The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[N.E. Brigand]

I'm genuinely confused as to why you think that Kanefield should have addressed ...

You ask some good questions and I hope to have some answers later.

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

That's just... wow. If this had been published before today, he might not be the candidate now. But who knows, maybe a majority of Republicans in North Carolina don't think women should be allowed to vote.

And he was addressing a Republican women's group?

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is boasting about defunding law enforcement. That includes, as noted here, not only cuts to the Dept. of Justice, FBI, and ATF, but "a $16 million cut to the immigration court budget, at a time when there are over 3,000,000 pending cases." (In response to that statistic, some on the right argue that the money could be better spent expelling migrants. But per U.S. law, those 3 million people can't be deported until their cases are adjudicated.)

Meanwhile, everyone will no doubt be shocked to learn that Elon Musk was lying when he claimed that President Biden, by admitting certain immigrants to the U.S. for humanitarian reasons (as every president since Harry Truman has done -- except Donald Trump) had thereby committed "treason." Naturally Trump cited this claim in his Super Tuesday victory speech last night.

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I imagine one part of the Dept. of Justice that Republicans would like to defund it its antitrust division:



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Democratic turnout in Massachusetts yesterday was more than three times higher than when Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were running for reelection in 1996 and 2012, respectively. I have no idea why, and given that Massachusetts will certainly vote for President Biden in November, I don't know that it matters.

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The Washington Post interviewed some Nikki Haley supporters, including an 80-year old woman from Richmond, Virginia, who voted for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Here's what she had to say:

I think [Trump is] so irrational and, really, very frightening. I think that if he allowed this January 6 thing to take place, he could try to take over the next time if he doesn't win this one. I just think he's dishonest and I don't want that -- but I think Biden is, too . . . I definitely won't vote for Biden. I will have to vote for Trump."

I think the ellipse in this case means not that the reporter is hiding what she really said from readers but that she cut herself off and paused before continuing. Someone suggested that President Biden should meet with her -- or voters like her -- to find out what it is they want that they Donald Trump will deliver them but he won't.

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Looking back: in January 2020, when there were just five known Covid-19 cases in the U.S., Joe Biden penned an op-ed for USA Today to say Donald Trump was not prepared for what was coming. Trump had lately tweeted that "it will all work out well," but Biden wrote "I am concerned that the Trump administration’s shortsighted policies have left us unprepared for a dangerous epidemic". Biden noted the Obama administration's response to an Ebola outbreak in 2014 and Donald Trump's xenophobic and shortsighted reactions at the time.

What Biden didn't say is that one reason Trump didn't want to act was because he was afraid of hurting U.S. relations with China and thus his own pocketbook.

[N.E. Brigand]

I think this candidate for Minnesota's legislature is right to claim that:



It's interesting to me that a number of the replies effectively concede those points by turning to a different subject: complaints about the deficit.

[N.E. Brigand]

Speaking of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., tonight he acknowledged on Fox News that he flew twice on Jeffrey Epstein's plane in the 1990s because "my wife had some sort of relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell."

Now I don't actually think that everyone, or even most people, who were guests of Epstein and/or Maxwell were involved in the pair's illicit activities. Epstein and Maxwell liked to cultivate a circle of rich friends, whom they used in a variety of ways.

RFK Jr. wants you to know about his other friends:



And specifically about the experience of flying on Jeffrey Epstein's private jet, he said: "It wasn't like a big plane. Like, I've been on a Donald Trump’s plane. It was like a 737. It's not like a little G6 or something like that."

[N.E. Brigand]

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.

In CA-47, Scott Baugh and the other Republican candidates combined for nearly 50.8% of the vote, as opposed to 46.3% for Dave Min and the other Democratic candidates. (These numbers are not final.) As you say, Katie Porter's decision to run for Senate puts the district at risk for Democrats. It doesn't help that Min was arrested last year for driving while intoxicated and is on three years' probation. (He still finished more than six points ahead of the next Democrat, Joanna Weiss.)

Still, I think Californians are to be envied that they had three such strong candidates to choose from in the Senate race. I was disappointed that Rep. Porter tweeted that she lost a "rigged" election, and I'm pleased that she's taking heat from liberals for that dumb remark. (Obviously not a lesson Republicans will ever learn.)

