Plus, an artist diminished by biography, and more…
View this email in your browser
Tuesday
December 21, 2021
Hello there,

Here’s the latest state of play on the Joe Manchin front. Politico broke the news Monday afternoon that Manchin and Joe Biden spoke Sunday night, and it was a decent conversation. We’ve also learned from various sources the details of what was in Manchin’s $1.8 trillion offer that he put on the table last week, and it’s not bad at all, really: rescind the Trump tax cuts; fully fund universal pre-K for 10 years; expand Obamacare; and, most pleasantly surprising of all, invest hundreds of millions in anti–climate change policies. On the downside, no paid family leave and no child tax credit (or Oxy Bonus, as Manchin seems to think of it). So it backs away from some key priorities that other Democrats desperately want in there, but it fully funds what is in there instead of letting things expire in two years. Jonathan Chait of New York magazine wrote, not unpersuasively, that Biden should take that deal right now. (Some others were more skeptical.)

But it’s all a little more complicated than that. Manchin wants the legislation to go through the normal committee process, which really slows things down. Also, Kyrsten Sinema says she’s against rescinding the 2017 tax cuts, which raises the prospect that, come next year, Manchin might be back on board the, er, yacht, and it’ll be Sinema who’ll be the pain in the ass co-president.

But hey—it’s progress, of a sort. Number one, we see that Manchin is indeed a Democrat, after a fashion anyway. The things in his $1.8 trillion offer are things that no Republican in Washington would support. And number two, it makes the weekend blowup seem like a married couple’s fight where they say things they don’t really mean and then come back and patch things up. Maybe.

Related: Read up on Mitt Romney’s family tax credit plan. It would give joint filers with incomes up to $400,000 (which is all but about 1.5 percent of households) $350 a month per child up to age 5 and $250 a month per child age 6 to 17. It’s a good idea! And because it’s from Mittens, it might attract a smattering of Republican support. Now, the way Manchin talks, he’d probably want to means-test it more strictly, but these are things that can be negotiated. This may be part of the mix next year.

On the virus front, Biden will speak this afternoon, laying out some new steps with respect to testing and more federal aid to hospitals. The plan includes deploying 1,000 doctors and nurses to hot spots around the country and moving masks, ventilators, and other equipment out of stockpile and onto the front lines. He’s doing what he can in a country where a former vice presidential candidate said she’d get vaccinated “over my dead body” and where even Donald Trump gets booed for saying he got his booster. 

Trump’s remarks are worth a paragraph. He also said that “we” (he and his audience, his tribe) had saved “tens of millions” of lives. Well … yes, the Trump administration paid hundreds of millions of dollars to Moderna and Pfizer to develop a vaccine fast, and that was great, and that is his one actual and unambiguous accomplishment as president. But at the beginning, he panicked and dithered and lied and cost tens of thousands of lives. And no, the vaccine hasn’t saved “tens of millions” of lives. There were around 385,000 deaths in the United States from the coronavirus in 2020. So there have actually been more deaths in 2021, when we had the vaccine. Any scenario where “tens of millions” would have died this year without the vaccine is completely impossible. I know it’s not news that Trump lied, but he’s going to run for president again, and he’s going to say this and say it and say it, and it has to be called out.

Today at NewRepublic.com, we’ve launched our year-end series, “What Now?” looking at where the country goes from here. Liza Featherstone ruminates on the generational divide on climate activism, as we zero in on all those potentially fraught family Christmas dinners. Felipe De La Hoz analyzes how immigration reform collapsed. Alex Shephard argues that it’s, um, high time for Biden to legalize pot nationally. And there is my own advice to Potus to take up the fight against monopoly power and go down in history as a trustbuster.

Thanks for reading,
—Michael Tomasky, editor
Support Our Journalists
Every day, our journalists are exposing the right’s assaults on our democracy—and pushing the Democrats to go bold to preserve the republic. Here’s a special offer from The New Republic so you won’t miss their scoops and sharp analysis.
—Michael Tomasky, editor
Try 1 year of The New Republic for just $10
Morning quiz:
Yesterday’s political history question: Speaking of Robert Todd Lincoln, there’s one fact from his life that’s even more mind-blowing than his proximity to multiple presidential assassinations. He was once saved from injury or possible death on a train platform in New Jersey by the brother of someone whom fate would connect to the Lincoln name for all time. Who were these brothers?

Answer:
Yes, Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes Booth, probably saved Robert Todd Lincoln’s life in either late 1863 or early 1864. Edwin was John Wilkes’s older brother and also a famous actor. Edwin did not, fortunately, share his brother’s reactionary politics.

Yesterday’s Christmas question:
It’s an Italian tradition that on Christmas Eve, seafood is served, and is served in that Italian way, to excess (it’s OK—I’m half Italian!). It’s called the Feast of the __ Fishes, the blank being a number. How many fish dishes are traditionally served?

Answer:
It’s the Feast of the Seven Fishes. The tradition comes from southern Italy, where it is known as the Vigil (that is, waiting for the virgin birth). You can serve any fish you want, but one dish in particular, fried smelts, is close to mandatory. Whole Foods got wise to this a few years ago and started stocking fileted smelts in time for the feast.

Today’s political question:
As we await the president’s remarks this afternoon, I peruse the list of vaccination rates by state. Of the top 20, 19 are blue states. What is the one red state in the top 20, and where does it rank nationally? You will be surprised. 

Today’s holiday season/sports question: On Christmas Day in 1971, the longest game in NFL history was played. The game went into two overtimes—that is, it ended with 7:20 left on the clock in the sixth quarter, delaying Christmas dinners across America (including at the Tomasky household). What two teams played in this game (a first-round playoff game, incidentally)? Who was the Hall of Fame placekicker who missed three field goals that day (one of them, in the first overtime, blocked; another sailed wide right with :35 remaining in regulation), causing his team to lose? And who was the non–Hall of Fame kicker who won the game with a 37-yarder?
Today’s must reads:
This year isn’t ending the way Democrats had hoped. But there’s a way the president can transform Americans’ lives without Congress’s help: bust up monopolies.
by Michael Tomasky
Biden needs to ditch his old-fashioned ideas about marijuana and realize that legalization is a winning bipartisan issue—something he desperately needs in 2022.
by Alex Shephard
Democrats may whittle down Biden’s social spending bill to win the West Virginia senator’s support.
by Grace Segers
Biographers get distracted by the photographer’s unusual life story—to the point of diminishing her work itself.
by Jeremy Lybarger
The Build Back Better Act was probably the last best chance for immigration reform for a long time. And even that didn’t offer much.
by Felipe De La Hoz
How one 90-year ecological mystery reveals the complexities of conservation—and the problems with the “endangered species” approach.
by Marion Renault
Democrats from the president on down are furious at the senator. Unfortunately, though, they still need his vote, and they know it.
by Daniel Strauss

Advertising

Sign up for more TNR Newsletters
Donate to TNR
 

Update your personal preferences for [email protected] by clicking here. 

Copyright © 2021 The New Republic, All rights reserved.


Do you want to stop receiving all emails from TNR? Unsubscribe from this list. If you stopped getting TNR emails, update your profile to resume receiving them.