The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[N.E. Brigand]

"Report the stakes, not the odds."

I don't remember which media analyst last year urged election reporters to do that, but here's a little example of the stakes involved when voters pick Republicans over Democrats. As Chris Hayes says: "I cannot overstate how, at the ground level of policy-making, this is the kind of thing conservative politics and Republican governance is really about. Part of the challenge of covering this is that republican very much do not go around running on the platform of 'We will make taking water breaks on your job illegal!' even if that's what they do."

That's right: the Republicans who control Florida's state senate voted to "ban local governments from having ordinances that require shade and water breaks throughout the day."

As it has been practiced over the past century, Republicanism is about protecting the strong at the expense of the weak.

Donald Trump merely adds to that baseline a heightened populist racism and a nearly unprecedented level of personal corruption (I say "nearly" because of Spiro Agnew).

But how many Floridians knew that's what they were voting for in 2022? How many journalists reported "no water breaks" as the stakes of that election?

[N.E. Brigand]

I think this Super Tuesday voter's outlook says something about both the stakes and the odds:



I may have mentioned before that my sixth-grade social studies teacher, Mrs. Wilson, in an Ohio public school, told our class in 1983-84 that women aren't qualified as world leaders. She did allow that Margaret Thatcher was an exception.

How many Mrs. Wilsons were out there for how many years filling up kids minds with crap like that? It makes you glad that so many kids zone out in school.

[N.E. Brigand]

Everyone should read up on conservatives' Project 2025 plan, which would be implemented if Donald Trump wins the election.

[N.E. Brigand]

North Carolina's lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, a Republican who is running today to be his party's nominee for governor, holds garbage views.

[RoseMorninStar]

A new poll in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania of voters who don't identify as being part of Donald Trump's base finds that only 31% of them had heard of any of the "most explicit authoritarian" comments that Trump has made. These voters were asked about ten statements including Trump's statement that he would be "dictator for one day," this call for "termination" of parts of the U.S. Constitution, his description of immigrants as "poisoning the blood of our country," his promise to pardon January 6th criminals, his claims that he would prosecute Joe Biden and his family, and his description of his opponents as "vermin." However:

The good news for Biden is that when respondents were presented with these quotes, it prompted a rise in Trump’s negatives. For instance, after hearing them, the percentage who see him as “out for revenge” jumped by five points, the percentage who see him as “dangerous” rose by nine points, and the percentage who see him as a “dictator” climbed by seven points.

I think there was a study released in 2021 that found the Lincoln Project's 2020 ads juiced the base but held no appeal for swing voters.

Perhaps not Lincoln Project ads of the past (or future), but by accounts of your original post which links to the poll, making swing voters aware of Trumps' statements do make a difference. Someone has to figure out a way of getting that information out there in an effective way. I imagine that listening to a recording/video of something a candidate said directly is far more effective than someone repeating what they said (which I often take with a grain of salt presuming someone may be putting their words in someone else's mouth). Nikki Haley is doing some of this.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

The Virginia poll three days ago showing Donald Trump leading Nikki Haley by only 8 points turned out to be an outlier. She's losing by about 29 points.

(The 538.com polling average showed Trump expected to beat Haley there by 49 points. Another case of the polls are overstating Trump's strength? And if so, what does it mean? Is it simply be a function of independent and Democratic voters participating in the Republican primary? Well, 538.com says the average had a forumula error and should have been 30 points, so the vote came in just as expected.)

Haley did win her second primary and first state tonight with a narrow victory in Vermont, but she lost the rest by wide margins.

I wonder to what degree yesterday's news from the Supreme Court helped Trump today.

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Washington Post: "A Fox News guest pundit seemed baffled at the idea that Donald Trump had dinner with a Nazi. That makes sense, since — as with most stories that are bad for Trump — the channel barely mentioned it."

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Adam Schiff ended up in first place in the California Senate race, with Steve Garvey in second.

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President Biden won all Super Tuesday states pretty handily (although "uncommitted" did even better in Minnesota today than last week in Michigan).

But not American Samoa, where someone named Jason Palmer won 51-40. That's right: fewer than 100 votes were cast. (And they each get 3 delegates.)

[Frelga]

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Adam Schiff ended up in first place in the California Senate race, with Steve Garvey in second.

I wanted Katie Porter, but I'm not too bummed because her congressional district is probably less securely Democratic.

A little bummed.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Katie Porter had to give up the opportunity to run in the 47th District in order to run for the Senate, which may end up costing the Democrats the chance to retake the House.

In that District (with 60% reporting) Republican Scott Baugh leads with 33.3% of the vote, with Democrat Dave Min running second with 25.4% of the vote. Baugh very narrowly lost to Porter in 2022, and likely will win this time around against Min. While I like Porter, I think her decision to run for the Senate was a mistake.

