Why Americans Hate Politics: Senator J.N. Kennedy

Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast:

Republican Sen. John Kennedy has been slammed as “tone deaf” after he made a political dig at a reporter while speaking about a terrorist attack in his home state of Louisiana.

The controversial quip came as he and other officials took questions about the Wednesday morning attack—which left at least 15 dead on New Orleans’ iconic Bourbon Street. A 42-year-old Army veteran named Shamsud-Din Jabbar has been named as the suspect, who was killed by officers who opened fire at the scene.

Early on in Tuesday’s press conference, a reporter told Kennedy that NBC News was “here on the right.” The remark was meant to help the 72-year-old identify each journalists’ affiliation as he geared up to answer a question during an afternoon press conference.

That prompted the Republican to remark, “Oh, that’s [an] unusual position.” He moved his hands to the right, seemingly suggesting NBC is a left-leaning outlet.

This appeared to confuse the reporter who had just assisted Kennedy. She called out, “I don’t get it.” Kennedy responded, “You wouldn’t.” He then took over the podium.

Democrats were quick to slam Kennedy—who has a long history of making bizarre comments to get attention—for making such a statement mere hours after dozens of his constituents were mowed down on the street as they celebrated the new year.

“Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana is a useless piece of s--t saying all the wrong things at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons,” wrote the political pundit Keith Olbermann on X. “What a tone deaf, selfish, senile motherf----r.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) malfunctions during a hearing on mass deportations.

KENNEDY: Who in Texas had their knives out for Black immigrants? Give me a name. Give me a name.
AARON REICHLIN-MELNICK: ...My suspicion is Ken Paxton...
KENNEDY: Give me a name. Give me a name.… pic.twitter.com/YpjSOENpT9

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) December 10, 2024

Unhappy New Year

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In the 21st century, Americans have been dissatistfied with the ways things are going.  This dissatisfaction translates into political volatility.

 

 

Still Liable

Our next book will look at the 2024 campaign and the limited political impact of Trump's legal problems.

Lola Fadulu at NYT:

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday failed to overturn a $5 million judgment that he sexually abused the writer E. Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s and later defamed her.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued to a federal appeals panel that a lower court in Manhattan had erred by allowing two women to testify in the Carroll trial that he had also sexually assaulted them. The lawyers also argued that the court should not have allowed Ms. Carroll’s lawyers to play the recording of the “Access Hollywood” conversation in which Mr. Trump bragged in vulgar terms about grabbing women by the genitals.

The appeals court rejected Mr. Trump’s request for a new trial in the case, which produced the smaller of two defamation judgments against him. “Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged  rulings,” the opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said. It was unsigned but issued by a three-judge panel made up of Denny Chin and Susan Carney — appointed by President Barack Obama — as well as Myrna Pérez, appointed by President Biden.

“Both E. Jean Carroll and I are gratified by today’s decision,” Roberta Kaplan, Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, said in a statement. “We thank the Second Circuit for its careful consideration of the parties’ arguments.”

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca2.60504/gov.uscourts.ca2.60504.176.1.pdf

 CARROLL v. TRUMP (2023) United States District Court, S.D. New York. E. Jean CARROLL, Plaintiff, v. Donald J. TRUMP, Defendant. 22-cv-10016 (LAK) Decided: July 19, 2023

The jury's unanimous verdict in Carroll II was almost entirely in favor of Ms. Carroll. The only point on which Ms. Carroll did not prevail was whether she had proved that Mr. Trump had “raped” her within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law – a section that provides that the label “rape” as used in criminal prosecutions in New York applies only to vaginal penetration by a penis. Forcible, unconsented-to penetration of the vagina or of other bodily orifices by fingers, other body parts, or other articles or materials is not called “rape” under the New York Penal Law. It instead is labeled “sexual abuse.”1

As is shown in the following notes, the definition of rape in the New York Penal Law is far narrower than the meaning of “rape” in common modern parlance, its definition in some dictionaries,2 in some federal and state criminal statutes,3 and elsewhere.4 The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was “raped” within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump “raped” her as many people commonly understand the word “rape.” Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.

So why does this matter? It matters because Mr. Trump now contends that the jury's $2 million compensatory damages award for Ms. Carroll's sexual assault claim was excessive because the jury concluded that he had not “raped” Ms. Carroll.5 Its verdict, he says, could have been based upon no more than “groping of [Ms. Carroll's] breasts through clothing or similar conduct, which is a far cry from rape.”6 And while Mr. Trump is right that a $2 million award for such groping alone could well be regarded as excessive, that undermines rather than supports his argument. His argument is entirely unpersuasive.

L.A. County Veers RIghtward on Crime

Our next book will look at the 2024 election. Democrats gained three House seats in California, but the state also showed its conservative streak.

Koko Nakajima and Phi Do at LAT:

A decade ago, Proposition 47 turned some nonviolent felonies into misdemeanors. At the time it was overwhelmingly approved by 90% of neighborhoods in L.A. County. This month parts of it were repealed by Prop. 36.

Eighty-seven percent of neighborhoods that previously supported the ballot initiative voted to overhaul it. Those same neighborhoods heavily supported Nathan Hochman for district attorney.

