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The Faithful Faithless

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 6, 2024

Trump’s GOP won’t take yes for an answer

“I want my war!” (Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook in Hook, 1991). More fake hair.

The French famously supported Americans’ fight to win freedom from England and its king. But Republicans won’t support Ukraine’s fight to secure theirs against invading Russians. Republicans won’t take yes for an answer on a bill to enhance U.S. border security after hissing and spitting about it for years. They don’t want to govern, they want to rule, yet have no idea how to do it. But kowtowing before Donald “91 Counts” Trump? They’re hell at bowing and scraping.

Christian conservatives make up a sizable percentage of the GOP base. They are conditioned from childhood to serve a heavenly king and to long for his return. But since Jesus Christ has been delayed now for two thousand years, they’ve grown impatient. They are ready to settle. For Trump.

With President Joe Biden’s economy going gangbusters (even Fox News admits it); with the inflation Republicans expected to run on falling; with unemployment at historic lows and the stock market at historic highs; with the end of Roe following him like a dark cloud; and with the U.S. justice system breathing down his neck about insurrection and other crimes, Trump has no weapons left for waging his 2024 war on America except fearmongering about border security.

Trump wants his war. On nonwhite immigrants and, ultimately, on the freedoms the French helped us win in the eighteenth century.

His enablers in Congress will bow and oblige. They won’t take yes for an answer on the border security bill they’ve ranted about for years (Catherine Rampell, Washington Post):

A hard-won, bipartisan Senate deal dropped Sunday evening, with tons of items on conservatives’ border-policy bucket list, including many that former president Donald Trump had begged for. These include:

  • beefing up border security as a condition for giving any more aid to Ukraine (check!)
  • a tougher and faster asylum-processing system so that those who don’t meet asylum criteria cannot stay and work for years while their cases crawl through the courts (check!)
  • hiring more personnel for Customs and Border Protection as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (1,500 and 1,200, respectively — so, check, check!)
  • huge investments in fentanyl detection technologies and other anti-trafficking enforcement (check!)
  • reviving something like Title 42 restrictions, wherein the president can “shut down” most of the asylum system (though this version doesn’t require a public health pretext and has more severe consequences for border-crossers — so, check-plus, perhaps).

House Republicans should have been pinching themselves in disbelief. Yet within hours of this 370-page bill dropping, House GOP leaders ruled out letting their chamber vote on any of it.

“I’ve seen enough,” Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) said, later adding that it was “a waste of time.” He just can’t take yes for an answer, it seems.

Speaker Johnson denies he’s taking orders from the indicted former president, but that’s beyond laughable in this former political party.

“I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people, many from parts unknown, into our once great, but soon to be great again, Country!” Trump posted to Truth Social. Give him everything and he’ll insist it’s wrong.

Only he can fix it. His cult is willing to see Ukraine fall and the “chaos” they claim is occuring on the border (and the MAGA convoy in Texas could not find) continue until Trump is back in the White House. They will misinform the public about the proposed bill to justify killing it.

Maybe House lawmakers are genuinely confused about how immigration law works. After all, they keep insisting that President Biden take actions that courts have ruled would be illegal. They also appear to misunderstand (misrepresent?) an aspect of the bipartisan Senate deal, in suggesting that it “accepts 5,000 illegal immigrants a day.” This is not, in fact, what the bill would do; rather, it would force the United States to block anyone crossing between ports of entry from even applying for asylum when that threshold has recently been met (as is the case right now).

Maybe House Republicans have convinced themselves that any legislation that could appeal to Democrats must, ipso facto, be too reasonable for them to consider. In a twist on the Groucho Marx line, they’d never belong to a club that would have anyone else as a member.

Hard-line Republicans had already begun efforts to punish their own party members who worked on this bipartisan deal, including lead GOP negotiator Sen. James Lankford(Okla.). Poor Lankford reportedly didn’t want this job at all, but he caught the falling knife anyway — and then got stabbed in the back with it.

The bill is too conservative for many Democrats, yet Biden is willing to accept it to get more ammunition to Ukraine’s defenders as part of the package. But Trump wants his political war. The Ukrainians have a real, one on their hands.

