Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Nikki Haley finally gets some scrutiny

Over the holiday I heard a few people saying that we liberals really should get behind Haley and help her beat Trump because even though she polls better than Biden we should do what we can to defeat him even if it means losing the general election. My response (in my head) was “wtf are you smoking? Haley is horrible!” Sure, maybe she’s not as bad as Trump in some ways but we don’t really know that because she is an empty vessel and nobody knows what she really thinks about anything.

Politico took a look at the flap and what it says about her:

After evading attacks for weeks from her Republican rivals, it was a town hall question about the origins of the Civil War that finally seemed to stick.

And it couldn’t have come at a worse time. With weeks to go before voting starts, Haley is now facing the first major test of her ability to withstand a maelstrom in the presidential campaign. It is a significant moment not only for the former South Carolina governor, but for the broader effort among Republicans hoping to stop Donald Trump from steamrolling to the nomination.

“This is Haley’s first time under the bright lights, and she must power through this and tackle Trump now,” said Scott Reed, a veteran GOP strategist. “Or else.”

Haley’s rivals treated her Civil War comments as a lifeline for their own dimming prospects in the race. DeSantis and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie quickly condemned her answer at their own campaign events this week. And Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, spent much of Thursday addressing questions about her remarks, putting her in the position of explaining rather than selling her candidacy.

For nearly a year — from her beginning as a long shot to her recent rise in polls — Haley went relatively unscathed. Her opponents have highlighted, with little effect, her evolving answers on issues like abortion and transgender rights. But they spent less money against her, too. As of Wednesday, Haley had $14 million spent against her in negative advertising, compared with nearly $37 million for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and $19 million for Trump, according to Rob Pyers, a nonpartisan data analyst. Trump has focused his hammer-like attacks on DeSantis, not Haley. And much of the media scrutiny over the past year focused on the Florida governor’s campaign missteps and policy proposals.

But that changed Wednesday night in Berlin, New Hampshire. Haley’s halting and convoluted response to a town hall questioner — and her ensuing attempts to clarify her comments, later acknowledging slavery as a cause of the Civil War after first declining to do so — put a harsh spotlight on her, arguably for the first time during the primary. Within hours, news outlets had begun digging into her past remarks on the issue, resurfacing an interview she’d given in 2010 in which she offered similar beliefs about the root causes of the Civil War.

And for Haley, the timing and location carried outsize significance. With Trump building wide leads in the three other early primary states — Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina — New Hampshire has emerged as the key battleground in the effort to slow Trump’s momentum. Polls there have shown Haley moving into second place and gradually creeping up on Trump ahead of the Jan. 23 primary.

“The answer itself doesn’t have to be a huge problem,” said Liam Donovan, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee official. “But the media response tells you the free ride is over, and she’s in for her first taste of adversity.”

The controversy has given particular oxygen to Christie, who in recent weeks has faced questions about whether he will remain in the race. The former New Jersey governor is polling third in some recent New Hampshire surveys, and many top Republicans in the Granite State say he is potentially siphoning off support that could otherwise go to Haley. Christie has insisted he won’t drop out of the race — he released a direct-to-camera ad this week in which he said as much — but the firestorm could give him added incentive to stay in.

“The problem for Haley is that her path to the nomination already amounts to an early state Triple Lindy, and anything that stands to stunt her rise — or, perhaps worse, breathe new life into somebody like Chris Christie — is something she can ill afford,” said Donovan.

Haley was already starting to face a barrage of attacks from her lower-polling opponents in the days leading up to her Civil War comments. DeSantis and Christie have highlighted her seemingly shifting position on the issue of transgender medical rights for minors. After a clip resurfaced earlier this month of Haley in June saying “the law should stay out of it” when it came to underage children seeking gender transitions, Haley told the Christian Broadcasting Network last week “there should be federal involvement” to block anyone under 18 from undergoing gender-altering procedures.

Christie in recent weeks has likewise hammered Haley on her position on abortion, accusing her of speaking differently about the topic in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Officials from rival campaigns have privately expressed frustration about a lack of scrutiny by the media on Haley’s policy positions. Haley, throughout much of her campaign, declined to make herself available for media gaggles at campaign events, instead choosing to grant occasional one-on-one interviews with select reporters and to sit for television spots.

