Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The polls are driving them crazy but the performance on Tuesday should make them keep their heads down, do the work and recognize they have a good argument and all the other side has is hate.

Ron Brownstein on the election this week and what it means for Democrats:

Democrats yesterday continued to perform better at the polls than in the polls.

Even as many Democrats have been driven to a near panic by a succession of recent polls showing President Joe Biden’s extreme vulnerability, the party in yesterday’s elections swept almost all the most closely watched contests. Democrats won the Kentucky governorship by a comfortable margin, romped to a lopsided victory in an Ohio ballot initiative ensuring abortion rights,and easily captured an open Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat. Most impressive, Democratsheld the Virginia state Senate and were projected to regain control of the Virginia state House, despite an all-out campaign from Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin to win both chambers.Among the major contests, Democrats fell short only in the governor’s race in Mississippi.

The results extended the most striking pattern from the 2022 midterm election, when Republicans failed to match the usual gains for the party out of the White House at a time of widespread public dissatisfaction with the president. Democrats, just as they did last November, generated yesterday’s unexpectedly strong results primarily by amassing decisive margins in urban centers and the large inner suburbs around them.

The outcomes suggested that, as in 2022, an unusually broad group of voters who believe that Democrats have not delivered for their interests voted for the party’s candidates anyway because they apparently considered the Republican alternatives a threat to their rights and values on abortion and other cultural issues.

“The driving force of our politics since 2018 has been fear and opposition to MAGA,” the Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg told me. “It was the driving force in 2022 and 2023, and it will be in 2024. The truth is, what we’re facing in our domestic politics is unprecedented. Voters understand it, they are voting against it, and they are fighting very hard to prevent our democracy from slipping away.”

The surprising results yesterday could not have come at a better time for Democratic leaders. Many in the party have been driven to a near frenzy of anxiety by a succession of recent polls showing Biden trailing former President Donald Trump.

Yesterday’s victories have hardly erased all of Biden’s challenges. For months, polls have consistently found that his approval rating remains stuck at about 40 percent, that about two-thirds of voters believe he’s too old to effectively serve as president for another term, and that far more voters express confidence in Trump’s ability to manage the economy than in Biden’s.

But, like the 2022 results in many of the key swing states, the Democrats’ solid showing yesterday demonstrated that the party can often overcome those negative assessments by focusing voters’ attention on their doubts about the Trump-era Republican Party. “Once again, we saw that what voters say in polls can be very different than what they do when faced with the stark choice between Democrats who are fighting for a better life for families and dangerous candidates who are dead set on taking away their rights and freedoms,” Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, the chief strategy officer of Way to Win, a liberal group that focuses on electing candidates of color, told me in an email last night.

Even more than a midterm election, these off-year elections can turn on idiosyncratic local factors. But the common thread through most of the major contests was the Democrats’ continuing strength in racially diverse, well-educated major metropolitan areas, which tend to support liberal positions on cultural issues such as abortion and LGBTQ rights. Those large population centers have trended Democratic for much of the 21st century. But that process accelerated after Trump emerged as the GOP’s leader in 2016, and has further intensified since the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

Across yesterday’s key contests, Democrats maintained a grip on major population centers. In Kentucky, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear carried the counties centered on Louisville and Lexington by about 40 percentage points each over Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

In Ohio, abortion-rights supporters dominated most of the state’s largest communities. That continued the pattern from the first round of the state’s battle over abortion. In that election, as I wrote, the abortion-rights side, which opposed the change, won 14 of the state’s 17 largest counties, including several that voted for Trump in 2020.

The results were equally emphatic in yesterday’s vote on a ballot initiative to repeal the six-week-abortion ban that the GOP-controlled state legislature passed, and Republican Governor Mike DeWine signed, in 2019. The abortion ban was buried under a mountain of votes for repeal in the state’s biggest places: An overwhelming two-thirds or more of voters backed repeal in the state’s three largest counties (which are centered on Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati), and the repeal side won 17 of the 20 counties that cast the most ballots, according to the tabulations posted in The New York Times.

Democrats held the Virginia state Senate through strong performances in suburban areas as well. Especially key were victories in which Democrats ousted a Republican incumbent in a suburban Richmond district, and took an open seat in Loudoun County, an outer suburb of Washington, D.C.

The race for an open Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat followed similar tracks. Democrat Daniel McCaffery cruised to victory in a race that hinged on debates about abortion and voting rights. Like Democrats in other states, McCaffery amassed insuperable margins in Pennsylvania’s largest population centers: He not only posted big leads in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but he also built enormous advantages in each of the four large suburban counties outside Philadelphia, according to the latest vote tally.

From a national perspective, the battle for control of the Virginia state legislature probably offered the most important signal. The Virginia race presented the same competing dynamics that are present nationally. Though Biden won the state by 10 percentage points in 2020, recent polls indicate that more voters there now disapprove than approve of his performance. And just as voters in national polls routinely say they trust Trump more than Biden on the economy and several other major issues, polls found that Virginia voters gave Republicans a double-digit advantage on economy and crime. Beyond all that, Youngkin raised enormous sums to support GOP legislative candidates and campaigned tirelessly for them.

Yet even with all those tailwinds, Youngkin still failed to overturn the Democratic majority in the state Senate, and lost the GOP majority in the state House. The principal reason for Youngkin’s failure, analysts in both parties agree, was public resistance to his agenda on abortion. Youngkin had elevated the salience of abortion in the contest by explicitly declaring that if voters gave him unified control of both legislative chambers, the GOP would pass a 15-week ban on the procedure, with exceptions for rape, incest, and threats to the life of the mother.

