The Daily Mail released a poll showing that Trump is up 4 points from Biden (with a margin of error at 3.5, which is undoubtedly very generous.) They also did one of those questions asking “what word do you associate with Trump and Biden.” He’s apparently very proud of the word cloud they made of it:
He likes it! I assume he thinks all this is a huge compliment. And I think we can be sure that he’s going to give them more of what they want.
Here’s the Biden word cloud which he didn’t post:
When I went looking for this I fully expected that the biggest word in that cloud was going to be “old.” “Nothing” is actually a happy surprise. It’s not even particularly negative, it’s just … neutral. People aren’t thinking much about him one way or the other. We can work with that. The rest of the words are largely positive.
Trump’s fascism, on the other hand is making a huge impact. And it appears that a whole lot of people think his fascism is just great. They want this orange make-up wearing, yellow cotton-candy haired, imbecilic monster to be their dictator. I can hardly believe there are so many of them.
We’ve got a major sickness in our political culture and I’m not sure if it’s curable.
Here’s a Christmas present for all of you who don’t have subscriptions to the NY Times: a free link to this delightful bit of holiday schadenfreude: the story of Ron DeSantis’ precipitous fall. Grab an egg nog and add a double shot. It’s just so much fun:
Boxed in by a base enamored with Mr. Trump that has instinctively rallied to the former president’s defense, Mr. DeSantis has struggled for months to match the hype that followed his landslide 2022 re-election. Now, with the first votes in the Iowa caucuses only weeks away on Jan. 15, Mr. DeSantis has slipped in some polls into third place, behind Nikki Haley, and has had to downsize his once-grand national ambitions to the simple hopes that a strong showing in a single state — Iowa — could vault him back into contention.
For a candidate who talks at length about his own disinterest in “managing America’s decline,” people around Mr. DeSantis are increasingly talking about managing his.
Ryan Tyson, Mr. DeSantis’s longtime pollster and one of his closest advisers, has privately said to multiple people that they are now at the point in the campaign where they need to “make the patient comfortable,” a phrase evoking hospice care. Others have spoken of a coming period of reputation management, both for the governor and themselves, after a slow-motion implosion of the relationship between the campaign and an allied super PAC left even his most ardent supporters drained and demoralized.
It only gets better. I urge you to read it.
DeSantis is as bad as Trump in most ways and worse in others in terms of his philosophy and intentions. But he doesn’t have that celebrity glamour that really gets Trump over. He and his wife thought they could create it by flaunting their youth and pretending to be some kind of Florida version of JFK and Jackie. But their personalities are so weird (in his case) and grating (in hers) that none of that played with the crowd. Also, they don’t have the trappings of wealth that really make that work for certain people.
DeSantis’ campaign is turning out to be an epic flame out on the level of Scott Walker, Jeb Bush or Rick Perry. In fact, it’s exceeding all of them. What he did in Florida to get this nomination is a tragedy.
Ron DeSantis is one of the worst presidential candidates in history and if we’re lucky, we won’t be hearing from him again.
All the most hopeful political strategists I read have one big caveat as they contemplate the upcoming election: the third party threat. That could throw a monkey wrench into everything and usher in another Trump flukey win. I’ve written before about No Labels, which is nothing more than a grift of dumb big donors. But this one is something else and it’s kind of terrifying:
The super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential bid is narrowing its ballot access campaign focus to seven states — including crucial battlegrounds that will determine the outcome of the presidential election.
American Values 2024 will now prioritize helping to get Kennedy on the ballot in Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New York and Texas, according to plans first shared with POLITICO.
Half of these target states were decisive in the 2020 race, and won by now-President Joe Biden by narrow margins. The promotion of a third-party candidate in these battlegrounds could change the pathways for victory for the major parties’ nominees — even if Kennedy only garners single-digit support next November.
“The seven states we will initially focus on have a total of 183 electoral college votes and some of the highest populations in the country,” PAC Founder Tony Lyons said in a statement.
The super PAC originally planned to also work on gaining ballot access in Indiana, Colorado and Nevada but have dropped them from the list after advice from their counsel. But American Values 2024 will still dedicate between $10 and $15 million to the smaller list of states.
A statement outlining the new plan also said it’s confident that Kennedy could win a contingent election, a possible scenario where no presidential candidate gets 270 electoral college votes. Under such a scenario, congressional delegations from each state cast votes to choose the next president.
