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Is Our Democrats Learning?

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 14, 2024

Dems post another pair of special election wins

Former congressman Tom Suozzi won the special election on Tuesday for the Long Island congressional seat recently held by “serial fabulist and expelled former GOP Rep. George Santos,” as CNN framed it. Santos won the seat by 8 points in 2022. Suozzi, a Democrat, defeated Nassau County GOP legislator Mazi Pilip by nearly 8, a 16-point swing in Democrats’ favor. The win shaves House Republicans’ majority thinner than it was on Monday (New York Times):

The outcome flipped one of the five House seats Democrats need to retake the majority in November, giving the party a badly needed shot of optimism. But Mr. Suozzi’s campaign also provided something that may prove more valuable, a playbook for candidates across the country competing on turf where President Biden and his party remain deeply unpopular.

The strategy went something like this: Challenge Republicans on issues that they usually monopolize, like crime, taxes and, above all, immigration. Flash an independent streak. And fire up the Democratic base with attacks — in this case, nearly $10 million in ads — on the abortion issue and former President Donald J. Trump, the likely Republican nominee for the White House.

“It’s a very interesting lesson to Democrats that you can escape your opponent’s attacks on immigration by not only leaning into the issue, but doubling down on it,” said Steve Israel, a former congressman from the district who once led the House Democrats’ campaign arm.

“Instead of trying to pivot around the issue, he charged into it,” Mr. Israel added.

Timidity is not an effective campaign strategy. Offense is.

“Worth noting that Suozzi bashed Republicans for killing the border deal in the home stretch of the race,” tweeted Greg Sargent of The New Republic, “which also suggests it’s good politics for Dems to be associated with wanting to make a deal (its specifics aside) and bad for Rs to be associated with killing it for Trump.”

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes observed on Threads, “If the shoe were on the other foot, Dems would be freaked out and frankly I think R’s should be way more freaked out than they are. This should have been very favorable terrain! The whole race was run on ‘their’ issue. They still lost.”

In a Pennsylvania state House special election in Bucks County, Democrats won again (Washington Post):

Democrat Jim Prokopiak was also projected to win a Tuesday special election for a state House seat in Pennsylvania, building his party’s narrow edge in a chamber that until recently was deadlocked 101-101. He beat Candace Cabanas after tying her to Trump and what he called “extremists” in the GOP, echoing national Democrats’ 2024 message.

“Donald Trump has turned the Democratic Party into the Kansas City Chiefs of special elections,” Joe Scarborough noted this morning.

It’s fine if Republicans double or quadruple down on what’s not working. But will Democrats elsewhere learn from this election what is? Will they fight their reflex to hunker down and play defense instead of offense?

Hayes quips:

I wrote recently that the constant refrain among Democrats that this is (like every damned one) the most important election of our lifetime only inspires them to adopt a defensive posture, to do the same thing they’ve always done, the way they’ve always done it, just more of it. When it’s the most important election of your lifetime you don’t take chances, don’t experiment. Also, you don’t adapt, don’t grow. That’s what’s killing the GOP now.

Cut it out. Take the win and learn from it.

“Joe Biden is a good president. The country is far better off today. The Democratic Party is winning elections all across the country,” strategist Simon Rosenberg tells MSNBC.

“We keep winning and they keep losing.”

Republicans are on their back foot. Democrats have to keep them there.

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Melania Gets Paid To Campaign For Her Husband

Published by digby on February 13, 2024

I guess she hasn’t received her check recently

Melania has been conspicuously absent from the campaign trail since Trump announced. Maybe that’s why. She used to get paid for it:

A super PAC aligned with former President Donald Trump paid his wife, former first lady Melania Trump, $155,000 in 2021, according to new financial filings.

The New York Times first reported that the group, Make America Great Again, Again — which has since been closed — made the unusual payment to the first lady in December 2021. The payment was not included on the group’s initial federal reports, which instead listed two transactions, for $125,000 and $30,000, last year for a client called the Designer’s Management Agency.

