Month: August 2022

And it’s exactly what we all thought it was

He’s appealing to FBI Trumpers and I imagine their numbers are substantial — or at least they were before he started claiming they were all criminals who routinely planted evidence. And he’s basically confirming the suspicions that it was anti-Clinton actors within the NY FBI office, friends of Rudy Giuliani, who were threatening to leak the information about Weiner’s laptop just before the election (which Comey inexplicably thought would be worse than making that major announcement.)

And it did cost Clinton the election. Nate Silver made the case long ago:

Clinton woke up on the morning of Oct. 28 as the likely — by no means certain — next president. Trump had come off a period of five weeks in which he’d had three erratic debates and numerous women accuse him of sexual assault after the “Access Hollywood” tape became public. Clinton led by approximately 6 percentage points in national polls and by 6 to 7 points in polls of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Her leads in Florida and North Carolina were narrow, and she was only tied with Trump in Ohio and Iowa.¹ But it was a pretty good overall position.

Her standing was not quite as safe as it might have appeared from a surface analysis, however. For one thing, there were still lots of undecided voters, especially in the Midwest. Although Trump had a paltry 37 percent to 38 percent of the vote in polls of Michigan, for instance, Clinton had only 43 percent to 44 percent. That left the door open for Trump to leapfrog her if late developments caused undecideds to break toward him. Furthermore, in the event that the race tightened, Clinton’s vote was inefficiently distributed in the Electoral College, concentrated in coastal states rather than swing states. While she had only an 11 percent chance of losing the popular vote according to FiveThirtyEight’s forecast that morning, her chances of losing the Electoral College were a fair bit higher: 18 percent.

Another danger to Clinton was complacency. Several days earlier, the Times had written that she was on the verge of having an “unbreakable lead.” And there was a risk that people looking at statistical forecasts were misreading them and “rounding up” a probable Clinton win to a sure thing. (We’ll take up that topic up at more length in a future article in this series.) But Clinton had actually slipped by a percentage point or so in polls since the final debate on Oct. 19. And the news cycle had become somewhat listless; the most prevalent story that morning was about the trial in the Oregon wildlife refuge standoff. Clinton was in a danger zone: Her lead wasn’t quite large enough to be truly safe, but it was large enough to make people mistakenly think it was.

The Comey letter almost immediately sank Clinton’s polls

News of the Comey letter broke just before 1 p.m. Eastern time on Oct. 28, when Utah. Rep Jason Chaffetz tweeted about it, noting the existence of the letter and stating (incorrectly, it turned out²) that the case into Clinton’s private email server had been “reopened.” The story exploded onto the scene; Fox News was treating Chaffetz’s tweet as “breaking news” within 15 minutes, and the FBI story dominated headlines everywhere within roughly an hour. In an element of tabloid flair, it was soon reported that the emails in question were found on a computer owned by Anthony Weiner, the former congressman, as part of an investigation into whether he’d sent sexually explicit messages to teenage girls.

Few news organizations gave the story more velocity than The New York Times. On the morning of Oct. 29, Comey stories stretched across the print edition’s front page, accompanied by a photo showing Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin, Weiner’s estranged wife. Although some of these articles contained detailed reporting, the headlines focused on speculation about the implications for the horse race — “NEW EMAILS JOLT CLINTON CAMPAIGN IN RACE’S LAST DAYS.”

That Comey’s decision to issue the letter had been so unorthodox and that the contents of the letter were so ambiguous helped fuel the story. The Times’s print lead on Oct. 30 was about Clinton’s pushback against Comey, and a story it published two days later explained that Comey had broken with precedent in releasing the letter. It covered all sides of the controversy. But the controversy was an unwelcome one for Clinton, since it involved voters seeing words like “Clinton,” “email,” “FBI” and “investigation” together in headlines. Within a day of the Comey letter, Google searches for “Clinton FBI” had increased 50-fold and searches for “Clinton email” almost tenfold.

Clinton’s standing in the polls fell sharply. She’d led Trump by 5.9 percentage points in FiveThirtyEight’s popular vote projection at 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 28. A week later — after polls had time to fully reflect the letter — her lead had declined to 2.9 percentage points. That is to say, there was a shift of about 3 percentage points against Clinton. And it was an especially pernicious shift for Clinton because (at least according to the FiveThirtyEight model) Clinton was underperforming in swing states as compared to the country overall. In the average swing state,³ Clinton’s lead declined from 4.5 percentage points at the start of Oct. 28 to just 1.7 percentage points on Nov. 4. If the polls were off even slightly, Trump could be headed to the White House.

Is it possible this was all just a coincidence — that Clinton’s numbers went into decline for reasons other than Comey’s letter? I think there’s a decent case (which we’ll take up in a moment) that some of the decline in Clinton’s numbers reflected reversion to the mean and was bound to happen anyway.

