Who-- No, WHAT-- Comes After Pelosi?

 

If next Tuesday comes and goes and Shahid Buttar hasn't pulled off the biggest political upset of 2020-- you can help him do that here-- Pelosi is almost definitely headed back to the speaker's chair, as what Politico calls "may be the most powerful congressional leader in modern U.S. history." I don't mean to quibble and I'm not certain how they define "modern," but Sam Rayburn (1940-1960 with two brief interludes) and Tip O'Neill (1977-1987) in the House and Lyndon Johnson (1953-1961), Mike Mansfield (1961-1977) and Mitch McConnell (2007-present) in the Senate have been pretty impactful and historically powerful. But Heather Caygle, John Bresnahan and Sarah Ferris wrote that "In the 22 months since she’s returned to the speaker’s chair-- an enormous achievement in itself-- Pelosi has centralized power in an unprecedented way. It’s due not just to her own maneuvering, but to a variety of circumstances: a chaotic president, a paralyzed Senate, and a national health emergency that’s spurred the most serious economic crisis in decades." Yep, that and a too big of a tent congressional party-- to the point of near dysfunction-- that no one else could probably hold together for more than a month.

It helps that she's had Trump as an adversary-- and a non-entity as minority leader-- but she has been successful in placating a progressive wing and the Republican wing of her own party-- the New Dems and Blue Dogs-- and in balancing the needs of the spineless careerists (and incrementalists) with the serious reformers and idealists. There are rot gut conservatives, devotees of the status quo and real life socialists in that tent and somehow Pelosi has kept the whole structure from the inevitable collapse.

But Politico's point is more along the lines that "Pelosi will no longer be the party’s leader if Biden wins the White House on Nov. 3, but her influence may only grow. If Democrats also win the Senate, the incoming president is expected to rely heavily on the Democratic agenda passed by the House that’s been blocked by Trump and Mitch McConnell during the last two years. On everything from health care to climate change to money in politics, the markers laid down by House Democrats may prove every bit as important as the policy goals Biden laid out during the campaign. Yet Pelosi also faces questions about her own future. In order to win over a handful of skittish Democrats following the party’s landslide victory in the 2018 midterms, Pelosi committed to serving only two more terms as speaker. That would make the next Congress her last after 20 years in power, and this upcoming election her final appearance on the ballot, unless she goes back on her commitment."

Pelosi, 80, is expected to easily secure another term as speaker in January-- very likely without even a challenge, according to interviews with a dozen House Democrats.

...Even with all of her success, some Democrats have quietly begun considering a post-Pelosi era. It’s a topic that no lawmaker will discuss publicly for fear of backlash from the speaker-- the oldest person to hold the office-- though such discussions continue quietly inside a caucus where roughly 80 percent of Democrats have only served under Pelosi’s leadership.

Nearly a dozen Democrats are clamoring for one of their caucus’ few open leadership posts in January, a perch that many hope could position them for bigger roles in case of a potential exodus by the troika of Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn in the next cycle.

“I think people are starting to think what’s the team going to look like two or four years from now,” said Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), who is running to be assistant speaker, the No. 4 spot in leadership.

“I think people are beginning to think who will be the next generation of leaders in the Democratic Caucus,” he said. “I think that’s kind of natural.”

There are still Pelosi critics, including roughly a dozen Democrats who opposed her second tour as speaker in 2018. But it’s not even clear how many would vote against her now.

“In the last go around, there was some opposition,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), a longtime Pelosi friend. “There was a lot of talking, but there wasn’t any candidate.”

Eshoo said it’s possible that some of the incoming Democrats from swing districts may stage some sort of opposition to Pelosi next Congress. But Eshoo said it would not weaken her ability to govern.

“Every single one of them will have received her considerable support, monetarily and otherwise,” Eshoo said. “She always says, ‘Just win.’”

“Our confidence in the speaker is high,” added Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA), another member of Pelosi’s leadership team seeking a higher post next year.

While Pelosi is firmly ensconced in the speaker's chair, there is speculation about possible successors whenever she does leave. The list includes Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY), the Democratic Caucus chair; Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA), a major player in Trump's impeachment; and Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), whose national profile rose during the police reform debate, among others.

I suppose Caygle, Bresnahan and Ferris are speaking to different people than the ones I speak with, but I have been told in no uncertain terms-- and by Democrats willing to do it-- that if Pelosi tries to shove PAYGO down the Democrats' throats again-- and she will-- that there will definitely be a progressive challenger to her reelection as speaker. Good, there should be. That tents, in fact, needs to collapse if there is ever going to be a breakout from this country's miserable status quo.

And, although Cheri Bustos and the DCCC have carefully recruited and supported a cadre of careerist non-leaders for the class of 2021, there are a number of independent-minded candidates likely to win House seats a week from today, despite the party establishment. Several have told me they may only have one term to accomplish their goals in-- due either to gerrymandering or to the probable 2022 anti-blue wave-- and that they don't plan to use those two years playing nice with a party establishment that is not much more than just better than the Republicans, at least in terms of the systemic reform that these candidates are motivated by.

We Warned You About PayGo, Right? Now The Filthy Mangy Blue Dogs Are Howling

The Republican wing of the Democratic Party, grudgingly went along with the Democrats Tuesday when Pelosi passed a bill to protect DREAMers with a massive bipartisan majority. You could tell there was some restiveness around the vote by noting that the scummiest of the Blue Dogs, Wall Street-owned Josh Gottheimer, lead a group of craven freshmen-- including 4 Blue Dogs-- to vote with the GOP on recommitting the bill.

But the next day a whiny letter to Pelosi and Hoyer turned up penned by Blue Dog chairs Stephanie Murphy (FL), Tom O'Halleran (AZ), Kurt Schrader (OR), Anthony Brindisi (NY) and Lou Correa (CA).

The Blue Dogs whined that the national debt-- which many of them helped run up by allowing the Republicans to spend massively on the military and to cut taxes just as massively-- is over $22 trillion-- "about $67,000 for every American man, woman and child," as they dramatically phrased it. If this money was being used for investments on things like education, health, infrastructure, etc, there would be no problem, but considering how those trillions are being wasted, there is a problem-- not with amounts, but with priorities.

