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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.

Stop white-knuckling polls

Everybody Relax. The Net economy runs on clicks. The polling economy runs on polls. Cable news runs on ratings 24/7/365. All make money promoting a horse race with a photo finish.

MSNBC kept flipping back to Steve Kornacki updating returns from the Kentucky governor’s race Tuesday night long after Dave Wasserman of Cook’s Political Report had “seen enough.” The Associated Press called the race for incumbent Democrat Andy Beshear 90 minutes later. So it goes.

I've seen enough: Andy Beshear (D) wins reelection in #KYGOV, defeating Daniel Cameron (R).

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 8, 2023

On Election Night, we don’t count policy positions or polling averages or pundits’ opinions. We count votes. It’s how democracies keep score.

And last night? Last night was “nearly a clean sweep” for Democrats.

We're one year out from the '24 election. Lots can happen. We should all practice humility and work hard to defend our democracy (which means electing Dems). But just for a moment I'd like to posit that maybe @POTUS Joe Biden understands elections better than the punditerati.

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) November 8, 2023

Beshear won another term in “red” Kentucky on an explicit abortion rights campaign against his GOP challenger. Beshear went straight at Daniel Cameron on the abortion issue with this powerful ad featuring rape survivor Hadley Duvall.

“Because of her courage, this commonwealth is going to be a better place and people are going to reach out for the help they need,” Beshear told supporters.

Democrats kept control of the Virginia state Senate and flipped control of the House of Delegates, dealing a blow to Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). Republicans had been looking to outlaw abortions in Virginia after 15 weeks.

“Glenn Youngkin got fleeced tonight,” quipped Norm Ornstein.

Just a reminder that when abortion rights have been on the ballot they have not lost anywhere. Not in Michigan. Not in Kansas, Kentucky or Montana. Now, not in Ohio.

— L O L G O P (@LOLGOP) November 8, 2023

Washington Post:

Abortion rights advocates won major victories Tuesday as voters in conservative-leaning Ohio decisively passed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing access to abortion, while those in ruby-red Kentucky reelected a Democratic governor who aggressively attacked his opponent for supporting the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.

[…]

The results sent a stark signal about enduring demands across the political spectrum to protect access to abortion more than a year after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court, heralding potentially far-reaching implications for the 2024 election. They offered more evidence that the end of Roe and the patchwork of abortion bans that followed have given Democrats a powerful argument to turn out their base and sway moderates and some Republicans. And they reaffirmed that GOP candidates who support restrictions are still struggling to find an effective message, even as some have tried to soften their pitch.

🚨 VICTORY

Ohioans are tired of having our rights attacked and our own government continually subvert our democracy.

And we will SHOW up to stop it!!

Like we just did. For a year!!

When I saw this line, I knew something special was happening.

WATCH: pic.twitter.com/wiVZSmCQ2E

— David Pepper (@DavidPepper) November 8, 2023

Democrats everywhere in 2024 will want to listen more to voters than to pundits and consultants. Americans are angry about the demise of Roe v. Wade. Democrats own that issue. It motivates voters.

“Across the country tonight, democracy won and MAGA lost,” President Joe Biden tweeted last night. “Voters vote. Polls don’t. Now let’s go win next year.”

Simon Rosenberg of the Hopium Chronicles is an unabashed cheerleader for Democrats. But for your edification, he wrote last night, “As we did in 2018, 2020, 2022 and as we’ve had night after night across the country this year. The Democratic Party is very strong right now. The Republicans are in deep trouble.” Tuck that under your pillows.

But don’t expect the press to abandon its hyping of every poll that promotes a “Biden in trouble” narrative. Press incentives have not changed and likely will not. The press is quick to report and slow to learn.

“I think some political reporters should try a little harder to hide their disappointment at Dems over performing relative to Biden’s approval ratings but that’s just me,” posted Adam Serwer of The Atlantic at Blue Sky.

Taking bets on which publication will have the first "why this is bad news for Biden" take. https://t.co/8LWZW0ReX9

— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) November 8, 2023

So, step away from the ledge, folks.

Maybe not you, Rick.

Post by @aaron.rupar

View on Threads

Maybe…

That case about whether domestic abusers should be allowed to carry guns was argued today:

About 40 minutes into Tuesday’s Supreme Court argument asking whether a federal law prohibiting domestic abusers from owning guns is unconstitutional, Chief Justice John Roberts asked J. Matthew Wright, the lawyer arguing against the law, a question that no attorney ever wants to hear.

“You don’t have any doubt that your client is a dangerous person, do you?” the Chief asked Wright.

There is, indeed, very little doubt that Wright’s client, Zackey Rahimi, is a very dangerous man. A Texas court determined that Rahimi “has committed family violence” and that he “represents a credible threat to the physical safety” of his ex-girlfriend or other members of her family.