That’s in contrast to other Republicans in the field. Even Trump, the overwhelming frontrunner, has answered questions from mainstream news reporters on his plane and spoke with the press this fall outside a New York City courtroom. In the fallout of her Civil War comments, Haley on Thursday did address reporters while standing next to New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.

It didn’t go well.

I don’t know how much this will hurt her in Iowa and New Hampshire. Most people in those states have already made up their minds. I suppose it could hurt her in Iowa where there’s no Democratic primary and some Democrats may have been planning to register for the caucuses to foil Trump. In New Hampshire she might have offended some of the Independents who were fueling her rise. Who knows?

But this whole thing has almost certainly dinged her image as the person who could best beat Biden. That idea depended on the notion that she could appeal to those suburban moms” who have defected from the GOP because of Trump. A controversy of slavery and abortion isn’t really going to help her there.

I’ve never respected her. She’s slick and craven and always has been. And she will follow the new fascist Republican Party wherever it wants to go. Just because she isn’t insulting everyone who crosses her in crude junior high school terms doesn’t mean she isn’t dangerous.

Here’s yet another disturbing story about the malign influence of Leonard Leo, Federalist Society founder and architect of the conservative Supreme Court we are now stuck with for a generation or more:

Groups aligned with the conservative legal movement and its financial architect, Leonard Leo, are working to promote a publicly funded Christian school in Oklahoma, hoping to create a test case to change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state.

At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The school received preliminary approval from the state’s charter school board in June. If it survives legal challenges, it would open the door for state legislatures across the country to direct taxpayer funding to the creation of Christian or other sectarian schools.

Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, acknowledges that public funding of St. Isidore is at odds with over 150 years of Supreme Court decisions. He said the justices have misunderstood Thomas Jefferson’s intent when he said there should be a wall separating church and state, but that the current conservative-dominated court seems prepared to change course.

“Jefferson didn’t mean that the government shouldn’t be giving public benefits to religious communities toward a common goal,” he said. “The court rightly over the last decade or so has been saying, ‘No, look, we’ve got this wrong and we’re gonna right the ship here.’ ”

Behind the effort to change the law are Christian conservative groups and legal teams who, over the past decade, have been beneficiaries of the billion-dollar network of nonprofits largely built by Leo, the Federalist Society co-chairman.

Leo’s network organized multi-million-dollar campaigns to support the confirmation of most of the court’s six conservative justices. Leo himself served as adviser to President Donald Trump on judicial nominations, including those of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Leo’s multiple hats in recruiting judicial nominees, using his nonprofit war chest to promote their confirmations and then funding legal organizations to craft challenges to longstanding court precedents, has drawn increasing criticism.

“The Christian conservative legal movement, which has its fingerprints all over what’s going on in Oklahoma, is a pretty small, tight knit group of individuals,” said Paul Collins, a legal studies and politics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “They recognize the opportunity to get a state to fund a religious institution is a watershed moment,” said Collins, author of Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, adding that“They have a very, very sympathetic audience at the Supreme Court. When you have that on the Supreme Court you’re going to put a lot of resources into bringing these cases quickly.”

Leonard Leo supports Trump — and any other Republican leader — because he sees them as instruments to achieve his goals, nothing more. He and his henchmen will use MAGA to obtain and maintain power but it’s not the agenda in itself. Destroying the public education system is one of his fundamental goals.

In many ways, it’s hostile to much of the economically populist side of the cult except to the extent it seeks to shrink government (Bannon’s “deconstruction of the administrative state.”) Leo takes the long view. His tool is the Republican Party, no matter who is in it.

Up is down, black is white, in is out, and wrong is right

The Bizarros at Fox News stand reality on its head every day and make money for the Murdoch family doing it. The Fox audience tunes in to lap up bald-faced lies. Here their talking heads claim that Donald Trump turned aound the “miserable” Obama economy (that crashed under George W. Bush). Joe Biden’s looks the same to them, dontcha know?

“Look how long it took President Trump turn the country around after Obama’s miserable economic state” pic.twitter.com/CNtr6VkDaX

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 29, 2023

MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen (No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen) was having none of this Foxsense. He responds on the hellsite:

Every good economic trend that happened under Trump started under Obama.

