Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Poll angst is a Democratic pastime but it’s a waste of time and energy

If you are fretting about the NY Times poll (which polled 900 people) that everyone is fretting about, here’s a reminder of a time in the not too distant past when everyone was fretting about another NY TImes poll from Joan Walsh in 2022:

It’s said to be wrong to kick a person when he or she is down. If Monday’s New York Times/Siena poll were a person, it’s been stomped so severely that a compassionate observer would step in to stop the fight. But even though the poll that launched a thousand headlines claiming the midterms are moving back toward Republicans, and that the so-called Dobbs effect—a shift to Democrats after the Supreme Court did away with a 50-year-old constitutional right to abortion—is subsiding, has been pretty thoroughly debunked by pollsters and progressive analysts, it still deserves attention (but no kicking here, folks).

It’s a case study of what even “good” polls can do wrong, and, maybe more important, of how journalists looking for a “new” story line hype outlier polls without understanding the first thing about what they mean—as well as the way voters should think about new polling as we get closer to the crucial election.

In case you were without a computer or television earlier this week, here’s the gist of the poll of 792 “likely voters.” In September, those polled by New York Times/Siena favored Democrats on a “generic” congressional ballot, by one point. A month later, those polled back Republicans by four. The big news, from the Times headline: “With elections next month, independents, especially women, are swinging to the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights.” The economy, the poll found, mattered much more to voters than abortion.

And despite the fact that a “gender gap” showing women favoring Democrats has been a defining feature of American politics since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, the poll showed women dividing their votes equally between the two parties. “The poll showed that Republicans had entirely erased what had been an 11-point edge for Democrats among women last month in 2022 congressional races to a statistical tie in October,” the Times wrote.

The detail that got the most hype, though, from the Times write-up: “The biggest shift came from women who identified as independent voters. In September, they favored Democrats by 14 points. Now, independent women backed Republicans by 18 points—a striking swing given the polarization of the American electorate and how intensely Democrats have focused on that group and on the threat Republicans pose to abortion rights.”

Wow. That’s a 32-point swing. Big if true.

Fun fact. It wasn’t true:

After polls closed on Nov. 8, Democrats held on to more seats in the House and Senate than is typical for the in-power party in a non-presidential election year, and they retained control of the Senate.

According to ABC News exit polling, that competitiveness was fueled by a number of factors, including voter passion about abortion access and antipathy to Trump-style election denialism and extremism…

In strong Republican years, ABC exit polling shows, independents typically break for the GOP — by 7 points in 2016, 14 in 2014 and 19 in 2010. This year, according to exit polling, independents voted for Democratic House candidates over Republicans by 2 points.

Walsh continued:

Bonier, Lake, and other pollsters agree: The decisive “tell” that the poll was flawed was its finding that women are splitting their votes evenly between Republicans and Democrats. “Do you really believe just months after losing a fundamental right, women will split their votes [between Republicans and Democrats]?” Bonier asks. “Have we ever since the ’90s had a situation where women didn’t vote more Democratic than men did?” pollster Anna Greenberg asked rhetorically in The New Republic.

Lake was more scathing: “There isn’t another poll in America that shows that,” she says. “If I did an outlier poll like that for a candidate, I’d have to do it over again at my own expense.” The Times should have tossed its October findings and started over, she says.

This latest NY Times poll shows the same thing, that the gender gap has disappeared. And it’s ridiculous.

The 2022 election results proved them wrong:

According to CNN exit polls, women constituted 52% of the vote and men 48%. That is an enormous difference. Let’s assume that turnout in 2022 ends up being about the same as the record 2018 turnout—roughly 116 million votes. The women’s share of that vote? 60,320,000. Exit polls also show that 53% of women voted Democratic. That’s 31,969,600 votes—a big number. Hillary Clinton, who clearly shares our frustration with those who discounted the women’s vote, tweeted out the following clearly sarcastic comment: “It turns out women enjoy having human rights, and we vote.”

Apart from the sheer magnitude of the women’s vote is the issue of intensity. Unlike men, women spend a great deal of their lives thinking about reproduction. They have no choice. Even in the 21^st century, pregnancy is still a dangerous business, and women’s health care is no place for government bureaucrats. No wonder that women think abortion is a lot more important than men do. As the election season entered its final stretch, and many Republican candidates got a crash course in obstetrics, some pulled back and/or softened their previous hard lines on abortion.

