Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Tennessee public education advocates chalk up a win

Efforts to defund Tennessee’s public schools crashed and burned on Monday after weekend negotiations failed to advance Gov. Bill Lee’s universal voucher bill. The bill will be dead (for now) once the legislature adjourns for the year. Lee plans to bring it back next session.

The Tennessean:

“I am extremely disappointed for the families who will have to wait yet another year for the freedom to choose the right education for their child, especially when there is broad agreement that now is the time to bring universal school choice to Tennessee,” Lee said in an early Monday statement. “While we made tremendous progress, unfortunately it has become clear that there is not a pathway for the bill during this legislative session.”

“Freedom to choose”? Remember when conservatives pitched vouchers as a way to help poor, minority kids escape “decaying” inner-city public schools, lives of poverty, drugs, etc. ? Nowadays they’ve dropped the facade. The “funding should follow the child” rubric hides the real goal of having the general public subsidized rich parent’s choice to send their kids to private schools. Vouchers and supposed “opportunity scholarship” programs are aimed at diverting public funds away from not-for-profit public education to selective private academies, many of them religious schools. Many charter schools operate the same way with public funds.

Charter schools, which were originally proposed to be district-run, innovative public schools, have since morphed into national charter school chains, Christian nationalist schools, and facades for for-profit corporations. More here: https://t.co/ManKFPEI1p #CharterSchoolFail https://t.co/xafa5jsOdT

— Jeff Bryant (@jeffbcdm) February 1, 2024

A look behind the curtain reveals where the tax dollars get diverted, to nominally nonprofit private schools often operated by for-profit LLCs that take a markup on dollars spent for services, supplies, teachers, and facilities.

Resegregation of schooling is a bonus for supporters, as is ensuring fundamentalists’ kids are not exposed to ideas like CRT, DEI, multiculturalism, “woke,” evolution, or any other Fox News bogeymen-of-the-month. These programs are designed to subsidize rich families who already “choose” to sent their kinds to private schools. What they want is a tax break for doing so.

“Vouchers are welfare for the well-to-do,” Missouri activist Jess Piper tweeted in Feburary. Annual public schools spending is still “the big enchilada” for many investors.

The Tennessee For All Coalition celebrated its successful efforts to kill the voucher proposal.

Another entry from The Tennssean:

“The governor’s voucher scam would have diverted money from our already underfunded public schools, doing immeasurable harm to every community in our state,” the coalition said in a statement. “Every child in Tennessee deserves to have a chance to succeed through strong public schools. We are one step closer to this vision with the defeat of this voucher scam. We will continue to fight to increase funding to every public school so communities can have more resources, restorative accountability measures, less reliance on high-stakes testing, and better paid educators and school support staff.”

We won!! This was only possible because of parents, students, educators and community members organizing together across the state.

Congratulations to everyone who gave their time to this effort, here’s some of what we did together:https://t.co/8MmWxkoXIj

— Tennessee For All (@TN4ALL) April 22, 2024

Tennessee Education Association President Tanya T. Coats said in a statement:

“90% of Tennessee’s students are educated in public schools, and today is a great day for them and their parents,” part of the statement read. “On behalf of our students, I want to thank the legislators who stood strong for our state’s children. I also want to thank the thousands of Tennesseans, including their local elected officials, who were moved to speak out against the governor’s proposal, and who I’m sure would do it all again in a heartbeat. We’ve seen a lot of bad voucher policies passed around the country, and none of them have lived up to the promise of benefitting parents and students.”

Despite my Republican colleagues best effort, the power of the people cannot and will not be stopped.

Proud of the people of Tennessee for standing up for labor, racial justice, and public schools.