But the Blue Dogs are crying PAYGO and Pelosi is committed to that reactionary policy... making me wonder if this isn't just a prelude to an attempt to derail and shut down growing agitation for Medicare-For-All. (Richard Neal, no Medicare-For-All ally, just announced he will be holding a hearing on Pramila Jayapal's bill next week, next week. It's likely that Neal has been tasked with Pelosi with the poisoning of the bill. Expect PAYGO to play a role.)

Today: The Big Pay-Go Show Down In The House

Yesterday I spent hours on the phone talking with members of Congress about Pelosi's Rules Package vote today. That's because her damned Pay-Go provision is part of it. Many of the members I spoke with DID NOT KNOW THERE IS A VOTE AND DO NOT KNOW WHAT PAY-GO IS. By noon I was so depressed I wanted to drown myself. They're just going to do whatever Hoyer and Clyburn tell them to do-- which will absoluetly kill any chance of a progressive agenda in this Congress. Kim Schrier, a physician, is a freshman from Washington's 8th district and is busy being sworn in today. Last night she got back to me with a statement about Pay-Go that threw me for a loop. "Pay Go," she wrote, "brings back fiscally responsible governance and ends the draconian practice of forcing cuts to vital programs to pay for others. It allows new funding sources to keep government working for the American People." I suspect that's what Hoyer and the leadership team are telling members of Congress, especially freshmen, what Pay-Go is. Am I getting ahead of myself here? I'll come back in a minute. Let me turn to my amigo, David Dayen at The Intercept, for a brief explanation-- yesterday-- about this controversy.

He wrote that progressives are pressuring against it-- I haven;'t found any other than Alexandria Ocasio and Ro Khanna-- "the House rules package for the 116th Congress will include a pay-as-you-go provision, requiring all new spending to be offset with either budget cuts or tax increases, a conservative policy aimed at tying the hands of government... Pelosi ran into resistance from progressives, who believe that the rule would make it more difficult for Democrats to pass a host of liberal agenda items, from 'Medicare for All' to a Green New Deal to tuition-free public college. Critics also argue that pay-go creates an unlevel playing field, where Republicans get to blow giant holes in the tax code, as they did with the 2017 tax cuts, while Democrats must pay fealty to the deficit.

The new rule establishes a point of order against any bill that increases the deficit within a ten-year budget window, based on figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The House could attach an “emergency” designation to legislation to get around the paygo rule: Congress did this in 2009 to pass the economic stimulus package under President Obama. The point of order could be waived by a majority vote of the House. But this gives the Democratic leadership another lever of control on what legislation can advance, as their assent would be critical to exempting bills from the paygo rule. And members of Congress tend to resist voting to waive the rule, as they worry it creates ready-made attack ads.

There is also a Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act, passed in 2010 under pressure from Blue Dog Democrats, which allows the president to enforce across-the-board cuts if Congress violates pay-go. But the prospect of a president implementing such an unpopular policy is remote. So the House rule looms large by constraining new spending at its source.

Liberals, of course, have plenty of ideas for how to raise revenue. The Trump tax cuts alone offer nearly $3 trillion in potential offsets simply by restoring corporate tax rates, “pass-through” rules on individuals, and inheritance taxes. But the pay-go rule forces Democrats to propose tax increases that Republicans gleefully broadcast. Meanwhile, Republicans, unconcerned with deficits, get to play Santa Claus, freed from having to match tax cuts with anything unappealing.

...At least one Congressional power broker wants progressive Democrats to fight the rules package. “In order for #PayGo to go into effect, it needs to pass the House,” wrote Bernie Sanders advisor Warren Gunnels on Twitter Tuesday night. “If some 18 Dems vote no, it fails. The vote will take place on Thursday. Will enough progressives have the courage to vote no on the first roadblock to #MedicareForAll, #GreenNewDeal & #CollegeForAll? Let’s see.”

The co-chairs of the CPC, Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal, look to be trying to tamp down the concern over Pelosi's attempt to ramrod Pay-Go through. They used a statement yesterday, which isn't that different from what I've been hearing from other liberals: "We have been concerned about PAYGO for months, and have had numerous conversations with Rules Chairman Jim McGovern and House leadership about these concerns. We all agree that the real problem with PAYGO exists in the statute that requires it. That is why we will reintroducing legislation in the 116th Congress to end PAYGO. In the meantime Chairman McGovern and House Leadership have committed to us that PAYGO will not be an impediment to advancing key progressive priorities in the 116th Congress. With the assurances that PAYGO can be waived, we do plan to vote for the House rules package and proceed with the legislation to fix the statute." I have tremendous trust in Pramila Jayapal's truthfulness and political instincts. But... Hoyer, Clyburn and Pelosi? Don't make me laugh. Besides, how is a satisfactory PAYGO legislative fix going to get through a wall of Republicans, Blue Dogs and New Dems? And then make it through McConnell's Senate and be signed by the always cooperative Señor Trumpanzee? NO WAY! Voting for a bad rule with the idea of "fixing" it down the road under these political realities, is... well, I won't characterize what I think it is. But, of late, there have been too many New Dems admitted to the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Former co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and incoming chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), told us that he'll "continue to state that pay-go is an unnecessary and misguided policy because it can stifle smart investments that are needed to better our nation and help families. With trillions in tax giveaways to the wealthy and corporations, Republicans are the ones who ushered in a new era of fiscal recklessness-- not Democrats. With the Trump Administration pushing dangerous policies, it is important not to tie our hands while governing. I’m confident our leadership understands these issues and will work toward ensuring pay-go does not impede progress on the policy solutions Americans have demanded." I'd interpret that to mean that today he'll be holding his nose and voting for it.

Tim Ryan (D-OH), often an unabashed Pelosi critic, told the Morning Joe crew yesterday that overall, he's backing Pelosi's efforts. "I don’t think anyone at any point questioned her ability to negotiate, for her to be in rooms like the one she’s going to be in today, like the one she was in last week, and be as effective as anybody else in our caucus or in our party." But that didn't stop him from announcing he's opposing PayGo. "Critical investments in education, infrastructure, and health care should not be held hostage to budgetary constraints that Republicans have never respected."

