tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58252565754162908262024-03-18T07:03:27.174-07:00EPIC JOURNEYThis blog continues the discussion that we began with Epic Journey: The 2008 Elections and American Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009).The latest book in this series is Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6226125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-55916561052557651202024-03-18T07:02:00.000-07:002024-03-18T07:02:53.107-07:00The Return of the Russian Assets<div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</a></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">.</a> <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2019/11/as-long-as-we-have-money-we-can-buy-him.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Among other things</a>, it <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/02/bozells-and-conservative-decline.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">discusses</a> foreign influence and Trump's <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/03/trumpism.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">attack on democracy</a>. <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/Our%20new%20book%20is%20titled%20Divided%20We%20Stand:%20The%202020%20Elections%20and%20American%20Politics.%20%20Among%20other%20things,%20it%20discusses%20foreign%20influence%20and%20Trump's%20attack%20on%20democracy." style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Russia helped Trump through 2020</a>. <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2022/02/putin-invades-ukraine-trump-praises.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">As Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine</a>, Trump lavished praise on Ru</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">ssian dictator <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2022/11/russian-interference-continued.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Vladimir Putin.</a> </span></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/18/trump-manafort-2024-campaign/">Josh Dawsey at WP:</a><br /><blockquote>Former president Donald Trump is expected to enlist Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/charles-kushner-paul-manafort-roger-stone-trump-pardons/2020/12/23/05cf013a-456d-11eb-975c-d17b8815a66d_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_2"> he pardoned</a>, as a campaign adviser later this year, according to four people familiar with the talks.<br /><br />The job discussions have largely centered around the 2024 Republican convention in Milwaukee in July and could include Manafort playing a role in fundraising for the presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. While no formal decision has been made, the four people described the hiring as expected and said Trump was determined to bring Manafort back into the fold.<br /><br /><br />Manafort worked for Trump in 2016 before being ousted and later <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/manafort-jury-suggests-it-cannot-come-to-a-consensus-on-a-single-count/2018/08/21/a2478ac0-a559-11e8-a656-943eefab5daf_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_5">convicted of tax and bank fraud felonies</a> as part of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He served time in prison before receiving a pardon in the final days of Trump’s time in office.</blockquote><p><a href="https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf">From a bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee:</a></p><p></p><blockquote><p>Manafort hired and worked increasingly closely with a Russian national, Konstantin
Kilimnik. Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik became an integral part of
Manafort's operations in Ukraine and Russia, serving as Manafort's primary liaison to Deripaska
and eventually managing Manafort's office in Kyiv. Kilimnik and Manafort formed a close and
lasting relationship that endured to the 2016 U.S. elections. and beyond. </p></blockquote><p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-michael-flynn-fd20908ba09b27beef2f8e40698d6d5e">Last year, Michelle Price reported at AP:</a></p><blockquote> Former President Donald Trump called into an event hosted by his former national security adviser <a href="https://apnews.com/hub/michael-flynn">Michael Flynn</a> over the weekend, telling his ex-adviser, “We’re going to bring you back.”<br /><br />After scrubbing a rally in Iowa on Saturday night <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-desantis-iowa-2024-c2d56a9fec898b90614864904fc1bedb">because of bad weather</a>, Trump spoke via telephone at an event for Flynn’s “ReAwaken America Tour” held at the former president’s Miami resort. The retired lieutenant general, a top figure in the far-right movement, has been one of the leading proponents of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.<br /><br />During the call, which was captured on a video of the event posted online, Flynn is seen holding a cellphone up to a microphone as Trump, on the line, says to Flynn, “You just have to stay healthy because we’re bringing you back. We’re going to bring you back.”</blockquote><blockquote>...<br /><br />Flynn, who <a href="https://apnews.com/article/0795b34ac17f4681934e31c07b442696">resigned from the Trump administration</a> less than a month after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, was charged later that year with lying to the FBI about conservations he had with the Russians on Trump’s behalf. He twice pleaded guilty, but Trump <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-pardon-michael-flynn-russia-aeef585b08ba6f2c763c8c37bfd678ed">ultimately pardoned him</a> in the final weeks of his presidency.</blockquote><br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /> <p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-8589106868337864962024-03-17T05:38:00.000-07:002024-03-17T06:50:29.403-07:00Trump Rhetoric<p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> </span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5825256575416290826/4588881606483201278#" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">Our books</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> have </span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5825256575416290826/5800418767978066030#" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">discussed</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> Trump's low character, which was on display yesterday in Ohio. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/17/trumps-long-history-of-referring-to-nonwhite-criminals-as-animals/">Marisa Iati at WP:</a></span></p><blockquote> Former president <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2">Donald Trump</a> ratcheted up his dehumanizing rhetoric against immigrants Saturday by saying that some who are accused of crimes are “not people.”<br /><br />“I don’t know if you call them people,” he said at a rally near Dayton, Ohio. “In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion. But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.”<br /><br />Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, was in Ohio to stump for Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/16/ohio-senate-republican-primary/?itid=lk_inline_manual_5">in a tight three-way race</a> for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. Moreno, a businessman, is facing Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Sen. Matt Dolan in Tuesday’s primary.<br /><br />...<br />Later in the rally, Trump warned it will be a “bloodbath for the country” if he is not elected. The comment came as he was promising to hike tariffs on foreign-made cars, and it was not clear exactly what Trump was referring to with his admonition.<br /><br />“Now we’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across [the] line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those guys — if I get elected,” he said. “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole. That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”<br />...<br /><br />Immigration is shaping up to be an explosive issue in the presidential campaign. Trump and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/?itid=lk_inline_manual_20">President Biden</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/29/biden-trump-border-immigration-texas/?itid=lk_inline_manual_20">staged dueling visits</a> to Texas border towns last month, castigating each other for a recent surge in illegal immigration.<br /><br />Trump said the influx of migrants was “a Joe Biden invasion.” Biden blamed Trump for the death of a $20 billion bipartisan bill to increase detention capacity and hire thousands of Border Patrol officers.<br /><br />Trump’s comments Saturday represent an escalation of his long-harsh language on the topic. Since beginning his 2016 campaign <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/16/theyre-rapists-presidents-trump-campaign-launch-speech-two-years-later-annotated/?itid=lk_inline_manual_23">by calling Mexican immigrants</a> “rapists,” Trump has made inflammatory attacks on migrants a theme of all of his campaigns. He accused immigrants in October of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/22/trump-campaign-immigrants-mass-deportations/?itid=lk_inline_manual_23">“poisoning the blood of our country”</a> — a remark some likened to the “contamination of the blood” concept that Adolf Hitler laid out in “Mein Kampf.” Trump has rejected that comparison and has continued to use similar language.</blockquote><p><a href="https://wapo.st/4cluHsG"> Trump has been referring to nonwhite people as "animals" for a very long time.</a></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Trump began attacking DeSantis again right after DeSantis signed legislation to allow the release of grand jury documents in the Epstein case. <a href="https://t.co/LQ04FSD9M1">https://t.co/LQ04FSD9M1</a></p>— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) <a href="https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1769104833426936232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 16, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-40346803825697864912024-03-16T08:20:00.000-07:002024-03-16T08:20:17.423-07:00Trump Trial Delays<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">In </span><i style="font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</a>, </i><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">we look at Trump's dishonesty and disregard for the rule of law.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"> Our next book <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/trump-must-pay-450m-for-his-fraud.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">will look at </a>the 2024 campaign and <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/people-dont-know-about-trumps-legal.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">the impact</a> of </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/trump-legal-fees-and-campaign-finance.html" style="color: #1118cc; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">Trump's legal problems</a><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">. </span><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">New York courts have found that he is a<a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/05/trump-loses-again.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;"> </a></span><span style="color: #1118cc; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/05/trump-loses-again.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">rapist</a></span></span><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"> and a <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/09/fraud.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">fraud</a>.</span></div><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/16/nyregion/donald-trump-trial-delay-strategy.html">Ben Protess, Alan Feuer, William K. Rashbaum and Maggie Haberman at NYT:</a><br /></p><blockquote><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/trump-legal-w-and-l.html">The schedule seemed stacked against Donald J. Trump</a>: four criminal trials in four cities, all in the same year he is running for president.<br /><br />But rather than doom Mr. Trump, the chaotic calendar might just save him.<br /><br />Mr. Trump, who as president helped reshape the federal judiciary, has already persuaded the Supreme Court to delay his trial in Washington. His lawyers have buried judges in Florida and Georgia in enough legal motions and procedural complaints that his cases there have no set trial dates, either.<br /><br />The case in Manhattan, where the district attorney accused Mr. Trump of covering up a sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, was the only one not mired in potential postponements.<br /><br />Until now.<br /><br />On Friday, Justice Juan M. Merchan, who is overseeing the case, delayed the trial at least three weeks, until mid-April.</blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-22949172790616988652024-03-15T05:54:00.000-07:002024-03-15T05:57:56.684-07:00House GOP Woes<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; vertical-align: inherit;">Our new book is titled </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</a></i><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; vertical-align: inherit;"> Among other things, it discusses</span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/03/trump-and-california-recall.