Melania Trump is listed as a client of that agency.

The payments were revealed Thursday after Trump filed new financial disclosure forms, which listed the $155,000 figure as the fee for a “speaking engagement.” The date of the payment coincides with a private fundraiser at the Trumps’ Mar-a-Lago club in Florida at the the time, which sold seats for $125,000 a pop.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump and former first lady Melania Trump stand together during an event at his Mar-a-Lago home on Nov. 15, 2022, in Palm Beach, Florida.

There’s nothing illegal about this. But it’s more than a little unusual, especially since her husband, the candidate, is supposedly worth billions. But the cult followers love to throw their hard earned money at Trump so I suppose they probably don’t care.

Is Comer’s Next Big Flop A Russian Asset?

Published by digby on February 13, 2024

Could be…

He’s still at it:

Tony Bobulinski, the high-flying investor who is the House GOP’s star witness in the Oversight Committee’s ever-expanding probe into Hunter Biden, has become the one Biden business associate that Republicans would like voters to believe.

“Of all of the guys that were involved in the Hunter Biden orbit, Tony Bobulinski appears to me to be the one solid guy that tried to do the right thing and was honest,” Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) told Lou Dobbs earlier this month.

But as Republicans examine Hunter Biden’s questionable business ties, it turns out Bobulinski is connected to one particular character perhaps more unsavory than any other figure in the inquiry’s constellation: Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg.

Vekselberg is a Ukrainian-born energy magnate who’s been a close ally of Vladimir Putin’s for decades. And in 2017, Vekselberg reportedly funneled $500,000 to an LLC run by Donald Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, supposedly with the intention of influencing the new administration to let Russia illegally occupy parts of Eastern Ukraine.

U.S. law enforcement has placed sanctions on Vekselberg multiple times, citing Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election, Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, and the oligarch’s ties to Putin. (Vekselberg tried to evade those sanctions with the help of an American attorney.)

But Republicans are trying to look past Bobulinski’s ties to Vekselberg, as they paint Hunter Biden—dishonestly and without actual evidence—as a corrupt figure facilitating payments to his father. And they want voters to take Bobulinski’s word about Biden’s shady business dealings.

Given Bobulinski’s personal history and connections to people like Vekselberg, however, Democrats think that would be outright foolish. In fact, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), said on Monday that Bobulinski’s biography raises “giant red flags.” Other impeachment witnesses have also directly disputed Bobulinski’s unproven claims about the Bidens, including a former business partner who characterized Bobulinski’s allegations to FBI agents as “wishful thinking” and “unicorns and rainbows.”

“Fuck Tony for, for trying to—I mean for taking little pieces of emails or, you know, and not showing the structure of an LLC or taking pieces of conversation that he recorded,” this witness told FBI agents. “I don’t know what’s in it for Tony but, but that email looks bad.”

All the same, Bobulinski will appear Tuesday for a private interview before the House panels exploring potential impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden. And during that interview, Bobulinski is expected to reiterate claims that he believes some of the cash from an ill-fated Chinese energy venture with the president’s son made its way to the current Oval Office occupant’s bank accounts back in 2017. (No parties have produced evidence confirming any pay-to-play relationship involving Joe Biden, and reporting has thrown cold water on the notion.)

What Bobulinski seems less inclined to discuss—given his failure to respond to repeated inquiries for this story—are his past connections to Vekselberg, a prominent Russian oligarch who sought repeatedly to influence Trump’s administration, including with payments to promote a proposal that would allow the Kremlin to retain control of the illegally occupied Crimean peninsula.

That proposal, which Trump attorney and fixer Cohen ferried to the White House in January 2017, also happened to contain the seeds of another plan, one that would later bloom into Trump’s first impeachment: ginning up suspicions about Hunter Biden’s ties to the troubled Ukrainian state-owned energy outfit, Burisma.