Trump then wrecked it with his disastrous COVID response, and Biden fixed it.

Cohen backs that up with some Washington Post graphics from September 5, 2020 (the thick of the pandemic):

Now let’s get some current data for the Biden administration. I can’t find a chart-for-chart comparison, but….

The current unemployment rate is 3.7%. The unemployment rate under Trump before the pandemic was 3.5%.

The S&P 500 closed on Friday at 4,769.83. It peaked at 4,766.18 at the end of 2021.

Job creation is another point of departure between Trump and Biden.

Alice’s Looking Glass World was at least fanciful and fun. Fox’s world is just a Bizarro version of the real one. The least Fox could do is give Bat Boy his own primetime show. He’d be as credible as the rest of these clowns.

Pwnallthethings lampoons 14th Amendment punditry

I’m ripping this off wholesale for the reading enjoyment of those not on Blue Sky.

First replace Trump with Obama and the 14th Amendment with the 22nd, says Pwnallthethings:

Now do it everywhere:

If you know, you know:

Naturally The Wall Street Journal gets in on the act:

One Connor Lynch comments: These rewrites really capture the solipsistic pedantry of the highly implausible counter arguments that keep popping up in editorial pages.

Pwnallthethings replies:

It’s fun applying their “ah, yes, the constitution says X, but they mean X in a special secret way that only I with this decoder triangle can parse for you” logic to similarly basic provisions elsewhere

When the 22nd Amendment says “elected only twice” the etymology of the latin prefix “bi” means “two”, but “biannual” might mean every two years, or twice per year, up to a total amount of four, and for that reason, “twice” here should be understood to permit “three”, a number less than “four” …

Imagine the remaining dialogue read as a Monty Python skit:

Connor Lynch: The 22nd Amendment’s use of “shall” here is not a mandate for courts and legislatures but merely predictive. It is guidance for voters, its enforcement and interpretation left exclusively to them.

Pwnallthethings: While the 22nd Amendment says that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”, it is not clear that the Presidency is an office at all; and consequently nobody has ever been elected president even once, and Obama can be elected a third time. In this essay I shall

Connor Lynch: “The 22nd amendment isn’t self-executing” would be a fun one. Being elected three times isn’t a crime, so it must be permitted

Pwnallthethings: No jury has convicted president Obama of having held two terms, nor has any prosecutor indicted him for it. Consequently denying him the ballot on 22nd Amendment grounds would be a gross violation of both his and our due process rights. As Professor of Law for the University of Tesla, I will show

And so on.

Real pundits get paid to write this. Remember that.

Update:

I think the most viral animal videos this year came from Mo Mountain Mutts which is a dog sitting and training outfit in Alaska that picks up the “students” in its puppy bus every day. It’s just the cutest series ever:

You’ve just gotta love it.

Here’s the former Great Whitebread Hope still flailing around trying to prove that he’s just as much of an authoritarian monster as Donald Trump:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said in a Thursday interview that, if elected president, he would fire special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two indictments against former President Trump, on “day one” of his hypothetical term in office.

DeSantis made the case for why he was the best candidate to win the GOP nomination in 2024 in a Fox News interview with Jason Chaffetz. After referencing Trump’s legal battles in the upcoming year, DeSantis said he would be able to keep focused on holding people accountable, including Smith.  

“I think that a guy like me as the nominee will be able to keep the focus on Biden, keep the focus on the Democrats’ failures,” DeSantis said, “but then, more importantly, after you win the election, start holding these people accountable, who have weaponized the legal system to go after their political enemies.”

“And that starts with day one, firing somebody like Jack Smith. That goes to dealing with people who are violating constitutional rights at the state and local government area,” he added.

I’m not sure what he thinks he’s doing these days but I don’t think this is going to convince anyone. The best guess is that he’s waiting to see if Trump falls face first into the omelette bar at Mar-a-lago before the convention and the party will be desperate for someone who is a much of a vengeful monster as he is.

Meanwhile, here’s the supposedly moderate choice (who happens to think the civil war was about freedom from big government) said yesterday:

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley says she would pardon former President Trump, if he were found guilty, saying that it wouldn’t be “in the best interest of the country” for him to be imprisoned.

