Dems, Progs, and Israel

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The 2024 race has begun.  The Gaza war is politically dangerous for Biden. A shocking percentage of young people think that the October 7 massacre was justified.  And Arab Americans in the key state of Michigan may be turning away from the president. 

Mara Gay at NYT:

For the first time in decades, possibly since the anti-Vietnam War and environmental movements, the left wing has led the center of the Democratic Party in a new political direction on a major issue — one sharply critical of the Israeli government, impatient with the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and increasingly willing to use American leverage to curb Israel’s military plans.

In recent weeks, Democratic leaders have begun inching closer to the progressive view that it is against U.S. interests to continue sending unconditional U.S. military aid to Mr. Netanyahu’s government in an asymmetrical war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza. And they have recognized that anger among Democratic voters — especially young voters — over the U.S. role in Gaza is a serious threat to Mr. Biden’s re-election that cannot be ignored.

Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

Prevailing political patterns in Middle East sympathies remain in place this year. Republicans overwhelmingly sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians, independents tend to favor Israel, and more Democrats side with the Palestinians than Israelis. This is the case even as Democrats give Israel much higher favorable ratings than they give the Palestinian Authority. The Democrats’ movement has been recent; until 2022, Democrats were more likely to sympathize with Israel.

Among age groups, young adults are slightly more sympathetic to the Palestinians than the Israelis (after being equally divided last year), with the other groups sympathizing with Israel.

 

Most House Democrats supported Israel aid on Saturday, but the nay vote was higher among Dems than Reps.

GOVTRACK: H.R. 8034: Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024

Apr 20, 2024 at 1:57 p.m. ET. On Passage of the Bill in the House.

This was a vote to pass H.R. 8034 in the House. The federal budget process occurs in two stages: appropriations and authorizations. This is an appropriations bill, which sets overall spending limits by agency or program, typically for a single fiscal year (October 1 through September 30 of the next year).

Vote Outcome

	All Votes		Republicans	Democrats
Yea	86%	366	193	173
Nay	14%	58	21	37
Not Voting		7	4	3

Passed. Simple Majority Required. Source: house.gov.

Trump Money Woes

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.

Lloyd Green at The Guardian:

Donald Trump dodged financial calamity on Monday. The office of Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and lawyers for Trump reached agreement in open court on the terms governing the appellate bond posted by the former president. 

...

Trump would no longer maintain any authority over the account. In turn, James remains barred from enforcing her $454m judgment against Trump and his businesses. For those keeping score, Trump is now out-of-pocket in a neighborhood north of a quarter of a billion dollars and counting.

His pretense of being cash-rich is soiled. In March, he shelled out for a separate $91.63m bond while he appeals the $83.3m verdict in the latest E Jean Carroll defamation case. Earlier, he paid another $4m into court to block Carroll from collecting a prior defamation judgment, also on appeal.

The stock price of Trump Media & Technology Group – his eponymous meme stock, DJT – is in the doldrums. Politico also reports that Save America, a Trump-controlled Pac, has already spent $59m on his legal fees and may run shortly out of money.

Beyond that, Trump World tussles with Ken Griffin, a major Republican donor and the chief of Citadel Securities, a leading Wall Street market-maker. Last Thursday, Devin Nunes – the former Republican congressman who resigned from the House to run Trump’s media company – wrote to the head of the Nasdaq, raising the issue of “potential market manipulation” of DJT stock and blasting “naked short-selling”.

Griffin, whose wealth is estimated at a cool $37bn, quickly struck back. He branded Nunes a “proverbial loser” whom Trump “would have fired on the Apprentice”. He also accused the humorless Californian of trying to deflect blame for DJT’s lackluster stock price.

Jessica Piper at Politico:

A PAC controlled by former President Donald Trump that has devoted tens of millions of dollars to his and his allies’ legal bills could be running out of cash after spending nearly $3.7 million on legal fees in March.

Save America, Trump’s leadership PAC, has now spent $59.5 million on legal consulting since the start of 2023. It also incurred $886,000 in new legal debt in March, according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission late Saturday. More than $1.1 million of its March spending went toward two firms representing Trump in his New York criminal hush money trial.