But it’s not credible to claim that the Comey letter had no effect at all. It was the dominant story of the last 10 days of the campaign. According to the news aggregation site Memeorandum, which algorithmically tracks which stories are gaining the most traction in the mainstream media, the Comey letter was the lead story on six out of seven mornings from Oct. 29 to Nov. 4, pausing only for a half-day stretch when Mother Jones and Slate published stories alleging ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

It’s rare to see stories linger in headlines for more than two to three days given how quickly the news cycle moves during election campaigns. When one does, some effect on the polls is often expected. And that’s what we saw. The sharpness of the decline — with Clinton losing 3 points in a week — is consistent with a news-driven shift, rather than gradual reversion to the mean.

We also have a lot of other evidence of shifting preferences among voters in the waning days of the campaign. Exit polls showed that undecided and late-deciding voters broke toward Trump, especially in the Midwest. A panel survey conducted by FiveThirtyEight contributor Dan Hopkins and other researchers also found shifts between mid-October and the end of the campaign — an effect that would amount to a swing of about 4 percentage points against Clinton. And we know that previous email-related stories had caused trouble for Clinton in the polls. In July, when Comey said he wouldn’t recommend charges against Clinton but rebuked her handling of classified information, she lost about 2 percentage points in the polls. Periods of intense coverage of her email server had also been associated with polling declines during the Democratic primary.

So while one can debate the magnitude of the effect, there’s a reasonably clear consensus of the evidence that the Comey letter mattered — probably by enough to swing the election. This ought not be one of the more controversial facts about the 2016 campaign; the data is pretty straightforward. Why the media covered the story as it did and how to weigh the Comey letter against the other causes for Clinton’s defeat are the more complicated parts of the story.

He went on to discuss the media’s role in this which was substantial, making the astute point that it thought it was covering the first President Hillary Clinton scandal, which had them drooling with delight. (They haven’t learned as much as they should have since then, I’m afraid.)

Read the whole thing if you aren’t familiar with this analysis. And take note of this from former Attorney General Loretta Lynch:

They didn’t have to do anything. All they had to do was tickle Comey’s outsized ego and that was that.

Street violence

t appears that we are in for another week of pins and needles waiting for court filings in the case of Donald Trump’s stolen classified documents which prompted the FBI to get them to a safe place away where odd wandering MAGA fans and foreign spies can’t get to them. The affidavit for the warrant was released last week and showed that the government had tried for months to get Trump to give the documents back and he either lied saying everything had been returned or made fatuous excuses as to why the government had no claim to them.

Next week we can expect that the Department of Justice will respond to a different judge’s request on Trump’s behalf that they show why they don’t need to appoint a special master to determine if any of the documents should be shielded by executive privilege. If so, that could take months, so Trump’s usual delaying tactics may succeed once again. But, importantly, that’s the only success he’s having at the moment.

Trump and the Republicans originally thought the FBI search would be a big help to his and the party’s political fortunes so they immediately jumped upon it, screeching that the FBI was acting like the Gestapo and predicting the beginning of a civil war. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, superciliously declared “the raid on [Mar-a-Lago] is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the regime’s political opponents.!” But it’s not looking like the big winner they thought it was. CBS News polled the question last week and found that a large majority, including 20% of Republicans, believe the search was done to protect national security, not to persecute Trump.

Then this week the Sunday news shows suddenly had trouble finding Republicans who were willing to compare the FBI to the East German Stasi or the Department of Justice’s decision action to Stalin’s Great Purge.

Retiring Senator Roy Blunt, appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” reluctantly admitted that “he should have turned the documents over and apparently had turned a number of documents over” before petulantly whining about the government waiting until it was close to the election before seizing them. (The government, from nearly all accounts, was trying to give the former president a way out of the mess and he refused to take it.) And more directly to Blunt’s complaint, Trump is just a disgruntled former employee at this point sitting on a bunch of highly sensitive national security documents at his resort hotel, he’s not on any ballot in November. Both New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, both widely touted as moderate Republicans, also hemmed and hawed that maybe the FBI did the right thing but then maybe they didn’t and that we need transparency but that it’s difficult since this is a matter of national security. Their discomfort was palpable.

Nobody knows just how bad this thing will turn out to be. Since that first day when the entire GOP participated in their mass primal scream, we’ve learned that Trump had stashed at least 700 documents, some of them marked with the most top secret designations that exist. That’s very difficult for the party that’s been chanting “lock her up” for the past five years to defend.

Trump, meanwhile, has been throwing everything at the wall on this one and none of it seems to be sticking. The political benefits aren’t materializing while the legal threat he faces is so very real. So he’s now deploying his most dangerous strategy, one he hinted at right after the search when he sent a cryptic message to Attorney General Merrick Garland:

President Trump wants the attorney general to know that he has been hearing from people all over the country about the raid. If there was one word to describe their mood, it is ‘angry,’ The heat is building up. The pressure is building up. Whatever I can do to take the heat down, to bring the pressure down, just let us know.”

