Tournament: Nano Nagle Voices | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough LF | Judge: Samantha Mcloughlin
Dems win the Senate now, but it’s close---it determines the Biden presidency.
Shane Goldmacher 7/17. Reporter, New York Times, “Democrats See Edge in Early Senate Map as Trump Casts Big Shadow,” The New York Times, July 17, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/us/politics/midterm-elections.html, RJP, DebateDrills.
Six months into the Biden administration, Senate Democrats are expressing a cautious optimism that the party can keep control of the chamber in the 2022 midterm elections, enjoying large fund-raising hauls in marquee races as they plot to exploit Republican retirements in key battlegrounds and a divisive series of unsettled G.O.P. primaries.
Swing-state Democratic incumbents, like Senators Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Mark Kelly of Arizona, restocked their war chests with multimillion-dollar sums ($7.2 million and $6 million, respectively), according to new financial filings this week. That gives them an early financial head start in two key states where Republicans’ disagreements over former President Donald J. Trump’s refusal to accept his loss in 2020 are threatening to distract and fracture the party.
But Democratic officials are all too aware of the foreboding political history they confront: that in a president’s first midterms, the party occupying the White House typically loses seats — often in bunches. For now, Democrats hold power by only the narrowest of margins in a 50-50 split Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tiebreaker to push through President Biden’s expansive agenda on the economy, the pandemic and infrastructure.
The plan is unpopular---it’s seen as soft on China.
Cynthia Hicks 21. Director of Public Affairs at PhRMA focusing on polling and opinion research that supports advocacy communications and strategy. “New polling shows Americans are sounding the alarm on the TRIPS IP waiver,” PhRMA, May 14, 2021, https://catalyst.phrma.org/new-polling-shows-americans-are-sounding-the-alarm-on-the-trips-ip-waiver, RJP, DebateDrills
*NOTE – the stuff after “include the following” is a picture that couldn’t be pasted. Go to the URL if you want to see it.
2. Americans are concerned that the TRIPS waiver could risk patient safety, sow public confusion, and cede America’s global innovation leadership to China.
Americans worry that waiving intellectual property introduces unnecessary and dangerous risks to safety and vaccine manufacturing. The top concerns – expressed by more than six in ten voters – include the following:
China is the key for the midterms---Senate control hinges on it.
Sarah Mucha 21. Politics reporter at Axios, covering the Biden administration and Congress. “Parties pounce on China as midterm issue,” Axios, June 23, 2021, https://www.axios.com/democrat-republicans-china-2022-midterms-6c242c54-b51b-444e-b9b2-65ff0afb906a.html, RJP, DebateDrills
Democrats and Republicans in purple states are already leaning into U.S. competition with China as a key issue in the fight to control the Senate in 2022.
Why it matters: American voters hold increasingly negative feelings toward the Chinese government, particularly around bilateral economic relations and following the nation’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak.
President Biden also has made it clear that confronting China remains a foreign policy priority.
Possibly vulnerable Democratic senators are capitalizing on the passage of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, a sweeping global competition bill focused on China that recently passed by a rare bipartisan vote.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) visited Kia’s West Point factory in Georgia to address how the bill could address the recent semiconductor shortage and avoid future plant shutdowns, like one the factory experienced.
Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) wrote op-eds in their local news outlets highlighting the bill's benefits.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and state Democratic parties are calling out Republicans like Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), both of whom voted against the bill.
They’ve also targeted Republicans running in open Senate seats who have expressed opposition to the bill.
Meanwhile, Rubio has been making a play for China hawks in Florida, Axios’ Lachlan Markay reported last week.
Rubio, who is up for re-election next year, has been sending campaign emails with subject lines such as, "Dems 3 China," and, "Is it time to stand up to Communist China?" to a list maintained by a nonprofit group called Stand Up to China.
In Arizona, Republicans latched onto Kelly's ties to a Chinese tech firm last year, and it's likely they'll continue to use that strategy.
The senator's team has argued he isn't beholden to Chinese authorities.
Republicans have long branded Democrats as "weak" on China as a line of attack. Expect that to continue through the campaign cycle, as Democratic candidates tout the passage of the U.S. Innovation Act and reframe the narrative.
They plan to focus on increasing the United States' competitive edge with China as a policy priority.
What they’re saying: David Bergstein, a spokesman for the DSCC, said the campaign committee will be “reminding voters that any Republican who refused to back this critical bill was too weak to stand up to China in order to protect and grow good-paying jobs.”
Chris Hartline, spokesman for the NRSC, said in a statement that "no one believes that Joe Biden and Senate Democrats will do what it takes to confront the geopolitical and economic threat posed by (President) Xi (Jinping) and the Chinese Communist Party.
GOP control of the Senate will be used to usher in a new wave of Trumpism, crushing democracy.
