Alexandra Erin Profile picture
Nov 27, 2017 14 tweets 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
So, babies. Here's the deal with the #GOPTaxPlan.

Tomorrow is "mark-up and debate". This means it, having cleared committee, comes to the Senate floor and Senators can talk about their problems with it and put forth amendments to fix it.
Expect the two GOP Senators who have said they won't vote for it "in its current form" to either propose amendments or be the obvious target of lip service pandering amendments, maybe both.

"Won't vote for it in its current form" is not a commitment to #VoteNo.
That's not to say their wavering means nothing! It's an early indication of the impact of our resistance and the widespread unpopularity of the bill itself. When they waver, it's not time to let up but time to double down. Ramp up the pressure.
Mitch McConnell hopes to vote on this bill THIS THURSDAY, which means whatever amendments get added to it in the next couple days won't be scored by anybody or analyzed in any way.

Once again, they are trying to ram a bad bill through into law so fast no one notices.
If the Senate passes this bill, then one of two things happens.

One, the normal thing, is that the House and the Senate have a joint committee hash out the differences between their two bills and then the compromise version goes back to the floor for a straight up and down vote
The other thing is that Paul Ryan, behind the cue ball and desperate to close out the legislative year being able to say Hey, Congress Did Something, just takes the Senate bill straight to the house floor and has his Republicans vote yes on it.

If that happens?

Game over.
So if the next two days go the GOP's way, they will vote for their scam of a tax bill on Thursday, and if they bring it to a vote the odds are very high they will pass it.
And once they have passed it in the Senate, we're basically out of chances to block it. It *could* still die in the joint committee or not be passed by one of the two houses, if they bother with the committee.

But don't count on it.
I've been saying we have to treat this as TrumpCare version X, because that's where it's leading anyway. We stop it in the Senate like we stopped it the other times, or we're going to be weathering the damage and trying to roll back the changes for a long time.
There are a lot of things going on right now, as there usually are. Net Neutrality and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are under fire by this regime. There's the Alabama special election.

There's also the holidays. In spite of everything else, that's still happening.
But if it seems like too much is happening at once on our end of the stick, remember that from their point of view, the GOP in Congress are the ones who've been racked up on the other side of the cue ball.
I'm not telling you this so you'll feel some kind of sympathy for them.

Nope. Exactly the opposite.

I'm telling you this to remind you to show them no mercy. Give them no quarter. No respite. No space to breathe. Not one inch. Not one breath. Not one moment's rest.
They thought they were going to waltz into DC and make all their venal, stunted little dreams come true. No more ObamaCare. No more Medicare. No more care. They thought they could pass whatever they wanted and their special guest star in the White House would rubber stamp it.
Instead he has proven to be a millstone around the neck of a dead albatross that's hanging around their necks, and they have been mired in controversy, conflict, and blame fatigue.

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More from @AlexandraErin

Oct 8, 2018
So, electric kettles. Let me see if I can't convert some other white US-born people over.

Here are some reasons:

1. You can set specific temperatures, not just heat things to a boil. Get closer to the ideal temperature for your tea, spend less time waiting for it to cool.
2. If you need boiling water to pour into or over something, not just like a single serving for instant whatever, you've got it in a nice kettle with a spout and an insulated handle.
3. You never have that thing where surface tension has stopped the water from actually boiling even though it's at temperature, and when you move it and disturb the water it explodes all over your hand (Google it, if you don't know this thing.)
Read 10 tweets
Oct 8, 2018
Twitter's specific policy on Dehumanizing Speech is better than I had feared; it's more specific, covering only comparisons to animals (vermin, pests) or tools for a specific purpose. You can give feedback here. Mine focused on implementation. blog.twitter.com/official/en_us…
The Dehumanizing Speech policy being specific is important because if (let's dream big here) it is enforced as written, you can avoid getting suspended for talking about TERFs by saying their beliefs are garbage or their actions are garbage.
My feedback focused on the unequal way in which Twitter's existing policies have been supported. White guys making clear references to genocide, murder, stalking children, etc., get "We have to look at context, this was clearly not serious" replies while their victims get banned.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 7, 2018
For the record, I do hope Brett Kavanaugh's life is ruined. I hope his marriage has been irreparably strained. I hope his social life is in the toilet. I hope he feels no joy at his win. I hope he only stops waiting for the other shoe to fall when it does, like a guillotine blade
My ~*preference*~ would be that he suffer some sort of institutional consequences, even if it was merely not being confirmed to a lifetime position on the highest court in the land, where he will have power over millions.

But the right decided that's off the table.
I hope anyone who comes before the SCOTUS who is even tangentially liberal, left, or Democratic makes an issue out of his participation in the case so that he has to spend his whole career justifying and defending his presence on the bench.
Read 8 tweets
Oct 7, 2018
Well, @RadioFreeTom thinks saying "No problem." implies there's a problem so forgive me if I'm not crowning him a king of situational analysis. What he's calling Trump's "rhetorical excess" is largely projection. The idea that we win by *not* pointing out what they're doing...
...just gives Trump and his party the full benefit of that projection, in that they get to smear their opponents while being insulated from accurate accusations. We've been ceding control of the narrative to them for decades now and it hasn't worked.
The reason @RadioFreeTom wants the Democrats to settle down and be good little children is because up until two hours ago HE WAS A REPUBLICAN and when this is all done he hopes there's a slightly more couth and presentable version of the Republican Party that's still in charge.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 7, 2018
We've got GOP voters talking about drinking liberal tears with their beers, we've got a GOP president lying his backside off to his rally and then telling Jeanine Pirro he wants to hold women "liable" for talking about rapes... I don't see the centrists asking them to be civil?
Isn't it weird how absolutely no pundit wrote an editorial saying that Lindsey Graham's fire and brimstone sermon isn't going to win over the middle? Isn't it strange that no one tells Chuck Grassley that his angry interruptions are going to hurt his party?
There was a lot of talk about whether or not Kavanaugh's vitriolic testimony would hurt him but I didn't see a lot of neutral or centrist-identified people saying that it *should*.
Read 5 tweets
Oct 7, 2018
So let me tell you another reason we need to not back down, not sit down, not be quiet: coward that he is, Donald Trump is at his most dangerous when he feels like he's on top of the world.
The horse race headlines are saying that Donald Trump had his best day as president, and I'm sure he felt it. He just came through a knock-down, drag-out fight and won a battle that people had been telling him to drop for weeks, so right now no one can tell him anything.
If he gets it in his head that maybe he should fire Rosenstein? No one's going to be able to talk him out of it. He might even do it just to extend the high, or see how far he can take it.
Read 8 tweets

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