Youngkin and his advisers described that proposal as a “reasonable” compromise, and hoped it would become a model for Republicans beyond the red states that have already almost all imposed more severe restrictions. But the results made clear that most Virginia voters did not want to roll back access to abortion in the commonwealth, where it is now legal through 26 weeks of pregnancy. “What Virginia showed us is that the Glenn Youngkin playbook failed,” Mini Timmaraju, the CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, an abortion-rights group, told me last night. “We showed that even Republican voters in Virginia weren’t buying it, didn’t go for it, saw right through it.”

Youngkin’s inability to capture the Virginia state legislature, even with all the advantages he enjoyed, will probably make the 2024 GOP presidential contenders even more skittish about openly embracing a national ban on abortion. But Timmaraju argued that yesterday’s results showed that voters remain focused on threats to abortion rights. “Our job is to make sure that the American people don’t forget who overturned Roe v. Wade,” she told me.

None of yesterday’s results guarantees success for Biden or Democrats in congressional races next year. It is still easier for other Democrats to overcome doubts about Biden than it will be for the president himself to do so. In particular, the widespread concern in polls that Biden is too old to serve another term is a problem uniquely personal to him. And few Democrats really want to test whether they can hold the White House in 2024 without improving Biden’s ratings for managing the economy. Trump’s base of white voters without a college degree may be more likely to turn out in a presidential than off-year election as well.

But a clear message from the party’s performance yesterday is that, however disenchanted voters are with the country’s direction under Biden, Democrats can still win elections by running campaigns that prompt voters to consider what Republicans would do with power. “We have an opening here with the effective framing around protecting people’s freedoms,” Fernandez Ancona told me. “Now we can push forward on the economy.”

Yesterday’s results did not sweep away all the obstacles facing Biden. But the outcome, much like most of the key contests in last fall’s midterm, show that the president still has a viable pathway to a second term through the same large metro areas that keyed this unexpectedly strong showing for Democrats.

It’s the freedom. It all comes down to that. Taking away abortion rights, banning books, banning speech, telling parents how they’re allowed to raise their kids, demonizing health care workers, election workers and teachers are all assaults on freedom. And they are just getting started.

By hook and by crook

It’s not clear sometines whether the beleaguered 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) is as dead as a Norwegian Blue or just resting. The Act, explains Democracy Docket, was not just intended to address open discrimination, but the subtle kind as well, as Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in 1969. Chief Justice John Roberts will go down in history for eviscerating and/or weakening VRA provisions.

Even then, The VRA is not quite dead yet:

Over the past few months, pro-voting forces have brought a series of lawsuits under lesser known and rarely litigated provisions of the VRA that seek to combat some of the more “subtle” — but nevertheless pernicious — voting laws that disenfranchise citizens across the country. From Washington to North Carolina and other states in between, these lawsuits are tapping into more obscure portions of the VRA in order to protect voting rights. 

You go to war with the VRA provisions you have.

Case coordinator Rachel Selzer names a few:

In Wisconsin, a new lawsuit challenges the state’s absentee ballot witness requirement under Section 201 of the VRA. 

A recent federal lawsuit brought on behalf of four individual Wisconsin voters alleges that the state’s absentee ballot witness requirement contravenes Section 201 of the VRA, which prohibits denying the right to vote on the basis of a citizen’s failure to comply with a “test or device.” Section 201 defines an unlawful “test or device” as any requirement that a voter must satisfy as a prerequisite for voting. 

Including “the voucher of registered voters or members of any other class.” Like a “supporting witness.”

Relying on Section 202(c) of the VRA, lawsuits in North Carolina and Washington challenge residency requirements for voting. 

That 1970 provision “abolished so-called ‘durational residency requirements’ as a precondition for voting in presidential elections.” Residency is distinct from a registration cutoff.

Despite the VRA’s clear mandate, states including North Carolina and Washington require their citizens to reside in the state for at least 30 days prior to the election in which they seek to vote. Two new federal lawsuits filed on behalf of the North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans and the Washington State Alliance for Retired Americans allege that their states’ respective durational residency requirements flout Section 202(c) as well as the U.S. Constitution.

[…]

The Section 202(c) lawsuits also bring claims under the First and 14th Amendments, alleging that the durational residency requirements unconstitutionally burden the fundamental right to vote without a compelling justification. Both cases cite the Supreme Court’s 1971 opinion in Dunn v. Blumstein, which held that Tennessee’s durational residency requirements “deny some citizens the right to vote” and “impinge[] on the exercise of a second fundamental personal right, the right to travel.” 

Using Section 202(d) of the VRA, a Georgia lawsuit seeks to extend the time period in which voters can request an absentee ballot.

In particular, Section 202(d) stipulates that states are required to allow all qualified voters who will be outside of their election district on Election Day to cast an absentee ballot in a presidential election so long as they applied at least seven days before the election. 

Georgia previously comported with this federally mandated deadline up until 2021 when it enacted an omnibus voter suppression law, Senate Bill 202, in response to record high turnout in the 2020 general election. Under S.B. 202, the latest a voter may apply for an absentee ballot (via mail, email fax or online) is 11 days before an election — four days before the VRA’s prescribed deadline. 

Look closely at any voting-related statutory adjustments made by GOP-led legislatures for the subtle and not so subtle impacts. They’re trying anything and everything they can think of to suppress the vote and to make voting itself more of a challenge. Just as Paul Weyrich said so unsubtly in 1980.

Two can play at that game.

“When in the history of the world have the people banning books been the good guys?”

Erin Reed (Erin in the Morning) posts on Threads:

This story got drowned out by the elections yesterday, but I want to make it clear to everyone. A decent sized city in Tennessee has banned public homosexuality. This is the kind of law we have not seen since the 70s. It’s straight out of Orbán and Putin’s government.

