Of American voters who DISAPPROVE of Biden on Israel-Palestine, per NYT/Siena poll, some think Biden is too supportive of Israel, some think he's too supportive of the Palestinians, but more think his level of support is about right. Yes, that's disapprovers saying "about right." pic.twitter.com/0mkiHVTN6g
This should have been interrogated a little bit more. These people disapprove of Biden’s Israel policy but think his support for Israel and Palestine is about right? I guess they might not think he shouldn’t support of either of them at all but that seems like a stretch. It’s weird question but it should be this confusing.
I think this shows the limitations of polling right now. People are expressing their discontent with Joe Biden on the economy despite telling pollsters their own financial situation is improved and they’re saying they disapprove of his handling of Israel despite the fact that they think he’s gotten the balance between the two warring parties about right. They’re basically saying they disapprove of Joe Biden and it actually has nothing to do with his policies. In fact, they like his policies. They’ve just decided they don’t like him.
I have to assume that some of this (at least among swing voters and Democrats) is about the PTSD dynamic that lingers from the pandemic and also the chaos that Trump and the Republicans constantly cause and which people think Biden is impotent to stop. Everything feels crazy — and the media isn’t helping.
But I also think that polling right now is sloppy, as with this daft question. They were trying to get people to tell them why they disapprove of Biden’s policy but worded it in such a way that probably did more to obscure than enlighten. There’s a lot of that around polling on Biden right now.
Some of this is just another way of saying “Biden’s an old white man and I don’t want to look at that.” I hear it in my personal life all the time. That’s what people see. But they also see Trump who hardly looks like a movie star and is getting weirder looking by the day. So that problem is going to balance itself out as the campaign takes off. And once it does, and other issues emerge, I think more people will be reminded of what they hated about Trump than think his term was the greatest time of their lives.
It seems like this new year can’t get any more turbulent or our political system more volatile. We’re going to have Donald Trump on trial, epic Supreme Court decisions, foreign policy crises and, oh yeah, the most important election of our lives. I’m already reeling with it and I’m sure you are too.
We are living through very, very consequential times. Obviously, the end of the cold war shook everything up after 40 years of a stand-off and the modern conservative movement’s long-term project finally flowering changed our politics. But things have been hurtling at warp speed over the past two decades with an epic terrorist attack that sent the nation into a frenzy and enabled a tragic war from which we still have not fully recovered. The financial crisis of 2008 was the worst economic catastrophe the vast majority of us have ever experienced. (Only the very oldest Americans went through the Great Depression.) The technological revolution of the last few decades is changing our lives so quickly that we can’t keep up from day to day.
And now we are living through the greatest threat to our democracy at least since the civil war and maybe ever. It’s a lot.
I know that people like you who are reading this little old blog and other sites around the internet, trying to keep up with what’s happening and maybe find some perspective are feeling the weight of all this right now. I know I am. But we can’t give up. There is simply no choice. So much depends upon Americans of good will taking a deep breath and girding ourselves for the political battle of our lives.
Donald Trump cannot become president again. It’s simply unthinkable. I don’t care if Joe Biden or a potted plant is his opponent, there is no choice. He must be defeated.
I hope you’ll keep stopping by here over the next year to read what we’ve gathered, synthesized and analyzed on any given day. There’s a lot going on and we can’t claim to be comprehensive but we do try to find information that’s useful in understanding the big picture. And I hope that we provide a little humor and humanity along the way.
If you’d like to help me keep this thing going for another year, you can do that by hitting the buttons below or using the snail mail address on the left. I’m incredibly grateful for your support and am blown away as always that you value this site and keep coming back to see what we have to say. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Donald Trump keeps sharing a photo on social media featuring a bright-red arrow pointing at the head of a bearded man at his civil fraud trial — claiming he is the son of the judge.
The Post can now confirm that the pictured bespectacled, well-groomed target is not the kin of Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron.
I should know — I’m the guy in the photo.
Trump, 77, on Tuesday yet again signal-boosted the photo of me sitting a few rows into the court gallery along with an article by a fringe-right activist inexplicably claiming Engoron’s son is “financially benefitting” from being given a “prominent” seat at the trial.
