nominee in 2024, No. 1 has been an easy pick. Trump still commands extensive loyalty in the GOP, as evidenced by Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyo.) historically large primary defeat.

But commanding that loyalty and being the guy at the top of Republicans’ ballots for the third straight election aren’t quite the same thing. And for the first time, we’re giving the slight edge — and the top of our list — to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The reasons for this might not be what you think.

The search of Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago last week was momentous. Exactly how it breaks politically, though, we don’t yet know.

There is some indication this development might actually have rallied the GOP to Trump, at least temporarily. The sense of persecution, long fed by Trump, has proved an invaluable political commodity, and he’s got plenty of grist for that mill — whatever the actual legitimacy of his highly speculative claims of political targeting.

But the political impact of the Mar-a-Lago search won’t be measured in the polls conducted in the past couple of weeks. This is a long game. And the legal jeopardy Trump faces could well reinforce some of the reasons DeSantis appears to have gained on him in earlier surveys. Namely: Trump’s uncertain electability and the political baggage he totes along with him.

Those factors endangered Trump’s stranglehold on the party well before the Mar-a-Lago search. Two states likely to hold important early primaries — Michigan and New Hampshire — featured polls showing Trump and DeSantis running neck and neck. In this year’s primaries, Trump-aligned candidates almost always win, but that’s in large part because the party has overwhelmingly aligned with Trump’s values. In contested primaries, the candidates Trump himself actually endorsed have often been stuck around 30 percent of the vote.

Indeed, those primaries suggest people might be willing to go with Trumpism, and to go without Trump. And DeSantis provides that in spades. He’s constantly pushing the envelope by opening new fronts in the culture wars and pushing actual legislation or executive actions to back that up. But more than that, he does so with the kind of actual attention to detail and policy that Trump has long eschewed.

Fox News’s Laura Ingraham recently wagered that Republicans might become so “exhausted by the battle — the constant battle — that they may believe that, well, maybe it’s time to turn the page if we can get someone who has all Trump’s policies, who’s not Trump.”

Crucially, we have yet to see Trump face a truly Trumpian opponent. In 2016, pretty much everyone was going after Trump on the assumption that they had to offer an alternative to his brand of politics — or because they were losing and needed to do something. Today, lots of Republicans are emulating Trump’s in-your-face, own-the-libs style. And nobody has done that more successfully than DeSantis.

It’s not difficult to see Republicans coming to view DeSantis as a more serious version of Trump — and potentially a more electable one.

This isn’t an easy call. But throw in the perhaps-undersold possibility that Trump won’t actually run in 2024, and we put DeSantis at No. 1 by a hair.

Below are our latest rankings, in ascending order of likeliness.

Also mentioned: Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Sen. Ben Sasse (Neb.), Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cheney, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie.

10. Donald Trump Jr.:

As we’ve said before, this applies only to a scenario in which his father doesn’t run. But that’s a scenario in which some polls show him running as high as second (with the caveat that we don’t have a lot of good polling). He’d clearly have a base to work with, but capitalizing on that is another matter. And it’s not just about lobbing bombs from the sideline, which is his true talent. (Previous ranking: 7)

9. Mike Pompeo:

The former secretary of state returns to this list, showing all the signs of a guy who will run. Those include running digital ads in Iowa and South Carolina. Also worth watching: He recently became one of the highest-profile Trump officials to testify to the Jan. 6 committee. And afterward, he seemed to temper his denial about having discussed removing Trump from office using the 25th Amendment, saying merely that it hadn’t been discussed “seriously.” It’ll sure be interesting to see how Trump backers respond to whatever testimony Pompeo provided. (Previous ranking: N/A)

8. Rick Scott:

The senator from Florida is often dismissed because of his awkward personal style. But he’s been positioning himself for the national stage by launching his own platform (which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has distanced himself from). And if Republicans can win back the Senate, perhaps Scott gets some credit as head of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm? That’s a double-edged sword though, given it’s quite possible Republicans blow a good opportunity. (Previous ranking: N/A)

7. Nikki Haley:

The former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor is a real contender on paper. She’s also leaning hard into the idea that she’ll run, having repeatedly cited the idea of electing a woman as president. (You’ll notice she’s the only woman on this list.) But races aren’t won on paper. Haley often disappears from the national discourse, and it’s still not clear what her campaign would be about. (Previous ranking: 4)

6. Ted Cruz:

The senator from Texas has been out front in criticizing the FBI’s search of Trump, including an early push for the search warrant. He has also floated impeaching Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI agents had been turned into “stormtroopers.” (Previous ranking: 6)