The pro-Putin plan claimed, falsely, that the U.S. was shielding Ukrainian government figures involved in a massive offshore money laundering scheme, thanks to “political cover by Joe Biden.”

“His son Hunter is active in the gas business in Ukraine which will suffer if relations between Russia and Ukraine are restored,” the plan said, adding that “the disclosure simultaneously of these thefts of U.S. aid will render the current Ukrainian administration unable to contest” the so-called peace deal.

Remember, Cassidy Hutchinson testifed that Mark Meadows clandestinely met with Bobulinski in October of 2020, shielded by Secret Service agents.

Oh, and by the way, there’s evidence that Bobulinski lied to the FBI too.

I think we know who this man is, don’t you?

Wow. That Looks Bad

Published by digby on February 13, 2024

Except:

They’re all liars because they know it doesn’t matter to their voters and that many people who don’t vote for them believe this is “true” even if it isn’t factual. And so it goes.

Still, it’s important to document the record. Trump’s “border” was fucked up too. It has nothing to do with Biden and everything to do with conditions in their home countries and full employment in the US.

Trumpapalooza

Published by digby on February 13, 2024

Donald Trump has so many pending criminal cases that he has to decide which ones offer him the greatest opportunity to grandstand on the courthouse steps on a given day. Yesterday, he attended the closed hearing on classified documents down in Florida and didn’t hold any press events afterwards which was odd since it was certainly not a hearing he needed to attend. I suspect he wanted to be there to hear about which witnesses were cooperating with the special counsel so he could find away to send his goons out to intimidate them. I would also guess he’s wanted to sink at his Trumpie judge and give her some sugar from across the room.

And there were rumors that he would attend Fani Willis’ potential prosecution disqualification hearing in Georgia and/or the Manhattan case regarding his illegal payments to Stormy Daniels. He’s decided on the Manhattan case apparently.

It’s a lot and there’s more:

Each of Trump’s four criminal cases is set to reach a clarifying inflection point over the next few days as he barrels toward a rematch with President Joe Biden.

In Trump’s New York case, a judge is slated to finalize the timetable for his trial on charges that he falsified business records to cover up an affair with a porn star in the closing weeks of the 2016 election.

In his Washington, D.C., case, the Supreme Court may signal whether it will quickly resolve Trump’s claim that he is “immune” from federal charges stemming from his effort to subvert the 2020 election.

In his Georgia case, where Trump is also facing state charges related to the 2020 election, a judge has scheduled a Thursday hearing to examine an effort by Trump and several co-defendants to disqualify the prosecutors.

And in his Florida case, a judge is weighing Trump’s latest motion to postpone key deadlines — a likely precursor to delaying the May 20 trial on charges of hoarding classified records at his Mar-a-Lago home.

The Supremes gave Jack Smith until next Tuesday to answer the Trump request for an appeal. I would assume Smith was prepared and will be filing it before then.

I’m not sure that Trump appearing at his various cases works as well for him as he thinks it does. Sure, his rubes send money. But all he really has to do is ask. I would think he’d do better with the swing voters by ignoring all these legal problems. The more they realize just how much legal trouble he’s in the more they are unlikely to sign on.

At least I think so. Maybe everyone is so blinded by his dazzling vigor and youthful appearance that nothing anyone says or does will change their minds.

What Are People Thinking?

Published by digby on February 13, 2024

Biden is to blame for the border bill failing???

Greg Sargent discusses one of the most disturbing poll results I’ve seen yet. It’s completely inexplicable:

You’ve probably heard that Donald Trump has “tightened his grip on the Republican Party,” or that he’s “bent the party to his will.” Pundits repeat such formulations constantly, because, well, it’s true: Trump is exerting a level of influence over his party in a way that’s unprecedented in a former president.

But what if voters aren’t aware of it?