[N.E. Brigand]

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

That quote is cut off at the end. Some are complaining the cut is unfair to North Carolina's Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. Here is a fuller quote: "I absolutely want to go back to the America when women couldn’t vote. You know why? Because in those days we had people who fought for real social change, and they were called Republicans. And they are the reason why women can vote today." He goes on to note that Republicans were also instrumental in bringing an end to Jim Crow laws.

Does the fuller quote help Robinson? I think it's ahistorical and nonsense. It's ahistorical because over time, the makeup of parties and associations change. For example, when the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870 and gave the vote to Black men, the two best known women's suffragists, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, quit their own organization (which supported that amendment) because they thought "black men should not receive the vote before white women" (that's per Wikipedia). History is messy.

Thus also for many decades, including those periods Robinson describes, there were two wings to the Democratic Party. Northern Democrats and most Republicans generally favored movement toward fuller equality for all citizens. Southern Democrats opposed it and were able to use the filibuster to halt or stall that progress. A Constitutional amendment for women's suffrage was first introduced in Congress way back in 1878, but the effort didn't pick up steam until the 1910s. Votes failed repeatedly over the next several years. President Wilson, a Democrat, finally endorsed it in 1918. He took the unusual step of speaking in support of the amendment in the Senate, citing women's role in the U.S. war effort (that would be World War I). The vote failed then too, but it finally passed the House in May 1919 and the Senate in June 1919, and it was endorsed by the required number of states and thus adopted in August 1920.

Here's how the final Senate vote broke down:

20 Democrats -- Yea
17 Democrats -- Nay
9 Democrats -- Not voting/abstained
36 Republicans -- Yea
8 Republicans -- Nay
5 Republicans -- Not voting/abstained

So while Republicans did shoulder a larger burden, there were votes against women's suffrage from both parties.

As for Congress's efforts to end Jim Crow which in the 1960s, that was very much a bipartisan affair, but the most important legislation was led by (northern) Democrats -- and it resulted in Democrats losing the southern states, in some cases because pro-segregation Democrats switched to become Republicans.

Besides Robinson's history being bunk, the whole idea is nonsense. He wants to go back to when women couldn't vote ... so they can again secure the right to vote? Does he then want to wait another 45 years from that point for the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act to be passed? Does he want to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, neither of which existed in 1920? This all started when he was asked to explain when America was great if, like Trump, he proposes to "make America great again."

And remember, Robinson's views on women were known to be garbage long before that video surface yesterday. He wrote all sorts of awful things on Facebook including this in 2017: "The only thing worse than a woman who doesn't know her place, is a man who doesn’t know his." That's "only" meant to attack LGBTQ individuals, but there's a large dollop of traditional misogyny thrown in. And in 2016, he said that women who breastfeed in public are "shameless attention hogs."

(Edited to fix dates: the 19th amendment was ratified by Congress and the states in 1919-20 not 2019-20. Robinson might wish otherwise.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thanks for providing that fuller quote. While I agree with all that you say, I do think that the quote is taken out of context and I regret citing it without looking at it more closely. I should have followed my normal rule never to cite the Huffington Post without further research.

[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.

In CA-47, Scott Baugh and the other Republican candidates combined for nearly 50.8% of the vote, as opposed to 46.3% for Dave Min and the other Democratic candidates. (These numbers are not final.) As you say, Katie Porter's decision to run for Senate puts the district at risk for Democrats. It doesn't help that Min was arrested last year for driving while intoxicated and is on three years' probation. (He still finished more than six points ahead of the next Democrat, Joanna Weiss.)

Still, I think Californians are to be envied that they had three such strong candidates to choose from in the Senate race. I was disappointed that Rep. Porter tweeted that she lost a "rigged" election, and I'm pleased that she's taking heat from liberals for that dumb remark. (Obviously not a lesson Republicans will ever learn.)

There is, of course, no guarantee that Porter would have won had she run for reelection in CA-47 given how close it was last time, but I think it is clear that she would have been more likely to win than Min will be. I wasn't pleased with her "rigged" comment but I cut her some slack for expressing frustration (and I understand why she was frustrated with Schiff's tactics). I was disappointed (but not surprised) that Barbara Lee got so little support, though that is perhaps hypocritical because I ultimately didn't vote for her either.

[Frelga]

Barbara Lee appears to still live in 2003.

I somehow didn't grasp that Porter was giving up her seat to run for Senate. That was a bad move, and I'm disappointed in her. It will be tough for Democrats to keep her seat. To bad the election wasn't last year, when California tax filing deadline was extended to October. Well off taxpayers in SoCal need to be reminded of how Trump's tax reform cost them $$$$$ in not being able to write off property taxes.