5. Glenn Youngkin:

It still seems like a bit of a stretch for someone to launch a presidential campaign just a year into his one term as governor. (Virginia doesn’t allow governors to seek reelection). But he’s clearly putting himself in the mix, and 2022 could play into his hands. Imagine a world in which flawed candidates cost the GOP winnable races — and possibly the Senate — in states like Arizona, Georgia, Ohio or Pennsylvania. At that point, the guy whose 2021 win was supposed to be a road map for the party — a road map disregarded in these Senate primaries — might look pretty attractive. (Previous ranking: 8)

4. Tim Scott:

The senator from South Carolina has faced some criticism from the right for his endorsement of moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). But if anyone can get past that kind of thing, it might be the broadly liked South Carolina senator. He’s also raising massive sums — $9.6 million last quarter — for what should be an easy reelection bid, and he can use that money to run for president. Scott’s recently published book included a blurb that said he was preparing a presidential run, but the publisher later said it was an error and that Scott hadn’t approved the line. (Previous ranking: 5)

3. Mike Pence:

Pence offered some interesting comments this week, opening the door to testifying to the Jan. 6 committee and saying, “The American people have a right to know what happened.” He has walked a fine line on criticizing Trump for that day, despite the insurrectionists endangering his life. We shouldn’t expect him to thoroughly denounce the man who picked him as vice president, but he’s certainly got a vested interest in the party moving in a different direction. The hard part is facilitating that without completely alienating the Trump backers he’d need in 2024. (Previous ranking: 3)

2. Donald Trump:

See above. (Previous ranking: 1)

1. Ron DeSantis:

See above. (Previous ranking: 2)

But Don't Get Happy

“If they were a corporation, the CEO would be fired and investigated,” said a national Republican consultant working on Senate races. “The way this money has been burned, there needs to be an audit or investigation because we’re not gonna take the Senate now and this money has been squandered. It’s a rip-off.”

Republicans are having kind of a hard time. I'll go along with most of the conventional wisdom here (ie: the primaries - where the internal squabbles are supposed to get worked out - have been brutal), but I have to add what should be obvious. Trump has captured a big chunk of the fund-raising infrastructure, and, as is his usual MO, he's taking a nice fat cut for himself, while using the money as leverage against anyone who won't toe the Trump line.

Check in with the shittiness of the GOP's Trump's WinRed money machine - The Professional Left podcast, starting at about 7:10

So it's pretty sweet to hear "the party of good business" is kinda crapping out because it's being run so poorly, and it's pretty good news when Republicans continue to eat their own, which could translate to positive outcomes in the mid-terms, but we can't let up.

Keep the balls to the wall, kids.

WaPo: (pay wall)

‘It’s a rip-off’: GOP spending under fire as Senate hopefuls seek rescue

A cash crunch at campaigns and the NRSC set off a panic as GOP candidates emerged from bruising primaries playing catch-up in polls and advertising

Republican Senate hopefuls are getting crushed on airwaves across the country while their national campaign fund is pulling ads and running low on cash — leading some campaign advisers to ask where all the money went and to demand an audit of the committee’s finances, according to Republican strategists involved in the discussions.

In a highly unusual move, the National Republican Senatorial Committee this week canceled bookings worth about $10 million, including in the critical states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona. A spokesman said the NRSC is not abandoning those races but prioritizing ad spots that are shared with campaigns and benefit from discounted rates. Still, the cancellations forfeit cheaper prices that came from booking early, and better budgeting could have covered both.

“The fact that they canceled these reservations was a huge problem — you can’t get them back,” said one Senate Republican strategist, who like others spokes on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. “You can’t win elections if you don’t have money to run ads.”

The NRSC’s retreat came after months of touting record fundraising, topping $173 million so far this election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures. But the committee has burned through nearly all of it, with the NRSC’s cash on hand dwindling to $28.4 million by the end of June.

As of that month, the committee disclosed spending just $23 million on ads, with more than $21 million going into text messages and more than $12 million to American Express credit card payments, whose ultimate purpose isn’t clear from the filings. The committee also spent at least $13 million on consultants, $9 million on debt payments and more than $7.9 million renting mailing lists, campaign finance data show.

Trump's dominance in GOP comes in focus, worrying some in party

“If they were a corporation, the CEO would be fired and investigated,” said a national Republican consultant working on Senate races. “The way this money has been burned, there needs to be an audit or investigation because we’re not gonna take the Senate now and this money has been squandered. It’s a rip-off.”

The NRSC’s chairman, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, has already taken heat from fellow Republicans for running ads featuring him on camera and releasing his own policy agenda that became a Democratic punching bag — leading to jokes that “NRSC” stood for “National Rick Scott Committee” in a bid to fuel his own presumed presidential ambitions.