The importance of the issue was seen most clearly in the Senate debate in Pennsylvania. Although the Democrat, John Fetterman gave a halting performance because he was still recovering from a serious stroke, his opponent, Republican Mehmet Oz, managed to make what had to be one of the most damaging comments on abortion ever: “I want women, doctors, and local political leaders…” to make these decisions.

The sheer absurdity of that comment went a long way towards distracting voters from the issue of Fetterman’s health and reminded many that government shouldn’t be making those decisions.

Finally, abortion is fundamentally different from inflation. Inflation is unpopular with both parties—there is no pro-inflation and anti-inflation party. In fact, if we’ve learned anything about politics in our polarized time it’s that voters see almost all issues through their partisan lens. Democrats worried about inflation could think that Joe Biden was dealing with it and Republicans that Joe Biden caused it. But abortion is different. One party is clearly in favor of keeping it legal in most or all circumstances and the other is not.

If you put together the sheer size of the women’s vote, the intensity of the issue and the fact that, unlike inflation or the economy, the two parties have stark differences on the issue, you get a powerful driver of the vote. There were five states with abortion referenda on the ballot and in every single one—including the deep red state of Kentucky—the pro-choice position won. In Michigan, where the abortion referendum won by 13.4 percent, it is not far-fetched to assume that it helped the Democrats keep several congressional seats. And in Pennsylvania, where abortion topped inflation by 9 points, Democrats picked up the only Senate seat so far.

The following table shows the percentage of voters in each of the crucial states and how they rated inflation and abortion. In most cases abortion was a close second; in Michigan and Pennsylvania it was far ahead of inflation.

TOP ISSUES IN THE 2022 MIDTERMS (%)

*Results according to CNN exit polls

Central to the story of the 2022 midterms, then, is an issue central to women’s lives, powerful enough to snatch victory from the Republicans, and durable enough to send a message about the future.

They will prove these polls wrong again, at least on that count. A majority of women are not gravitating to Trump and they haven’t stopped caring about reproductive rights as a matter of basic human rights and everyday economic rights. It’s bullshit. Right now, states are banning IVF, women who have miscarriages are being arrested, rapists are being given joint custody of the child their 12 year old victim was forced to bear, women are almost dying because they can’t obtain abortion care and the right wing is talking about outlawing abortion and birth control using the Comstock Act from 1873 in a 2nd Trump administration. I really don’t think the majority of American women are signing up for that.

I guess he thinks he can entice some of those RFK Jr voters over to his side. He’s also following this guy’s guidance:

Shortly before Joseph Ladapo was sworn in as Florida’s surgeon general in 2022, the New Yorker ran a short column welcoming the vaccine-skeptic doctor to his new role, and highlighting his advocacy for the use of leeches in public health.

It was satire of course, a teasing of the Harvard-educated physician for his unorthodox medical views, which include a steadfast belief that life-saving Covid shots are the work of the devil, and that opening a window is the preferred treatment for the inhalation of toxic fumes from gas stoves.

But now, with an entirely preventable outbreak of measles spreading across Florida, medical experts are questioning if quackery really has become official health policy in the nation’s third most-populous state.

As the highly contagious disease raged in a Broward county elementary school, Ladapo, a politically appointed acolyte of Florida’s far-right governor Ron DeSantis, wrote to parents telling them it was perfectly fine for parents to continue to send in their unvaccinated children.

“The surgeon general is Ron DeSantis’s lapdog, and says whatever DeSantis wants him to say,” said Dr Robert Speth, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at south Florida’s Nova Southeastern University with more than four decades of research experience.

“His statements are more political than medical and that’s a horrible disservice to the citizens of Florida. He’s somebody whose job is to protect public health, and he’s doing the exact opposite.”

Ladapo’s advice deferring to parents or guardians a decision about school attendance directly contradicts the official recommendation of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which calls for a 21-day period of quarantine for anybody without a history of prior infection or immunization.