If anything, that’s a massive understatement. Rahimi allegedly hit his ex-girlfriend in a parking lot, and then fired a gun at a bystander who witnessed the fight. He then allegedly called the ex-girlfriend and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone that he’d assaulted her. And he’s accused of committing multiple other crimes where he fired a gun — in one of them, he allegedly fired into a man’s home with an AR-15 rifle.

The specific question before the Supreme Court in United States v. Rahimi is whether a federal law makes it a crime to possess a firearm if a court has determined they are a threat to their “intimate partner,” their child, or their partner’s child violates the Second Amendment.

Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito appeared open to the possibility that this law could violate the Constitution.

And, while Alito at times made arguments that seemed lifted from men’s rights activists — such as a claim that courts frequently impose domestic violence restraining orders without considering if they are warranted — even he seemed uncomfortable with some of Wright’s arguments by the end of the Court hearing.

The biggest question in Rahimi, in other words, does not appear to be whether the Supreme Court will reverse a right-wing federal appeals court that struck down this ban on gun ownership by domestic abusers. The biggest question appears to be how the Court will do so, and whether it will issue a sweeping decision limiting a recent pro-gun decision that has sown chaos and confusion in the lower courts.

Three ways that the Supreme Court could resolve Rahimi

Rahimi is an arresting case: Ordinarily, clear-cut cases such as this one do not reach the Supreme Court. The system of federal trial courts and intermediate appeals courts is supposed to weed out cases that present questions as seemingly one-sided as the ones in this case — again, the question is Rahimi is whether someone that a court has determined to be a violent threat to their partner or to a child should own a gun.

But Rahimi is before the Court for two reasons. One is that it arose out of the Fifth Circuit, a far-right court, dominated by MAGA stalwarts, that routinely hands down head-scratching decisions reaching right-wing results. Indeed, the Fifth Circuit hands down trollish, unworkably disruptive decisions so often that correcting these errors has become one of the (itself very conservative) Supreme Court’s major projects.

This term, the Court is expected to reverse Fifth Circuit decisions that declared an entire federal agency unconstitutional, that virtually neutralized another federal agency, and that allowed Republican state governments to seize control of which content is published on Twitter (the site that Elon Musk insists on calling “X”), YouTube, or Facebook.

That said, the Fifth Circuit’s penchant for judicial arson can only explain part of why Rahimi is before the justices. The other explanation is that, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), the Court’s Republican appointees placed an extraordinarily high burden on any lawyer tasked with defending any gun law. Under Bruen, a gun law is typically unconstitutional unless similar laws existed in the framing era. And there were no bans on gun ownership by domestic abusers in 1791.

In any event, a majority of justices — possibly as many as eight — seemed to agree during Tuesday’s argument that they should not follow Bruen’s reasoning to the absurd conclusion that the Fifth Circuit reached in Rahimi. But there was considerable disagreement about how to reverse the Fifth Circuit.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a frequent critic of the Republican justices’ use of history to justify reaching conservative results, appeared to suggest several times that Bruen should be tossed out in its entirety.

She repeatedly asked what work Bruen’s “history and tradition” framework is doing if the fact that domestic violence was largely tolerated in the framing era doesn’t prevent modern-day legislatures from enacting the law at issue in Rahimi, which is rooted in modern-day sensibilities. And Jackson also brought up the uncomfortable fact that laws disarming enslaved Black people and Native Americans were common in early American history. The Bruen framework, she suggested, seems to focus too much on the rights afforded to white Protestants in early America, and does not capture the history of all Americans.

Jackson, however, was the only justice who attacked Bruen so directly. A critical bloc of the justices, which may include Roberts, Obama appointees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, and Trump Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, seemed to hone in on a different argument that would weaken Bruen without forcing the Court to make the embarrassing concession that Bruen’s framework is an unworkable mess that consistently produces monstrous results.

Under this framework, which was proposed by Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, “dangerous” individuals are beyond the scope of the Second Amendment, and legislatures have broad authority to determine which types of people are too dangerous to own a firearm. That category may include people like Rahimi, who have received a court proceeding determining them to be dangerously violent. It also may include minors or people with serious mental illnesses who may not handle gun ownership responsibly, even though these conditions are not their fault.

This is why Roberts’s question about Rahimi’s dangerousness was such a bad sign for his chances of prevailing in this case. Similarly, near the very beginning of the argument, Barrett seemed to state outright that she intends to vote against Rahimi — suggesting that there is no question that someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order is dangerous.