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"> state</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; vertical-align: inherit;"> and </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/03/shape-shifting-candidate.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1a00ff; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">congressional</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; vertical-align: inherit;"> elections. </span><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republican-rep-ken-buck-leaving-congress-eroding-gop-majority-rcna143046">Scott Wong, Sahil Kapur and Ben Kamisar at NBC News:</a><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/10/mccarthy-lashes-out-on-his-way-out.html">Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo</a>., who frequently defied his own party and announced last fall he <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/gop-reps-ken-buck-kay-granger-announce-wont-run-re-election-rcna123189">would not seek re</a><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/gop-reps-ken-buck-kay-granger-announce-wont-run-re-election-rcna123189">-</a><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/gop-reps-ken-buck-kay-granger-announce-wont-run-re-election-rcna123189">election</a>, said Tuesday he will resign from Congress at the end of next week, further shrinking the GOP's already razor-thin majority.<br /><br />"Today I am announcing that I will depart Congress at the end of next week," Buck said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/RepKenBuck/status/1767610261781827904">statement</a>. "I look forward to staying involved in our political process, as well as spending more time in Colorado and with my family."<br /><br />His departure will cut the House Republican margin to 218-213; Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will continue to have two votes to spare before needing Democrats to govern. But illnesses and other unexpected absences could make his already difficult job even more ch</blockquote><div><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-house-divided-house-republicans-retreat-from-their-annual-gop-retreat">Reese Gorman and Riley Rogerson at <i>The Daily Beast:</i></a><br /><blockquote>For their annual retreat, House Republicans traveled to the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia this week to rally around a message to defend their House majority and to settle on a <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-bad-news-that-so-many-in-the-gop-are-pissed-about-averting-a-shutdown">path forward to fund the government</a>.<br /><br />There was just one problem: Less than half of the GOP conference even bothered to show up.</blockquote><blockquote>...<br /><br />[M]uch of the schedule fell apart even before Republicans arrived. The poor turnout prompted organizers to compress the retreat from a two-and-a-half day event into little over a day. House Republicans invited former President <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/keyword/donald-j-trump">Donald Trump</a> to attend, but <a href="https://twitter.com/MZanona/status/1768250811706925520?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet">he declined</a>. And the retreat’s marquee speaker, Fox News Business host Larry Kudlow, dropped out at the 11th hour. (Republicans replaced him with Howard Lutnick, the CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald.)</blockquote><blockquote>...</blockquote><p></p><blockquote>Many of Republican leadership’s loudest detractors skipped out on the retreat. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who has bemoaned the dearth of conservative policy wins this Congress and dangled ousting Johnson, didn’t deign to make an appearance.<br /><br />Neither did several of the eight Republicans responsible for ousting McCarthy. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) was busy prepping for her appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/12/politics/house-gop-retreat/index.html">told CNN</a> he has “a farm to run.” And fittingly, as Johnson emphasized to members that they needed to support their colleagues, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was in Texas campaigning for Republican influencer <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-challenger-brandon-herrera-ridicules-barron-trump-during-youtube-show?ref=author">Brandon Herrera, who is challenging fellow Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales</a>.</blockquote><p></p></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-72636909891728046182024-03-14T08:46:00.000-07:002024-03-15T05:54:37.502-07:00RNC and the Bliss Precedent<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141540/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"><i>Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</i>.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> The 2024 race has begun. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-backs-down.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The nomination phase</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> has effectively ended<a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/03/there-is-no-rnc-only-trump.html">. Trump has begun</a> turning the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/06/trump-legal-bills-could-get-republican-national-committee-support-.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">RNC into his personal fiefdom. </a></span></p><p>After becoming president, Nixon sacked RNC chair Ray Bliss, who had declined to subsidize Nixon's campaign travel in the 1966 midterm campaign. Bliss was probably the greatest RNC chair in history up to that time. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/14/trump-rnc-purge-gop-nixon-00146840">At <i>Politico</i>, William Hershey and John Green write:</a></p><blockquote>The episode represented a big step toward the development of candidate-centered politics, of which Trump is a reigning master. In candidate-centered politics, one service that party chairs can’t — or won’t — easily provide is a check on the excesses of ambitious office holders.<br /><br />With his record of winning races, Bliss, who died in 1981, would have stewed over the GOP’s losing efforts during McDaniel’s long tenure — most notably the loss of the House in 2018, the Senate in 2020, and the disappointing results of 2022. He would have understood McDaniel’s limited ability to rein in Trump in recent years but would have disapproved of the deference she showed him while he and the party were out of power.<br /><br />In his view, party organizations should be independent of candidates and respect the diversity of opinion among rank-and-file Republicans. Ideally, the party would also serve as an independent check on office holders as well — something he hoped to do with Nixon — but at the very least it could serve as a neutral incubator for future candidates when it did not hold the White House.<br /><br />All of this would have put him at odds with Trump. If there were any questions about whose interest the new RNC leaders will serve, Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law and an RNC co-chair along with North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley, put them to rest.<br /><br /><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">“Every single penny will go to the No. 1 and the only job of the RNC — that is electing Donald J. Trump as president of the United States and saving this country,” she told Newsmax in February. This prospect may not be music to the ears of congressional, state and local Republicans.</span><br /><br />One test of the new leadership’s intent will come soon enough. Trump’s team has said it will not use the RNC to pay his mounting personal legal bills, which are <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-spent-millions-legal-fees-2024-presidential-campaign-3384cbfc2df69d3e97ba9e47c2384312">estimated to be in the millions</a>, as it did when he was president. But with a family member and other Trump lieutenants now controlling the party’s fundraising machinery, the gravitational pull toward supporting Trump by any measure possible will be strong.</blockquote><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-76430038544056306422024-03-13T08:50:00.000-07:002024-03-13T08:50:59.166-07:00Trump on Social Security and Abortion<div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141540/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"><i>Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</i>.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> The 2024 race has begun. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-backs-down.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The nomination phase</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> has effectively ended. With Super Tuesday, the withdrawal of Nikki Haley, and the State of the Union, the general election campaign has begun.</span></div><div><br /></div>Abortion and Social Security are probably the Democrats' two best issues this year. <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2024/03/12/donald-trumps-unforced-error-00146636">Calder McHugh at Politico:<br /></a><blockquote>But now, thanks to an unforced error, Trump has effectively opened the 2024 general election campaign with a return to the third rail he sought to abandon almost a decade ago. Asked in a CNBC interview Monday whether he’d changed his outlook on how to handle entitlements, Trump argued in <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1767183483212906771">a word salad-heavy answer</a> that “there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and also the theft and the bad management of entitlements.”<br /><br />It’s not obvious from his answer whether he’s had a material change of heart on Social Security, because it’s not obvious what he means at all. In early 2020 he made a similar comment <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/us/politics/trump-social-security.html">that he quickly walked back</a>, that he would “at some point” look at cutting entitlements; nothing came of it. But this time, his campaign immediately recognized he had stepped on a landmine. A campaign spokesperson tried some cleanup on Monday, arguing that Trump will “continue to strongly protect Social Security and Medicare in his second term.”<br /><br />By then, though, it was too late. Trump suddenly found himself on the defensive, in the position so many prior GOP nominees have been in. He had given up the tactical advantage he had used to swamp his GOP rivals in the 2016 primary, back when he recognized that, when it came to entitlement reform, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DGNZnfKYnU">the only winning move is not to play</a>.<br />...<br />Recognizing the opportunity, the Biden campaign today released a video of the president watching Trump’s answer, shaking his head, and turning to the camera to say, “this man has no idea what he’s talking about. Over my dead body will he cut Social Security so he can give tax breaks to the super wealthy … This is worth the fight all by itself.”<br /><br />The entitlement fight isn’t the only ghost of past elections that have inconveniently returned. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, he has largely avoided articulating a clear position — his stance seems to be <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/01/trump-floats-15-week-abortion-ban-00144381">coalescing around support for a 15-week or 16-week national ban</a>.<br /><br />But his strategic ambiguity isn’t sustainable in an election where abortion rights are center stage. This isn’t 2016, when he had yet to appoint three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and his Republican primary rivals were attacking him for <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trumps-evolving-stance-abortion/story?id=38057176">his formerly pro-choice stance</a>.<br /><br />In 2024, he owns Dobbs. And, thanks to his recent remarks, Democrats will make sure he owns the longstanding Republican position on entitlement reform. It’s a rough, but somehow familiar, way to kick off the general election.</blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-3284337823813410862024-03-12T15:54:00.000-07:002024-03-12T15:54:21.260-07:00CMC Connects: 2024<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: large;">Unusual aspects of 2024:</span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"></p><ul style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0.5em 0px; padding: 0px 2.5em;"><li style="font-size: 13.2px; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Biden is the oldest-ever major candidate. Trump is close behind.</span></li><li style="font-size: 13.2px; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Trump seeks to be the first former president since Cleveland to regain the White House.</span></li><li style="font-size: 13.2px; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Trump is the first major-party candidate to run while under indictment. <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2023/april/eugene-debs-tom-doherty.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">There was a minor-party candidate who got a million votes while in prison</a></span></li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/07/2024-presidential-primary-season-was-one-of-the-shortest-in-the-modern-political-era/">The nomination phase came to a very early close</a></span><span style="font-size: medium;">.