“Kennedy has two clear pathways to the White House,” Lyons said. “We will do everything we can, while working closely with our attorneys and without coordinating with the campaign, to make sure that the uniparty fails in any efforts to derail the peaceful, populist revolution that he represents.”
There hasn’t been a contingent election since 1836. It is also widely believed that a contingent election would result in the Republican nominee winning the presidency because there are more state delegations with a majority of Republican members than Democratic ones.
It is nothing but sabotage, a sick con to help elect Donald Trump. And Kennedy and his people are so deluded that if they were to succeed they would feel zero remorse, and insist that it’s not their fault because Biden just wasn’t good enough. (Democrats are required to win huge to overcome certain narcissistic egos in its broad coalition.) That’s how these people think.
There is something wrong with him. He’s not normal. And the people working for him are craven opportunists. I wish I knew what could be done but I’m not sure there’s anything except working overtime to educate the people who might vote for him about the stakes. He’s polling at 13 percent or so and that probably won’t hold up. But if he’s on the ballot in those battleground states he doesn’t have to have more than a fraction of that to sabotage the election.
I won’t even talk about Jill Stein, who will definitely be on the Green Party ballot. She was pivotal in 2016 and I’d imagine between her and RFK Jr, they could siphon off enough votes in those battlegrounds to really cause some chaos. And chaos benefits MAGA. It’s what they plan for. It’s what they live for.
There’s a lot of economic news this holiday week. The media is slowly but surely beginning the turn although they give Biden no credit even as Trump is out there saying we’re in a recession and acting as if he presided over Camelot or something.
But really, the news is good. Here’s one little data point from the professionals who have no reason at all to blow smoke. (After all, they can make money either way…) Here’s the Goldman Sachs projection for 2024:
Unemployment to stay low, 3.6%. Wage growth of 3.5% with inflation at 2%, meaning real wage growth of 1.5%. Overall growth of 2%. FRB starts cutting interest rates throughout 2024.
— Our most out-of-consensus call for 2024 is our growth forecast. Our 2% forecast for 2024 Q4/Q4 GDP growth is well above consensus of 0.9% and the FOMC’s 1.4% forecast. This reflects our view that the growth impulses from changes in financial conditions and changes in fiscal policy should be modest and roughly neutral on net next year. It also reflects our forecast that consumer spending will easily beat expectations—we expect 2% growth vs. consensus of 1%—because real income should grow about 3% and household net worth is close to an all-time high.
— Consistent with our growth view, we expect the labor market to remain strong. The healthy starting point of still-high job openings and a low layoff rate coupled with fading recession fears should support steady job gains in 2024 at a rate that gradually converges over the year to the current breakeven pace of about 100k. This should keep the unemployment rate low at around 3.6%.
–Wage growth and inflation should fall to roughly target-compatible levels in 2024. The main drivers of high wage growth over the last two years—extreme labor market overheating and big inflation shocks that sparked demands for larger cost-of-living adjustments—are now behind us. As a result, wage growth should keep falling toward the 3.5% pace we estimate is compatible with 2% inflation. Core PCE inflation slowed sharply in 2023H2 and appears on track to fall into the low 2s on a year-on-year basis by spring. We expect further rebalancing in the auto and housing rental markets to leave the year-on-year rate at 2.2% at the end of 2024, undershooting the FOMC’s 2.4% forecast, and we see a reasonable chance that it could fall below 2%.
–The rapid decline in inflation is likely to lead the FOMC to cut early and fast to reset the policy rate from a level that most participants will likely soon see as far offside. We expect three consecutive 25bp cuts in March, May, and June, followed by one cut per quarter until the funds rate reaches 3.25-3.5% in 2025Q3. Our forecast implies 5 cuts in 2024 and 3 more cuts in 2025. We also expect the Fed to slow balance sheet runoff in 2024Q4 and to end it fully in 2025Q1.