Morton Kondracke 21. Retired executive editor of Roll Call, a former "McLaughlin Group" and Fox News commentator and co-author, with Fred Barnes, of Jack Kemp: The Bleeding Heart Conservative Who Changed America. “Why Democrats Must Retain Control of Congress in 2022,” RealClearPolitics, August 4, 2021, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/08/04/why_democrats_must_retain_control_of_congress_in_2022_146189.html, RJP, DebateDrills
The 2020 election demonstrated how fragile our democracy is. As Donald Trump tried, by means both legal and illegal, to overturn the results of a free and fair election, only the courts and a thin line of courageous Republican election officials guaranteed that the peoples’ choice prevailed.
But the safeguards are weaker. Although the Supreme Court upheld the last lower-court dismissal of multiple Trump-inspired lawsuits charging election fraud, in July the court upheld new voting restrictions enacted in Arizona.
And many of the Republican election officials who refused to back up Trump’s bogus fraud charges have been threatened, fired, or are being challenged for reelection by Trump followers. Meanwhile, 17 Republican-controlled state legislatures have joined Arizona in making voting more difficult: In several of them, legislators are trying to seize control of election management, including power to replace county election officials or even decide how a state’s election results should be certified, regardless of the popular vote.
Republicans claim they are acting restore faith in elections, but—with fraud repeatedly shown to be rare and of no effect in in 2020—Trump and his followers are really undermining faith in American elections.
The result of this frenzy of activity in furtherance of Trump’s “Big Lie”—that he won the 2020 election (and that he won in a “landslide,” no less) —is that the preservation of American-style self-government depends on Democrats retaining control of Congress in 2022.
Republicans have shown that they simply can’t be trusted to safeguard democracy. Donald Trump now owns the Republican Party as GOP politicians up and down the line do his bidding, out of fear or belief.
Even after a mob of Trump supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Republicans in Congress voted overwhelmingly against impeaching and convicting him for his actions and inaction. Eight GOP senators and 147 representatives voted not to certify Electoral College counts submitted by two states (had they prevailed, there would have more). Then only six GOP senators voted in favor of forming a truly bipartisan 9/11-style commission to investigate the insurrection, killing the proposal by filibuster. After Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi established a select committee to conduct an investigation, Republican leaders attacked her as responsible for the riot, falsely claiming she is in charge of security at the Capitol.
Republicans who voted against Trump on any issue relating to Jan. 6 now face primary opponents backed by him and censure by their state parties. Rep. Liz Cheney, the most vocal Trump critic in the GOP, lost her House leadership post. Trump has even attacked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who criticized him after Jan. 6 but also blocked creation of the 9/11 commission. It’s classic authoritarian behavior—demanding total loyalty from his followers and total control of his faction, and assailing any rivals in power.
Lately, Trump reportedly has encouraged his followers to believe he can somehow be reinstated as president later this month, and the Department of Homeland Security is concerned that the violent acts of Jan. 6 may be repeated when he’s not.
The sad, but inevitable conclusion is that if Republicans take control of either chamber in Congress, they will not try to do what’s best for America as a whole. They will do what Trump tells them to do, probably starting with trying to undo everything President Biden and the Democrats in Congress have done during the previous two years.
For starters, if Democrats are to prevail next November, Biden must be seen as a successful moderate-progressive president—one who can defy the historical pattern that presidential parties almost invariably lose seats in their first midterm election.
The last two Democratic presidents s who launched major initiatives without GOP support, Bill Clinton (tax increases and health care reform) and Barack Obama (Obamacare and anti-recession stimulus spending), suffered historic shellackings in the ensuing midterms—54 House seats and eight Senate seats in 1994, and 63 House and six Senate seats in 2010. Biden, who has multiple big programs in his policy agenda, has smaller Democratic margins in Congress than Clinton and Obama. In other words, the Democrats must hang on to almost all of their contested districts and states.
McConnell, who earned the moniker “grim reaper” for blocking Obama, was supposed to be a willing negotiating partner for Biden. Instead, the Senate Republican leader has pronounced himself “100 focused” on defeating Biden’s legislative agenda. So far, Biden has succeeded in passing a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package (with no Republican votes). He is trying to work out a bipartisan $1 trillion “physical infrastructure” package. McConnell isn’t the obstruction with this legislation, as Senate negotiators and the White House sound optimistic. But with Rep. Kevin McCarthy openly angling for Pelosi’s job, nothing is certain in the House.
Trump is actively trying to scuttle infrastructure spending. He’s telling Republicans to oppose it, saying passage means letting “the Radical Left play you for weak fools and losers,” and he has threatened primary challenges against GOP legislators who support it. This, despite his promising to pass a $2 trillion bill while president (then never delivering). Republicans who support it obviously want money for roads, bridges and broadband for their constituents.
But they don’t like the contents of Biden’s follow-up proposal—a $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” program, which would expand Medicare, caregiving for the disabled and elderly, and child care, while funding universal pre-kindergarten, free community college, national paid family leave, and extended child tax credits. And they don’t like the corporate and capital gains tax increases Democrats propose to pay for it all. So the Democratic plan is to pass it as a “budget reconciliation” measure requiring only Democratic votes.