In the face of unrelenting pressure, the people are winning— resistance matters. pic.twitter.com/zEDJCCHjoZ

— Rep. Justin Jones (@brotherjones_) April 23, 2024

So take the win and prepare for the next battle. These guys are nothing if not relentless.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

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

Not bloody likely…

Walter Shapiro in TNR runs down all the consequences we’ve seen so far from the Supreme Court decision to reverse Roe vs Wade and the political problem it’s caused for Republicans:

Even a huckster with Trump’s disdain for the truth cannot spin away the fact that Republicans are on the unpopular side of the abortion debate. Fifty-nine percent of voters in a Fox News poll in late March said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And a Wall Street Journal poll in mid-March found that a stunning 39 percent of suburban women in swing states consider abortion to be their most important voting issue in 2024.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Republicans. In the spring and early summer of 2022, as the Alito draft became the official opinion of the Supreme Court in the Dobbs case, the prevailing GOP view of the political aftereffects of the decision was, in effect, “It will all blow over.” No Republican predicted that abortion would still be a powerful weapon for the Democrats in 2024 and beyond.

Writing in Politico, Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative National Review, declared that the Dobbs decision was “a fizzle” as “a quick-acting elixir for Democratic political woes.” His logic in the July 2022 piece was that the Alito leak gave everyone a chance to brace for a reversal of Roe, “limiting the shock value and making the decision a dominant story for days rather than weeks.”

In an interview with NPR, Mitch McConnell—who, via efforts to block Merrick Garland and rush through Amy Coney Barrett, played arguably as big a role in Roe’s reversal as Trump did—seemed unfazed by the political implications of his anti-abortion handiwork. “I think it will be certainly heavily debated in state legislative and governor’s races because the court will have, in effect, returned this issue to the political process,” McConnell said after the Alito draft leaked. “My guess is in terms of the impact on federal races, I think it’s probably going to be a wash.”

Since everything for McConnell is political, it is tempting to wonder if he would have pursued the abortion issue with break-the-rules zealotry if he knew that it would turn out to be anything but a wash for the Republicans. There are hints from McConnell’s early days as, yes, a liberal Republican that he once supported Roe. If there was no conviction behind McConnell’s rush to approve anti-abortion judges, it suggests that this was a major miscalculation by a man who was always prized for his political sagacity. 

GOP Senate flamethrower Josh Hawley, whose raised fist of support shortly before the January 6 insurrection lingers in memory, offered a novel why-Republicans-will-gain theory in an interview with the Kansas City Star after the Dobbs decision. According to Hawley, millions of Americans will relocate based on the availability of abortions in their states. “The effect is going to be that more and more red states are going to become more red,” the Missouri senator said, “purple states are going to become red and the blue states are going to get a lot bluer. And I would look for Republicans as a result of this to extend their strength in the Electoral College.”

Other right-wing senators, who had been leading the anti-abortion bandwagon for years, adopted the implausible argument that the uproar over the leaked Alito memo was all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Texas Senator Ted Cruz argued in a TV interview, “Angry leftists, many of whom are pretty ignorant and don’t even know what overturning Roe means, I think a month afterwards are gonna be surprised—‘Wait, nothing about my life changed.’” (Something tells me that voters in Arizona and Florida might not agree.) 

Concerned about the political blowback from the decision, Senate Republicans circulated a memo (scooped by Axios) that was little more than a big smiley button on how to handle abortion. Written immediately after the Alito leak, the memo recommends, “Be the compassionate, consensus-builder on abortion policy.… While people have many different views on abortion policy, Americans are compassionate people who want to welcome every new baby into the world.” An ad script for a mythical female Republican suggests this deliberately bland wording: “Here’s my view—I am pro-life, but in reality, forget about the political labels, all of us are in favor of life.” 

When anyone in politics says, “Forget about the political labels,” realize that they are trying to squirm out of the losing side of an argument. 

Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, who is sincerely anti-abortion, offered some wise recommendations for Republican men in May 2022: “Don’t fail to embrace compromise because you can make money on keeping the abortion issue alive.… Use the moment to come forward as human beings who care about women and want to give families the help they need. Align with national legislation that helps single mothers to survive.”

