Glasser pushed back on the narrative that Trump is charming in a one-on-one setting:
“This man is not charming. He is a self-absorbed, rambling, narcissistic, old man who doesn’t care what your questions are.”
This does not surprise me, only masochists love him. Normal, psychologically healthy people do not.
Call me a Marxist, I guess…
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake analyzes the reason why Republicans aren’t doing better in what should be a good year for them. Basically, it’s because their candidates are such jerks. Yes, I know we all know that. Steve M. adds important context to that observation. He quotes this part of the WaPo article:
… these popularity gaps are often bigger than the margins in the actual head-to-head matchups. And there’s one main reason for that: partisanship.
As The Post’s Philip Bump recently wrote, the CBS/YouGov poll showed Fetterman led Oz on several key issues when it comes to voters’ decisions, often by double digits. Yet Fetterman led by just five points on the ballot test. That’s because party often wins out on voters’ decisions.
Even more telling: The same pollster showed that, in both Pennsylvania and [the Senate race in] Georgia, a majority of people supporting the Democrat said they were doing so primarily because they liked their candidate. But 8 in 10 supporters of the Republican said their vote was primarily about supporting their party or voting against the other candidate.
… what these polls suggest is that if Republicans can win in these states — and by extension win the Senate — it’ll be in large part because of a favorable environment and the ever-present pull of partisanship.
Steve adds:
If “partisanship,” with no party label attached, is the reason unlikable Republicans are competitive in races against more likable Democrats, then where are the examples of the opposite phenomenon? Where are voters embracing Democratic jerks rather than nice, likable Republicans in competitive races?
Maybe there just aren’t any nice, likable Republicans. It certainly seems as if Republicans try harder to be nasty and unlikable. Maybe Republicans in this year’s most competitive races are doing better than their likability scores because some voters are choosing them for their unlikability. (That would appear to explain the good polling numbers for Ron DeSantis, the least likable person on the planet.)
Republican and right-leaning swing voters see an obnoxious Republican and think: He may be a jerk, but he’s our jerk. Democrats don’t seem to do that. (Maybe they did in response to Anthony Weiner and Alan Grayson, but they’re both out of politics now.)
But Republicans also seem to have much more party loyalty than Democrats. It’s not hard to see why: Their favorite media sources have engaged in pure cheerleading for their party (and relentless demonization of the other party) for decades. The rest of the media is described as “liberal,” but it’s always ready to shiv a Democrat. (Was there a single positive news story published about Joe Biden between the fall of Afghanistan and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act?) The entire political world hits the fainitng couch when a prominent Democrat issues a blanket condemnation of Republicans, while Republican politicians call Democrats treasonous Marxist America-haters every day.
So it’s not surprising that Republican jerks can be competitive. They’re Republicans. There’s simply more Republican partisanship than Democratic partisanship.
That is true. But I wonder if it’s changing a little bit. I know there are plenty of Independents and progressives who don’t like the Democrats. That’s been true for a long time. But we are in a new world where holding on to institutional power — however imperfect it might be — is one of the only lines of defense against these authoritarians.
I mean, did you ever think you’d see this?
The Republicans have a lead. But it keeps shrinking.
While they’re still in a very good position to capture a House majority, that majority looks narrower today than it ever has, having ticked down for the second straight month to 223 seats in our model estimate. Republicans were at 226 in August and 230 in July.
Voters are engaged because they think the stakes are so high — for many, bigger than just affecting their pocketbooks.
Two-thirds of voters feel their rights and freedoms are very much at stake in this election — more so even than say their financial well being is.
And each side feels if the opposition gained control of Congress, people like them would have fewer rights and freedoms than they do now.
Voters believe by two to one that a Republican Congress would lead to women getting fewer rights and freedoms than they have now, rather than more rights.
Voters feel that on balance, men and people of faith are more apt to gain rights rather than lose them if Republicans win — but many also feel things would stay the same.
How the issue constituencies define this race — and why things have shifted a little
Democrats’ lead on the abortion issue is a little bigger now, while Republicans haven’t grown their support among voters prioritizing the economy since last month.