A third possibility, first floated by Justice Neil Gorsuch, was to try to shrink the question the Court decides in this case. As Gorsuch repeatedly noted, the Fifth Circuit held that the federal law disarming domestic abusers is unconstitutional on its “face,” a legal term that means that there is no set of circumstances where the law could be considered valid.

But even if there may be edge cases where the law is applied to someone who is only marginally dangerous, or who may have received less due process than Rahimi did, Gorsuch appeared to agree that Rahimi, the unusually dangerous individual before the Court in this case, should not have a gun.

The good news for everyone who agrees that victims of domestic violence should not be murdered is that at least seven justices appear poised to reverse the Fifth Circuit. The question is whether they will also roll back some or all of their incompetently drafted decision in Bruen.

Fingers crossed.

And nobody seems to be able to rein him in. It’s obvious most Republicans don’t want to.

Here’s a good analysis of where we are with Trump and his legal problems from Stephen Collinson at CNN:

The judge in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial despairingly pressed the ex-president’s lawyer: “I beseech you to control him if you can.”

Judge Arthur Engoron’s plea reflected his frustration at an incorrigible witness who boasted Monday about his piles of cash, aimed scathing political attacks and spouted uniquely illogical logic.

But Engoron, who is presiding over the New York trial, also put his finger on a deeper question that will define a singular political figure’s place in history.

And the answer, as always, was no, Trump cannot be controlled.

No mere lawyer could impose the kind of discipline that two-and-a-half centuries of constitutional checks and balances could not provide during Trump’s time in office or since. And after threatening to dismiss the ex-president from the witness stand, Engoron opted to let the Trump storm rage in the apparent hope that it would blow itself out — though history has shown it never does.

Trump’s combative defense against claims he inflated his wealth to rip off banks, insurance firms and New York state, served as a troubling preview of a 2024 election season that is likely to become ensnared with his massive legal peril. But it also revealed insights into Trump’s relentless refusal to give an inch to his enemies and showed why voters who despise East Coast authority figures and liberal societal codes adore him.

His testimony offered warnings to lawyers who will seek to puncture his self-created bubble of alternative realities with facts and evidence — and showed how he might try to charm and confuse jurors in his coming criminal trials.

As he climbed into the witness box and lifted his hand and swore to tell the truth — an almost ironic act given his record of falsehoods — Trump obliterated yet another convention. Ex-presidents in America don’t typically get called to explain their actions in court. And Monday’s four-hour dive into the Trump Organization’s financial records was just a warm up for subsequent criminal courtroom dramas that could mean the Republican Party will nominate a convicted felon for president. Trump denies wrongdoing in each and every case against him.

Trump shows what he will do to save himself

Trump in a blue suit, tie and shirt instead of his campaign livery of dark suit, white shirt and improbably long red tie, left no doubt that if tearing down legal and political systems is what it will take to save him, he won’t hesitate.

“It is election interference because you want to keep me in this courthouse all day long,” Trump told prosecutors working for New York Attorney General Letitia James, accusing her of trying to base a run for governor on an attempt to destroy his business. As he often does, the ex-president was turning facts upside down — it is he who is politicizing the justice system in his own bid for a return to power.

And before he faces judgment, Trump is seeking to discredit the organs of accountability that will seal his fate. “It is an extremely hostile judge,” Trump added, raising his hand to point at Engoron, who sat beside and just above the witness box on the bench.

The ex-president’s day was a microcosm of a riotous life as a real estate magnate, New York City icon, showbiz reality star and demagogic political candidate and US president. He obstructed, exaggerated, spouted insults, brassily trampled courtroom protocol and substituted partisan narratives for the yes and no answers that the judge demanded. Yet Trump also expertly used the outraged stream of consciousness and linguistic dexterity that turns his interrogators in the law, or the media, in knots.

There were even flashes of humor, hinting at one of the key ingredients of the political method that has seduced millions of Americans. Asked, for instance, whether he had built houses on a golf course in Scotland, Trump conceded that he had not but added waspishly: “I have a castle.” And there were oodles of quintessential Trump self-promotion. He boasted that his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort was “a very successful club,” said he’d built the “best building on the West Coast” and claimed dubiously that his 18 holes in Aberdeen was the “greatest golf course ever built.”

At one point, Trump mused: “I’ve had a lot of cash for a long time.”

Trump’s supporters could not watch him since the trial was not televised but they would have recognized the bulldozer on the witness stand and the blow-it-all-up persona that made a twice-impeached, four times indicted ex-president who left Washington in disgrace nearly three years ago again the Republican front-runner.

It became clear long before Trump left court complaining of a “scam” that his legal strategy was indistinguishable from his familiar political one: admit nothing and brand any criticism as proof of a vast, unfair plot against him. The goal was transparent: leverage the latest bid to call him to account into a campaign fueled by a martyr complex that can win back presidential powers to drive away his legal woes.