[N.E. Brigand]

Two national polls today show President Biden in the lead, but 1. both polls are close, 2. a narrow popular vote win for Biden probably means a narrow electoral college win for Donald Trump, 3. we're still a long way out from November, and 4. averages are more reliable than individual polls -- and the averages currently favor Trump. But with those caveats noted, these are the new polls:

A. Emerson has had Trump in the lead more often than not over the past two years, and consistently since September but with the margin narrrowing. The most recent poll had Biden and Trump tied at 45%, and if the undecided voters are forced to choose, Biden leads 51%-49% (1,350 registered voters, Mar. 5-6).

B. KFF has Biden over Trump 47%-44% (1,072 registered voters, Feb. 22-28). That poll also finds two-thirds of respondents want a national law guaranteeing abortion rights.

Note that both polls use "registered" rather than "likely" voters.

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SplitTicket predicts Republicans will control the Senate 52-48, and that's after moving Arizona from "toss-up" to "leans Democrat" following Kyrsten Sinema's decision to withdraw from the race. With Democratic Senator Joe Manchin retiring, Republicans are assured of winning West Virginia, and Democratic Senators Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio are rated as facing "lean Republican" contests.

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In "closed primary states where only registered Republicans could vote" on Super Tuesday, Donald Trump underperformed his polling, doing six points worse in California, 24 points worse in Minnesota, and 11 points worse in Oklahoma than polls suggested he would. But there weren't a lot of polls.

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Donald Trump's tax cuts (which overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and corporations) passed in Dec. 2017 are set to expire in 2025. Election reporter Dave Weigel (formerly at the Washington Post and now at Semafor) says that this represents a "sleeper issue" this year. Democrats want to let the cuts for the richest beneficiaries expire and use the increased revenue to pay down the deficit and address some funding needs. Republicans, like Kari Lake in the interview at that link, want to make the cuts permanent but also claim they will (1) not cut Medicare or Social Security and (2) not let the deficit grow. How? They won't get specific, but Lake says: "it's going to be difficult ... we're in a dire situation."

(I appreciated something else Weigel observed today: "Just think about it for a second. Wars in Ukraine and Gaza, OPEC extending its output cuts, and it costs less to fill up your car than it did six months ago. Republicans' 'Biden made us energy dependent again' line doesn't make sense. If at the start of Russia's invasion, you said, 'The war will still be going on in two years, but gas here will be cheaper,' you'd have sounded a little crazy. But it is and it is!")

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And speaking of taxes:



Interesting that Tesla had $5.5 billion in profits in 2021 but paid no corporate taxes.

And do illegal immigrants disproportionately gravitate toward Democratic states? What about Texas?

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

New York Times: "The Biden team is preparing to use Project 2025 ... against Trump".

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Even the Dreamers? People who were brought here by their parents as kids and have lived here their whole lives?



Apparently so, since he says "no path to citizenship."

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"Trump’s White House Pharmacy Handed Out Drugs Like Candy: : A Dept. of Defense report found an obscene lack of control over the handling of controlled medications while Trump was in office." To be sure, we heard during Donald Trump's administration that the White House physician from 2013 to 2018, Ronny Jackson, who then was promoted for a year to the new position of "Chief Medical Advisor to the President" and then in 2020 was elected to Congress representing Texas's 13th district, was already known as "Dr. Feelgood" during Barack Obama's presidency for his liberal distribution of medication. ...

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. ...

News today on this story: "Navy demoted Ronny Jackson after probe into White House behavior."

The Congressman from Texas was quietly demoted from Rear Admiral to Captain in July 2022. That reduces his retirement pay by about $15,000. But he's continued to refer to himself as a retired Rear Admiral since his demotion. Shame.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Dave McCormick, who hopes to unseat Pennsylvania's incumbent Democrat, Sen. Bob Casey. Like Dr. Mehmet Oz, the New Jersey resident who lost to John Fetterman in Pennsylvania's 2022 Senate race, McCormick only recently moved to the state.

As Dave McCormick launched his 67-county campaign bus tour on a Saturday afternoon in Lititz, he told supporters gathered that he was going to "live on the bus" through November.

He flew back to Connecticut later that evening.

McCormick also threw his wife, who works for Exxon, under the bus when he was asked about gas prices.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm genuinely confused as to why you think that Kanefield should have addressed ...