Republicans have the same lead they did in August among voters who say the economy and inflation are “very important” to their vote.
Democrats now have a slightly larger lead among those saying abortion is very important than they did in August.
Why? One possible reason: people who say abortion is very important to their vote tend to think Democrats are talking about the issue — more so than other topics. That may be satisfying their need to hear about it.
People who think the economy is very important think the Republicans are talking about immigration and President Biden more than about their economic policies.
It’s not that those topics are unimportant. It’s just not necessarily matching voters’ priorities. So there’s perhaps a relatively unmet need there. (And voters who prioritize the economy say Democrats are talking about economics even less.)
And that’s why the campaign right now is centered around defining what the contest is about
If Democrats want this contest to be about abortion, we can clearly see why:
The idea of a national abortion ban is very unpopular: 70% of voters oppose it.
Voters overwhelmingly reject the idea of the state requiring a woman to give birth if she were to become pregnant through a case of rape or incest, instead saying that decision should be left up to the woman.
Abortion is a make-or-break issue for most women voters. Seven in 10 women say a candidate must agree with them on that to get their vote. That’s higher than other issues tested. This is especially the case for women who want abortion to be legal. A larger percentage of them rank the issue as very important than either the economy or inflation.
Abortion is now the top issue for Democratic women.
By a substantial margin, voters say the overturning of Roe makes them more likely to back a Democratic candidate than a Republican one.
If Republicans want to make immigration a central issue, that’s important at least for their base. In a turnout election, that matters.
The Republican base overwhelmingly likes that GOP governors are sending migrants to Democratic areas of the country — nearly nine in 10 approve. Views on this are split on party lines overall.
The migrant transfers may have increased the salience of the immigration issue a little for each party’s base, and a bit for independents. It’s up with both groups ranking it “very important.”
Most Republicans say they approve of transferring migrants because it forces other states to deal with the issue and calls attention to the problem, though fewer than half say it is good for the migrants.
Republicans want crime to be a central issue — and they have a distinct edge on that.
Republican policies are seen by more voters as able to keep them safe. And Republicans are winning voters who say crime is very important, by a wide margin.
The big picture: the threats to democracy
And then — the number who feel democracy is threatened is still high.
The 2022 election may not end this, after a year in which election deniers have already won nominations for offices.
One third of Republicans — and fully half of MAGA Republicans — think the Republicans should plan to challenge states and districts the Democrats win in 2022, and not accept the results.
Only 17% of Democrats feel Democrats should similarly challenge if the GOP wins.
The Trump factor is still there
Former President Donald Trump is a net negative with the rest of the electorate overall. For that matter, Mr. Biden is too.
More voters are voting to oppose Trump than support him, on balance.
But two-thirds of Republicans say it’s at least somewhat important for the party to be loyal to Trump.
Trump motivates turnout for Republicans: those who think loyalty to him is “very important” are more enthusiastic and more likely to say they’ll vote than those who place less importance on loyalty.
That makes it harder for Republican candidates to distance themselves even if they wanted to.
What can change
Here’s a reason the Democrats still trail:
Despite enthusiasm growing, Democrats are still less likely than Republicans to say they’ll definitely vote. They haven’t closed that gap. (A big part of that is young people being less likely to turn out.)
Once we get beyond those most concerned with abortion, the Democrats still have work to do making this midterm electorate look like midterms that they’ve won.
Last month we found people becoming a little less negative about the economy. But there’s been no change since then. And a majority still expects things to slow or head into recession. One key factor could be the direction that sentiment heads from here.
And there’s Mr. Biden. A sitting president is usually a factor in any midterm. Mr. Biden’s approval rating ticked up last month but has not changed since. As with the economy, movement from here could potentially change things.
Finally, each party thinks they’re hearing a lot of campaign talk about the other side, more than talk about issues.
Plenty of partisans continue to see the other side as enemies, threats to their way of life — not just political opponents. It’s the case for over half of Republicans, with MAGA voters especially seeing things this way, and for almost half of Democrats.
Those voters are far more likely to see rights and freedoms at stake.
But they’re also more likely to vote.
So, in an election that will turn on turnout, we might expect to hear a lot of negative partisanship — because that’s what a lot of these voters want, a reflection, perhaps, of the state of our politics today.