</span></li></ul><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/2024GeneralElection.html#!">Polls suggest a close race </a>-- but early polls are not a reliable guide</span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgvLVRN1SfRqXAZryG--_18qlzMtXsG9HlHZ6xGdTtywnmSSg34jCW5nwiVcpbN3Ofac_2kXQ9c9hdGNskVxcTH5KtlkMrseBxCMNSh7X66Q8WEvoq2PAv8GxPozBZpDWIwb_46H0FsNjML2a74ybqlQ5Lowp5j4ZL55vdP581dbuiGAHC3VMEGL8oFF2M" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="253" data-original-width="440" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgvLVRN1SfRqXAZryG--_18qlzMtXsG9HlHZ6xGdTtywnmSSg34jCW5nwiVcpbN3Ofac_2kXQ9c9hdGNskVxcTH5KtlkMrseBxCMNSh7X66Q8WEvoq2PAv8GxPozBZpDWIwb_46H0FsNjML2a74ybqlQ5Lowp5j4ZL55vdP581dbuiGAHC3VMEGL8oFF2M=w640-h368" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><div><br /></div></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Five ways Biden could lose:</span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;">1. <a href="https://douglas-hibbs.com/background-information-on-bread-and-peace-voting-in-us-presidential-elections/" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">E</a>conomic crisis</span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;">2. <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/jimmy-carter-public-approval" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Another pandemic or crisis that goes bad</a></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;">3. Scandal</span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;">4. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/04/biden-third-party-peril-00139380" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Spoiler</a></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;">5. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/04/us/biden-resting-after-surgery-for-second-brain-aneurysm.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Age and Health</a>: <a href="https://youtu.be/CptqDRfn_-M" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">see what Biden was like in 2012</a></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Two ways Trump could lose:</span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;">1. Age and health</span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Montage of 32 clips from Trump’s two speeches yesterday where he mispronounced words, got confused, mixed up names, forgot names, and babbled insane nonsense. <a href="https://t.co/SQeURo2zhd">pic.twitter.com/SQeURo2zhd</a></p>— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) <a href="https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1764295156981723453?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 3, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;">2. Criminal conviction</span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <span> </span><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/07/biden-trump-2024-poll-00140126">Impact on voters</a>?<br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/06/trump-legal-bills-could-get-republican-national-committee-support-.html">RNC might tap out for legal bills</a><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><ul style="line-height: 1.4; margin: 0.5em 0px; padding: 0px 2.5em; text-align: left;"><ul><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><br /></li></ul></ul><div><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /></span></div></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-41114786745812387402024-03-12T07:32:00.000-07:002024-03-12T07:32:58.596-07:00There is no RNC. Only Trump.<div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141540/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"><i>Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</i>.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> The 2024 race has begun. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-backs-down.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The nomination phase</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> has effectively ended. Trump has begun turning the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/06/trump-legal-bills-could-get-republican-national-committee-support-.html">RNC into his legal defense fun</a>d.</span></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/us/politics/rnc-trump-layoffs.html">Shane Goldmacher, Michael C. Bender and Chris Cameron at NYT:</a><br /><blockquote>Days after allies took over the Republican National Committee, Donald J. Trump’s advisers are imposing mass layoffs on the party, with more than 60 officials, including senior staff members, laid off or asked to resign and then reapply for their jobs, according to two people familiar with the matter.<br /><br />The swift changes amount to a gutting of the party apparatus eight months before the November election, with one person familiar with the operations estimating that the R.N.C. had only about 200 people on payroll at the end of February, and about 120 at its headquarters near Capitol Hill. The heads of the communications, data and political departments were among those let go.<br /><br />On Friday, Michael Whatley, a close ally to Mr. Trump, and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/us/politics/trump-rnc-lara-michael-whatley.html">were unanimously elected</a> as the committee’s chair and co-chair. Mr. Trump had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/us/politics/trump-ronna-mcdaniel-rnc.html">pushed out Ronna McDaniel</a>, the committee’s leader since 2017, and endorsed Mr. Whatley and Ms. Trump to take the reins of the national party.<br /><br />Chris LaCivita, one of Mr. Trump’s top campaign advisers, was tapped to serve as the chief operating officer, and he was at the party headquarters meeting with senior staff on Monday.<div><br />The purge of R.N.C. staff members was <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/11/bloodbath-at-rnc-trump-team-slashes-staff-at-committee-00146368">first reported by Politico</a>. It is not clear that Mr. Trump is done clearing house.<br /><br /><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">One person with direct knowledge of the changes said the party’s full finance and digital teams were now planned to be moved to Palm Beach, Fla., where the Trump campaign is based. Another person described the party and Trump operations as being functionally fused into one.</span></div></blockquote><div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-58036577203671008002024-03-11T05:58:00.000-07:002024-03-11T05:58:55.179-07:00Trump Amnesia<div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141540/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"><i>Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</i>.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> The 2024 race has begun. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-backs-down.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The nomination phase</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> has effectively ended. With Super Tuesday, the withdrawal of Nikki Haley, and the State of the Union, the general election campaign has begun.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/11/republicans-rejecting-reality.html"><br /></a></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/11/republicans-rejecting-reality.html">Political activists are familiar with the details of the Trump story. </a><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/11/republicans-rejecting-reality.html">Republicans simply deny those details</a>. Outside the MAGA world,<a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/people-dont-know-about-trumps-legal.html"> normals either do not know or have forgotten</a>.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/biden-trump-sotu-voter-amnesia.php">Cameron Joseph at CJR:</a></div><blockquote> A recent survey of voters who did not support Trump in 2020—conducted in three key swing states by Democratic pollster Geoff Garin and <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/179548/poll-voters-trump-dictator-threats">shared with the New Republic</a>—found that less than a third of them had heard “a lot” about Trump’s most recent authoritarian statements, like his <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/12/11/donald-trump-dictator-one-day-reelected/71880010007/">vow</a> to be “dictator for one day,” and his <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1213746885/trump-vermin-hitler-immigration-authoritarian-republican-primary">description</a> of his political opponents as “vermin.”<br /><br /> The question is whether voters just don’t really care—or if they’ll turn against him once they are reminded of Trump’s record in office and plans for a second term.<br /><br />The New York Times’ Jennifer Medina and Reid Epstein <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/us/politics/trump-presidency-election-voters.html">tackled this question</a> earlier this week with a piece aptly headlined “Do Americans Have a ‘Collective Amnesia’ About Donald Trump?” <br /><br />It’s very much worth a read. They write: “More than three years of distance from the daily onslaught has faded, changed—and in some cases, warped—Americans’ memories of events that at the time felt searing. Polling suggests voters’ views on Mr. Trump’s policies and his presidency have improved in the rearview mirror. In interviews, voters often have a hazy recall of one of the most tumultuous periods in modern politics.”<br /><br />Part of the problem is that many voters, especially the crucial bloc of younger ones, simply don’t remember Trump that well. Those turning eighteen and eligible to vote for the first time this fall were just ten years old and in grade school when Trump won the presidency, in 2016; the January 6 Capitol riots happened back when most of them were just starting high school. The rest of us don’t have memories that are as sharp and reliable as we’d like to think—it’s not just Joe Biden and Donald Trump who regularly get names wrong or forget in what year things occurred.</blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-57525475308556403792024-03-10T05:54:00.000-07:002024-03-10T07:27:33.206-07:00Katie Britt Update
<p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141540/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"><i>Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</i>.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> The 2024 race has begun. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-backs-down.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The nomination phase</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> has effectively ended. With Super Tuesday, the withdrawal of Nikki Haley, and the State of the Union, the general election campaign has begun. Katie Britt's SOTU response has become a national laughingstock.</span></p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cCfLpuLdF8Q?si=LO8bMFdmAJSqd5jx" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">New <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FactChecker?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FactChecker</a> --> Katie Britt’s false linkage of a sex-trafficking case to Joe Biden (h/t Jonathan Katz) <a href="https://t.co/rp7UdmSwHQ">https://t.co/rp7UdmSwHQ</a></p>— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) <a href="https://twitter.com/GlennKesslerWP/status/1766535186546594117?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/us/politics/katie-britt-republican-response-sotu-border.html">Ken Bensinger at NYT</a>:<blockquote>Ms. Jacinto, who spoke with the Times Saturday from Mexico, said she had not been informed ahead of time that Ms. Britt would be discussing her in the speech and only learned about it after a video pointing out the deceptive framing of the senator’s speech was posted by the independent journalist <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@katzonearth/video/7344090454985624862">Jonathan Katz</a> on TikTok on Friday.<br /><br />“I only found out via social media,” said Ms. Jacinto, who continues to speak frequently about human trafficking and who is supported by a U.S.-based nonprofit, <a href="https://www.reintegra.org/karlajacintoen">Reintegra</a>, that provides educational grants to victims of sex trafficking in Latin America. “I thought it was very strange.”<br /><br />She said she preferred to keep politics out of the question of human trafficking. “I am involved in the fight to stop trafficking and I don’t think it should be political,” she said. “The work I do is not a game.”</blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-86714831980436753432024-03-09T06:18:00.000-08:002024-03-09T07:04:31.932-08:00State of the Union Aftermath<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141540/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"><i>Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</i>.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> The 2024 race has begun. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-backs-down.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The nomination phase</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> has effectively ended. With Super Tuesday, the withdrawal of Nikki Haley, and the State of the Union, the general election campaign has begun. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Despite some garbled words and an occasional reappearance of his lifelong stutter, Biden's performance reassured nervous Democrats that he can display vigor.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/us/politics/state-of-the-union-takeaways.html">NYT:</a></span></p><blockquote>In a raucous State of the Union address, President Joe Biden’s goal was to reassure Americans that at 81, he is ready for a second term.