If, next November, the GOP captures one chamber—most likely, the House—whatever Biden can get done in his first two years can’t be easily undone, but he will get nothing more passed. If the GOP gets control of both chambers, Republicans will try to reverse anything he has accomplished. He’ll have only his veto pen as protection. Stalemate from 2023 through 2024—and an unsuccessful-seeming Biden presidency—could reelect Trump (or someone backed by him), in which case constitutional norms and respect for election results and the rule of law would again be in peril.
Extinction
Kasparov 17
Garry Kasparov, Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, former World Chess Champion, “Democracy and Human Rights: The Case for U.S. Leadership,” Testimony Before The Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women's Issues of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, February 16th, https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/021617_Kasparov_20Testimony.pdf
As one of the countless millions of people who were freed or protected from totalitarianism by the United States of America, it is easy for me to talk about the past. To talk about the belief of the American people and their leaders that this country was exceptional, and had special responsibilities to match its tremendous power. That a nation founded on freedom was bound to defend freedom everywhere. I could talk about the bipartisan legacy of this most American principle, from the Founding Fathers, to Democrats like Harry Truman, to Republicans like Ronald Reagan. I could talk about how the American people used to care deeply about human rights and dissidents in far-off places, and how this is what made America a beacon of hope, a shining city on a hill. America led by example and set a high standard, a standard that exposed the hypocrisy and cruelty of dictatorships around the world. But there is no time for nostalgia. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War, Americans, and America, have retreated from those principles, and the world has become much worse off as a result. American skepticism about America’s role in the world deepened in the long, painful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their aftermaths. Instead of applying the lessons learned about how to do better, lessons about faulty intelligence and working with native populations, the main outcome was to stop trying. This result has been a tragedy for the billions of people still living under authoritarian regimes around the world, and it is based on faulty analysis. You can never guarantee a positive outcome— not in chess, not in war, and certainly not in politics. The best you can do is to do what you know is right and to try your best. I speak from experience when I say that the citizens of unfree states do not expect guarantees. They want a reason to hope and a fighting chance. People living under dictatorships want the opportunity for freedom, the opportunity to live in peace and to follow their dreams. From the Iraq War to the Arab Spring to the current battles for liberty from Venezuela to Eastern Ukraine, people are fighting for that opportunity, giving up their lives for freedom. The United States must not abandon them. The United States and the rest of the free world has an unprecedented advantage in economic and military strength today. What is lacking is the will. The will to make the case to the American people, the will to take risks and invest in the long-term security of the country, and the world. This will require investments in aid, in education, in security that allow countries to attain the stability their people so badly need. Such investment is far more moral and far cheaper than the cycle of terror, war, refugees, and military intervention that results when America leaves a vacuum of power. The best way to help refugees is to prevent them from becoming refugees in the first place. The Soviet Union was an existential threat, and this focused the attention of the world, and the American people. There existential threat today is not found on a map, but it is very real. The forces of the past are making steady progress against the modern world order. Terrorist movements in the Middle East, extremist parties across Europe, a paranoid tyrant in North Korea threatening nuclear blackmail, and, at the center of the web, an aggressive KGB dictator in Russia. They all want to turn the world back to a dark past because their survival is threatened by the values of the free world, epitomized by the United States. And they are thriving as the U.S. has retreated. The global freedom index has declined for ten consecutive years. No one like to talk about the United States as a global policeman, but this is what happens when there is no cop on the beat. American leadership begins at home, right here. America cannot lead the world on democracy and human rights if there is no unity on the meaning and importance of these things. Leadership is required to make that case clearly and powerfully. Right now, Americans are engaged in politics at a level not seen in decades. It is an opportunity for them to rediscover that making America great begins with believing America can be great. The Cold War was won on American values that were shared by both parties and nearly every American. Institutions that were created by a Democrat, Truman, were triumphant forty years later thanks to the courage of a Republican, Reagan. This bipartisan consistency created the decades of strategic stability that is the great strength of democracies. Strong institutions that outlast politicians allow for long-range planning. In contrast, dictators can operate only tactically, not strategically, because they are not constrained by the balance of powers, but cannot afford to think beyond their own survival. This is why a dictator like Putin has an advantage in chaos, the ability to move quickly. This can only be met by strategy, by long-term goals that are based on shared values, not on polls and cable news. The fear of making things worse has paralyzed the United States from trying to make things better. There will always be setbacks, but the United States cannot quit. The spread of democracy is the only proven remedy for nearly every crisis that plagues the world today. War, famine, poverty, terrorism–all are generated and exacerbated by authoritarian regimes. A policy of America First inevitably puts American security last. American leadership is required because there is no one else, and because it is good for America. There is no weapon or wall that is more powerful for security than America being envied, imitated, and admired around the world. Admired not for being perfect, but for having the exceptional courage to always try to be better. Thank you.