Louisiana's Veto Override Session, National Inflation, and Vacation
You probably won't hear much from me this week.
I am sitting at a table next to a glass door, right now. On the other side of that glass door is a beautiful inlet of an even more beautiful lake. I’ll be spending the majority of this week here and, therefore, likely not writing. But before I sign off for the week, I wanted to share a couple of things.
The first is the Louisiana veto override session that began and ended last week. As I said on the radio Wednesday, it was only historic in that it was the first time the state legislature had held an override session. Nothing at all changed, otherwise. There were no vetoes, and the Republican leaders of the House and Senate did an absolutely awful job of counting and whipping votes.
In truth, the session was no more historic than losing one’s virginity. It was emotional, awkward, and short.
Perhaps over time, there will be more override sessions that will do something. But for right now, don’t expect much from a Republican legislature that had a chance to override some very important vetoes but couldn’t. We are now hearing stories that House Speaker Clay Schexnayder is going to face a challenge to his Speaker position if he doesn’t remove Democrats from committee leadership positions. I think that Senate Majority Leader Page Cortez is probably going to face some sort of challenge himself.
As predicted by most conservative pundits in the state, it looks like state Senator Ronnie Johns is the new leader of the state’s Gaming and Control Board, as appointed by Governor John Bel Edwards. He was in Baton Rouge late last week to accept the job, after avoiding the veto override session earlier in the week by claiming he was recovering from surgery.
Doesn’t pass the smell test, but forget it, Jake. It’s Louisiana.
On the national scene, I think Democrats have a problem brewing in the form of inflation. They are insisting it’s temporary, but financial experts and the Wall Street Journal are insisting this is a long-term issue. The problem for Democrats is that, up until COVID-19, the economy was strong, things were cheaper, and everyone was employed. Now, the economy is weak, everything is expensive, and those without jobs no longer have all the extra benefits they were getting during the COVID crisis.
What’s worse is the Delta variant is causing some local and state governments to rethink their positions on social gathering places. Mask mandates are likely coming back in places, and you could see another shutdown of some local economies. Hopefully not, but fear is driving a lot more of the response than rationality at this point.
In 2020, I said that Joe Biden didn’t win so much as Donald Trump lost. Neither had a coherent message except “I am not the other guy.” The problem became that the “other guy” was preferable to the current guy. Now, though, the current guy is floundering and things are getting worse. Where historically the party in power (in this case, the Democrats) does very poorly in midterm elections, it is looking more and more like the party out of power will overperform expectations.
Already, the Biden administration is signaling their first term is over. Legislative goals cannot be met. By siding with Nancy Pelosi’s and Chuck Schumer’s demands of highly partisan policies passed through the Senate’s reconciliation process, the Biden administration is saying they won’t be able to get any of their ideas across the finish line, so they have to fight partisan rhetorical battles instead of legislative ones.
This does not bode well for the Democrats.
They will have nothing to show for 2022 and will therefore have to keep relying on Donald Trump as their bogeyman, despite his waning influence. Trump will not be as influential in 2022 as Democrats and the media want him to be, and by 2024 he’ll be out of the picture completely. They will have nothing left to stand on.
They should actually thank Trump for this chance at being in power. Without him, they likely wouldn’t have won in 2020. They do not have much of a chance of winning beyond 2020, though, if they continue to ignore what most of the country is saying: Stop forcing the cultural battles, moderate your positions, and focus on the needs of the country rather than your loudest voices on Twitter.
Y’all have a good week. I can’t guarantee I’ll be writing every day, but I also can’t guarantee I’ll be absolutely silent. But this lake is really pretty, and this part of the country I haven’t visited before, so I want to focus more on it and my family than what social media and politics are screaming about.