Trump is no Marquis de Lafayette, and the Republicans no allies of freedom like the French.

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Trouble In Paradise

Published by digby on February 5, 2024

The border convoy is getting crispy

Some Might Call This Blackmail

Published by digby on February 5, 2024

Or better yet, terrorism

These people are very stupid, so you can’t expect most of them to know history or understand basic governing requirements. The ones that do obviously don’t give a damn. They’ve been taking hostages for years on budget deals. Now they are using the security of the United States and the world as a weapon to get their way:

It is not unusual for Washington Republicans to receive visitors — candidates, lobbyists, political donors — who boast about their commitment to securing the border and cutting taxes.

It’s not every day that one of those visitors used to run Denmark.

Yet on a recent Thursday afternoon, several hard-line members of the House found themselves listening to Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the former Danish prime minister emphasized his small-government values. As a head of government, Rasmussen told them, he had restricted migration and held down taxes — stances even the conservative Freedom Caucus might admire.

“He was trying to draw parallels with Republican ideology,” recalled Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, who helped convene the meeting.

Then Rasmussen addressed his real agenda: a passionate appeal for aiding Ukraine.

The meeting between a statesman of the West and outspoken voices of the American right captured the tensions at the heart of the transatlantic security relationship — and served, perhaps, as a preview of just how strained old alliances could grow under a second Trump presidency. For Rasmussen, who is also a former head of NATO, it was a brief immersion in the brute transactional politics that now governs the U.S. Congress, even on the most sensitive matters of national security.

The group that met with Rasmussen, which included at least two Freedom Caucus members, heard him out politely and even sympathetically, according to Buck and others in the room. They liked his argument that holding the line against Russia would send a message to China about American resolve. Even more resonant was Rasmussen’s scathing criticism of the Biden administration’s pullout from Afghanistan — a costly error, he said, that emboldened the enemies of democracy and invited the invasion of Ukraine.

Then the pushback came.

Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina, a 60-year-old urologist by training, was the most direct voice in the room, laying out his raw political calculus in unperfumed terms.

Murphy told Rasmussen that the price for backing Ukraine must be a crackdown at the border with Mexico. Murphy said he agreed with Rasmussen about the Ukraine war, on the merits, but saw war funding as crucial leverage in a separate policy negotiation with President Joe Biden.

When I spoke with Murphy about the meeting, he echoed those lines. Blaming Biden for having “invited his own country to be invaded” by migrants, he said the Ukraine issue was the best tool for forcing the president’s hand.

“When you have fulcrums, you have to use them,” he said. “We have to use what we can — sadly enough, with the conflict in Ukraine.”

That theory of governing is not new to Washington. It has been a regular feature of legislative politics for decades. But this mode of brinkmanship has become more ordinary and more dangerous. The demands of recalcitrant lawmakers have grown. So have the risks they are willing to take with the real-world consequences of their actions.

It used to be considered radical to shut down the government over a spending dispute. Now, the future of European security is a bargaining chip in an unrelated policy battle.

Now these people are refusing to take yes for an answer. Joe Biden could agree to enact the entire Trump immigration agenda including his stupid wall and they would still not do it. Trump wants the issue for the election and they agree with him.

But lets face facts, they are also objectively pro-Russia and they hate Europe and would be fine if it fell to Vladimir Putin. It’s impossible now to see any other explanation.

As it stands today, they are tanking the border bill and have no plans to pass Ukraine aide despite their demands being met on the former but Speaker Johnson is rushing to put a stand alone Israel aid bill on the floor. They are 100% bad faith actors in every way.

Luckily Biden is calling their bluff on that last one:

Trump Says He Didn’t Endorse James Lankford

Published by digby on February 5, 2024

Uhm…

He told Bongino, “I won 77 out of 77 counties [in Oklahoma]. Ronald Reagan is second with 56.” Bush ’04, McCain and Romney swept all 77 as well. The GOP hasn’t lost a county in Oklahoma since the 20th Century. In other words, Trump is nothing special in Oklahoma. It is a dyed in the wool red state.

