“He died like a dog…”
Fergawdsakes.
"what digby sez..."
Month: August 2022
I needed to hear it again
Sixteen hours later, this is already old news, but….
CNN:
A federal judge on Monday sentenced Guy Reffitt, who brought a gun to the US Capitol during the January 6, 2021, riot and threatened House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to more than seven years in prison, the longest insurrection-related sentence to date.
Reffitt, a recruiter for a right-wing militia known as the Three Percenters, was the first Capitol rioter to go to trial rather than take a plea agreement.
“Mr. Reffitt’s reluctance to admit early that his behavior is illegal is concerning,” District Judge Dabney Friedrich said before handing down the 87-month sentence. “And I want to be very clear … under no legitimate definition of the term ‘patriot’ (does) Mr. Reffitt’s behavior on and around January 6 fit the term. It is the antithesis of the word.”
Friedrich added: “The officers at the Capitol are the patriots, as well as those who fought and even died to protect our democracy, our rule of law … those in the mob are not. Not only are they not patriots, they’re a direct threat to our democracy and will be punished as such.
Watch that space.
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Georgia open-carry law cancels music festival
Did you watch any of Lollapalooza over the weekend? Broadcast on Hulu from that violent, Democrat-run, urban hellscape of Chicago? Well, that sort of thing ain’t happening anytime soon in Atlanta, peaches. Because freedom!
Atlanta’s Music Midtown festival has been cancelled over Georgia’s gun laws.
The September festival in Piedmont Park was set to host My Chemical Romance, Future, Jack White and Fall Out Boy, among other performers. Citing “circumstances beyond our control,” festival organizers did not comment further on what caused the two-day show’s cancellation. But it seems they cannot prohibit possession of firearms at a festival held on public property. That poses a safety risk to 50,000 fans and threats of lawsuits from gun advocates.
Billboard notes that most promotion companies “will not host a festival in a location that permits gun owners to carry their weapons into an event, with an exception sometimes made for law enforcement. Some artist riders actually have specific language saying that artist will not perform in cities or states where gun laws grant attendees the right to bring weapons inside of a concert venue.”
The decision centered on a 2014 state law passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by then-Gov. Nathan Deal that allowed Georgians to legally carry firearms in a range of new places, including public land such as city-owned Piedmont Park.
For years, there was no legal consensus on whether that law applied to private events held on public property. But a 2019 Georgia Supreme Court ruling — and an appellate court ruling earlier this year upholding that decision — made it more difficult for private groups to restrict guns from short-term events held on public land.
The event’s organizers were concerned about a threat of a lawsuit from gun owners if they decided to hold the festival with firearms restrictions in place, two officials with direct knowledge of the decision told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
WSBTV Atlanta had more:
Channel 2 obtained an email from two independent sources that shows a Monroe County man reaching out to the festival. Parts of the email say, “Should any member of your security team accost a legal carrier of weapons and either prevents their entry or ejects them merely because they are lawfully armed, your company could be sued for damages and all associated legal costs, not to mention Live Nation as well.”
Georgia gun advocate Phil Evans told CNN he emailed organizers in May warning them that he had asked the city to deny the festival a permit for attempting to prohibit possession of firearms.
The cancellation is a “major blow” to the city’s tourism industry, the AJC reports, and to Atlanta’s “mystique as a music mecca.”
Calling it a “sad day” for the city, Atlanta City Council President Doug Shipman wrote on Twitter that: “Public policy has real impacts and, in this case, economic and social implications on a great tradition.”
And state Democrats chastised Republicans for adopting a raft of pro-gun legislation, including a 2022 law that allows Georgians to carry concealed handguns without first getting a license from the state.
“Brian Kemp’s dangerous and extreme gun agenda endangers the lives of Georgians, and the cancellation of Music Midtown is proof that his reckless policies endanger Georgia’s economy as well,” said Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Atlanta Pride Fest organizers say the festival set for early October is still on schedule:
“We have taken Georgia Open Carry Law into account with our security plans for many years now. Although we certainly would like to see more regulations and the ability to limit weapons, just because we think that big crowds and guns don’t mix,” said Jamie Fergerson with the Atlanta Pride Committee.