I’m sorry that negative partisanship is the defining state of our politics, but it is. The right has brainwashed their side with lies and propaganda and the left is struggling to oppose those lies and hold back the tide of antediluvian authoritarianism. Yes, it’s negative, but the reasons for it are very different.
I don’t know what to think about the election at this point but everyone needs to just keep their heads down and do what they can. If you have young people in your life make sure they vote!
Now that they’ve literally gone back to the 1860s the Republicans don’t seem to know what to do:
Arizona Democrats vowed Saturday to fight for women’s rights after a court reinstated a law first enacted during the Civil War that bans abortion in nearly all circumstances, looking to capitalize on an issue they hope will have a major impact on the midterm elections.
Republican candidates were silent a day after the ruling, which said the state can prosecute doctors and others who assist with an abortion unless it’s necessary to save the mother’s life. Kari Lake, the GOP candidate for governor, and Blake Masters, the Senate candidate, did not comment.
Katie Hobbs and Kris Mayes, the Democratic nominees for governor and attorney general, implored women not to sit on the sidelines this year, saying the ruling sets them back more than a century to an era when only men had the right to vote.
“We cannot let (Lake) hold public office and have the power to enact extreme anti-choice policies that she’s spent her entire campaign touting,” Hobbs said during a news conference outside the attorney general’s office. “As Arizona’s governor I will do everything in my power and use every tool at my disposal to restore abortion rights in Arizona.”
The ruling presents a new hurdle for Republicans who were already struggling to navigate abortion politics. It fires up Democrats and distracts attention from the GOP’s attacks on President Joe Biden and his record on border security and inflation less than three weeks before the start of early and mail-in voting, which are overwhelmingly popular in Arizona.
Abortion rights are particularly salient among suburban women, who play a decisive role in close elections in Arizona.
“In Arizona, with a draconian abortion law in effect today, I think you will see suburban women take a real look at Democratic candidates who promise to do something even if it’s not in their power,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican consultant.
Democrats have poured tens of millions of dollars into television advertising focused on abortion rights, and women have been registering to vote in greater numbers than men across the country.
The old law was first enacted among a set of laws known as the “Howell Code” adopted by the 1st Arizona Territorial Legislature in 1864. Legislative researchers said it remained in the penal code in 1901 and was readopted in subsequent rewrites, including in the 1970s.
Lake has spoken positively of Arizona’s territorial ban on abortion, which she called “a great law that’s already on the books.” She has called abortion “the ultimate sin” and has also said abortion pills should be illegal.
Masters called abortion “demonic” during the GOP primary and called for a federal personhood law that would give fetuses the rights of people. He’s toned down his rhetoric more recently, deleting references to a personhood law from his campaign website and dropping language describing himself as “100% pro-life.”
Masters can run but he can’t hide:
What to do? David Ignatius hearkens back to an earlier nuclear crisis moment:
As Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to salvage his failing invasion of Ukraine, there is a small but growing chance that he will use nuclear weapons. Historians will wonder how this war could have veered toward such insanity, but it’s now inescapably part of the landscape.
“In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country … we will certainly make use of all weapons systems available to us. This is not a bluff,” Putin said in a speech broadcast Wednesday morning. His nuclear umbrella appears to include Ukrainian territory that Russia has seized or plans to annex.
How should President Biden and other world leaders respond to this outrageous blackmail? The answer cannot be to capitulate. That would scar the global future as horribly as this war has already damaged Ukraine. As Biden said Wednesday: “Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter.”
Leaders must think now with the same combination of toughness and creativity that President John F. Kennedy showed during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Because that’s the only parallel within most of our lifetimes. That means drawing a firm line — Kennedy never wavered on his demand that Soviet missiles be removed from Cuba — but it also means looking for ways to de-escalate.
Let’s start with the need for firmness from the West. The outcome in Ukraine will set the rules for the 21st century. If Putin’s extortion succeeds, China will surely see it as a precedent for Taiwan. If Chinese leaders see that the United States and its allies can be cowed by a nuclear threat, they will act with greater boldness. That’s the hidden danger of this “little” war in Ukraine: It could set the stage for a big war with China down the road.