Now Murfreesboro has moved on to local libraries “where at least four books, all containing LGBTQ+ themes, have been pulled from the shelves,” Reed writes, describing the ordinance. “Following that, the [city] council moved to enact a tiered library card system, where most nonfiction content will be gated behind the adult-only library card. This system will go into effect in 2024.”

Where have we seen that before?

Reed continues:

On Monday, however, the county steering committee met to discuss a new resolution: the removal of all books in the library that could possibly violate the Murfreesboro ordinance. The fiery meeting featured multiple board members stating that they had the right to “enforce community standards” and ban books.

Local activist Keri Lambert pointed out that city was already being sued over the ordinance. Now you want to double down and invite another? she asked, exasperated?

“Do you know now that if you’re under 18 you can’t access history books?” How does a 16-year-old study for the SAT?

“When in the history of the world have the people banning books been the good guys?”

East of Tennessee

“Democrats yesterday continued to perform better at the polls than in the polls,” wrote Ron Brownstein on Wednesday. It was also true in North Carolina.

We had no statewide contests in North Carolina on Tuesday. Still, Democrats fared better here as well in the mostly nonpartisan local races (WRAL):

Democrats swept the mayor’s race and council seats in Huntersville, in Republican-leaning northern Mecklenburg County — the first time that’s ever happened, according to Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer.

[…]

Democrats also won all the open seats in New Hanover County, which is politically nearly evenly divided. They won the mayor’s race in High Point, a seat that’s been held by a Republican for many years. They even swept the town councils in Cooleemee, a tiny town in Davie County, and in Mars Hill and Marshall in Madison County, all typically Republican areas.

Democrats have not engaged much in local races in recent cycles, but longtime Democratic strategist Gary Pearce says that’s changing under new party Chairwoman Anderson Clayton. He credits her for the wins.

“She had made a big thing when she came in about wanting to compete in municipal races,” Pearce said. “Some Democrats were afraid that would take the focus off the 2024 election, but she proved them wrong.”

Watch that space.

Oh, that guy in the White House? Still getting shit done:

The White House announced this week a historic investment in American passenger rail services, advancing the plan put forth in Biden’s signature Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that will provide billions of dollars for modernizations in Amtrak’s northeast corridor. The new projects are expected to create over 100,000 new construction jobs.

The law will provide $16.4 billion in new funding for 25 passenger rail projects from Boston to Washington, D.C. The investments will rebuild tunnels and bridges that are over 100 years old; upgrade tracks, power systems, signals, stations, and other infrastructure; and, advance future projects to significantly improve travel times by increasing operating speeds and reducing delays.

We’re making a historic investment in America’s passenger rail: over $16 billion dollars into the Northeast Corridor for 25 different projects.

It’s part of my agenda to invest in America. And to invest in Americans. pic.twitter.com/9XCWyCXIO8

— President Biden (@POTUS) November 8, 2023

Joe knows something about Amtrak, I hear.

(h/t KM for the graphic)

Trump on his great achievement in taking away a woman’s right to choose:

During the 202) campaign he tried to hedge:

The Democrats cannot let him do that again. His bragging about being personally responsible for taking away women’s constitutional rights must be pounded into every voter’s brain before the 2024 election. It must be conventional wisdom made clear by those quotes of him taking credit for what he did (and there are more) and he cannot be allowed to hedge about it and pretend he didn’t say it. Not this time.

Nobody can stand her

Marjorie Taylor Greene finds that she’s standing alone:

With her claims about Jewish laser beams, attacks of school-shooting survivors, promotion of QAnon, and overall “I’ll tell YOU when I’ve had enough wine coolers” vibes, Marjorie Taylor Greene has never been a universally beloved figure in Washington. Still, for a time, she had a number of friends on the far-right side of Congress who were willing to put up with her. Now? Not so much!

The Daily Beast reports that while the GOP’s three-week train wreck electing a House Speaker was an embarrassing stain on the entire party, one individual in particular “emerged from the drama with few friends and plenty of enemies”: the congresswoman from Georgia. She’s now persona non grata among a significant amount of Republicans thanks to the fact that:

1-She was kicked out of the House Freedom Caucus this summer.
2-Kevin McCarthy, whom she aligned herself with earlier this year, is out of power.
3-“GOP rank and file…already disliked her.” 

Really, it’s just math.

And that math was on display last week when Greene tried and failed—very badly!—to censure Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib for the lawmaker’s pro-Palestinian comments. Per the Daily Beast:

Twenty-three Republicans broke with Greene on her resolution to censure Tlaib…. And those 23 Republicans breaking with Greene—a firebrand conservative who is perhaps the id of the MAGA movement in Congress and has Donald Trump on speed dial—is just the latest evidence that GOP members are neither fearing nor loving Marjorie Taylor Greene.

That point was further illustrated after the vote, when Greene took to Twitter to shame the Republicans who voted against her censure resolution. “You voted to kick me out of the freedom caucus, but keep CNN wannabe Ken Buck and vaping groping Lauren Boebert and you voted with the Democrats to protect Terrorist Tlaib,” Greene wrote, taking aim at Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX). “You hate Trump, certified Biden’s election, and could care less about J6 defendants being persecuted.”

In response, Roy told The Hill: “Tell her to go chase so-called Jewish space lasers if she wants to spend time on that sort of thing.” And whereas some of her colleagues might have previously come to her defense, many have since suggested—some by saying outright—that she’s only hurting herself and her standing in Congress.