You may have noticed that none of this has happened over the last two years. Instead, the abortion issue has been defined for the nation by reactionary state judges and insensitive, good-old-boy GOP state legislators. The result is that the Dobbs decision was not a single event, but a torrent of regressive policies. It is telling that, despite Trump’s urging, the GOP-controlled Arizona state House failed again Tuesday to soften the state’s abortion laws. 

Many Republicans in Washington embraced the anti-abortion movement out of political convenience. With the issue gathering momentum nearly two years after Dobbs, this Faustian bargain doesn’t seem very convenient after all.

The anti-abortion zealots are pushing for a national ban, saying they will “compromise” by just banning it after 15 weeks with some vague, ill defined exceptions. That just isn’t going to fly. It’s all extremely inconvenient and they simply don’t know what to do about it.

Axios on the GOP civil war:

A growing number of House Republicans are accusing their conservative colleagues of enabling Democratic wins, especially after this weekend’s foreign aid votes. Multiple members believe they could have gotten concessions from Democrats on border policy in exchange for Ukraine funding, only to be blown up by backlash from conservatives.GOP leadership brought up border security provisions alongside their foreign aid package — but the package was blocked by Republicans from reaching the House floor under normal rules.

It ultimately failed to get the two-thirds majority needed to pass the House under suspension of the rules.  “If you were a true conservative, you would actually advance border security, but what they want to do is they want to blow up border security,” Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) told Axios.

“[T]he members who scream the loudest about border security were actively and knowingly preventing us from getting it done,” another member said.

“They’re making us the most bipartisan Congress ever,” a third member told Axios. “Because they are unwilling to compromise just a little bit in a divided government, they force us to make bigger concessions and deals with the Dems.”

 Conservatives who advocate for blocking procedural motions argue it’s necessary to light a fire under GOP leadership to demand more.

Multiple conservatives said they expected more out of Speaker Mike Johnson than former Speaker Kevin McCarthy due to his record as a rank-and-file member. “Republicans have control of the House and we should be leveraging it to secure our border, unfortunately the Uniparty is working to secure the borders of Ukraine instead of our own border,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) tweeted.

“[T]he problem is [Johnson’s] gotten nothing on anything. Right? They roll him every time,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — who is pushing the motion to vacate — told reporters on Saturday.

Republicans left town yesterday without Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) pulling the trigger on her motion to vacate.

Johnson “needs to do the right thing, to resign and allow us to move forward in a controlled process. If he doesn’t do so, he will be vacated,” Greene said on Fox News.

 Johnson has faced some of the most tumultuous weeks of his speakership, with his longevity in the role remaining in question.

But the Louisiana Republican has asserted that he won’t cave to threats to his speakership and feels rules changes should be made in the next Congress to tamp down on the unprecedented level of chaos.

This is the problem when you put purists and low information conspiracy theorists into elective politics. They should have stayed Facebook activists not become legislators. They’re clueless about how this works and are obviously incapable of learning.

Marge says she wants Johnson to resign and is all over the internet saying that Republicans are so angry about all this that they will hold their breath until they turn blue and refuse to vote in November. Actually, these antics may very well be turning off normie Republicans who want the chaos to stop. Either way, I’m sure Marge will be there blaming her leadership because that’s what the right has been doing for the last 15 years. It’s their brand. And even if they lose everything this fall I doubt they’ve learned their lesson.

Following up on my earlier post today, I see that Philip Bump has some nice charts to illustrate the point that Biden has an advantage among likely voters:

On Sunday, the network published the results of a national poll that asked respondents, among other things, to evaluate how interested they were in the election on a scale from 1 to 10. Fewer than 2 in 3 selected 9 or 10 — lower than any similar measurement by NBC’s pollsters this late in a presidential election year since at least 2008.

Among Republicans, 70 percent indicated they were very interested in the election. Among Democrats, only 65 percent. Among independents? Fewer than half.