The Pentagon has undoubtedly presented Biden with a menu of options for how to respond if Putin, say, uses a tactical nuclear weapon to block further Ukrainian advances toward Crimea and the Donbas region. Biden in an interview broadcast Sunday warned Putin against using nuclear weapons, saying: “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. It would change the face of war unlike anything since World War II.”
Biden’s comment was more plea than threat. And it was in line with his repeated signals that he wants to avoid any direct U.S.-Russian conflict. That’s admirable restraint, but it’s also part of why Putin keeps raising the ante. Now that Putin has directly threatened use of nuclear weapons, Biden must signal more clearly that the cost would be devastating for Russian forces occupying Ukraine and for Russia itself.
Let’s think now about how Biden can emulate JFK’s clarity and diplomatic finesse. A good start, always, is by understanding your adversary.
Putin is a bully, but what makes him truly dangerous is that he has woven a narrative of Russia’s victimization that causes him to view the Ukraine conflict almost as a holy war. He claimed Wednesday that the West’s goal in Ukraine “is to weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country.” That might sound mad, but Putin clearly believes it. So, one message Biden needs to send, to Putin and the Russian people, is that the West doesn’t seek dominion. Sketching a path toward mutual postwar stability if Russia halts its aggression would be a start.
Kennedy’s genius in the Cuban missile crisis was to respond to a message from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that offered a path to de-escalation, rather than to more belligerent messages.
Is there a similar off-ramp with Ukraine? I doubt it. But I was struck that Putin in his Wednesday speech repeated the same claim he made at a news conference last week in Uzbekistan — that Russia had been prepared for a “peaceful settlement” in the negotiations brokered by Turkey in Istanbul in late March, but that Ukraine and the West had balked. Okay, that’s the letter to answer.
Biden and Putin are a study in contrasts. One is an aging elected politician; the other is a famously vigorous, unelected dictator; one has near-consensus support at home for his Ukraine policy; the other is increasingly attacked in Moscow by right-wing hawks and left-wing doves; one has a unified presidential administration; the other faces growing Kremlin bickering and finger-pointing; one has solid allies across Europe; the other has increasingly wary support from China and India. Clearly, whatever the differences in age and aggressiveness, Biden’s is the stronger hand.
Ukraine, for now, shows no interest in the sort of diplomatic process that Biden has said is necessary to end the war. The Ukrainians want to press their advantage against the retreating Russians, regaining as much territory as possible before winter. There’s a kind of catch-22 at work here: When the Ukrainians were losing ground last summer, they didn’t want to negotiate from weakness. Now that they’re advancing, they see no reason to compromise from a position of strength. Kyiv needs a reality check about its longer-term battlefield prospects.
Kennedy succeeded in the Cuban missile crisis for two reasons. First, he showed that he was prepared to risk nuclear war to stop a reckless move by Moscow. Second, through a secret back channel, he found a face-saving way to avoid the ultimate catastrophe. Biden should study both lessons.
I have little doubt that Biden and his team have been looking very closely at this case. Still this is a very different situation with way more moving parts, not the least of which is Ukraine, which is not a US vassal state and whose needs anmd desire must be front and center. Still, this is nuclear war we’re talking about. The consequences of a misjudgment or a provocation with the so-called “limited”nuclear scenarios are horrifying. It cannot happen.
What we’re seeing now is the first time one of the nuclear powers has launched an aggressive war with the explicit threat of nuclear war if they don’t get their way. (Needless to say, it’s always at least somewhat implicit when any nuclear power engages in warfare.) In that sense, it really is closest to the Cuban missile crisis in terms of danger, except now we’re dealing with an actual hot war battlefield. It’s frightening.
