Month: January 2022

Famed political prognosticator Charlie Cook is notably bearish on the near-to-medium term prospects of the Democratic Party.

As this column noted three weeks ago, it might take either divine intervention or Republicans self-destructing to save the Democratic majority in the U.S House as that chamber reflects national trends much more than the more idiosyncratic Senate. But as we saw in the 1994, 2006, 2010, and 2014 midterms, the Senate can also reflect those same political fundamentals. While Democrats would certainly take divine intervention, they might ought to be praying for Republican self-destruction, whether in the form of Trump driving a wedge through his own party or that increasingly “Trumpy” Republicans replicate the behavior of the tea-party era GOP in 2010 and 2012, nominating unelectable candidates in key Senate races.

There is some good news to report, however, as the redistricting process has so far gone much better for the Democrats than anticipated. This is largely because the Republicans have been too aggressive in their gerrymandering, leading to some setbacks.

The Ohio map, which benefited Republicans, was struck down by the state Supreme Court for ignoring a stateconstitutional amendment against partisan gerrymandering. The Alabama map was invalidated by a federal court for violating the Voting Rights Act.

Meanwhile, in New York, the anti-gerrymandering movement suffered a major defeat that will potentially net three more seats in Congress for the Democrats. In 2014, New Yorkers pushed through a constitutional amendment creating a bipartisan redistricting commission, but it has come to nothing.

The commission was supposed to present a single map to the legislature that state lawmakers could adopt or reject. But, beset with its own partisan infighting, the commission did not come up with a unified map, instead submitting two maps, one drawn by the Democrats on the panel and another drawn by the Republicans. The commission’s drama effectively allowed state lawmakers to dismiss its work and create their own map…

…The map made public Sunday would result in lines that would give Democrats 22 seats to four Republican ones. The New York delegation is currently 19 Democratic seats to eight seats for Republicans. The state lost a seat because of slow growth over the past 10 years.

The map erases the upstate seat held by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R) and creates a deep blue district in the middle of the state.

The initial thought was that the Republicans could wipe out the Democrats’ 10-seat majority in the U.S. House of Representatives without the need of a money or messaging advantage, simply by having complete control of redistricting in more states. But it’s not looking good for them right now.

So far, in more than two dozen maps passed around the country, Democrats would net an additional five districts that Joe Biden would have won in 2020. The New York map, which is expected to be voted on this week and signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), would bring that up to eight seats.

Midterm elections typically go badly for the president’s party, so the Democrats would like a big cushion. They won’t have a big cushion but they’ll at least have a theoretical chance of holding onto the majority if they can keep control of enough Biden seats. That was very much in doubt when this process began.

As Cook points out, however, the more important action is in the Senate.

In the key Senate contests, every one of the six states that had the closest presidential margins in 2020 features a highly competitive Senate race this year. In fact, The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter has nine Senate seats in its three most competitive categories (Lean Democrat, Toss Up or Lean Republican). All nine were among the 12 closest states in the 2020 presidential…

…Should Republicans net more than one seat this fall and retake the chamber, Democrats will have a tall order to get it back in 2024. They’ll be defending 23 seats to the GOP’s 10. Of the 23, three are in states Trump carried: Jon Tester in Montana, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Joe Manchin in West Virginia. Another five come from states that Biden won by 5 points or less. None of the 10 GOP seats up are in Biden states and only one, Rick Scott in Florida, is in a state that Trump won by 5 points or less.

If you are like me, you may be disenchanted with our political system but prefer it to Nazi dictatorship. In that case, you might agree that the Senate races in places like New Hampshire, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona are of higher than historically average importance. You might want to carve out some time on your calendar to help out in those races. A fascist Senate joined with a fascist House will pave the way for a fascist president.

We can’t afford to wait on divine intervention.

I was a big admirer of Russ Feingold when he served Wisconsin in the United States Senate despite the fact that he had a tendency to vote for George W. Bush nominees I thought he should oppose. He was often alone, or nearly so, among Democrats in showing deference to the opposing president’s more controversial picks for the courts and administration. I had a grudging respect for that.

The parallel today is Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican who frequently joins with far more moderate members of his party to approve Democratic nominees. The trait stands out more with Graham because little else about his political career has remained static. He went from being John McCain’s wingman to Donald Trump’s chief apologist, and seems to move further to the far right with each passing month. But he’s still willing to vote for Biden’s nominees, and that will quite likely include Biden’s coming pick to replace Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court.