According to the New York Times, this strange message had the senior leadership at the FBI “befuddled.” I actually doubt that. These are people who prosecute mobsters all the time and they know a veiled threat when they see it. And it’s certainly not the first time they’ve encountered it with Trump. They are in the midst of the largest investigation in history with the January 6 insurrection cases which are a direct result of his incitement. He was letting the Attorney General know that he might have to unleash his mob again if they pursue this case and they know it.

The man is a criminal and he’s blatantly asserting that he is immune from the laws that govern the rest of us.

This isn’t the first time he’s made that threat, either, and in the past he was more explicit. At a rally in Texas last January he ranted about the various legal threats he is facing, telling the cheering throng:

“If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or corrupt we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had.”

Remember, he called Jan. 6 a “protest” too. And at that same rally, he promised to pardon all the insurrectionists.

After Trump and the Republicans went on their tirade about the Mar-a-Lago search there were numerous threats against FBI agents, with one actual assault resulting in a devoted MAGA follower being killed by police. The extremists are exercised and Trump continues to egg them on. Posting on his Truth Social site he degrades and defames the FBI and the Department of Justice in the lurid terms he usually reserves for Democrats and the media. Holding nothing back, he’s daily making a case for an armed uprising. For instance:

“The law enforcement of our Country has become that of a Third World Nation, and I do not believe the people will stand for it ― between Fraudulent Elections, Open Borders, Inflation, giving our Military to the Enemy, and so much more ― how much are we all expected to take?”

He posted this to his social media site on Sunday:

He's essentially threatening the country with violence if the laws are applied to him. pic.twitter.com/rmQ7Gp883w

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 28, 2022

FBI Director Christopher Wray called the threats “dangerous and deplorable.” And while I do think that talk of outright civil war is hyperbolic, threats of street violence and domestic terrorism are all too real.

Unfortunately, this strategy seems to be catching on with his toadies and minions in the party:

Trump just shared this clip on Truth Social… https://t.co/8Qr54S9AbT

— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) August 29, 2022

This is, of course, the source of Trump’s power and it is powerful. There is no doubt that the DOJ and law enforcement as well as the courts are aware that he has a rabid following that has demonstrated its willingness to commit violence on his behalf. But at some point, they will have no choice but to act if they want to preserve what’s left of the government’s integrity. The man is a criminal and he’s blatantly asserting that he is immune from the laws that govern the rest of us.

The fact that Trump is leveraging this particular power to incite violence around these legal cases is a sign of weakness. He cannot persuade anyone who isn’t already persuaded and party officials are with him only out of fear or as long as he is useful to them. Calling for riots in the streets is a nuclear option that may or may not detonate the way he thinks it will. But it has the potential to blow the country apart either way. 

Salon

#ETTD edition

A sidekick without a protagonist is what?

There’s lots of pushback on Sen. Lindsey “count me out” Graham’s promising riots in the streets if TFG Donald Trump faces prosecution for mishandling federal dcouments. Under the friggin’ Espionage Act, yet. What does he think Jan. 6 was?

2/ Is threatening violence if things don't go their way the new normal for the GOP? Would it work for BLM or groups protesting anti-abortion prosecutions too? Can the GOP also do this if they don't like future election outcomes?

These are no longer just theoretical questions.

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) August 29, 2022

“I spent more than 20 years in the military, and from Beirut to Libya to Syria to Iran to Iraq, this guy’s rhetoric sounds like every terrorist leader we were sent to hunt down,” tweets Jim Wright (a.k.a. Stonekettle) this morning. “Threatening violence over your political and religious beliefs is the very definition of terrorism.”

It is also notable that people whose conservative politics were heretofore anathema to the left are, for now, allies in defense of the institutions of this democratic Republic. That ought to give Trumpists pause. It won’t.

1/ The slow drumbeat of Authoritarian Classic Hits is increasing in tempo as the DC elites and the media fall into the trap.

Variations of "Well, if Trump is indicted and prosecuted we'll have blood in the streets" is an increasingly common trope.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) August 29, 2022

Wilson continues:

2/ This accepts the predicates of the authoritarian side; the Dear Leader is above justice.

It acknowledges the advantage of a party/movement willing and proven to use political violence to achieve electoral ends.

This is poison for the Republic and for democracy.

3/ It accepts the false assertion than any arm of government that seeks to hold Trump not to political but *legal* account is inherently corrupt, political, and malevolent. The DOJ isn’t being “tested”…it’s doing its job. America, however, is being tested.

4/ Trump’s history of escaping justice is notable and depressing. It’s one of his superpowers, and gives his base a sense of invulnerability and gives Republican leaders a case of swooning vapors at the thought of siding with law-and-order.