Meanwhile, Peter Pomerantsev at the Guardian speculates that the threat may have the opposite effect from what Putin intended — at home. He discusses the threats of “total war” that inspired the Nazi regime, drawing comparisons with Putin’s swaggering sabre rattling, but points out that the Russian people are quite different:
The great difference with Nazi propaganda is that while the former was geared to action and mobilisation, Putin’s propaganda is geared to demobilisation: sit on the couch, feel strong by watching propaganda and let the Kremlin run things. Beneath the rhetoric of self-sacrifice, Putin’s propaganda has traditionally allowed for self-interest or, at least, self-preservation. You go to war spouting patriotic rhetoric, but really you are in it because it allows for loot and rape. You enjoy the highs of patriotic rhetoric at home, but really your interest is in being allowed to pursue corruption, great and small. Putin’s trick is to dress self-interest in patriotic propaganda. Now those two things are splitting. Going to the front just means pointless death. It’s now clear the “partial” mobilisation is not partial at all; people are being grabbed on the streets and packed off to war. On social media, the sentiment towards mobilisation is highly negative. In polling, even the most pro-Putin Russians are against it. The war in Ukraine was meant to be a movie, not a personal sacrifice.
Putin’s threat of nuclear war may backfire, too. It’s meant to intimidate the west and Ukraine but it can upset his own people more. If there’s one thing Russians fear more than Putin, it’s nuclear war – and now he’s the one bringing it closer. For both the elite and the “ordinary” Russians who I’ve spoken to recently, the calculation is about whether the risk of going against Putin is bigger than the risk of sticking with him. So far, rebelling has seemed the bigger risk; does the nuclear topic change that? Much depends on how the international community reacts. We need to show that the closer he gets to a nuclear threat, the more devastating the reaction will be: military, economic and diplomatic. He will even lose China.
Losing public opinion in Russia is not the same as in a democracy. It doesn’t necessarily lead to protests, let alone losing non-existent elections. But being able to show you can control public opinion, through fear and propaganda, is one of the emblems of tsardom. Putin has lost control of the military situation. Losing control of propaganda will show that beneath the shiny fascist boots are feet of clay. Now stamp on them.
I’m not sure how that’s done, exactly. But the two track system that Ignatius evokes is almost certainly in the mix.
You remember this, right?
Multiple historians have accused Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) of misconstruing facts due to his recent controversial remarks about early American history.
According to a new analysis from Newsweek, DeSantis’ seemingly controversial remarks were made on Tuesday, September 20. At the time, he argued that it was the “American revolution that caused people to question slavery.”
He added, “Nobody had questioned it before we decided as Americans that we are endowered by our creator with inalienable rights and that we are all created equal. Then that birthed abolition movements.”
After making his speech, DeSantis posted a portion of it via Twitter and it quickly surpassed 900,000 views. However, it also attracted criticism. Speaking to Newsweek, historians weighed in with critical assessments of the Florida governor’s remarks.
Professor Karin Wulf, who focuses on the study of eighteenth-century British American history at Brown University, said, “On at least three levels this is wrong. The idea of natural rights didn’t originate with the American revolutionaries; they were reflecting ideas that were widespread among political thinkers, perhaps most obviously the 17th-century English political philosopher John Locke.
She added, The United States as a government did not act against slavery in any form until 1807 (prohibition of the Atlantic slave trade) and acted in key ways to protect it right up to the Civil War (the fugitive slave act).
“Most egregiously, the idea that ‘no one’ questioned slavery erases enslaved people themselves who were active in resisting slavery both as individuals and collectively and in refusing the logic and legality of their enslavement.”
Seth Rockman, who also works at Brown University as an associate professor conducting writing and research on slavery economics, suggested that DeSantis’ actions Black Americans are part of a greater agenda stemming from white nationalism.
“DeSantis clearly has not done the reading for class, but his error here goes beyond ignorance of the last several decades of research on anti-slavery thinking and organizing over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” Rockman said. “What DeSantis does here is more pernicious because it places Black people outside the category of ‘we’ and ‘Americans’— a move that can only be understood as part of DeSantis’s strategy to ride white nationalism to higher office.
“This statement is yet another deliberate DeSantis move to ‘trigger’ or ‘own the libs,’ but let’s think about the implications of DeSantis’s statement here: When DeSantis says ‘no one’ he pretends that enslaved African and African-descended people aren’t worth taking seriously as people whose opinions about slavery might matter, then or now.
“The slaves who staged massive revolts in New York, South Carolina, and other mainland colonies throughout the colonial era, were they not questioning slavery?”