Other spending decisions, such as putting about $1 million total into reliably blue Colorado and Washington earlier this month sparked fresh questions after the committee turned around and canceled buys in core battlegrounds.

The NRSC invested heavily in expanding its digital fundraising and building up its database of small-dollar donors. But online giving to Republicans, not just the NRSC, sagged earlier this year from what consultants said was a combination of inflation, changes to Facebook advertising policies, concerns about emails caught in spam filters, and complacency with an anticipated Republican wave. Some Republicans also suspect former president Donald Trump’s relentless fundraising pitches and cash hoarding has exhausted the party’s online donor base.

Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, who is struggling in his race against Democrat John Fetterman, meets with attendees during a Republican Jewish Coalition event in Philadelphia, on Aug. 17, 2022. (Matt Rourke/AP)

The NRSC still has tens of millions of dollars in reserved airtime, and its next filing, which covers the month of July and is due to the FEC on Saturday, will show millions more in ad spending. The group said its total spending on TV so far topped $40 million. On Friday the NRSC said it added more than $4 million of airtime across Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona.

“Our goal was to keep our candidates afloat and get them to this point where they’re still in the game in all our top states,” NRSC spokesman Chris Hartline said. “So when the big spending starts now we have a fighting chance.”

That big spending is coming from a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), which this week announced a whopping $28 million rescue effort in Ohio, where Republican candidate J.D. Vance raised a dismal $1 million in the second quarter and has spent less than $400,000 on ads.

Pa. race no longer a tossup as Fetterman memes zero in on Oz's wealth

The super PAC, known as the Senate Leadership Fund, also moved up by three weeks its spending in Pennsylvania and added $9.5 million there, for a total of $34 million. Recent surveys show the Keystone State’s Senate race drifting toward Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman over the Republican nominee, celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.

McConnell himself acknowledged the challenge of reclaiming the chamber’s majority, telling reporters in Kentucky on Thursday that the House was likelier to flip. “Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” he said, according to NBC News, a comment that was widely viewed as a swipe at some of the primary winners and their lagging fundraising performance.

The NRSC opted not to pick favorites in this year’s primary contests, a break from the past decade when the committee worked to avoid out-of-the-mainstream nominees who cost the party wins in 2010 and 2012. Many of this year’s Republican candidates haven’t run for office before and emerged from nasty, expensive primaries that left their favorable ratings underwater. A string of recent polls showed Republican candidates in many battlegrounds trailing or in a dead heat with well-funded Democratic opponents.

Democrats are outspending Republicans by more than double in the Arizona Senate race; by almost two-to-one in Nevada and by four-to-one in Ohio, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. Republicans are also being outspent by about $14 million in Georgia.

“Everything came together at once, and everyone woke up like, ‘Oh my God,’” said one Republican consultant. “It’s been an absolutely disastrous two weeks for GOP Senate stuff on all fronts.”

After The Washington Post discussed this story with the NRSC on Friday, five Senate campaigns reached out to praise the committee’s help.

“They are focused on bringing the fight to the Democrats everyday,” said Gail Gitcho with Herschel Walker’s campaign in Georgia. “Whoever says otherwise is nuts.”

Zack Roday with Joe O’Dea’s Senate campaign in Colorado added, “The NRSC has been a great partner, everything we’ve asked for.”

Democrats point to signs of a newly energized base and a national political environment that is, at the very least, less bad for them. The party in power typically loses ground in midterms.

Democrats more hopeful for midterms — but brace for GOP spending surge

JB Poersch, president of the main Democratic Senate super PAC, pointed to the Jan. 6 hearings, recent mass shootings, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade as changing the dynamics in the past two months.

“It’s surprising and says a lot about the Republican brand that their candidates have struggled to raise money,” Poersch said. “With extreme candidates and extreme positions, maybe Republican donors are finding these candidates are out of step with where they are. Maybe voters are feeling the same way.”

Vance’s disappointing financial report touched off new urgency for air support from the McConnell-aligned super PAC, a person familiar with the planning said. The size of the buy reflects the expense of advertising statewide in Ohio with its multiple media markets, and that Republicans view the state as both winnable and as a must-win. An affiliated nonprofit known as One Nation is spending an additional $3.8 million to help Vance against his Democratic rival, Rep. Tim Ryan.

Several public polls recently showed Ryan leading, and internal Republican surveys found Vance with an even bigger deficit, according to people familiar with the findings.

A Vance campaign adviser rejected suggestions that the super PAC’s intervention showed weakness, saying the race was always going to be competitive.

“If the Washington punditry thinks Trump won the state by 8 so it should be a slam dunk, they’re sorely mistaken,” the adviser said, referring to Trump’s margin of victory in Ohio in 2020. “Them putting money in this race shows they believe this is a race they can win.”