5/ The media faces a particularly tempting variation of this; to turn the coverage into the legal version of he-said she-said horserace coverage. This isn’t just back-and-forth both-sides-have-a-point, folks. Trump’s effect on American political…

6/ …is cancerous, hideous, and pervasive, but no more so than his corrupt attempts to suborn the law to protect himself. The danger of his people rising up if he’s indicted, prosecuted, and imprisoned is far, far less consequential than walking away from justice.

7/ If they do rise up to violence, we face a choice; collapse into the long dark or do the hard, correct things to save America from a (not semi) fascist movement. The New Civil War is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet. (h/t@greatdismal)

Finis

“The danger of his people rising up if [Trump is] indicted, prosecuted, and imprisoned is far, far less consequential than walking away from justice.” I must agree.

Bill Kristol cites Lincoln’s 1838 Lyceum speech on the threat to our political institutions posed by “the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country,” as well as what today looks like Trumpist mobocracy:

By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained.–Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed–I mean the attachment of the People. Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last. By such things, the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it; and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak, to make their friendship effectual. At such a time and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric, which for the last half century, has been the fondest hope, of the lovers of freedom, throughout the world.

Our alleged beacon of freedom is at risk today from the very people who dip themselves in it like soft-serve vanilla decorated with sprinkles. The press still treats them seriously.

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Not so sleepy now, is he?

Look, Joe Biden is a decent man, a thoroughly experienced Washington insider, and a man with heart that he’s not afraid to show in public. What his party has needed in the Executive Mansion, though, is someone willing to punch back against the anti-democracy, authoritarian cult that was once America’s conservative party. Last week, Biden came out of his corner swinging. Democrats cheered.

We reviewed Sunday some of what Biden said last week about “semi-fascists” threatening to tear down the republic.

Jennifer Rubin brings more receipts (Washington Post):

No one should be shocked by the president calling the movement — one that tried to overthrow a democratic election, continues to threaten violence, spews the racist Great Replacement theory, operates in a universe of delusion and disinformation and seeks to redefine America as a White Christian nation — semi-fascist. (Pro-fascist or just fascist would have worked as well.)

A party that celebrates Hungary’s illiberal Viktor Orban, embraces Russian propaganda and grovels before Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan cannot complain when it is held accountable for its right-wing nationalism and authoritarian hero-worship.

Biden spent most of his first year and a half as president trying to advance a sweeping legislative agenda over obstructionists from his own party. With his focus there and his poll numbers sinking, his party seemed almost leaderless and his base dispirited.

After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning half a century of abortion rights, and after a remarkable series of legislative achievements on drug prices, gun safety and climate change, Biden fulfilled (somewhat) a campaign promise to forgive student debt. Now he has turned his attention to helping his party hold its ground against right-wing nationalists in the 2022 midterm elections. And not a moment too soon.

“When he gets his dander up, he can be an effective campaigner,” as Rubin sees it. Trumanesque even.

No more talk that “Biden was elected to lower the temperature.” No more blather that “voters want to stop the partisan fighting.” After ceding rhetorical ground to an unhinged opponent never interested in “unity,” Biden has decided to tell the truth — and let the GOP think it’s hell.

Democrats and weak-kneed pundits need not fret about Biden free-ranging on the campaign trail. As vice president and then as presidential candidate in 2020, he was at his best when fighting against special interests and their right-wing pets. Republicans have to date paid little price for opposing a minimum tax on big corporations that pay nothing, opposing middle-class relief from high health-care and energy costs and, most of all, opposing widely held views on contraception, a woman’s right to choose, free speech and LGBTQ equality.

Biden’s message now is simple: Republicans’ free ride is over. Let’s call them out for what they are. That Joe Biden is the one who could recapture the hearts of Democrats as he considers a second term. Certainly, helping Democrats pull off an expectations-defying midterm election could help as well.

Democrats’ hopes are buoyed not just by Biden’s rebound but by Republicans high on their own supply, explains Charles Blow (New York Times):

Some of what is helping Biden is not his success but that of Republicans. The overturning of Roe v. Wade was monumental and is still stuck in voters’ minds. Many feel they are stuck in a nightmare and Democrats hold the only possibility of salvation.

This decision, this victory by the forced-birth zealots, wiped out the progress Republicans were making by pushing the anti-wokeness canard — this idea that they had to fight back against racial indoctrination, against people who would redefine what a woman is and against health regulation.

The War Against Woke now looks silly in light of the escalated War Against Women.

Also, Trump has resurfaced as a foil.

Just in time, Biden has resurfaced as the Democrats’ standard bearer.

Republicans’ failing War Against Women

Silliness has not been a deal-breaker for conservative voters for decades. Republicans’ obsession with not showing weakness leads them almost invariably not to back down when wrong but to double down. That reflex is itself a weakness. They cannot shut up when they are losing. Or refrain from showing everyone just how ignorant they are when it comes to women’s anatomy.

They might have learned from Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, but nah.