It is also in keeping with Ladapo’s previous maverick proclamations about vaccines that health professionals say pose an unacceptable danger to the health of Florida residents. They include official guidance to shun mRNA Covid-19 boosters based on easily disprovable conspiracy theories that the shots alter human DNA and can potentially cause cancer – “scientific nonsense” in the view of Dr Ashish Jha, a former White House Covid response coordinator.

Meanwhile, with measles having been eradicated in the US since 2000, the disease’s resurgence, paired with Ladapo’s latest misadventure, have prompted a new round of mocking commentary. Florida: Come for the Sunshine, Leave With the Measles, opined the Orlando Sentinel; “Measles? So On-brand for Florida’s Descent Into the 1950s”, was the take of the Tampa Bay Times.

[…]

To Speth, and numerous other medical experts, Ladapo’s risky succession of positions denying even the most obvious benefits of immunization and vaccination is a symptom of a wider political assault by the rightwing, which carries deadly potential.

Its origins, Speth believes, lie in a long-discredited study by the disgraced British former doctor Andrew Wakefield falsely tying the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism, but which was enthusiastically embraced by anti-vaxxers and other extremists in the US.

“The Wakefield study was a gross fraud, yet today up to 25% of our population believes it, and opportunistic politicians seize on the sentiment to tell people what they want to hear about the danger of vaccines,” he said.

“Republicans are at war with medical science, and that’s a horrible tragedy. But I feel like Cassandra, talking about the public health threat. We’re going to start seeing a lot more children die of infectious diseases that could be prevented if they were vaccinated.”

If Trump wins and his Project 2025 is enacted, there is no reason they won’t be able to do this. If it pleases the conspiracy addled far right, that’s all that matters because that’s their ticket to power and dominance.

Update:

Children’s Health Defense is RFK Jrs organization. Dear God…

That was Trump speaking earlier today. Here are a few more:

Here’s Dr. John Gartner analyzing Trump’s speech at CPAC last weekend:

Trump manifested a number of phonemic paraphasias. He was trying to say evangelist, for example, but haltingly said “evangelish.” He was trying to say “three years later,” but said, “three years, lady, lady, lady.” Trying to spit out the word “lately,” he sounded like a car with a bad battery struggling to turn over. When Trump can’t find a word his whole demeanor changes. It’s almost like someone pulled the metaphorical plug. Trump looks blank, stops in mid-sentence (or mid-word), his jaw goes a little slack, and when he starts to talk again, he slurs, speaks haltingly, and often looks confused. Trying to get the word out, he shifts to a non-word that is easier to pronounce. When people are losing their ability to use language they use non-words. They start with the stem of the real word, and then they improvise from there.

In my family we call sandwiches “slamichs” because that’s what my stepson called them when he was three. It was cute then. It’s not cute watching and adult man regress to the mental age of a three-year-old. It can make you even feel sorry for Trump in those moments when he appears so vulnerable, confused, and disoriented. I asked several highly specialized experts about Trump’s use of language, and they told me that what Trump is doing in total, but especially the phonemic paraphasias, were almost certain evidence of brain damage. This is not minor, or within normal limits, like forgetting who the president of Germany is, for example, as Biden has been pilloried for. Trump is evidencing formal thought disorder, where his basic ability to use language is breaking down.

Trump is also showing signs of “semantic aphasia” where he is using words in the wrong way. For example, when Trump talked about “the oranges of the investigation.” We saw an example of that this weekend, as well. Trump said, “We’re going to protect pro-God….” In mid-sentence, he goes blank and looks at the ceiling. The words he uses to complete the sentence don’t really make sense: “…context and content.”

Trump is bragging about passing the MOCA, a screening test for dementia, as if it made him MENSA, when it’s a test any kindergartener should pass. Specialists tell me a patient can be in steep diagnosable organic decline for an extended period before they fail the MOCA. Someone with an advanced degree from an Ivy League school, for example, has a lot of IQ points to give before they hit kindergarten level. If you pass the MOCA it certainly does not mean you’re cognitively equipped to be President of the United States. Trump can’t even name the current president of the United States. Seven times he’s said he’s running against Obama. That’s not a gaffe or joke. That’s hard clinical evidence of serious organic brain damage.

His Nikki Haley mistake was shocking. But that first video at the top says it all about his obvious distress as far as I’m concerned. That is not normal, even for him.