Meanwhile, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot confirmed an agreement to keep Lollapalooza at Grant Park for another decade, calling it “not only a significant economic driver” for the city, but a “truly iconic Chicago summer festival.” Attendance will be allowed to grow from 100,000 to 115,000 per day.
Chicago receives a share of the festival revenue. Arrests during this year’s four-day festival numbered under 20, fewer than in 2021.
Georgia’s open-carry fans may miss their music but have more time and money for shooting holes in cans, training to overthrow their government, and for intimidating neighbors.
A biker once told me what he liked most about being in a biker gang was not the motorcycles or fighting, but how just the image made people step out of his way. Open-carry likely has the same antisocial appeal.
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For men
The Washington Post reported on what world these people want to go back to:
When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, it invalidated antiabortion laws in many states. Now that the Supreme Court has struck it down, these states face questions about whether and how the old laws will take effect again.
Some states avoided this confusion by taking preemptive action. In the half-century that the Supreme Court guaranteed the right to abortion, a number of states passed trigger laws automatically restricting abortion if Roe were ever overturned; now those laws are going into effect. Other states passed laws codifying abortion rights in the event Roe was reversed.
But a few states did nothing at all, and now confusion reigns about whether the old laws are kicking in again.
In Arizona, a 15-week abortion ban will go into effect this fall, but the Republican state attorney general is trying to enforce a stricter 1901 law immediately.
Arizona is trying to bring back a 1901 law to ban abortions
In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) is fighting a 1931 law that would ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Abortion remains legal there by court injunction.
In West Virginia, a law from 1849 — before West Virginia was even a state — which makes providing an abortion a felony,is enforceable, according to the Republican state attorney general.
And in Wisconsin, the Democratic attorney general is fighting enforcement of a law, also from 1849, making it a felony to provide an abortion unless it is needed to save the life of the mother. The Democratic governor has said he’ll grant clemency to anyone charged under it.
For many women, it’s jarring to contemplate resurrecting laws from a bygone era when women’s rights were drastically curtailed.
In 1849, West Virginia was still part of Virginia. (The Trans-Allegheny region didn’t break off until the Civil War.) Women of any race or class had difficult lives and few rights.
In 1850, there were about 10,000 enslaved Black women in the counties that became West Virginia. These women had no control over their financial, professional, political or sexual lives. They could not legally marry, and there was no legal protection against sexual assault. Many enslaved women, particularly in Virginia, were subjected to rape and forced breeding. They had no right to travel, so they could not have crossed state lines for an abortion. Some enslaved people brought recipes for abortion-inducing drinks with them from Africa, but access to these would have been inconsistent at best.
Even the most privileged women in what would become West Virginia had few rights. Rebecca Harding Davis was a White woman born into an upper-middle-class family and educated by tutors and private schools. She embarked on a career as a journalist and novelist. Her breakout work, “Life in the Iron Mills,” detailed the plight of immigrants in the mills and mines around her. But she forfeited some of her rights when she married, since Virginia denied married women any property rights, with one legislator arguing that a woman having such a right would destroy the entire institution of marriage.
Wisconsin was a progressive state since its beginning, at least relative to the others. In the 1840s, when it passed its abortion law, its lawmakers took the radical step of considering giving women the right to vote in the state Constitution, before deciding against it, according to the Office of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin. As one local newspaper editorial put it soon afterward, “Women are confessedly angels, and angels don’t vote.”
Married women in Wisconsin were given some property rights in 1850, though they were still barred from writing their own wills or controlling their wages. The University of Wisconsin, which was founded in 1848, the same year as the state, let women enroll as early as 1863, though it was largely a business move to boost enrollment during the Civil War. Even then, female students could only study teaching.
Few Black women lived in Wisconsin, though it was a free state and many White residents were involved in abolition and the Underground Railroad. For Indigenous women, though, there was almost no freedom of movement. For years, settlers and traders had been sexually exploiting them and pushing them off their lands, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. In 1850, the federal government lured thousands of Indigenous people from Wisconsin to Minnesota, including Julia Spears, an 18-year-old Ojibwe woman. She later described watching hundreds of adults and children die of starvation and disease in what is now called the Sandy Lake Tragedy.