<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li> A Contrast With Trump: President Biden launched a series of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/us/politics/biden-campaign.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-sotu&variant=show&region=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_top_links_recirc">fiery attacks </a> against former President Donald Trump, a competitor whom he did not mention by name but made clear was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/us/politics/biden-sotu.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-sotu&variant=show&region=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_top_links_recirc">a dire threat to American democracy</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/us/politics/biden-trump-chaos.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-sotu&variant=show&region=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_top_links_recirc">stability in the world</a>.</li><li> A Rowdy Address: The president was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/us/politics/biden-state-of-the-union-rowdy.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-sotu&variant=show&region=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_top_links_recirc">feisty and confrontational</a>. Republicans <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/us/politics/laken-riley-sotu-biden-marjorie-taylor-greene.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-sotu&variant=show&region=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_top_links_recirc">jeered</a> from their seats. And Democrats enthusiastically cheered their presidential nominee even as a few aired their grievances about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/us/politics/biden-gaza.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-sotu&variant=show&region=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_top_links_recirc">the war in Gaza</a>.</li><li> Biden’s Battles: Republican opposition, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/us/politics/biden-foreign-policy-challenges.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-sotu&variant=show&region=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_top_links_recirc">splits in his own party</a> and tension with allies make Mr. Biden’s vow to restore American power more complicated than it was when he came into office.</li><li> Trump’s Response: Outages on Trump’s platform, Truth Social, interrupted the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/us/politics/trump-instagram-biden-state-of-union.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-sotu&variant=show&region=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_top_links_recirc">barrage of derogatory posts</a> that served as his retort to Biden’s remarks.</li></ul></blockquote><p>The GOP response by Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama was a fiasco. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/08/katie-britt-sotu-reaction">Martin Pengelly at <i>The Guardian</i></a>:</p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/07/katie-britt-alabama-biden-rebuttal"></a><blockquote><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/07/katie-britt-alabama-biden-rebuttal">Katie Britt’s Republican response</a> to Joe Biden’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/state-of-the-union-address">State of the Union</a> address drew reactions ranging from the baffled to the satirical to the appalled, even among fellow rightwingers.<br /><br />“What the hell am I watching right now?” an unnamed Trump adviser <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/katie-britt-sotu-rebuttal-torched-republicans-1234983528/">told</a> Rolling Stone.<br /><br />“It’s one of our biggest disasters ever,” another unnamed Republican strategist <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/official-katie-britt-gop-response-to-state-of-the-union-has-republicans-losing-it">told</a> the Daily Beast.<br /><br />...</blockquote><blockquote>In his address Biden used his bully pulpit effectively, attacking Republicans in a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/07/joe-biden-state-of-the-union-address">fiery speech and inviting a strong response</a>. But Britt’s speech, delivered with overt theatricality, oscillating in tone between the wholesome and the wholly horrific, did not land well even in her own party.<br /><br />Charlie Kirk, founder of the far-right Turning Point USA youth group, <a href="https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1765951989178102097">said</a>: “I’m sure Katie Britt is a sweet mom and person, but this speech is not what we need. Joe Biden just declared war on the American right and Katie Britt is talking like she’s hosting a cooking show, whispering about how Democrats ‘dont get it’.”<br /><br />That pointed to widespread confusion over the setting for such a figure to give such an important speech: a kitchen.<br /><br />As a Gallup poll <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/611030/americans-say-women-officeholders-benefit-country.aspx">showed</a> 57% of American voters think the US would be better off if more women were in elected office, Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Trump aide turned never-Trumper, <a href="https://x.com/alyssafarah/status/1765951164934205847?s=46&t=lf_0P7vXDlL3MH8GQFeCSw">said</a>: “Senator Katie Britt is a very impressive person … I do not understand the decision to put her in a KITCHEN for one of the most important speeches she’s ever given.”<br /></blockquote><p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">so it appears that <a href="https://twitter.com/SenKatieBritt?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SenKatieBritt</a> is not just a bad actress but also a huge liar<br /><br />this is what the Republican Party has become <a href="https://t.co/R8Lvx9mnOY">https://t.co/R8Lvx9mnOY</a></p>— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1766456009738920346?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-46548473956905378592024-03-07T06:06:00.000-08:002024-03-07T06:06:16.878-08:00The Economy, the Election, and the Rural-Urban Divide<div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; vertical-align: inherit;">Our most recent book is titled </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</a></i><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; vertical-align: inherit;"> Among other things, it <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2020/11/trumps-legacy-in-numbers.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">discusses</a> the <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/02/deadlock-and-polarization-and-grassroots.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">politics</a> of <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/01/kinzinger-on-fiscal-politics.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">economic policy</a>. <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/12/good-economic-news.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Objective indicators are doing great</a>. <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/12/doing-fine-feeling-bad.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Perceptions, not so much</a>.</span></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/03/why-an-improving-economy-hasnt-helped-biden/677631/">Ronald Brownstein at <i>The Atlanti</i>c</a>:<br /><blockquote>Paul Kellstedt, a political scientist at Texas A&M University, told me that two big structural shifts in public opinion help explain why Biden has not benefited more so far from these green shoots of optimism.<br /><br />One, Kellstedt said, is that the relationship is weakening between objective economic trends and consumer confidence. Compared with the days of Reagan or Clinton, more voters in both parties are reluctant to describe even a booming economy in positive terms when the other party holds the White House, Kellstedt noted. Given Biden’s record of overall economic growth and job creation, as well as the dramatic rise in the stock market, the consumer-confidence numbers, though improving, are still lower “than they should be based on objective fundamentals,” he told me.<br />...<br /><br />Political strategists in both parties believe another central reason Biden isn’t benefiting more from the many positive economic trends under his presidency is that so many Americans remain scarred by the biggest exception: the highest inflation in four decades. Although costs aren’t rising nearly as fast as they were earlier in Biden’s presidency, for many essentials, <a href="https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SAF11">such as food</a> and rent, prices remain much higher than when he took office.</blockquote><p><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/05/urban-and-rural.html">Compared with metro America</a>, <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2017/06/the-rural-urban-divide.html">rural America</a> is benefiting less from the growing economy.</p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/opinion/white-rural-voters.html">Paul Krugman on rural America:</a><br /><blockquote>Indeed, American farms produce <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1hjiH">more than five times</a> as much as they did 75 years ago, but the agricultural work force declined by about two-thirds over the same period, thanks to machinery, improved seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. Coal production has been <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=44155">falling</a> recently, but thanks partly to technologies like mountaintop removal, coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago, with the number of miners <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1hosi">falling</a> 80 percent even as production roughly doubled.<br /></blockquote><blockquote>The decline of small-town manufacturing is a more complicated story, and <a href="https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/china-shock-and-its-enduring-effects">imports</a> play a role, but it’s also mainly about technological change that favors metropolitan areas with large numbers of highly educated workers.</blockquote><p>Federal programs, he writes, do benefit <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2020/08/pa-rural-voters-and-postal-service.html">rural Americ</a>a, but..</p><blockquote>While these transfers somewhat mitigate the <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2016/09/gap-year-clinton-america-v-trump-america.html">hardship facing rural America</a>, they don’t restore the sense of dignity that has been lost along with rural jobs. And maybe that loss of dignity explains both white rural rage and why that rage is so misdirected — why it’s pretty clear that this November<a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2022/02/democrats-rural-decline.html"> a majority of rural white Americans will again vote against Joe Biden</a>, who as president has been trying to bring jobs to their communities, and for Donald Trump, a huckster from Queens who offers little other than validation for their resentment.</blockquote><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-65923447826322173572024-03-06T05:43:00.000-08:002024-03-06T05:43:46.404-08:00The Day After Super Tuesday<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141540/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"><i>Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</i>.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> The 2024 race has begun. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-backs-down.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The nomination phase</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> has effectively ended. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/03/super-snoozer.html">After losing everywhere except DC and Vermon</a>t, Haley will drop out. </p><p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/05/north-carolina-gov-primary-00144815">At Politico, Zach Montellaro reports:</a></p><blockquote>Former President Donald Trump paved the way for Mark Robinson.<br /><br />Robinson, a candidate in North Carolina’s GOP primary for governor Tuesday, has done all the things that would normally make someone a toxic general election candidate: He’s <a href="https://www.wral.com/lt-gov-robinson-defends-homophobic-comments-dismisses-calls-for-resignation/19915242/">called homosexuality</a> “filth,” made <a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2021/02/mark-robinson-lieutenant-governor-north-carolina/">antisemitic remarks about Hollywood</a> controlling Black people and expressed <a href="https://www.wral.com/story/nc-s-lieutenant-governor-we-are-called-to-be-led-by-men-not-women/20318578/">retrograde views about women</a>.</blockquote>The presidential primary in MN had an unpleasant surprise for Biden:<br /><blockquote> But it was in Minnesota, which hasn’t gone for a Republican for president since Richard Nixon in 1972, where Biden saw a less surprising but more threatening setback. The “uncommitted” option on the ballot there had as big a night as it did in Michigan, winning 19 percent of the vote with 89 percent counted. The state’s politically significant Somali population, concentrated around the Twin Cities, rebuked Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.