It appears that Lankford, a far right GOPer, has decided that he wants to do the job of being a far right legislator instead of a full time MAGA sycophant. I wonder how well that’s going to work out for him.

CNN’s Manu Raju spoke with Sen. James Lankford about the GOP opposition to his border deal.

“I’m frustrated when people put out intentionally false information. I expect more. There are policy disagreements on that, I get that,” he said. “If people think that politics are wrong, and now we’re in a presidential year, so let’s not help Biden in the process, we’re just going to disagree on that. I get frustrated when people put out things that are intentionally false, that they know are false, because I expect more of Americans.” 

Lankford: “It was funny for me just to be able to watch some of their conversation last night from members that I’ve talked to that have said to me, ‘Hey, I really need weeks to be able to review this. It’s really complicated.’ And then within an hour they were coming out in opposition,” he said. “It was like, so much for the weeks I need to review it. I can tell now the weeks of review wasn’t actually to review, it was just to try to kill it, stall it.” 

Asked him if he were frustrated with Trump. “His job is to run for president. My job is to serve the nation,” Lankford said. “I’m in the Senate right now on Homeland Security, doing border management, I’m doing my job. He’s doing his job, he’s running for president.” 

Lankford said that the law needs to changed — and more must be done besides just administrative action. He pointed to House GOP passing HR2

“If there really is a problem on the border – which there is a problem on the border, it’s not like just enforcement, which clearly Biden’s not enforcing the border – but it’s also a problem in the law,” he said. “Which is why they put out H.R. 2 because they saw the problems in the law, which is why we said in October we need to change the law to be able to deal with these things. We see a change in law, then the House needs to be able to put out a bipartisan proposal that’ll pass the House and the Senate.” 

It even appears that he might be a human being. How novel:

Unfortunately, for Lankford, I’m afraid this is The Kiss Of Death:

We Need A Verdict

Published by digby on February 5, 2024

People would like to know if a jury of Trump’s peers find that he has committed crimes before they vote next November. It’s not too much to ask:

Most Americans want to see a verdict on the federal charges former President Donald Trump faces related to election subversion in 2020 before this year’s presidential election, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. And looking ahead, most expect Trump to pardon himself of any federal crimes he’s convicted of if he wins the presidency – or to refuse to concede if he loses in November.

About half of Americans, 48%, say it’s essential that a verdict is reached before the 2024 presidential election, and another 16% that they’d prefer to see one. Just 11% say that a trial on the charges should be postponed until following the election, with another quarter saying the trial’s timing doesn’t matter to them. A 72% majority of Democrats and 52% of independents say it’s essential that a verdict is reached pre-election. Republicans are more split. While 38% say that a verdict should be reached before the presidential election, including 20% who call that essential, another 39% say it doesn’t matter when the trial is held, and 23% that they think the trial should be held after this election.

It’s absurd that the Republicans are so far gone that they refuse to find someone other than a man under 91 criminal indictments in several different jurisdictions to nominate for president of the United States. Personally, I think that’s enough to disqualify him, along with dozens of other acts of corruption and malfeasance before and after he was president. It terrifying that almost half the country seems prepared to put such a person back into the the White House. But if some of them need to see a jury verdict before they can decide that he is unfit then they damned well should have one. It’s outrageous that the courts are dragging their feet on this.

Trump Is A Privatizer

Published by digby on February 5, 2024

Trump will be very busy exacting revenge on his enemies so he won’t even know what’s going on elsewhere in his administration. Also he’s learned that he can just lie and say up is down and black is white and tens of millions of people will believe him so he can do whatever he wants without ever having to be accountable for the horrors he inflicts.

You can bet this will happen if he wins. It’s been one of the fundamental goals of the Republican Party for decades and they will shove the sharpie in his hand and he will sign it:

LAST YEAR, FOR the first time ever, a majority of Americans eligible for Medicare were on privatized Medicare Advantage plans. If Republicans win the presidential race this year, the push to fully privatize Medicare, the government health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities, will only intensify. 