Saikat is Alexandria Ocasio's chief of staff

Pelosi's Deranged Obsession With PAY-GO Is Bad For Democrats And Bad For The Country

This could be a fatal mistake for Democrats

If the Democrats expect to successfully defend all those seats they won in deep red territory in 2020, there are two ways to go about it:

1- pray that Trump keeps screwing up and that the anti-red wave is even bigger than the 2018 one;
2- make a real effort to deliver on the policies the voters want

I happen to believe in the power of prayer. But only God decides which ones get answered and which ones don't-- and when. So... I'd suggest delivering to the voters. And the stuff voters want includes things that can't be delivered on if Pelosi goes ahead with that idiotic PAY-GO plan of hers that virtually no one wants except fro Republicans-- albeit only when Democrats control the House. Just ask David Dayen!

Oh, wait! I don't have to publish David's phone number after all! He stuck everything you'd want to ask him into a New Republic piece that came out yesterday, The Left Is Taking Aim at Pelosi’s Deficit Obsession. He sums up the problem that progressives have with her scheme with one line: "The Democratic leader wants to resurrect a House rule that will hinder progressive legislation." And now the explanation, although he prefaced it with some good news: the Congressional Progressive Caucus got Pelosi to agree "to scrap a House rule, implemented by Republicans in 1994, requiring a super-majority vote for raising taxes on the majority of wage-earners, making priorities like Medicare for All or tuition-free college harder to finance." The problem, however, is that there still’s a "major hurdle left to topple: the 'pay as you go' rule, commonly known as PAY-GO, which demands that all new spending get offset with budget cuts or tax increases. Progressive critics argue that this creates an unlevel playing field, where Republicans blow giant holes in the tax code, as they did last year, while Democrats must pay fealty to the deficit. These critics are now mounting a fight to unshackle a future activist government."

Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), the former chair of the Progressive Caucus chair and new chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee agreed that Pelosi's PAY-GO plan "an absurd idea," saying it’s "irresponsible to try to tie up Congress’s ability to respond to economic downturns or, in the current discussion, to slash programs."

Pelosi has defended and expanded pay-go for over a decade. She first instituted it as a standing rule the day she received the speaker’s gavel in 2007, and was a driving force in passing the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act in 2010, signed by Barack Obama. That law puts the burden on the president to enforce across-the-board cuts if Congress violates pay-go. The prospect of any president implementing an unpopular hatchet job like that is remote. So the House rule looms large in this fight by constraining new spending at its source.

Obviously, Pelosi and her allies on pay-go consider the rule good politics, allowing them to rebut charges about “tax and spend” liberals by insisting that every new program is fully paid for. If anybody actually cared about the deficit, instead of habitually using it as a weapon to rein in the opposition party, maybe that logic would be compelling. But even if the politics make sense, the rule leads to bad policy, as Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, which is quite close to House progressives, argues in a paper last week.

As Bivens explains, the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies were artificially made smaller because of pay-go rules. Democrats also created a long implementation period for Obamacare, with four years between signing and the effective date of the exchanges. That allowed adherence to pay-go within the ten-year budget window. But it also denied benefits to the public for an exceedingly long period, during which Republicans swept into virtually all levels of government.

A pay-go rule is even more dangerous in a time of economic downturn, when government needs to be the spender of last resort. “It is terrible economics to view federal budget deficits as always and everywhere bad,” Bivens writes, and that’s especially true when the economy is struggling. Democrats, he notes, were obsessed with President George W. Bush “running up the nation’s credit card” on wars and tax cuts when the real focus should have been on deregulation that was weakening financial markets.

When the Great Recession hit, the stimulus package was deliberately targeted lower than what was required to fix the economy. In 2010, Obama pivoted toward deficit reduction, and fiscal policy started to go negative in the middle of that year, while Democrats still controlled Congress and unemployment was still unforgivably high. Public sector jobs fell every year from 2009 to 2011. Bivens highlights a remarkable stat: “If this public spending following the Great Recession had followed the average path of the recoveries of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, a full recovery with unemployment around 4 percent would have been achieved by 2013.”

Pay-go can always be waived-- as it was for the stimulus, and for the Republican tax cuts. But it creates an environment where legislation must be mindful of deficits first and helping people second. Bivens’s paper and other unconventional economic thinkers like Stephanie Kelton have taken their mission as re-educating Capitol Hill that the goals of fiscal policy must be broader than the budget deficit.

The Trump tax cuts actually provide a wide range of “pay-fors” that could be used to fulfill pay-go-- just reverse the gifts to corporations and the wealthy to pay for programs. But it still puts Democrats in a box, having to propose tax increases up front, which Republicans gleefully broadcast. Republicans get to play Santa Claus, able to promise endless tax cuts and endless spending, while Democrats pray that voters see them as the party of fiscal responsibility.

The Green New Deal Line In The Sand

Last week we talked about the opening of the the U.N. climate conference in Katowice, Poland; yesterday the Washington Post published a piece by David Nakamura about the Trumpist regime resisting global climate efforts at home and overseas. "The United States," he wrote, "joined a controversial proposal by Saudi Arabia and Russia this weekend to weaken a reference to a key report on the severity of global warming, sharpening battle lines at the global climate summit in Poland aimed at gaining consensus over how to combat rising temperatures... The attempt by Trump administration delegates to look past the world’s most important climate reports comes two weeks after the administration downplayed a landmark federal report about the impacts of global warming on the United States, which is the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide."

Over the weekend, the president reaffirmed his decision to remove the United States from the global Paris agreement to reduce carbon emissions from coal, natural gas and petroleum. Referring to continued unrest in France, where thousands of demonstrators have protested a proposed fuel-tax increase, Trump tweeted: “Very sad day & night in Paris. Maybe it’s time to end the ridiculous and expensive Paris Agreement and return money back to the people in the form of lower taxes?”

Trump touted American progress on the issue. “The U.S. was way ahead of the curve on that and the only major country where emissions went down last year!”

It is true that U.S. emissions dropped in 2017, but in 2018 they are projected to grow 2.5 percent.

According to the federal Energy Information Administration, emissions had fallen in seven of the last 10 years before this year’s rise.

Ignoring the climate assessment of experts within their own administration, released the day after Thanksgiving, U.S. officials in recent days cleared a path to build more highly polluting coal-fired power plants, authorized seismic studies in the Atlantic Ocean that could harm marine animals, and opened millions of acres of land in the West to mining and fracking, stripping protections for a near-threatened species of bird.