This isn’t terribly surprising. It is consistently the case that independents — generally meaning independents who tend to vote for one party or the other and independents who don’t — are less politically engaged and less likely to vote. Comparisons of national polling conducted by the Pew Research Center with Census Bureau estimates of the electorate show how much of the nonvoter pool in each recent election has been made up of independents.

In 2016 and 2020, at least two-thirds of partisans voted, according to this analysis. About 6 in 10 independents who lean toward a party did, while about half of non-leaning independents cast ballots.

But there’s an important asterisk this year: Those less likely to vote are also much more likely to support Trump.

You can see it in the NBC News data. Biden leads by nine points with those who voted in 2020 and 2022. Among those who voted in neither of those elections? Trump leads by 22 points.

He points out that the Harvard Youth Poll released last week suggests the same thing.

That amounts to an almost 20 point lead among likelies.

Research by University of Pennsylvania political scientist Dan Hopkins published by 538 earlier this month used an Associated Press poll conducted by NORC, previously the National Opinion Research Center, to compare support in the general election with voting frequency. The same pattern prevailed: Those who vote less often are more likely to back Trump — including among the Black and Hispanic voter pools that have been a focus of attention since 2020.

This suggests that Gallup’s finding that young and non-White voters were shifting right over the past few years might be a function of less politically engaged people.

Viewing the same point through a different lens: Pew’s analysis of recent voting habits shows that Black and Hispanic voters are also more likely to have not voted in recent elections.

Bump suggests this might indicate that all the handwringing about a supposedly big shift right among those voters is a bit of a mirage.

Obviously, Democrats still need to do everything they can to get out the vote. Apathy isn’t ever something to count on especially since Trump has a unique ability to motivate his cult. (Also, they’re going to try to throw out as many votes as possible.) But this does at least show that the majority of the most engaged people are appalled by Donald Trump and will do whatever they can to assure that he doesn’t get back into the White House. It’s something.

There’s a ton of legal analysis coming about today’s opening arguments in Trump hush money trial and I’ll try to recap some of it for you later. But in the meantime I found that I enjoyed Olivia Nuzzi’s colorful twitter observations about the atmosphere in the courtroom and I suspect you will too:

Hello from Manhattan criminal court where Donald Trump’s hush money trial officially starts this morning

It is another freezing day inside this courthouse 

Donald Trump just arrived, railed against Letitia James, and then walked into the courtroom. He’s now hunched over in his seat whispering to his attorneys. 

Donald Trump is glowering in the direction of Judge Merchan as the trial officially begins. 

Trump is tilting his head dramatically and making trout-like movements with his mouth as he listens to judge Merchan. Like a version of this iconic sequence but much more subtle

As Trump sits in the courtroom listening to Judge Merchan explain how his criminal trial is going to work, Truth Social sends out push notifications for the spate of posts sent from his account this morning, including one that refers to him as “Daddy Trump.”

Donald Trump is staring straight ahead with a dull expression as the prosecution begins opening remarks, referring to a “criminal conspiracy,” “a coverup,” and “a scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.” 

Donald Trump is shifting uncomfortably in his seat as the prosecution references David Pecker and Michael Cohen. 

Trump busies himself by fiddling with papers on the table in front of him while prosecutor Matthew Colangelo talks about his alleged affair with Karen McDougal. 

It’s hard to tell what exactly Trump is looking at in the courtroom at any given time. But he is certainly not looking at the prosecutors. 

Colangelo is standing to Trump’s right presenting the prosecution’s opening statement. Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, sitting near the aisle to Trump’s right, has angled his body to face Colangelo. Trump, meanwhile, has not looked over at the prosecution once. He is alternately staring down at papers, staring off ahead, or appearing to look at the screen in front of him (the content of the screen is not clear). 

Donald Trump raised his eyebrows in a dismissive gesture after the prosecution read his comments from the Access Hollywood tape. 