So basically, Republicans all refuse to hold Trump or his henchmen accountable for what they’ve done but they promise to go after all of his political enemies on his behalf.

Who needs Trump?

Catherine Rampell has done a good service by laying out for her colleagues what they need to do to fulfill their responsibilities in 2024. Here are the two I think are most important:

Spend less time reporting on who’s likely to win an election and more on what they’d do if elected.

The point of winning elections is, ostensibly, to govern. Yet a voter could spend hours watching or reading presidential election coverage and come away with only a vague understanding of what any of the contenders would do as president. Too often journalists ask candidates questions like “Why are you so far down in the polls in Iowa?” rather than “What would your position on [food stamps/tariffs/banking] mean for Iowans?”

Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor, has pithily boiled down our mission as “Not the odds, but the stakes.” These days, Rosen’s refrain is usually quoted in the context of the stakes for democracy (specifically, under another Trump administration), but it’s a good principle for any substantive matter that affects the lives of everyday Americans.

We must produce more coverage of what, say, the health-care system would look like under different candidates’ platforms. Also climate, working conditions, immigration, civil rights, taxes, nutritional programs and so on. This is harder to do than just covering the horse race, but it adds more value.

People need to understand the stakes.There’s so much cynicism and disinformation out there that a whole lot of people just buy into the fatuous notion that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them.” And then there are the “lesser of two evils” and the “heighten the contradictions” excuses and this is what we end up with:

I can’t imagine how anyone can come to that absurd conclusion but it’s sadly not uncommon. Making the Democrats “learn their lesson” isn’t going to keep immigrants from being deported or Netanyahu and Putin from pursuing their violent goals.

Report the important positive news and not just the important bad news.

Journalists are often accused of having a “bad-news bias.” That’s partly because alarming or infuriating stories sell in a way that positive ones often don’t — particularly in an era in which the public seems addicted to outrage. This addiction manifests in many ways, including in how politicians talk, how regular people converse with one another, and what newspeople decide to report.

There’s also a cover-your-rear impulse that disproportionately discourages positive news coverage. If we write about a policy/company/person/study/whatever in a way that emphasizes the good things, and it turns out we missed some significant problem, we look like fools. If we write something broadly critical and miss something good, audiences rarely care.

But our job is to give the public a truthful portrait of the world around them. Positive developments are part of that too.

I don’t think I need to tell my readers how important I think this is. I feel as if you are well aware of all the bad news out there. We’re inundated with it. I try to highlight the more positive news that doesn’t get as much exposure. But it’s really important that the mainstream media shifts their attitude and starts reporting the facts without all the editorializing about how none of it matters.

She also has a resolution for us and it’s important:

But my key resolution for news consumers is this: Help news organizations stick to the pledges above. You can do this by actually consuming the nuanced, balanced, thoughtful news coverage you say you want.

One reason journalists disproportionately cover polls is that doing so is relatively easy; another is that audiences appear to prefer simple, digestible “who’s ahead?” summaries to nitty-gritty policy issues. They don’t seem to care much about local elections (as evidenced not just by audience ratings but by voter participation). And they love to rage-click. Those who hate on media claim to want more balanced, meaty coverage and fewer inflammatory headlines. But virtually any journalist can tell you that these stated preferences are not borne out by our traffic numbers.

And those numbers matter. They especially matter in an era of ultra thin budgets and media layoffs, in which complex investigative work that almost no one reads or watches becomes an unaffordable luxury.

So if substantive coverage matters to you, reward it with your attention. Vote with your eyeballs, your ears, your clicks, your shares, your paid subscriptions. That can mean here at The Post or at any other organization whose work you like, and, through your news-consumption habits, resolve to make better in 2024.

I resolve to try to circulate the good journalism that I come across all year long and help my readers find the good journalism that’s being done in the big media and also the blogs, substacks and other newsletters that deserve our attention. It’s never been more important to be informed.

You’ll note that Trump’s lower number was in November 2019, before the pandemic hit and the numbers surged. Biden’s low number, on the other hand, is from hard work digging out of the carnage that was left behind. Those high numbers for Reagan and Obama improved dramatically in the last year and there is every reason to believe that Biden’s numbers are going to go lower still.