White House officials said that the rollback of Obama-era regulations had been in the works for months and that the timing of the announcements just days after the Nov. 23 release of the National Climate Assessment was coincidental. But experts said the Trump administration has clearly accelerated its energy agenda this year as the president seeks to lock in the rule changes, which can take months to finalize, before the end of his first term.

Republican administrations have traditionally been more lenient than Democrats on environmental regulations, but Trump has overseen a shift that is “much, much bigger,” said Bruce Buckheit, who served in the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement division.

“They want to get stuff done that can’t be undone by the next administration,” Buckheit said. “This is their moment to keep on truckin’.”

For Trump, the moves reinforce his belief that climate warnings-- delivered with increasing urgency by scientists who say policymakers are running out of time to avoid calamities caused by rising temperatures-- are fanning false hysteria about the planet’s future.

Rather than moderate his views, the president has made clear that he and his advisers are “not necessarily such believers,” as he put it in a recent interview with the Washington Post.

The National Climate Assessment, mandated by Congress, warned that temperatures could rise by as much as 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the continental United States by 2050, unleashing destructive and costly heat waves and extreme weather events.

“I don’t see it,” Trump told The Post.

That message has been delivered beyond America’s shores. At the Group of 20 summit in Argentina in late November, all nations except the United States endorsed a joint statement that reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris climate accord. Trump officials signed the document only after securing the insertion of language highlighting the administration’s decision to exit the Paris compact and America’s right to use all forms of energy.

In Poland on Monday, the administration has arranged to put on a show promoting coal and other fossil fuels. When a panel of climate skeptics at talks in Germany last year defended the administration’s policies and Trump’s assertion that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, a large group of activists sang, jeered and walked out.

White House aides rejected the notion that the regulatory changes are in conflict with the climate report, which they dismissed as focusing on the most extreme scenarios. Press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that such modeling contradicts “long-established trends” and called the process “an extremely complicated science that is never exact.”

Jeffrey Holmstead, who served as an EPA assistant administrator in the George W. Bush administration, said the Trump White House has been clear that the report “overstates or exaggerates the risk of climate change.”

The administration is moving to reverse Obama administration actions that Trump and his aides believe overstepped the government’s authority, Holmstead said. For example, Trump is replacing Obama’s Clean Power Plan with an alternative proposal to grant states more autonomy to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

“They think that the people who issued that report may be scientists but that maybe they have their own agenda,” said Holmstead, a lawyer and lobbyist at Bracewell who represents energy companies.

That view does not square with public opinion. A Politico/Morning Consult poll released Friday showed that two-thirds of voters are very or somewhat concerned about the report’s findings, with 58 percent saying they agree with the conclusion that human activity is accelerating climate change.

During a tour last month of the devastation caused by deadly wildfires in Paradise, Calif., Trump was asked by reporters whether his skepticism of climate change had changed.

“No, I have a strong opinion,” the president replied. “I want great climate; we’re going to have that.”

The climate assessment also contradicts the president’s core assertion that regulations aimed at lowering greenhouse gas pollution harm the economy.

On the contrary, the report says, respiratory illnesses from pollution that lead to sick days for workers and heat-related deaths could stunt economic growth. And the flooding of roads, which block transportation routes and close businesses, could cost the economy billions of dollars per year.

Ignoring such warnings, the administration moved this week to lift restrictions to protect sage grouse habitat on 9 million acres on Western land to promote oil exploration and natural gas drilling, widely called fracking, as well as other mineral mining. Drilling for natural gas has created a boom in energy that powers and heats homes, but burning it creates more greenhouse gases.

According to the Energy Information Administration, petroleum use accounts for the largest amount of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States-- 46 percent. Natural gas consumption, at 29 percent, edged out coal, at 26 percent, the Energy Information Administration said.

On Thursday, the Trump administration announced its plan to reverse an Obama administration rule requiring coal-fired power plants to install technology that captures and lowers their carbon emissions.

Acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler, who lobbied for a major coal company and other energy interests before joining the administration this year, said the technology’s cost made new coal plants infeasible. In fact, coal plants are in steep decline, with the amount of coal used in energy generation falling by 53 percent since 2006 as natural gas use increased by 33 percent, according to information from the administration.

Republicans in regions that are producers or heavy users of coal applauded Trump.

“For eight years, President Obama landed blow after blow in his war on coal,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Thursday. “Now President Trump’s EPA is also targeting another regulation that would have made it nearly impossible to build any new plants in the future. This is a crucial step toward undoing the damage and putting coal back on a level playing field.”

Buckheit, the former EPA official, said its unlikely that any new coal plants will open. Rather, he said, the administration’s action was “in many ways symbolic. This is playing to the base.”

That political messaging has put Trump aides in the awkward position of trying to explain the apparent dichotomy of his regulatory agenda with the conclusions of the climate assessment. In an interview with a Canadian television network, U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft drew public ridicule when she said she respects “both sides of the science” on climate change.

“I believe there are scientists on both sides that are accurate,” she said.

Twenty-two members of the House and 4 senators have signed onto the GreenNewDeal. Needless to say, none of them are Republicans. The GOP seems to have abrogated its repsonsibilities in regard to the most profound threat the country has faced since... perhaps ever. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. This has got to be a "Hey we're all in the same boat; let's do what we have to do" issue. I don't expect Trump-- who famously told his aides that he doesn't care about running up enormous deficits because he won't be around when they explode-- to understand or deal with something like Climate Change but what about Republicans in Congress? Are they really all that far gone? All of them? I suspect not many Republican members of Congress read Kate Aronoff except piece in The Intercept last week, With A Green New Deal, Here's What The World Could Look Like For The Next Generation. Some of them, unlike Trump, may actually care about children, grandchildren, mankind, planet... that kind of stuff, so if you have a Republican rep. or senator, let them know about this and remind them it's not a partisan issue and they can be a hero.

It's the spring of 2043, and Gina is graduating college with the rest of her class. She had a relatively stable childhood. Her parents availed themselves of some of the year of paid family leave they were entitled to, and after that she was dropped off at a free child care program.

Pre-K and K-12 were also free, of course, but so was her time at college, which she began after a year of public service, during which she spent six months restoring wetlands and another six volunteering at a day care much like the one she had gone to.