Dahlia Lithwick shakes her head at Republican men’s gabbiness about things they clearly don’t know (Slate):

Long after the time had passed for male GOP officials to stop, to just stop, pretending they know or understand anything about female anatomy, reproductive organs, medical emergencies and basic preventative health care, they have continued to talk. They have continued to talk and talk and talk even when the massive blowback after the Dobbs decision proved it was an error; Kansas proved it was an error; and after the surprise election of Pat Ryan in a New York special election proved it was an error. Every time a Republican man opens his mouth to talk about women’s bodies, ten new female voters get their wings. Yet somehow, they cannot seem to stop themselves!

Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, that could come back to bite them this November, Lithwick observes:

One analysis of the Kansas’ voter registration list showed that in the week after Dobbs, more than 70 percent of newly registered voters in that state were women. Those numbers, according to an Upshot analysis of 10 states with available voter registration data, show consistently higher registration for women after the Dobbs leak in May. As Jennifer Rubin recently noted, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that, “62 percent of women registering since Dobbs registered as Democrats, 15 percent as Republicans and that 54 percent were younger than 25.” And a Pew Research Center poll indicates that “a majority of registered voters (56 percent) say the issue of abortion will be very important in their midterm vote, up from 43 percent in March.” Tom Bonier, CEO Of TargetSmart recently posted on Twitter: “We are seeing early signs of what could lead to a huge increase in women voting in November. …This surge is young and female.” Both Mitch McConnell and RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel are panicking about the GOP’s odds in Congress, directly connected to fundraising around abortion.

“Nobody should be surprised,” writes Lithwick, “that women are friggin’ furious right now.” And the more Republicans open their mouths to reveal their underlying cruelty, the more women they’ll not just alienate but motivate to vote this fall. “It says so much about where we are just now that this simple connection must be explained as if it were string theory.”

Suddenly threats to democracy stand atop voters’ concerns at a time Republicans keep signaling that democracy and women’s freedoms are of no concern to the GOP.

When you are repeatedly being told by those in power that your preferences don’t matter and when those in power believe that saying the quiet parts out loud is electorally costless, they aren’t just saying that women don’t matter. They’re saying democracy doesn’t matter either. But it turns out they don’t get to decide that. You do

Make them pay.

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Well, well, well:

New CBS poll:

While Republicans continue to lead with people who prioritize the economy, at least three things are tempering their overall advantage:

-Abortion rights: it’s still on voters’ minds, buttressing Democratic support and helping them with women in swing districts. 

-Gas prices: most report prices in their area coming down, and with them, views of Biden’s handling the economy are up a bit – part of a slight rebound we see among the Democratic base.

The extent to which this election is about anything other than a still-shaky economy, such as:

-Donald Trump — while midterm elections are often referenda on the sitting president, this one is about the former, too. For a majority of voters he’s a factor, either to support or oppose him. Democrats are winning voters whose vote is based “a lot” on how they feel about Trump.

-Republican nominees: both women and independents (key voting groups) are more likely to say it’s Republicans who’ve been nominating candidates they’d call extreme – more so than Democrats’ nominees.

What about Mar-a-Lago and the documents search?

File it under “About Donald Trump.” The FBI search hasn’t directly changed many votes because of the sharp partisan splits over it, but then, it could be part of a larger issue holding back Republicans, as Donald Trump stays on voters’ minds.

-Trump is a big positive for his own partisans, but they were voting Republican anyway. Most rank-and-file Republicans want party leaders to stand with Trump here and not criticize him. But that sets up a challenge for the GOP because…

-Trump is net-negative for independents. Independents would prefer Republicans criticize Trump to support him on Mar-a-Lago. Half of independent voters name Trump as a factor in their vote, and by four to one, they’re voting to oppose him (far worse than Biden’s support-oppose ratio).

-Most independents, like most Democrats, see the Mar-a-Lago search as an attempt to protect national security. They differ from Republicans, who see a political attack on Trump.

Abortion

Why it’s emerged as a big factor:

-There’s a widespread perception among women that if Republicans gain power, they’ll make restricting abortion a priority (65%), even more so than inflation (56%).

-More Democrats (77%) say abortion is “very important” than describe any other issue that way — it’s neck-and-neck with gun policy and ahead of the economy and inflation. 

-By more than two to one, likely voters say their vote for Congress will be to support abortion rights rather than to oppose them. 

-Motivation around the issue is one-sided: Republicans tend to say their vote isn’t about abortion, but most Democrats say the overturning of Roe boosted their support for their party’s candidates.

-It might help Democratic candidates with people on the fence: third-party and undecided voters for whom the overturning of Roe is a factor say it makes them want to support Democrats over Republicans by four to one.

Related: Watch key group of college-degree women

In the last two elections, White women with college degrees were critical to Democrats’ winning coalition, voting for them by double-digit margins. And then this year amid economic pessimism, Democrats slipped with this group.