As the prosecution moves onto the subject of Stormy Daniels, Trump scribbles notes to his lawyer and slides the paper over so he can read it. 

With every new allegation and detail from prosecutors, Trump inches closer to fully making this expression.

Prosecutors are telling this story about Trump’s 2016 campaign: the operation was in a tailspin after the Access Hollywood tape, scrambling to avoid further disclosures that would hurt the candidate even more with women voters. They argue that the hush money payment was not about communications or “spin” (spin being PR-speak for lying) but about “election fraud.” 

Donald Trump’s lawyer begins opening remarks for the defense. Todd Blanche tells the coirt: “President Trump did not commit any crimes.” 

Blanche tells the court, as Trump looks on, that he and others will refer to Trump as “President Trump” because “he has earned” the title. “We will call him President Trump out of respect for the office that he held,” Blache says. Adding, “But he is also a man… and a husband.” 

Blanche needs to humanize for the jury of Trump’s peers the nonhuman, peerless man. But it also felt, like it always feels, that this was yet another Trump employee performing for an audience of one. 

Blanche has an unfortunate habit of backing up away from the microphone while he gesticulates and paces about as he speaks, making it hard to hear him completely 

As Trump looks on with an even, satisfied expression, Blanche tells the court: “There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It’s called democracy.” 

Blanche tells the court: “There is nothing illegal about entering into a nondisclosure agreement. Period.” 

The defense is now introducing doubt about Michael Cohen’s character, calling him “a convicted felon… a convicted perjurer… a convicted liar.” 

Trump’s legal team introduces the Regina George defense. Blanche tells the jury: “You will learn that Michael Cohen was obsessed with President Trump. He’s obsessed with President Trump to this day.” 

Blanche encourages the jury to be skeptical of words like “scheme” and “conspiracy.” He rolls his eyes as he refers to the “‘Catch and Kill scheme.’” Blanche says that Trump’s behavior, described by prosecutors, is “not a scheme” and “not against the law.” 

David Pecker has taken the stand. Bespectacled, puffy silver hair and a puffy silver mustache, wearing an ill-fitting gray suit and pale tie. Under the bright white courtroom lighting, he looks almost translucent. 

Trump busies himself scrawling on paper as Pecker describes his work at AMI. In my experience, Trump has basically zero tolerance for conversation that does not immediately and directly relate to him. He has very little curiosity about others. And he looks pretty bored right now. 

Pecker has twice laughed out loud in the few minutes he’s been on the stand — emphasis on the loud. Like Chris Matthews style. It’s a little weird but overall somewhat endearing. (Trump did not seem to react to Pecker’s laughter.) 

Pecker’s testimony has concluded for today. Court is ending early due to the holiday. Day two of the trial begins at 9:30 am tomorrow. 

It’s very interesting watching Trump process his own boredom. There’s a lot of procedural bullshit the judge and the lawyers have been working out since Pecker’s testimony concluded. Left alone while his lawyers approached the bench, Trump was just sitting there with a blank expression, twirling a pen around in his hand and staring at it. 

He left the courtroom and violated the gag order:

Trump again going after witness Michael Cohen: When are they going to look at all the lies that Cohen did in the last trial… He got caught lying. Pure lying. When are they going to look at that? pic.twitter.com/1hYa8YpjCV

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 22, 2024

Aaaand:

Desperation➡️call for "disruptions" so he can be saved and public will think it is too dangerous & inflamnatory to prosecute him. https://t.co/lhcEN4HXZ9

— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) April 22, 2024

He was angrily posting all morning about how the Columbia protesters are allowed to continue while his followers aren’t. So, yeah, I think she’s right. But the truth is that very few people have shown up to support him.

Four years ago today, Trump went on national TV to complain about media coverage of himself while Americans were dying

Trump: The fake news media would say, 'he didn't do his job. Trump didn't do his job.’ Because you have a lot of bad reporting out there. It's very sad pic.twitter.com/OYU2dRkRpS

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 22, 2024

… because he’s an idiot:

Four years ago today

Trump: Doctor, wouldn’t you say there’s a good chance that COVID will not come back?

