Violence and Threats of Violence

Our book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.

Nicholas Riccardi at AP:

The Capitol Police last year reported that they investigated more than double the number of threats against members of Congress as they did four years earlier. Driven by former President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him, threats against election workers have exploded, with one in six reporting threats against them and many seasoned election administrators leaving the job or considering it.

Frank Figliuzzi at MSNBC:

According to a July report from the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, "From April 6, 2023 to June 26, 2023, Americans agreeing that 'the use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency' increased from 4.5% to 7%, or the equivalent of an estimated shift from 12 million to 18 million American adults."

That research institute found that the increase "likely reflects the response of more intense commitment to Trump following the announcement of the federal indictment against him for mishandling 3 classified documents on June 9, 2023 — about two and a half weeks before our June 26, 2023, survey."

 

Matt Gaetz: “Only through force do we make any change…” pic.twitter.com/b9mSi6aGRK

— Frank Figliuzzi (@FrankFigliuzzi1) August 12, 2023

Violence and Intimidation

Our book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.

Dan Merica at The Messenger:

When Michigan State Rep. Matt Maddock took the stage at an Oakland County fundraising pool party in early August – a recording of which was obtained exclusively by The Messenger – he had a clear message he wanted to convey: If the government keeps coming after conservatives, someone is going to get shot or a civil war is going to begin.

Matt Maddock – whose wife, Meshawn Maddock, is a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party and one of the 16 fake electors who state attorney general Dana Nessel criminally charged in July – painted a bleak picture of how some conservatives plan to respond to the charges.

“If the government continues to weaponize these departments against conservatives and the citizens that are then the taxpayers, you know what's going to happen to this country,” Matt Maddock asks, according to the audio obtained by The Messenger. After attendees at the event shout possibilities, Maddock answers his own question: “Someone's going to get so pissed off, they're going to shoot someone. That's what's going to happen. Or we're going have a civil war or some sort of revolution. That's where this is, where this is going.”

If that happens, it’s conservatives – like the people at the pool party – who are “going to get squashed,” he added. 

UPDATE: Trump's Lawyers are before Judge Tanya Chutkan in his protective order hearing related to posts he made on Truth Social.

Here is some of the early dialogue taking place moments ago:

Trump's attorney John Lauro: We're asking the government to show good cause. Your… pic.twitter.com/BrrolhTq15

— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) August 11, 2023

Polarization 2023

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

Frank Newport at Gallup:

Republicans and Democrats are highly polarized on a number of prominent U.S. social and policy issues, but there has been significant variation in the trends associated with these partisan gaps over the past two decades. The gaps have increased significantly on some issues but have changed much less on others, even with broad shifts in Americans’ attitudes that affect both partisan groups.

Abortion and a Ballot Measure in Ohio

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. Abortion was a big issue in the 2022 midterm. It will probably be a big issue in 2024.

 Dennis Aftergut at The Hill:

On Tuesday, Ohio voters handed the state’s Republican legislature, and its Issue 1, a stinging defeat. By an overwhelming margin, they followed a 2022 pro-abortion rights trend set by voters in other states, including red ones like Kansas, Kentucky and Montana.

They also sent a 2024 message for national politicians.

Following the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, voters in the three Republican-majority states named above — like voters in Democratic-majority Vermont, Michigan and California — stood up for their right to be free of government attempts to enter family homes and end women’s bodily freedom. More on that in a moment.

In Ohio, Issue 1 was an anti-abortion wolf in constitutional process clothing. Everyone knew the Ohio legislators’ cynical anti-choice motive animating the measure. They were changing the rules for amending the state’s constitution in an attempt to accomplish their aims by stealth.

Fervent GOP opponents of abortion rights sponsored Issue 1 to raise the threshold on citizens’ ability to establish those rights through the ballot box. If voters had approved it, Issue 1 would have raised the minimum required to adopt new constitutional provisions by popular vote, like one set for abortion rights in November, from a simple majority to 60 percent of voters. The current requirement, 50 percent plus one vote, has been in place since 1912.

Running on Bidenomics

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

 Nicholas Wu at Politico:

Some purple-district Democrats want to give Biden more credit. Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), who represents a Las Vegas-area seat Biden won by 9 points, said she’d talk up ‘Bidenomics,’ “because it has made a difference.” What’s more, she wants the Democratic Congress that did the legwork to pass the landmark legislation to get its due, too.

“I don’t shy away from that. I think the president has a good record to brag about. But I also remind people that that recovery legislation got us started on this road to prosperity,” she said.

There’s a problem with that theory. Most Americans haven’t heard much about the Inflation Reduction Act or many of its provisions, polls show, so Democrats have to explain not only how they believe it’s helped voters, but also the existence of the legislation.

Still, for first-term lawmakers like Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.), who can’t do much legislatively from the minority, the main substantive work they can brag about came from the last Congress.

“I think that we’ve got to understand that sometimes it’s okay to toot our own horn,” he said.

DCCC Memo on Vulnerable GOP Incumbents

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

From DCCC:

For the first seven months of the 118th Congress, vulnerable House Republicans have voted overwhelmingly with their party and with extreme MAGA Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene. The most vulnerable Republicans in the House – those representing districts President Biden won in 2020 – vote on average nearly 94% of the time with the MAGA extremists running their party. Rather than showing independence or bipartisan leadership, these party hacks have fallen in line behind their extreme party bosses.

Despite campaign promises to be independent, these vulnerable Republicans time and time again have voted in lockstep with the most extreme MAGA Members in their party to rip away women’s reproductive freedom, cut services for veterans, defund law enforcement, gut manufacturing jobs, and uphold a culture of corruption in Washington – all while ignoring the kitchen table issues like lowering costs and creating good-paying jobs. Expect to see ties to extreme Republicans and these key issues in paid media against vulnerable Republicans next fall.

...

 Women and their families should have the freedom to make their own health care decisions, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans from waging an all-out effort to insert themselves into these private decisions. House Republicans are using any means necessary to enact their end goal of a national abortion ban, including attaching an unnecessary provision to one of their funding bills that would restrict access to the abortion medication mifepristone. This safe medication is used in 53% of all abortions in the country. And in one of their first votes at the beginning of the year, every vulnerable Republican voted in support of anti-choice legislation that could punish doctors and rip away women’s reproductive freedom.

Republicans Like RFK Jr. a Lot More Than Dems Do

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The early stages of the 2024 race have begun.

 Nathaniel Rakich at FiveThirtyEight:

A certain presidential candidate has been very popular lately. He appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast. House Republicans invited him to testify before Congress on censorship. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also a Republican, has suggested that if he becomes president, he might nominate him to lead the Food and Drug Administration or Centers for Disease Control. GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said he’d consider him to be his running mate.

The only problem? This candidate is running in the Democratic primary.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a contradiction ever since he announced his presidential campaign back in April. Though he’s part of the most famous family in Democratic politics and holds some liberal views — like supporting abortion rights — he is best known for his embrace of conspiracy theories most popular on the right, including the idea that vaccines are unsafe. That has made him a celebrity among conservative thought leaders and persona non grata within the Democratic Party. The head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee even called him “unfit for public office.”

Those topsy-turvy opinions of Kennedy extend to voters — he’s quite popular among Republicans, but Democrats are highly ambivalent about him. Eight polls have asked about Kennedy’s favorable and unfavorable rating since July 1, and Kennedy’s net favorability rating is higher among Republicans than it is among Democrats in seven of them.