Professor Sarah Pearsall also explained why she disagrees with DeSantis’ claims. “The claim by DeSantis is completely incorrect. Plenty of people had questioned slavery before the American Revolution. Of course enslaved people had resisted the system since its inception, but there were also tracts by colonists, such as Samuel Sewell’s The Selling of Joseph, published in Boston in 1700, which argued that the institution was unacceptable.
“Early abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic included Quakers; their efforts in some cases predated the outbreak of the American Revolution. Since DeSantis also states of history that ‘It’s gotta be accurate,’ he might want to practice what he preaches.”
Heather Cox Richardson examines the Civil War-era law just reactivated to legislate how Arizona can use women’s bodies:
In Arizona, Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson has restored a law put into effect by Arizona’s Territorial legislature in 1864 and then reworked in 1901 that has been widely interpreted as a ban on all abortions except to save a woman’s life. Oddly, I know quite a bit about the 1864 Arizona Territorial legislature, and its story matters as we think about the attempt to impose its will in modern America.
In fact, the Civil War era law seems not particularly concerned with women handling their own reproductive care—it actually seems to ignore that practice entirely. The laws for this territory, chaotic and still at war in 1864, appear to reflect the need to rein in a lawless population of men.
The context of the original law was punishing male violence involving “cutting out tongues or eyes, slitting noses or lips, or ‘rendering…useless’ someone’s arm or leg,” Richardson writes. With regard to “miscarriage,” the law targeted using secret poisons or instruments intended to produce one. Those found guilty would face two to five years in prison, “Provided, that no physician shall be affected by the last clause of this section, who in the discharge of his professional duties deems it necessary to produce the miscarriage of any woman in order to save her life.”
The law that is currently interpreted to outlaw abortion care seemed designed to keep men in the chaos of the Civil War from inflicting damage on others—including pregnant women—rather than to police women’s reproductive care, which women largely handled on their own or through the help of doctors who used drugs and instruments to remove what they called dangerous blockages of women’s natural cycles in the four to five months before fetal movement became obvious.
The rest of the code of laws drafted by one judge and passed by twenty-seven other men in the Arizona Territorial legislature of 1864 included allowances and prohibitions that today would be considered beyond the pale. Including discriminatory laws regarding race and defining “the the age of consent for sexual intercourse to be just ten years old,” Richardson notes.
In the context of reactionary, right-wing backlash, the Arizona code that once sanctioned pedophilia has been repurposed in 2022 by vocal foes of pedophilia to allow the state to appropriate women’s bodies for reproduction. Whether or not they “consent,” at whatever age they conceive, and even if through the criminal behavior of men.
There would be irony in that if irony were not outlawed in MAGAstan.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us
If it wasn’t for bad faith, our conservative adversaries wouldn’t have no faith at all, to borrow from the famous blues song.
If you live in one of the states above — well, maybe not New Jersey (timing issue) — residents who are potentially eligible but unregistered to vote in your state may have in the last week or two received a postcard from their secretary of state or state board of elections. The postcards will suggest ways anyone unregistered at that address can register to vote if eligible. (Ask your neighbors.)
Member states of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC, formed in 2012 with assistance from The Pew Charitable Trusts) send out the postcards ahead of each general election to a list the voter list maintanence organization provides.
ERIC has replaced the now-defunct Interstate Crosscheck system once championed by former Kansas Secretary of State, Republican Kris Kobach, as a way of promoting the notion that voter fraud is widespread: dead people on the voter rolls, people registered in multiple states, etc. The error-prone Crosscheck was sued out of existence. By most accounts, ERIC maintains the lists better.
Not that Republicans actually want maintaining voter lists done better:
Wisconsin voters filed a legal complaint against the state’s elections commission on Thursday, accusing the body “and its members of violating the federal Help America Vote Act by its contracted use of [the] Electronic Registration Information Center [ERIC].”
Filed by the Thomas More Society on behalf of the Wisconsin Voter Alliance, the complaint alleges that “in violation of the federal Help America Vote Act, the Wisconsin Election Commission [WEC] has contracted with Electronic Registration Information Center, Inc. to maintain and implement WisVote” and that the “delegation of this government function to an outside entity has enabled the potential rigging of Wisconsin’s federal elections towards particular federal candidates.”