He’s even supportive of the broad goal of picking a black woman for the position, stating on Face the Nation Sunday, “In the history of our country, we’ve only had five women serve and two African American men. So let’s make the court more like America.” His support would be guaranteed if Biden chooses J. Michelle Childs, a graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law.

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday broke with several of his Republican colleagues by seemingly expressing support for President Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate the first-ever Black woman to the Supreme Court.

In an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Graham (R-S.C.) — a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — also appeared to endorse J. Michelle Childs, a U.S. District Court judge in his home state of South Carolina, for the seat held by the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.

I’m not sure why Graham stays consistent with this approach when he shifts in every other way, but I won’t complain. In general, I think qualified people should be approved by members of the opposing party. My main complaint with Republican nominees in recent decades is that they are frequently either lacking qualifications or have obvious ulterior motives for taking the position.  In some cases, the GOP is staffing departments with people who oppose the existence or core objectives of the organization they’ll lead. In those cases, I don’t think it’s proper to defer to the president.

As for Graham, he shows so little political courage that I can’t give him too much credit for sticking his neck out, but he’s bucking the affirmative action line, and I’m grateful for that.

Senate Republicans and conservative commentators have repeatedly criticized Biden for committing to selecting a Black woman to fill Breyer’s seat, with Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) suggesting in a local radio interview on Friday that whomever the president picks will be a “beneficiary” of affirmative action.

But Graham distanced himself from Wicker’s remarks on Sunday, saying, “Affirmative action is picking somebody not as well qualified for past wrongs. Michelle Childs is incredibly qualified. There is no affirmative action component if you pick her.”

Ironically, the rare moments when Graham acts like a reasonable and decent person just make me dislike him more because they reveal that he knows better and still chooses to behave like an impossible asshole most of the time. But I’ll give him limited credit where it’s due, as it is here.

These days there’s no shortage of stories like this one from Florida in the news.

Sixteen books have been removed from school library shelves after a local group determined they were “inappropriate” and contained “obscene material.”

This developed amid a “dramatic uptick” in challenges to books involving racial and LGBTQ issues, according to the American Library Association.

The books include The Kite Runner, written by an author from Afghanistan, and two books written by Toni Morrison, an acclaimed African-American author.

That is a classic case of book banning.

But the big story from this week is the one about a school district in Tennessee.

A Pulitzer-Prize winning graphic novel about the Holocaust has been banned by a Tennessee school district, prompting blowback from critics who say it’s essential to teach children about the genocide.

The 10-member McMinn County School Board voted unanimously earlier this month to remove Maus from its curriculum and replace it with an alternative, which hadn’t been decided at the time of the vote.

While we should challenge this decision on its merits, the question that needs to be asked is whether removing a book from a school’s curriculum is the same as banning a book. It clearly isn’t.

Teachers and schools must upgrade the material used in their curriculums all the time. That is especially true when it comes to teaching children about race and gender. If you doubt that, just take a look at what Garrett Epps wrote about what he was taught growing up in Virginia schools.

Just as the McMinn County School Board was removing “Maus” from their curriculum, the Mukilteo School District in Washington was removing “To Kill a Mockingbird” from theirs.

Late Monday, the school board voted unanimously that “To Kill a Mockingbird” should not be mandatory reading for ninth graders…

It is the first time in about 25 years a request was made to the board to remove a book from the curriculum. High school English teachers Verena Kuzmany, Riley Gaggero and Rachel Johnson asked for the removal in September, citing the novel “celebrates white saviorhood,” “marginalizes characters of color” and “uses the ‘n’ word almost 50 times.”

Here’s where context matters. In the Mukilteo School District, each grade has one book that is required reading. For 9th graders, that book has been “To Kill a Mockingbird.” But it’s time for an update. Similar actions on that particular book have been taken from Burbank, California to Biloxi, Mississippi. In none of those school districts has “To Kill a Mockingbird” been banned (ie, removed from the library) and in most places it is still on approved lists for teachers to use. It is simply no longer required reading for every student.

Burbank Superintendant Matt Hill asked the pertinent questions: “Do we have books that represent, not just white authors, or do we have people of color authors of multiple races and backgrounds? Do we have a diverse set of books that our students can access?” Those are the kinds of adjustments schools have been in the process of making – ensuring that students get exposed to a diversity of authors. There is no shortage of classics that fit that description.