The post went out to Trump’s 6.52 million followers on the Truth Social app.
It was the second time within a month that the former president shared the photo of me and a screenshot of the Nov. 7 article from Laura Loomer, an anti-Muslim activist who once described Islam as a “cancer” and has been banned from social media sites in the past.
I was first tipped off to this when Trump shared the post on Truth Social in late November but felt it wasn’t worth giving any air.
But after Trump shared it again Tuesday — and upped the ante by including a comment from famously fact-challenged disgraced ex-Congressman George Santos (R-NY) — I thought it was worth setting the record straight.
Santos had responded to Loomer’s Nov. 7 story with a “fire” emoji and asked his then-colleagues on the House Oversight Committee to “investigate further” the Engoron son situation for possible “misconduct.”
Perhaps that comment was mere misdirection from Santos — who was being probed at the time by a separate House committee, which days later exposed his alleged use of campaign funds on personal splurges such as X-rated OnlyFans subscriptions, Botox and spa treatments.
In an online video, Donald Trump praised the white nationalist conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer as “terrific” and “very special” and said: “You are a very opinionated lady, I have to tell you. And in my opinion, I like that.”
Loomer, 30, is a Florida activist and failed political candidate who once described herself as a “proud Islamophobe”, earning bans from major social media platforms.
Among proliferating controversies, Loomer has called Muslims “savages” and Islam a “cancer”. She has spread conspiracy theories about mass shootings, including the Parkland school shooting in Florida.
Loomer has been closely linked to Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist who, with the rapper Ye, controversially dined with Trump last year.
In April, the New York Times reported that the former president wanted to give Loomer a campaign role. It did not come to pass but she remains a vocal supporter. In the video posted online on Sunday, she said she was making her first visit to Bedminster, Trump’s golf club in New Jersey.
Sitting with the man she called “the greatest president ever”, she said Trump was “killing it right now” in the Republican presidential primary, adding: “You’re crushing it. You’re up over 50 points.”
Trump, 77, said: “It’s great to have you and you are very special and you work hard … I appreciate your support and everybody appreciates your support.”
Loomer said: “Thank you so much for inviting me to sit with you today. It’s a pleasure. You’re the best. I love you.”
Another fascist. Trump reposts her stuff constantly on Truth Social.
They commonly misidentify people online, sometimes so ludicrously you have to laugh. Recently they found a picture of someone who looks a little like John Nichols, liberal columnist for The Nation, at the insurrection and it found its way into one of Trump’s legal filings as evidence that the whole thing was a left wing set-up. It’s that dumb.
I don’t know how important it all is but in the end but it says something about Trump and his followers.I leave it up to you to decide what that is.
Or will they help the GOP cut its losses and move on?
Donald Trump came to America’s attention as a political actor back in 2011 when he became the self-appointed leading voice on the right insisting that President Barack Obama had been illegally elected president because he supposedly wasn’t born in the US. He made all the rounds of the news shows demanding that Obama produce his birth certificate even claiming that he sent people to Hawaii, Obama’s birthplace, telling the Today show audience “they cannot believe what they’re finding.” When Obama produced the birth certificate Trump claimed “an extremely reliable source” told him it was a forgery. This went on for years until Trump was elected president in 2016. And it was all a lie.
Isn’t it so typically Trump that after all that it would be him who turned out to be disqualified from the presidential ballot? At least that’s what the Colorado Supreme Court ruled last night in a case that cites the 4th Amendment barring officers of the government from running if they’ve participated in an insurrection. The court found that he did that and said the Constitution applies to presidents as well.
It’s going to the US Supreme Court, of course, as it everyone expected. But if anyone thinks the high court will defer to a state supreme court out of their often stated commitment to “states’ rights” I wouldn’t hold my breath. It’s very likely they’ll agree to take it up and will decide it one way or another. This election is going to test Donald Trump’s belief that “his” three justices would save him. They refused to step up in 2020 but with potential jail terms looming and unprecedented constitutional challenges facing them, he might just luck out.