You ask some good questions and I hope to have some answers later.

To be clear, I am not saying that I agree with the Supreme Court's ruling in the Trump v. Anderson 14th Amendment case; I don't agree with any of them including the concurrences.

[N.E. Brigand]

I think this advice (written more than twelve hours before Biden's speeech) is right:

President Biden has improved people's lives and they haven't noticed. That's because people's understanding of the world is determined by their information diet, not their material conditions. President Biden needs to take up more space in their information diet, which means starting arguments. ...

Biden should make controversial, sweeping, but unambiguously true claims (“Donald Trump betrayed the nation and tried to overthrow the government”; “I produced the best economy in human history”) so they rile people up in huge debates, but debates where you start out ahead.

This is a classic troll tactic for dominating the discourse for a reason: it works. Say something that a lot of people will object to but is, when you dig into it, incontestably correct. The result: everyone argues a bunch, getting all the attention, and then you’re right.

Apart from referring to Donald Trump as "my predecessor", that's what a lot of Biden's State of the Union address consisted of. But he could go farther.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm sure he will. But probably mostly after the conventions.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Biden is already campaigning on his widely-praised SOTU speech.

[N.E. Brigand]

"How do you cover a candidate everyone knows—and no one remembers?"

Celinda Lake, one of President Biden’s top pollsters on his 2020 campaign, was recently conducting a focus group with swing voters for another client when a response stopped her cold.

Lake had asked how the voters felt about former president Donald Trump’s pending criminal court cases related to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

“They go, ‘What court case around January 6?’” she recalled. “These were swing voters, and about half of them weren’t sure what we were talking about. And I said, ‘Well, you know, the insurrection and that he was the one that provoked it.’ They go, ‘Oh, yeah. I kind of forgot about that.’”

For journalists and the types of highly engaged voters who watch the news every night, Trump’s lock on renomination has been near-certain for at least six months, and his various transgressions and incendiary comments are well known. But it’s easy for political obsessives to lose sight of how little attention many normal people pay to day-to-day politics.

Even now, as Trump’s Super Tuesday victories this week mark the all but official start of the 2024 presidential general election, a significant portion of voters remain largely disengaged—especially those swing voters whose choices will likely decide the election.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

He's not even pretending to not want to be a dictator anymore.

[RoseMorninStar]

It has long puzzled me why people believe a businessman would be the best person for president. Especially a business where there are no checks & balances and is run like a dictatorship. Such businesses generally do not do what best for the majority who are further down the chain.

[N.E. Brigand]

On March 9, 2020, four years ago today, by which point more than 30 states had reported cases of Covid-19 and the number of known deaths in the U.S. had gone from zero to 28 in just ten days (that number would later be revised up as some other deaths dating back to Feb. 6 were found to be from Covid-19), then-President Donald Trump said that the situation was "very much under control" in the U.S. and claimed that the number of new cases would soon fall to zero. On Twitter, he pointed out that 27,000-70,000 Americans die from the flu each year and that "nothing is shut down. Life and the economy go on. ... Think about that!"

Think about this: three month later, the U.S. death count would hit 100,000. It would be more than 500,000 by the year's end.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

RFK, Jr. reportedly has gotten enough signatures to qualify for several more states, including Michigan. Despite suggestions that he might pull more votes from Trump than Biden, pills have consistently shown the opposite.

Concerned.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump tonight referred to himself as President Biden's "political appointment."

He meant "political opponent," but didn't even notice he'd made the mistake. I look forward to him explaining that he did it deliberately.

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Although Sen. Katie Britt floundered with her immigration horror story on Thursday, first because her horrible delivery dominated the news and second because the story turned out to be something that happened 20 years ago, that subject is still a potent tool for Republicans. Donald Trump tonight tried to use it as a wedge to drive the "suburban housewife" vote away from President Biden: "They want something that's very important: security. ... They don't want illegal immigrants knocking on their front door and saying I'm going to use your kitchen or I'm going to use your bedroom and there's not a damn thing-- that's the nice one, OK, that's the nice ones". In other words, Republicans' argument is again: Democrats want to let criminals rape and kill you. The murder of Laken Riley in Georgia adds fuel to this fire. Political analyst Mike Madrid argues that, ridiculous as it might seem, this is a line of attack that might work, and Democrats need to be prepared to counter it forcefully.

[N.E. Brigand]

It was overshadowed the next day by the State of the Union, but this summary of Donald Trump's resume is first-rate: