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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Orphan States

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections

From Axios:
Between the lines: "The most competitive states this cycle are those where a court or commission drew a congressional map as opposed to a partisan one," Cook's U.S. House editor Dave Wasserman tells Axios.He points to races in New York, Michigan, Arizona and California: "That's where you’re going to see a lot of money spent."

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Wasserman says the situation is especially perilous for House Democrats facing tight races in "orphan states," where there's no competitive statewide election driving turnout.Those orphan states include California, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, Washington — and arguably New York, Wasserman tells Axios.
The only path to survival for those Democrats may be to go "scorched earth" against still-undefined Republican challengers — which, at this point in the race, includes essentially all first-time candidates.

Monday, May 30, 2022

Network of Election Deniers

 Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the partiesThe state of the GOP is not good. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.  

Alexandra Berzon at NYT:
An extensive review of Ms. [Cleta] Mitchell’s effort, including documents and social media posts, interviews and attendance at the Harrisburg seminar, reveals a loose network of influential groups and fringe figures. They include election deniers as well as mainstream organizations such as the Heritage Foundation’s political affiliate, Tea Party Patriots and the R.N.C., which has participated in Ms. Mitchell’s seminars. The effort, called the Election Integrity Network, is a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-wing think tank with close ties and financial backing from Mr. Trump’s political operation.

Ms. Mitchell says she is creating “a volunteer army of citizens” who can counter what she describes as Democratic bias in election offices.
...

Ms. Mitchell’s trainings promote particularly aggressive methods — with a focus on surveillance — that appear intended to feed on activists’ distrust and create pressure on local officials, rather than ensure voters’ access to the ballot, they say. A test drive of the strategy in the Virginia governor’s race last year highlighted how quickly the work — when conducted by people convinced of falsehoods about fraud — can disrupt the process and spiral into bogus claims, even in a race Republicans won.

...

 The Republican National Committee’s involvement is part of a return to widespread election-work organizing. For nearly 30 years, the committee was limited in some operations by a consent decree after Democrats accused party officials in New Jersey of hiring off-duty police officers and posting signs intended to scare Black and Latino people away from voting. The committee was freed of restrictions in 2018.

This year, its multimillion-dollar investment includes hiring 18 state “election integrity” directors and 19 state “election integrity” lawyers. The party has so far recruited more than 5,000 poll watchers and nearly 12,000 poll workers, according to the committee. These efforts are separate from the Election Integrity Network, said Emma Vaughn, an R.N.C. spokeswoman.

But in multiple states, the R.N.C. election integrity directors have been involved in Ms. Mitchell’s events. Ms. Vaughn acknowledged that party officials participate in events hosted by other groups to recruit poll workers and poll watchers. She noted that in many states poll monitors must be authorized by the party. The R.N.C. is training its monitors to comply with laws protecting voting rights, she said.

Sunday, May 29, 2022

Abortion Politics 2022

 Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses how polarization has affected American life.

At Axios, Sophia Cai reports that the congressional parties are almost completely polarized on abortion.
Driving the news: Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) — described by his primary challenger, Jessica Cisneros, as "the last anti-choice Dem in the House" — was barely clinging to a lead after Tuesday’s runoff election.Joe Manchin of West Virginia is the only Senate Democrat who joined Republicans earlier this month blocking the advancement of legislation that aimed to codify federal protections for abortion rights.

Democrats further down the ballot who oppose abortion rights are being pushed out or walking away.In New Jersey, the Morristown Democratic Committee voted last year to strip Aaron Oliver of his chairmanship because of his anti-abortion views. "It was awful," Oliver told Axios. "I didn't want to resign, but this issue right now with the Democratic Party is an absolute litmus test."
In Texas, state Rep. Ryan Guillen—the only Democrat to vote for the state's new near-total ban on abortion—switched to the Republican Party last November.
In Tennessee, former state Rep. John DeBerry Jr. lost his re-election bid as an independent in 2020 after state Democrats decided he couldn’t run in their primary due to his voting record on abortion and school choice.

The other side: Republicans who support abortion rights are also a rare breed. There are just two in the Senate — Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — and none in the House.

Flashback: In 1976, the Hyde amendment banning federal funding for most abortions first passed the House, with 247 Democratic votes. Just 22 Democrats voted no, and 16 did not vote.That was a modern high mark for anti-abortion Democrats in the House, Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life of America, told Axios.
The roll call notably shows Republican opposition greatly outnumbering Democratic opposition — and more Republicans voting no than yes — underscoring how drastically both parties have shifted in the decades since.

By the numbers: Today, about 26% of Democrats describe themselves as “pro-life,” according to Gallup, and about 22% of Republicans describe themselves as “pro-choice.” Among national officeholders, though, the issue is almost fully polarized.The GOP began adopting an increasingly hard line on abortion in the 1980s, as New York Magazine recently detailed, By 2018, there wasn’t a pro-choice Republican left in the House.
Anti-abortion Democrats still made up about a quarter of the Democratic House majority as recently as 2010, but a slew of those members either lost their races or retired. Two of the last holdouts, Reps. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Dan Lipinksi (D-Ill.), both lost their seats in 2020.

What they're saying: "The Democratic Party is making it inhospitable to be pro-life and in the Democratic Party," Day told Axios. "It's a huge mistake."

Saturday, May 28, 2022

"Let's Go Brandon" Firearms

 Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses how polarization has affected American life.



Friday, May 27, 2022

The Akin Ploy in a CA House Race

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections

In the 2012 Missouri  Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative."  The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe.  It worked.  Other campaigns have tried the same thingEven in California.

Republican Rep. Young Kim raised eyebrows on Tuesday with a new broadcast ad buy in LA targeting Greg Raths, suggesting Kim could see her GOP opponent as a serious obstacle to reelection in California’s 40th Congressional district. Just this week, Democratic candidate Asif Mahmood launched a separate ad buy on cable TV, contrasting his views on abortion with those of Raths, a now all-too-common tactic to elevate one’s preferred opponent.

Melanie Mason and Seema Mehta at LAT:

Kim’s sudden advertising onslaught against Raths has made others take notice. The Cook Political Report, which does nonpartisan elections analysis, noted that “GOP strategists believe Kim was slow to take Raths seriously” and rated the seat as “lean Republican,” down from the stronger “likely Republican” it had initially assessed.

Meanwhile, Mahmood, the Democrat, has spent more than $400,000 on air attacking Raths for being too conservative on abortion, indirectly boosting Raths’ appeal among the GOP base. The ad does not mention Kim at all.

“We’ll be prepared in the general for whoever emerges, but right now it looks more likely to be Raths,” said Nathan Click, a Mahmood campaign strategist.

Political gamesmanship is also likely at play. There is a long tradition of candidates trying to elevate an opponent in the primary whom they see as more beatable in November. Kim’s allies accused Democrats of “disinformation” by trying to publicize Raths.

The Republican state party has sent mailers trumpeting Kim and has staff in her district working on contacting voters. Reinforcement also came from Congressional Leadership Fund, a McCarthy-aligned super PAC that plowed more than $650,000 into television and radio ads for the final days of the primary.

“This would be the equivalent of taking your shoe and crushing an ant in terms of political heft,” said Jon Fleischman, a GOP strategist. “Why not use it?... If she can stomp out her opponents in a pretty meaningful way, it is a deterrent to this happening again in two years.”

Raths’ resources are minuscule by comparison. He’s spent less than $10,000 on radio ads and has sent out texts highlighting Kim’s vote to censure Trump after the insurrection. Still, his ground game and indirect advertising from Mahmood gave him enough hope to put up $90,000 of his own money.

“We’ll see in two weeks if that was a good bet,” he said.

But Raths may be self-destructing:


 

 

Thursday, May 26, 2022

Public Opinion on Guns

Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties.Republican elected officials oppose gun control.  Although their position is at odds with general public opinion, few if any will suffer any political damage from it.

Eli Yokley at Morning Consult:

  • According to the Wednesday survey, 65% of voters favor stricter gun control laws in the United States, up from 60% in a survey conducted after a May 14 mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y. It marks a similar level of support for gun restrictions as measured in a survey following the 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla.
  • Since last week’s survey, the share of Republicans in favor of tougher gun laws increased from 37% to 44%, mirroring a level of support that had been fairly steady during Donald Trump’s presidency but declined after President Joe Biden took office last year.
  • Two in 3 independent voters said they want stronger gun laws, up 10 percentage points from the post-Buffalo shooting survey.
...

Although the survey was conducted just one day after the Tuesday shooting, which took the lives of 19 elementary school students and two teachers, the event had near-immediate salience with the public: 52% of voters said they had seen, read or heard “a lot” about the massacre at Robb Elementary School, along with another 36% who heard some about it.

Harry Enten at CNN:

Indeed, most Republicans feel no pressure to act on gun control because voters are as likely to trust them on the issue of guns as they are to trust Democrats. A Pew Research Center poll from earlier this year showed that 38% of Americans agreed with Republicans on gun policy compared with 37% who agreed with Democrats, a finding within the margin of error and one that has been consistent in polling.

At the same time, polling from CNN/SSRS from earlier this year found that the enthusiasm on the gun issue was, if anywhere, on the Republicans’ side. Forty-five percent of voters who lean Republican said gun policy was extremely important to their 2022 congressional vote, while 40% of voters who lean Democratic said the same. Those who said gun policy was one of their top issues were more likely to have backed Donald Trump in 2020 than Joe Biden. 

Blake Hounshell at NYT:

Three days.

That’s how long it takes before the public’s anger begins to dissipate after a mass shooting, according to two scholars at Princeton University. It’s now over 24 hours after an 18-year-old gunman slaughtered 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, and the national conversation over what to do next has already fallen into a familiar pattern.

Democrats are demanding action. Republicans are trying to change the subject. And time is running out before the country’s attention inevitably turns elsewhere.

For a paper published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Patrick Sharkey and Yinzhi Shen of Princeton examined Gallup surveys of Americans’ self-reported emotions in the days before and after a mass shooting

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

A La Recherche du David Perdue

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections

Aaron Blake at WP:
The headline contest was one that we already knew was probably a lost cause for Team Trump. But we didn’t really know the half of it. It was an absolute rout: Former senator David Perdue (R-Ga.) trailed incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp (R), 73 percent to 22 percent, with 96 percent of votes in.

This was perhaps the one race former president Donald Trump most targeted to make a statement about the 2020 election. Members of the GOP establishment in turn wanted to send a message that Trump should give up on his “vendetta tour,” punctuated by a Kemp endorsement from former vice president Mike Pence.

It’s unlikely this will chasten Trump much. Election deniers are winning primaries elsewhere, and they’ll continue to do so. But there was a time relatively recently when we wondered whether the idea of a stolen election would be a litmus test in the GOP primaries; Kemp has now showed you don’t absolutely have to toe that line.

That doesn’t mean others will be able to replicate his success. Kemp had built credibility with the conservative base, and it’s not like he denounced Trump’s lies as a handful of other Republicans have. He also made a point to support new voting restrictions in Georgia.

In some ways, Tuesday’s biggest surprise in Georgia was Secretary of State Brad Raffenspeger (R), who had been left for political dead after more directly repudiating Trump’s voter-fraud claims.
Then he, unlike many Republicans who denounce Trump, actually ran for reelection. He went on to fend off a high-profile, election-denier opponent in Rep. Jody Hice — without a runoff.

Combined with Chris Carr’s easy win over a lackluster Trump-backed challenger for attorney general — Carr had said there was no widespread voter fraud — Trump went 0 for 3 in endorsing against statewide Georgia Republicans who assured the election was valid.


Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Petition Signature Fraud Reshapes MI Governor Race

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections

Taylor DesOrmeau at MLive:
Five of the 10 Republican candidates for governor don’t have enough valid signatures to make the ballot, according to a report from the Michigan Bureau of Elections after a thorough review.

The five candidates without enough valid signatures are James Craig, Perry Johnson, Michael Brown, Michael Markey Jr. and Donna Brandenburg.

The report is not a final decision, however. The Michigan Board of State Canvassers will vote Thursday, May 26, to determine which candidates have enough valid signatures. The Bureau of Elections report is just a recommendation for the board.

If all five candidates are disqualified, that would leave five Republican candidates on the Aug. 2 primary ballot: Garrett Soldano, Kevin Rinke, Ryan Kelley, Tudor Dixon and Ralph Rebandt.

The board of canvassers has two Republicans and two Democrats. It could take issue with certain petitions and signatures that were deemed invalid.

Governor candidates need at least 15,000 signatures, and 100 from each congressional district, to qualify for the primary ballot. Candidates were allowed to submit up to 30,000.

The winner from among the GOP candidates will face Democratic incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the Nov. 8 general election.

Here’s how many valid/invalid signatures the Bureau of Elections found for the six candidates in question:

  • Tudor Dixon: 29,041 valid signatures, 199 invalid signatures
  • Perry Johnson: 13,800 valid signatures, 9,393 invalid signatures
  • James Craig: 10,192 valid signatures, 11,113 invalid signatures
  • Michael Brown: 7,091 valid signatures, 13,809 invalid signatures
  • Michael Markey Jr.: 4,430 valid signatures, 17,374 invalid signatures
  • Donna Brandenburg: 6,634 valid signatures, 11,144 invalid signatures
Many of the faulty petitions came from the same 36 circulators, who submitted an estimated 68,000 invalid signatures across petitions for 10 different Michigan candidates for governor and other positions, per the bureau.

Having fraudulent signatures submitted is common, the bureau said in its report, but it is “unaware of another election cycle in which this many circulators submitted such a substantial volume of fraudulent petition sheets consisting of invalid signatures, nor an instance in which it affected as many candidate petitions as at present.”

Monday, May 23, 2022

Civil War

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellioncoups, and secession.   

Yascha Mounk at The Atlantic:
As someone who lived in many countries—including Germany, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom—before coming to the United States, I have long had the sense that American levels of partisan animosity were exceptionally high. Although I’d seen animosity between left and right in other nations, their hatred never felt so personal or intense as in the U.S.

A study just published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace confirms that impression. Drawing on the Variety of Democracies (V-Dem) data set, published by an independent research institute in Sweden that covers 202 countries and goes back more than two centuries, its authors assess to what degree each country suffers from “pernicious” levels of partisan polarization. Do their citizens have such hostile views of opponents that they’re willing to act in ways that put democracy itself at risk?

The authors’ conclusion is startling: No established democracy in recent history has been as deeply polarized as the U.S. “For the United States,” Jennifer McCoy, the lead author of the study and a political-science professor at Georgia State University, told me in an interview, “I am very pessimistic.”

Sunday, May 22, 2022

Republicans and Election Process

 Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections

Nick Corasaniti, Karen Yourish and Keith Collins at  NYT:
At least 357 sitting Republican legislators in closely contested battleground states have used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a review of legislative votes, records and official statements by The New York Times.

The tally accounts for 44 percent of the Republican legislators in the nine states where the presidential race was most narrowly decided. In each of those states, the election was conducted without any evidence of widespread fraud, leaving election officials from both parties in agreement on the victory of Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The Times’s analysis exposes how deeply rooted lies and misinformation about former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat have become in state legislatures, which play an integral role in U.S. democracy. In some, the false view that the election was stolen — either by fraud or as a result of pandemic-related changes to the process — is now widely accepted as fact among Republican lawmakers, turning statehouses into hotbeds of conspiratorial thinking and specious legal theories.

  

In four crucial battleground states [GA, WI, MI, AZ] Republican candidates who falsely contend that Donald Trump won the 2020 election are running for state attorney general.

If they win, they’d serve as their states' top law enforcement officers and would have the power to use their office to tilt the outcome of presidential elections. If Trump should run again in 2024, and the outcome is close in a handful of states, the actions attorneys general are able to take could also give Trump cover to claim falsely claim victory once again.

“To the extent that election results are challenged, or that there are attempts to undermine results, it will be the state attorneys general representing the state and the results in court that perhaps matters most to protecting the will of the voters,” said Joanna Lydgate, the CEO of States United Action, a nonpartisan group that tracks the races.

Along with the governor and, in most states, the secretary of state, the state attorney general is part of a trio of elected officials who oversee, administer, defend and certify elections and election results. Election deniers are also running in many states for secretary of state and governor.

Saturday, May 21, 2022

Stefanik

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. It also discusses the state of the partiesThe state of the GOP is not good.  Case in point: the infamous Elise Stefanik.

 Brian Huba at Syracuse.com:

This past weekend, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY-21) addressed the nation’s baby formula shortage. On her personal Twitter, Stefanik posted, “The White House, House Dems, & usual pedo grifters are so out of touch with the American people that rather than present ANY PLAN or urgency to address the nationwide baby formula crisis, they double down on sending pallets of formula to the southern border.” Not only is this tweet disgraceful (notice the nod to QAnon), it’s also dishonest.