The total spent on legal expenses for Save America was almost as much as Trump’s campaign committee in the month of March, highlighting how legal troubles have sucked up the cash of his political operation. Trump’s official campaign committee spent just over $3.7 million in March, with travel expenses, followed by payroll, occupying its biggest expenditure categories.

That total is minuscule compared to the more than $29 million that President Joe Biden’s campaign spent in March, with the incumbent launching a major ad campaign.

Save America, Trump’s leadership PAC, was able to stay in the black in March due to another $5 million refund in March from Make America Great Again Inc., the Trump-backing super PAC. The super PAC has transferred $5 million to the leadership PAC each month going back to last July, with less regular transfers before then.

The leadership PAC initially seeded the super PAC with $60 million before he announced his candidacy. Now, MAGA Inc. can only send $2.75 million more back to Save America, raising questions about whether Save America will continue to be the vehicle to fund legal bills in several cases linked to Trump.

 

Rightward Shift Among Chinese Americans in SF

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  Our next book will carry the story through 2024.

 Jim Carlton  and Christine Mai-Duc at WSJ:

Long a reliable voting bloc for the left, Chinese-Americans have been important drivers of a recent backlash against progressive policies in San Francisco, which has grown in support and been backed by tech industry money.

Members of the Chinese community, who make up one-fifth of this city of 810,000 and a slightly smaller percentage of registered voters, say they have been particularly incensed by incidents of anti-Asian violence, school policies they believe have emphasized equity over merit, and street homelessness. Many are also upset that property crime has long been higher in San Francisco than most other major cities, though it has dropped this year.

Chinese-Americans were among the most emphatic backers of ballot measures passed last month mandating drug screening for public welfare recipients and expanding police powers, as well as the 2022 recall of the three school board members and the district attorney, Chesa Boudin. Their margin of support for those efforts was 10 to 30 percentage points higher than the overall San Francisco voting population, according to an analysis of publicly available data by research firm Data Second. The firm is run by the husband of Marjan Philhour, a candidate for San Francisco Board of Supervisors running on a moderate platform.

...

In the past, Chinese-Americans often voted for representatives from their own community, in which political activists had close ties to left-wing political movements. That was particularly true in Chinatown, the oldest enclave of Chinese immigrants in the U.S., dating to the 1850s.

As Chinese residents climbed the socioeconomic ladder, however, they increasingly moved to the city’s western, more suburban neighborhoods and began voting for reasons other than ethnic representation, political analysts and community leaders said.

Many Chinese-American voters grew angry at the political establishment during the pandemic, when prolonged school closures and a move away from merit-based admissions at one elite high school incensed families who put an emphasis on education.

Asian Americans to Democrats: "we want safe streets, good schools and less progressive ideology." That's the message and 2024 warning from San Francisco. Footnote about our unfortunate experience at the end. @OutFrontCNN story features @JoelEngardio. Producer: @jasonkCNN pic.twitter.com/6Up96sGD5H

— Kyung Lah (@KyungLahCNN) March 23, 2023

Deepening Diploma Divide

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  

Nate Moore at The Liberal Patriot:

We are on track for a historically large education divide among white voters. An average of recent polls finds Joe Biden winning white college-educated voters by 18 points and losing white non-college voters by 27 points—a colossal gap of 45 points. 

Compared to 2020 results, Trump’s margin with non-college whites is holding steady, while Biden has significantly improved his standing with degree-holding whites. Such Democratic improvement is certainly welcome for Team Biden, but not unexpected. College-educated white voters have been shifting blue for a decade, driven left by Trump and the GOP’s hardline cultural stances. The flip side of the demographic coin is that nonwhite voters, particularly those without a degree, are moving towards Republicans. Should current trends continue, education polarization—rather than racial—will become the defining feature of American elections. 

 

RFK Jr's Family and Associates Are Against Him

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Trump allies are trying to boost RFK Jr. in an effort to split the anti-Trump vote. Biden supporters have noticed.

Kevin Liptak and Michael Williams, CNN:

President Joe Biden received the formal endorsement of more than a dozen members of the extended Kennedy family on Thursday, aiming to harness the legacy of a storied Democratic family while implicitly underscoring their near-universal rejection of a third-party challenge mounted by one of their own, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The broader Kennedy family has mostly shunned RFK Jr.’s campaign, calling it “dangerous,” even as the candidate himself looks to capitalize on his last name and family history.