Today we see Democrats rebounding: their lead with White college-degree-holding women has increased by seven points since July and is currently 13 points. It’s not back to 2018 levels, but helps account for some of the shift in seats because these women are critical in key swing districts.

More of those who were undecided have moved toward the Democrats, for now. The issue of abortion is a motivator — most say their vote this year will be to support abortion rights.

And then there’s this:

The views on the economy are more positive and it’s largely because Democratic voters are approving of Dark Brandon. His approval is up even on the economy although it’s still pretty anemic.

This is important:

Look at young people, whom the Democrats count on: the cancellation of some student loan debt is particularly popular among voters under age 30. And the president’s overall approval rating has moved into positive territory among them now, up from last month.

This poll estimates the Republicans will still win the House but very narrowly. That means it’s not out of the question that the Dems could hold it. Whether they will all depends on turnout. As always.

It’s just too much

https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1563957242264752128

It started at the RNC:

Nearing the end of his speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July, Chris Christie paused.

It wasn’t just that the crowd was chanting — that, he expected. The New Jersey governor was in the middle of an attack on Hillary Clinton, listing what he saw as her many missteps as secretary of state. After each perceived misstep, he asked the crowd, “Is she guilty or not guilty?”

“Guilty!” the crowd thundered back again and again.

But this time, it sounded different. Christie looked down and to his left, at the enormous California delegation, momentarily distracted. Or perhaps it was Pennsylvania, Ohio or Maryland delegates. They were chanting.

His eyes narrowed for a moment, seeking out the disruption. But then a smile slowly took over his face. He nodded as he figured out what they were saying. The chant swelled to a roar, and delegates began standing up from their seats. They waved their red, white and blue “Trump” signs. They shook their fists. They screamed and hollered and made the building shake, in that now-familiar three-beat chant:

“Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!”

It’s hard to say definitively if that was the first time the most popular chant of Donald Trump’s campaign was uttered, but by the next evening, it was a go-to refrain, punctuating every mention of Clinton’s name.

It fit right in with Trump’s core pitch to voters: that Clinton couldn’t and shouldn’t be trusted. His fans broke out in the chant at any mention of the Clinton Foundation, the email server or any other of his attacks on her.

Of course, that wasn’t his only position. At times, Trump’s rhetoric shifted, and he insisted that a better path would be beating her on Nov. 8. “Let’s just beat her in November,” he told supporters at a rally on July 29 in Colorado Springs just after the Democratic convention — a line he repeated at various campaign rallies over the course of the fall.

But for the most part, he took a hard line — including when speaking with Clinton herself. “And I’ll tell you what. I didn’t think I’d say this, but I’m going to say it, and I hate to say it. But if I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception,” he said at the Oct. 9 presidential debate. “There has never been anything like it, and we’re going to have a special prosecutor.”

In Florida on Oct. 12, he told the crowd that “this corruption and collusion is just one more reason why I will ask my attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor,” and later adding, “She has to go to jail.”

He actually said “she has to go to jail” a lot:

Now it may be coming back to haunt him. Chris Hayes had a good segment on this. It continues to incense me that after all he and his sycophantic cult did with the “lock her up” and “she has to go to jail” chants, he had the brass to steal hundreds of classified documents and store them in his hotel storage room. It’s unbelievable.

They’re just so mad

I happened to look at the Donald Trump website today and came across this, which is apparently how they define MAGA:

Over the past four years, my administration delivered for Americans of all backgrounds like never before. Save America is about building on those accomplishments, supporting the brave conservatives who will define the future of the America First Movement, the future of our party, and the future of our beloved country.  Save America is also about ensuring that we always keep America First, in our foreign and domestic policy.  We take pride in our country, we teach the truth about our history, we celebrate our rich heritage and national traditions, and of course, we respect our great American Flag.

We are committed to defending innocent life and to upholding the Judeo-Christian values of our founding.

We believe in the promise of the Declaration of Independence, that we are all made EQUAL by our Creator, and that must all be TREATED equal under the law.

We know that our rights do not come from government, they come from God, and no earthly force can ever take those rights away. That includes the right to religious liberty and the right to Keep and Bear Arms.

We believe in rebuilding our previously depleted military and ending the endless wars our failed politicians of the past got us into for decades.

We embrace free thought, we welcome robust debate, and we are not afraid to stand up to the oppressive dictates of political correctness.

We know that the rule of law is the ultimate safeguard of our freedoms, and we affirm that the Constitution means exactly what it says AS WRITTEN.

We support fair trade, low taxes, and fewer job-killing regulations, and we know that America must always have the most powerful military on the face of the Earth.

We believe in Law and Order, and we believe that the men and women of law enforcement are HEROES who deserve our absolute support.

We believe in FREE SPEECH and Fair Elections.  We must ensure fair, honest, transparent, and secure elections going forward – where every LEGAL VOTE counts.

This random capitalization seems to be a common feature in all of TrumpWorld.