“Childish in many ways,” Representative Troy Nehls, who has previously defended Greene, told the Daily Beast of her attacks on Roy. “What do you feel you’re accomplishing there, you know?” Another Republican and former Greene ally told the outlet: “She’s creating her own enemies through unprovoked, unwarned, and unsubstantiated attacks. Embarrassing herself through launching attacks she later has to retract due to their inaccuracies.” A third who was “once close” with the Georgia rep added: “There is no one I have heard from, dozens of members, who are happy with her, that trust her [or] confide in her. She’s continually seeking attention,” this GOP member said, “building herself up while tearing others down. I have cut ties completely.”

Asked for comment re: her lack of popularity in DC, Greene told the Daily Beast she wasn’t going to speak to a “stupid gossip blog.”

Unfortunately, while Greene may be on the outs with many of her congressional colleagues, she reportedly remains beloved in MAGA HQ, where she is apparently on a “short list” of VP candidates.

They managed to censure Tlaib last night with a different resolution which probably fries her even more.

Trump is not going to pick her for VP. She’s not his type (as he likes to say…) and this unpopularity will not go unnoticed at Mar-a-Lago. He may like her personally (he likes anyone who licks his boots) but there’s a limit.

Daddy’s little girl on the stand

MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin covered the testimony on twitter this morning:

Good morning, I’m back at New York Supreme Court, and I’ll be posting both here and through MSNBC’s live blog of Ivanka Trump’s testimony. I’ll give you the good color and analysis there & will pop in here with quicker bits of the play-by-play:

Let’s set the stage with 7 minutes left before the trial day starts. The courtroom is almost full, but not nearly as crowded as it has been on days past and is a relative ghost town compared with Monday’s packed-within-inches scenario. 

The Attorney General is here in her usual front-row seat, surrounded by staff, and her team has been at their table for at least a half hour. Team Trump, on the other hand, just walked in and is getting settled. 

Remember: Ivanka is technically a third party witness, and as my @NBCNews colleague @adamreisstv observed this morning, will not sit as the defense table nor is she permitted in the courtroom separate and apart from being called to the stand. 

Previewing lines of testimony to come, Ivanka explained that she spent “an enormous amount” of time on two projects in particular: Doral and the Old Post Office loan. 

Right off the bat, Ivanka is a more cooperative, comfortable witness than her brothers. 

And now, with little fanfare, Solomon has started discussing the relationship between the Trump Org and Deutsche Bank. He asks whether she understands Trump once had a relationship with DB through its commercial division, including with respect to a loan on the Chicago property. 

Ivanka has referenced her August 2022 investigative interview multiple times now, including referring to documents shown to her at that interview. That she has been well, if transparently, prepped is clear. 

In connection with discussing the financing Trump sought for Doral, Ivanka says her goal with Doral was to “reposition” it as a luxury property. And here comes the first document in today’s examination. 

In a 2011 email to someone named Andy Beal, Ivanka promises her father will send him his most recent financial statement via “hard mail.” She does not recall whether Beal requested that document; the conversations with Beal Bank were brief & never reached the term sheet stage. 

Kise is objecting to these questions on relevant grounds. The implication, of course, of reviewing these kinds of emails with other prospective lenders is that the Trumps could not obtain a loan for Doral on standard terms for a commercial real estate project. 

That is, in fact, where we are headed. We are now looking at a November 2011 email from Ivanka to Richard Byrne of Deutsche Bank about obtaining financing for Doral, conversations Ivanka described as “high level” and that “didn’t go anywhere.” 

And now we’ve moved to the point, one month later, where Ivanka — the captain of the Doral redevelopment — has arranged a meeting with Rosemary Vrablic and Dominic Scalzi of the private wealth management group and days later, received a term sheet and a request for more information for due diligence purposes from Vrablic 

And in particular, Solomon is now highlighting how much more advantageous the interest rates are (LIBOR + 2.25 or the Prime Rate, during one phase of the project) in exchange for … 

two things: a full and complete personal guaranty from Donald Trump that he could cover the principal and interest of the loan and operating expenses of the resort AND a minimum net worth of $3 billion, exclusive of brand value. 

That these terms were unusual, even for Trump, is underscored by the initial reaction of Trump Org lawyer Jason Greenblatt, who worried in a Dec 2011 email that Trump might not be willing to sign such a guaranty and that the minimum net worth requirement could be “a problem.” 

Ivanka responded, “We’ve known that” — meaning that the net worth requirement would be an issue — “since day one.” Nonetheless, however, Trump told DB his total net worth was in excess of $4 billion. 

And when Ivanka sent back to DB their marked up term sheet, they lowered the net worth covenant to $2 billion, not $3 billion. 

Ivanka has now confirmed Trump Org ultimately entered into commitment and fee letters with Deutsche Bank for the Doral loan, as signed by her dad. 

Kise is now objecting that Ivanka has not been questioned about the three corporate entities that afforded the AG jurisdiction; Engoron says “it’s an interesting question.” Solomon is getting exercised; she was involved, from top to bottom in the negotiation and execution of this deal. 

Engoron says the subpoena set a floor, not a ceiling on the scope of her testimony, and we move on. 

Ivanka is reviewing the ultimately agreed-upon net worth covenant, which required a minimum net worth of $2.5 billion, exclusive of brand, as reflected in his statements of financial condition. She has no independent memory of this term, however. 

Ivanka also has testified, despite Solomon’s attempt to refresh her recollection with various emails, that she does not recall communications about an unsecured, additional loan for Doral in 2016, nor does she remember why that loan did not come to fruition. 

Ivanka is now being shown an April 2016 email from Vrablic indicating there “bank couldn’t make the exception in this case,” meaning they decided against moving forward. Again, Ivanka says this does not refresh her recollection. 

Solomon moves on to the another of the topics I predicted would come up: Ivanka’s option to purchase two different penthouse apartments, both of which were owned by the Trump Org. 

