The Big Lie and Election Administration

Our new 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. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie. 

At NYT, Charles Homans reports on Trumpist efforts to control election machinery:

A year later, Trump loyalists supporting his claims about the 2020 election are strong candidates and, in some cases, front-runners in Republican primaries for secretary of state across the country. In Georgia, Representative Jody Hice, who has said he is not “convinced at all, not for one second, that Joe Biden won the State of Georgia,” is running against Mr. Raffensperger in the Republican primary in May, with Mr. Trump’s backing.

...
“Donald Trump and a lot of folks in his orbit were frankly ahead of the curve when it came to raising funds and organizing behind candidates who backed the big lie,” said Miles Taylor, a former official in Mr. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security who this year helped to start the Renew America Movement, an organization supporting Republican and Democratic candidates running against Trump-backed Republicans.

Mr. Taylor said that while his group was now active in congressional races, it did not yet have the resources to compete against Trump-endorsed candidates in state contests. Nor was the Democratic Party capable of filling the void, he said: “In a lot of these places, Democrats have no hope of winning a statewide election, and all that matters is the primary.”

In other areas, Democrats are disadvantaged by pre-existing political losses. In 23 states, Republicans control both state legislatures and governors’ mansions. Democrats control both in only 15 states.

The legislatures that Republicans now control have in the past year become laboratories for legislation that would remove barriers that stood in the way of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 results. In seven states this year, lawmakers proposed bills that would have given partisan officials the ability to change election results in various ways. Although none passed, Republican-led legislatures in Arizona and in Georgia passed laws that directly removed various election oversight responsibilities from the secretaries of state — legislation that appeared to directly target specific officials who had been vilified by Mr. Trump.

“We’ve never seen anything like that before,” said Wendy Weiser, the vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, who co-wrote a recent report on the new state-level legislation.

Vaccine Polarization

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the politics of COVID.

From KFF:

As reported previously, while majorities across all demographic groups have received a COVID-19 vaccine, there are still disproportionate shares of certain groups that remain unvaccinated. A recent KFF analysis found partisanship is now the strongest self-identifying predictor of being unvaccinated and a quarter of Republicans (26%) continue to say they will “definitely not” get a COVID-19 vaccine, similar to the shares of uninsured adults and White Evangelical Christians who say the same. There are also gaps in vaccine uptake between college graduates and those without a college degree (83% vs. 68%) and age groups, with 89% of adults 65 and older reporting receiving a COVID-19 vaccine compared to 67% of adults 18-29 years old. At least two-thirds of Hispanic adults, Black adults, and White adults report receiving a vaccine.

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Similar to the role that partisanship has played in initial COVID-19 vaccines, the survey finds the share of fully vaccinated Democrats (32%) reporting receiving a booster dose outpaces both independents (21%) and Republicans (18%). Democrats also are more likely than independents or Republicans to report they will “definitely” get a booster once eligible, 43% compared to 32% and 32%, respectively. Three in ten (31%) fully vaccinated Republicans say they will definitely not or probably not get a booster if the FDA and CDC recommend it for people like them, compared to 38% last month.

Also from KFF:

As with vaccination attitudes among adults, parents’ intentions for vaccinating their children diverge largely along partisan lines. Among parents of 12-17 year-olds, eight in ten Democrats say their teenager has already gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to about half of independents and just a quarter of Republicans. Indeed, half of Republican parents say they will “definitely not” get their 12-17 year-old vaccinated.

A similar pattern is seen among parents of younger children, with about half of Democrats saying their 5-11 year-old is already vaccinated or will be right away, compared to three in ten independents and about one in ten Republicans. Again, about half of Republican parents say they will “definitely not” vaccinate their younger child. Notably, however, at least three in ten parents of children ages 5-11 across partisan groups say they want to “wait and see” how the vaccine works for other children before getting their child vaccinated.