Arizona was still a territory when it passed its abortion law in 1901, but the fight for women’s suffrage was in full swing. Bills to give women the vote in 1883 and 1891 had failed. Two other bills passed but were vetoed by governors. A narrower law, which gave taxpaying mothers of school-age children the right to vote in school board elections, was struck down in court. At Arizona’s 1911 constitutional convention to become a state, women’s suffrage failed again.
Frances W. Munds of Prescott was there for all of it. She was already a member of suffrage organizations when she married a cattle rancher in 1890. She was a mother to young children as she climbed the ranks in these organizations, where she pushed to include Mormon women in the movement. Finally, after she campaigned for a ballot initiative, women in Arizona got the right to vote in 1912, eight years before the 19th Amendment. When she was elected to the state Senate two years later, local newspapers called her “Mrs. J.L. Munds” — her husband’s name, a common practice for newspapers nationwide.
It would be decades until Indigenous and Hispanic women in Arizona could vote.
Though Black women got the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, many were still unable to exercise that right. In 1931 — the year Michigan passed its abortion law — Detroit preacher’s wife Fannie B. Peck was focused on a different type of voting: voting with your dollars.
Peck started the Housewives’ League of Detroit in 1930 to encourage Black women to shop only at Black-owned businesses and businesses that hired Black employees. Their motto was “Don’t buy where you can’t work” — but that was somewhat symbolic, given that only 22 percent of women were in the labor force nationwideat the time, according to census data.
Michigan women also couldn’t open their own bank accounts. In 1932, as a Great Depression-era federalmeasure, employed women were forced to quit their jobs if their husbands were also employed.
Nationally, many rights for women were still years or even decades away, according to the National Women’s History Alliance, including receiving a minimum wage equal to men’s (1938), serving on juries without restriction (1975), using birth control (1965), keeping a job after becoming pregnant (1975), enlisting as full members of the military (1948), serving in combat (2013), attending an Ivy League school (1983), owning a credit card (1974) and pressing charges for sexual assault against a spouse (1993).
My mother was divorced in th 1950s and had to move back in with her parents because she couldn’t get a bank account in her name. I know that seems like ancient history but that’s the time Trump and his cult worship as the best of all possible worlds.
A little bit of optimism can’t hurt
Michael Tomasky at TNR making the point today:
Joe Manchin hit all five political talk shows Sunday, touting aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act that most Democrats would much rather gloss over—notably, $5 billion to upgrade some coal plants. That pales in comparison to the $370 billion the bill would spend on climate-related measures, but it’s the kind of payoff that the West Virginia senator has the power to demand and get.
If the Democrats manage to pass this bill—if the party’s other wet blanket in the Senate, Kyrsten Sinema, or Josh Gottheimer and his SALT crowd in the House don’t kill it—the dynamics of the midterms just might change considerably. Democrats at last have something to show for all their Keynesian ambitions. Combine this with what, as I’ve written, should be the centerpiece of their fall campaign—defense of abortion rights and exposure of GOP plans to limit abortion rights nationally if the party takes back power in Washington—and they have a shot at keeping not only the Senate but maybe the House too.
That’s a long shot, to be sure. The Cook Political Report rates 34 House districts as toss-ups. Democrats are defending 26 of those, and Republicans just eight. Beyond that, there are seven more Democratic seats that Cook rates “lean Republican.” Those aren’t great numbers any way you slice it.
However, something is different in 2022 compared to the 2010 or 2014 midterms or even 2020, when Democrats lost House seats even as their president candidate was winning. In 2010, you could smell a bloodbath coming. There were two reasons for that, one empirical and one structural. The empirical reason was simply the state of the economy, with the country still gobsmacked by the Great Recession. But the structural reason was more interesting and is rather less discussed.
Democrats had won a lot of House seats in 2006 and 2008 because of George W. Bush’s unpopularity. So you had a bunch of Democrats in office in 2010 representing districts with Cook PVI (partisan voting index) numbers like R+5, R+7, or even higher. Something similar was true after 2018, when Democrats won in districts where they normally would have no chance because of Donald Trump’s unpopularity—think Kendra Horn in Oklahoma.