Now that she’s graduated, it’s time to think about what to do with her life. Without student debt, the options are broad. She also won’t have to worry about health insurance costs, since everyone is now eligible for Medicare. Like most people, she isn’t extraordinarily wealthy, so she can live in public, rent-controlled housing-- not in the underfunded, neglected units we’re accustomed to seeing in the United States, but in one of any number of buildings that the country’s top architects have competed for the privilege to design, featuring lush green spaces, child care centers, and even bars and restaurants. Utilities won’t be an issue, either. Broadband and clean water are both free and publicly provisioned, and the solar array that is spread atop the roofs of her housing complex generates all the power it needs and more.

For work, she trained to become a high-level engineer at a solar panel manufacturer, though some of her friends are going into nursing and teaching. All are well-paid, unionized positions, and are considered an essential part of the transition away from fossil fuels, updates about which are broadcast over the nightly news. In any case, she won’t have to spend long looking for a job. At any number of American Job Centers around the country, she can walk in and work with a counselor to find a well-paid position on projects that help make her city better able to deal with rising tides and more severe storms, or oral history projects, or switch careers altogether and receive training toward a union job in the booming clean energy sector.

The AJCs are a small part of the Green New Deal Act of 2021, a compromise plan that was only strengthened in the years that followed. For a brief moment, it looked as if the Supreme Court might strike down large elements of it, but as a plan to expand the size of the court gained popularity with the public, the justices backed down.

Gina might also open her own business. Without having to worry about the cost of day care or health insurance, she can invest everything into making her dream a reality. And the cost of labor for business owners, who no longer have to pick up the health care tab, is reasonable enough that she can afford to pay good wages for the staff that she needs to meet demand.

Whichever she chooses, she’ll work no more than 40 hours a week, and likely far less, leaving ample time to travel via high speed, zero-carbon rail to visit friends elsewhere and go hiking or to the beach; enjoy long, leisurely meals of locally sourced food and drink; and attend concerts in the park, featuring musicians whose careers have been supported by generous public arts grants. As she gets older, paying for health care won’t be a concern, with everything from routine doctor’s visits and screenings, to prescription drugs, to home health aides covered under the public system, as social security continues to furnish her rent, expenses, and entertainment through the end of her life.

That’s the world a “Green New Deal” could build, and what a number of representatives and activists are pushing Congress to help set into motion. Led by Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), 17 23 representatives and counting have signed on to a measure that would create a select House committee tasked with crafting, over the course of a year, a comprehensive plan to move the U.S. away from fossil fuels by 2030 and accomplish seven goals related to decarbonizing the economy.

...What, exactly, would a Green New Deal entail?

Like its 1930s counterpart, the “Green New Deal” isn’t a specific set of programs so much as an umbrella under which various policies might fit, ranging from technocratic to transformative. The sheer scale of change needed to deal effectively with climate change is massive, as the scientific consensus is making increasingly clear, requiring an economy-wide mobilization of the sort that the United States hasn’t really undertaken since World War II. While the Green New Deal imaginary evokes images of strapping young men pulling up their sleeves to hoist up wind turbines (in the mold of realist Civilian Conservation Corps ads), its actual scope is far broader than the narrow set of activities typically housed under the green jobs umbrella, or even in the original New Deal.

“People talk often about the infrastructure investment that has to happen, and new technology,” Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, told me. “But there’s also an industrial plan that needs to happen to build entirely new industries. It’s sort of like the moonshot. When JFK said America was going to go to the moon, none of the things we needed to get to the moon at that point existed. But we tried and we did it.” The Green New Deal, he added, “touches everything-- it’s basically a massive system upgrade for the economy.”

In a broad sense, that’s what policymakers in other countries refer to as industrial policy, whereby the government plays a decisive role in shaping the direction of the economy to accomplish specific aims. That doesn’t mean that the state controls every industry, as in the Soviet system; instead, it would be closer to the kind of economic planning that the U.S. practiced during the economic mobilization around World War II, and that is practiced internally today by many of the world’s biggest corporations. Should Ocasio-Cortez’s resolution pass muster, the select committee will convene policymakers, academics, and representatives from the private sector and civil society to hash out next steps. How widely or narrowly that groups defines a Green New Deal-- and whether it’ll ever be given space to meet on Capitol Hill-- remains to be seen, as supportive lawmakers huddle in Washington this week to try and gain support for writing it into the rulebook for the next Congress. Ultimately, it will be that committee that fleshes out what a Green New Deal looks like. But the proposal itself, American history, and existing research give us a sense for what all it might look like in practice.

The plan itself-- or rather, the plan to make the plan-- lays out seven goals, starting with generating 100 percent of power in the U.S. from renewable sources and updating the country’s power grid.

As the first two points of the resolution suggest, one of the main goals of any Green New Deal that spurs a complete switch to renewables will be dialing up the amount of total energy demand represented by electricity, by switching combustion-based activities like heating systems, air conditioners, and automobiles over to electric power. The Energy Transitions Commission estimates that 60 percent of energy will need to be distributed via electricity by mid-century, up from just 20 percent today. Making that possible means developing new technology, and also overhauling today’s grid, making it easier for homes and businesses that generate their own power to feed it back into the system. A modern grid-- or “smart” grid, per Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal-- would also make way for microgrids, which are self-contained renewable energy generation systems that allow small neighborhoods and hospitals, for instance, to continue making their own power even if there are disruptions (say, hurricane-force winds or a wildfire) upstream. Assuming it won’t be entirely sustainable to import all of that capacity, scaling up renewables will also likely mean expanding the country’s renewables manufacturing sector to produce more solar and wind infrastructure, components for which are today sourced largely from abroad.

“We build things here in Detroit, and across Michigan, and we’ve got a lot of people here with manufacturing skills who are being left behind by the corporate greed,” incoming Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D- Mich., among the first supporters of the resolution and who campaigned on a Green New Deal, said via email. “Just this week we heard about how GM, a company that has received billions and billions from taxpayers, is planning to cut thousands of jobs here.  So it’s really exciting to be talking about rapidly building up our green, renewable energy infrastructure, because these are jobs that can and should go to our workers here in Michigan.

