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Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments. Last week, a gunman murdered Charlie Kirk.

Peter Baker at NYT:

The first few minutes of President Trump’s Oval Office address after the assassination of Charlie Kirk last week followed the conventional presidential playbook. He praised the victim, asked God to watch over his family and talked mournfully of “a dark moment for America.”

Then he tossed the playbook aside, angrily blaming the murder on the American left and vowing revenge.

That was stark even for some viewers who might normally be sympathetic. When Mr. Trump appeared later on Fox News, a host noted that there were “radicals on the right,” just as there were “radicals on the left,” and asked, “How do we come back together?” The president rejected the premise. Radicals on the right were justified by anger over crime, he said. “The radicals on the left are the problem,” he added. “And they’re vicious. And they’re horrible.”

... 

 “If I take care of the base, everything else will take care of itself,” he once told Anthony Scaramucci, a former ally who briefly served in Mr. Trump’s first-term White House.

While he made few nods toward working across the aisle in his first term, Mr. Trump has all but abandoned any efforts at bipartisanship in his second. He does not invite Democratic leaders to the White House for talks, nor does he brief them on major national security events.

Russell T. Vought, his budget director, complained in July that “the appropriations process has to be less bipartisan.”

...

His critics fear that Mr. Trump will now use the Kirk assassination to go further on liberal organizations and institutions, a view encouraged in ominous social media posts by Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff and a leader of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.\

“In recent days we have learned just how many Americans in positions of authority — child services, law clerks, hospital nurses, teachers, gov’t workers, even DOD employees — have been deeply and violently radicalized,” Mr. Miller wrote on Saturday, suggesting that their responses to Mr. Kirk’s killing were unacceptable. “The consequence of a vast, organized ecosystem of indoctrination.”

Mr. Trump is certainly right that his opponents have called him a “fascist” and “Nazi.” But his outrage at incendiary rhetoric is situational. In the same Fox News interview last week in which he complained about excesses by the left, he referred to Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist and front-runner for mayor of New York, as a “communist.” Even more than in his first term, Mr. Trump lately has referred to political rivals and journalists as “evil.”

The Left Believes in the Green Lantern Theory of Minority Party Leadership

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Hans Nichols at Axios:

A closed-door meeting for House Democrats this week included a gripe-fest directed at liberal grassroots organizations, sources tell Axios.

Why it matters: Members of the Steering and Policy Committee — with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in the room — on Monday complained activist groups like MoveOn and Indivisible have facilitated thousands of phone calls to members' offices."People are pissed," a senior House Democrat who was at the meeting said of lawmakers' reaction to the calls.

The Democrat said Jeffries himself is "very frustrated" at the groups, who are trying to stir up a more confrontational opposition to Trump.

A Jeffries spokesperson disputed that characterization and noted to Axios that their office regularly engages with dozens of stakeholder groups, including MoveOn and Indivisible, including as recently as Monday

Zoom in: "There were a lot of people who were like, 'We've got to stop the groups from doing this.' ... People are concerned that they're saying we're not doing enough, but we're not in the majority," said one member.Some Democrats see the callers as barking up the wrong tree given their limited power as the minority party in Congress: "It's been a constant theme of us saying, 'Please call the Republicans,'" said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.).

I reject and resent the implication that congressional Democrats are simply standing by passively," said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).

Summing Up 2024

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

Peter Baker at NYT:

And while tens of millions of voters still cast ballots against Mr. Trump, he once again tapped into a sense among many others that the country they knew was slipping away, under siege economically, culturally and demographically.

To counter that, those voters ratified the return of a brash 78-year-old champion willing to upend convention and take radical action even if it offends sensibilities or violates old standards. Any misgivings about their chosen leader were shoved to the side.

As a result, for the first time in history, Americans have elected a convicted criminal as president. They handed power back to a leader who tried to overturn a previous election, called for the “termination” of the Constitution to reclaim his office, aspired to be a dictator on Day 1 and vowed to exact “retribution” against his adversaries.

