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The last push for Pennsylvania
Welcome back to our new daily feature, Midterm Matters, where we pick a red-hot US midterms story and separate the signal (what you need to know) from the noise (what everyone is yelling about).
In the final stretch of the midterm race, Democrats and Republicans are pushing hard in Pennsylvania. On the blue side, President Joe Biden and his old boss Barack Obama will hold an event in Philadelphia on Saturday in a bid to get out the vote amid fears that turnout could lag, particularly among communities of color.
Meanwhile, on team red, former President Donald Trump will also make a stop in southwest Pennsylvania over the weekend to campaign for Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, as well as state Senator Doug Mastriano, who’s trailing Democrat Josh Shapiro in the race for governor.
Why Pennsylvania? Well, it’s one of just a few states – along with Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona – that will determine which party controls the Senate. Democrat John Fetterman currently leads Oz by a smidge, but Fetterman, whose health woes have become a central electoral issue, was leading his opponent by six percentage points just a month ago. Indeed, Democrats are rightfully concerned about their prospects in the state.
It’s also one of the very few opportunities Dems have this cycle to flip a Senate seat as opposed to playing defense.
In recent weeks, Obama, who remains extremely popular in the Democratic Party, has made stops in other crucial swing states like Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. We’ll know in just a few days whether it’ll make a difference …
George Floyd Police Reform Bill unlikely to pass Senate
Jon Lieber, Managing Director of the United States for the Eurasia Group, shares his insights on US politics:
With the conviction of Derek Chauvin, will there be a George Floyd Policing Reform Bill?
Unlikely right now. It's possible, but there's a big divide between Republicans and Democrats over the issue of eliminating qualified immunity. Democrats want to get rid of it. Republicans want to keep it in order to make sure that cops aren't exposed to too much liability while they're on the job. And to get anything done in the Senate, you need 60 votes, which would, of course, require 10 Republicans. So, conversations are likely to be ongoing, but this issue went nowhere during the Trump administration because both sides decided they wanted something, to make something political out of it, and I don't think that much is going to change now.
Why did President Biden flip-flop on the refugee cap?
President Biden promised during the campaign that he would lift President Trump's refugee cap from 15,000 to its old level of 65,000. But with a surging migrant crisis on the southern border, Biden decided this wasn't a priority and changed his mind a little bit on undoing the refugee cap. The administration announced this last Friday and there was a lot of pushback from migrant and refugee advocates against them for doing so. They later that evening flip-flopped again and said that sometime in May they were going to announce a new policy that would satisfy most of their allies on the left. But the issue of the border is still a big one for President Biden, one that's been dormant for quite some time. But with a surging number of children in particular rising on the southern border, it's not going to go away.
Will Washington, DC become the 51st state?
I'm standing here on a street corner in DC and I think the answer is probably also unlikely. And the reason is similar to the George Floyd Bill, that you cannot get 60 votes in the Senate to pass this. You'd have to eliminate the filibuster and even if you did that, it's unclear today if there are 50 Democrats in the Senate who would favor doing so. The House has now passed the bill multiple times to make DC a state, but the outlook in the Senate is just not that good. Stay tuned, because this is going to be a really important political issue throughout the year, especially as the Democrats look at the likelihood they might lose the House of Representatives next year.
GameStop stock rally gives policymakers opportunity for legislation
Jon Lieber, who leads Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, offers insights on US politics:
First question. Stonks! Will the GameStop stock rally result in new regulation on Wall Street?
The answer is probably, but the interesting thing is, we have no idea what form that regulation might take. The interesting thing about this storyline around GameStop is that the run-up in prices, driven by social media chatter on Reddit, against hedge funds who had shorted the stock, opens up a whole can of worms for how you want to solve the issue, and is most likely going to be an outlet for members of Congress preexisting biases. If you want to regulate hedge funds, well, here's an excuse to do so. If you want to implement a financial transaction tax, this is your opportunity. If you're concerned about consumer protection, data privacy, this could be a hook to get into those issues as well. So, this is a headline grabbing event that's probably going to fade out of the news in a week or so, but it's going to stay relevant to policymakers for several more months, could potentially result in new legislation, or new regulation from the SEC based around investor protection and market structure. So, stay tuned. We're going to be hearing about GameStop for a long time.
Second question. What is the future for the legislative filibuster?
Well, as part of the Senate's organizing resolutions, two Democratic senators made public commitments that they were not going to vote to change the legislative filibuster. This is the 60-vote threshold in the Senate to pass legislation. With 50 Democratic members in the Senate, you need all 50 to agree to change the rules. They only have 48 votes right now at the most. This means it's probably not going to happen. Now, these two senators could change their mind down the road, Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, Joe Manchin, from West Virginia. There's probably a handful of other senators who also oppose changing the rules but haven't done so publicly. The other thing they could do is pass legislation using the reconciliation process, which has guard rails around it that limited to only budget and tax legislation, but change the rules of the reconciliation process, to supercharge their ability to pass legislation with only 50 votes without changing the legislative filibuster. Something to keep an eye on, we expect at least two big pieces of legislation this year to pass through the reconciliation process, giving multiple opportunities to try to change those rules and erode the norms around reconciliation.
Ending the filibuster: Senator Chris Coons' changed views & a Biden administration
In a new interview with Ian Bremmer for GZERO World, Delaware Senator Chris Coons, once an ardent defender of the filibuster, explains why he's had a change of heart on the procedural policy. The filibuster prevents a simple majority from passing legislation in the Senate, and has been a tool that Coons says allowed Sen. Mitch McConnell, then Minority Leader, to "use the power of the minority to thwart the Obama Administration's agenda." Coons says, should VP Biden win the 2020 election, "I'm not willing to sit by for four years and watch an entire administration lose the opportunity to make real change."