“We were the Arsenal of Democracy and helped save the planet from real darkness decades ago, and there’s no reason why we couldn’t be one of the regions to build America’s green energy infrastructure and help save the planet again in the process.”

Bringing more clean energy online could entail expanding the types of programs that already exist at the state level, too, though they seldom come with much teeth. Renewable portfolio standards require utilities to source a certain amount of their power from wind and solar. New York state, for instance, set a renewable portfolio standard of 29 percent by 2015. The deadline came and went quietly, without much talk of how it would pick up the slack to reach its next goal of 50 percent renewables by 2030.

Those targets would have to be much stricter to get off fossil fuels by 2035. “You say, you hit the target and you reduce emissions 10 percent every year or you go to jail,” says Robert Pollin, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute. “That would get their attention.”

...While winding down fossil fuel production and scaling up renewables will of course be a considerable part of any Green New Deal, so too will investing in the research, development, and manufacturing capacities to get especially difficult-to-decarbonize sectors, like airlines and steel, off fossil fuels over the next several decades, as Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal notes. The latter requires a still largely experimental process called electrolysis, which targeted investments could subsidize research into. In Sanders’s town hall Monday night, Ocasio-Cortez appeared to reference economist Mariana Mazzucato’s work, which lays out the existing progress and potential of using public investment to finance early-stage research that venture capital funds are too risk-averse to support. (Ocasio-Cortez and other members of her team have met with Mazzacuto.)

“For far too long,” she said, “we gave money to Tesla-- to a lot of people-- and we got no return on the investment that the public made in new technologies. It’s the public that financed innovative new technologies.”

Such a policy umbrella, though, could be just as much about decarbonization as about building out sectors of the economy which simply aren’t carbon-intensive, but are essential to a healthy economy, such as teaching and nursing. A federal job guarantee, which is cited in the draft resolution and a hot topic among 2020 presidential hopefuls, might put people to work remediating wetlands and tending community gardens while providing an alternative to low-paid work bound up in hugely carbon-intensive supply chains. Walmart, for instance, is the biggest employer in 22 states, paying an entry-level wage of $11 per hour. McDonald’s, another major employer, is estimated to have at some point employed 1 in 8 American workers and has consistently resisted calls to institute a $15 minimum wage. A federal jobs guarantee that paying that much, as outlined by several proposals, would effectively create a national wage floor, compelling retail and fast food chains to either raise their wages or risk having their employees enticed into better-paid jobs that improve their communities and make them more resilient against climate impacts.

For extractive industry workers, whose wages are traditionally high thanks to decades of labor militancy, $15 an hour may not be too big of a draw, meaning other programs could be needed to finance what’s widely referred to as a just transition, making sure that workers in sectors that need to be phased out-- like coal, oil, and gas-- are well taken care of and that communities which have historically revolved around those industries can diversify their economies. Spain’s social democratic government recently sponsored a small-scale version of this, investing the relatively tiny sum of $282 million, with the support of trade unions, to help coal workers transition into other work while shuttering the last of the country’s coal mines.

With the right investment, new jobs won’t be hard to come by. Research from the International Labour Organization finds that while a concerted transition to renewable energy could cost as many as 6 million jobs around the world in carbon-intensive sectors, it could create 24 million jobs, or a net gain of 18 million, and far more than the profound job loss that would stem from unchecked climate change.

It's not hard to imagine cries from Republicans and Democrats alike about how much such a program might cost, and of the dangers of blowing up the deficit. Worth noting is the cost that 13 federal agencies have said are likely if we do nothing, according to the National Climate Assessment quietly released on Black Friday. By 2100, heat-related deaths could cost the U.S. $141 billion. Sea-level rise could rack up a $118 billion bill, and infrastructure damages could cost up to $32 billion. Along the same timeline, the report’s authors found, the financial damages of climate change to the U.S. could double those caused by the Great Recession.

By comparison, the 1 to 2 percent of gross domestic product that Pollin has said a Green New Deal would cost seems pretty cheap, never mind the fact that putting millions of people to work would bolster tax revenues and consumer spending. Pollin calls it “equitable green growth,” coupled with “degrowth down to zero of the fossil fuel industry.” Incumbent fuel sources, and coal in particular, aren’t exactly saving anyone money. A recent analysis from the group Carbon Tracker has found that 42 percent of coal capacity worldwide is already unprofitable, and that figure could spiked to 72 percent by 2030.

“The question is, ‘What policy do you use to build up the public investment and incentivize private investment?’” Pollin said. “You can’t just have these private sector incentive programs. That’s just not going to get it.”

As several proponents have pointed out, though, so-called pay-for questions are rarely asked of public spending programs designed to further national interests, be that getting out of a recession or fighting a war. “If we were threatened by an invader, we would mobilize all the resources we have at our disposal to deal with that security threat,” says U.K.-based economist Ann Pettifor. “As in those circumstances, you cannot rely entirely on the private sector.”

Pettifor was among the first people to start thinking seriously about a Green New Deal just after the financial crisis. Then working at the New Economics Foundation, a progressive think tank, she helped convene a series of meetings in her living room that would eventually coalesce into the Green New Deal group. The group produced several reports on the subject. But with European sovereign debt crisis about to plunge the continent’s lawmakers into full-blown austerity hysteria, any public discussion of a big, expansionary spending package faded. Jeremy Corbyn’s election to Labour Party leadership helped change that. And this past March, Chakrabarti, working on Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign at the time, showed up on her doorstep wanting to hear more.

For Pettifor, as for many Green New Deal advocates on this side of the pond, the funding question is less about how to reconcile line items than about reconfiguring what goals the economy is working toward-- that is, to make it do something other than simply grow GDP by some fixed percentage each year.

Economists’ and policymakers’ fixation on unlimited economic growth as the metric for measuring economic prosperity is a really recent invention, developed in large part by the exponential returns that were being brought in by a ballooning financial sector–and not to that point factored into economic accounts. “If I work hard every day and night I have a weekly wage. If i gamble and win a load of money, I get rich quick,” she explains. “And the finance sector has moved its focus into making money in that way and not in investing in productive activity.” That shift toward measuring growth above all else started to displace an earlier focus on full employment in the 1960s, making multiplying profits and consumption the goal rather than ensuring people’s basic needs were met. As a result, carbon emissions spiked.