Ivanka maintains she was not involved in the statements of financial condition so she has no idea how they were valued in those documents. 

With a half hour remaining before lunch, we’re focused on Ivanka’s involvement in the Old Post Office — aka Trump International Hotel DC — deal, which began with presentations to the federal government’s General Services Administration, which owns the property. 

The AG’s lawyer is using documents to establish that in December 2011, the GSA noticed “multiple GAAP departures” in Donald Trump’s statements of financial condition, and brought those to the attention of Trump Org. representatives, including Ivanka. 

A Trump employee, David Orowitz, internally circulated a proposed response to GSA’s concerns; Ivanka does not recall that they received a “deficiency letter” to which Orowitz was trying to respond. She does remember GSA had “questions” to which they worked to get them “answers.” 

But she doesn’t have any independent recollection of any specific questions raised by GSA in response to Trump’s statements of financial condition. 

****

We’re now on our lunch break, but before it began, Ivanka was shown a 2013 email between her and her husband, as produced by the Trump Org. 

While how much of that email will ultimately be admissible is up for discussion because of spousal privilege,if you wondered whether these two talked shop, they absolutely did. Ivanka seems to have sought and got Jared’s advice about potential sources of financing for the Old Post Office deal. 

And the implication that the AG appears to be drawing here is twofold: Only Deutsche Bank was willing to provide financing on terms even close to what the Trumps wanted—but only if they got two things they wanted: 

a guaranty that Trump could cover the principal, interest, and operating income of each asset and proof that he maintained a minimum net worth of $2-3 billion, exclusive of brand value, as demonstrated by … his annual statements of financial condition. ]

Ivanka’s direct testimony is over and has been relatively placid. But that doesn’t mean there were no surprises. 

The AG’s lawyer just showed Ivanka proof that despite making a personal guaranty to Deutsche Bank in connection with the Old Post Office loan, Trump then entered into an agreement with his adult kids, through which each agreed to pay him money through their revocable trusts to ensure he could meet that obligation. 

On cross examination, Jesus Suarez is hammering at a theme: Deutsche Bank wanted to make money, and the favorable loan terms they extended to Trump were part and parcel of an overall strategy to make money from their relationship with the Trumps. Not only did DB offer them other investment opportunities or banking services, but seemed to have believed publicity from the Trump relationship would benefit the bank. 

Given how little she recalled about the terms of the related loans, Ivanka’s recollection of the beginning of her involvement in the multi-year, multi-million-dollar Doral acquisition and renovation strikes me as oddly extensive. 

Rubin points out that Trump lying and saying he could personally guarantee the repayment of the loan even though he actually had to enter a deal with his kids that he could loot their trusts if he failed is quite a revelation.

I’m just putting this here to mark what took place today. Rubin’s analysis on television was that despite her calm demeanor, Ivanka actually revealed a great deal about how they did business and didn’t contradict any of the documents presented in the case, merely saying that she didn’t remember them. Those documents are pretty damning. In some ways it appears that she subtly threw Trump and her brothers under the bus by just sitting there and allowing the case to speak for itself without staging any tantrums and distractions as the others have done on the stand to deflect from the substance of the case.

Everyone has been saying that her testimony isn’t important but as I wrote last week, she was intimately involved in Trump’s schemes and has different incentives than the boys to join the circus. Her husband has handsomely cashed in on the presidency. Her concerns are more for her own reputation and Jared’s and getting into this mess doesn’t benefit her. She’s a Trump and they always look out for number one.

“To many voters, the topic of abortion is so important, so we have been completely straightforward and clear. I will back a bill to protect life,”

That was yesterday.

Youngkin made a bet that the GOP establishment-backed approach to the abortion issue — a 15 week ban — would be enough to neutralize it at the ballot box and he went all-in. How’d it work out for him?

Not well. He was banking on the abortion issue to win yesterday and he lost the Virginia House and the Democrats held on to the Senate. So it’s back to the drawing board for the GOP. They have a hardcore base for whom abortion is fundamental. They have shown that they’re “flexible” with wink-wink rhetoric like what Youngkin has been selling but they won’t go beyond that. And after Trump made sure Roe V Wade was overturned, pro-choice voters no longer trust any of their assurances.

This issue is killing the Republicans and it should. They spent 50 years building up their base by calling abortion murder and claiming it’s a holocaust knowing that Roe protected them from the consequences. They don’t have that anymore and they don’t know what to do.

This piece by Joan Walsh in The Nation nails it:

Maybe Glenn Youngkin got a little too big for his fleece britches.

That’s a (bad) joke; he became famous for his fleece vests, not fleece pants. But he did try to ride his semi-surprise 2021 gubernatorial victory as a fleece-wearing suburban dad (not the tailor-suited Carlyle exec he was) into a 2023 state government trifecta, raising money and campaigning to get Republicans control of the state Senate, where Democrats have blocked his regressive agenda, as well as holding the House of Delegates, which the GOP clawed back the year he won.Continue watching[DV] The Nationafter the ad

He spent more than $14 million and failed. Democrats kept their lead in the state Senate. More surprisingly, they took back the House, winning at least 51 seats; final margins for both chambers will come later Wednesday. Youngkin needed a Senate victory to enact his promised 15-week abortion ban and other right-wing measures. Instead, he lost both houses in Virginia’s general assembly.

Along with overwhelming pro-choice victories on Ohio’s constitutional Issue 1, as well as Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Andy Beshear’s slam-dunk reelection, abortion rights advocates had a great night. Youngkin’s humiliating defeat is special, though. In 2017, the anti-Trump resistance took an astonishing 15 seats in the House of Delegates. The 2021 Virginia losses were devastating for progressives, and were also viewed as a Joe Biden backlash. This victory is enormous.