</blockquote><p>The Akin ploy worked in California:</p><p></p><blockquote>Schiff may have <a href="https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/03/05/super-tuesday-2024/anger-over-schiff-strategy-00145251">ticked off liberals</a> by elevating Republican Steve Garvey, but the gambit worked. Garvey easily beat out Democratic Rep. Katie Porter for the second spot in the general election — which means an almost-certain Schiff victory in the fall.</blockquote><p>CA Dems may have avoided a top-two lockout:</p><blockquote>In addition to Schiff successfully dragging Garvey into the general election, Democrats appeared to have avoided a lockout in one of the state’s most competitive congressional districts, in the Central Valley, though the race for the seat currently held by GOP Rep. David Valadao was still too close to call early Wednesday morning.</blockquote><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-66567715194125359912024-03-05T20:28:00.000-08:002024-03-05T20:28:39.295-08:00Super Snoozer<p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/04/trump-republicans-chairs-survey-00143360" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"> </a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141540/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"><i>Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</i>.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> The 2024 race has begun. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-backs-down.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The nomination phase</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> has effectively ended.</span></p><p>Trump swept Super Tuesday except for Vermont, where there is not party registration and Democratic identifiers were probably responsible for Nikki Haley's surprise win. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/03/its-time-to-end-the-election-wishcasting/677651/">Tom Nichols at <i>The Atlantic</i>:</a></p><blockquote>Trump was the Republican favorite from the moment former Speaker of the House Kevin <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/kevin-mccarthy-said-he-visited-mar-a-lago-after-jan-6-because-trump-was-depressed-and-not-eating">McCarthy went to Mar-a-Lago</a> in 2021 to rehabilitate Trump’s standing in the GOP. His nomination was inevitable the night most of his primary opponents <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/us/politics/trump-convicted-republican-debate-hands.html">raised their hand</a> on a debate stage—one from which he was absent—and said they’d vote for him if he beat them, even if he was convicted in a court of law. Even <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/02/nikki-haley-south-carolina-campaign-trump/677538/">Nikki Haley</a> is still <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/03/03/nikki-haley-donald-trump-republican-party-rnc">dithering</a> to this very moment about whether she’d support a man who calls her “Birdbrain” and whom she has passionately argued is unfit for office.</blockquote><p>He earlier lost the DC primary, Instead of just ignoring the loss, he rationalized it:</p><p><br /></p><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" class="truthsocial-embed" src="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/112035101050795667/embed" style="border: 0; max-width: 100%;" width="600"></iframe><script async="async" src="https://truthsocial.com/embed.js"></script>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-55704874328033633702024-03-04T09:35:00.000-08:002024-03-04T09:35:57.140-08:00The Party in the Electorate Decides<p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/04/trump-republicans-chairs-survey-00143360"> </a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141540/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"><i>Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</i>.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> The 2024 race has begun. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-backs-down.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The nomination phase</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> has effectively ended.</span></p><p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/04/trump-republicans-chairs-survey-00143360">Seth Masket at <i>Politico</i>:</a></p><blockquote><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-obit.html">As I surveyed GOP county chairs across the country</a>, I thought they would provide an early signal as to where the Republican nomination would end up. County chairs are influential in local GOP circles, party leaders who can offer the kind of endorsements that candidates are eager to collect. They’re also still close to the rank-and-file grassroots, and their shifts, I imagined, would signal where the rest of the party was going.<br /><br />But instead, I found that the county chairs didn’t lead their voters. For the most part, they followed them — to Donald Trump.<br /><br />Last February, the county chairs were less supportive of Trump than Republican primary voters as a whole. Yet as time went on, and Trump consolidated support among rank-and-file voters, the chairs fell in line. It’s a reflection of the state of the GOP that has existed since 2016 when Trump first snatched the nomination away from the establishment and took over the Republican Party.<br /><br />In the pre-Trump era, GOP leaders clearly played more of a role in steering the direction of the party. The 2012 campaign is instructive: Many different candidates were <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/republican-primary/2012/national">briefly the favorites</a> of rank-and-file Republican voters, from Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich to Rick Santorum. But throughout the cycle, party elites’ money and endorsements stayed focused on Mitt Romney, and that’s who got the nomination. <a href="https://www.politico.com/tag/the-county-line">This year’s ongoing survey</a> of county chairs illustrates how<span style="background-color: #fcff01;"> Republican elites are now more responsive to the grassroots rather than the other way around — either because they lack the interest or the ability to do anything else.</span></blockquote><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-48047570010130592682024-03-04T09:30:00.000-08:002024-03-04T09:30:23.581-08:00No Labels Whiff?<div><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">Our most recent book is titled </span><i style="font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</a></i><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">.</a><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">The </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2022/07/premature-frontrunners.html" style="color: #1118cc; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">2024</a><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"> race has </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/05/desantis-launches-badly.html" style="color: #1118cc; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">begun</a><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"> </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/09/unwanted-2024-faceoff.html" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1a00ff; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.</a> Nevertheless, it is dawning on people that <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/Voters%20are%20not%20happy%20about%20having%20to%20choose%20between%20Trump%20and%20Biden." style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">third partie</a>s face <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/12/challengers-faces-challenges.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">daunting barriers</a> in American politics.</p></div><div><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/04/no-labels-super-tuesday-unity-presidential-ticket-00144518">Daniel Lippman and Shia Kapos at <i>Politico</i>:</a></div><blockquote> “<a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/03/third-party-update.html">No Labels</a> just missed one heck of an opportunity to potentially be viable, and now I don’t know that they can be viable,” said Jim Teague, the CEO of a Texas oil and gas company and a No Labels donor. “I don’t know who they can possibly get to run that would generate excitement that Joe Manchin would have generated,” he said, adding that it’s “pretty doubtful” he will donate to the organization in the future.<br /><br />No Labels officials say they are continuing to move forward with plans to launch a presidential run and are looking at “sometime after Super Tuesday to determine if we offer our line and who would be on it,” spokesperson Maryanne Martini said.<br /><br />The sense that there is a lack of clarity around the group’s 2024 plans — including the absence of a slate of candidates — has caused anxiety among at least the half dozen donors who spoke with POLITICO.<br /><br />The group last held a meeting with supporters on February 23. But, according to Martini, they focused on a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/22/no-labels-lawsuit-election/">successful lawsuit</a> against hostile domain squatting on NoLabels.com — not the presidential race or updates on the candidate selection process.</blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-49943032520610856882024-03-02T06:24:00.000-08:002024-03-02T06:24:04.577-08:00Third Party Update<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">Our most recent book is titled </span><i style="font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</a></i><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">.</a><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">The </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2022/07/premature-frontrunners.html" style="color: #1118cc; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">2024</a><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"> race has </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/05/desantis-launches-badly.html" style="color: #1118cc; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">begun</a><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"> </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/09/unwanted-2024-faceoff.html" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1a00ff; font-size: 13.2px;">Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.</a> Nevertheless, it is dawning on people that <a href=" Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.">third partie</a>s face <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/12/challengers-faces-challenges.html">daunting barriers</a> in American politics.</p><p><a href="https://email.puck.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"> Peter Hamby at Puck </a>writes on the CA Libertarian convention and the prospect that <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/rfk-ad.html">RFK Jr</a>. could win the party's presidential nod:</p><blockquote>That prospect crashed into reality the following day, when convention organizers ran a presidential straw poll. Out of 95 votes cast, [Lars] Mapstead won. [Michael] Rectenwald came in second. <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/12/challengers-faces-challenges.html">Kennedy</a> came in dead last in the straw poll, earning only a single vote.<div>...</div><div><br />Of course, Kennedy was merely testing the waters in Costa Mesa. He isn’t officially seeking the Libertarian nod. But given the resistance to his candidacy from the convention-goers, his path to get on ballots everywhere has essentially reset to where it was before the weekend. Kennedy’s team is confronting a patchwork of ballot-access laws that are different in every state. <br /><br />Some states require tens of thousands of validated signatures, which is a heavy lift for even the most well-funded candidates from the two major parties. Kennedy, at least, has money to count on. Thanks to his family name, Los Angeles connections, and small-dollar online support, Kennedy is raising a respectable amount of money for a gadfly candidate. He ended the fourth fundraising quarter last year with $5.4 million in the bank. But the Kennedy campaign continues to burn through cash, spending heavily to collect ballot access signatures. A super PAC backing his campaign is also working to secure ballot access for Kennedy, but that effort is likewise facing a legal challenge from the Democratic National Committee over claims of improper coordination.</div></blockquote><p><a href="https://puck.news/no-labels-schadenfreude-johnsons-secret-society/">Tara Palmieri at Puck</a>:</p><blockquote><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/third-party-stumbles.html">So it’s finally put up or shut up time for No Labels</a>—the disorganized dark money group that counts Nelson Peltz, Steve Schwarzman, and Harlan Crow as donors—to execute its quixotic plan to assemble a unity-ticket to challenge the increasingly inevitable disappointment of a Trump–Biden rematch. Over the last two years, the third-party group has raised tens of millions on the assumption that No Labels and its opportunistic C.E.O., Nancy Jacobson, could recruit a viable candidate—Larry Hogan, say, with Joe Manchin as V.P. Sure, No Labels has been able to get their name on the ballot in 16 states. Unfortunately, they just haven’t been able to find that dream ticket, which will prevent them from ballot access in many others.