New polling analysis reveals only 14% of L.A. County voters supported former Dist. Atty. Gascón and “No” on Prop. 36.

 

Trump, Musk, and H1B

Our next book discusses the 2024 election.  Immigration was a top issue.

 Ken Bensinger at NYT:

President-elect Donald J. Trump appeared to weigh in on Saturday on a heated debate among his supporters over the role of skilled immigrant workers in the U.S. economy, saying he had frequently used the visas for those workers and backed the program.

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties,” he told The New York Post. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

But his comments — which were enthusiastically embraced by the technology industry as an endorsement — may muddy the waters because Mr. Trump appears to have only sparingly used the H-1B visa program, which allows skilled workers like software engineers to work in the United States for up to three years and can be extended to six years.

Instead, he has been a frequent and longtime user of the similarly named, but starkly different, H-2B visa program, which is for unskilled workers like gardeners and housekeepers, as well as the H-2A program, which is for agricultural workers. Those visas allow a worker to remain in the country for 10 months. Federal data show Mr. Trump’s companies have received approval to employ over 1,000 workers through the two H-2 programs in the past 20 years.

The Trump transition team did not reply to multiple requests for comment seeking clarity on the type of visas the president-elect was referring to in the interview.

But it did respond to a prior query about Mr. Trump’s position on work visas by sharing the text of a speech he made in 2020 extolling the work of American citizens in building the country, noting that “Americans must never lose sight of this miraculous story.” While campaigning in 2016, Mr. Trump spoke out against the H-1B program, calling it “very bad for workers” and stating that “we should end it.”

Still, the news report on Saturday set off a wave of celebration in the tech industry and among supporters of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who has been an outspoken advocate of H-1B visas.

Ian Miles Cheong, a social media influencer with 1.1 million followers on X, posted, “Donald Trump backs Elon Musk on H-1B visas.

”

The International Decline of the Progressive Left

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.   Our next book continues the analysis into 2024.

 

Bertrand Benoit, David Luhnow and Vipal Monga at WSJ:

This past year showed that the progressive politics that dominated most industrialized countries over the past two decades or more is shifting to the right, fueled by working-class anxieties over the economy and immigration, and growing fatigue with issues from climate change to identity politics.

The return of Donald Trump to the White House is the most dramatic and important example—but it is far from the only one.

Across Europe, where economic growth has largely stalled, conservatives and populist right-wing parties are making unprecedented gains. Three-quarters of governments in the European Union are either led by a right-of-center party or are ruled by a coalition that includes at least one.

The shift is set to continue. Canada appears poised to kick out a deeply unpopular progressive prime minister and Germany is expected to dump its center-left government. Polls show the top two parties in Germany represent the center-right and the far-right.

...

In country after country, many working-class voters—especially those outside the biggest cities—are signaling the same thing: They mistrust the establishment—from academics to bankers to traditional politicians—and feel these elites are out of touch and don’t care about people like them.

Years of increased migration and trade, coupled with low economic growth, have led to a backlash and a rise in nationalism, where people want more of a sense of control, political analysts say. The rise of social media has exacerbated divisions and led to an upsurge in antiestablishment parties.

“It’s a broad shift that goes across countries,” said Ruy Teixeira, a lifelong Democrat who now works for the center-right American Enterprise Institute think tank. “Working-class people are just pissed off—about immigration, about all the culture war stuff, and the relatively poor economic performance that has shaped the working-class experience in the 21st century.”

Hispanics and the Prosperity Gospel

Our next book will look at the 2024 election, which had fascinating demographic features.

Michelle Boorstein at The Washington Post:

The mix of hope, drive for success and belief in a God who rewards faith, sometimes with financial accomplishments, has become dominant across the United States and Latin America, experts on Latino religion say. The belief system is sometimes called “seed faith,” “health and wealth gospel,” or “prosperity gospel.”

In the past half-century, driven by larger-than-life pastors, it has overtaken other more traditional theologies centered on God’s priority being poor and disenfranchised people, some experts said. This belief system, they said, helps explain what exit polls showed was a significant shift among Latino Christian voters to Trump, who they see as an uber-successful, strong and God-focused strive.
...
Nationally, network exit polls showed that between 2020 and 2024, Trump gained 14 points in support among Latinos, although a bare majority favored Harris, the Democratic nominee. In that same period, he gained 25 points among Latino Catholics and 18 points among Latino evangelical Protestants.
...

The prosperity gospel is rooted in American Pentecostalism and evangelical Protestantism, but experts say it’s become huge across faith in general, and especially among unaffiliated, often online spiritual influencers. Trump grew up in the church of the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, whose book “The Power of Positive Thinking,” was a huge bestseller and is considered a classic of the prosperity gospel.

A Pew Research Center survey in 2014 found wide majorities of Protestants and Catholics in almost all of Latin America agreed that “God will grant wealth and good health to believers who have enough faith.” In the Dominican Republic — the ancestral or birth home for many in Allentown — 76 percent of Protestants agreed and 79 percent of Catholics did. The firm PRRI asked a similar question in March and found 44 percent of U.S. Latinos overall agreed, higher than any other group except African Americans. What that means politically is that wealthy candidates like Trump are seen by some as both faithful and worthy of emulation.