Later in the day:

Playing the hand you are dealt

Jonathan Last throws water on the magical thinking about skittish Democrats replacing Joe Biden on their presidential ticket. (Really? Are we still talking about this?) Scary New York Times polls? How about scarier polls? Virtually all the also-mentions poll worse than Biden against Trump: Harris, Newsome, Whitmer and Shapiro.

Ten days ago already, Lawrence O’Donnell’s “the governing will not be televised” monologue refuted Ezra Klein’s speculation about Democrats replacing Biden. If that was not sufficient to dispel the notion that the DNC is going to rub a monkey’s paw and produce a younger presidential candidate, Last provides bullets on why it won’t (The Atlantic):

Let’s say that one of these not–Kamala Harris candidates is chosen at the Democratic National Convention in August. In the span of 10 weeks they would have to:

1. Define themselves to the national audience while simultaneously resisting Trump’s attempts to define them.
2. Build a national campaign structure and get-out-the-vote operation.
3. Unify the Democratic Party.
4. Fend off any surprises uncovered during their public (and at-scale) vetting.
5. Earn credit in the minds of voters for the Biden economy.
6. Distance themselves from unpopular Biden policies.
7. Portray themselves as a credible commander in chief.
8. Lay out a coherent governing vision.
9. Persuade roughly 51 percent of the country to support them.

Democrats may have a knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but not since 2018. Unless the carnage abates in Gaza soon, there will exist the potential for protests in Chicago that (for those of a certain age) will evoke bad memories from 1968. Even the rowdies of The Big Tent Party will want to avoid that kind of bad press. All the more reason for DNC and FBI bloodhounds to alert on any ratfucking schemes the RNC or Russia may cook up to recreate that chaos on Democrats’ “behalf.”

Joe Biden is Joe Biden. He isn’t going to win a 10-point, realigning victory. But his path to reelection is clear: Focus like a laser on suburban and working-class white voters in a handful of swing states. Remind them that Trump is a chaos agent who wrecked the economy. Show them how good the economy is now. Make a couple of jokes about the antlers. And then bring these people home—because many of them already voted for him once.

Having a sure thing would certainly be nice, given the ongoing authoritarian threat we face. But there isn’t one. Joe Biden is the best deal democracy is going to get.

He’s already beaten Trump once. A brokered convention, Last warns, is unlikely to help Democrats win when “Biden has a 50–50 shot.”

Perhaps it’s my own magical thinking, but that tight polling feels off. We’ve seen them wrong too often. The media focus on Biden’s age is, at least in part, MAGA- and horse-race-driven. What’s not being polled enough is “Trump fatigue.” As my friend found, students may not be “excited to vote for the 80 year old president,” a question pollsters love to ask, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t planning to vote.

High card still wins when your opponent’s got nothin.’

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Ending the Gaza carnage

Yes, our outrage is selective. In a world of double standards, Nicholas Kristof reminds readers how much we have one toward Israel (New York Times):

Rabbi Marvin Hier in The Jerusalem Post condemned “an unprecedented double standard” that relentlessly criticizes Israel’s bombing of Gaza but is unbothered by the Allied bombing of civilians in Germany and Japan in World War II. And the World Jewish Congress cites “criticizing Israeli defensive operations, but not those of other Western democracies” as an example of antisemitism.

A fair criticism, Kristof writes, and a false one.

In 2023, for example, the United Nations General Assembly adopted 15 resolutions critical of Israel, and only seven resolutions critical of all other countries in the world together, by the count of one pro-Israel group. Does anyone think that represents even-handedness?

People are more focused on Israel than on what Unicef describes as a “wave of atrocities” currently underway against children in Sudan, while the number of children displaced by recent fighting in Sudan (three million) is greater than the entire population of Gaza. University students in America and Europe protest about Gaza but largely ignore the 700,000 children facing severe acute malnutrition in Sudan, after a civil war began there last April.

The Darfur region of Sudan two decades ago endured what is widely described as the first genocide of the 21st century. Now bands of gunmen once more are killing and raping villagers belonging to particular ethnic groups. I was seared by my reporting from Darfur during the genocide, and it staggers me that the world is ignoring another round of mass atrocities there.

Not to mention that some of the worst crimes against civilians in recent years were committed against Arabs were “by by Arab rulers themselves, in Syria and Yemen.” But Gaza right now is the most dangerous place in the wold for a child.