But those winners were largely wiped out in 2020 (Horn lost). Now, if you look at the list of the 26 toss-up Democrats, there are only two in those kinds of districts: Jared Golden in Maine’s 2nd, which is R+6, and Matt Cartwright in Pennsylvania’s 8th, which is R+4. Most of them are in districts that are even, or R+1, or D+1—tough districts, but holdable with the right arguments.
And, I should add, with the right kinds of opponents. Take Abigail Spanberger in Virginia’s 7th. It’s D+1, but it’s also mostly a new district for Spanberger—the state legislature redrew the district to such an extent that it no longer even includes her home. Still, her opponent, Yesli Vega, is a rich target. Vega has questioned the 2020 election results, said January 6, 2021, was just “a group of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights,” and was endorsed in a crowded field by Ginni Thomas, the pro-insurrectionist married to Justice Clarence Thomas.
On abortion, Vega is way out there. She’s accused Spanberger of “murdering the unborn.” And a month ago, she agreed with a questioner who was skeptical that rape could result in pregnancy. […]
I don’t see where Vega has said explicitly that she’d vote for a federal abortion ban, but it’s a fair and logical assumption, based on both her statements and her list of endorsers, that she would do so. Spanberger should spend the fall stressing the point and making her answer, as all these vulnerable Democrats should. And say, again and again, the most damning thing of all: that Republicans want 13-year-old rape victims to be forced to have those children. If every voting American hasn’t heard that sentence or one very like it 500 times between now and November, the Democrats haven’t done their job.
Vega is hardly an outlier. Spanberger’s fellow Virginia Democrat Elaine Luria is also running against an extremist, as are a lot of others. If the Democrats can get voters thinking more about their opponents’ extremism than gas prices, a number of candidates in these swing districts might have a shot.
The Inflation Reduction Act can play a role here. It should bump up President Biden’s poll numbers a little. Whether it will actually help reduce inflation by election time is a crapshoot. But Biden and the Democrats now have a pretty impressive lineup of accomplishments to run on: the American Rescue Plan, which (most Americans have no idea) is still sending grant money out to cities and towns and states for a host of projects; the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is just getting ramped up (see this map for how much money is going to each state); the gun bill; the veterans/burn pits bill, assuming Senate Republicans reverse course given the enormous criticism they’ve received; and now the IRA, which will make major climate investments and, unless Sinema knifes it, begin to tighten the carried-interest loophole (it will not “do away” with it, alas, but it’s movement in the right direction). That one is symbolically important because Trump won some points from some credulous people in the media for talking about it a lot in 2016 and vowing to end it, which he never lifted a finger to do.
That’s a real record. Throw in—and emphasize—Republican radicalism, and maybe all is not lost.
I would add that gas prices, the MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE IN THE WHOLE WORLD, have been coming down. It’s unlikely, but possible, that people will feel a bit better about the economy by then.
My God …
How can this guy be tied with Rafael Warnock? How is that even possible?
Here’s Warnock:
But this is really gross
Donald Trump’s plans to build a grandiose family mausoleum with 19-foot stone obelisks on the grounds of his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, were shot down in 2007 by local officials who found the design garish and out of character with the area.
Now there’s a single grave on the course — for Ivana Trump, the ex-wife of the former president and mother of his three oldest children. Following her July 20 funeral, she was buried not far from the clubhouse and behind the first tee in a bare plot with a spray of flowers and small granite plaque.
The grave appears to come with tax advantages for Trump and his golf course.
New Jersey tax code provides a “cemetery” with a “trifecta of tax avoidance,” with breaks for property, income and sales taxes, Brooke Harrington, a Dartmouth sociology professor and self-described tax researcher, wrote on Twitter. The state requires no minimum number of graves to qualify as a cemetery, she added.
The tax code says any land dedicated to cemetery purposes is exempt from all taxes. Cemetery companies are specifically exempt from paying any real estate taxes or personal property taxes on their lands, as well as business taxes, sales taxes, income taxes and inheritance taxes.
In the New Jersey Law Revision Commission, a “cemetery company” is defined as “a person, corporation, association or other entity that owns or operates a cemetery, reported Business Insider.
It’s unclear whether Trump, who famously pays almost no federal income tax, intends to pursue the tax advantages and how much money is at stake.
