<![CDATA[2022 election]]>

House Democrats give up on passing “assault weapons” ban… at least for now

July 27, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

In an embarrassing defeat for the gun control lobby, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has pulled the plug on the attempt to pass an “assault weapons” ban ahead of the August recess after failing to come up with the necessary votes, though POLITICO reports Democrats could try to revive the bill once lawmakers return after Labor Day.

According to the POLITICO report infighting between the Democrats’ progressive and “moderate” caucus led to the bill being pulled; not necessarily because of the gun ban itself, but because of progressives’ balking at a bill that would have increased funding for law enforcement.

Pelosi confirmed those plans to reporters Wednesday, acknowledging that the caucus has always planned to return when, or if, the Senate is able to complete work on a sweeping prescription drug and health care funding package: “The recognition that we have to come back … has made our plans a little bit different.”
The package of bills was intended to satisfy moderates — with measures to invest in local policing — as well as progressives, with the first vote to ban semi-automatic weapons since 1994. But other factions in the caucus, including the CBC, said they were skeptical of the timing of the policing legislation with only months remaining until the midterms. Progressives, too, demanded more safeguards placed on the grants to law enforcement organizations.
“We have a broad-based caucus that has multiple interests,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said as he left a closed-door meeting Wednesday morning. “The overwhelming majority want to make sure that people understand we want safe communities.”
Instead, the House will pivot its attention to a “big cat” public safety bill, a “Tiger King”-inspired bill from activist Carole Baskin, along with other noncontroversial legislation. Those will be the last votes for at least a week, as the House heads on its August recess and awaits Senate action on the drug pricing and health care bill.

Pelosi was hoping that “moderates” would support the gun ban bill while the progressive wing would bite their tongue and vote for the bill that would give more money to local law enforcement, but instead it sounds like the progressives weren’t willing to go along, which led to at least even more moderates balking at voting to ban the most commonly-sold rifles in the country. What remains unclear, for the moment anyway, is whether Democrats ever had the votes for their gun ban. I’m not convinced that’s the case even though Democrats are spinning the sidelining of the bill as an intra-party disagreement over policing.

Moderate Democrats have pushed for months for floor votes to show their commitment to supporting local police, after a scourge of GOP attack ads last cycle portrayed their party as anti-cop and soft on crime. Those attacks, according to Democrats’ own campaign arm, were “alarmingly potent” in key swing districts, and many battleground members believe it cost the party seats in the last election — which narrowed their House majority as they expected to expand it.
As the package of bills moved closer to the floor, however, progressives and Black Democrats raised alarm bells that the party shouldn’t be supporting more cash and support for policing programs without any kind of new accountability standards. The debate became highly nuanced: A bipartisan bill to increase the hiring and pay of police officers, particularly in local areas, became a bigger conversation about the role of policing.
“The debate is not about the function of policing. It’s about the definition of policing. And I think that that’s been the hard part,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a senior progressive.

I’m sure that there are a number of Democrats in purple districts who are breathing a sigh of relief that they don’t have to cast a vote on criminalizing the sale and purchase of most semi-automatic rifles as well as many models of shotguns and handguns, and I would be surprised if Nancy Pelosi really does decide to revisit the issue after Democrats return to D.C. after their August recess. It’s possible, of course, but if that’s going to happen she’s gonna have to convince the sizable number of progressives in the House to vote to increase funding for police and persuade the much smaller number of moderates to cast a high profile vote in favor of a sweeping gun ban just weeks before Americans start casting their votes in the midterms. If Pelosi couldn’t get that done in late July, I don’t see how it’s going to be any easier even closer to Election Day.

CNN Poll: Dem voters place importance on gun policy, GOP voters on crime

July 19, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

A new poll from CNN and polling outfit SSRS offers some interesting nuggets of info about what’s on the mind of voters ahead of the midterms, though obviously take this with as many grains of salt as you’d like.

The poll found Republicans and Democrats tied on the generic congressional ballot with 46% each, a drop of three points for the GOP and a gain of four points for Democrats. Interestingly, the poll found that neither Republicans or Democrats are paying attention to the issues that are of most importance to them.

Two-thirds of registered voters (67%) say that Democratic candidates for Congress in the area where they live aren’t paying enough attention to the country’s most important problems, with just 31% saying that these candidates have the right priorities. A similar 65% say that Republican candidates in their area aren’t paying enough attention to important national problems, with 33% saying that GOP congressional candidates have the right priorities.
Economic issues are currently voters’ central concern. Nearly 7 in 10 voters (69%) currently call the economy extremely important to their congressional vote, and 67% say the same of inflation. Smaller majorities place the same level of importance on voting rights and election integrity (61%), and gun policy (60%).
About half rate education (51%), abortion (50%) or crime (49%) as extremely important, and fewer say the same of immigration (42%), climate change (34%) or the coronavirus pandemic (26%). That focus on the economy has increased since earlier this year, even as the survey’s field period spanned a series of events including the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade, the passage of a new gun law and several hearings of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

“Gun policy” is polling slightly higher than “crime” in terms of importance; something that appears to be the result of a distinct partisan divide. 69% of Democrats surveyed said that “gun policy” will be extremely important to their vote this year, while Independents (56%) and Republicans (54%) saw that as less important.

When the topic turned to crime, however, Democrats, at 41%, were far less likely to say it was an extremely important issue than Republicans. Almost two-thirds (62%) of GOP respondents said crime is an extremely important issue to them, with 45% of independent voters agreeing.

At the moment, gun control is seen as a more important issue to Democrats than abortion (69-63), which is somewhat surprising to me given that most of the protests aimed at the Supreme Court in recent weeks have revolved around the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and not the Bruen decision striking down New York’s “may issue” laws.

The CNN poll also found that while 14% of survey respondents overall said that if they could pick just one issue they would want candidates for Congress to talk more about “gun policy,” that number jumped to 23% among Democrats. Republicans were decidedly cooler at just 5%; a number that presumably includes those single issue Second Amendment voters who want to hear more talk about expanding the right to keep and bear arms.

Overall the economy is still the most important issue by far on the minds of voters, with more than half picking the economy or inflation as the single-most important topic for candidates to talk about, though Democrats (at just 33%) were far less likely to agree with that sentiment than Independents (52%) and Republicans (70%).

It sure looks like Democrats are looking for anything to talk about other than the current state of the economy and the red-hot Bidenflation numbers that grow worse with every report, and gun control is their go-to at the moment. Still, with more than half of independent voters saying that “gun policy” is extremely important to them this year, Republicans ignore the issue at their own peril. Personally, I’d love to see candidates bring up New York’s new gun control laws and how they’re the model for what Democrats want to do nationwide.

We also need to hear about consequences of these laws; otherwise law-abiding gun owners being turned into felons and subjected to prison time for the “crime” of stepping foot into one of the Democrats’ many gun-free zones while armed, for instance. And hammer home the fact that the Democrats’ gun control ideology hasn’t made liberal bastions like Baltimore and Chicago any safer, which raises the question of why on earth we’d impose these same restrictions (many of which will undoubtably be found to be unconstitutional) at the federal level when we need to get serious about addressing violent crime, declining rates of arrest, and broken mental health and criminal justice systems that are failing their fundamental tasks. The economy is clearly the dominant issue for voters this election cycle, but gun control and crime aren’t far behind and shouldn’t be brushed aside by Republicans looking to ride a red wave to victory in November.