Consider that in the first 18 months of Russia’s current war in Ukraine, at least 545 children were killed. Or that in 2022, by a United Nations count, 2,985 children were killed in all wars worldwide. In contrast, in less than five months of Israel’s current war in Gaza, the health authorities there report more than 12,500 children killed.

Among them were 250 infants less than 1 year old. I can’t think of any conflict in this century that has killed babies at such a pace.

Kristof adds the obligatory “of course Israel has a right to respond” and Hamas should release its hostages, etc.

Because of America’s support for Israel’s invasion and diplomatic protection for it at the United Nations, this blood is on our hands, and that surely justifies increased scrutiny.

Yet here’s another double standard: We Americans condemn Russia, China or Venezuela for their violations of human rights, but the United States supports Israel and protects it diplomatically even as it has engaged in what President Biden has called an “over the top” military campaign.

So yes, some of the campus outrage is selective, and yes, we condemn some attrocities of war here and ignore others there. Double standards, Kristof concludes, “run in many directions, shielding Israel as well as condemning it.”

But it seems to me that in a world of screens (like this one) screaming for our attention, people have only so much bandwidth. Our selective attention goes to places with the most cameras in places that look the most like our homes, and to people who seem most like us.

I’ve noted before that the left is more critical of its friends than its adversaries. We expect little of our adversaries and wield little leverage for modifying their behavior. But the U.S. is heavily invested in its ally Israel, both financially and culturally. We have both interest and leverage. For Jewish Americans, history and family. For Christians, a theological heritage. For others, a kind of moral muscle memory that grants Israel undeserved grace because of crimes visited during the Holocaust.

“[W]e should never let our very human tangles of double standards and hypocrisies be harnessed to deflect from the tragedy unfolding today for the children of Gaza, or America’s complicity in it,” writes Kristof. Netanyahu may not be movable, but Israel can be pushed. So push.

For supporters of Israel reluctant to demand better behavior, whether from a sense of loyalty or a sense that because of Hamas’ attrocities, Gaza “had it coming,” perhaps the New Testament provides guidance.

To whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48).

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MSNBC’s data guy Steve Kornacki took a look at the polling a few days ago that I think addresses some of the weirdness we’re seeing with the national polls and the election results.

Donald Trump is winning his primaries handily and has a virtual lock on the Republican presidential nomination — but a common interpretation of the results says that he is also exhibiting profound weaknesses among independents that portend dire general election consequences.

But there’s a hitch. A look at general election polling reveals a completely different story among independent voters — and a dive into all the other data we have on the 2024 presidential race shows why Trump’s poor independent numbers in the primary and better performance in general election polls are completely consistent with each other. The short answer: These are two very different groups of voters.

First, the evidence for Trump’s weakness among independents voting in this year’s GOP primaries is straightforward. Despite the widely acknowledged — even by his critics — inevitability of his nomination, Trump is still losing around 40% of the vote in Republican contests. And he’s getting crushed among independents, a group that looms large in November. From exit polling data, here’s how bad Trump’s numbers have been with them so far (note that exit polls weren’t conducted in Michigan):

But the recent NBC News poll paints a very different picture among independent general election voters:

For context, Trump lost the independent vote to President Joe Biden in 2020 by a 9-point margin, 52%-43%, per the NBC News national exit poll. So the current general election polling actually indicates slight improvement for Trump (and a decline for Biden) among independents, albeit with a significant number indicating they don’t want either candidate.

For that matter, even as Trump is losing 40% of the overall vote in Republican primaries, general election polling shows no slack in his support among Republican voters. He took 92% support from Republicans in our last poll.

How could this be? Look at the primary results and you see a front-runner who is hemorrhaging independents at an alarming level and a Republican electorate that contains wide resistance to him. And yet, look at general election polling, and you see … almost none of this.

It’s possible, though, that there’s really no inconsistency here at all.

Start with the simple stuff. A chunk of former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s primary voters (23% of them in South Carolina, per the exit poll) say they will nonetheless be satisfied with Trump as the GOP nominee. So at least some of the Trump current opposition stands ready to rally around him in the general election, which helps explain why general election polls show almost unanimous Republican support for Trump.

