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The dearth of polling on the question Do people like holidays? suggests that the answer is not complicated. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo)

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Democrats tend to leave easy points on the playing field out of a misguided sense of modesty, the term Joe Biden used recently when recounting his experiences in the Obama White House. By refusing to take a victory lap and crow about his accomplishments, President Biden argued, Barack Obama failed to maximize the political benefits from the things he did.

Political scientists call this the art of credit claiming: convincing voters that you are the reason something good has happened. Biden himself missed an opportunity when he declined to put his name on the $2,000er, I mean $1,400economic relief checks sent out earlier this year, as Donald Trump had done. Liberals tend to see that kind of politicking as tacky, which of course it is. Its also important and necessary.

Theres nothing wrong with taking the layup, with pandering to voters most basic interests. With control of the White House and Congress, and with the predictable pushback to Bidens proposed infrastructure spending bringing his honeymoon period to an end, Democrats could make an easy play to curry favor with voters by creating new federal holidays.

Sure, some of the same people now loudly complaining that no one wants to work will oppose the idea of Americans working less for any reason. But its difficult to imagine that the issue would be, on balance, anything but a net political win. (The dearth of polling on the question Do people like holidays? suggests that the answer is not complicated.)

Creating a federal holiday requires a vote in Congress. Presidents can declare holidays unilaterally, but only for a single, nonrecurring date (such as when July 4 falls on a weekend, and a different date, like July 3, is given temporary holiday status). The worst-case scenario, politically, for a unified Democratic House and Senate proposing new holidays would be to force Senate Republicans to defend using their various obstructionist tricks to prevent passage. If Democrats cant collectively win a rhetorical battle framed as We voted to give you more holidays, they refused, then perhaps politics is the wrong line of work for them.The Argument

There are obvious candidates for additional holidaysJuneteenth and Election Day leap to mindbut its worth remembering how little most Americans use holidays for their official purpose. Is Labor Day really used to solemnly remember the victories and sacrifices of the labor movement? Or is it just a three-day weekend at a point in the calendar when most of us could really use one? Growing up in Illinois, I learned firsthand that having Casimir S. Pulaski Day off from work or school was enjoyable even for the majority of people who neither knew nor cared who Pulaski was.

While the number of federal public holidays in the United States is below but roughly comparable to that of our peer nations, the absence of paid vacation time (or the meager amounts for many who have it) puts American workers at a serious disadvantage when it comes to leisure. And messaging that leisure is good, that quality of life is important would be effective. For all the political posturing around the joys of work, most of us are thrilled to take a day off when the opportunity arises.Current Issue

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One complicating factor is the disparity between salaried and hourly workers, since the latter are often not paid if they do get a holiday off. But the hourly pay on holidays is often at time-and-a-half or better, giving the pro-holidays faction an argument that people can still benefit economically, if not in additional leisure time.

The usual suspects like the Chamber of Commerce will wail and rend their garments over any proposal for new federal holidays, and right-wing media will try to turn it into a culture war issue regardless of whether Congress proposes Juneteenth or National Corn Dog Day (the third Saturday in March, obviously). Let them. The counterpointWouldnt it be nice to have another three-day weekend?is formidable.

Expanding the holiday calendar is not the nations most pressing matter, but that is precisely the point. With other, more difficult issues that lack consensus still on the table and Republicans forever inventing issues that pander to their base (campus cancel culture), Democrats need to find issues that enable them to do some posturing of their own. Arguing that Americans work too much and deserve some additional days off has a very limited downside.

Its OK to do some politics. I promise. Democrats should learn to pick the low-hanging fruit when its available.

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Democrats Should Just Create More Federal Holidays - The Nation

On the anniversary of the death of George Floyd, dozens of gunshots rang out in the middle of the day at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, forcing reporters and bystanders to duck and cover.

The symbolism was unmistakable the yearlong bout of protest after Floyds killing has coincided with a surge of urban crime that has made gunplay dismayingly common.

Indeed, the intersection where Floyd was killed, now a memorial blocked to vehicular traffic, has become a watchword for mayhem.

The issue of public safety may be about to play its most significant role in our politics since the mid-1990s, the beginning of a decades-long decline in crime that steadily eroded its political salience.

Former President Donald Trump tried to make law and order a defining issue in 2020, but the rioting he so forcefully denounced was, in most places, too transitory to become an overwhelming issue.

Now, more than a year into a serious crime wave, Democrats are fooling themselves if they think they wont be blamed for rising violence in Democratic-run cities.

Overall, murder increased by more than 25% in the United States last year, the biggest jump in 60 years. Surely, the dislocations of the pandemic have been a factor, but its also obvious that anti-police agitation has put the cops on their heels. Exhibit A is Minneapolis.

In the fevered aftermath of the Floyd killing, the City Council pledged to do away with the police department, among the most outlandishly unachievable and self-destructive promises ever made by an elected body. Of course, it couldnt follow through on it any more than it could have followed through on a promise to eliminate traffic lights or municipal snow removal.

Still, cops have fled the force while crime has soared. The impeccably progressive mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, who desperately wanted to ingratiate himself at a tribunal-like anti-police rally last summer, but, to his credit, wouldnt commit to defunding the police, now occasionally sounds like hes channeling former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani circa 1993.

Another dyed-in-the-wool progressive, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, faced with ongoing unrest that once was blamed on Trump, has called for the citys residents to take the city back, and for unmasking, arresting and prosecuting rioters.

Los Angeles cut its police budget by 8% in the wake of the Floyd protests, and now is adding it right back. In South Los Angeles, the LAPD is increasing patrols and vehicle stops to search for guns and gang members.

Irving Kristol famously said a neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality. If progressive politicians who are now sounding friendlier to the police havent been mugged, they at least have been alarmed by the sound of approaching gunfire.

The turnabout isnt universal. White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked the other day whether theres a crime problem and, sounding as evasive as when she discusses the border, would only say there is a guns problem. This was a reference to the completely unconvincing argument that increased gun sales have led to the spike in crime when surges in gun sales since the mid-1990s never before led to higher crime.

The problem that Democrats have is that they have accepted and celebrated the people making a comprehensive case against the police as systematically racist.

This argument doesnt naturally allow for nuance. In fact, it logically entails calling for fewer cops and less police funding, an agenda that will be hard to sell to most people in the best of circumstances but is toxic in an environment of rising crime.

Black Lives Matter has already been losing support in the polls, while trust in the police has been rising. Things would have to get much worse for crime to become as central an issue as it was in the 1970s. But Democrats who arent alarmed that reporters are dodging bullets at the George Floyd memorial are tempting political fate.

Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.

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Lowry: Democrats ignore crime wave at their peril - Boston Herald

President Joe Biden is expected to call on Congress in his budget proposal this week to ditch the 45-year-old ban on abortion funding, after supporting that prohibition throughout his career. But Bidens recent reversal on the Hyde amendment wont be enough to overcome the Senate, where moderates like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) oppose repealing the ban and Democrats ultimately need Republican support to enact spending bills.

Every indication is that it has a slim chance in the Senate, Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), a top House appropriator, said of the effort to nix the abortion spending ban in particular. But that doesnt mean that, at certain points, you dont stand up for it.

Democrats are planning budget boosts for sexual and reproductive health services, family planning and teen pregnancy prevention, hoping some of those issues will be more palatable for Republicans and moderates in passing a raft of bipartisan spending bills. Theyre also hoping to build on millions of dollars allocated for gun violence research in recent years, after the long-held Dickey amendment chilled studies on the issue for more than two decades.

Because the Hyde amendment prevents federal money from being spent to perform abortions, it blocks low-income women from paying for the procedure through government programs like Medicaid. The main workaround for pro-choice lawmakers: pour money into grant programs that fund clinics like Planned Parenthood.

Theres a lot we can do without addressing Hyde directly that will be important to supporting womens access to reproductive choices, said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.).

Democrats are now eyeing significant funding increases for the Title X family planning program. Biden has asked for $340 million to that end, a nearly 19 percent increase over current funding.

Shaheen, a member of the spending panel that funds the State Department and foreign programs, also wants Congress to spend more money on international family planning work, including through the U.N. sexual and reproductive health agency currently funded at about $33 million.

Its hard for me to understand why there seems to be such opposition to increasing support for family planning, Shaheen said. It improves the health of mothers and babies around the world. So, Im hopeful we can do that.

Federal cash runs dry on Sept. 30, and House Democrats are expected to pass their initial slate of spending bills in July without the abortion funding ban.

But unlike a massive infrastructure plan which Democrats can try to advance without GOP support any deal to keep the government open will eventually require buy-in from at least 10 Senate Republicans, meaning a fight over scrapping the Hyde and Dickey amendments could stall the annual spending bills or force a government shutdown.

Its a principled choice, Price said of opposing the funding bans. But in the end, there also has to be a practical choice to get the bills through.

Even the return of earmarks isnt enough to get GOP lawmakers to relinquish the longstanding Hyde provision that has largely served as a truce between both parties, smoothing over an issue that could easily throw government funding into chaos.

I could get every earmark I wanted, but if Democrats take the Hyde amendment out of the Labor-H bill, I certainly wouldnt vote for it, and I dont think any pro-life Republican would, said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the ranking Republican on the House panel that oversees funding for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.

Progressives and abortion rights advocates say even symbolic support for eliminating the Hyde amendment is progress. Congress must begin to lay down markers recognizing that the Democratic base largely wants to toss the provision, said Destiny Lopez, co-president of the abortion rights advocacy group All* Above All.

This is deeply a racial justice and economic justice issue, Lopez said. Its one of the harshest remaining barriers to abortion access that Congress actually controls.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who co-chairs the Pro Choice Caucus, said progressive Democrats will keep fighting until they have enough votes in both chambers to torpedo the provision for good.

It affects Black and brown women disproportionately, Lee said of the Hyde amendment. Were not going to stop.

In recent years, progressives have had more success in their effort to diminish the Dickey amendment that debuted in 1996 and has been re-upped every year since. While the amendment bans the CDC from advocating for gun control and has served to stall research on the subject for more than two decades, Democrats in 2018 altered the language to explicitly allow the public health agency to study gun violence.

Then in 2019, Congress for the first time provided funding specifically for that cause, spending $25 million. House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) told CDC officials during a hearing this week that she wants a progress report on those research efforts.

Even though the Dickey amendment remains intact, Democrats say the new language substantially eases the policy that once ground gun violence research to a halt. To build on that victory, they now plan to provide billions of additional dollars across federal agencies to bolster research, gun violence prevention initiatives and background check systems, while encouraging states to adopt gun licensing laws and establish voluntary gun buyback programs.

Gun deaths continue to occur at a staggering rate in our country, Attorney General Merrick Garland told House appropriators this month in asking for $232 million in additional funding to combat gun violence. This is both a law enforcement issue and a public health issue.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated Sen. Jeanne Shaheen's position on the Senate Appropriations State-Foreign Operations Subcommittee. She is a member of the subcommittee.

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Democrats are stuck on abortion and gun control. They have a backup plan - POLITICO

The issue of public safety may be about to play its most significant role in our politics since the mid-1990s, the beginning of a decadeslong decline in crime that steadily eroded its political salience.

Donald Trump tried to make law and order a defining issue in 2020, but the rioting he so forcefully denounced was, in most places, too transitory to become an overwhelming issue. He was also in the awkward position of trying to run against disorder as an incumbent rather than a challenger, and his chaotic governing style wasnt a good match for a message of orderliness.

But now, more than a year into a serious crime wave, Democrats should bewarethey are fooling themselves if they think they wont be blamed for a rise in violence in Democratic-run cities that clearly, at some level, is a result of police forces feeling beleaguered and overwhelmed.

Overall, murder increased by more than 25 percent in the United States last year, the biggest jump in 60 years. Murders jumped nearly 50 percent in New York City. Crime increased 36 percent in Los Angeles. And the story is the same in city after city.

Surely, the dislocations of the pandemic have been a factor, but its also obvious that anti-police agitation has put the cops on their back feet. Exhibit A is Minneapolis.

In the fevered days and weeks after the killing of Floyd, the City Council pledged to do away with the police department, among the most outlandishly unachievable and self-destructive promises ever made by an elected body. Of course, it couldnt follow through on it, anymore than it could have followed through on a promise to eliminate traffic lights or municipal snow removal.

Still, cops have left the force in droves, while crime has soared. Murders, rapes, robberies and assaults increased 25 percent last year, with the rise much steeper, more than 60 percent, in the neighborhoods surrounding the intersection where Floyd was killed.

The impeccably progressive mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Fry, who desperately wanted to ingratiate himself at a tribunal-like rally last summer, but, to his credit, wouldnt commit to defunding the police, now occasionally sounds like hes channeling Rudy Giuliani circa 1993.

The violence needs to stop, its unacceptable, he said at a community meeting a couple of weeks ago. We should be holding these perpetrators accountable. He added that when you make big, overarching statements that were going to defund or abolish and dismantle the police department and get rid of all the officers, theres an impact to that.

Another dyed-in-the-wool progressive, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, faced with ongoing unrest that once was blamed on Trump, has called for the citys residents to take the city back from rioters and for unmasking, arresting, and prosecuting them.

Los Angeles cut its police budget by 8 percent in the wake of the Floyd protests, and now is basically adding the funding right back. In South Los Angeles, the LAPD is increasing patrols and vehicle stops to search for guns and gang members.

Irving Kristol famously said a neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality. If progressive politicians who are now sounding friendlier to the police havent been mugged by reality, they at least have been alarmed by the sound of approaching gunfire.

The turnabout isnt universal. White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked the other day whether theres a crime problem, and sounding as evasive as when she discusses the border, would only say there is a guns problem. This was a reference to the completely unconvincing argument that increased gun sales have led to the spike in crime, when surges in gun sales since the mid-1990s never before led to higher crime.

The problem that Democrats have is that they have either made themselvesor allied themselves with people makinga comprehensive case against the police as systematically racist. This doesnt naturally allow for nuance, and, in fact, logically entails calling for fewer cops and less police funding.

This is an agenda that will be hard to sell to most people in the best of circumstances, but it is toxic in an environment of rising crime.

Black Lives Matter has already been losing support in the polls, while trust in the police has been rising. Things would have to get orders of magnitude worse for crime to become as central an issue as it was in the 1970s. But safe streets is a non-negotiable expectation of all voters. Its why law and order, whether wielded demagogically by George Wallace or much more responsibly by Ronald Reagan, has such power.

Democrats who arent alarmed that reporters cant do standups at the George Floyd memorial without dodging bullets are tempting political fate.

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Opinion | Democrats Ignore the Crime Spike at Their Own Peril - POLITICO

The latest Democratic battle to expand Medicare access is under way.

A group of more than 150 House Democrats from the progressive and centrist wings of the party are launching a campaign to include an expansion of Medicare in President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan, The New York Times reported.

They sent a letter on Thursday to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris arguing to widen the federal health program so it includes a broader range of Americans, along with growing the range of benefits provided so it includes dental, vision, and hearing aids.

"Medicare expansion means more coverage for more people and by finally allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, it's at a lower cost for taxpayers," Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Pramila Jayapal, a leader of the effort, said in a Friday tweet. "Let's get this done."

The plan would cut the eligibility age from 65 to 60, adding roughly 23 million Americans into the government health insurance program. The group projects it would amount to $200 billion over a decade. They say the price tag would be offset with another proposal: empowering Medicare to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs, which Democrats have failed to achieve in the past.

The effort is certain to trigger Republican opposition and potentially reopen a fierce debate among Democrats on healthcare. The last Democratic presidential primary was largely defined by policy brawls over Medicare for All and whether Americans should be able to keep their private coverage in a reform effort.

Expanding Medicare access is popular with voters, however, particularly reducing prescription drug costs. Up to now, however, Biden and Democrats have directed their efforts at expanding the insurance subsidies available under the Affordable Care Act.

Widening Medicare coverage could run into roadblocks in the Senate from centrist Democrats. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has stated his opposition, complicating the path ahead for other Democrats supportive of the measure. "No, I'm not for it, period," he told The Washington Post last month. It's unclear why Manchin opposes it, although he told The Hill in 2019 the government "can't even pay for Medicare for some."

Biden continues negotiating with Republicans on an infrastructure plan, and the talks are set to stretch into at least early June. The White House did not include a Medicare expansion or a blueprint to cut the price of prescription drugs in its economic plans, though it called on Congress to approve the measures in its budget without laying out specific policies.

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Democrats want to allow 60-year-olds into Medicare as part of Biden's infrastructure package - Business Insider