Also, practically: Virginia is the only Southern state that hasn’t imposed drastic limits on abortion since the end of Roe v. Wade. I haven’t seen decent drill-down results yet, but trust me: Women voters made this happen. The last big state poll showed abortion was motivating 70 percent of Virginia women voters, compared to 47 percent who said that was their top issue in 2019.

Loudoun County’s Russet Perry is the new state senator from District 31, which has long been considered considered the most symbolic swing race out there. Several sources told me early Tuesday that if Perry won, Democrats would hold the Senate. Perry staked her race on abortion—here is one great ad. She also just plain mocked opponent Juan Pablo Segura, doughnut mogul, for trying to turn the crime issue against her—she’s a former prosecutor as well as a former CIA agent.

Perry bested Segura on both counts.

Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia PAC gave $300,000 to Segura in October, and a quarter-million in September. That’s on the late side, though, in a race that had long been marked nationally as a big one for both sides. It turns out a lot of Youngkin’s contributions came in September and October. He gave almost a quarter of a million to GOP Senator Siobhan Dunnevant in early October (to be fair, on top of almost $700,000 he gave her in September). But money coming in October can be hard to spend. Dunnevant lost to Democratic Delegate Schuyler VanValkenburg, part of the progressive class of 2017.

“Youngkin raised millions over the summer,” says Carolyn Fiddler, a writer and political operative steeped in Virginia politics, who was bewildered by Youngkin’s late spending. “That looks like butt-covering money, coming so late.” We’ll have to see final spending reports, but it could turn out that Youngkin was mainly raising that cash for his own political ambitions.

Those ambitions might have been advanced by winning the state Senate and keeping the House and having an actual agenda of accomplishment, however regressive, to run on. That’s not going to happen.

Other highlights of Tuesday night include 2017 cycle stars Jennifer Carroll Foy and Danica Roem moving up to the Senate. Carroll Foy gave up her delegate seat for an unsuccessful run for governor in 2021; Roem was Virginia’s first trans legislator. Both are progressive favorites. As is Delegate Nadarius Clark, who won a slightly different district (maps were redrawn, more fairly, but it made it hard for incumbents to run as incumbents). And former delegate Joshua Cole, who lost his seat in the disaster of 2021, is going back to Richmond, after running four races in six years.

“When I was a delegate, I was the poorest legislator in Richmond,” Cole said in a moving election night statement. “But I come to this work with a sincere belief that a better, safer, more fair commonwealth is possible.”

Cole’s opponent, by the way, got more than $600,000 from Youngkin. But most of it came in October.

Another Virginia race getting national attention featured progressive parent activist Allison Spillman facing well-funded conservative newcomer and private-school parent Meg Scalia Bryce for an at-large school board seat in Albermarle County, home to Charlottesville. I wrote about this race, and National Review’s Ramesh Ponneru clapped back that I got it wrong—Bryce’s anti-trans positions and her denial of “systemic racism” were mainstream views. Also, he thought it indelicate of me to emphasize that Bryce is Antonin Scalia’s daughter. (Please feel free to talk about the way I got my values from my dad if I ever run for office. Or any time you want to.)

Spillman beat Bryce 56 to 44 percent. Democrats also won back the Loudoun County school board, an epicenter of GOP backlash just two years ago.

The big loser, Suburban Fleece Daddy Youngkin, held out the hope of Trumpism after Trump. Trump is losing in the courts this week; Youngkin just lost big at the polls. People freaking out over bad polling for Joe Biden—at the same time in the election cycle the pundits were sure Mitt Romney would clobber Barack Obama—really ought to pore over Virginia election results instead.

I do think Trump won Tuesday night, though: the GOP billionaires who were talking about drafting Youngkin to challenge the 91-felony-count guy next year are skulking away with their wallets between their legs. Trump will have no serious GOP challenger. Except himself. 

MAGA Mike is ready to deliver for the cult

Punchbowl News on where the House Republicans go from here:

Democrats had a very good Election Night on Tuesday. Incumbent Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection in Kentucky, dispatching Republican Daniel Cameron, a close ally of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Ohio voters enshrined the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution. And Democrats won control of the state legislature in Virginia. Gabe Amo, a former aide to President Joe Biden, won a special election in Rhode Island.

Maybe for just a minute, this will stop Democrats from hand-wringing over Biden’s lousy poll numbers. Maybe. And anoint a new national political star in the 45-year-old Beshear.

Conversely, it was a bad night for the GOP nationally. And it was a bad night for House Republicans, as their version of the FY2024 Transportation-HUD spending bill got pulled from the floor. When it will be taken up is still unclear.

The big question: Can Johnson deliver? Since the birth of the Tea Party movement and the 2010 House GOP landslide, the right has pined for a speaker who would listen to them. A speaker who would pursue their preferred strategies, seek confrontation with the Senate and White House instead of compromise and run the House as if it were an extension of the Republican Study Committee. A speaker who was one of them.

They’ve finally got that in new Speaker Mike Johnson, who emerged from weeks of brutal House GOP infighting as their party leader. Now the rubber will meet the road as to whether governing as a conservative hardliner can actually work. The early signs are mixed, at best.

Johnson has, in essence, delayed critical aid to Israel by turning it into a partisan political fight, tying the $14 billion in new funding for the embattled U.S. ally to enacting offsetting IRS cuts (and increasing the deficit). The Louisiana Republican is signaling he’s very open to possibly impeaching Biden. He’s leaning toward pursuing a strategy pushed by the House Freedom Caucus to bifurcate government funding, a risky move given that Democrats control the Senate and the White House. And Johnson passed on an opportunity to try to move a stopgap funding bill this week, instead pushing off any House action to avert a shutdown until days before the Nov. 17 deadline.