Vance benefited in the primary from about $10 million by an allied super PAC funded by technology billionaire Peter Thiel. But people involved in the race said it’s unclear whether Thiel, whose style in the past has been to invest early and then bow out, will put money behind Vance in the general election. Thiel also funded the Arizona Senate bid of Republican nominee Blake Masters, his former employee.

A spokesman for Thiel declined to comment.

The Senate Leadership Fund, which typically expands spending in the final stretch after Labor Day, finished June with more than $100 million in the bank. Starting in September, the PAC has reserved $14.4 million in Arizona, $37.1 million in Georgia, $15.1 million in Nevada, $27.6 million in North Carolina, $15.2 million in Wisconsin and $7.4 million in Alaska.

On Polling

Brief Tho't:

When pollsters report that the number of Republicans supporting the stoopid notion that Trump actually won in 2020 is going up, I think we need to keep this one math-y thing in mind:

1. If there are 100 people in the GOP, and 60% of them are on board with Trump's 2020 bullshit, that's 60 people.
2. If the party shrinks to 70 people, but now 75% of them support Trump's bullshit story, that's 53 people.

I've thought there's been something wrong with the polling for quite a while. And I'm not saying that's it, and it can't be anything else.

I just think it's gotta be something, and maybe it starts with something so simple even a dolt like me can understand it.

Shit Keeps Rollin'

Some politicians and certain officials know how to play the politics so they can skate while all the legal issues work their way thru the court system, and by the time the decision comes down that says they're a buncha lyin' sacks of shit, the public has "moved on" and we have a hard time even remembering why we were pissed off about it in the first place.

AP:

Russia probe memo wrongly withheld under Barr, court rules

The Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr improperly withheld portions of an internal memo Barr cited in announcing that then-President Donald Trump had not obstructed justice in the Russia investigation, a federal appeals panel said Friday.

The department had argued that the 2019 memo represented private deliberations of its lawyers before any decision was formalized, and was thus exempt from disclosure. A federal judge previously disagreed, ordering the Justice Department to provide it to a government transparency group that had sued for it.

At issue in the case is a March 24, 2019, memorandum from the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and another senior department official that was prepared for Barr to evaluate whether evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation could support prosecution of the president for obstruction of justice.

Barr has said he looked to that opinion in concluding that Trump did not illegally obstruct the Russia probe, which was an investigation of whether his campaign had colluded with Russia to tip the 2016 election.

A year later, a federal judge sharply rebuked Barr’s handling of Mueller’s report, saying Barr had made “misleading public statements” to spin the investigation’s findings in favor of Trump and had shown a “lack of candor.”

Friday’s appeals court decision said the internal Justice Department memo noted that “Mueller had declined to accuse President Trump of obstructing justice but also had declined to exonerate him.” The internal memo said “the Report’s failure to take a definitive position could be read to imply an accusation against President Trump” if released to the public, the court wrote.

The Justice Department turned over other documents to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as part of the group’s lawsuit, but declined to give it the memo. Government lawyers said they were entitled under public records law to withhold the memo because it reflected internal deliberations before any formal decision had been reached on what Mueller’s evidence showed.

Sitting presidents are generally protected from criminal charges on grounds it would undermine their ability to perform the office’s constitutional duties. The Justice Department, like Mueller, “took as a given that the Constitution would bar the prosecution of a sitting President,” the appeals court wrote, which meant the decision that Trump wouldn’t be charged had already been made and couldn’t be shielded from public release.

Had Justice Department officials made clear to the court that the memo related to Barr’s decision on making a public statement about the report, the appellate panel wrote, rulings in the case might have been different.

“Because the Department did not tie the memorandum to deliberations about the relevant decision, the Department failed to justify its reliance on the deliberative-process privilege,” wrote the panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Appellate judges also noted that their ruling was “narrow,” saying that it should not be interpreted to “call into question any of our precedents permitting agencies to withhold draft documents related to public messaging.”

Attorneys for the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to an email message seeking comment. The department can appeal the ruling to the full appeals court.

Dems Deliver

I really do hate that I sound like some kinda zombie cheerleader for Biden, but I think there's a need for people to stand up strong for the things he and the Democrats are doing &/or trying to get done. Especially in light of what the dog-ass GOP is trying to pull.

Maintaining a kind of moderation and modulation has always ended up being perceived as Wishy-Washy - like we think maybe it's OK what they're doing, but it's all a big "Meh - whatever, dude".

So when the Republicans get all assertive - even though most of what they say is a little light on fact, and often a flat-out lie - an awful lot of people fall for their bullshit because it's presented with a confident gung-ho attitude.