But that’s Stefanik’s long-standing M.O. She routinely uses dog whistles and bold-faced lies to manufacture outrage. It’s the most irresponsible thing an elected official can do, but Stefanik never misses a beat. Or, to quote a longtime constituent I know from New York’s 21st, “Elise has not been productive for our district or state. Has been productive on a national level for herself.”

Earlier this year, Stefanik publicly attacked a school in Mayfield, N.Y., accusing it of putting an educator on leave because that educator expressed anti-mask sentiments on social media. The administration denied this, saying in part, “... the district would not put someone on leave for posting their personal opinion about the mask mandate on social media.” Then Stefanik inserted herself into the story, claiming the teacher was disciplined for posting one of Stefanik’s Facebook posts about the issue. The school called Stefanik’s statement(s) “misleading and inaccurate,” and Stefanik called for the “Resignation of any and all administrators who made this wrongful determination.” Again, there is zero evidence this happened as Stefanik describes.

When the Ukrainian war broke out, Stefanik trashed President Joe Biden. “Joe Biden’s weakness on the world stage has emboldened our foreign adversaries…” She saw the bloodshed as a chance to score cheap political points. A few weeks later, Stefanik penned an op-ed for the New York Post, promising to investigate Hunter Biden to the ends of the Earth when the GOP reclaims the House. In this same op-ed, she referred to the nation’s First Family as the “Biden Crime Family,” not once, twice, but three times. Gutter-ball politics.



Friday, May 20, 2022

Mastriano

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellioncoups, and secession. 

Greg Jaffe at WP:
Two decades before he was Republican nominee for Pennsylvania governor, Doug Mastriano warned in a master’s thesis that the United States was vulnerable to a left-wing “Hitlerian Putsch” that would begin with the dismantling of the U.S. military and end with the destruction of the country’s democracy.

The thesis, written in 2001 when Mastriano was a major at the Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College, is highly unusual for its doomsaying and often fearful point of view, and its prediction that only the U.S. military could save the country from the depredations of the country’s morally debauched civilian leaders. The paper is posted on an official Defense Department website and lists Mastriano as the author at a time when he said he received a master’s degree from the school.

In it, Mastriano adopts the point of view of a colonel who is living in 2018 — some 17 years in the future — and has taken refuge in an “isolated cavern” in the George Washington National Forest. The military’s collapse, in his telling, allowed a left-wing leader obsessed with “political correctness” and backed militarily by the United Nations and the European Union to rise to power in a struggle that led to the deaths of millions of Americans.

“Domestically, life was bleak with a rampant drug culture, hedonism and a plethora of ‘alternate’ religions dominating the American youth,” wrote Mastriano in the voice of his fictional colonel. “We were a people without vision or direction.”

Ultimately, Mastriano concluded that the U.S. military was the “only institution to prevent the destruction of the republic.”

The document displays a disgust for anyone who doesn’t hold his view that homosexuality is a form of “aberrant sexual conduct” and presages the worldview that has led Mastriano to blame rampant fraud for Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat and to join a crowd headed toward the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“This thesis proves that Mastriano’s embrace of activity that undermines the U.S. Constitution is no recent corruption,” said Peter Feaver, a former senior White House official in the George W. Bush administration who was written extensively about civil-military relations. “It stems from poisonous views and misunderstandings that he has held for a very long time.”

Thursday, May 19, 2022

Census Miscounts

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections The 2020 campaign unfolded amid a decennial census.

Texas and Florida did not devote enough money to encouraging people to fill out their forms.

Big mistake.

Hansi Lo Wang at NPR:
For the 2020 census, all states were not counted equally well for population numbers used to allocate political representation and federal funding over the next decade, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Thursday.

A follow-up survey the bureau conducted to measure the national tally's accuracy found significant net undercount rates in six states: Arkansas (5.04%), Florida (3.48%), Illinois (1.97%), Mississippi (4.11%), Tennessee (4.78%) and Texas (1.92%).

It also uncovered significant net overcount rates in eight states — Delaware (5.45%), Hawaii (6.79%), Massachusetts (2.24%), Minnesota (3.84%), New York (3.44%), Ohio (1.49%), Rhode Island (5.05%) and Utah (2.59%).