It’s tempting to go through it line by line and refute every sentiment in light of what he actually does but I don’t think it’s necessary. Under the shallow boilerplate, the whining, the grievance, the arrogance, the belligerence shines through. That’s what they love about him.

It was a chaotic as his mind

This story in the Washington Post is an interesting look at this latest scandal from the National Archives’ point of view. It’s so clear that Trump is hiding something. It makes absolutely no sense for him to have behaved this way if he wasn’t.

This anecdote really illustrates exactly how incompetent Trump was as president. This is a picture of a man totally over his head, basically pretending to know what he’s doing but really just trying to get through the day:

Trump’s disdain and disregard for the presidential record-keeping system he was legally bound to adhere to is well-documented. And while advisers repeatedly warned him about needing to follow the Presidential Records Act early in his presidency, his chaotic handling of the documents prevailed.

NARA’s motto, Littera Scripta Manet, translates from Latin to “the written word remains.” But in Trump’s White House, the written word was often torn, destroyed, misplaced or hoarded.

“Any documents that made it to the White House residence were these boxes Trump carried around with him,” explained Stephanie Grisham, a former senior White House staffer. “Usually the body man would have brought them upstairs for Trump or someone from the outer-Oval at the end of the day. They would get handed off to the residence and just disappear.”

Boxes of documents even came with Trump on foreign travel, following him to hotel rooms around the world — including countries considered foreign adversaries of the United States.

“There was no rhyme or reason — it was classified documents on top of newspapers on top of papers people printed out of things they wanted him to read. The boxes were never organized,” Grisham said. “He’d want to get work done on long trips so he’d just rummage through the boxes. That was our filing system.”

That’s just Trump acting like he’s on top of things when he actually had no clue how to do his job. Once things get out of control the only thing you can do is try to keep others from knowing how out of control it is.

It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Trump doesn’t know exactly what he’s got — or doesn’t understand what he’s got — but he knows there’s stuff in there that’s incriminating, whether against others or himself. He couldn’t trust anyone else to go through the stuff so he just wanted to keep it all under wraps, assuming that some day he would go through them and use them for whatever purpose he once thought would be important.

Republicans just can’t stop talking about cutting Social Security

For all of their newfound “populism” and alleged love of the (white) working class, they always give themselves away

When Blake Masters was running for the Republican nomination for Senate in Arizona, he floated what he called a “fresh and innovative” idea.

“Maybe we should privatize Social Security. Right? Private retirement accounts, get the government out of it,” he said at a June forum with the fiscal conservative group FreedomWorks.

Masters subsequently backtracked. “I do not want to privatize Social Security,” he told the Arizona Republic after he won the primary. “I think, in context, I was talking about something very different. We can’t change the system. We can’t pull the rug out from seniors.”

Democrats saw an opening in the key Arizona race. The party’s Senate campaign arm rolled out an ominous TV ad highlighting the footage, accusing Masters of seeking to “cut our Social Security and privatize it” to finance tax breaks for the wealthy, while “gambling our life savings on the stock market.”

Asked to clarify his position, Katie Miller, Masters campaign spokesperson, told NBC News: “Blake’s position has always been clear. All he wants to do is incentivize future generations to save through private accounts.” She described his stance as “Social Security-and.”

Ahead of the 2022 election, Masters is one of many Republicans to touch what has been called the “third rail” of American politics — a costly but popular pillar of the safety net that gives monthly cash benefits to those 62 and older, who vote in big numbers. In major Senate and House races across the country, GOP candidates have called for cutting long-term Social Security spending to tackle inflation and resolve the program’s finances. Democrats are trying to make them pay a political price, arguing that the same Republicans created a budget hole by cutting taxes for top earners.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, said at a recent campaign stop that Social Security “was set up improperly” and that it would have been better to invest the money in the stock market. Earlier, Johnson told a radio show that Social Security and Medicare should be axed as “mandatory” programs and be subject to “discretionary” spending, meaning Congress would have to renew them yearly or they’d end.

[…]

President Joe Biden took a swing at Johnson on Saturday, saying on Twitter that the senator “wants Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every year.”

Never, ever, lose sight of who these people really are and what they really believe despite their so-called “populism.” They want to end Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all education funding, and more. Remember, the head of the Senate Campaign Committee Sen. Rick Scott put out an agenda that said Social Security and Medicare — all discretionary spending — re-approved by congress every 5 years. If they can get enough Blake Masters’ in with Ron DeSantis at the helm they can get that done.

But a rebellion brews against Trump 2.0

I’m not usually one to cheer on corporate America throwing its weight around but in this case, I’m applauding.

CNN’s Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Florida companies fighting back against the Yale educated lawyer pretending to be a populist. (Those types are usually fascists pretending to be populists.)

“Florida is fighting back,” tweeted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Aug. 22. “We stand for the values of places like Destin, Dunedin and Deland – not Davos.”