Sometimes I have a little trouble remembering that progressive ideas always win because progress is inevitable. Gotta keep that in mind.

Of course, the caveat is that progressive ideas win when we remember our history, and we regard it accurately. So maybe we need to be even more wary of Republican efforts to fudge that history and to actually prohibit the thorough examination necessary to interpret it correctly. But that's a whole different rant.

Anyway, I'm not going to be shy about saying I think Biden's doing what he should be doing - what I want someone to be doing.

Biden Administration has engineered $32 billion in student loan forgiveness so far.

Yahoo Finance:

President Biden forgives close to $4 billion in student debt — what’s next?

President Joe Biden wiped $3.9 billion from the student loan records Tuesday.

More than 200,000 former students, who still owe on a federal student loan from their time at ITT Technical Institute will see their loan balances cleared, whether they’ve applied for forgiveness or not.

ITT Educational Services closed its campuses in 2016 after years of questioning and scrutiny of its accreditation standards and recruiting processes. At the time, the institution had about 45,000 students across 130 campuses.

Some of the former students were already eligible for federal student loans forgiveness but this move applies to all borrowers who took on debt attending the school between 2005 and September 2016, when the school closed.

This brings the total amount of loan discharges under Biden to nearly $32 billion and leaves many wondering what more could be forgiven or at least if payments will remain on pause.

The pause has been helpful for millions

After mortgages, student loans make up the biggest chunk of household debt at more than $1.5 trillion, according to the Brookings Institution.

At the start of the pandemic, the government froze student loan repayments for most borrowers. In April, the White House extended the moratorium for the sixth time through to August 31.

“This pause will help 41 million people keep up with their monthly bills and meet their basic needs,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in an announcement. “It will give borrowers some urgently needed time to prepare for a return to repayment.”

A letter addressed to Biden and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and signed by more than 100 lawmakers highlighted those positive effects of the freeze.

“For the first time, many borrowers have had the opportunity to pay down debt, open a savings account, purchase a home, and save for retirement — none of which would have been possible without the payment pause.”

As the letter pointed out, many used the break to save up to buy homes, pay off credit cards or catch up on other bills.

“Resuming student loan payments would force millions of borrowers to choose between paying their federal student loans or putting a roof over their heads, food on the table, or paying for child care and health care,” the lawmakers wrote.

A path to forgiveness

Mark Kantrowitz, a student loans expert who’s written five books about scholarships and financial aid, says there are three potential paths to forgiveness: regulation, legislation or executive authority.

If the president were to use executive action to cancel student debt, he would face legal challenges that Kantrowitz does not expect would not go Biden’s way. And Congress has not yet passed legislation for broad loan forgiveness, nor does it seem poised to.

Regulation might be the president’s best bet, says Kantrowitz, whose books include How to Appeal for More Financial Aid.

The federal government offers four income-driven repayment plans, which set loan payments at amounts meant to be affordable to borrowers based on their incomes and family size.

Most people forget these are also loan forgiveness plans, Kantrowitz says. After making qualifying payments for 20 or 25 years, depending on the plan, borrowers can have their remaining debt eliminated. Those who work in public service may qualify for forgiveness after just 10 years of payments.

One of four plans — the Income-Contingent Repayment Plan — gives the U.S. Department of Education broad regulatory authority such that it could be remade into a means-tested loan forgiveness program, says Kantrowitz.

Means testing, a method of determining eligibility for government assistance, is a way of addressing the concern over helping people who might not need it.

Biden “doesn’t believe that — that millionaires and billionaires, obviously, should benefit or even people from the highest income,” former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said after Biden’s remarks in the spring. “So that’s certainly something he would be looking at.”

Will he or won’t he?

One likely reason that Biden hasn’t followed through on his campaign proposal is the economic and geopolitical fallout of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, says Siri Terjesen, a management professor and associate dean at Florida Atlantic University.

“With year-on-year inflation closing in on 10%, policymakers who remember basic economics will want to curb further stimulus in order to bring inflation back under control,” she said in an email. “A large student loan forgiveness program would drive up inflation even faster.”

Since the beginning of 2020, Biden has forgiven billions of dollars worth of student debt through other programs. Those include plans for borrowers who were misled by their schools, those with disabilities and others who work in public service.

The push for more continues.

The majority of Americans support student debt cancellation, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren argued in a Senate committee hearing this spring.

“There is scarcely a working person in America who does not have a friend or family member or coworkers who is weighted down by student loan debt,” said Warren, who supports forgiving $50,000 per borrower.

Canceling that amount would cost $904 billion and forgive the full balances of about 30 million — or 79% — of borrowers, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York economists.