Dr. Birx: We don’t know pic.twitter.com/7viIjAk1R5

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 22, 2024

Just for fun… it’s still early

One of Biden’s best polls of the year:
51-48 among Reg Voters
53-47 among Likely Voters https://t.co/CTxvirwJIc

— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) April 22, 2024

Biden's secret weapon? We saw it in Marist this morning. We've seen it in Marquette and NY Times in the past. Biden performs better among likely or certain voters. I wouldn't take the RV data at face value, especially if folks continue to be uninterested in the election. pic.twitter.com/CmYeiKScEQ

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) April 22, 2024

There are a lot of people who will walk over hot coals to vote for Trump. But there are just as many, if not more, who will do the same thing to vote against him.

David Pecker to take the stand

Opening arguments in Donald Trump’s criminal trial are scheduled to begin today and Trump isn’t taking it well. He was posting late into the night on Sunday railing against well, everything, clearly feeling the stress of what he’s about to face. And he may know more about what he could be facing than we do at this point. The NY Times reports that the prosecution’s first witness is going to be David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer and owner of its parent company AMI — and former close confidante of Donald Trump.

Evidently, the two men, who’ve known each other since the 1980s, have not spoken since Pecker was given immunity by federal prosecutors in the Michael Cohen case back in 2018 and testified that Trump was involved up to his neck. And yet, while Trump has crudely insulted everyone involved in that case, and his current one, he’s never said a word against Pecker. That’s curious, don’t you think?

Up until the moment the FBI searched Michael Cohen’s home and office looking for evidence of this payoff scheme to silence various people during the 2016 campaign, there had been no greater cheerleader for Donald Trump than David Pecker. The National Enquirer had run hit piece after hit piece on his political rivals, first in the primary when they accused Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx., of having an affair and Dr Ben Carson of medical malpractice and basically devoted every other front page to slamming Hillary Clinton as a raging succubus from hell. Once Trump got into the White House, Pecker used his paper to extol Trump’s leadership as a combination of Mahatma Gandhi and Alexander the Great but after one last cover calling Michael Cohen a traitor and a liar, the Trump stories stopped cold and the paper went back to its celebrity gossip roots.

Nobody knows for sure what precipitated the change but the timeline certainly suggests that Pecker fairly quickly decided that he didn’t want to go to jail for Donald Trump when the FBI came calling. He stuck an immunity deal with the federal prosecutors and told them what he knew. And what he knew was that back in 2015 when Trump had decided to run for president, he called Pecker up to his office in Trump Tower and asked him what he could do to help his campaign. Pecker told him that he could keep an eye out for negative stories and they could coordinate together to shut them down. Cohen would be the liaison.

Pecker used the “catch and kill” method (pay for the story and then never run it) with former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal who said she’d had a months long affair with Trump and paid off a doorman who claimed he had evidence that Trump had fathered a child with an employee. But according to the Wall St. Journal when adult film star Stormy Daniels turned up (for a second time) Pecker refused to have the Enquirer pay her off because he had consulted with an election lawyer who informed him that it could be considered an illegal in-kind contribution. Cohen made the deal with Daniels anyway and ended up having to front the money himself with the understanding that Trump would reimburse him.

Predictably, Trump took his sweet time in paying back Cohen who even had Pecker ask for it on his behalf. Trump told Pecker that Cohen had plenty of money. In the end, he reimbursed him, plus a bonus, but he lied about it repeatedly until shortly after the FBI raid on Cohen’s office. Trump’s involvement in the payments was first revealed by his newly hired attorney, Rudy Giuliani, on Fox News one night when he blurted out that Cohen had “funneled it through the law firm, and the president repaid him.” The next day Trump tweeted a long explanation obviously written by someone else explaining that he’d paid off an extortionist and “money from the campaign played no roll [sic] in it. The move, which was the first of many hare-brained strategies cooked up by Giuliani and Trump without input from people who know better, came as a complete surprise to his staff one source telling the WSJ, “people in the White House are a little concerned about what looks like the roller coaster ride ahead.” As the Journal reported, they were right to be:

Election-law experts said Mr. Giuliani’s revelation places the president at the center of questions about possible campaign-finance violations. Mr. Trump’s reimbursement of his lawyer for the payment could violate election law, since Mr. Cohen likely would have been required to report the funds he spent upfront as an in-kind donation, if investigators determine the payment was made to help Mr. Trump win the election. Mr. Giuliani on Wednesday suggested it was.

Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to those campaign finance violations saying in court that he did so at Trump’s direction. Pecker was given immunity and he corroborated Cohen’s account that Trump was in on the scheme. Trump, identified as “Individual 1” in prosecution documents was let off he hook even though it was clear that he was guilty of the same crimes Cohen for which Cohen was going to prison and Pecker was given immunity.

Even Fox News analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano thought this was a clear cut case of criminal liability

This Fox News judge does a great job explaining why President Trump is in real trouble. pic.twitter.com/OysCloV5Xs

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 13, 2018

According to then-US Attorney in charge of the case, Geoffrey Berman, who was later forced to resign, that happened because of interference from Attorney General Bill Barr who instructed them to “cease all investigations” into the matter. Berman wondered if Barr was  trying to shield Trump from possible legal liabilities after he was out of office. It’s certainly not a stretch to think so.

In 2021, the FEC fined AMI $187,500 for unlawfully aiding Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 by making a $150,000 illegal campaign contribution in the Karen McDougal matter. Pecker (who no longer owns the company) was personally protected by his immunity agreement. They let Trump off the hook too despite the investigators’ finding that he was liable as well.

There is no doubt that the scheme was illegal. It’s just a matter of the Manhattan prosecutors proving that Trump’s actions to hide the payments show that he was doing it to commit another crime. If the other crime is violating campaign finance laws, Pecker will be able to shed light on that issue.

After all, Pecker had already made the mistake of paying off McDougal on Trump’s behalf but refused to pay Stormy Daniels because he’d been informed by an attorney that he was crossing legal lines. What are the odds that he didn’t call up his good pal Trump and say, “hey, Don, my lawyer tells me this plan we’ve got going might be illegal?” Maybe he was too scared to say anything but he sure wasn’t scared to tell Cohen that he wouldn’t play ball so I think that’s unlikely.

We know Pecker is going to testify that Trump asked him to help with the campaign and that he was in on the scheme to “catch and kill” any negative stories. Michael Cohen got Trump on tape talking about payments. Will Pecker testify that Trump knew that what they were doing was illegal? Will they be able to show that his fraudulent bookkeeping was in service of covering up his crime? Stay tuned. We’re finally going to find out.

Salon

Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT) has posted a new ad pointedly suggesting that with Donald Trump’s history he could not even get hired at your local mall.

“Would you buy a used car from this man” entered popular culture in the 1960 election. This RVAT ad is another version of that famous attack. It may work against Donald Trump. And it may not. The popular vote spread in 1960 was less than one percentage point (just over 100k votes), even though Sen. John F. Kennedy won in the Electoral College by 303-219 votes. (Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia won 15.) So, how effective was it even in the pre-internet stone age?

Donald Trump lost the popular vote in both 2016 and 2020, but the electoral vote spread was nearly the same as 1960 in each. It’s just that the count fell Trump’s way in 2016 (and against the country’s international standing).

Who knows? Maybe the the approach will work this time. Trump’s support has nowhere to go but down. It’s just that as the late Paul Weyrich observed, Republican chances in elections go up as the voting population goes down. There’s no rooom for Democrats slacking off. Too much is on the line.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

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

Uncommitteds will find this must-see TV

Americans love a good courtroom drama as much a police procedural. That fascination may finally get uncommitted voters who have tapped out and tuned out of politics to pay attention to what’s at stake in the November presidential election, Anat Shenker-Osorio tells Greg Sargent in today’s Daily Blast podcast.