 

 

More on Liberal Dark Money

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

Theodore Schleifer at Puck:

The left has refined a tool first exploited by the right in which donors make contributions to dark-money groups, which in turn make contributions from their balance sheets to super PACs. That clever workaround allows donors to avoid the disclosure that would be required if they donated to the super PAC directly. For instance, consider Future Forward USA, a new super PAC run by a well-regarded, low-profile operative named Chauncey McLean, with help from newfound strategist celebrities like David Shor. The group was wildly popular in the 2020 cycle with Silicon Valley billionaires like Dustin Moskovitz, who put at least $47 million into the super PAC to finance a last-minute barrage of anti-Trump television ads.

But I say at least because the biggest donor to Future Forward USA was actually its own 501(c)4 nonprofit group, which doesn’t disclose its donors. Similarly, consider the progressive powerhouse Sixteen Thirty Fund, another 501(c)4 that raises major money from 501(c)3s organized by Arabella Advisors, a philanthropy consulting firm that is popular with liberal donors. The Sixteen Thirty Fund raised a staggering $390 million last year, nearly three times what it raised in each of the prior two years. The group then sent $164 million to liberal super PACs like Future Forward in the 2020 campaign to whack Trump, with no donor disclosure required.

Sometimes the play is to toe the line between philanthropy and politics. The inconspicuously named Voter Participation Center, a 501(c)3, and its allied dark-money brother, the Center for Voter Information, were favorites of Silicon Valley donors and collected $85 million and $49 million respectively in 2020—far more than the $14 million and $6 million they raised in 2016. C.E.O. Tom Lopach stresses that “increasing civic engagement is not a partisan endeavor.” Both groups are nonprofits, but they are led by longtime Democratic operatives like Lopach, funded by Democratic Party donors, and work to turn out voters who are likely Democrats. Are these philanthropies?

The Coup Next Time

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

 Barton Gellman at The Atlantic:

A year ago I asked the Princeton historian Kevin Kruse how he explained the integrity of the Republican officials who said no, under pressure, to the attempted coup in 2020 and early ’21. “I think it did depend on the personalities,” he told me. “I think you replace those officials, those judges, with ones who are more willing to follow the party line, and you get a different set of outcomes.”

Today that reads like a coup plotter’s to-do list. Since the 2020 election, Trump’s acolytes have set about methodically identifying patches of resistance and pulling them out by the roots. Brad Raffensperger in Georgia, who refused to “find” extra votes for Trump? Formally censured by his state party, primaried, and stripped of his power as chief election officer. Aaron Van Langevelde in Michigan, who certified Biden’s victory? Hounded off the Board of State Canvassers. Governor Doug Ducey in Arizona, who signed his state’s “certificate of ascertainment” for Biden? Trump has endorsed a former Fox 10 news anchor named Kari Lake to succeed him, predicting that she “will fight to restore Election Integrity (both past and future!).” Future, here, is the operative word. Lake says she would not have certified Biden’s victory in Arizona, and even promises to revoke it (somehow) if she wins. None of this is normal.

Arizona’s legislature, meanwhile, has passed a law forbidding Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state, to take part in election lawsuits, as she did at crucial junctures last year. The legislature is also debating an extraordinary bill asserting its own prerogative, “by majority vote at any time before the presidential inauguration,” to “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election.” There was no such thing under law as a method to “decertify” electors when Trump demanded it in 2020, but state Republicans think they have invented one for 2024.

In at least 15 more states, Republicans have advanced new laws to shift authority over elections from governors and career officials in the executive branch to the legislature. Under the Orwellian banner of “election integrity,” even more have rewritten laws to make it harder for Democrats to vote. Death threats and harassment from Trump supporters have meanwhile driven nonpartisan voting administrators to contemplate retirement.

George Packer at The Atlantic:

[Democrats] regularly sound the alarm about the threat to democracy, but it is one of many alarms, along with those over the pandemic, child care, health care, criminal justice, guns, climate change. All of these deserve urgent attention, but they can’t be equally urgent. Biden has spent far less of his political capital on saving democracy than on passing an infrastructure bill. According to a Grinnell College poll in October, only 35 percent of Democrats believe that American democracy faces a “major threat.” The figure is twice as large for Republicans—whose belief in a major threat is the threat. Delusion about the danger prevails in both parties.