And given Biden’s own dreadful poll numbers with independents (a 27% approval rating with them in NBC News’ latest poll), there are surely some of them who will be motivated to vote against Biden in November and thus cast ballots for Trump, even if they’ll never pronounce themselves satisfied with Trump.

But all of this only goes so far. It still leaves the bulk of Haley’s primary voters appearing to be dug in for good against Trump.

The answer that reconciles those figures, or at least a big part of them, with the general election polling is that many of these Haley votes are likely coming from people who already cast ballots against Trump in 2016 and 2020 — and who are committed to doing so again in 2024.

To them, these primaries amount to a bonus opportunity to cast yet another vote against Trump.

The pool of independents who voted in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries will be far different from the much, much larger pool of independents who will vote this fall. After all, primaries attract far lower turnout than general elections, so those who are most motivated to participate can skew the independent pool in various directions. The question becomes whether there’s a particular type of independent who feels drawn disproportionately to participate in these GOP primaries.

And here there’s an obvious answer: the “Trump resistance.” Opposition to Trump extends across many demographic groups, but the most dramatic activation against him has come from white, college-educated voters in suburban areas. Many of them routinely voted for Republicans until Trump came along. In 2012, white college graduates sided with Mitt Romney over Barack Obama by 14 points, per the national exit poll. But by 2020, they were going with Biden over Trump by 15.

That swing is only part of the story. What matters for our purposes is that the anti-Trump segment of white, college-educated voters is also proving exceptionally motivated to get to the polls and vote against Trump and his party in any and every election they possibly can.

We saw this just weeks ago in the special election in New York’s 3rd Congressional District, anchored in suburban Long Island. Like primaries, special elections are low-participation affairs, where turnout disparities can make all the difference. Sure enough, per data compiled by Newsday, in the five locales with the highest concentrations of white, college-educated voters in the Long Island portion of the district, turnout ran from from 69 to 76 percent of the level seen in the 2022 midterm elections. In these places, the Democratic candidate, Tom Suozzi, romped.

By comparison, in the five locales with the lowest share of white college-educated voters, turnout was only 54 to 61 percent of the 2022 level. That disparity goes a long way toward explaining how Suozzi won the race by 8 points.

And it’s not just Long Island. Democrats have been achieving success, often by unexpectedly high margins, in one special election after another, thanks in no small part to this enthusiasm.

There’s every reason to suspect this same energy is at work in the GOP presidential primaries. The rules in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan all allow for mass participation by non-Republicans, meaning there has been little barrier for “resistance”-types to take part. They may not consider themselves Republicans, but they are supremely eager to vote, so why wouldn’t they join in en masse, especially with no meaningful contest on the Democratic side?

This is consistent with the results we’ve seen so far, with Haley’s support rising and falling depending on the concentration of whites who have college degrees in any given area. For instance, on Saturday in South Carolina, she actually won the state’s 1st Congressional District by 6 points. Not coincidentally, the 1st District contains the highest share of white college-educated voters in the state, with its anchor, Charleston County, clocking in at No. 1 among counties.

And we know that many of these college-educated whites voted for Joe Biden in 2020, since he won Charleston County by 11 points. For Haley, this made Charleston the single biggest potential source of crossover votes from anti-Trump non-Republicans. It seems she took full advantage, routing Trump in the county by 24 points — her best showing anywhere.

The intense political engagement of anti-Trump, college-educated whites has been evident for some time. It could be crucial in November, ensuring Democrats that a big chunk of their base won’t need any prodding to vote. And especially if overall turnout dips significantly from the record-high levels of 2020, it could also translate into a decisive edge for Democrats in close battleground states.

But when it comes to the GOP primaries now unfolding, what looks at first glance like a new and alarming weakness for Trump may very well be just the latest manifestation of a now-familiar phenomenon. 

Biden voters don’t run around in garish costumes festooned with his face or wave gigantic Biden flags from the back of their Biden-covered pick-up trucks. They just vote. And they vote in great numbers. That quiet enthusiasm is apparently impossible to pick up in the polls.

Hoookay….

I don’t know the story here, but anyone who would do this, even as a joke, is seriously messed up. It may be a cult but this is something even more disturbing.