<br /><br />So on March 8, just three days after Nikki Haley is set to be demoralized in 16 states on Super Tuesday, No Labels is handing over the power to their 800 delegates to make a choice about whether to move forward, and with whom. Their ideal candidate, of course, has been Haley, herself. <br /><br />In fact, No Labels emissaries have been trying to persuade Haley through back channels, but she’s emphatically resisted. Joe Lieberman, who sits on the board, has told donors that the organization has three strong options, including a Republican governor, but he won’t share names. So far, No Labels has also flirted with total non-starters like Chris Christie and Hogan and Manchin, until they got turned down. (Hogan is now running for Senate in Maryland.) It’s hard to see anyone leaving their party to run as a spoiler, and No Labels had made it clear they need a Republican on the top of the ticket so as not to hand the election to Trump.</blockquote><p> </p><div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-82225176008428188562024-03-01T05:27:00.000-08:002024-03-01T05:27:16.689-08:00Hunter Biden Deposition Backfires on GOP<p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our 2020 book is titled </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</a></i><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> Among other things, it </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/02/bozells-and-conservative-decline.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">discusses</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> the</span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/01/the-gop-after-trump.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1a00ff; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"> state of the parties</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/02/supporting-political-violence.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1a00ff; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The state of the GOP is not good.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/12/impeachment-inquiry.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;"> Its case against Hunter Biden</a> appears to rest on Russian disinformation. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/29/hunter-biden-transcript-impeachment-inquiry/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzA5MTgyODAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzEwNTYxNTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3MDkxODI4MDAsImp0aSI6IjVhNzc1MzU0LTY2MDUtNGUxNi1iMmY2LTY0YzkzODcwMTMzZiIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9wb2xpdGljcy8yMDI0LzAyLzI5L2h1bnRlci1iaWRlbi10cmFuc2NyaXB0LWltcGVhY2htZW50LWlucXVpcnkvIn0.fYzistd_4AB5V7oACaDE4Fmpg8HZ6oQVatSiCr4cMfE">Philip Bump at WP</a>:</span></p><blockquote>Hunter Biden’s appearance in front of investigators and members of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees unfolded a bit like a Bruce Lee movie.<br /><br />Republican legislators and interviewers challenging the president’s son on the House majority’s behalf would throw out an allegation, often one that’s been worn smooth after tumbling around in the right-wing media universe for the past year or two. And Biden would invariably swat it away, stripping off the layers of innuendo that had been applied by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/?itid=lk_inline_manual_3">Donald Trump</a> and Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) or Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) or any of myriad Fox News commentators.<br /><br />This included epic battles against well-known foes, like an exchange between Hunter Biden and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), or repeated, extended back-and-forth with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). But at no point was a question left unanswered — including through an invocation of the Fifth Amendment — or, to an objective observer, left answered with obvious incompletion.<br /><br /><br />The discussion was centered on the Republican effort in the ongoing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/12/biden-impeachment-inquiry-meaning/?itid=lk_inline_manual_7">impeachment inquiry</a> to demonstrate that President Biden had benefited financially from Hunter Biden’s business endeavors — and, they hoped, that the elder Biden had used his position as vice president to that end. They were unsuccessful in making that case from the hearing’s first moments.</blockquote><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">BREAKING: The Hunter Biden Hearing transcript was just released. It's over 250-pages long.<br /><br />Here are 7 highlights I have found:<br /><br />- Hunter Challenged Republicans to Prove that he sent money to Joe Biden:<br /><br />“I appreciate the job that you have. I truly do. I appreciate the job that… <a href="https://t.co/vKmInAGLIF">pic.twitter.com/vKmInAGLIF</a></p>— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) <a href="https://twitter.com/krassenstein/status/1763373325470830823?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 1, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-62316399612995595872024-02-29T05:28:00.000-08:002024-02-29T06:46:37.774-08:00Trump Legal: W and L<div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">In </span><i style="font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</a>, </i><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">we look at Trump's dishonesty and disregard for the rule of law.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"> Our next book <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/trump-must-pay-450m-for-his-fraud.html">will look at </a>the 2024 campaign and <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/people-dont-know-about-trumps-legal.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">the impact</a> of </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/trump-legal-fees-and-campaign-finance.html" style="color: #1118cc; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">Trump's legal problems</a><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">. </span><span style="font-size: 13.2px;">New York courts have found that he is a<a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/05/trump-loses-again.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;"> </a></span><span style="color: #1118cc; font-size: 13.2px;"><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/05/trump-loses-again.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">rapist</a></span></span><span style="font-size: 13.2px;"> and a <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/09/fraud.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">fraud</a>.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/us/politics/trumps-immunity-supreme-court-delay-strategy.html">Alan Feuer at NYT:</a><br /><blockquote> The Supreme Court that former President Donald J. Trump helped to shape tossed him a legal lifeline on Wednesday night, making a choice that substantially aided his efforts to delay his federal trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.<br /><br />By deciding to take up Mr. Trump’s claim that presidents enjoy almost total immunity from prosecution for any official action while in office — a legal theory rejected by two lower courts and one that few experts think has any basis in the Constitution — the justices bought the former president at least several months before a trial on the election interference charges can start.<br /><br />It is not out of the question that Mr. Trump could still face a jury in the case, in Federal District Court in Washington, before Election Day. At this point, the legal calendar suggests that if the justices issue a ruling by the end of the Supreme Court’s term in June and find that Mr. Trump is not immune from prosecution, the trial could still start by late September or October.<br /><br />But with each delay, the odds increase that voters will not get a chance to hear the evidence that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the last election before they decide whether to back him in the current one.</blockquote><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/nyregion/trump-bond-civil-fraud.html">Ben Protess and Kate Christobek at NYT</a>:</p><blockquote>Donald J. Trump on Wednesday lost his initial bid for a New York appeals court to pause the more than $450 million judgment he faces in a civil fraud case, a decision that could expose him to financial peril.<br /><br />Mr. Trump’s lawyers had <a href="https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=oor8_PLUS_SyilUVorLgVywrDfQ==">asked the appeals court</a> to allow him to post only a $100 million bond — <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/24/nyregion/trump-fraud-trial-penalty.html">a promise from an outside company that the judgment eventually will be paid</a> — because securing one for the full amount was “impossible,” they said.<br /><br />A single appellate court judge assigned to consider Mr. Trump’s request, Anil Singh, <a href="https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=ZWaAqAQogm6UhRjKc4u16A==">turned him down</a> on Wednesday. Mr. Trump will try again next month with a panel of five appellate court judges, but for now, the former president is still on the hook to post a bond for the full amount of more than $450 million. And any company providing one would probably require him to pledge cash and other collateral that he does not yet have.<br /><br />If Mr. Trump fails to secure the bond, the New York attorney general’s office, which brought the case accusing him of fraudulently inflating his net worth, can collect the $454 million from him. The attorney general, Letitia James, is expected to provide Mr. Trump a 30-day grace period, which will expire on March 25, at which point she could move swiftly to seize Mr. Trump’s bank accounts and perhaps take control of his New York properties.</blockquote><p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/28/trump-said-he-had-400-million-cash-now-his-lawyers-say-bond-is-struggle/">Aaron Blake at WP:</a></p><blockquote>Trump lawyer Christopher Kise added during a hearing Wednesday, “No one, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, has 500 million laying around.” (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)<br /><br />But in the very same legal proceedings less than a year ago, Trump indicated he had something close to that amount of cash at his disposal.<br /><br />In an <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23932452/452564_2022_people_of_the_state_of_v_people_of_the_state_of_exhibit_s__859.pdf">April 2023 deposition</a>, Trump volunteered that he had “substantially in excess of 400 million in cash.”<br /><br />“Developers usually don’t have cash. They have assets, not cash,” Trump said. “We have, I believe, 400 plus and going up very substantially every month.”<br /><br />Trump added later that, despite the legal fees he was facing, “I have over 400 — fairly substantially over $400 million in cash. That’s just cash. That’s just cash.”<br /><br />It’s not clear that Trump’s legal team is saying that he doesn’t actually have the cash, as much as that producing a bond in the full amount is impractical.<br /><br />It’s also possible that Trump’s cash flow has declined in the intervening months. But he claimed it was increasing significantly as of April 2023.<br /><br />The Trump legal team’s claims are also at odds with what one of its own members said last week, after the judgment.<br /><br />Appearing on Fox News, Trump lawyer Alina Habba noted that a bond including the full amount would have to be posted and added that “we will be prepared to do that.”<br /><br />“Unfortunately, they picked the wrong guy to pick on, in my opinion, because he’s strong, he’s resilient, and he happens to have a lot of cash,” Habba added.</blockquote><p> </p><blockquote><br /></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-62458248104021275362024-02-28T05:03:00.000-08:002024-02-28T05:45:59.511-08:00Michigan Primary<div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141540/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"><i>Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</i>.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> The 2024 race has begun. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-backs-down.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The nomination phase</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> has effectively <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-obit.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">ended</a>. But primaries go on.</span></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/upshot/michigan-primary-biden-2024.html">Nate Cohn at NYT</a>:<br /><blockquote>In Tuesday night’s results in Michigan, around <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/27/us/elections/results-michigan-democratic-presidential-primary.html">one in eight</a> Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary — <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/27/us/trump-biden-michigan-primary-election/biden-faces-a-robust-protest-vote-as-he-and-trump-carry-michigan-heres-the-latest?smid=url-share">a protest</a> of the Biden administration’s policies toward Israel and the war in Gaza.<br /><br />In some predominantly <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/11/the-american-politics-of-gaza-war.html">Arab American precincts</a> in Dearborn, <a href="https://cityofdearborn.org/documents/city-departments/city-clerk/elections/election-results/2024-election-results/8308-february-27-2024-primary-election-unofficial-results-as-of-10-15-p-m/file">around three in four</a> Democrats cast a protest vote for uncommitted.