Does that sound like the independent state legislature theory to you? Just asking.
The unregistered are “off the grid,” so to speak, and difficult to identify. ERIC makes it easier than accosting random passersby on the streecorner to ask if they are registered. Republicans really dislike the idea of mass outreach to unregistered persons.
That’s not all from Wisconsin conservatives:
A conservative law firm is challenging the use of a federal voter registration form in Wisconsin, saying it doesn’t meet the requirements laid out by state law.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed a lawsuit on Sept. 15 asking a judge to declare the National Mail Voter Registration Application illegal in the state and order the Wisconsin Election Commission to withdraw its approval for the form because it doesn’t ask for all information required by state law.
Many states are required by federal law to use the form, which is provided by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, but Wisconsin isn’t subject to such an obligation because the state allows voters to register at the polls on Election Day.
The federal form and same-day registration are far from the only ways people in Wisconsin can register to vote. Residents can also register online, at their municipal clerk’s office or by mail with a state form, which is available in English, Spanish and Hmong on the election commission’s website.
There’s a pattern here. Give Republicans what they say they want — cleaner, more accurate voter rolls with fewer bad addresses, fewer dead voters, fewer registered in multiple states — and they grouse even louder. They won’t take yes for an answer. They don’t want people to vote. You know why.
Over the weekend, CNN’s Daniel Dale pointed ou the GOP’s “open borders” complaint is bullshit. It’s important for people to have their facts straight, says Dale. But it’s only important to people who care about having their facts straight. Those more concerned about changing the subject of this election from abortion to immigration do not.
Liberal pundit Maria Cardona made a point of telling Scott Jennings that migrants entering the country through ports of entry and seeking legal asylum are not “illegal.” Migrants apprehended at the border are not entering the country through open borders. But that story doesn’t sell fear.
“You can’t have it both ways,” Cardona said, reiterating my point. “if the border was open, they would not be apprehended.”
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us
This is a useful analysis by Philip Bump about the risk Ron DeSantis is taking with his grotesque human trafficking stunt. One of the most astute observations is that one of the reason that the Hispanic vote may have gone more heavily for Trump in 2020 was because immigration wasn’t a priority issue in that election. I admit, I hadn’t thought of that. Republicans putting it on the menu this time may titillate their bigoted white base but it may very well do the opposite for the Latino vote:
Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity this week, former president Donald Trump revived one of his earliest anti-immigration lines: The people approaching the border were criminals.
“Venezuela is emptying their prison population into the United States, going right through the border like nothing,” he claimed, alluding to a report published by Breitbart. “We’re poisoning our country, and it’s very hard to come back from that.”
The Breitbart report is vague, referring to a briefing purportedly offered to Border Patrol agents. But Trump was unbothered by the lack of specificity: It offered a simple pivot to describing the arrival of migrants as a national “poison.”
Over the past year or two, there has been an increase in the number of apprehensions made at the border of people from outside Mexico and Central America, including a rise in the number of Venezuelan migrants. There’s a simple reason for this: Turmoil and political repression in Venezuela — unrest that Trump and his party have often used as a foil by blaming it on socialism — is driving people to seek opportunity in the United States. But the rhetoric of a dangerous “open border” was more appealing to Trump in the moment than railing against Venezuela’s leadership. So the problem became sneaky criminals, an argument akin to his “they’re bringing crime” line about immigrants from his 2015 campaign launch.
Venezuelan immigrants have been in the news recently thanks to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) using people from that country for his stunt of sending immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. DeSantis’s effort was clearly intended to ingratiate him with Republican voters; his attempts to rationalize what happened and why don’t hold up well to scrutiny. Trump, of course, had the same intent: continue to play to his base’s anxiety about immigration.
But both Trump’s rhetoric and DeSantis’s gimmick have an obvious downside risk. Those being targeted are Hispanic immigrants, members of a demographic group to whom Republicans are feverishly trying to appeal. For DeSantis in particular, seeking reelection in a state that’s home to a large percentage of Hispanic immigrants, using members of that group as political props two months before his reelection bid is even more curious.