The court was already knee deep in Trump cases anyway. They will let us all know this week if they plan to take up the Special Counsel’s request that they weigh in early on the question of whether Trump has immunity because he was president when he tried to stage a coup. He filed with both the DC Circuit Court of Appeals as well and they have already said they’ll take it up in a couple of weeks so the Supremes may decide to wait until they issue their opinion.
They also agreed to take up another January 6th case brought by Joseph Fischer, a man who stormed the Capitol that day and is charged with obstructing an official proceeding. If the Court agrees with him that this law has been wrongfully applied, hundreds of people convicted of that crime will have their convictions overturned or the charge dropped. One of them could be Donald Trump who has been charged with that same crime.
If the court decides that Trump has immunity because he was acting in his official duties when he incited a riot that day it’s game over anyway and the January 6th case is pretty much dead. It’s hard to believe they’d do that but then most of us didn’t think the court would take up Bush v. Gore and order the counting of votes to stop either. But this court has shown some restraint with Trump cases so far, including a case in which he tried to claim “absolute immunity” and they ruled unanimously against him. So, they may decide that he shouldn’t have immunity in this case either, which of course he should not.
The idea that it was his official duty to call up election officials and say, “so what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break,” is so ludicrous that it makes your head hurt.
But they could really muck things up with a bad ruling in the Fischer case which seems as if it could be their reasoning for taking the case this term. Sure, they’ll grant that Trump isn’t immune from accountability but they could easily find that all those patriotic citizens who ransacked the capitol and threatened the Vice President and Speaker of the House may have been unruly but the charge of obstructing an official proceeding wasn’t meant to cover that particular crime. You can bet that Trump’s lawyers are going to ask for a stay until they decide it and that would give the court the excuse they may be looking for to delay Smith’s case until after the election.
If the court grants Trump a stay until they decide that issue, Smith could drop the two charges that pertain to that law, leaving two others: conspiracy to deny Americans their rights and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. So maybe the court wouldn’t see the usefulness in helping Trump out with that. On the other hand, the argument set forth by Fischer, that the law was meant to apply to document mishandling, actually does apply to Trump since he was involved in the fake elector scheme.
The only thing we know at this point is that the Supreme Court is now going to be involved in three major Trump election cases as we go into the election year. Do we really think the Supreme Court with a six-three right wing majority, three of whom were appointed by Trump to take the heat for Trump being held accountable for his crimes?
It really should be a 5-3 majority because Justice Clarence Thomas should recuse himself as former Chief Justice William Rehnquist did in the Nixon case . (He had been in Nixon’s Department of Justice before he joined the court.) Thomas has not only been exposed as a thoroughly corrupt judge who really should resign in disgrace anyway (with even more damning evidence coming out just this week) but the fact that his wife was heavily involved in the very insurrection Trump is accused of fomenting makes it even more obvious. He won’t and they can’t make him. He does what he wants. And in any case, they would still have a majority if they all stick together to protect the former president from the consequences of his actions. Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell saw to that.
I don’t think anyone can predict what’s going to happen. If the court does rule against Trump and somehow prevents him from running we know all hell will break loose, but what else is new? Unless Trump is exonerated and wins the election that’s going to happen anyway. If the Court is smart it will take my colleague Amanda Marcotte’s advice [INSERT LINK] and pull the band-aid off sooner rather than later. Maybe they understand that if Senate Republicans had lived up to their responsibilities and convicted Trump in his second impeachment for inciting the insurrection as they should have the GOP and the country wouldn’t be in this mess today. But I wouldn’t count on it.
Antidemocratic actions in Republican-led legislatures. Militias gearing up for a second civil war (and staging to go weapons-hot on Jan. 6). Donald Trump echoing the rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini. An economy and an ecology that’s left younger Americans with grimmer prospects than their parents’. Is it any wonder many younger Americans lack enthusiasm for a gridlocked politics that has not served them well?
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.
Readers know too well that a sizable faction on the “patriotic” right has abandoned democracy for a dalliance with autocracy if not outright dictatorship. If younger Americans join them, if not in MAGAstan then in apathy, we are, to put it plainly, in deep shit.