<br /><br />Having one in eight Democrats vote uncommitted in an uncontested primary is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/us/politics/past-protest-vote-michigan-primary.html">not wholly unusual.</a> As recently as the last time a Democratic president sought re-election, <a href="https://mielections.us/election/results/12PPR/">in 2012</a>, 11 percent of Michigan Democratic caucusgoers voted for “uncommitted” instead of for Barack Obama.<br /><br />Having three in four Democratic primary voters in <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/11/the-difficult-politics-of-israel-hamas.html">Arab American communities </a>do it, on the other hand, is an eye-popping figure. It goes well beyond the norm, and it’s a powerful indication that the war in Gaza poses serious political risks to President Biden.</blockquote><p>Cohn offers some important caveats:</p><blockquote> Imagine, for a moment, that in the last election Mr. Biden had lost every single voter in Dearborn, Hamtramck and Dearborn Heights — the three Michigan townships where Arab Americans make up at least 30 percent of the population. He still would have won Michigan — and still would have won it by more than he did Wisconsin, Arizona or Georgia.<br /><br />For that same reason, Mr. Biden’s <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/michigan/">deficit in the polling</a> of Michigan can’t mostly be attributed to his weakness among Arab American and Muslim voters. Overall, Arab Americans make up 2 percent of the state’s population and probably an even smaller share of the electorate. There are non-Arab Muslim voters, of course, adding another percentage point or more. In the end, 3 percent of the electorate can only do so much.</blockquote><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Why sequencing of reported election results matter:<br><br>Early in the evening Uncommitted was getting ~15% of the vote<br><br>The final tally is ~13%<br><br>In 2012, Uncommitted was ~11% -- so we might attribute ~2% to a ceasefire protest vote <br><br>Yet an early narrative set in Biden is in trouble</p>— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) <a href="https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/1762827961898819826?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 28, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-90605490181838803702024-02-25T05:49:00.000-08:002024-02-25T06:45:08.602-08:00South Carolina<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141540/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"><i>Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</i>.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> The 2024 race has begun. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-backs-down.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The nomination phase</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> has effectively <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-obit.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">ended</a>.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/24/south-carolina-gop-primary-trump-haley/">Trump won South Carolina, defeating Haley in her home state by 60-39 percent, a narrower victory than polls had indicated. Aaron Blake at WP</a>:<br /><blockquote>Given the GOP nominating contest appears to be all but over, the biggest question now might be what the results say about Trump’s general election prospects.<br /><br />A few <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/02/24/south-carolina-exit-polls/?itid=lk_inline_manual_19">exit poll findings</a> stand out.<br /><br /><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">One is that 31 percent of voters said Trump wouldn’t be fit to serve as president if he’s convicted of a crime</span>. South Carolina becomes the third early state to show that at least 3 in 10 voters said a convicted Trump wouldn’t be fit. (We don’t have data for Nevada.)<br /><br />Just because these voters say he wouldn’t be fit doesn’t mean they wouldn’t vote for him, but it would surely be a hurdle for at least some voters to get over. And 5 percent of voters voted for Trump but said he would be unfit if convicted.<br /><br />Another exit poll finding is that a large chunk of Haley’s support was expressly anti-Trump. While about 20 percent of voters picked her and said it was mainly an affirmative vote for her, well more than 1 in 10 voted for her while saying the vote was mostly against her opponent (Trump).<br /><br />The NORC analysis showed that 35 percent of voters said they would be dissatisfied with Trump as the nominee, and<span style="background-color: #fcff01;"> 21 percent said they wouldn’t vote for him in the general election.</span><br /><br />At least 20 percent of voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have now said they will not vote for Trump in November.<br /><br />A major unknown from there is how many of these voters actually mean it — and would otherwise be in the GOP camp. South Carolina allows any voter to participate in the Republican primary. But just 4 percent of voters Saturday identified as Democrats.</blockquote><p><a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/02/25/trump-voter-demographics-problem-election-2024">Mike Allen at Axios:</a></p><blockquote>Where he won: Two-thirds of Trump voters were white and didn't go to college.</blockquote><p></p><blockquote> 83% of "angry" voters backed Trump. (<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/south-carolina-republicans-trump-electable-fit-haley-preliminary/story?id=107521006">ABC</a>)</blockquote><p></p><blockquote>Where he lost: 75% of Haley supporters correctly said Biden was legitimately elected president in 2020 (about 40% of them voted for Biden). (<a href="https://apnews.com/article/who-voted-how-south-carolina-primary-trump-haley-86a0c7960e5c3c7f88ec1c9a330be53e">VoteCast</a>)</blockquote><p></p><blockquote>A stunning 62% of Republican primary voters said Biden wasn't legitimately elected. (<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/south-carolina-gop-primary-election-exit-polls-rcna139595">NBC</a>)</blockquote><p></p><blockquote>Those who went to the polls reflected Trump's strengths:This was the oldest South Carolina GOP electorate this century. (<a href="https://twitter.com/chucktodd/status/1761529837724840078">Chuck Todd</a>)<br /></blockquote><blockquote>60% of primary voters were white evangelical or born-again Christians. (<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/24/politics/exit-polls-south-carolina-primary/index.html">CNN)</a><br /><br />Reality check: That group isn't remotely big enough to win a presidential election. He would need to attract voters who are more diverse, more educated and believe his first loss was legit. South Carolina exit polls show he didn't do that.</blockquote><br /><br /> Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-26577892258748427632024-02-24T06:22:00.000-08:002024-02-24T06:22:53.109-08:00Third-Party Stumbles<p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our most recent book is titled </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</a></i><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">The </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2022/07/premature-frontrunners.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">2024</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> race has </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/05/desantis-launches-badly.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">begun</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">.</span></p><p> Larry Hogan gave up a brief No Labels flirtation to run for the Senate. It is dawning on people that a No Labels candidate would serve to elect Trump. <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/no-labels-spoiler-bid-suddenly-150445872.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall">At TNR, Greg Sargent report</a>s:</p><blockquote>Around six months ago, when <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/12/manchin-new-hampshire-no-labels/">speculation raged</a> that Senato<a href="https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Joe%20Manchin">r Joe Manchin might</a> join a <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/third-party-threat-to-biden.html">third-party presidential ticket</a> on behalf of the centrist group No Labels, he privately consulted with Richard Gephardt, the former congressman who has taken up the cause of stopping No Labels in its tracks.<br /><br />Gephardt showed Manchin private polling that he’d bankrolled himself, illustrating that such a bid could only help Donald Trump beat President Biden, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Gephardt reminded Manchin that even third-party bids that win real public support have routinely failed to garner many, or even any, Electoral College votes.<br /><br />In short, Gephardt pointed out, a third-party bid could never succeed on its own; it would mostly take votes away from Biden. Manchin absorbed the argument, the person says, and then expressed an acute worry: Above all, Manchin said emphatically, he did not want to become the person who handed the presidency to Trump.<br /><br />That argument finally seemed to prevail with Manchin last week, when he announced that he will not be part of any third-party ticket after all. Manchin <a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2024/02/16/west-virginia-sen-joe-manchin-announces-he-wont-run-for-president-in-2024/">declared</a> that he didn’t want to be a “spoiler,” having apparently realized that by far the most likely consequence of such a bid would be a second term for Trump, as he began to fear six months ago.</blockquote><p><a href="https://www.mediaite.com/politics/the-campaign-is-a-mess-rfk-jr-hit-with-staff-exodus-over-lavish-spending-and-amateurish-leadership/">RFK Jr. has staffed his campaign with people who lack relevant experience. It is going poorly. Diana Falzone at Mediaite:</a></p><blockquote>Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign is in disarray amid an exodus of campaign workers who say disorganization, lavish spending, amateurish leadership, and a severe disconnect between the campaign and the candidate’s values have led the long-shot bid for the presidency astray.<br /><br />Fourteen members of Kennedy24 have resigned since the start of the year, including 12 field staff and two main staff, according to multiple sources who spoke with Mediaite on the condition of anonymity. One source close to the campaign pinned the turmoil on two leaders: Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, campaign manager and Kennedy’s daughter-in-law, and Del Bigtree, an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/rfk-jr-hires-del-bigtree-anti-vaccine-activist-communications-director-rcna131859">anti-vaccine activist</a> who serves as the campaign’s communications director.<br /><br />The source described Fox Kennedy and Bigtree as “self-serving” operatives who were “making decisions based on their own personal advancement opportunities, and not acting in the best interest of the candidate.”</blockquote><p> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-65093245260279251602024-02-23T05:26:00.000-08:002024-02-23T05:26:48.023-08:00South Carolina Snoozer: Pre-Mortems<p><br /></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our latest book is titled </span><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141540/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"><i>Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</i>.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> The 2024 race has begun. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-backs-down.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The nomination phase</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> has effectively <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/01/desantis-obit.html" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">ended</a>. The Haley campaign has already expired, and the South Carolina primary will merely be the death certificate.</span></p><p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/23/nikki-haley-south-carolina-problem-trump-00142515"> Natalie Allison at <i>Politico</i>:</a></p><blockquote>For years after she left the governor’s office, <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/sex-ivf-republicans-conservatives.html">Haley</a> failed to nurture her own base of support with the party faithful.<br /><br />“We didn’t abandon her,” said Allen Olson, formerly the head of the Columbia Tea Party, who was supportive of Haley as she entered the governor’s office. “<span style="background-color: #fcff01;">She abandoned us</span>.”<br /><br />As <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/haley-goes-after-trump.html">Haley</a> campaigns in her home state ahead of Saturday’s primary, she is encountering an electorate that is not only enamored with Trump but that she has done little to cultivate. More than a decade after she last won over conservative voters here, Haley had become a stranger at state and local party events, avoiding Silver Elephant Dinners, party conventions and grassroots gatherings as she embarked on national speaking circuits and book tours, stumped for Republican candidates around the country, appeared on national TV and flirted with the question of whether she would run for president.</blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>...