Donald Trump’s Manhattan trial begins today. The political press will drive a battle-of-the century narrative to draw eyeballs and clicks. Are these charges serious? Can District Attorney Alvin Bragg prove Trump paying off a porn star was election interference? Who will triumph? But the hubbub around the trial may communicate to non-political junkies the message that where there is smoke there is fire. Trump won’t come out of this unscathed even if acquitted.

The right forever has thrown smoke bombs at opponents to convince the less-tuned-in that there must be something suspicious afoot. Al Gore and the internet. Hillary’s emails. Obama’s birth certificate. Voter fraud. There’s a Deep State out to get you. That there is no there there is beside the point. Create doubt in people’s minds. It’s a death by a thousand cuts strategy for sabotaging an opponent. Or a country. Russians are professionals at it.

The irony as the trial begins today is that the black smoke swirling around Trump will be his emails. That’s not how Shenker-Osorio puts it. She uses the concept of social proof, “where people think the thing they think people like them think.” A lot of people are going to see smoke billowing from Trump and think there must be something to it.

The problem for Democrats, says Shenker-Osorio, is that they “cannot say on Monday that these people are an authoritarian faction” coming for your freedom — an existential threat to America — and on Tuesday promise to work with them. That’s not an effective, consistent or sticky message. “Either the theater is on fire or it’s not on fire,” she tells Sargent. (Democrats seem to have a biological aversion to consistent messaging.)

Polls show that only a fraction of voters “would be less likely to support Trump upon a conviction in this criminal trial.” But that’s enough in a contest with razor-thin margins. To this day, I celebrate one of our 2006 field organizers for losing the most Republican county in the district. Losing there by only 3,000 votes meant flipping the district from red to blue.

Dahlia Lithwick and Shenker-Osorio said the same at Slate on Friday:

Thus, while it is absolutely the case that 36 percent of independents saying that a guilty verdict would move them away from Trump is less than the 44 percent saying it wouldn’t, when your vote total is presently neck and neck and electoral precedent says it will come down to the wire, you cannot afford to lose anyone, let alone over a third of the gettable voters. That 36 percent matters greatly.

And so, those who are dismissing the electoral consequences of this criminal trial by declaring that events in Manhattan over the next few weeks will merely animate Trump’s base—a base that will see this trial as yet more proof of the Deep State’s (™) persecution of their Lord—are also demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of electoral math. You cannot mobilize the voters who are already absolutely voting for Trump to any greater heights. No matter how rabid their fury, and how bottomless their sense of shared grievance, they still get only one vote each—at least until they figure out how to commit the voter fraud they love to decry on a broader scale. The rank and file in the tank for MAGA cannot become more impactful.

Opening arguments today are not like Trump’s civil trials. This is a criminal case. Law & Order stuff. Must-see TV, even if it’s not on TV.

This means that voters who only barely register the drumbeat of political news will still see a man they are supposed to consider the potential leader of the free world falling asleep, muttering threats at jurors, and generally looking sad and trapped and small. And if he is declared guilty, this process will render him, in many voters’ understanding, a criminal.

Presidential elections are won and lost on broad narratives like “Morning in America” and “Yes We Can,” not on narrow policy disagreements.

What Trump on trial—and the constant barrage of chatter about it—ultimately does is clue these weary citizens into the actual consequences of this election. It changes the narrative from a tale of two old men, neither of whom they find appealing, into the possibility that a convicted criminal will be deciding which laws, if any, apply to him and also to everyone else. This, for everyday voters residing outside the commentariat, is what can become core to politics: a story of morality and possibly even some game-changing theater.

Stay tuned. We know you will.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

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