Conservative operatives have already sketched out what the GOP’s policy agenda would look like in the early days of a new Donald Trump presidency. As Rolling Stone has detailed, the proposed Project 2025 agenda is radically right-wing. One item buried in the 887-page blueprint has attracted little attention thus far, but would have a monumental impact on the health of America’s seniors and the future of one of America’s most popular social programs: a call to “make Medicare Advantage the default enrollment option” for people who are newly eligible for Medicare. 

Such a policy would hasten the end of the traditional Medicare program, as well as its foundational premise: that seniors can go to any doctor or provider they choose. The change would be a boon for private health insurers — which generate massive profits and growing portions of their revenues from Medicare Advantage plans — and further consolidate corporate control over the United States health care system. 

He’s going to do many horrible things and this is one of them.

Get Ready For More Chaos

Published by digby on February 5, 2024

The House is only getting started

As usual these days, the GOP congress is a burbling cauldron of chaos and dysfunction with wild hearings, inexplicable strategy and internal strife. They are all fighting among themselves trying to curry favor with their party’s leader, Donald Trump, and jockeying for power. And it’s an election year, which even in placid times turns politicians into preening posers desperate for money and attention. It is a combustible situation.

The budget is still not settled although they managed to extend the deadlines for a short while as they try to hammer out deals on taxes, national security and the border. And they have a lot of work to do on all the investigations they are currently pursuing, which to this point are utter embarrassments.

The big show was supposed to be the impeachment of Joe Biden, promised to Donald Trump as payback for the two impeachments he endured. That one’s not looking good at the moment. The House oversight committee chairman. James Comer, who is running the Hunter Biden investigation keeps punching holes in his own narrative every time he interviews another witness. Just last week, another presumed “whistle blower”, Eric Schwerin, a former business associate of the president’s son, was interviewed in closed door testimony and swore under penalty of perjury that the president was not involved at all in Hunter’s business dealings.

This is how Chairman Comer lamely explained all this:

CNN reported that the GOP is finally seeing the writing on the wall

[O]ne GOP lawmaker estimated there are around 20 House Republicans who are not convinced there is evidence for impeachment, and Republicans can only lose two votes in the current House margins…

“You’d be hard pressed to say it’s going well,” said a GOP source closely following that investigation. “It’s a jumbled mess.”

It appears that Biden’s impeachment is going nowhere fast but all is not lost. In the next few days we should see a vote in the House to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as part of their current election year border extravaganza. If they go through with it, it will be the second impeachment of a cabinet secretary in history, the last one happening 150 years ago. Why are they doing it? They are opposed to the administration’s immigration policies, something which has never before been the basis for impeachment which is defined as treason, bribery and high crimes or misdemeanors.

They know this is bogus, of course. It’s all for effect, much like the dozen or so different Benghazi hearings in the run-up to the 2016 election. Rather than have Judiciary Committee handle the matter as is usual, they opted for the Homeland Security Committee run the inquiry which opted to only hold two sham hearings before releasing the articles of impeachment last week. They charged him with two articles: “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and a “breach of public trust” claiming that he failed to detain enough migrants and lying to congress and the American people. These are vague allegations that don’t even come close to meeting the constitutional definition of impeachable offenses.

Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board, hardly a friend of the administration tried to wave them off:

House Republicans are marking up articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and the question is why? As much as we share the frustration with the Biden border mess, impeaching Mr. Mayorkas won’t change enforcement policy and is a bad precedent that will open the gates to more cabinet impeachments by both parties.

Perhaps most galling is the fact that DHS claims that if enough migrants are not being detained, it’s because the congress has failed to provide the funding to do so. And now, even with Democrats and the White House capitulating to most of their demands, they are refusing to take yes for an answer.

On Sunday night Senate negotiators released the details of their hard fought bipartisan border agreement which is harsher than we would have seen under any Democratic administration or congressional majority in the last 40 years. (There are some policy improvements as well as laid out here by Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy) They agreed to the terms as the price House Republicans demanded in order to fund other vital national security priorities. So naturally, the House Republicans immediately declared it dead on arrival. This was expected since they’ve been saying that for weeks despite not knowing what was in it.