Forgiving $10,000 per borrower would cost $321 billion and eliminate the entire balance for 11.8 million borrowers, or about 31%.

Adding an income cap to forgiveness proposals “substantially reduces the cost of student loan forgiveness and increases the share of benefit going to borrowers who are more likely to struggle repaying their debts,” the report says.

Potential problems with broad student debt forgiveness

Advocates of broad forgiveness argue that student loans contribute to racial and socioeconomic wealth gaps. But there are better ways to reduce racial wealth gaps, argues Adam Looney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Looney posits that student loan forgiveness is regressive and only targeted debt relief policies can work to address inequities caused by federal student loan programs.

“Measured appropriately, student debt is concentrated among high-wealth households and loan forgiveness is regressive whether measured by income, educational attainment, or wealth,” he writes. “Across-the-board forgiveness is therefore a costly and ineffective way to reduce economic gaps by race or socioeconomic status.”

The next steps

Kantrowitz expects Biden to make one more extension of the payment pause and interest waiver that will last until after the upcoming midterm elections.

While the White House has kept its cards close to its chest, Kantrowitz believes that loan forgiveness is likely to happen. “And if it happens it’s likely to be limited in amount and eligibility,” he says.

Biden has already ruled out canceling $50,000 worth of debt, but $10,000 of forgiveness is still on the table.

Meanwhile, the issue continues to shine light on the rising costs of going to college.

College tuition and fees were about 170% more expensive in 2021 than in 2001, Tejersen cites in a new book on reducing higher education bureaucracy.

“The silver lining in the student debt fiasco,” she says, “is that more Americans recognize the need to identify affordable college options.”

Charles Blow Gets It

Charles Blow points up a few glaringly obvious glitches in the Liz Cheney Worship Hour, and I acknowledge and concur with all of them.

But he goes on to highlight the real problem - the GOP itself. And I'm absolutely on board with that one too.

BTW - this is something Blue Gal and Driftglass have been talking about for a very long time. 

NYT: (pay wall)

Opinion - Republicans Are America’s Problem

Tuesday’s primary in Wyoming delivered Liz Cheney a resounding defeat. She is one of the few Republicans in Congress willing to resist Donald Trump’s election lies, and Republican voters punished her for it.

First, let me say, I have no intention of contributing to the hagiography of Liz Cheney. She is a rock-ribbed Republican who supported Trump’s legislative positions 93 percent of the time. It is on the insurrection and election lies where she diverged.

In a way, she is the Elvis of politics: She took something — in this case a position — that others had held all along and made it cross over. She mainstreamed a political principle that many liberals had held all along.

Excuse me if I temper my enthusiasm for a person who presents herself as a great champion of democracy but votes against the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Situational morality is better than none, I suppose, but I see it for what it is, and I am minimally moved.

However, her loss does crystallize something for us that many had already known: that the bar to clear in the modern Republican Party isn’t being sufficiently conservative but rather being sufficiently obedient to Donald Trump and his quest to deny and destroy democracy.

We must stop thinking it hyperbolic to say that the Republican Party itself is now a threat to our democracy. I understand the queasiness about labeling many of our fellow Americans in that way. I understand that it sounds extreme and overreaching.

But how else are we to describe what we are seeing?

Of the 10 Republicans in the House who voted to impeach Donald Trump for his role in fomenting the insurrection, four didn’t seek re-election and four lost their primaries. Only two have advanced to the general election, and those two were running in states that allow voters to vote in any primary, regardless of their party affiliation.

Polls have consistently shown that only a small fraction of Republicans believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected. He was, of course. (That fact apparently can’t be repeated often enough.)

And in fact, according to a Washington Post analysis published this week, in battleground states, nearly two-thirds of the Republican nominees for the state and federal offices with sway over elections believe the last election was stolen.

This is only getting worse. Last month, a CNN poll found that Republicans are now less likely to believe that democracy is under attack than they were earlier in the year, before the Jan. 6 committee began unveiling its explosive revelations. Thirty-three percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said the party should be very accepting of candidates who say the election was stolen; 39 percent more said the party should be somewhat accepting of those candidates.

Furthermore, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll published in January found that the percentage of Republicans who say that violence against the government can sometimes be justified had climbed to 40 percent, compared with just 23 percent of Democrats. It should also be noted that 40 percent of white people said that violence could be justified compared with just 18 percent of Black people.

We have to stop saying that all these people are duped and led astray, that they are somehow under the spell of Trump and programmed by Fox News.

Propaganda and disinformation are real and insidious, but I believe that to a large degree, Republicans’ radicalization is willful.

Republicans have searched for multiple election cycles for the right vehicle and packaging for their white nationalism, religious nationalism, nativism, craven capitalism and sexism.