Seems promising, no? Here is some data about where we are this minute:
Journalist: The economy actually looks pretty great. Inflation is coming down. Employment is better than anyone expected. Numbers are better than were forecasted before the pandemic even began pic.twitter.com/VsOQs2z9aG
I posted Trump’s Christmas eve message in an earlier post. It was something. He went even further on Christmas:
He was busy all Christmas morning, going to church, enjoying the grandkids, watching a little football. Oh wait, no he wasn’t:
By contrast:
This year has tested us in many ways, but Christmas is a reminder of the power of community to keep us together even in difficult times. Wishing you all a peaceful holiday. pic.twitter.com/r0qA27UiXm
So kids, I’m begging you to devote as much energy as possible to this issue and make the smartest political decisions you can make right now. This just can’t wait. — there’s literally nothing more important to your future. None of the other things you care about will matter if this doesn’t get fixed. It’s now or never.
It’s been gently raining all night. It’s supposed to rain all day. Steady, gentle rain. That’s different from the violent summer downpours that flood streets and basements across the neighborhood. No amount of hydrological remediation in your yard is going to stop that.
The problem is climate change may be accelerating (Washington Post – gifted):
For the past several years, a small group ofscientists has warned that sometime early this century, the rate of global warming — which has remained largely steady for decades — might accelerate. Temperatures could rise higher, faster. The drumbeat of weather disasters may become more insistent.
And now, after what is poised to be the hottest year in recorded history, the same experts believe that it is already happening.
In a paper published last month, climate scientist James E. Hansen and a group of colleagues argued that the pace of global warming is poised to increase by 50 percent in the coming decades, with an accompanying escalation of impacts.
According to the scientists, an increased amount of heat energy trapped within the planet’s system — known as the planet’s “energy imbalance” —will accelerate warming. “If there’s more energy coming in than going out, you get warmer, and if you double that imbalance, you’re going to get warmer faster,” Hansen said in a phone interview.
Not everyone, agrees, the Post adds.
Still, “The truth is bad enough,” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann writes in a blog post. There is still a degree of uncertainty about the acceleration (no pun intended).
Data suggests that warming began its acceleration about 1970. The Post account describing the trends and drivers you can read for yourselves via the gifted link.
Hansen acknowledges that the global surface temperature data, alone, isn’t presenting an entirely clear picture of acceleration yet – but he predicts that it will be soon, as temperatures spike much further in the current El Niño.
“There won’t be any argument [by] late next spring, we’ll be way off the trend line,” Hansen said.
Some climate models also predict an acceleration of warming in the years to come, as aerosols decline. “While there is increasing evidence of an acceleration of warming, it’s not necessarily ‘worse than we thought’ because scientists largely expected something like this,” said Hausfather.
Not necessarily worse than we thought is not exactly comforting.
Yes, it’s serious. And yes we can still do this. But it’s going to take the people with most of their lives still ahead to fix what those of us with most of ours behind us have left them. “We didn’t know” is no longer an excuse. It never was much of one over 50 years ago when high school friends and I helped organize the first Earth Day events at our school.
The cohort of voters with the most untapped electoral power is under 45. Use it or lose the planet. Your state looks like mine, trust me.
Next year’s presidential election will be like no other. No matter who the major party candidates are. After the last, the outgoing Oval Office occupant instigated a violent insurrection to retain power that he could not win at the ballot box. The 2024 campaign will inform the world whether our nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” can endure much longer.
Polls taken this early suggest that a race between incumbent Joe Biden and Donald Trump is tight. The House Jan. 6 committee determined that Trump “lit that fire” on Jan. 6. The Colorado Supreme Court, having found there was “no question” that Trump supported the insurrection, has disqualified him from the state’s ballot. Federal and state felony charges against Trump for his actions stand pending trial.
Norman Eisen, Celinda Lake and Anat Shenker-Osorio suggest the race could shift significantly if Trump is convicted before November 2024. First, those trials have to occur and reach that conclusion (New York Times):
Yet we have seen the effect in several national surveys, like a recent Wall Street Journal poll. In a hypothetical matchup between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump leads by four percentage points. But if Mr. Trump is convicted, there is a five-point swing, putting Mr. Biden ahead, 47 percent to 46 percent.
In another new poll by Yahoo News-YouGov, the swing is seven points. In a December New York Times-Siena College poll, almost a third of Republican primary voters believe that Mr. Trump shouldn’t be the party’s nominee if he is convicted even after winning the primary.
The damage to Mr. Trump is even more pronounced when we look at an important subgroup: swing-state voters. In recent CNN polls from Michigan and Georgia, Mr. Trump holds solid leads. The polls don’t report head-to-head numbers if Mr. Trump is convicted, but if he is, 46 percent of voters in Michigan and 47 percent in Georgia agree that he should be disqualified from the presidency.