If we aren’t clear that these kinds of updates or changes to curriculum are very different from attempts to actually ban books, we confuse the issue and open the door to bothsiderism, ie, both liberals and conservatives want to ban books. That would be a lie.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Sedona, Arizona scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have now painted over my pencil sketch. Preliminary paint layers have been added to all various elements of the scene. More to come next week.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

In the history of this country, it wasn’t until 1967 that someone other than a white male served on the Supreme Court. That was the year that LBJ nominated Thurgood Marshall. But it wasn’t until 1981 that Reagan nominated the first woman, Sandra Day O’Connor, to serve. All told, of the 115 justices who have served on the court, 108 have been white males.

That puts to lie a recent statement by Jonathan Turley in response to President Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman. From 1790 to 1967, every member of the Supreme Court was selected “initially through an exclusionary criteria of race and sex.” The quiet part that no one said out loud was that the nominee must be a white male, excluding all women and people of color.

Folks lighting their hair on fire over Biden’s promise seem to have forgotten that, in 1980, Ronald Reagan promised to nominate a woman. Then, when Justice Ginsburg died, Trump promised to do the same. Funny that none of these right wingers ever accused them of using “an exclusionary criteria.”

The truth is that it has always been Republicans who play “identity politics.” In doing so, even when they nominate a woman or person of color, they tend to prioritize the person’s gender or race over everything else. Because of that, they project those intentions onto Democrats. But President Biden has made his own criteria very clear.

The person I nominate to replace Justice Breyer will be someone with extraordinary qualifications. Character, experience, and integrity.

And they will be the first Black woman nominated to the United States Supreme Court.

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 27, 2022

Character, experience, and integrity are the priorities. But for the person he choses, those qualities will have been forged through the lens of what it means to be a Black woman in this country today.

We learned what that meant when former President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court. You might remember that Republicans went a bit ballistic about the time she referred to herself as a “wise Latina.” Here’s what she actually said:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life…

Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar…

Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion…I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.

Republicans claimed that those remarks made Sotomayor unqualified to serve because she wouldn’t approach her duties objectively. But they completely ignored the fact that Justice Samuel Alito basically said the same thing during his confirmation hearings.

I tried to in my opening statement, I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point…

And that’s why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let’s say, someone who is an immigrant — and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases — I can’t help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn’t that long ago when they were in that position…

[W]hen I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, “You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country.”

When I have cases involving children, I can’t help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that’s before me.

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who’s been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I’ve known and admire very greatly who’ve had disabilities, and I’ve watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn’t think of what it’s doing — the barriers that it puts up to them.

So those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person.

No one questioned whether any of that would hinder Alito’s ability to be objective. That is because the experience of being a white man in this country is considered normative – just as it had been normative to nominate white men to serve on the Supreme Court. As women and people of color rise to positions of power in this country, those norms are being brought out into the open and challenged.

While I don’t agree with Justice Alito about much of anything, I value his experience of coming from an immigrant family and being a father – just as I value Justice Sotomayor’s experience of being a Puerto Rican woman raised in the Bronx. But only Sotomayor’s experience challenges the status quo, which is why Republicans threw a fit about her remarks.

I suspect that these reactions to Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman are just the beginning of what will be an ugly process of confirmation. In some ways, I don’t envy the person he choses. But then, as a Black woman in this country, it is very likely that she will have experienced all of that before. If Sotomayor is any precedent, that will at least be part of why she will make such an exemplary Supreme Court justice.

The case of Willie Stokes is about as egregious as you can imagine. In 1984, a murder took place during a dice game. The Philadelphia police offered Franklin Lee sex and drugs to falsely testify that Stokes committed the homicide. Lee obliged at Stokes’ preliminary hearing but then had a pang of conscience and recanted at the actual murder trial.

Nonetheless, the jury convicted Stokes. Thereafter, Lee was prosecuted for perjury at the preliminary hearing, but Stokes was never informed of this. He spent 37 years in prison based on the testimony of a convicted perjurer who didn’t even stand by his testimony. Stokes rotted in prison for decades not realizing that he had a solid case for having his conviction thrown out.

“I didn’t believe it,” Stokes said in a telephone interview. “I didn’t believe that they would let something like that happen — that they knew, and they didn’t tell me.”

Stokes was only released in early January and is now living with his mother. He daughter was 2 years old when he went to prison, and she died at 22, Stokes wasn’t allowed to attend her funeral. Now he’s suing the Philadelphia police department, and I hope he gets a big settlement. The detectives responsible for setting him up are deceased, but two of the prosecutors are alive. One isn’t answering questions and the other says he doesn’t remember the case.