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Trump DOJ

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. 

 Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  

Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.   

He is planning an authoritarian agenda and would take care to eliminate any internal dissent.

Eight years ago, Benjamin Wittes wrote:

The soft spot, the least tyrant-proof part of the government, is the U.S. Department of Justice and the larger law enforcement and regulatory apparatus of the United States government. The first reason you should fear a Donald Trump presidency is what he would do to the ordinary enforcement functions of the federal government, not the most extraordinary ones.

Alex Leary and  Sadie Gurman at WSJ:

...Trump has repeatedly signaled he could seek retribution against his perceived enemies. This has alarmed many Americans, including some former supporters who think Trump during a second term would be savvier and more determined to bend the institution to his whims. Trump has said winning in November would be his form of retribution.

Trump and his allies have been considering candidates for attorney general who share his expansive view of presidential authority and would be more willing to do the White House’s bidding. President Biden and other presidents before him have sought to portray the Justice Department as independent of politics, taking pains to avoid even the appearance of seeking favor with the nation’s top cop.

Trump wants a loyalist, people familiar with his thinking said, and he has openly expressed regret over his choices in his first term, Jeff Sessions and William Barr. Sessions stepped aside from the department’s probe of the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, angering the president, and Barr refused to pursue Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud in 2020.

Among those under consideration to lead the department in a second Trump term are John Ratcliffe, who served under Trump as director of national intelligence; Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, a former state attorney general; and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, according to people familiar with discussions. These talks have included informal musings by Trump, who has mentioned Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.

...

Moves Trump has suggested include giving political appointees at the Justice Department greater oversight of the FBI, including its traditionally independent director, shrinking the size and power of its Washington headquarters and affording more resources instead to agents in the field. Some allies have suggested reviewing all of the FBI’s investigations and terminating those they find objectionable.

People familiar with Trump’s policy goals said he would give priority to religious rights over LGBTQ protections and that he would go after what they see as a left-wing ideology that drowns out other voices on college campuses.

Trump Trial Delays

In Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics, we look at Trump's dishonesty and disregard for the rule of law.

 Our next book will look at the 2024 campaign and the impact of Trump's legal problems. New York courts have found that he is a rapist and a fraud.

Ben Protess, Alan Feuer, William K. Rashbaum and Maggie Haberman at NYT:

The schedule seemed stacked against Donald J. Trump: four criminal trials in four cities, all in the same year he is running for president.

But rather than doom Mr. Trump, the chaotic calendar might just save him.

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.

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.

Until now.

On Friday, Justice Juan M. Merchan, who is overseeing the case, delayed the trial at least three weeks, until mid-April.

The Akin Ploy in the CA Senate Race

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

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) secured the nomination of a weak GOP opponent in 2012 by running "attack ads" that made him sound appealing to conservative GOP voters. 

https://youtu.be/ec4t_3vaBMc  She told the story here: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/todd-akin-missouri-claire-mccaskill-2012-121262/

In the dozen years since, campaigns and parties have tried the same controversial trick, with mixed results.

I said that Adam Schiff would do the same with Steve Garvey, and he is:

https://x.com/ccadelago/status/1753072507823984940?s=20

Seema Mehta at LAT

Republican Senate contender and former baseball All-Star Steve Garvey is getting a campaign boost from an unlikely source — Democratic Rep. Adam B. Schiff, a top rival in the race for the seat once held by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Schiff’s campaign released a new ad portraying Garvey, a political novice considered a long shot to win the coveted seat, as his greatest competitor in a close 2024 Senate race that features two other top Democrats: Reps. Katie Porter of Irvine and Barbara Lee of Oakland.

“Two leading candidates for Senate. Two very different visions for California,” a narrator intones, noting later that Garvey “is too conservative for California” and voted for Donald Trump twice.

While the message will turn off Democratic voters in the state, it may increase the former baseball player’s appeal to Republican voters — as it is designed to do, according to two political strategists.