There was a time when they believed that it would need to be packaged in politeness — compassionate conservatism — and the party would eventually recommend a more moderate approach intended to branch out and broaden its appeal — in its autopsy after Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss.

But Trump offered them an alternative, and they took it: Instead of running away from their bigotries, intolerances and oppression, they would run headlong into them. They would unapologetically embrace them.

This, to many Republicans, felt good. They no longer needed to hide. They could live their truths, no matter how reprehensible. They could come out of the closet, wrapped in their cruelty.

But the only way to make this strategy work and viable, since neither party dominates American life, was to back a strategy of minority rule and to disavow democracy.

A Pew Research Center poll found that between 2018 and 2021, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents gradually came to support more voting restrictions.

In a December NPR/Ipsos poll, a majority of Democrats, independents and Republicans all thought that American democracy, and America itself, was in crisis, but no group believed it more than Republicans.

But this is a scenario in which different people look at the same issue from different directions and interpret it differently.

Republicans are the threat to our democracy because their own preferred form of democracy — one that excludes and suppresses, giving Republicans a fighting chance of maintaining control — is in danger.

For modern Republicans, democracy only works — and is only worth it — when and if they win.

The GOP Trinity

CRUELTY

IMMISERATION

DEATH

Not A Real Party Anymore

A reminder: Donald Trump did not remake the GOP in his own image. He is the perfect reflection of what that party has been morphing into for at least 2 or 3 generations.

The message I think I'm picking up is that the GOP is in fact pushing hard to tear down our experiment in self-government in order to replace it with plutocracy.

They want plutocracy, it's just that they haven't quite settled on the right plutocrat yet.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Opinion
Voters are a problem. But GOP leaders are steering the radicalism.

Rep. Liz Cheney’s loss this week means that at most just two of the 10 House GOP members who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump last year will stay in Congress. Casting out Cheney, who had become the more forceful anti-Trump figure in the party, is the latest illustration of the hard-right views of many GOP voters. Not only did those voters choose Trump over a field of much more mainstream and qualified GOP presidential candidates back in 2016, but this year they also have nominated dozens of candidates across the country who won’t fully acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

But while the choices of Republican voters have been very bad, it’s Republican elected officials at the local, state and federal level who are really driving the party — and therefore the country — in a radical, undemocratic direction. These officials and politicians, including Trump, are the party’s most important and influential extremists.

To understand, and perhaps even combat, the GOP’s radical turn, it’s important to understand its root causes. I think of the GOP as having five distinct power centers: the party’s voters, elected officials, superwealthy conservative donors, GOP-appointed judges and grass-roots activists.

I have ranked these power centers in order of importance, at least in my view. But the precise order is less important than the general idea that the party’s radicalism is being reinforced at several different levels.

1. Republican elected officials

It’s Republican politicians who pass deeply unpopular laws that roll back individual rights. They break with traditional democratic norms and values, including by spreading the election misinformation that helped lead to Jan 6. They demean institutions and people who try to act in nonpartisan ways, including the FBI, which was viciously attacked by some Republican politicians last week after its search of Trump’s house. And to insulate themselves from accountability from voters, GOP officials aggressively gerrymander legislative districts, particularly at the state level.

It’s not clear that there was a groundswell of Republican voters in early 2021 who had even heard of critical race theory, much less wanted to ban books written by numerous LGBTQ and Black authors from public schools and libraries. The results from a ballot initiative in Kansas this month suggest many Republican voters are wary of the near-total bans on abortion being adopted in red states. Likewise, many of these Republicans vote in favor of raising the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid and limiting gerrymandering on ballot referendums, policies that GOP legislators won’t adopt even though they are common-sense and popular.

Wyoming voters chose to formally end Cheney’s tenure in Congress. But in reality, Republican Party officials had all but guaranteed that result by their actions over the last year. After the majority of House Republicans voted to disqualify some of the 2020 election results, and after all but 10 opposed Trump’s impeachment, any GOP official who said that Biden won the election and voted for impeachment was going to seem anti-Republican to party activists.

And GOP officials then took even more steps to make sure Wyoming voters got the message that Cheney was no longer a Republican in good standing. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) backed the effort to remove Cheney from her leadership post, and he joined with Trump and others to aggressively campaign against her reelection.

2. Superwealthy conservative donors

Wealthy conservatives are a huge reason the Republican Party has moved in an extreme direction. They pump millions into conservative policy groups such as the Federalist Society. They fund media and grass-roots organizations that move voters to the right. They create super PACs that help Trump-aligned conservatives win Republican primaries. And, just as importantly, they often don’t fund organizations or candidates who would move the party back to the center.