In a sane country, that assessment would be a no-brainer. But we are not a sane country.
An October Times/Siena poll indicates the conviction gut-punch for Trump would be stronger in swing states, leading to Biden victories in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania as well as Wisconsin where Biden is already favored. The shift would be “seismic,” with Biden winning by 10 rather than losing by four percentage points.
The same poll also provides insights into the effect a Trump conviction would have on independent and young voters, which are both pivotal demographics. Independents now go for Mr. Trump, 45 percent to 44 percent. However, if he is convicted, 53 percent of them choose Mr. Biden, and only 32 percent Mr. Trump.
The movement for voters aged 18 to 29 was even greater. Mr. Biden holds a slight edge, 47 percent to 46 percent, in the poll. But after a potential conviction, Mr. Biden holds a commanding lead, 63 percent to 31 percent.
The allegations must first be proven before a jury, but even ongoing trials will affect voters’ perceptions. The incredible shrinking “red wave” of 2022 dissipated in the wake of the Jan. 6 committee hearings. MAGA Republicans across the country lost their races. Trump’s legal entanglements next year could cost him.
What does this say about Americans’ mood? The authors find:
… Americans care about our freedoms, especially the freedom to cast our votes, have them counted and ensure that the will of the voters prevails. They are leery of entrusting the Oval Office to someone who abused his power by engaging in a criminal conspiracy to deny or take away those freedoms.
Yet Trump has promised to do more than corrupt elections if elected. Freedom as we know it will become a memory. His Christian nationalist supporters mean to relegate other faiths and nonbelievers to second-class citizen status, to bellow about Muslim sharia law while imposing their own version. Trump means to turn civil service into a national patronage system for toadies. He means to turn the Department of Justice into his personal brute squad.
Felony criminal convictions, the authors explain, “will foreground the threat that Mr. Trump poses to our nation and influence voters in an election-defining way.” But those could come too late or never.
It will be a mistake for Democrats to sit on their heels awaiting that day when convictions come down. Trump will delay proceedings beyond November if he can. The Great Sedition Trial of 1944 that Rachel Maddow recounts in her “Ultra” podcast and in “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” ended in a mistrial. The defendants turned that trial into a circus first. Trump would certainly try, even while splitting his time between campaigning and staying out of prison.
Many American voters will find the prospect of a Trumpish hellscape in which they lose their freedoms too abstract to be motivating and, until they occur, Trump convictions as well. Even then, Trump will appeal again and again no matter his prospects of success. Delay and uncertainty work in his favor.
Democrats must not wait for convictions to turn public opinion. Democrats must foreground the pending felony charges and trials themselves, and now. Replace “former president” with “indicted felon” at every opportunity. Waiting for the outcome of the trials is a grave strategic error.
It’s not too late, but it’s going to take intense focus and attention.
Former Vice President Al Gore expressed optimism that humanity can still repair the damage to the environment that is causing global warming.
“The good news is we can reclaim control of our destiny,” Gore, who has long warned of the dangers of climate change, said on “State of the Union” in an interview that aired Sunday.
“We have the ability to do this,” Gore said, adding: “And it’s not impractical,” citing solar power, wind power and electric vehicles.
“We can do this,” he told host Jake Tapper, “if we just overcome the greed and political power of the big fossil fuel polluters who have been trying to control this process. It’s time for people at the grassroots level in every country to speak up, and the good news is, that’s happening too. “
Sunday’s episode of “State of the Union” focused on 2023 as a year of record-setting temperatures and natural disasters. Gore made it clear that humans still have to choose the right course and follow it to fix the planet or face grave consequences.
“If we don’t take action, there could be as many as one billion climate refugees crossing international borders in the next several decades,” he said. “Well, a few million has contributed to this wave of populist authoritarianism and dictatorships and so forth. What would one billion do? We can’t do this. We could lose our capacity for self-governance. “
I wish all of alive and all those who came before us hadn’t brought us to this point. It’s not fair but here we are.
So kids, I’m begging you to devote as much energy as possible to this issue and make the smartest political decisions you can make right now. This just can’t wait. — there’s literally nothing more important to your future. None of the other things you care about will matter if this doesn’t get fixed. It’s now or never.
