Analysis: As Florida’s DeSantis pushes right on cultural and other issues, Democratic state leaders see a need to speak out in opposition
President Biden’s State of the Union speechand the most memorable video clips, those of Republicans heckling the president and, in the case of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene , calling him a “liar.” But the juxtaposition of the governors’ conference with the president’s speech highlighted how and why the locus of action is shifting.
During his first two years in office, Biden governed with narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Because most legislation requires 60 votes to pass the Senate, he was limited in what he could do. On issues like immigration and voting rights, important to the Democratic base, nothing was done. In the next two years, he will govern with a slim majority in the Senate but with Republicans narrowly in control of the House. Neither party is likely to get its way.
Among Democrats, Biden commands the biggest stage and the loudest megaphone, but Democratic governors — California’s Gavin Newsom, Illinois’s J.B. Pritzker, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, North Carolina’s Roy Cooper, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, Colorado’s Jared Polis, New Jersey’s Phil Murphy, Maryland’s Wes Moore, Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, Massachusetts’s Maura Healey, Wisconsin’s Tony Evers and others — will be defining the party’s response as much as the president.
Pritzker put it this way: “Our success as a state goes hand in hand with a determination to fight against a rising tide of hate … For some, the ugly voices that sing those discordant notes sound like siren calls. Their message is amplified by elected officials or political grifters who look to harness the tremendous power of hate for their own ambition.”
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