That’s one possible takeaway from a new ABC News-Ipsos survey, which has a maddening finding: Trump gets substantially less blame for killing the bipartisan border security deal last week than any other major actor in that drama:

Americans find there is blame to go around on Congress’ failure to pass legislation intended to decrease the number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border—with about the same number blaming the Republicans in Congress (53%), the Democrats (51%) and Biden (49%). Fewer, 39%, blame Trump.

Biden strongly supported the deal, while Trump explicitly and repeatedly called on Republicans to kill it. He expressly asked for the blame for its death to be directed at him. As the measure appeared to be dying, numerous Republicans said openly that Trump was the reason for it, even suggesting that he demanded its demise to give himself an issue against President Biden. Trump himself didn’t bother trying to hide this motive.

What’s more, Democrats get almost identical blame to Republicans, even though virtually all Senate Democrats voted for the deal, while virtually all Republicans opposed it. That’s after Democrats made the bulk of the concessions required to broker the compromise, which would have made it much harder to apply for asylum, channeled vast expenditures into fortifying the border, expanded detention of migrants, and expedited processing of asylum-seekers, including faster removal of those who don’t qualify.

What??? It’s insane. But as Sargent goes on to discuss, the president often gets blamed for immigration problems even when it’s the congress that fails to make the laws that would give him the tools to make the system better.

As for the poll, it may be an outlier or be skewed because of Trump cultists blindly following their Dear Leader and understanding the game is to blame Biden.

Sargent wonders whether swing voters are understand how Trump ordered the GOP to tank the bill. I don’t know but I suspect they don’t know much. I’ve heard several of my civilian friends in the last few days say they barely follow the news because it’s so depressing. But they are aware of the drumbeat that Biden is old and think most of the problems stem from that.

Sargent has some advice for the Democrats:

The border deal’s demise shows yet again that for a former president, Trump wields unprecedented influence over his party. Yet how aware are swing voters of this level of influence?

Democrats must do more to communicate that Republicans are sabotaging the country because Trump told them to. Democrats spent a few days pointing out that Republicans themselves admitted they iced the deal to help Trump politically. But they mustn’t let this drop. Keep saying it. What if Biden did more in coming days to highlight the fact that the Border Patrol—which endorsed Trump—supported the deal that Trump killed?

The party could also be making far better use of a stable of young, energetic Democrats from southwestern and border states, who could act as surrogates. Now is the time to do exactly that.

Right now, Trump may be enjoying the best of two worlds—he can get Republicans to do his political bidding without getting the blame for the result. Sure, it’s infuriating. But Democrats must channel that anger into action, so the public places the blame for this debacle exactly where it belongs.

All that sounds good. But in the end I think the people are going to have to be forced to see both Biden and Trump in action, with all that that entails, in order to truly understand the dynamics at play. It’s going to take all hands on deck.

Trouble In Maga Paradise?

Published by digby on February 13, 2024
Oh my.

The Senate stayed in session all night to pass the Ukraine funding bill. Now Mike Johnson says he won’t bring it to the House floor because it doesn’t have border funding.

I know it’s hard to believe. But it shouldn’t be. They have discovered that nothing matters to their people except owning the libs and licking Trump’s boots.

They’re very busy anyway. There’s a lot of important business on the agenda:

House Republicans have reached out to special counsel Robert Hur to discuss having him testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee about his report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

Hur’s report released last week did not charge the president with a crime, but it painted a picture of a forgetful commander in chief who failed to properly protect highly sensitive classified information – a depiction that could hurt Biden politically and that Republicans have seized on.

Hur has retained Bill Burck as his personal attorney. While there is no date on the calendar, they are looking toward the end of February, one of the sources told CNN. The Justice Department declined to comment.

This should be a real shitshow. But the earlier the better. Get it out of the way.

A Hand Full Of Nothin’

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 13, 2024

Republicans plan “Jan. 6 hearings” on age

Tired: Benghazi-Benghazi-Benghazi. “But her emails.”
Wired: Ageism.