But Thursday’s event in Philadelphia - the same city where RFK Jr. announced his independent bid for the presidency in October - nonetheless highlights the threat Kennedy poses to Biden as he seeks to win reelection in a race where even a low-performing third-party candidate could act as a spoiler.

Aaron Pellish at CNN:

Environmental groups are condemning Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential bid and his environmental policy in new efforts on Friday, portraying him as a candidate who will increase the chances former President Donald Trump is reelected.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a climate advocacy group where Kennedy previously served as senior attorney for 28 years, is planning to run a full-page advertisement in newspapers through its political arm in six battleground states on Sunday. According to a copy of the ad obtained by CNN, the group is calling on Kennedy to drop out of the race to prevent him from being a spoiler for Trump, who they call “the single worst environmental president our country has ever had.”

“We have spent our careers fighting to protect the planet and its people. As current and former leadership and board members of the NRDC Action Fund, as well as former colleagues of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., we have one message for him: Honor our planet, drop out,” the ad reads.

“In nothing more than a vanity candidacy, RFK Jr. has chosen to play the role of election spoiler to the benefit of Donald Trump – the single worst environmental president our country has ever had,” the ad continues.

Another Problematic Senate Candidate

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. In 2024, several Republican Senate candidates are having problems. 

 Matthew Chapman at Raw Story:

Wisconsin Senate candidate Eric Hovde is unhappy that the media is covering his proliferation of MAGA election conspiracy theories.

In a new video posted to X, Hovde — a banking and real estate development executive challenging Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin — complained that news outlets were mischaracterizing his past statements about voting in nursing homes, implying that he was saying senior citizens shouldn't be allowed to vote. In reality, he said, he was just casting doubt that all the senior citizens who voted in 2020 actually did so.

"Let me tell you how a political hit job works, and the Democrats are experts at this," said Hovde. "So last week, in some news articles, there were written that I don't believe elderly should be able to vote. How did that come about? Because I absolutely believe the elderly should vote."

His actual statement, Hovde continued, was purely about "election integrity issues" and this got spread out of control through Democratic-controlled "phony news organizations." "It's patently false," he said. "It's fundamentally wrong."

The remarks at issue came from an interview Hovde gave on the Guy Benson Show, first reported by the left-leaning Heartland Signal, where he said, "We had nursing homes, where the sheriff of Racine investigated, where you had 100 percent voting in nursing homes. Well, if you're in a nursing home, you only have a five, six-month life expectancy. Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote."

Hovde did not explicitly say senior citizens shouldn't be allowed to vote; however, his remarks disparaging the idea most nursing home residents are of sound mind to vote in the first place generated widespread controversy and anger in the local press.

Problematic GOP Senate Candidates

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. Several Republican Senate candidates are having problems. 

Republican (Former Congressman Mike Rogers) hoping to represent Michigan in the U.S. Senate suffered a setback to his campaign this week after facing allegations that he lives in Florida.
https://t.co/gHgZi0jF5C

— Karol Cummins (@karolcummins) April 10, 2024

In Montana, GOP recruit Tim Sheehy is having trouble explaining what he had claimed was a war wound.

Sheehy apologized and asked for leniency after alleged 2015 gun incident https://t.co/hEahHtNnho

— Liz Goodwin (@lizcgoodwin) April 17, 2024

Former baseball star Steve Garvey, who is running against Adam Schiff for Senate, has owed millions in back taxes since the 1980s

Garvey has had more than 40 tax liens, federal and state, totaling nearly $4 million

He’s still trying to pay off the debthttps://t.co/wVkKgtvfGf pic.twitter.com/i5Sfc6OwJO

— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) April 17, 2024

In June 2022, Kari Lake praised the 1864 anti-abortion law as “great legislation already on the books” and said politicians should do the right thing despite polling and protests.

Lake: “Arizona will not be a state where abortions are happening.“ pic.twitter.com/usYACHCPUL

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) April 10, 2024

Arizona Senate hopeful Kari Lake (R) suggested that supporters “maybe strap on a Glock” after saying the “next six months is going to be intense” ahead of the 2024 election. https://t.co/hLDrY2Ng8R

— The Hill (@thehill) April 17, 2024