Charles Koch, who with his now-deceased brother David created a network of right-wing organizations that have pushed state-level GOP politicians to the right, is perhaps the conservative billionaire most responsible for the party’s turn to extremism. But that title could also go to Rupert Murdoch, who founded Fox News and has allowed it to become a haven for anti-Black and anti-Latino sentiments.

3. GOP-appointed judges

Conservative judges, including those on the Supreme Court, usually aren’t executing the most extreme parts of the GOP’s agenda. But through their rulings, these judges enable and at times even encourage it. The aggressive gerrymanders and voter suppression laws adopted by GOP-controlled states over the past decade never would have happened if the Supreme Court had struck down a few of them. They set off a wave of aggressive antiabortion laws by overruling Roe v. Wade.

4. Republican activists and organizations

Republican elected officials don’t come up with their extreme rhetoric and ideas totally on their own. Conservative activists and organizations often write radical proposals and then demand party officials pass them into law. For example, the leading figure in the party pushing for limits on how racism is taught in public schools is Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute.

In Cheney’s case, the Wyoming Republican Party central committee, made up of party activists, censured her in February 2021, only weeks after she voted for Trump’s impeachment. Cheney wasn’t alone: Many of the congressional Republicans who voted either for Trump’s impeachment or his conviction were quickly censured by local and state Republicans. Those censures sent a clear message to the rest of the party: Activist Republican types whose support GOP officials need to stay in office were standing firmly behind Trump — and would disavow anyone who did not.

5. Republican voters

I don’t want to understate the role of Republican voters in moving the party toward radicalism. Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and other extremist Republicans would not have power without voters backing them in primaries and general elections. In Wyoming, Republican primary voters could have ignored the views of Trump and other Republican leaders and reelected Cheney, who remains very conservative on most policy issues.

In polls, the clear majority of Republican voters say that Biden didn’t legitimately win the 2020 election, meaning that they either believe the “big lie” or simply aren’t willing to accept that their candidate lost. Despite Jan. 6 and all of the other terrible things he did while in office, and since leaving, Trump is the leading candidate when Republican voters are asked about a potential 2024 primary — numbers that no doubt are part of the reason he might run for president again.

And the Republican voters who oppose Trump-style politicians and back ones such as Cheney in primaries aren’t blameless either. These voters tend to back Trumpian candidates in the general election. Trump himself won more than 90 percent of self-identified Republicans in 2016 and 2020, meaning nearly all of those who opposed him in the 2016 primary eventually fell in line. The Wyoming Republicans who backed Cheney in this week’s primary probably won’t support Democratic candidate Lynnette Grey Bull in the general election.

Trump-skeptical Republican voters, in my interviews with them, tend to be very tied to their identity as Republicans. They are largely unwilling to vote for any Democrat. And they are very open to arguments that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other figures on the left are just as dangerous as Trump-style Republicans, which frees them to vote for candidates such as Greene.

The big problem is that these five groups create a kind of feedback loop: GOP voters initially chose Trump; party donors, activists, judges and elected officials started embracing Trump-style politics and elevating Trumpian figures; now, the Trumpian figure in a given GOP primary is often also the person who has been on Fox News and raised the most money, so the voters are very likely to choose her. And that person will then move the party further right. It’s not an accident that the Trump presidency produced someone such as Greene.

Because these five groups are reinforcing one another, I see no easy or clear path for the Republican Party to shift toward a George W. Bush-style conservatism (one that embraces multiculturalism and respects core democratic values) anytime soon. As someone who started his political journalism career in 2002, I never expected Republicans to deem someone whose last name is Cheney insufficiently conservative. But that’s today’s Grand Old Party.

Today's Trae

Trae Crowder - Liberal Redneck

If Reagan himself came back and dared scoff at the notion that Trump won in 2020, they'd be callin' him RINO Ronnie.

What Liz Said

It's important to remember that Liz Cheney voted more than 95% of the time in favor of everything that was considered "Trump's agenda". She supports a governing philosophy that would deny her own sister the rights guaranteed to everybody else under the constitution. And she has said straight out that Democrats are baby-killers.

So let's make sure we don't include Liz Cheney's pinch-faced puritanism in the whole hero thing being piled up around her.

That said, it's equally important to make common cause with anyone willing to stand up against the shit storm that comes with Daddy State rule.

Here's Cheney's concession speech from last night:

Today's Tweet

The fever is still upon us, and it's gonna be a while before it burns itself out.

This is what GOP voters in Wyoming chose over Liz Cheney, in case anyone was wondering how the Republican Party was going: pic.twitter.com/7cv9gkvaFP

— Andrew Wortman 🏳️‍🌈🇺🇸 (@AmoneyResists) August 17, 2022