Criminal lawyer Michael Diamondstein, who handled his successful federal court appeal, called the actions of police and prosecutors in the case outrageous.

“They used perjured evidence to convict him and then charged the perjurer, and never told him. And then Willie was warehoused for 38 years,” Diamondstein said

In his view, the official misconduct stemmed from “institutional racism, or pure bias.”

“The cases needed to be closed. The inner city minority were interchangeable, as long as you had someone in the defendant’s chair,” he said.

Simple justice demands that the people who knowingly conspired to frame Stokes should do at least 37 or 38 years in prison, and if that is effectively a life sentence, that’s just too bad. But all that’s on the table right now is a big financial reward which could never compensate Stokes for what he lost.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has championed about two dozen exoneration cases. A supervisor in his office, Matthew Stiegler, said Thursday the office agreed with the federal judge who found that Stokes’ constitutional rights were egregiously violated.

There’s a reason progressives fought to elect District Attorney Krasner. Philadelphia desperately needed a culture change.

Hi photo lovers.

I call this one The Night Before the Storm. We’d get a snowstorm the starting not too long after I took that photo. It ended up being a good deal more of a storm than the “light dusting of snow” that was initially forecast for my area. The evening sky looked lovely, and I liked how this almost comes across as a black-and-white photo. January is always a difficult month for me, for reasons I’ll keep to myself. Every once in a while I’ll photograph a scene that redeems the month.

I am still using my same equipment, and am no professional. If you are an avid photographer, regardless of your skills and professional experience, you are in good company here. Booman Tribune was blessed with very talented photographers in the past. At Progress Pond, we seem to have a few talented photographers now, a few of whom seem to be lurking I suppose.

I have been using an LG v40 ThinQ for just al little over three years. My original is gone. The back of the phone came off. Apparently the battery began to burst. I am using a replacement (thanks to insurance) that is identical. I need more time to research smart phones, especially at the high end. I prefer to get a device and keep it for four or five years. Most of my family seems to be gravitating toward iPhones, so I suspect I may eventually have to succumb and go to the Dark Side of The Force. In pandemic environment filled with uncertainty, my default is to avoid major purchases for as long as possible. So, unless something really goes wrong with my current phone, I’ll stick to the status quo for as long as possible. Keep in mind that my last Samsung kept going for over four years (the last year was a bit touch and go). Once I do have to make a new smart phone purchase, the camera feature is the one I consider most important. So any advice on such matters is always appreciated. Occasionally I get to use my old 35 mm, but one of my daughters seems to have commandeered it. So it goes.

This series of posts is in honor of a number of our ancestors. At one point, there were some seriously great photographers who graced Booman Tribune with their work. They are all now long gone. I am the one who carries the torch. I keep this going because I know that one day I too will be gone, and I really want the work that was started long ago to continue, rather than fade away with me. If I see that I am able to incite a few others to fill posts like these with photos, then I will be truly grateful. In the meantime, enjoy the photos, and I am sure between Booman and myself we can pass along quite a bit of knowledge about the photo flog series from its inception back during the Booman Tribune days.

Since this post usually runs only a day, I will likely keep it up for a while. Please share your work. I am convinced that us amateurs are extremely talented. You will get nothing but love and support here. I mean that. Also, when I say that you don’t have to be a photography pro, I mean that as well. I am an amateur. This is my hobby. This is my passion. I keep these posts going only because they are a passion. If they were not, I would have given up a long time ago. My preference is to never give up.

It’s rare that I agree with Jonathan Turley about anything, but I accept his broad point that Joe Biden probably shouldn’t have promised as a candidate for the Democratic nomination to exclusively consider a black woman for his first appointment to the Supreme Court. There was no need to make the promise so ironclad, and it would have been better to leave some wiggle room. Turley spells out some of the advantages of being a little more equivocal, as Ronald Reagan was when he basically promised to put a woman on the high court when he was a candidate in 1980. I find his arguments persuasive.

But I also don’t see it as particularly important.  One advantage is that Biden made a binding commitment and was honest about his intentions. That allowed the voters to make an informed decision, and that’s a plus. It also had the benefit of saving us from the kabuki dance of pretending to be openminded about other candidates. We’ve seen this countless times in sports, where a team will interview black applicants for head coaching or general manager jobs just to check a box, even though they know they’ll be filling the position with someone white. In the NFL, this practice is codified as the Rooney Rule, and while it is well-intentioned it can be painful to watch in practice.