Republican House leaders immediately launched into bad faith interpretations of the bill with the Speaker even lying to the media and suggesting that he wasn’t ever consulted on the negotiations (a contention refuted by the principal GOP negotiator, Sen. James Lankford, R-Ok., who said that Speaker Johnson declined his invitation to participate.)

Now the larger bill, which also contains funding for Ukraine, Israel, and humanitarian aid for Gaza, will have to pass the Senate which, according to some observers, is why the House is rejecting it outright in the hopes that it will influence the Senate to kill the bill:

I don’t know what those means are but it would be quite something to see Donald Trump’s howl at his orders being rejected. It’s hard to see exactly how that will come to pass but the House GOP is so dysfunctional and working with such a tiny majority that I suppose anything is possible.

We know that Trump and the Republicans don’t want to pass any border legislation because they have told us they want to use the “crisis” to beat up Democrats in the election. This is no secret. They also don’t want to pass any more Ukraine funding for reasons that are simply inexplicable unless their apparent attraction to Russian president Vladimir Putin is more than simply for show. Speaker Johnson said over the weekend that he plans to take care of Israel in a separate bill (so his evangelical buddies and the hard right Israeli leadership don’t need to worry about that.)

It would be nice to think that the American people will see through all this and realize how utterly craven and irresponsible the Republicans are being but with all the noise out there it’s impossible to know if they can hear it even if they’re paying attention. The one person we know for sure the Republicans have to fear is Donald Trump who is going to be very, very angry if they don’t follow through on the impeachment of his nemesis Joe Biden. He made himself crystal clear on that and I won’t be surprised if they go through with a perfunctory impeachment vote regardless, just to make him happy. If there’s one thing they are terrified of doing it’s pissing off Dear Leader.

Surviving The Pollercoaster

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 5, 2024

Choose not to ride

Silver Bullet roller coaster. Photo by KeithJ (2005) via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED).

Dan Pfeiffer of Crooked Media attempts to coax readers of presidential polls off the ledge. His team has dubbed the stomach-churn the Pollercoaster.

Biden is up. Biden is down. Biden is tied. Trump is ahead by three, Biden is by six. Take a breath, Pfeiffer advises:

1. Polling is an Educated Guess

There are two rules for riding the Pollercoaster. First, polls are not supposed to be predictive. They don’t tell us what WILL happen. They try to tell us what is happening right now — during the polling period. Second, every poll is based on an educated guess about who is going to vote. When the polls are wrong — like they were in 2016 and 2020 — it’s because pollsters were wrong about the makeup of the electorate.

In 2016, the New York Times’s Nate Cohn gave the raw data from a poll of Floridians to four different well-respected pollsters and asked them to estimate the results of the poll using their methodology and models. And lo and behold, the four pollsters (and Cohn) got widely different results.

I would encourage everyone to read Nate’s write-up of the experiment because it’s one of the best explanations of the least understood and most opaque parts of polling.

The process of weighting the results to match one’s model of the likely electorate is rarely explained to the public, so it’s hard to understand exactly why the results differ, but that’s one main reason they do.

The 2024 election will be unprecedented, Pfeiffer explains, as was the COVID-19 election of 2020.

“For the first time in the modern era, a former president is running to reclaim his job. There is a historic level of dissatisfaction with both candidates,” Pfeiffer explains. “A record number of voters are expressing interest in voting for a third-party candidate. Finally, one of the candidates is facing the prospect of being convicted of a crime and sentenced to prison before the election.”

Poll that one, pilgrim, and I’ll get you another!

Regarding those third-party efforts, Pfeiffer adds:

First, every pollster is treating the No Labels candidacy differently. Some use possible candidates like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin or former Republican Governor Larry Hogan. Others describe No Labels as a bipartisan organization. Secondly, we have no idea where these candidates will be on the ballot.

Ballot position makes a difference in the voting booth, and where the “thirds” land could be different in every state.

Finally, Pfeiffer gets to the factor that keeps me up at night: independents and young voters. When he sees two wildly divergent polls, Pfeiffer looks at the crosstabs for how those groups responded to poll questions:

In the Quinnipiac poll that has Biden winning by 6, he is beating Trump among Independents by 12. In the CNN poll, Biden is trailing Trump by 4 with Independents. In the Bloomberg/Morning Consult swing state poll, Biden is down 8 with Independents. In the NBC poll, Trump is winning Independents by 19 points!