Chauncy deVega at Salon has an interesting compendium of commentary by various experts in Christian nationalism today that’s well worth reading. Here’s one excerpt from Katherine Stewart the author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.”

There’s a disconnect between the reality and the narrative framing that sticks to everything. For example, we continue to get horse race coverage that tells us about Trump’s “big win” in South Carolina as if this were just another normal election cycle. On the other hand, the combination of Trump’s legal jeopardy and his increasingly unhinged, overtly fascist rhetoric is indisputable evidence that what we are facing is anything but normal.

As for Trump’s claims about being a prophet or some type of messiah, I think we have here a convergence between what appears to be Trump’s mental disorder and the needs of a base that has been primed for fascism. The only surprising thing about Trump’s claims is he has not yet said he is better than Jesus. That is sure to come! 

It is what it is, and anybody who has been watching this unfortunate man for the past decades knows exactly what I’m talking about. It’s just sad. The more pressing problem is that fascism so often works through the cult of the leader. The leader is always one who suffers on behalf of the victim majority, but who nonetheless triumphs against the evil cosmopolitan elite. And Trump seems to understand this instinctively, which is why he insists that, in his legal struggles against a supposedly corrupt system of justice, he is standing up for the little guy. 

We can’t know the extent to which Trump believes his own lies. The more important point is that majorities of Republican voters believe him when he speaks. In last summer’s CBS News-YouGov survey, Trump supporters – astonishingly –tend to trust him more than they trust their family and friends, conservative media, or even their own religious leaders. We cannot overstate the role of conspiracism and disinformation in bringing us to the point we are in right now. Many MAGA voters have been drawn into a fear-filled, fact-free world. They continue to believe the Big Lie that the 2020 was stolen; they think Trump was the greatest president ever; they say that his indictments are just political persecution from a “weaponized” system of justice; and they have been persuaded that a global cabal is trying to strip away from them everything they hold dear – and that Trump is the savior who will face down the demons and set the world aright. 

Yikes.

Dr. David P. Gushee author of several books including his most recent, “Defending Democracy From Its Christian Enemies” says this:

I hate to say it, but it sure looks like his notable appeal to the non-college white male is connected to a certain credulousness on the part of his base to Trump’s increasingly outlandish religious appeals. And his supporters either don’t know or don’t care that he is articulating cruel positions on such matters as deporting undocumented immigrants and abandoning Ukraine and maybe Europe as a whole to the Russians. 

Idolatry is when a false god or no god is worshipped as God. Trump’s narcissism enables him to see himself in idolatrous ways. Trump is using increasingly idolatrous language to describe himself. I think this may be because he actually believes it but it certainly is because he finds that the language works with a part of his base. 

The will-to-believe that we find in some of these followers is a classic precursor to idolatry. A lack of serious knowledge of the historic Christian faith is also a precursor to people being attracted to the use of religious symbols and language even when they should be repelled by what the faith itself would describe as an obvious misuse. e.g., just because someone uses religious language that does not mean they are a friend to faith or to believers. They may be a predator to faith and the faithful. But you have to actually know something about the religion to be able to tell the difference. Many scholars are trying to make sense of this, and here an internal Christian theological perspective is the most help. That is, we know that what Trump is doing religiously is parasitic on, rather than an expression of, vibrant and real Christian faith. 

Nothing I have seen to this point shows me that Trump’s hardcore religious base can be pried away from him. Not even imprisonment is likely to make a difference with this base. Sometimes in politics, and in history, a malignant force must simply be defeated, and then defeated again, and then defeated again. That is where we are. 

David L. Altheide author of the new book “Gonzo Governance: The Media Logic of Donald Trump”:

The disinformation about Trump’s defense of Christianity from leftists who want to tear down crosses is key to so-called Christian Nationalism. There is scant evidence that Christianity is under attack in the United States. But in true gonzo fashion, Trump creates a false image that appeals to extreme Evangelicals and Pentecostals. He is their savior. His effort to paint himself as a victim of political persecution plays to religious fundamentalists and others who have supported exclusionary and discriminatory policies. Many of his supporters fear ongoing rapid social change in our culture, including social media, the push for more rights by women, workers, and minority groups. And like Hitler, his sanctimonious appeal for strong resistance to guilty verdicts and criticisms of his racist policies is justified by the Divine, and that we all “answer to God in heaven.” When Trump refers to Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists as “persecuted Christians” he is following Hitler’s lead of defending racist policies with holy appeals. In 1936, Nazis claimed that God revealed himself “through our Fuehrer, to enable us to accomplish our great mission in the world.” Churches were tolerated as long they did not interfere with the state and did not oppose German racial ideals.   