Who is the enemy DeSantis is combatting? “Woke CEOs” and any “corporate power” that aims to impose “an ideological agenda on the American people” by championing values of “diversity, inclusion, and equity” in investment considerations and workplace policies.

Going after corporate America might seem a surprising move for a Yale-educated lawyer who will likely run for president in 2024 and is backed by more than 40 billionaire donors. But having traction as a Republican candidate in many cases means posing as a defender of freedoms threatened by political correctness and the machinations of “corporate cartel elites.” DeSantis apparently is fine with harming Florida’s reputation as a business-friendly state, if that’s what it takes to make his mark and impose his political will.

Yet businesses are pushing back. DeSantis has faced a “summer of litigation” that has complicated his efforts to mandate what businesses can and cannot say and do with their own employees. Florida is now a test case for the response of American business to government interference in the private sector.

His contrarian crusade in April to strip the job-creating giant Disney of its special self-governance status, regardless of the potential costs to Florida taxpayers, is one example. (DeSantis has insisted that taxpayers won’t shoulder any of the Disney World district’s debt.) The company became a target for speaking out against what critics call his “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which bans K-3 classroom discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation and allows parents to potentially sue school districts that engage these topics. The governor’s actions generated multiple recent lawsuits, which DeSantis and his state agencies have filed motions to dismiss.

And earlier this month, a Florida judge blocked parts of the Stop WOKE Act, which restricts discussions of race and racial discrimination in the education and business sectors.

DeSantis is by no means alone in this quest to discipline the private sector. Punishing corporations and organizations that take stands against Republican illiberal measures is now part of the GOP playbook, as Delta Airlines discovered, when it nearly lost a jet fuel tax break worth $35 million for expressing opposition to a new and highly restrictive Georgia voting law.

Yet DeSantis has arguably been the most activist governor, attempting to bully sports teams, state retirement fund managers that use environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in choosing assets, and even the Special Olympics if their actions express a commitment to values and platforms he disagrees with — such as gun control, vaccine mandates or climate change.

That’s why businesses are striking back. A lawsuit brought by wedding registry Honeyfund.com and the diversity consultancies Collective Concepts and Whitespace Consulting argued that Florida’s “Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act” (the Stop WOKE Act), which challenges the implementation of diversity training programs and exposes corporations that offer them to legal risks, is unconstitutional in its curtailing of free speech.

A Florida judge agreed, which is why he blocked the Stop WOKE Act. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker struck the law down and refused to issue a stay to keep it in effect during any appeals by the state.

“If Florida truly believes we live in a post-racial society then let it make its case,” Walker wrote. “But it cannot win the argument by muzzling its opponents.”

Free speech concerns also led to the defeat of much of a DeSantis measure to fine technology companies if they deplatform political candidates. While the governor leaned hard into the populist rhetoric, calling Twitter and other corporations “elites” and “Big Tech censors” pushing “the dominant Silicon Valley ideology.” Circuit Judge Kevin Newsom, a Trump appointee, was having none of it.

“Put simply, with minor exceptions, the government can’t tell a private person or entity what to say or how to say it,” Newsom ruled, finding that social media companies are “private actors” protected by the First Amendment.

DeSantis’ actions against ESG investing suggest that Florida businesses are perhaps pawns in his ambitious plans to run for president. On Aug. 23, he passed a resolution that eliminates ESG considerations from Florida state pension fund investments.

“[It] will direct Florida’s fund managers to make sound investments on returns not woke ideology. Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) is dead on arrival in Florida,” the governor announced.

This strongman rhetoric hides the fact that the whole declaration was a performance. As Kent Perez, spokesman for the State Board of Administration that directs the pension fund remarked, Florida’s fund was not currently investing with ESG factors in mind. “We do not invest to make social statements,” Perez said.

Others appointed by Republicans are equally baffled.

“Sadly, [the law] moves us one step closer to authoritarian government,” says Marcos Daniel Jiménez, who served as a US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida during the George W. Bush administration. “Targeting the speech of private employers based on the beliefs and preferences of current lawmakers” places “American liberty” and “our system of free enterprise” in jeopardy, Jiménez concludes.

But that’s okay with DeSantis, whose message that Florida is a “free state” with respect to the federal government’s “authoritarian, arbitrary, and seemingly never-ending mandates and restrictions” covers up his own desire to police speech and behavior.

As DeSantis prepares to run for president as a strongman-style leader, he will undoubtedly escalate his attempts to domesticate the private sector. It’ll be up to businesses in Florida to lead the way in protecting their rights against autocratic overreach.

Now it’s true that a big part of fascism has traditionally been defined as a cooperation between Big Business and authoritarian government for their mutual benefit. That may be how that goes again if DeSantis or someone like him wins a national election. At the moment, with free speech still intact, business sees this stuff as a threat to their profits and a problem for them in a tight job market so they’re on the same team. Welcome to the Resistance, corporate America. (For now….)