The cemetery business idea has been kicking around for a while in the Trump family.
Tax documents from the Trump Family Trust, published by ProPublica, show the trust sought in 2014 to designate a property in Hackettstown, New Jersey, about 20 miles from the Bedminster golf course, as a nonprofit cemetery company.
Trump’s early mausoleum idea in 2007 got nowhere.
Bedminster’s then-Mayor Robert Holtaway argued before the city council that the over-the-top structure could attract the wrong kind of people, The New Yorker reported. He compared it to a place “in Austria where a Nazi war criminal was buried” that “became a tourist attraction,” according to the magazine.
Trump suggested the mausoleum could have versatile uses — such as a spot for weddings, and over the years submitted various other plans for cemeteries on his property.
In 2014, The Trump Organization filed plans to build twin graveyards at Bedminster, The Washington Post reported. One would be a 284-plot cemetery offering gravesites for sale. The other would include 10 plots overlooking the first tee for Trump and his family.
“Mr. Trump … specifically chose this property for his final resting place as it is his favorite property,” his company wrote in the plans.
Maybe they can charge golfers for the privilege of teeing off of Ivana’s grave. With a picture.
Recently, there’s been a lot of discussion of the problems with originalism as a doctrine of jurisprudence. Here’s one example:
The paper [the NY Times] annotated the Dobbs majority decision with its own analysis, pointing out that Justice Alito’s argument is grounded in originalism, which it puts “in contrast to the more liberal interpretative method that views the Constitution as a living document whose meaning can evolve with society.” But originalism, as many have noted, is a flimsy legal framework, not a robust legal structure. It can justify anything and nothing at all.
Exactly. But I’m in a churlish, underappreciated mood. So here are some nearly 20 year-old excerpts on the subject of originalism from my now dormant solo blog.
August 7, 2003 —from “Bach and Scalia“
Originalism, like fundamentalism, is a modern movement that selectively chooses which texts to honor over others or which portions of which texts to honor over others.
All reading, no matter how rigorous, requires interpretation.* One would have thought this was so obvious that it doesn’t bear pointing out. But occasionally, some clown like Scalia claims a mystical access to The Truth and the point has to be made again.
“Please somebody give me an interpretation doctrine that has objective limits other than originalism and textualism. Scalia’s defense of originalism is otherwise unrefuted. “
No such thing as an “intepretation doctrine.” No such thing as “objective limits…”
Regarding interpretation: interps are useful only to the extent they are contingent (and yes, this assertion is self-contradictory: so what? It’s still true.). Culture, society, consensus, dispute, etc. determine the correctness of an interp, which can, must, and will change as society changes. Very little in human discourse can be decided by fiat once and for all. Even [Leo] Strauss… if you read him carefully, admits as much. Originalism is a doctrine that does indeed argue from a spurious intentionality and tries to reify language, which as Lewis Carroll convincingly demonstrates, is a pipe dream.
…. Just as there is no definitive interpretation of the Goldberg Variations, there can be no definitive interpretation of the law. There are many valid and invalid interpretations of both and the determination of the status of an interpretation is no more and no less than a contingent one, subject to infinite revision and refinement.
*Certain scientific texts and theorems may be unambiguous in a way that precludes interpretation. Those texts, however, are written in a specialized language, ie math, and are not relevant to the exegesis of legal or theological texts.
A brief dilation on my assertion (made in response to an originalist in a comment) that there is no such thing as an “assertion doctrine” or “objective limits.” Originalists clearly choose which texts to anoint with their originalist juju and then suppress others. That is clearly as abitrary and non-objective an “assertion doctrine” as any other. Why? Because the limits on which texts get chosen are ones that are set by those who determine the relevance and validity of the texts through an interpretative procedure contingent on their thoughts, concerns, principles, values, training, and ignorance of the full extent of texts available. There is nothing remotely “objective” going on in originalism. In short, originalism is as much based on interpretation as any other approach to reading the law. And it always must be.
It is a source of wonder to me that anyone ever took originalism seriously. It is also a source of wonder to me that no one in a position of authority (law degree, training in philosophy, huge public presence — i.e., not a mere blogger who can simply see the obvious flaws in originalism) ever bothered to publicly and consistently and loudly excoriate originalism’s pseudo-intellectual pretenses when it would have made a difference.