The youth vote is a wild card even if the Harvard Youth Poll shows it leans Biden.

The bigger question is how many of them will turn out. The greatest untapped pool of eligible voters that lean blue are nonvoters under 45. They could run this joint if they truned out like their elders. We could lose it all if they don’t.

Right now, polls are a kind of “choose your own adventure” affair. People promote the ones that favor their favorites and downplay the rest. So Pfeiffer closes with some practical advice:

The broader trends of the recent polling tell me two things. First, Biden, at minimum, has stabilized, and things may be looking up as people’s views on the economy improve. Second, the polls are consistent with what we have long assumed — this is a very close and winnable race that will come down to less than 100,000 votes across a small handful of states. Our task is the same if the polls show Biden up by 2 or down by 5. We have to do the work of persuading voters, which is why you should immediately go to Vote Save America and sign up to do something other than worry about polls.

You can be a player or you can be a victim of politics. What’ll it be?

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

“Ya’ll got the secret sauce”

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 5, 2024

Leading horses to water again

“Ya’ll got the secret sauce,” the neighboring congressional district chair said in a call after the 2014 midterm elections. Could I bottle it and send her counties a case?

November 2014 was not as bad for Democrats as 2010, the REDMAP election in which Republicans flipped 20 state houses across the country. But 2014 wasn’t good either. Still, North Carolina was the only state across the South where Democrats picked up state legislative seats. We netted three, two in my county. Betsy wanted to know our secret.

Listen. Political campaigns are not just contests of ideas. They are contests of skills. No matter how much people believe money, ideas and policies win them, at some point you have to play the game and put points on the scoreboard. Once polls close, we don’t count policies or ideologies. We count votes.

State parties are like little armies. Each year, veterans retire, and new volunteers arrive. Parties run recruits through basic training. This is a precinct; here’s how you organize it. Here are our charter and bylaws. This is the voter database; here’s how to pull a basic walk list and canvass your neighborhood. Etc.

Unlike the U.S. Army, what state parties lack is Officer Candidate School. Volunteers who might eventually lead a county’s worth of precincts pick up higher-level skills by the seat of their pants over multiple election cycles. If then. Democrats have gotten by on the assumption that they will for decades. Bad assumption.

Activists who live in more rural counties where big races don’t parachute in satellite campaign offices may never learn how a well-organized turnout operation works. Especially in a non-swing state. They don’t know what they don’t know.

Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics.
– attributed to Gen. Omar Bradley

“It’s like they give you a small box of parts with no assembly instructions,” one organizer observed of state trainings.

Seriously. I have county chair manuals from multiple states, some over 250 pages. They are heavy on administration and light on electing Democrats. That’s why I wrote For The Win. This is nuts-and-bolts, mechanics and logistics for maximizing your county’s down-ballot vote and for building enduring infrastructure with little money and modest computer skills. Theoretical Foundations of Campaign Craft this is not.

In 2011, The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer wrote “State For Sale” about conservative millionaire Art Pope’s influence on North Carolins elections. She opens on the story of State Sen. John Snow, a likeable, moderate Democrat incumbent in the state’s western tip. Pope threw nearly a million dollars at Snow’s 2010 reelection campaign, including two dozen attack mailers that might have accused him of being a pedophile, except that was not yet a default Republican smear.

Snow lost by 161 votes spread over eight counties, less than the combined undervote in his down-ballot race in two of his smaller counties. I’m convinced to this day that if those rural counties were better organized, Snow would have held his seat.

In the 2020 elections, COVID was a big influence. North Carolina Chief Justice Cheri Beasley lost reelection in her statewide down-ballot race by 401 votes. That’s the undervote in just a couple of precincts.

It’s hell down-ballot. And while not marquee races, state legislative and judicial races mean more to your daily lives than the clown show under the U.S. Capitol dome. Ask state activists fighting to secure women’s bodily autonomy post Dobbs.