For the other 36 states, as well as Washington, D.C., the bureau did not find statistically significant net over- or undercount rates.

Mike Schneider at AP:

Florida's undercount translates into around 750,600 missed residents, and an analysis by Election Data Services shows the Sunshine State needed only around 171,500 more residents to gain an extra seat. The undercount in Texas translates into around 560,000 residents, while the Election Data Services analysis put Texas as needing only 189,000 more residents to gain another congressional seat. Hispanics make up more than a quarter of Florida's population and almost 40% of Texas residents, and critics say the Trump administration's failed efforts to add a citizenship question to the census form may have had a chilling effect on the participation of Hispanics, immigrants and others. It was a different story for states where residents were overcounted, like Minnesota and Rhode Island. Minnesota was allocated the 435th and final congressional seat in the House of Representatives; if Minnesota had counted 26 fewer people, that seat would have gone to New York. Minnesota's 3.8% overcount amounted to around 219,000 residents.


 

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Trump on the PA Senate Race

 Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections


Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Domestic Terrorism

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellioncoups, and secession. 

President Biden spoke about the "Great Replacement" massacre today in Buffalo:

What happened here is simple and straightforward: terrorism. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism. Violence inflicted in the service of hate and a vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group.

A hate that through the media and politics, the Internet, has radicalized angry, alienated, lost, and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced — that’s the word, “replaced” — by the “other” — by people who don’t look like them and who are therefore, in a perverse ideology that they possess and being fed, lesser beings.

I and all of you reject the lie. I call on all Americans to reject the lie. And I condemn those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit. (Applause.) Because that’s what it is.

We have now seen too many times the deadly and destructive violence this ideology unleashes.

We heard the chants, “You will not replace us,” in Charlottesville, Virginia. 


Monday, May 16, 2022

Shots Fired

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellioncoups, and secession.   

Sunday, May 15, 2022

Murder and "Great Replacement Theory"

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellioncoups, and secession.  

Ben Collins at NBC:
A manifesto apparently written by the suspect in a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket that killed 10 laid out specific plans to attack Black people and repeatedly cited the “Great Replacement" Theory, the false idea that a cabal is attempting to replace white Americans with non-white people through immigration, interracial marriage and eventually violence.

The manifesto, which appears to be written by 18-year-old Payton Gendron, included a shared birth date and biographical details with the suspect in custody. The PDF was originally posted to Google Docs at 8:55 p.m. Thursday, two days before the shooting, according to file data accessed by NBC News.
...

“Great Replacement" theory has recently received support from traditional power centers of the American right. According to an AP-NORC poll released this week, 1 in 3 U.S. adults believe there is an ongoing effort “to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains.”

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has repeatedly pushed “replacement” rhetoric on his show. “I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest for the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World,” Carlson said in April of 2021.


 

Friday, May 13, 2022

The Falcon Cannot Hear the Falconer

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections

Michael C. Bender at NYT:
A late surge from Kathy Barnette in Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary is officially on former President Trump’s radar.

Mr. Trump criticized Ms. Barnette, a conservative author and political commentator, on Thursday and said she was unvetted and unelectable. “Kathy Barnette will never be able to win the general election against the radical left Democrats,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.

Ms. Barnett’s momentum in the polls has jeopardized Mr. Trump’s second attempt to influence the primary race, which comes to a close on Tuesday. He endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz, a longtime television host, after his first choice for the seat, Sean Parnell, suspended his campaign in November amid a court battle over the custody of his children.

Ms. Barnette’s sudden rise comes as Dr. Oz has been locked in a contentious primary fight with David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive with deep ties to Mr. Trump’s political orbit. A Fox News Poll on Tuesday showed her at 19 percent, behind Mr. McCormick at 20 percent and Dr. Oz at 22 percent.

Her climb has surprised many watching the Pennsylvania race — including Mr. Trump, who never seriously considered supporting her before he announced his endorsement of Dr. Oz less than five weeks ago, according to two people familiar with the decision who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations.


 

Wednesday, May 11, 2022

The Akin Ploy in California

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections

In the 2012 Missouri  Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative."  The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe.  It worked.  Other campaigns have tried the same thing.