[N.E. Brigand]

Nikki Haley is suspending her campaign, and Mitch McConnell, shameless to the end, is endorsing Donald Trump.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Haley has stopped short of endorsing Trump, though I would guess it is only a matter of time.

[N.E. Brigand]

President Biden's message to Nikki Haley's supporters:

[Voronwë the Faithful]

A very excellent article from Teri Kanefield about the Supreme Court's 14th Amendment decision and the "outrage" it has generated.

The Outrage Machine Strikes Again (14th Amendment, Section 3)

[N.E. Brigand]

A very excellent article from Teri Kanefield about the Supreme Court's 14th Amendment decision and the "outrage" it has generated.

The Outrage Machine Strikes Again (14th Amendment, Section 3)

I haven't Kanefield's piece yet, but I just searched it for the word "officer," which does not appear there. One of the legal arguments advanced by Donald Trump's supporters (that's a paper by conservative legal scholars Josh Blackman and Seth Barrett Tillman), and taken up by pundits on television programs, and in fact the argument that was dispositive in the first Colorado decision which ruled in favor of Trump, was that Trump is exempt from this Constitutional provision because the president is not an officer as defined there (and Trump had never held another governmental office and thus had taken no other oath). The word "officer" appears more than 30 times in the transcript of the oral arguments on this case at the Supreme Court, and some commentators continued to propose that this would be the reason that the Court would rule against Colorado (as everyone agreed they would). All of that commentary about "officer" turned out to be wrong. Kanefield's apparent decision not to consider this important strand of the discussion (outrageous or not), strikes me as odd.

I will read the whole thing. I am curious to see how she discusses all the outrage on Fox News about this case prior to the Court's decision.

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Edited to add: I've now read Kanefield's whole piece and will probably read it again. While I agree with her conclusion -- which echoes a point that Marcy Wheeler has been making again and again for at least two years -- and her frustration with the way certain legal pundits framed an outcome disfavorable to Trump as an inevitability (although I think she misunderstands Elie Mystal -- one of Wheeler's regular targets-- who never had any expectation that the Court would keep Trump off the ballot). I wish she had spent a little more time on the possibility that even a unanimous Supreme Court can be wrong. And only history will tell if it's "Rush-Limbaugh-level crazy" to compare this decision to Dred Scot. If Donald Trump wins in November and effectively terminates the Constitution, then this decision will probably be seen as more important than that one, not less. Even the historians of that new regime may agree with me about that. But I'll probably be among the first to have my back against the wall, so I'd never know it.

I am mindful that in contradistinction to the pundits Kanefield excoriates, you called this ruling -- that Section 3 isn't self-executing -- quite some time ago.

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Edited further because I see my edit cross-posted with your subsequent reply. I could see just from the first couple pages of Kanefield's post that she was going to lay out a history of how the punditry described this case. I wondered if it was a comprehensive history. Did it consider all punditry or only anti-Trump punditry? Did it consider all major strands of discussion about this case or just some? Remembering that one key argument made as to why Donald Trump was or was not disqualified from holding office was that the president is not an officer, remembering that this was fiercely argued on both sides, remembering that it was the reason Trump was originally not disqualified in Colorado, remember that when Colorado's Supreme Court ruled otherwise, there was plenty of "outrage" -- the subject of Kanefield's discussion -- on the right about that and other aspects of their ruling, remembering that Trump's lawyers continued to push the point in oral arguments at SCOTUS, remembering that the whole argument had vanished entirely in the Court's decision issued Monday (except by implication: they say that states can't bar "federal officeholders" from appearing on the ballot, so I guess that means the president is one)*, and remembering all the "outrage" I've seen on social media from the right -- before and after Monday's decision -- arguing that Colorado's Secretary of State and Supreme Court should be punished for supposedly violating Trump's rights, I searched to see what Kanefield had to say about that particular strand. As you say, she has other fish to fry: she wishes to knock Tribe and Luttig and others down a few pegs. Fair enough. Those commentators were wrong, or at least, the Supreme Court in 2024 says they were wrong, about Section 3 being self-executing. (Historians or a future SCOTUS may someday decide otherwise.) But Tribe and Luttig and others also argued that the president was an officer. They apparently were right about that. And Blackman, who it taken pretty seriously on the right (I don't know much about Tillman), was wrong. (Or again, the Court now seems to say he was wrong. History or a later majority of justice may disagree about that too! Maybe one hundred years from now, it will be settled law that president is not an officer but states can disqualify federal candidates.) Is Blackman showing the "intellectual humility" that Kanefield wants to see from Tribe and Luttig?