It’s why Pettifor largely rejects the premise of debates among environmentalists about growth and degrowth. For the green movement to talk about growth at all, she says, “is to adapt that OECD framing of what the economy should be about” and “to adopt the framing of a neoliberal idea of the economy. I would prefer to us to talk about full employment.”

That’s not to suggest there aren’t nuts and bolts funding issues that can be easily worked out. In contrast to state governments, which rely in large part on tax revenues, the federal government has plenty of tools at its disposal for financing a Green New Deal-- tools it deployed to great effect during the financial crisis. It could also set up a National Investment Bank to furnish lines of credit for green investment. A polluter fee or carbon tax could provide some revenue, as well, but perhaps more importantly would punish bad behavior in the energy sector. Loan guarantees of the sort used in the stimulus package could help to build out clean energy as they did then, before getting scrapped when Republicans took control of the House in 2010. (While Solyndra, the most infamous of those loan recipients, failed, the program overall made a return on investment greater than those enjoyed by most venture capital funds.)

In a piece co-authored by Greg Carlock, author of a Green New Deal prospectus for the upstart think tank Data for Progress; and Andres Bernal, an adviser to Ocasio-Cortez; and Stephanie Kelton, former chief economist on the Senate Budget Committee, the writers explain, “When Congress authorizes spending, it sets off a sequence of actions. Federal agencies … enter into contracts and begin spending. As the checks go out, the government’s bank-- the Federal Reserve-- clears the payments by crediting the seller’s bank account with digital dollars. In other words, Congress can pass any budget it chooses, and our government already pays for everything by creating new money.”

A Green New Deal, moreover, “will actually help the economy by stimulating productivity, job growth and consumer spending, as government spending has often done,” Kelton, Bernal, and Carlock add. “In fact, a Green New Deal can create good-paying jobs while redressing economic and environmental inequities.”

...Needless to say, the Green New Deal faces an uphill battle on the Hill. Aside from complaints about feasibility, the pushback from other Democrats so far has been largely procedural, Weber says, citing a fear voiced by some House members that should the select committee be empowered to draft legislation, it would undermine the authority of other established committees. As he points out, the resolution outlines only that the committee be allowed to draft legislation, and wouldn’t pre-empt that legislation first going through another body before moving to a floor vote. Moreover, Weber added, “We actually do need a committee that goes beyond the very narrow focus of the existing ones. What we’re talking about is something that effects every aspect of society. A select committee that can have the purview over the issues that all of these existing committees and more is exactly the type of vehicle that Congress-- if it want to take climate change seriously-- should be creating.”

Eventually, support for the GreenNewDeal is going to be a make-it-or-break-it line in the sand. People like Alexandria, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ted Lieu, Ro Khanna and Joe Neguse are going to be remembered as some of the Members who got it started in the House, just as Bernie, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley and Brian Schatz did in the Senate. But, it's still early and we need all get our own members of Congress to understand how seriously we tale this and how seriously they'd better take it. Right now we're talking about heroes. How much longer before we're talking about enemies? Example: is anyone really supposed to believe Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, two senators who are being touted as "progressive" possible presidential candidates, are worthy of support when they're not on this thing yet? And where's Elizabeth Warren?

Will The New Congress Be Able To Accomplish Anything Substantive?

Is there anything the new Congress can do is a question many people are asking. As we saw earlier today, potential— if absurd— presidential candidate, putatively as a Democrat, Howard Schultz, the Starbucks guy, is worried that the Democratic Party is wandering too far left. He’s an idiot. Norman Solomon, in an essay for TruthOut, is far more on the mark. He notes that pundits and conservatives are urging Democrats away from popular policies that are embraced by most Americans, if not by the super-wealthy. “We should expect plenty of such advice during the months ahead as Democrats take control of the House for the first time in eight years,” he wrote. It may sound prudent to urge ‘affordable health care’ instead of Medicare for All, or ‘subsidies for community colleges’ instead of tuition-free public college. But such positions easily come across as wonky mush that offers no clear alternative to a status quo that played a role in driving populist anger into the arms of the right wing in the first place.”

One problem is that the conservative Democrats from the Republican wing of the party is exactly who the DCCC stocked the new Congress with. Many of the winners campaigned on “affordable healthcare,” for example, instead of on Medicare-for-All. Unfortunately, not many progressive were elected. The DCCC saw to that in candidate recruitment and candidate support. Plenty of Republican-lite careerists were elected. “When political campaigns are deeply authentic from the grassroots,” wrote Solomon, “they serve as compost to prepare the ground for future victories. In sharp contrast, there’s little left to build on after Election Day in the wake of top-down campaigns that promote moderate notions in response to extremely dire problems. While commonly applauded by mass media, centrism smothers the fires of grassroots excitement.” So where do we go from there?

Incantations about the need for so-called moderate policies do little to stimulate a big turnout from the Democratic base— and other voters— oriented to voting against Republican candidates if their opponents draw sharp contrasts between advocacy for economic justice and flackery for de facto oligarchy.

Surveys show that voters are hungry for genuinely progressive policies that have drawn little interest from mainstream media outlets. For instance, polling of the US public shows:

• 76 percent support higher taxes on the wealthy.
• 70 percent support Medicare for All.
• 59 percent support a $15 minimum wage.
• 60 percent support expanded tuition-free college.
• 69 percent oppose overturning Roe v. Wade.
• 65 percent support progressive criminal justice reform.
• 59 percent support stricter environmental regulation.

Yet such popular positions are routinely ignored or denigrated by elite political pros who warn that such programs are too far left for electoral success. The same kind of claims assumed that Bernie Sanders would never get beyond single digits in his 2016 presidential campaign.

The midterm election results have made Nancy Pelosi the likely next House speaker. Although habitually bashed by Fox News and other right-wing outlets as an ultra-liberal villain, Pelosi has declared allegiance to fiscal centrism and ongoing militarism that forecloses implementing a progressive political agenda.

In September, as House minority leader, Pelosi precluded any potential left-populist agenda by backing reinstatement of a “pay-go” rule to offset all new spending with tax increases or budget cuts. A former legislative director for three Democrats in Congress, Justin Talbot-Zorn, responded with an article on The Nation’s website pointing out that “bold progressivism and ‘pay-go’ fiscal conservatism are mutually exclusive.” He wrote: “The issues of America’s rising inequality and frayed social contract— including stagnant wages, unaffordable college, and exorbitant health care can only be fixed with major new investments.”