And here we are.
The nasty right wingers have a hard time answering their own question
Republicans mocked Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson last month for refusing to define the word “woman” during her Senate confirmation hearing.
But it turns out those same Republicans on the Judiciary Committee don’t agree on how to define a woman, and some wouldn’t ― or couldn’t ― give a definition when HuffPost asked Tuesday.
“I don’t have anything for you on that,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.).
“I’m not going to indulge you,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) dodged the question three times in a row, citing her policy of not talking to reporters in Senate hallways ― even though it was Blackburn who made this an issue with Jackson in the first place.
Thirteen hours into the first day of Jackson’s hearing last month, the Tennessee Republican tossed out the question: “Can you define the word ‘woman’?”
“Can I provide a definition?” Jackson said, appearing confused. “No, I can’t. I’m not a biologist.”
After some back and forth, Blackburn concluded: “The fact that you can’t give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about.”
The next day, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) laid into Jackson too, telling her: “I think you are the only Supreme Court nominee in history who has been unable to answer the question ‘What is a woman?’”
The real aim of Blackburn’s question was almost certainly to try to corner Jackson on the issue of transgender women participating in women’s sports ― part of a broader, ugly GOP attack on LGBTQ people heading into the 2022 elections. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is pushing for child abuse investigations of parents whose children seek gender-affirming medical care. Florida’s new “Don’t Say Gay” law prevents teachers from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity to students younger than fourth graders. The Human Rights Campaign, meanwhile, is tracking more than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills across the country.
In a follow-up email to HuffPost, a spokesperson for Blackburn said her definition of a woman is “Two X chromosomes.”
The spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether Blackburn considers women born with only one X chromosome to be women, or if she considers men born with two X chromosomes to be women.
In a written statement, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) offered the same definition as Blackburn: “A woman is born with two X-chromosomes.”
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary and the Britannica Dictionary define a woman as “an adult female person” and “an adult female human being,” respectively. Do senators agree with this?
“I have more of a traditional view of what a woman is,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).
What is that?
“My wife.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said a woman is simply someone who is “biologically a woman,” adding that he thinks most Americans can figure out who’s a woman and who’s a man.
“The birds and the bees stuff ― it’s been a while, but I think I remember the general gist of the differences,” Graham said. “To have a hard time answering that question is kind of odd to me.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) shouted his definition of a woman before slipping into a Senate elevator: “An adult female of the human species.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was bolder than most.
“Someone who can give birth to a child, a mother, is a woman,” he said. “Someone who has a uterus is a woman. It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.”
So if a woman has her uterus removed by a hysterectomy, is she still a woman?
“Yeah. Well, I don’t know, would they?” he asked. (Yes.)
Asked again later if he would consider a woman to still be a woman if she lost her reproductive organs to cancer, Hawley said: “I mean, a woman has a vagina, right?”
Cruz, when asked, immediately answered that a woman is “an adult female human.”
Can you believe this? In the past they would have just said a woman is a lesser being who isn’t endowed with the only important body part — a penis. But even these throwbacks know that doesn’t sound right. So they are struggling because even the biology of all this is much more complicated than they want to admit and the fluid nature of human identity even more so. The whole thing is just ugly bigotry.
Poor Mike Pence. The former Republican vice president apparently thinks he has a chance to win the GOP nomination for president even after an angry mob of Republicans stormed the U.S. Capitol with the intention of hanging him for betraying their dear leader, Donald Trump. So Pence is running around the country making speeches in front of small audiences as if he has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning a national election again when the sad fact is that he is a man without a constituency.
Republicans who loved Pence when he was Trump’s most ardent disciple consider him a traitor. Those who respect him for doing the job every vice president who came before him had done on January 6 still loathe him for all of the years he spent ostentatiously licking Trump’s boots. There might be a handful of GOP officials and operatives who look at Pence and see a sort of ghostly George W. Bush (whose vocal delivery he shamelessly apes), and the press, of course, wants to cast him as a viable Trump rival. But the truth is that Mike Pence is a walking piece of Wonderbread toast.