*Will Robert F. Kennedy sue to be allowed on the ballot in states where he hasn't met their qualifications? Doesn't avoiding the "chaotic state-by-state patchwork" that Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson fear require that states do so? Or does it require that states where Kennedy is listed remove him because others don't have him on their ballots?

I will add one more thought about "officers," not related to Kanefield's essay. There has been some punditry about how, since the majority in Monday's opinion require a Congressional act not only to disqualify candidates for the presidency but also for any federal office, the door has been opened for all Jan. 6th insurrectionists to run for office. However, I wish to note that because Section 3 applies only to those insurrectionists who had previously taken an oath of office, most Jan. 6th insurrectionists already were exempt.

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Edited one more time to ask: where is Lawrence Lessig's intellectual humility? He argues today that Monday's outcome was obviously the only possible rational one, and in support of his argument, he writes that "the Constitution does not make Congress the judge of the states’ presidential elections. That power is vested in the states", but also that "there needs to be a regular procedure to make that determination [that a candidate has engaged in insurrection], and obviously, there can’t be 51 different procedures in all the jurisdictions that send electoral votes to Congress." How do those two arguments not contradict each other?

(He also seems to say that a person has to be convicted to be disqualified. But the insurrectionists whose actions inspired Sec. 3 were not convicted.)

I do think he's right that the outcome of this case has helped Trump politically. It will do none of us any good if a few centuries from now everyone agrees that Trump was an insurrectionists who should have been disqualified by a sensible reading of the Constitution but that the people who brought these suits should have known they were going to lose and not poked the bear that led to the end of the United States as a democratic nation.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

While the issue was certainly raised during the oral argument, it was pretty apparent that the question of whether or not Trump qualified as an officer of the United States for purposes of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was not going to be dispositive for any of the justices. That question is completely irrelevant to the point that Kanefield is making, so I am puzzled by your puzzlement at her not mentioning it. It is completely irrelevant to what she is saying.

[N.E. Brigand]

Dean Phillips has suspended his campaign and endorsed President Biden. That's been expected. In the past week, Phillips has been pleasingly light-hearted about his chances, noting, for example, that recent Times polling showing him getting 12% of the vote put him way too high and joking about all the work he had to do to catch up to "uncommitted."

(Also, having read Kanefield, my post above is now more than twice as long as it originally was.)

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Edited to add: I think Jay Willis makes a good point here:



We did vote. And then Trump used violence to try to overturn that vote. And he was stopped.

That should have been the end of it. He should be done now. We shouldn't still be having this discussion.

And if institution after institution keeps failing the majority, it's not going to end well for anyone.

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Edited to add a link to Phillips's announcement, which is quite nice.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm genuinely confused as to why you think that Kanefield should have addressed pro-Trump punditry when that was not what her article was about? Isn't that a species of "both-sideism" that is condemned when people want to equate the Democrats with the MAGAs? In any event, to be clear, Kanefield's point isn't so much that Tribe and Luttig, et al. were wrong in their arguments; it is that they were wrong to stridently claim that their position was the only viable position to take. The fact that all nine justices disagreed with their position, including the three moderate justices (there are no "liberal" justices on this court) proves that their position was not the only viable position to take. I share Kanefield's dislike of that type of legal punditry and I'm glad that she called it out. Calling out the Fox News-type legal pundits for their issues is a separate matter.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

More from the Holocaust-denying and apparently women's-suffrage denying candidate for Governor of North Carolina.

[N.E. Brigand]

President Biden's message to Nikki Haley's supporters...

More outreach from President Biden to Haley supporters:



I hadn't previously seen that January 24 statement by Trump, in which he said that anyone who donates to Nikki Haley "will be permanently barred" from his party, adding "We don't want them, and will not accept them." The primaries hadn't even started then. There's a lot of Haley supporters he was trying to alienate then.

[N.E. Brigand]

New from Rolling Stone: "Trump's White House was 'awash in speed' and Xanax. If you ever looked at the actions of the Trump administration and wondered, 'Are they on drugs?' -- the answer was, in some cases, yes. Absolutely, yes. Under Trump, the White House Medical unit was 'like the Wild West,' and staffers had easy access to powerful stimulants and sedatives. Trump staffers on the edge would often pair Xanax with booze. As one former senior Trump administration official puts it: 'You try working for him and not chasing pills with alcohol.' (We first got interested in this story because of a ledger reprinted in a Pentagon report which seemed to suggest that there might be Ketamine and Fentanyl in the Trump White House. Turned out they ordered the stuff, but only to be ready in case of emergency problems.)"

The Trump campaign hasn't commented on this story, but one of the authors shared a little more: "I tracked down a therapist who saw Trump administration officials. This source told me that immediately after counseling sessions, leaders of the White House Medical Unit would press for information about what was said in therapy."