Over the past few decades, there has been “a small but steady erosion of support” for the ideal of democracy, not only in the United States but also around the world, says Eric Plutzer, the political scientist who directs the Mood of the Nation Poll for Penn State University’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy.
The latest survey, taken in November 2022 and published in January, found that 78 percent of those surveyed said democracy is “the best political system in all circumstances.” But among the Gen Z cohort, ages 18 to 25, nearly half answered either that it “makes no difference” whether they live under a democracy or a dictatorship (28 percent) or that “dictatorship could be good in certain circumstances” (19 percent). More than a third of millennials, ages 26 to 41, agreed with one of those statements.
Plutzer notes that this comports with polls that have asked similar questions, going back to the 1990s. “Young people have always been less enthusiastic about democracy,” he said. “But the generation gap has really exploded.”
That’s not to say there are no young bright spots: Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), Tennessee Democratic state Reps. Justins Jones and Pearson, David Hogg (Leaders We Deserve), and my N.C. state chair Anderson Clayton. But if, as Jay Rosen insists, we must make clear not the odds but the stakes in the next election, we’d best be about making them unmissable.
A Biden campaign official said the president’s team understands that democracy becomes a potent issue only when voters understand it in the context of having their rights taken away, as has already happened with abortion, thanks to the Trump-appointed justices on the Supreme Court.
“It’s an exercise in storytelling,” he told me. “The tragedy about the abortion issue is there really are a lot of sad stories to tell.”
Trump is also telling a story. He could hardly be clearer about what he will try to do, if given the opportunity. Democracy might be looking pretty ragged these days, but Americans should take seriously their responsibility to preserve what’s left of it.
Speaking of seeing your rights taken away, Molly Jong-Fast sees a nightmare unfolding in the wake of the Dobbs decision. She thought it could be bad. It’s worse and unmissable:
For millions of women, it’s more dangerous to be pregnant in post-Roe America, and there have been countless stories of doctors refusing to treat women who are miscarrying in Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Texas, which was recently back in the news under particularly awful circumstances. The plight of Kate Cox, a Dallas-area mother of two, again highlighted the seemingly intentional vagueness of abortion-ban exceptions. Cox would appear to be an ideal candidate for an exception given that her 20-week-old fetus was diagnosed with trisomy 18, a defect which has roughly a 95% fetal death rate. She also already had two C-sections, and having more such surgeries could endanger the mother’s life.
With three overlapping abortion bans in Texas, according to NPR, the procedure “is illegal in the state from the moment pregnancy begins” and doctors can only legally “provide abortions in the state only if a patient is ‘in danger of death or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.’” While “doctors, hospitals and lawyers have asked for clarity on what ‘serious risk’ of a major bodily function entails,” notes NPR, “the Texas attorney general’s office has held that the language is clear.” Republican attorney general Ken Paxton, the villain of this story (and others), reminded doctors that a lower court ruling saying Cox could have an exception to the draconian law “will not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws.”
“Everything we worried about, every worst-case scenario, is happening right before our eyes,” she writes. “For years I was told I was being a Cassandra about the danger to women of a post-Roe America but if anything, the reality is even bleaker than I imagined.”
Let’s do more than hope that reality sinks in with disillusioned younger voters sooner than the start of voting next fall. Let’s let them know. If they vote in numbers that match theirs, they can run this place. If they don’t, this place will run them.
The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled 4-3 that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is not a dead letter. The court found Donald J. Trump ineligible to appear on the 2024 Colorado primary ballot. The Jan. 6 violence was consciously encouraged by Trump, that the violence constituted an insurrection, that his actions are disqualifying, and that no legislative action is required to make it so. The provision is self-executing.
The case brought by several Republicans and one independent voter charged that it would violate state election law if Secretary of State Jena Griswold placed an ineligible candidate on the Colorado primary ballot. Specifically, that Trump is ineligible (Washington Post):
“A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the decision reads. “Because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.”
[…]
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the majority wrote. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”
Don’t be absurd
The Colorado court’s decision (between the lines) includes numerous FUs to the former president and his hapless attorneys.
The amendment’s other sections require no enabling legislation, the court found. Section 3 adds a disqualification to the constitution’s existing qualification for the presidency, no different from the age and citizenship requirements. The court cites multiple cases where states held those provisions to be self-executing (pg. 31). California refused to place a twenty-seven-year-old on the presidential ballot; Colorado (in the Hassan case involving then-Judge Neil Gorsuch) excluded a naturalized citizen from the presidential ballot; Illinois found a thirty-one-year-old candidate disqualified from its presidential ballot.
Now-Justice Gorsuch wrote in the Hassan decision he surely must remember:
… it is “a state’s legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process” that “permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.”
The court brushed aside Trump’s arguments that in exercising its right to free association a political party has the right to nominate whomever it chooses. Could it then nominate that twenty-seven-year-old or someone not a natural-born citizen? No. Don’t be absurd, the court did not add.
The argument that Section 3 does not apply to the presidency the court also found absurd (CNN):
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says oath-breaking insurrectionists can’t serve as senators, representatives, presidential electors, “or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State.” But it doesn’t mention the presidency.
This textual vagueness is why the trial judge kept Trump on the 2024 ballot. But the high court disagreed. And this was the linchpin of their decision to disqualify Trump.
Trump argued that as mentioned in Section 3 the presidency is not an “office” under the Constitution. But the court finds 25 times elsewhere in the Constitution where the presidency is referred to as an “Office” (i.e., you’re wasting our time).
The court concludes (pg. 127):
Our independent review of the record in this case brings us to the same conclusion: President Trump incited and encouraged the use of violence and lawless action to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. The tenor of President Trump’s messages to his supporters in exhorting them to travel to Washington, D.C. on January 6 was obvious and unmistakable: the allegedly rigged election was an act of war and those victimized by it had an obligation to fight back and to fight aggressively. And President Trump’s supporters did not miss or misunderstand the message: the cavalry was coming to fight.
The decision itself is “unassailable” in the opinion of retired conservative appellate judge J. Michael Luttig (CNN):
“The individual justices of the Colorado Supreme Court brought honor to their court as well to the state and federal judiciaries with their opinion tonight in this historic case,” Luttig told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “AC360” Tuesday, describing their “meticulous” efforts to address all the issues involved in the case.
“Their opinion is unassailable under the objective law of the federal constitution and section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court of the United States ought to affirm this decision today,” he added.
The unprecedented decision opens a can of worms and raises too many questions to answer this morning.
What will SCOTUS decide? Will John Roberts find a way to “not mix in” and/or let the Colorado decision stand? Will other states follow if that happens or if the Supremes uphold Colorado? Will Republicans nominate someone else if they do? (Can RNC members afford the private security?) Will Justice Clarence Thomas, wife of Ginny of Insurrection, recuse? Will the outcome help Joe Biden or hurt him?
Amanda Marcotte worries what happens if Trump gets stripped off several state ballots (Salon):
All of those never-Trumpers we thought were our buddies will abandon the #Resistance so fast it will make Democratic heads spin. And the MAGA types could be so angry about losing Dear Leader they will rush the polls to vote as hard against Biden as possible.
David Frum admits his predictions about the case were wrong and believes it more likely Trump will not be the GOP nominee. SCOTUS now has an opportunity to save itself and the republic on which Clarence Thomas‘ paycheck stands (The Atlantic):
The U.S. Supreme Court now has the opportunity to offer Republicans an exit from their Trump predicament, in time to let some non-insurrectionist candidate win the Republican nomination and contest the presidency.
The Colorado court has invited the U.S. political system away from authoritarian disaster back to normal politics—back to a race where the Biden-Harris ticket faces more or less normal opponents, rather than an ex-president who openly yearns to be a dictator.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel attacked the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot
She called it “election interference” in a post to X, and said the RNC’s legal team “looks forward to helping fight for a victory.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said the ruling was “nothing but a thinly veiled partisan attack.” He said voters should be able to decide the nominee.