With the advent of early voting, most elections are no longer one-day, 14-hour turnout marathons for precinct captains. The county party plays a larger role. It coordinates a weeks-long turnout operation involving perhaps dozens of precincts and multiple early voting sites and campaigns. A big part of that job is education and ensuring voters know to not simply vote for president and walk away. But beyond gaining seat-of-the-pants experience, and with states’ training budgets and bandwidth limited, few are teaching less experienced and under-resourced county committee chairs how to step into that role. So I do it.

This free “cookbook” is on its way to over 2,500 county chairs this week. It’s still a lead-a-horse effort. You can’t win if you don’t show up to play. And if you do show up, you’d best have “game.”

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Elon Getting Crispy

Published by digby on February 4, 2024

You’ve read about how the Trump White House was basically a pill mill, dispensing uppers and downers like candy and even handing out fentanyl for reasons no one has been able to explain. Right. Perfectly normal.

Look what’s been happening at Tesla, the company owned by the other Very Stable Genius, Elon Musk. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Several current or former directors at Tesla and SpaceX attend parties with him, go on exotic vacations and hang out at Burning Man, the Nevada arts and music festival.

Musk and these directors, including venture capitalists Gracias and Ira Ehrenpreis, tech mogul Larry Ellison, former media executive James Murdoch, as well as Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk, have invested tens of millions of dollars in each other’s companies—Ellison held billions of dollars in Tesla shares with about a 1.5% holding in 2022. Some also received career support and help from Elon Musk.

Most members of Tesla’s current eight-person board have amassed shares worth hundreds of millions of dollars from their seats over the years, significantly more than what board members at other companies make for their service. 

Tesla pays its directors mostly in stock options, and the current board, not including Musk himself, collectively has made more than $650 million selling shares from those options. They hold additional options valued at nearly $1 billion. Some directors agreed to return a portion of that compensation to Tesla to resolve a shareholder lawsuit about their compensation while denying any wrongdoing. A judge has yet to approve the settlement. 

Some current and former Tesla and SpaceX directors have knowledge of Musk’s illegal drug use but haven’t taken public action, according to people who have witnessed the drug use or were briefed on it.

The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Musk has used drugs including cocaine, ecstasy, LSD and magic mushrooms, and that leaders at Tesla and SpaceX were concerned about it, particularly his recreational use of ketamine, for which Musk has said he has a prescription. The illegal drugs violate strict antidrug policies at Musk’s companies and could put SpaceX’s federal contracts and Musk’s security clearance at risk. 

At the upscale Austin Proper Hotel, Musk has attended social gatherings in recent years with Tesla board member Joe Gebbia, the 

Airbnb co-founder and a friend of his, where Musk took ketamine recreationally through a nasal spray bottle multiple times, according to people familiar with the drug use and the parties. 

Other directors, Gracias, Jurvetson and Kimbal Musk, have consumed drugs with him, according to people who have witnessed the drug use and others with knowledge of it.

Musk and some people close to him, including Kimbal Musk, attend parties at Hotel El Ganzo, a boutique hotel in San José del Cabo, Mexico, known for its art and music scene as well as drug-fueled events, according to people familiar with the parties.

The volume of drug use by Musk and with board members has become concerning, some of these people said.

In the culture Musk has created around him, some friends, including directors, feel there is an expectation to consume drugs with him because they think refraining could upset the billionaire, who has made them a lot of money, some of the people said. More so, they don’t want to risk losing the social capital that comes from being close to Musk, which for ome feels akin to having proximity to a king.

Totally fine. Nothing to worry about.

Elon Musk already holds the world record for losing the most money, and the Tesla CEO has lost another $30.5 billion in the first month of 2024. At the same time, his rival in wealth, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has gained $7.3 billion.

Now the gap between the tech moguls is just $15 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That might sound like a lot (a lot, a lot) to normal people, but it’s not much in the race to the top for the world’s richest, especially considering that Musk has already lost twice that sum in just a few weeks.

You’d think that Musk would be attending to business in light of that. Well, not so much. Get a load of what he spent the weekend doing around the clock:

It was a full blown bender, I’m afraid.

The man has issues. Big ones.