Notably, Pence and Trump have been holding competing public appearances for the last couple of weeks. Down in Arizona, Trump held a rally for a couple of wildly extreme GOP candidates for governor and senate, Kari Lake and Blake Masters, as well as a few kooky down ballot endorsees. He gave his usual meandering performance, delighting the large crowd with many of his greatest hits. At the microphone, Lake praised the former president for his inspiration:
“President Trump taught us how to fight and I took a few notes. That’s why I go after the fake news because he showed us how to do it. He gave us the game plan and he showed us exactly how to stand up and fight. Republicans need to fight back”
Trump made it very clear that he was going to keep fighting, telling the crowd, “I ran twice and I won twice and I did much better than the second time than the first, getting millions more votes in 2020 than in 2016 and now, we may have to do it again.”
Across town, Mike Pence was speaking at a rally of about 300 people on behalf of Kari Lake’s opponent, Karrin Taylor Robson, whom he described as the true conservative in the race as if anyone cares about that anymore. Pence’s big zinger of the night was a swipe at Lake — “Arizona Republicans don’t need a governor that supported Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton” — which he delivered like a blast of foghorn. Nobody mentioned Jan. 6 or the 2020 election.
As it happens, the two former allies also held opposing speeches just a few days later in Washington D.C. Trump returned to the scene of the crime to ostensibly give a policy address at the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-allied “think tank” and slush fund devoted to the former president and culture war propaganda, while Pence spoke at the Young America’s Foundation. The media portrayed these two speeches as a clash of visions for the Republican Party, with Trump offering his patented hellscape view of “American Carnage,” complete with his laundry list of grievances about the allegedly stolen 2020 election, while Pence supposedly offered a fresh look to a brighter future which was interpreted as a jab at his former boss. That jab was most apparently expressed as, “I don’t know that the president and I differ on issues, but we may differ on focus.” (That’s telling him…)
Politico wondered what it all meant:
That difference in focus is at the center of several big questions for Republicans in 2022 and 2024: Which vision do they want the party to follow? Which do they think is more appealing to the voters they need in order to win a majority? And even if they agree with Trump on the issues, is his focus — with its dark tone and feedback-loop quality — helpful in that pursuit?
But this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Trump’s appeal and Pence’s lack of it.
“Issues” as we previously understood them no longer exist in the Republican Party. Trump’s “dark tone and feedback-loop quality” are the issues. It’s all about grievance, anger and resentment served up with the juvenile derision and mockery that only a true demagogue can deliver. A bowl of lukewarm water like Mike Pence simply can’t serve that no matter how many dramatic pauses he takes in his speeches.
But the fact that he cannot deliver a crude joke or stick the knife in and twist it with Trumpian glee doesn’t mean that Pence isn’t running on Trumpism.
Pence’s “policy agenda” is full of culture war grievances. He released a pamphlet last spring in which he promoted “patriotic” education (meaning shallow jingoism, banning books and refusing to teach the truth about American history and the indigenous, Black and immigrant experiences.) He backs the cruel assault on transgender kids, draconian laws against abortion and all of the other far-right talking points that Trump and every other Republican on the campaign trail are running on. Pence just hasn’t weighed in on the Great Replacement Theory, yet, so perhaps that’s what defines a sunny moderate these days.
Most importantly, while he doesn’t talk about the 2020 election, Pence also hasn’t said a word against the attack on democracy that GOP state legislators and other officials are enacting all over the country. If anything, he’s enabling them by endorsing the fatuous insistence that “in-person voting” must be enforced and mail-in voting should be (safe, legal and) “rare.” There is no reason for any of that except to continue to encourage the false belief that the electoral system has been compromised on behalf of the Democrats. It is, in fact, the Big Lie and Pence is now perpetuating it just as the man who sat idly by while his rabid mob chanted “hang Mike Pence” has done.
Nonetheless, Pence is as obsequious and submissive as ever, refusing to stand up for himself even in face of what Trump did to him that awful day and never saying a harsh word about his former mentor. He’s forlornly trying to salvage a political career based entirely on his fervent devotion to the man whom the only people who would vote for him believe he betrayed. Sad isn’t the right word to describe it. It’s pathetic.
This is a widely shared meme on right wing social media:
