If I had to pin it down, I'd say my ADD and my Maine Coons and our other cats got the best of me after vacation. (As I write this, I've got a MC on my lap, and another on my desk, her head resting against my laptop and her feathery white fur covering the tab, caps lock and shift keys, so this could be fun.)
Anyway - two it was, and here they are. For your Sunday School I focused on a couple of US Senate races - Colorado, where Joe O'Dea (R) and incumbent Michael Bennet (D) are battling it out, and Utah, where Evan McMullin is mounting an independent bid to oust incumbent Mike Lee (R). And, it was purely coincidence that Utah and Colorado were the states were I spent my vacation...
First up? Dana Bash in the State of the Union classroom with the candidates for the Colorado seat. O'Dea was pushing a 'tough on crime' message, although the specific message would have made more sense if he was running for a state office, not the US Senate.
He said Dems in his state are ignoring the laws on the books, that we "need more cops on the street" and to "make sure we're enforcing the laws we have." And, specifically on red flag laws, like the one in Colorado that's focused on mental health?
Sheriffs tell him it doesn't work, "it puts them at risk. They're not happy with that law," and it needs to be rewritten.
...We need to do more with mental health here to get these people off the street. But we have hundreds of laws on the books. We need to enforce them. We need more cops on our street right now. If you talk to Chief Pazen here of the city and county of Denver -- he's the chief of police -- he will tell you he's short 250 officers. That's because Democrats across the state of Colorado have defunded, demoralized the police. And we need to do better.
Bash followed up, noting that Colorado's approved 146 applications to take guns away from dangerous people in two years, and asked if that didn't make his state safer.
He said no, citing stats saying it's the "the third worst state for violent crime in the United States," and "they just deemed Denver as one of the most unsafe cities in the nation." He said they have record crime everywhere, cashless bail issues, and again, the laws on the books need to be enforced.
I wish, as I do every Sunday, that the interviews were more about getting questions answered than about getting questions asked.
Meanwhile, down the hall in the MTP classroom, What's-his-name talked with McMullin. His opponent has said that voting for the independent is "a vote for the Democrats to keep their majority," and W-H-N wondered if that was correct. McMullin said no.
... look, I'm building a coalition of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and members of third parties to better represent Utah and to help lead our country forward. And I'm not going to Washington to join a party or to caucus or to play the party power game. I'm going to represent our coalition.
... He said he'll maintain his independence, and that would help Utah and give it "an added value of influence." After blasting Lee ("He sits on his hands until it's time to vote no and then he goes and complains about our country on cable news."), he said he thinks we've seen
... that the senators in the chamber who are willing to act with greater independence, serving their constituents, standing up to party bosses, standing up to extremist factions and special interest groups, they have the most influence in the chamber. They're more influential, I think, even than the party bosses. And I want that for Utah.
I wonder what would happen if we had more unaffiliated members of Congress?
For your Extra Credit, I spent time with the pundit panels in the MTP and This Week classrooms. Starting with MTP, Amy Walter said the Dems
have known that the crime issue was a challenge for them" from the beginning, and she said "they've been playing defense on this for quite some time.
Maria Teresa Kumar said that "one of the conversations we're not having is that this is an opportunity for the Democrats to own police enforcement... all of a sudden, these Republicans and Republican leadership flipped on it, and said it was an FBI sting job. That is not the party of law enforcement. And if anything, it's undermining a really basic institution." Pat McCrory said he was "shocked the Democrats aren't bringing up guns," but said on "everyday crime, the Democrats are on their heels. And they deserve to be on their heels."
On abortion,
Daniels said it "was always going to happen" that the Rs would be all over the place on abortion, creating "kind of this hodgepodge of different ideas of what voters might want to hear at that time... People can just pick and choose whatever they want, even within the issue themselves." Walter said how important the issue is depends on where the voter is. "...if you're in a state with abortion restrictions -- you are much more motivated than if you're in a state that doesn't." So, in reliably blue states, it's not that big an issue.
And in George's This Week classroom, the gang talked January 6th and election deniers running for office.
Donna Brazile said even if Trump shows up to answer his subpoena from the January 6th Committee, he won't say anything. But she wishes he would tell his story, he should be willing to - but he won't, because "he doesn't have the truth on his side." Julie Pace agreed when George said polls aren't showing a bump for Dems as a result of the hearings, and that the Ds aren't pressing this issue. Rather, "Democrats are scrambling to try to figure out how they can form an economic message."
Maggie Haberman said the election deniers is "the story that is actually not getting a ton of attention" given the crush of information that's out there, and that secretaries of state elected this cycle will be the ones to impact 2024, as they'll be deciding whether to certify the results.
Chris Christie and Brazile got into it a little bit on the Committee
Chris Christie said the January 6th Committee "was resigned to having a credibility problem because of the membership of the committee and the way that was done." He also said "there's nobody there to argue the other side," to which George said "But there's - there's no other side..." Brazile agreed. Christie said "I think you can question a lot of these witnesses who came up, and test their credibility."
Brazile pushed back pretty hard, wondering if Christie wanted to test the credibility of Bill Barr, the people who were advising Trump in the Oval, or "of the cops who got their heads smashed in - is that who you're going to test?"
In the end, they didn't come to blows. Christie said his point was some people are remembering things now that they had no recollection of earlier - which is likely true, but also not uncommon. I mean, just look t the Republican Party. Half of them don't remember what they said, even when they see themselves saying it on television...
So - there you have it: last week's posts, in a nutshell. We'll see how I do this week...
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