This is the kind of legislative saber-rattling conservatives have dreamed about for years. But can it work?

The reality is this: Aid to Israel is going nowhere fast. As we noted above, GOP leaders had to pull the Transportation-HUD spending bill Tuesday night because both moderate and conservative Republicans rebelled. There’s a better-than-even chance that the federal government could shut down next week. Vulnerable GOP lawmakers don’t love the idea of impeaching Biden while some senior House Republicans fret it could actually help the president politically. Plus the Democratic-controlled Senate will never convict him anyway.

But Johnson is likely to face little — if any — of the backlash that his predecessors felt if his plans fall apart.

For the moment, Johnson has succeeded in somewhat calming the crisis atmosphere that prevailed inside the House Republican Conference. Internal GOP meetings are less contentious than they have been throughout this Congress. Conservatives, in particular, seem willing to give Johnson a chance to find his way in very difficult circumstances. He’s still firmly in his honeymoon phase.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who chairs the House Freedom Caucus, noted Johnson inherited his post following a disastrous few weeks for Republicans, which gives the speaker some more leeway in funding negotiations.

“Most of it was already baked in by the time he got here,” Perry said of Johnson. “The waters are just too high.”

Perry, however, was confident that Johnson won’t go for a clean CR like former Speaker Kevin McCarthy did at the end of September. That move ultimately cost McCarthy his job after conservative hardliners decided to oust the speaker.

“He’s not going to cave,” Perry insisted of Johnson.

Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), one of the eight lawmakers who voted to oust McCarthy, said he had full faith in Johnson to give the right what they want.

“The outcome is going to be quite a bit different,” Crane told us. “Speaker Johnson is a lot more conservative and I don’t believe he’s as transactional.”

Whether or not Johnson is more conservative than his GOP predecessors isn’t up for debate. He’s decidedly more to the right than McCarthy. Same with Paul Ryan or John Boehner.

Yet the real question is can a brand-new speaker with an inexperienced staff execute strategies straight from the Freedom Caucus playbook and be successful in an otherwise all-Democratic Washington? We’ll find out, but it’s going to be an up-and-down ride in the meantime.

They may give him a little leeway but not much. What they really want is chaos and I don’t think he has any choice — or desire — to give them anything else. These people believe that if they just hold their breath until they turn blue they will get what they want. And if you judge by their antics over the last few months, they are absolutely right to think it. They showed that if they don’t give in the rest of the party will give them what they want. The problem is that what they want is something most voters hate.

But it’s easy to see why they are. Our political culture is crazy.

After days of panic and hand wringing over presidential polls that show President Biden possibly narrowly losing to Donald Trump a year from now, last night Democrats were given a reprieve from their doleful mood as the off-year elections delivered victories across the country. With the exception of the Mississippi Governorship (which no one seriously thought could be won by a Democrat) they swept all the big bell weather elections, from flipping the Virginia House of Delegates and holding the state Senate (pushing Gov. Glenn Youngkin off the short list of GOP Great Whitebread Hopes), winning the important abortion rights referendum in blood red Ohio and re-electing the Democratic Gov. of Kentucky. There were dozens of others including state Supreme Court victories, and school board seats that were either held or flipped by the Democrats. It was a good night.

But, as is their wont, the Democrats will no doubt revert to their bleak frame of mind as soon as they see another presidential poll or two that shows the race is close. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes described the phenomenon perfectly:

The political experience of the Biden era for Democrats is: extended periods of intense anxiety about terrible polling, occasionally punctuated by strangely positive election nights. And then the cycle repeats.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 8, 2023

I have a theory that Americans are so sour and despondent not so much because of the economy but because our politics seem to be so messed up. The right has been brainwashed into believing that our elections are all rigged and Democrats are trying to destroy them personally and Democrats see the likes of Donald Trump, currently a defendant in four felony trials, and kooks like Marjorie Taylor Greene running the Republican Party and it makes them feel like they’re in a nightmare from which they an’t awaken. Republicans are cheered up by Tthe thought of Trump wreaking revenge on their hated enemies and Democrats are briefly mollified by winning elections but it all feels so futile. On some level Republicans know they aren’t really winning and Democrats know that the country is inches away from an authoritarian takeover by evil clowns. Of course 76% of the population thinks the country is going in the wrong direction!

If you want to see a perfect demonstration of our broken politics, tune in tonight to the third Republican presidential debate where the remaining five candidates who made the cut will pretend that it matters. The front runner, Donald Trump, will not be attending this one just as he didn’t attend the first two something no candidate would have ever done in the past. It’s rudely dismissive of the voters, the party and the people who are running against him. Chalk this up to yet more boorish behavior from him, which only seems to make his followers love him more.

He’s counter-programming the debate with a big rally in Hialeah, Florida, a 95% Latino community where he has a following. A GOP strategist told NBC News that he’s doing it because “a portion of the Republican electorate likes to hear that their candidates are popular with minorities.” Naturally, he’s doing it just 15 miles away from the venue where his sad-sack rivals will be debating.

At this point it is a foregone conclusion that unless something cataclysmic happens, Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. In another time a president who was under indictment for trying to overturn the electoral college and fomenting an insurrection, not to mention stealing classified documents and storing them in the toilet at his beach club, could be expected to drop out of the race. His rivals know he’s not going to do that so the main purpose of those who are at least polling in double digits from time to time are jockeying for second place just in case he keels over.