Adopted in 2003, the Rooney Rule is an NFL policy requiring every team with a head coaching vacancy to interview at least one or more diverse candidates. In 2009, the Rooney Rule was expanded to include general manager jobs and equivalent front office positions. The Rooney Rule is named after the late former Pittsburgh Steelers owner and chairman of the league’s diversity committee, Dan Rooney.

As you can imagine, this results in countless interviews for candidates who have absolutely no chance of getting the position, if for no other reason that the decision to hire someone else has already been made. Maybe this is an unseemly price to pay for actually having a bit more diversity at the end of the process, but it’s pretty gruesome in the way it provides false hope and wastes people’s time with token interviews.

When it comes to replacing Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, Biden could emulate Reagan who pretended to consider several men for appearance’s sake, but actually had every intention of keeping his campaign promise by appointing Sandra Day O’Connor. But Biden probably will provide a short list of candidates that includes exclusively black women, precisely because he also intends to keep his campaign promise.

It would be better to treat any major job opening in the federal government as at least theoretically open to all, regardless of race or gender, but let’s not pretend that honesty doesn’t have its merits. If you’re going to hire based on race or gender (or both), is it really better to pretend otherwise?

As a political matter, this will become another white grievance talking point for the Republicans, and it could have been done in a way where there was less saliency to their argument. But it’s really a pretty minor issue in the bigger picture. On the merits, I can make a case that it’s better not to pretend.

Who wants to get a fake interview with the president for a position on the Supreme Court just so people like Turley will have less to bitch about?

I’m not going to pretend the know what Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions are in Ukraine. But there was at least one portion of the Steele dossier that captured the overall goal of his efforts to influence the 2016 election.

[The Trump operation’s] aim was to sow discord and disunity within the U.S. itself, but more especially within the Transatlantic alliance which was viewed as inimical to Russia’s interests. Source C, a senior Russian financial official, said the Trump operation should be seen in terms of Putin’s desire to return to Nineteenth Century “Great Power” politics anchored upon country’s interests rather than the ideals-based international order established after World War II.

That is why, when Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, the Obama administration pointed this out:

“What we see here are distinctly 19th- and 20th-century decisions made by President Putin to address problems, deploying military forces rather than negotiating,” says a senior administration official, speaking on background. “But what he needs to understand is that in terms of his economy, he lives in the 21st-century world, an interdependent world.”

During a speech in Brussels not long after the invasion of Ukraine, President Obama outlined the conflict.

Throughout human history, societies have grappled with fundamental questions of how to organize themselves, the proper relationship between the individual and the state, the best means to resolve inevitable conflicts between states. And it was here in Europe, through centuries of struggle — through war and Enlightenment, repression and revolution — that a particular set of ideals began to emerge: The belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose. The belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed, and that laws and institutions should be established to protect that understanding…

It is in response to this tragic history [of two world wars] that, in the aftermath of World War II, America joined with Europe to reject the darker forces of the past and build a new architecture of peace. Workers and engineers gave life to the Marshall Plan. Sentinels stood vigilant in a NATO Alliance that would become the strongest the world has ever known. And across the Atlantic, we embraced a shared vision of Europe — a vision based on representative democracy, individual rights, and a belief that nations can meet the interests of their citizens through trade and open markets; a social safety net and respect for those of different faiths and backgrounds…

So I come here today to insist that we must never take for granted the progress that has been won here in Europe and advanced around the world, because the contest of ideas continues for your generation. And that’s what’s at stake in Ukraine today. Russia’s leadership is challenging truths that only a few weeks ago seemed self-evident — that in the 21st century, the borders of Europe cannot be redrawn with force, that international law matters, that people and nations can make their own decisions about their future.

As our democracy is challenged here at home, it should come as no surprise to any of us that right wingers are lining up in support of Putin’s 19th century politics. Taking the lead on that is, of course, Tucker Carlson. He has asked why it is disloyal to side with Russia but loyal to side with Ukraine and told blatant lies about NATO – suggesting that they are some kind of occupying military force. That has made him quite the hero of state-controlled Russian TV.