“Joe Biden is better on his worst day than Donald Trump is on his best day,” Lawrence O’Donnell noted Monday night, referencing Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s accomplishments in office and physical condition when he ran for a fourth presidential term.

There are serious stakes for these United States in this fall’s elections, particularly regarding who wins the White House. But Republicans are proving themselves no more serious today than they were in 2016, 2018, 2020 or 2022. They plan to campaign on ageism.

Paul Krugman wrote on Monday, Lincoln’s birthday:

But watching the frenzy over President Biden’s age, I am, for the first time, profoundly concerned about the nation’s future. It now seems entirely possible that within the next year, American democracy could be irretrievably altered.

And the final blow won’t be the rise of political extremism — that rise certainly created the preconditions for disaster, but it has been part of the landscape for some time now. No, what may turn this menace into catastrophe is the way the hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election. It reminds me, as it reminds everyone I know, of the 2016 furor over Hillary Clinton’s email server, which was a minor issue that may well have wound up swinging the election to Donald Trump.

Over the weekend, the same Trump who invited Russia to publish hacked Hillary Clinton emails in 2016 invited Russia to invade any NATO country he felt hadn’t paid enough for alliance defense (as though he was being personally cheated). Trump told a MAGA crowd in South Carolina that under a Trump presidency he would not defend that NATO country. He pledged, in essence, to violate U.S. law for which Trump has serially demonstrated his disdain. And for which Trump faces 91 felony counts in multiple jurisdictions.

Trump is “utterly deranged,” tweets Georgetown historian Thomas Zimmer.

Republicans’ “cool hand”

Cool Hand Luke once said, “Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.” And nothing is what Republicans have to offer. So they hope hearings on Joe Biden’s age will do to him what Benghazi and “But her emails” hearings did to Hillary Clinton.

Axios tells us what we already know about the GOP’s fall strategy:

House Republicans are activating a weekslong, perhaps monthslong, plan to keep questions about President Biden’s mental state in the spotlight, Axios has learned.

The big picture: The GOP planning includes hearings and possibly even subpoenas for documents and recordings.

Why it matters: Sources close to House GOP leaders are blunt that they don’t think it even matters what they find. These sources think that any fight will make the White House look bad — and keep a huge Biden vulnerability in the headlines.

They plan to milk the Robert Hur report on Biden’s retention of documents for all the media coverage they’re worth. And to spotlight again and again Hur’s gratuitous smears against Biden’s age.

Next, we’re told, House Republicans plan to seek testimony from Hur — and would ask him both about how Biden’s storage of sensitive documents could have hurt national security, and about the president’s mental acuity in the interview.

If I was as conspiracy-minded as MAGA Republicans, I might believe they were complicit in Hur’s dropping those comments into his report for just this purpose. They knew the press would pounce or at the very least both-sides Trump’s and Biden’s ages. The New York Times and other news outlets are today as willing to help the GOP as they were to promote George W. Bush’s disastrous Iraq invasion. It’s no wonder Krugman is worried.

Here are O’Donnell’s comments in full.

Update: O’Donnell was referencing Roosevelt’s accomplishments and physical condition in his third term when he ran for his fourth.

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BREAKING: Senate Passes Ukraine, Israel Aid Package

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 13, 2024

Above banner this a.m. from the Washington Post

Let the follies begin (Washington Post):

The Senate passed a $95 billion national security package to aid Israel, Ukraine and other U.S. allies early Tuesday morning after a monthslong debate that has deeply divided congressional Republicans.

The bill passed 70 to 29, after 22 Republicans joined Democrats in approving the aid.

God immediately told House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to reject the Israel aid because the package wasn’t harsh enough on strangers in the land. Johnson dismissed it premptively Monday night.

“In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will o these important matters,” Johnson said in a statement. “America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”

Johnson’s statement comes after he and other House leaders helped torpedo an earlier version of the legislation that includes sweeping border security measures and other reforms.

The whiny voice of God Johnson is hearing is Donald Trump’s, if not Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speaking through Donald Trump.