Most of Trump’s rhetoric to religious zealots is intended to solidify their support. Trump’s minions are not likely to be dissuaded by anything since, in their support for a man who asks no forgiveness of numerous sins, they have already compromised many basic Christian ideals and standards of morality and conduct. Christians are aware of Biblical cautions to beware of false prophets, but political zealots could care less: They are political and will support anyone who advocates for their right-wing views of abortion, America as a white Christian nation, patriarchy, and discrimination against foreigners, most immigrants, and racial minorities.

MAGA is a cult and its dominated by people who call themselves evangelical Christians. They love him more than Jesus.

I thought this was an astute take on all this:

Marge Greene has been fighting funding Ukraine from the get and now she has the power to stop it altogether. And she’s using it.

Speaker Mike Johnson, and everyone else in the House GOP caucus, is scared to death of this woman. She is the defacto Speaker of the House because any speaker knows that she will trip that motion to vacate without a second thought and that will be the end of their speakership. McCarthy managed to co-opt her early because he knew how dangerous she was but she’s not going to make that mistake again. She knows her power lies in being the most vicious, ruthless person in the US Congress and she won’t give it away again.

If Johnson crosses her, he’s done and he knows it.

Among the loudest voices taking Johnson to task is Greene, who has threatened to file a motion to vacate his office if he does not meet the demands of herself and other hardline conservative House GOP members, particularly on opposition to providing more aid to Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. Greene has said that those funds should instead be spent domestically, including on measures to strengthen security at the U.S.-Mexico border amid an influx of migrants arriving into the country.

Speaking with Politico for an article published Sunday, the congresswoman admitted that the GOP’s desperation is largely why Johnson still has the speakership, even as his position within the party is increasingly perilous.

“I don’t think he’s safe right now,” Greene said. “The only reason he’s speaker is because our conference is so desperate.”

Ukraine’s future is in this woman’s blood soaked hands right now. How in the hell did this government come to put so much power into such a person’s hands?

What am I saying? This misbegotten system put Donald Trump in the White House so obviously anything is possible.

He’s still at it:

Former President Donald Trump was accused in a lawsuit Wednesday of trying to “drastically dilute” the value of stock shares in his social media company held by the firm’s co-founders, potentially depriving themof hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.

The partnership, United Atlantic Ventures alleges that Trump Media & Technology Group engaged in “wrongful 11th hour … maneuvering” to dilute UAV″s minority stake in the media company, a court filing says.

The Delaware Chancery Court lawsuit comes in advance of the planned merger of TMTG with a shell company called Digital World Acquisition Corp., which would result in the shares of the combined entity being publicly traded.

If DWAC shareholder approve the merger next month, Trump’s 90% stake in TMTG could be valued at more than $3 billion, given DWAC’s current share price.

UAV is a partnership of Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, who initially pitched Trump the idea of creating Trump Media in February 2021, after the former president was banned from Twitter and Facebook following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Both Litinsky and Moss were contestants on Trump’s television show, “The Apprentice.”

TMTG later built and launched Truth Social, the social media platform that Trump uses almost exclusively to communicate with the public.

The planned merger comes as Trump, who is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has been ordered to pay more than $500 million in civil judgments in New York, related to trial verdicts for business fraud and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll.

“The attempt here is to deprive them of the deal,” said Christopher Clark, a lawyer for UAV.

“It’s not like they went out and bought a lottery ticket,” Clark said of the co-founders. “They actually went out and did the work, they created Truth Social, and now the beneficiary of that, Donald Trump, doesn’t want to pay.”

“Not a unique story, unfortunately,” Clark said, referring to Trump’s infamous practice of contesting bills from contractors and lawyers.

This is the same crime he’s been committing for decades and getting away with it, at least until the State of New York finally stepped up and did something about it. But he’s clearly still at it. If these guys manage to deprive him of his 3 billion dollar deal, that would be of great service to the world.