But this support for Putin’s world view goes way beyond Tucker Carlson’s fandom. In a recent YouGov poll, 62 percent of Republicans said that Putin is a stronger leader than Biden. Back in 2014, Franklin Graham praised the Russian president for his crack-down on gay rights and wrote that Putin was preferable to then-President Obama, while Pat Buchanan declared that Putin is “one of us” when it comes to fighting the culture wars. Ja’han Jones documented the fondness one group of Trump supporters feel for Putin.

Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke once called Russia, a majority white, Slavic country that frequently opposes the increasingly diverse European Union, the “key to white survival.”White supremacist leader Richard Spencer hailed Russia as the “sole white power in the world” in 2016.

None of that came about by accident. For years, Putin has been courting the groups that make up the current base of the Republican Party: white nationalists, Christian nationalists, and gun rights groups. Putin not only sent his own emissary to a white nationalist meeting in Hungary in 2014, he actually hosted one in St. Petersburg a year later.

Casey Michael documented how Russia became the global leader of the Christian right. That is quite an about-face from the days when the Soviet Union was seen as a threat by these same groups for their spread of “godless communism.” But Putin has been working on that transformation for a while now, starting with his embrace of the Russian Orthodox Church. His rhetoric about the West shifted as well.

“We can see how many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilization,” he said at a conference in 2013. “They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious, and even sexual … They are implementing policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan.” By succumbing to secularism, he noted on another occasion, the West was trending toward “chaotic darkness” and a “return to a primitive state.”

Finally, Denise Clifton and Mark Follman put together an excellent timeline of how ties between Russia and the NRA developed over the years. A Tennessee lawyer named G. Kline Preston first introduced David Keene, then the NRA’s president, to a Russian senator, Alexander Torshin in 2011. Bringing together the overlap between white nationalists, Christian nationalists, and gun rights groups, Preston once said that “the value system of Southern Christians and the value system of Russians are very much in line…we’re very similar people, in a lot of our values, our interests and that sort of thing.” Of course, unsaid is the fact that when Preston refers to “Southern Christians,” he’s actually talking about Southern White Christians.

The one thing we can take from all of this is that, as Putin ratchets up the pressure on Ukraine and Biden uses 21st Century diplomacy to  ease tensions, the MAGA crowd will take the side of a foreign dictator over our own president. That will only empower Putin, whose goal has always been to “sow discord and disunity within the U.S.”

Setting aside the possibility that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is one of the rare politicians who takes contrary position purely out of principle, it seems clear that she’s modeling herself as a maverick in the same vein as former Arizona senator John McCain. That’s her brand– or theory for how she’ll get reelected, and it might not be delusional if she can somehow survive a primary from her left and get to a general election.

In that sense, she probably welcomes the decision by the Arizona Democratic Party to censure her for opposing changes in the U.S. Senate’s filibuster rule. It inoculates her thoroughly against any future charge that she’s too tied to the national party and give her a wide berth to run in the middle. Whether our hyper partisan age has an appetite for candidates with crossover appeal is debatable, but Sinema will be a test case.

But she’s not on the ballot this year. That distinction goes to her Democratic colleague, freshman senator Mark Kelly. Kelly voted to eliminate the legislative filibuster, at least for the limited purpose of passing voting rights legislation, and he has decided to defend Sinema by criticizing the censure. It’s really a professional courtesy, especially after Sinema promised to do everything she can to help win reelection. Political analyst Larry Sabato says that Sinema did Kelly no favors by opposing the filibuster change since it makes it easier for the right to cast him as a far-left radical. That theory will be tested, too.

I’m generally not a fan of purity tests and censure votes, and Sinema’s ostracism comes will several risks, including the potential for her to simply switch parties and throw power in the Senate to the Republicans and Mitch McConnell. Yet, in this case, I can see some value in using Sinema as an example. The idea isn’t so much that censuring Sinema will directly result in anything beneficial, but more that other Democrats will have some fear of backing the filibuster in the future.

Essentially, the existence of the filibuster can be translated to “Democrats can never have nice things, no matter how hard they try.” And that can’t stand or the party will have no purpose, no prospects, and eventually not much support. Sinema’s position on the filibuster has some merit in the abstract and I’ve made similar arguments in the past, but it can’t stand in the present.

If I were Kelly, I’d criticize the censure, too, but I still disagree with what he’s saying. I won’t attack him for it because he’s being strategic and collegial, but he’d be better off having a colleague willing to help his party achieve more successes and keep more promises. That’s his best avenue to reelection, and I suspect Sinema will discover the same was true for her.