“These past few months have been a great test for the US Senate, to see if we could escape the centrifugal pull of partisanship and summon the will to defend Western Democracy when it mattered most,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after the bill passed. “Today, the Senate has resoundingly passed the test.”

That’s a test MAGA Republicans in the House mean to fail. Deliberately.

Ukraine funding has become unpopular among GOP base voters, and Trump said at a recent rally he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO nations that he views are not spending enough money on defense. Trump also explicitly opposed the foreign aid package, saying in a recent social media post that he believes aid should be given as a loan.

That’s because profit and loss, winners and losers, are the only lenses through which Trump the Shallow views the world: What’s in it for me?

House Democrats are exploring using a discharge petition to go around Johnson’s announced blockade, the Post reports. They would need “at least four signatures from Republicans supportive of Ukraine funding” to introduce the petition before the end of the month.

Any Republican who signs would draw a primary challenge this time around or next. Still, Democrats have about 14 Republicans not seeking reelection they might persuade to take a principled stand before leaving. But signing would end whatever future political plans they might have in the Republican Party, not to mention attract death threats against them and their families from an unforgiving MAGA cult.

Democrats’ dishcarge efforts, the Post explains, could also face reservations from their own caucus.

Its path would still be tricky in the House, given that some Democrats have objected to the Israeli government’s handling of the war in Gaza, where most homes have been destroyed or damaged, more than 12,300 children have been killed and a quarter of the population is starving, according to the United Nations. Enough Republicans would need to support the bill to make up for those Democrats who would not vote for the bill over the aid to Israel.

Bringing the legislation to the floor through a discharge petition — which requires 218 members to support it — would avoid Johnson having his fingerprints on the proposal amid calls by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and others to remove him as speaker if he puts a Ukraine funding bill on the House floor for a vote.

Greg Sargent points to a new ABC News-Ipsos survey in which Donald Trump “gets substantially less blame for killing the bipartisan border security deal” Republicans killed last week “than any other major actor in that drama” (The New Republic):

Biden strongly supported the deal, while Trump explicitly and repeatedly called on Republicans to kill it. He expressly asked for the blame for its death to be directed at him. As the measure appeared to be dying, numerous Republicans said openly that Trump was the reason for it, even suggesting that he demanded its demise to give himself an issue against President Biden. Trump himself didn’t bother trying to hide this motive.

Unreconstructed royalists

Yet as president Biden will get the blame, Trump knows. He wants his weapon for the fall campaign. A booming economy and falling inflation no longer work for him. But fear of the Other? It’s as reliable as a knife when your pistol runs out of bullets.

That same Ipsos poll finds Americans trust Trump over Biden to handle immigration by 44 percent to 26 percent: Here Biden gets blame for what’s happening at the border and also for the failure of Congress to improve the situation after Trump commanded Republicans not to.

[…]

No matter how many times Republicans insist the executive can “shut down the border” by himself, the Great and Glorious Donald J. Trump also presided over numerous border crises and even released huge numbers of migrants. Congress largely created this situation. It could make all this better, but as last week showed, it won’t.

Johnson and his caucus of unreconstructed royalists are not serious either about the border or aid to Ukraine and Israel. Fealty to their liege-lord is everything for the power they believe Trump will bring them in a second term. His subjects will need new red hats with ’47’ on them. Trump himself seeks a crown and the immunity from prosecution he believes comes with it.

Update: See Ryan Grim’s account of the Senate vote, of Chris Van Hollen’s speech (he voted yes), and the dire conditions in Gaza created by the far-right extremists in the Netanyahu government. Whatever pressure Washington is applying to Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza is not working. Children are already starving to death.

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This Is Real, Folks

Published by digby on February 12, 2024

This isn’t on some obscure corner of the internet. It’s on Newsmax which is watched by many MAGA Republicans and on which many GOP elected politicians appear:

I just thought you’d want to know what your fellow Americans are watching. Now, go have a drink.