“Regardless of political affiliation, every citizen registered to vote should not be denied the right to support our former president and the individual who is the leader in every poll of the Republican primary,” Johnson said.
The decision is on hold until January 4, one day before Griswold is required to set the March 5 primary ballot candidate list in stone. This will allow the U.S. Supreme Court time to decide whether it will review the case. Which it almost certainly will. Trump will insist.
The Colorado Supreme Court threw Trump off the ballot because they say he’s disqualified under the `4th Amendment for stoking an insurrection on January 6th:
The 4-3 ruling, which rests on an interpretation of the 14th Amendment, will almost certainly force the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve whether Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, is eligible to hold future public office.
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the Colorado majority opinion reads. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”
The court, which consists entirely of Democratic appointees, is the first in the nation to side with activists and voters who have filed numerous lawsuits claiming that Trump is barred from office under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause.” That clause states that anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after taking an oath of office to support the Constitution is forbidden from holding any public office.
The divided decision, issued just two weeks after the court heard oral arguments in the case, reverses a Denver judge’s ruling that found that while Trump had engaged in insurrection, the Constitution’s ambiguity on the matter left Trump eligible to remain on the ballot. The four-justice majority of the Colorado high court agreed with the lower-court judge that Trump engaged in insurrection — and found that he is disqualified from the ballot as a result.
Moments after the ruling, Trump vowed to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
The Court issued a stay allowing Trump to appeal before January 4th, the day before the ballots are scheduled to be printed. There is every reason to believe they will do it.
I would imagine that the court is going to go Trump’s way on this. They do not want to open Pandora’s box on this, creating ballot chaos in a number of states. But you never know.
Obama campaign manager Jim Messina has a message for No Labels, which principal Joe Lieberman insisted would only run a candidate for president if they thought he or she could win. And just as important, Lieberman has been clear that they would not run anyone if it looks as though it would help Trump win:
The idea that a “unity ticket” featuring a Republican and a Democrat could somehow produce a nominee with “a clear path to victory” is worse than a political fiction. The group behind it, No Labels, is pushing a dangerous lie that would simply serve to put Trump back in the White House.
How can I be so certain? Look at the last half-century of election results. In modern U.S. presidential history, third parties have not won much. In 1968, George Wallace won 46 electoral votes by running a regionally-targeted (and racist) campaign. Since then, they’ve won zilch — not a single state. Not Gary Johnson or Jill Stein in 2016, and not Ralph Nader in 2000. None of them broke 5 percent of the vote.
Then there’s Ross Perot, who No Labels aspires to emulate for his appeal to “the vast middle of the electorate.” Despite unlimited cash and facing an unpopular incumbent in George H.W. Bush and a near-unknown in Bill Clinton, Perot failed to win a single state. Can No Labels twist the data and make an argument that Perot could have won if he had done things differently? Sure! But that’s like saying I could have been the quarterback of the Denver Broncos — technically true, but come on!
There’s a reason for this lack of success: Our political system isn’t designed to support third parties at the presidential level.
The biggest barrier is the Electoral College. States use a “winner takes all” system to distribute their electoral votes, which is why Perot won nearly 20 percent of the popular vote but got a big fat zero from the Electoral College. This leads to two practical effects: First, parties are incentivized to form the largest coalitions possible, which naturally leads to a two-party system. Second, many voters don’t want to “waste” their vote on a candidate with no chance of winning, so they default to the major parties. Both effects make it harder for third parties to compete.
The question of whether Americans are willing to vote for a third party comes up every presidential cycle. Consider this: Two months before the 2016 election, Gary Johnson polled at 10 percent. In June 1992, Perot led all candidates at 39 percent. These polls were mirages — neither got anything close to that number of votes. Third parties often poll well during a campaign, but that support vanishes on Election Day.
This points to a larger truth: Americans think a third party is needed, even if they won’t vote for one. Voters want to express discontent with their party. Sure, nearly half of the electorate thinks a third party is necessary, but No Labels mistakenly assumes this means those voters will actually vote for one. Once Americans get a good look at the alternatives, like Perot or Johnson, they end up sticking with the major parties.
While a third-party candidate can’t win, No Labels could still throw the election to Trump, and it wouldn’t take that many votes. Let’s look at three battleground states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In 2016, Trump’s margin of victory was less than 50,000 votes in these states, and third parties won significantly more votes than that in each one. Did they flip the election for Trump? It’s possible. In 2020, with no third parties to contend with, Biden beat Trump in Michigan by 154,188 votes, Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes and Wisconsin by 20,682. All of those margins are smaller than what third parties received in 2016. These Blue Wall states will be close again in 2024, and if third parties perform similarly in 2024 as they did in 2016, they will deny Biden a second term.
This alone should give any responsible person pause. A No Labels candidate in these states could easily hand the election to Trump. But maybe that’s the goal. Whatever their original intentions, the people behind No Labels — including Harlan Crow, the GOP mega-donor who gifted travel and luxury vacations to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — are using dark money on this folly. The group is working to raise $70 million and has already qualified for the ballot in 12 states, including states that could be pivotal to the outcome, such as Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina.
While I’m not a fan of polling done more than a year out (seriously), The Wall Street Journal did an analysis that showed third parties would more likely draw votes from Biden. The report points to an NBC survey that has Biden and Trump tied head to head, but if you add a third-party candidate, Trump leads by 3 percent. (Of course, this math might change if Liz Cheney or RFK Jr. make a serious run.) New polling of young voters shows a similar dynamic, shrinking Biden’s lead with the introduction of third parties.
Historical data suggests the same. Based on exit polling (a highly flawed metric), No Labels believes Perot in 1992 may have siphoned votes from both parties equally. However, an American Journal of Political Science study concluded that Perot increased turnout by 3 percent and decreased Clinton’s margin of victory by 7 percent.
If we look at who helped Biden win last time, they are the type of voters who might switch parties: Voters who selected a third party in 2016 voted for Biden by 29 percent. Those voters could be the difference for Biden in 2024.
From all the data I see, the practical effect of having No Labels run a third-party campaign is that Trump would win. And any argument that a third party can win next year is a false promise, an illusion and a lie spread by people with ulterior motives.
The prospect of Trump being president again should be repellent to any decent person who believes in freedom and building a more perfect union. The people at No Labels know better than this. It’s time to cut the crap, believe the data and be honest with the American people. Any well-funded third-party candidate would be a disaster for our republic — and risks putting us on a direct path to a dictatorship.
It. Is. Insane and Lieberman and Manchin and Nancy Jacobson (who runs No Labels) and anyone else tempted to run a protest candidacy or make a protest vote is PLAYING WITH FIRE. They need to back off now. And, I would add, it would be nice if someone could have a chat with RFK Jr and Cornell West as well because they are being narcissistic destroyers of everything they claim to care about if they enable Donald Trump in any way.
I know that some idealists say they will refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils. We go through that in most elections. Maybe it has more salience now but it shouldn’t. There is simply no comparison on any level between Joe Biden and Donald Trump who is the personification of evil in ways that are absolutely terrifying. I’m hopeful that most people will come around but it’s going to keep me awake at night worrying about it for sure.
On the other hand, here’s a little hopium for you to sleep on tonight. Stuart Stevens is one of the most astute Never Trumpers around:
"I think Biden is going to win by a larger margin this time. I think it's going to be an easier race"@stuartpstevens makes bold predictions on the 2024 presidential race. pic.twitter.com/zGLHWMX8gs
Former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao called out former President Donald Trump for his racist broadsides aimed at her and his other anti-Asian rhetoric.
Trump, who is ramping up his 2024 presidential campaign, has repeatedly made racist attacks on Chao, who served in his administration, in recent months. Trump’s attacks often involve jabs at her husband, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has drawn Trump’s ire since he publicly condemned Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
In a Truth Social post Monday, Trump tried to baselessly suggest that Chao had a connection to the classified documents recently found in President Joe Biden’s Delaware home and an office in Washington.
“Does Coco Chow have anything to do with Joe Biden’s Classified Documents being sent and stored in Chinatown?” Trump wrote. “Her husband, the Old Broken Crow, is VERY close to Biden, the Democrats, and, of course, China.”