And challenges to Pelosi and coming from the far right of the Party, Blue Dogs with the worst of the New Dems. Congressional progressives seem to just twiddle their thumbs to see what will happen to them. Meanwhile, How about if Congress tries for some great policy that should be adoptable in a bipartisan fashion? Most Americans want big money out of politics. That would be a smart policy for the Democrats to pursue.

Voters overwhelmingly support reform that would include reducing the influence of big money in politics and requiring full disclosure of all money being raised and spent to influence elections. Backing for legislative action is cross-partisan with 85% of Democrats, 81% of independents, and even 78% of Republicans in support. This is something the new Congress could accomplish in a bipartisan way that voters would be really happy with— even if the big donors of both sides of the aisle, as well as certain party leaders from both sides of the aisle, would oppose.

Last week, Simone Pathé, writing for Roll Call reported that three-quarters of Democratic challengers in top races are rejecting corporate PAC money. Rejecting corporate PAC money is easy for a candidate, since they never get offered anyway. What happens when they’re a member with checks being waved under their nose-- either directly from lobbyists or indirectly from party leaders who routinely launder dirty money with a wink and a nod. (Example, anyone who has ever taken a contribution from Wasserman Schultz was taking money from Wall Street, the private prison industry, pay-day lenders, Big Sugar, etc. Hoyer gets his money from sources just as shady.) How will new member navigate that piece of the swamp? How many incumbents currently reject corporate money? I know Ro Khanna and Beto O’Rourke do, maybe a few more— and a few members from both parties reject corporate money from sources that have anything to do with the jurisdiction of the committees they serve on. But those are very rare exceptions.

Some of the new candidates who made the no corporate PAC pledge are, ironically, New Dems, a group within the party that is completely based on bundle dirty corporate cash, particularly from Wall Street, for their members. It’s not easy to imagine characters like Jason Crow (New Dem-CO), Abigail Spanberger (New Dem-VA), Anthony Brindisi (NRA-NY), Max Rose (New Dem-NY), Conor Lamb (New Dem-PA), Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MI) sticking to this long without a law forcing them too.

These candidates did get pushback from members of Congress— and some still encounter lobbyists who pressure them to go back on their pledges.

“I got a lot of angry phone calls from senior Democrats,” Slotkin said. Democratic elected officials told New Jersey’s Tom Malinowski his stance would make the campaign harder. Similarly, [Andy] Kim was told to consider all the resources he’d be giving up if he won and ran as an incumbent.

…[E]ven with so many candidates now rejecting PAC money of some kind, there’s still skepticism amongst some D.C. lobbyists and fundraisers, whose business model depends on incumbents taking the money… “This could really be a problem not this cycle, but next cycle when Democrats have a huge map to defend and a lot of candidates in competitive seats who are leaving a million dollars on the table,” said one Democratic lobbyist, who argued that rejecting corporate PAC cash, which is fully disclosed, shouldn’t necessarily be a priority for overhauling campaign finance.

…More than 100 Democratic candidates signed on to a letter last month “to put Congress on notice” and demand that leaders address the issue.

But any campaign finance overhaul is unlikely to become law with Republicans expected to hold on to the Senate and with Trump still in the White House.

Even if a proposal stalls in a divided Congress, candidates who have rejected corporate PAC money say they will keep their promises.

“There’s two options here. One is Max continues to maintain his federal lobbyist and corporate PAC pledge and contribute as a member of Congress,” Rose said. “Or two, Max Rose is no longer a member of Congress.”

It will be interesting to see how party leaders, who accrue and maintain power by their ability to raise immense amounts of money from the sewer, will de-rail this tendency— and have no, illusions… de-rail it they will… or die trying. Without the pay for play system, creeps like Steny Hoyer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Steve Scalise and Kevin McCarthy would be what, exactly? Back-benchers competing in a world of ideas where they have no footing whatsoever?

Is The Democratic Party The Party Of Medicare-For-All? Or The Party Of PAYGO?

PAYGO doesn't preclude impeachment, but it does preclude Medicare-for-All. There is virtually no support among Democratic voters for PAYGO... other than, perhaps, some of Pelosi's big donors. And yet... in her top 3 priorities if the Democrats win the House in November... PAYGO. But no Medicare for All. A majority of Democrats in the House have signed on as co-sponsors of Medicare-for-All-- even some New Dems and Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the party who represent overwhelmingly blue districts and knew they'd better (like Lou Correa, Vicente Gonzalez, Darren Soto, Adam Smith, Jim Cooper, Al Lawson, Adam Schiff, Sanford Bishop, Filemon Vela... even Joe Crowley). Despite warnings from the DCCC not to, lots of Democratic candidates are running on Medicare-for-All and here are a dozen campaigning on a platform that includes signing on as co-sponsors as soon as they are sworn in in January.

But Pelosi doesn't seem to get it. Or doesn't want to get it. She really needs to watch this week's Samantha Bee show. There's a short clip of part of it above that was made for Nancy. And a little Twitter snap poll from Friday morning:

Being more popular than Trump isn't enough. Democratic voters are starting to catch on to this whole lesser-of-two evils debacle and how it prevents progress for working families. Most Democratic voters are still willing to give the Democratic establishment the benefit of the doubt-- especially with a Trump looming over us-- but that isn't going to last for ever. And it's already starting to fray around the edges.

Very nice that an RNC poll shows Pelosi more popular than Trump among voters-- and even among independent voters... but PAYGO isn't the reason. This-- none of which is on Pelosi's to-do list-- is what voters say they want and what many of them expect from a Democratic victory in November:

And this is how voters feel about Medicare-For-All. As you can see, it's very popular-- more popular than any congressional leaders-- about as popular as Bernie. Are establishment Democrats like Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn out on the hustings campaigning on PAYGO? Trying to persuade voters it's a reason to vote for Democrats? Uhhh... no. Of course not. It would let all the air out of the balloon.

The RNC poll showed that "when the November election is framed by Trump and Pelosi... respondents prefer Pelosi-aligned candidates over Trump-aligned candidates by 5 points, 50 percent to 45 percent. Among independents only, Pelosi still prevails by a 4-point margin."