When Democrats talk about the threat, they focus on disenfranchisement, describing the new Republican election laws as “Jim Crow 2.0.” The language, by provocatively invoking that terrible history, highlights the racial bias in the laws. But the threat we face is a new one; it requires new thinking. Through most of American history, both parties, while excluding large numbers of Americans from the franchise, basically accepted the choice of the electorate—and that is no longer true. The supreme danger now is not that voters in urban counties will have a harder time finding a drop box, or that some states will shorten the mail-ballot application window. The danger is that the express will of the American people could be overthrown.

 

Trump World

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the impact of social media.

Katy O'Donnell at Politico: 

The special purpose acquisition company taking former President Donald Trump's social media startup public is under investigation by federal regulators, the company said Monday.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) separately announced Monday he was resigning from Congress and would become CEO of the new firm, Trump Media & Technology Group, in January. Nunes, a close Trump ally, is the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

The SPAC, Digital World Acquisition Corp., said in a public filing that it had received inquiries in recent weeks from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. SPACs are shell companies that acquire private firms for the purpose of selling shares on stock exchanges.

 Sara Fischer at Axios:

Aside from social networks, conservatives are pushing to create alternatives to other tech tools and communication platforms.

• Book publishing: Trump allies recently launched a book publishing house called Winning Team Publishing, run by former Trump campaign aide Sergio Gor and Donald Trump Jr. The imprint will publish the ex-President's first book, a coffee table tome that's picture-focused.
• Cloud storage: Trump's new social media company will be hosted online by RightForge, an internet infrastructure company that courts conservatives. As Axios' Margaret Harding McGill notes, relying on a conservative web hosting service could help Trump avoid the same issues Parler faced when Amazon pulled its web services following the Capitol siege.
• Crypto: A new cryptocurrency called "Magacoin" has already caught the attention of high-profile conservatives, per The Guardian.
• Phones: A young Bitcoin entrepreneur is developing a "Freedom phone," a device being marketed to conservatives.

Superspreader in Chief

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the politics of COVID.

Mark Meadows recently revealed that Trump tested positive for COVID on September 26, 2020.  Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey at WP:

From the day he tested positive until his hospitalization, Trump came in contact with more than 500 people, either those in proximity to him or at crowded events, not including rallygoers, according to a Washington Post analysis of the president’s interactions during that period.

That seven-day window reveals a president and chief of staff who took a reckless, and potentially dangerous, approach to handling the coronavirus, including Trump’s own positive test.

Trump and Meadows hid Trump’s positive test not just from the public, but also from his inner circle and from his top public health officials. He took part in a debate with Democratic rival Joe Biden three days later, never revealing the test result to Biden or event organizers.

And Trump took no extra precautions, such as mask-wearing or social distancing, to protect those he came in contact with in the days following the positive test.

By the end of October, more than two dozen people in Trump’s orbit would test positive for the coronavirus.

According to the official narrative of the Trump White House, the president first tested positive for the virus on the evening of Thursday, Oct. 1, and was taken by helicopter to Walter Reed less than 24 hours later. But medical experts say that a more likely time frame is at least a week between an initial positive test and a patient requiring hospitalization.

Everything Trump Touches, Dies -- Literally

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the politics of COVID.

Daniel Wood and Geoff Brumfiel at NPR:

Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden. That's according to a new analysis by NPR that examines how political polarization and misinformation are driving a significant share of the deaths in the pandemic.

NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S. from May 2021, the point at which vaccinations widely became available. People living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.7 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates.

The trend was robust, even when controlling for age, which is the primary demographic risk of COVID-19 mortality. The data also reveal a major contributing factor to the death rate difference: The higher the vote share for Trump, the lower the vaccination rate.

The analysis only looked at the geographic location of COVID-19 deaths. The exact political views of each person taken by the disease remains unknowable. But the strength of the association, combined with polling information about vaccination, strongly suggests that Republicans are being disproportionately affected.