There is a clear correlation between the density of the foreign-born population in a county and its 2020 presidential vote. The tenth of counties with the lowest percentage of foreign-born residents backed Trump by an average 74-point margin. The tenth with the highest percentage backed Joe Biden by an average of 35 points.
But this correlates with population density; the tenth of counties with the highest number of immigrants are home to 35 times more people than the lowest tenth. You can see that below. More heavily immigrant counties (lower on the graph) are more Democratic (further to the left) — and often more populous (larger circles). In other words: cities.
Notice that Miami-Dade County is highlighted. It has the highest percentage of foreign-born residents. It is home, in fact, to one of the largest populations of Venezuelan immigrants in the United States. No wonder the mayor of Miami-Dade County, a Democrat, blasted DeSantis.
Venezuelan advocacy groups joined in the criticism.
But, despite having such a large immigrant population, notice how close to that centerline Miami-Dade sits. In 2020, Biden won only narrowly, far less robustly than was broadly expected. The election results in more heavy Hispanic places were less divided by party. Below, you can see how many places with higher Hispanic populations were divided in their vote or backed Trump.
There are a few reasons for this. The first is that the analysis suffers from the ecological fallacy: This is an assessment of the vote in heavily Hispanic places, not Hispanic voters. The second is that many places with heavily Hispanic populations have large populations of noncitizen Hispanics who cannot vote.
In places like Florida, though, most of the foreign-born population is also Hispanic. Compare the prevalence of orange in that state (high foreign-born population, heavily Hispanic) with the purple in the Midwest (lots of foreign-born residents, low Hispanic density) or the yellow in northeastern Arizona (high Hispanic density, low foreign-born).
Trump and DeSantis may be mollified somewhat by the fact that, despite Trump’s 2015 rhetoric, Miami-Dade County did end up voting more favorably for the incumbent president in 2020 than expected. To some extent, this can be attributed to the county’s large Cuban population, targeted by Trump’s anti-socialism pitch. (We don’t want the United States to turn out like Venezuela!) But there was also a national shift to the right among Hispanic voters from 2016 to 2020.
Analysis from Equis Labs published last year offered an explanation for that: The election wasn’t really focused on immigration. Candidates were more focused on the pandemic, crime and the economy, meaning that Hispanic voters were more likely to choose between the candidates on those issues than on immigration where Trump fared worse.
Last week, the New York Times published new polling conducted by Siena College focused on the views of Hispanic voters. On the economy, Hispanics are split between Democrats and Republicans. On immigration, though, Democrats retain a big advantage. Hispanics agree with Democrats’ handling of illegal immigration by a nine-point margin and legal immigration by 26 points. The boundary there gets blurry; DeSantis has claimed that the migrants shipped to Martha’s Vineyard were in the country illegally, but it appears many were seeking asylum and legally allowed to remain in the country.
The point, though, is that by highlighting immigration right before the election, DeSantis and Trump might be mobilizing their voters to turn out to vote. But they are also increasing the salience of immigration, a question on which Hispanic voters are more likely to side with the political opposition.
Trump, it seems safe to say, isn’t really worried about that. DeSantis, who won election in 2018 by a remarkably narrow margin, might be a bit more cautious. Sure, he’ll get more airtime on Fox News. But at the risk of eroding the likelihood of a blowout reelection — and marching toward the 2024 primaries as a triumphant political conqueror.
Recall that the GOP Lt. Governor stepped on the third rail of Florida she said they would be sending back Cuban migrants (and then hastily walked it back.) They don’t seem to be on top of the risks of this strategy.
Venezuelans, like Cubans, are running from a country run by leftist government and regardless of their thoughts about the reasoning, Democrats should be able to leverage that with Venezuelan and Cuban voters. I would hope they are up on Spanish language media (and regular media for that matter) talking about how DeSantis is persecuting people who are fleeing a leftist government just as Cubans have been doing for decades (and giving GOP politicians their vote for supporting it.) All’s fair and DeSantis’s cheap stunt should be thrown right back in his face.
