The Great Vibe Reversal

Emotional whiplash hits Congress

What a difference two weeks can make.

On paper, the big thing that happened in Congress last week was that we failed to pass a bunch of budget bills.

That isn’t shocking news, but it’s somewhat notable because the Speaker had drawn a line in the sand a few months back by saying that he was absolutely committed to passing a budget by August 1st.

Well, we didn’t come remotely close. 

So now the stage is set for another one of those semi-fake, near-miss shutdown dances. You’ll start seeing headlines about this in the next few weeks, but honestly I wouldn’t worry too much about it. The Speaker isn’t going to let his right-flank force a government shutdown in the weeks before an election, so he’ll end up doing a deal with the minority party for the votes he needs for a budget extension and that will get him past the election.

But it felt like no one was talking about that in Congress last week.

Everything was overshadowed by the huge emotional whiplash from the presidential race.

Two weeks ago, the minority party felt crushed. In talking with them on the House floor, they sounded like they were on the Titanic, getting ready to go down with the ship.

Members of Congress care about the presidency, but they really care about their own seats. And the minority party was looking at some projections that had them losing a lot of seats.

Meanwhile, the majority party was thrilled.

Some of them told me they considered the election to be effectively over and they were already thinking beyond winning the presidency and toward a dramatic expansion of their House majority.

In the parlance of Gen Z, the vibes were way up for one party, and way down for the other.

And then, suddenly, a 180 degree turn. The Great Vibe Reversal of 2024.

You’re not allowed to light fireworks on the floor of the U.S. House - for good reason - but it almost felt like that was the level of celebration by the minority party now that the vice president is going to be the nominee.

Why?

One big reason is that they’re looking at polls showing her improving rapidly among independent voters, picking up roughly 15 points with them over the last two weeks. There’s a belief in the minority party that a strong performance among those voters could filter down to their congressional races.

And as a current member of Congress, I assure you, it is remarkable the extent to which our races are tied to the presidential race. Yes, it is technically possible to outperform your party’s nominee for president. But it is very, very hard - especially if you have to do that by more than three or four points.

What this means in Congress is that the majority party now has to pivot and start playing offense against her immediately. 

For example, articles of impeachment were filed against her last week, accusing her of high crimes and misdemeanors. The Speaker didn’t want that to get filed - and he won’t let it come to a vote - but he couldn’t hold back one of his members who wanted to capture the media attention for being the first member of Congress to formally call for her impeachment.

There are a few more serious items Congress is going to try and accomplish before the election, but not many. If we’ve been at, say, 70% performative politics for the last year, we’re about to hit 95%.

And I’ll keep you posted.

Campaign update - riding a wave

You’ll like this.

The last time you heard from me was the day after the president stepped out of the race.

I told you that early signs pointed to a surge in support for the vice president, and then I made a pitch for you to include our campaign in the era of good feelings that had just been unleashed.

But I wasn’t really sure that would happen. My race is for Attorney General, pretty far off the national political grid.

But holy smokes - we just had one of our best weeks of fundraising in the whole campaign.

What I’ve learned from running campaigns is that the key to winning is making the most of those precious moments where people are energized and focused.

We are still in one of those moments.

We’re a 50/50 race and we’re in a crucial swing state. Your dollars go very far here. If you can contribute, either with ActBlue or non-ActBlue, our whole team would really appreciate it.

Thanks so much, and I’ll see you next week.

Best,

Jeff 

P.S. - And just in case you were wondering what it would look like if members of Congress did set off fireworks in the Capitol, A.I. says it would look something like this: