Politics

Democrats may finally get their overdue political reckoning

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

Democrats may finally get their overdue political reckoning

This is an adapted excerpt from the Nov. 11 episode of “Morning Joe.”

In every speech I’ve given over the past 20 years, I talk about the ebb and flow of American politics: If a party gets voted into power and goes too far left or too far right, they’re corrected in the midterms and readjust for the next election.

I learned this firsthand during President Bill Clinton’s first administration. After he was elected in 1992, Clinton passed the Tax Reform Act of 1993, which increased the corporate tax rate and the top federal income tax rates.

In 2022, Democrats didn’t have this usual “shellacking.”

Clinton was quickly painted as a left-wing radical, and that reaction got people like me elected in 1994. However, when we shut down the government trying to balance the budget, we were seen as going too far right, which helped Clinton get re-elected in 1996.

In 2008, we saw the same thing with President Barack Obama. He won this massive, sweeping victory, but two years later the tea party came in and said, “It’s our turn now.”

The realignment in 1994 helped push Clinton to declare, “The era of big government is over,” during his 1996 State of the Union address. That was Clinton readjusting to the actions of the American people. He realized he had to go to voters and say government wasn’t the answer.

It’s the same thing that happened with Obama: He started talking to Republicans in 2011 and 2012 about the deficit and spending caps. He talked about welfare reform and balancing the budget after Democrats got a “shellacking,” as Obama would sayin the 2010 midterms. His base hated it, but he did it anyway — just like Clinton.

But in 2022, Democrats didn’t have the usual incumbent party “shellacking.” Ezra Klein makes a very compelling argument in The New York Times that since there wasn’t a reckoning two years ago — one that would have made President Joe Biden not run for re-election or make Democrats reconsider some of their policies — the party developed “political blindness” going into the 2024 election.

After the Democrats’ defeat last week, it may finally be the time for the party to go through that political reckoning.

Joe Scarborough

Former Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., is co-host of BLN’s “Morning Joe” alongside Mika Brzezinski — a show that Time magazine calls “revolutionary.” In addition to his career in television, Joe is a two-time New York Times best-selling author. His most recent book is “The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics — and Can Again.”

Allison Detzel

contributed

Politics

The US-Australia face-off that isn’t happening

Published

1 minute ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Who’s not here at Seattle’s Lumen Field for the Pacific Rim face-off between the United States and Australia?

If they’re following the match, the two countries’ elected heads — President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — are doing so from afar.

Politics

The soccer boss in Mark Carney’s ear

Published

31 minutes ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

VANCOUVER — Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber joined Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday to watch Canada’s thrashing of Qatar. Garber probably did not want Carney to enjoy the stadium experience too much.

BC Place is Major League Soccer’s most troublesome facility. The arena is old, was not designed with soccer in mind, and is owned by a government agency — the BC Pavilion Corporation, which also controls the Vancouver Convention Center — that forces the Vancouver Whitecaps to fight for dates on the calendar against concerts and other events.

“We want to be the ones that control our destiny, like every sports team does,” Garber told reporters Friday in Seattle.

The Whitecaps are now up for sale, and Garber is actively pushing British Columbia’s political establishment — including Premier David Eby and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim — to find a solution can keep the team from decamping to Las Vegas. While the government has been willing to renegotiate its financial relationship with the team, a proposed new stadium would take “four-plus years” in construction, which Garber said was untenable.

“It unimaginable how long we’re going to be out of the stadium,” he told reporters Friday in Seattle. “They are very relevant club that doesn’t have a good business model, and you can’t be sustainable.”

Garber recounted he met with Eby while in Vancouver, and sat with Carney and Victor Montagliani — the head of regional soccer confederation CONCACAF and a close ally of the prime minister — during the match itself. Garber said he has placed a league official in Vancouver full-time to manage the negotiations with local officials over the Whitecaps’s future.

“We want to be the ones that control our destiny, like every sports team does,” said Garber. “It’s easier for business people to make decisions, a little harder for politicians.”

Politics

The accidental American

Published

1 hour ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

In 2001, airline employees stopped a seven-months pregnant Florence Balogun from traveling home to London, deeming her too pregnant to fly. She stayed in New York, where she was visiting, eventually giving birth to a son, Folarin, before returning to London.

Twenty-five years later, Folarin Balogun has attracted global notice as a rising soccer star. Despite training in Arsenal’s youth academy and spending much of his career playing for England’s youth teams, Balogun — legally an American citizen, thanks to his Brooklyn birth — has emerged as a key contributor to the U.S. team’s attack at this year’s World Cup. The striker scored two goals in America’s opener against Paraguay last Friday, hoisting his team to a record-breaking 4-1 victory, the most goals the U.S. men’s team has ever scored in a World Cup game.

While Balogun’s performance has fueled fresh hopes about America’s World Cup prospects, he’s also found himself in the middle of America’s ongoing birthright citizenship debate.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order overturning the country’s long-standing birthright citizenship practice. The American Civil Liberties Union then sued to block the move, taking their legal battle to the Supreme Court. The court is expected to issue a final ruling soon — though it seems“broadly skeptical” of Trump’s effort.

“The executive order itself doesn’t claim to strip away [Balogun’s] citizenship or or the citizenship of other people born before [Feb. 19, 2025],” Cody Wofsy, the lead lawyer in the ACLU’s case, told Blue Light News. “But the constitutional theory that the government is asking the Supreme Court to adopt casts a shadow over the citizenship of millions and millions of people who were born in this country and have lived their entire lives as citizens.”

Examples of high-profile birthright citizens — like Balogun, but also politicians such as Kamala Harris and Marco Rubio — help illustrate the reality of banning birthright citizenship, Wofsy said.

“We don’t know what the justices are thinking,” he said, “but I would hope that they understand just how grave an action the government’s asking them for.”