In a statement shared with NBC News condemning Trump’s attacks, first reported by Politico, Chao, who immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan as a child, spoke out about the racism Asian Americans have faced.
“When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name. Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next generation,” Chao said. “He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.”
In a statement, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, said “people should stop feigning outrage and engaging in controversies that exist only in their heads.”
Chao had avoided responding to Trump’s attacks. In response to a Truth Social post last month in which Trump again used a racial slur against her, Chao said in an interview with CNN that she thought “it would be very helpful if the media does not just repeat that racist tweet.”
After that, it’s hard to believe that McConnell would use his wife’s appointment as proof that Trump isn’t a racist, but there you are. He is just as shameless as Trump.
And remember, McConnell’s legacy of democracy destruction is almost as important as Trump’s. He showed to the nation and the world that norms don’t matter when he installed Trump nominees Gorsuch and Barrett on the high court despite breaking every understood process to get it done and then smugly reversed himself just three years later to accomplish the same thing. They are entwined in history forever. And despite his supposed antipathy toward Trump, I don’t think he minds it much at all. He got what he wanted. That’s all he cares about. They are very much alike.
It’s going to be a long year, people. It’s clear that it’s going to require a lot of fortitude to avoid falling into despair over the next few months if they continue to cover this election as they have been. What I see happening is that while they are appropriately covering Trump’s ascent into full Hitlerian fascism (for now, anyway) they are also succumbing to their usual need to “balance” the coverage by hyping Biden’s unpopularity.
I’m not suggesting that he’s popular. He isn’t. But just look at the NY Times coverage of their polling. I’m sure you remember this one from last month:
Ok. Here’s their latest poll which shows that Biden is leading Trump nationally among likely voters:
Here’s the website:
I’m not kidding when I say he’s leading nationally which ought to account for a mention in at least one headline fergawdsakes!
Here’s how they address it way down in the main article:
Overall, registered voters say they favor Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden in next year’s presidential election by two percentage points, 46 percent to 44 percent. The president’s job approval rating has slid to 37 percent, down two points from July.
But there is considerable uncertainty over whether disaffected voters will even vote. While it is still early, the race is flipped among the likely electorate, with Mr. Biden leading by two percentage points.
That’s it. No biggie.
The emphasis in every piece in the NY Times about its own article is negativity about Biden. How about this?
Economic concerns remain paramount, with 34 percent of registered voters listing economic- or inflation-related concerns as the top issue facing the country. That’s down from 45 percent in October 2022, but still high.
Whatever. Biden’s old.
Now maybe there will be some other articles forthcoming about this poll that highlight these facts but everyone, including the Times, knows that the way they frame their findings will drive the news cycle for days, just as a lot of people are going home for the holidays and sitting around watching the news a lot more than they usually do.
I don’t know about you, but this stuff makes me see red. The mainstream media has been hounding Biden ever since the Afghanistan withdrawal (which they also used as some kind of “reset” in their coverage so as not to seem biased) and it’s been relentlessly dismissive of his accomplishments ever since then. It’s maddening.
Tom and I have been writing about this throughout the last three years, trying to keep our own sanity but mainly hoping that we could provide some perspective for our readers. Monitoring these media trends has been part of what I’ve done here at Hullabaloo since 2003 when its coverage of the war in Iraq was abominable. But even before that my writing in various other online outposts about the Clinton years and particularly about the 2000 election coverage (which is showing some alarming similarities) focused intently on the way the media shapes our politics and, mostly, not for the better.
Calling them out for this was the single most important motivation for the creation of the left blogosphere, of which I’m still proud to have been a founder, back in the day. And it remains one of the greatest motivators for what we do here yet today. Clearly, it’s still necessary. This impulse to “balance” the coverage is in the media DNA and it has to be countered.
If you can help us to keep doing what we do for another year, I would be most grateful. If you’d like to contribute, you can use the snail mail address on the left or click one of the buttons below.
Thank you so much for reading Hullaballoo and I hope you’ll keep coming back. We will do our best to deliver something interesting for you each and every day.