After this segment, Dana bash said to the reporter something to the effect of, “that’s nice but nobody’s feeling it so that’s bad news for Biden.” The reporter explained that since prices are higher than they were five years ago you can’t expect people to feel good about anything.

Americans need to get some perspective. It always takes some time for this stuff to catch up but there’s no reason for the mainstream media to be so relentlessly negative.

Anyway, here’s your hit of hopium for the day to counterbalance that kind of coverage if you’ve happened to be exposed to it:

Update —

And lookie here:

Detroit is on track to record the fewest murders since the 1960s. In Philadelphia, where there were more murders in 2021 than in any year on record, the number of homicides this year has fallen more than 20 percent from last year. And in Los Angeles, the number of shooting victims this year is down more than 200 from two years ago.

The decrease in gun violence in 2023 has been a welcome trend for communities around the country, though even as the number of homicides and the number of shootings have fallen nationwide, they remain higher than on the eve of the pandemic.

In 2020, as the pandemic took hold and protests convulsed the nation after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, the United States saw the largest increase in murders ever recorded. Now, as 2023 comes to a close, the country is likely to see one of the largest — if not the largest — yearly declines in homicides, according to recent F.B.I. data and statistics collected by independent criminologists and researchers.

The rapid decline in homicides isn’t the only story. Among nine violent and property crime categories tracked by the F.B.I., the only figure that is up over the first three quarters of this year is motor vehicle theft. The data, which covers about 80 percent of the U.S. population, is the first quarterly report in three years from the F.B.I., which typically takes many months to release crime data.

The decline in crime contrasts with perceptions, driven in part by social media videos of flash-mob-style shoplifting incidents, that urban downtowns are out of control. While figures in some categories of crime are still higher than they were before the pandemic, crime overall is falling nationwide, including in cities often singled out by politicians as plagued by danger and violence. Homicides are down by 13 percent in Chicago and by 11 percent in New York, where shootings are down by 25 percent — two cities that former President Donald J. Trump called “crime dens” in a campaign speech this year.

That should be good news, right? Right????

Naturally, Trump’s first reaction when presented with the portrait of a Medal of Honor winner is to ask the artist “do you think I could look like that if you did me? Perfect jaw, all those muscles?” pic.twitter.com/el78v1yZda

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 29, 2023

Has there ever been a bigger narcissist in the history of the world? Ever?

And this lunacy is feeding it.Imagine how much that cost?

It’s a cult. pic.twitter.com/x2mw5Xxbz6

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 27, 2023

Donald Trump has denied claims made by the director Chris Columbus that he “bullied his way into” appearing in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

The former US president said on his social media platform Truth Social, that the film’s production team were “begging me to make a cameo appearance”.

Trump said of the 1992 film: “They rented the Plaza hotel in New York, which I owned at the time. I was very busy, and didn’t want to do it. They were very nice, but above all, persistent.

“I agreed, and the rest is history! That little cameo took off like a rocket and the movie was a big success, and still is, especially around Christmas time. People call me whenever it is aired.”

The sequel to the 1990 comedy Home Alone, Home Alone 2 made $359m (£280m) and was the third-highest grossing film of 1992.

In 2020, Columbus, who directed both movies, told Business Insider that Trump’s cameo was a condition of being able to film inside the Plaza hotel, on top of the usual fee.

“He did bully his way into the movie,” said Columbus, who reported Trump as saying: “The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie.”

But Trump said on Truth Social this week: “Nothing could be further from the truth.” He added that his appearance had given the film a considerable boost. “That cameo helped make the movie a success, but if they felt bullied, or didn’t want me, why did they put me in, and keep me there, for over 30 years? Because I was, and still am, great for the movie, that’s why! Just another Hollywood guy from the past looking for a quick fix of Trump publicity for himself!”

Guess who’s lying?

I know it’s cheap to post this stuff. We all know he’s an infantile egomaniac. But sometimes I just have to vent. How can any adult admire this freak? I’ll never understand it.

Happy New Year everyone! Please, oh please, let it be a good one.

Once again, thanks so much to everyone who has supported Hullabaloo this year. It’s such a blessing to have such generous readers and I sincerely appreciate it. It means everything and I honestly couldn’t be more grateful. You are the best!

cheers,
digby