The race for second place seems to have finally been sorted out and has come down to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former S. Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. A few months ago everyone assumed that DeSantis would be nipping at Trump’s heels by now it hasn’t worked out that way. His campaign has been disastrous and in some polls he’s been overtaken by Haley. He managed to pick up the endorsement of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds this week which infuriated Trump who snapped “apparently has begun her retirement tour early as she clearly does not have any ambition for higher office…two extremely disloyal people getting together is, however, a very beautiful thing to watch. They can now remain loyal to each other because nobody else wants them!!!” Desantis has taken a few potshots at Trump in recent days but it will be surprising if he really goes after him in the debate. After all, a new poll shows him 39 points behind Trump in his own state of Florida. Sad!

Nikki Haley, his main competition for the silver medal for swimming upstream, seems to be on the rise. There are some polls showing her in second place in Iowa and New Hampshire where she is dominating the “lane” for Republicans who don’t like Trump. It’s actually not much more than a narrow bike path but for the tiny portion of GOP voters who don’t want to vote for Trump in the primary but will almost certainly vote for him in the general, Haley is their choice. Any thought she might end up being Trump’s running mate flew out the window when he started calling her “Birdbrain,” but again, if she snags that coveted second place, there’s a chance that she could end up with the nomination if Trump accidentally inhales too much extra-hold Aquanet one morning and has to drop out.

The remaining three, Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and S. Carolina Sen. Tim Scott will do whatever it takes to get some attention since that’s the only reason they’re there. The brief Ramaswamy surge has dissipated precipitously now that people have seen that while he is flamboyantly obnoxious , usually a selling point with the MAGA crowd, he doesn’t make them feel good about enjoying it. That’s Trump’s special talent and nobody does it like he does.

Scott is just a cipher at this point who had some big donors backing him and has gotten nowhere. Although it’s still expected that Trump would rather choose an attractive woman as his running mate, there is still a chance he could fit the bill. He’s been very careful not to offend the former president but neither has he demonstrated any willingness to adopt the obsequious sycophancy Trump has come to expect in his VP.

And then there’s Christie who whiffed in the first two debates after promising to tear into Trump. It’s unclear what he expects to get out of any of this but a repeat of his performance last weekend at a gathering in Florida at which he was booed lustily by the audience as he tried to tell them that Trump is a liar and a crook would certainly be entertaining for the whole country to see.

I’m not sure anyone but political junkies are interested in anything these people have to say. It’s kind of pathetic they are even bothering with such a useless ritual. But it’s really no wonder the Democrats are anxious and depressed despite constantly winning elections. The more they win the higher the stakes become in the next one as the Republican party sinks further and further into a cult of personality.

Salon

Do the work. Score the points.

Noah Berlatsky of Public Notice reflects on Tuesday’s elections (bolding mine):

Some 48 hours ago, pundits were rushing to explain how, why, where, and exactly to what extent the Democratic Party is doomed.

A New York Times/Sienna poll released last weekend showed President Joe Biden catastrophically trailing indicted orange gasbag of hatred former President Donald Trump in virtually every key swing state. According to the poll, Trump leads Biden by five points in Arizona, four in Pennsylvania, six in Georgia, and 11 in Nevada. Analysts like Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias made panicky noises, condemning Dems for not mounting a serious primary challenge to the incumbent. There was weeping, there was gnashing of teeth.

And then, we had an actual election.

Tuesday night’s results are difficult to square with the “Biden and Democrats are doomed” narrative. In an off-year election, with the incumbent president’s approval rating mired below 40 percent, you would normally expect the president’s party to be stomped, crushed, spindled, and obliterated.

But instead, Democrats did fine. In fact, they did better than fine, and then even better than that. Tuesday looked a lot like a blue wave, with Democrats romping to victory in blue and purple states and overperforming dramatically in red ones.

It’s difficult to predict what this means for 2024. But we know that in 2022 and now in 2023, Biden’s low approval rating appeared to be entirely disconnected from Democratic performance. That should at least give the likes of Silver and Yglesias a moment’s pause in their punditing of apocalypse.

After spending four hours each morning commenting on the day’s political news, lately I’m reworking For The Win for 2024. As much as I’m an admirer of my friend Anat Shenker-Osorio’s messaging research, in the end progressives actually have to put points on the board. It’s not as sexy as messaging or punditry or political philosophy, but it’s where the rubber meets the road (or whatever metaphor you’d prefer). For that we have to get out of our heads:

Winning in your head is like bringing sports visualization training to the Olympics and thinking you’ll be competitive when you show up with no conditioning and no skills.

Many races next fall will be closer than what we saw last night. (Democrat Andy Beshear won in Kentucky by 5 points; Ohio Issue 1 passed by 13.) Democrats next year have to execute plays and score points (votes, not sick burns). Candidates and campaigns try to motivate voters to get off their couches and get to the polls. (Target better, maybe?) Part of motivating voters is message-driven, sure, but actual scoring comes down to mechanics, logistics, and execution:

The job of county committees is a political version of the Last Mile problem in telecommunications. All the high-profile effort and capital spending goes into clearing rights-of-way, erecting towers, and stringing lines. The Last Mile problem is the less conspicuous work of hooking up end users one … by one … by one because that is where companies stop spending money and start making bank.

The only thing that counts on Election Day is how many bubbles voters fill in on their ballots for Democrats. Voters actually have to show up and execute the documents. This isn’t like Trump declassifying documents with his mind. Those voters (many of them) will arrive aware of only a handful of the races and candidates printed on their ballots. Without your help, they’ll leave down-ballot races blank — school board, city council, county commission, etc.

Please contact your local county Democratic committee and ask about their 2024 get-out-the-vote program. Work the phones, knock the doors. Be the smiling face reassuring voters as you hand them a sample ballot outside the polling station.

It’s too late to talk policy. Uncertain voters are looking for reassurance.  If they trust you, they will vote with you. That’s how it works. Trust me.