</p> Haley returned to South Carolina in 2019 after serving at the United Nations and living in <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">New York City</span>, putting down new roots in the <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">coastal resort community of Kiawah Island</span>. It was hours away from Lexington, the Republican-rich suburb of Columbia where she launched her political career as a state representative.</blockquote><blockquote>Far from the heart of conservative South Carolina, Kiawah Island is a golf and beach town, a destination for transplants and retirees and part of a county that President Joe Biden won in 2020. The Biden family has vacationed there at a donor friend’s mansion.</blockquote><p>Haley has been making the electability argument. Yes, the polls show that she would run better than Trump in November. But most polls also show Trump winning. albeit by a slender margin. The "loser" label does not work with <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/03/politics/cnn-poll-republicans-think-2020-election-illegitimate/index.html">voters who think that he actually won in 2020, but was the victim of a rigged election</a>. </p><p>Lately she has been saying that <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/haley-goes-after-trump.html">Trump sides with foreign thugs</a>. That is closer to the mark, but most voters do not care about foreign policy.</p><p>She does not want to say the obvious: that Trump incited a violent rebellion against the government he swore to uphold.</p><p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/23/south-carolina-primary-identity-politics-00142777">Jonathan Martin at <i>Politico</i>:</a></p><blockquote>For all their enmity toward the other in the last few months, <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2024/02/the-desantis-disaster.html">Ron DeSantis</a> and Haley are strikingly similar in their failures. Both made scant effort to develop relationships, whether with the media or with fellow Republicans. Neither was widely accessible to the press until their fate was likely sealed and neither had much goodwill with other GOP lawmakers. So when Haley, as recently as this month, sought out endorsements from some of the most prominent figures in the party it was too late. Those horrified by Trump stayed quiet and everybody else in the party gave in and endorsed the frontrunner.</blockquote><blockquote>...</blockquote><blockquote> For all Haley’s talk about hard truths, a staple of her stump speech, the one she hasn’t come to terms with is that Trump represents the bright line of our times. It’s a which-side-are-you-on moment. And, as she made clear in her remarks, she doesn’t want to pick one.<br /><br />Instead, she’s contorting herself, and blurring the history we’ve all lived through, to argue Trump has changed. It’s a way to rationalize her own capitulation to him in 2016 and accommodate a party rank-and-file that just maybe can be convinced that the person who called for a Muslim ban, mocked Mitt Romney for walking like a penguin and belittled John McCain’s war record and gold star families was a bigger person when he first ran for president.</blockquote><blockquote>I know why she’s doing it — she doesn’t want to be seen as Liz Cheney, as donning the blue jersey by saying Trump is unfit for office. Haley wants to retain her viability with Republicans, which is why she made clear again in that speech she’s no Never Trumper.<br /><br />There are many others like Haley. There’s actually a word for them in the Trump era: homeless. Or to use a more modern phrase: the politically unhoused.</blockquote><p> </p><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-15403083562730110812024-02-22T05:35:00.000-08:002024-02-22T05:35:55.359-08:00Sex, IVF, Republicans, Conservatives<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our 2020 book is titled </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</a></i><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> Among other things, it </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/02/bozells-and-conservative-decline.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">discusses</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> the</span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/01/the-gop-after-trump.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1a00ff; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"> state of the parties</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/02/supporting-political-violence.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1a00ff; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The state of the GOP is not good.</a> <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2022/08/democrats-election-results-and-abortion.html" style="color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">Abortion was a big issue in the 2022 midterm</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/02/abortion-politics-and-public-opinion.html" style="color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">It will probably be a big issue in 2024</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">.</span></p><p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/21/alabama-ivf-abortion-00142536">Alice Ollstein at Politico:</a></p><blockquote>The Alabama Supreme Court ruling granting legal personhood to frozen embryos could set up a political and legal backlash against conservatives heading into the November election.<br /><br />The decision not only threatens GOP efforts to court suburban women and other constituencies uneasy about abortion bans, but also complicates the party’s standing with millions of people who may oppose abortion but support — and in many cases use — in-vitro fertilization and other forms of fertility care. The ruling also demonstrates how the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has made previously theoretical policy and legal battles over the most intimate aspects of American life far more immediate and high-stakes.<br /><br />GOP strategists warn that pursuing curbs on those treatments risks exacerbating the backlash that has <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/08/republican-party-abortion-trap-00091088">cost Republicans several races</a> since the fall of Roe. One in six Americans who struggle with infertility — millions of people each year — turn to IVF, according to the National Infertility Association.<br /><br />“It certainly intersects, badly, with general election politics for Republicans,” said Stan Barnes, a political consultant and former Republican state senator in Arizona. “When a state, any state, takes an aggressive action on this particular topic, people are once again made aware of it and many think: ‘Maybe I can’t support a Republican in the general election.’”</blockquote><p><a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4482507-haley-didnt-say-agreed-alabama-ivf-ruling/">Sarah Fortinsky at <i>The Hill</i>:</a></p><blockquote>GOP presidential candidate <a href="https://thehill.com/people/nikki-haley/">Nikki Haley </a>says she did not endorse the recent Alabama Supreme Court <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4477607-alabama-supreme-court-rules-frozen-embryos-are-children/">ruling</a> that said frozen embryos and fertilized eggs should be treated as children under state law.<br /><br />Instead, Haley told the hosts of CNN’s “King Charles,” that she agreed an embryo is an unborn baby.<br /><br />“Well, first of all, I didn’t, I mean, this is again, I didn’t say that I agreed with the Alabama ruling. What the question that I was asked is, do I believe an embryo is a baby?” Haley said Wednesday evening. “I do think that if you look in the definition, an embryo is considered an unborn baby. And so, yes, I believe from my stance that that is.”<br /><br />“The difference is — and this is what I say about abortion as well — we need to treat these issues with the utmost respect,” she added.<br /><br />Her remarks come after she faced pushback to an <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4481497-haley-on-alabama-ivf-ruling-embryos-to-me-are-babies/">earlier interview</a> with NBC News, in which she said, “I mean, embryos, to me, are babies.”</blockquote><p><br /></p><p> </p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Heritage Foundation is the lead organizer of Project 2025 (which I called Project 25, below). 2/ <a href="https://t.co/7G4FPNp1ix">https://t.co/7G4FPNp1ix</a></p>— jennycohn@toad.social ✍🏻 📢 (@jennycohn1) <a href="https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1759358798744166645?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 18, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5825256575416290826.post-60718150615903710452024-02-21T04:23:00.000-08:002024-02-21T04:23:35.862-08:00Russian Disinformation and Hunter Biden<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Our 2020 book is titled </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="color: #1118cc; text-decoration-line: none;">Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics</a></i><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538141533/Divided-We-Stand-The-2020-Elections-and-American-Politics" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> Among other things, it </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/02/bozells-and-conservative-decline.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1118cc; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">discusses</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> the</span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/01/the-gop-after-trump.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1a00ff; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;"> state of the parties</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;">. </span><a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2021/02/supporting-political-violence.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1a00ff; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px; text-decoration-line: none;">The state of the GOP is not good.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> <a href="http://www.epicjourney2008.com/2023/12/impeachment-inquiry.html"> Its case against Hunter Biden</a> appears to rest on Russian disinformation.</span></p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/us/politics/fbi-informant-hunter-biden.html">Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer at NYT:</a><br /><blockquote>A former F.B.I. informant accused of making false bribery claims about President Biden and his son Hunter — which were widely publicized by Republicans — claimed to have been fed information by Russian intelligence, <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nvd.167064/gov.uscourts.nvd.167064.15.0.pdf">according to a court filing on Tuesday</a>.<br /><br />In the memo, prosecutors portrayed the former informant, Alexander Smirnov, 43, as a serial liar incapable of telling the truth about even the most basic details of his own life. But Mr. Smirnov told federal investigators that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.<br /><br />Those disclosures, including Mr. Smirnov’s unverifiable claim that he met with Russian intelligence officials as recently as three months ago, made him a flight risk and endangered national security, Justice Department officials said. Mr. Smirnov had been held in custody in Las Vegas, where he has lived since 2022, since his arrest last week.<br /><br />...<br /><br />“The misinformation he is spreading is not confined” to his false claims about the Bidens, wrote prosecutors working for David C. Weiss, the special counsel investigating Hunter Biden on tax and gun charges.<br /><br />“He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November,” they added.</blockquote><p><a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/02/21/the-biden-impeachments-latest-big-blow-00142385">Politico Playbook:</a></p><blockquote> Word of the Smirnov dossier, memorialized internally at the FBI as a four-page report, leaked out and it became the white whale of House and Senate Republicans looking to impeach Joe Biden. Sen. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-Iowa) and Rep. JAMES COMER (R-Ky.) finally <a href="https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/fd_1023_obtained_by_senator_grassley_-_biden.pdf">got their hands on it</a> last summer.</blockquote><p></p><blockquote>...</blockquote><p></p><p></p><blockquote> The House impeachment effort had already been losing steam. Comer, the Kentucky Republican leading the effort, <a href="https://spectrumnews1.com/ky/louisville/news/2024/02/15/comer--biden-impeachment-vote-may-not-happen-">said recently</a> that a vote might not happen at all, given the House GOP’s tiny majority. And many Republicans suddenly seem more interested in talking about Joe Biden’s age rather than his son Hunter.<br /><br />In Biden’s orbit, the potential Russian connection to the case is being greeted with outrage.<br /><br />“Obviously there’s a case that’ll have to play out here,” said a person close to Biden. “But based on the indictment and filing, it lays bare how unscrupulous the entire GOP and their enablers in right wing media have become. …Republicans in Congress ought to be facing the crushing burden of a massive scandal of their own making right now: An impeachment based on what might be a Russian intelligence operation. If nothing else, a criminal lie, based on the indictment.”</blockquote><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 1.125em;"></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com