“People are sick and tired of what’s happening. I think it’s a very sad day for America,” Trump said at the end, before noting The New York Times polls showing him leading President Joe Biden in key swing states — a tactic his lawyer Chris Kise also used to imply the “soon to be” next president wasn’t being shown sufficient respect.

Trump’s dignity is ruffled

Yet Monday was also a rude awakening for Trump.

Retired commanders-in-chief are usually surrounded by a force field of deference, with their secret service detachments and forever title of “Mr. President.” Trump has long posed as the alpha male and his entire business and political creed — in person and on social media – is based on intimidation. But it must have been a long time since anyone had shushed Trump like Engoron, cutting him off ahead of another meander by saying, “No, no, you answered the question.”

There was no “Mr. President” from the attorney general’s lawyers or the judge. The witness was simply “Mr. Trump.” He sat on a leather chair, alone in the wood paneled witness box, his hands clasped in his lap.

But the trial quickly became a test of wills between Trump and Engoron over who controlled the court. After one trip by Trump down a rabbit hole, the judge asked the lawyers if they had asked for an “essay” on brand value. Frustrated with partisan asides, Engoron warned that “this is not a political rally, this is a courtroom.” And the judge bristled at the ex-president’s complaint that he always ruled against him. Adopting a tone typical of Trump subordinates, Kise argued with the judge’s admonitions against speeches and lauded the ex-president’s “brilliant” replies.

Later, the judge, perhaps trying to avoid offering grist for a potential appeal said he’d let the ex-president ramble. But by the end of the day, Engoron’s resolve frayed: “It feels like a broken record,” he said of Trump’s answers. The ex-president snapped back: “He keeps asking me the same question over and over.” Engoron will however get the last word. He has already ruled that Trump, his two adult sons and the Trump Organization are liable for fraud in inflating his wealth in return for advantageous deals with banks and insurance firms. The trial will resolve related claims and decide how much restitution is due and whether he will be barred from doing business in New York.

How Trump defended himself

It was hard to tell whether Trump had helped or hurt himself. He did appear to disrupt the smooth running of the trial. But – as he complained at one point – there is no jury, and Engoron will be left to adjudicate the trial.

Trump’s defense broadly rested on three planks. He denied accusations that he’d inflated his properties, insisting conversely that he’d undervalued most of them by not including ill-defined millions of dollars implied by his “brand” and its potential. He claimed that he was protected by a disclaimer clause in financial documents, which meant that banks and insurance firms had to do their own due diligence. And he repeatedly insisted that “there were no victims,” so there can have been no crime.

This blanket deniability and belief in his own imperviousness echoed Trump’s false proclamations in office that the Constitution granted him almost absolute powers. Or that the phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that earned him his first impeachment or his January 6, 2021 speech before the Capitol insurrection were “perfect.”

Trump also offered an intriguing glimpse into his mindset as a businessman that makes it easier to understand his false insistence that he actually won the 2020 election when he clearly lost it.

“I can look at a building and tell you what they are worth,” he said, creating the impression that the true valuation of a property was something he could just pluck out of the air, with little regard for all the complex financial instruments that normally add up to an investment’s true value. This desire to make a reality just what he wants it to be has long defined Trump’s political approach. And he seems to adopt a similar tactic in looking at an election and deciding who won regardless of the actual evidence about who got the most votes.

This question of whether Trump actually believes what he says will be key to two election interference trials — one in federal court in Washington and one in Georgia where prosecutors must show he intended to break the law. Trump insists that he was convinced he won in 2020, despite all evidence to the contrary. And in his virtual reality world, he may believe it or may at least be able to convince a jury he did.

But the most sobering takeaway of Trump’s day in court on Monday was that while the law might succeed in enforcing accountability where constitutional and political constraints failed, there is no sign yet that anyone or anything can bring the potential 47th president of the United States under control.

Bolts has a nice overview of what’s at stake in tonight’s elections. This is the intro, you just need to click over to see the cheat sheet:

The 2024 presidential election is already in full swing, but first voters are settling a swath of critical races this fall. The balance of power in state and local governments is on the line in myriad ways, from the five states where trifectas are at stake to the fall’s sole race for supreme court.

Bolts has identified more than 170 items—and counting—to watch across 31 states, and why they matter, including key races for governors, DAs, mayors, and lawmakers, plus dozens of referendums. 

We’ll add more races to this page through Election Day: Thousands of additional offices, boards, and ballot measures are all on the ballot all around the nation; this page is Bolts’ selection of important races to monitor. We will also update the page with results once they are known.

Most elections on this page are scheduled for Nov. 7, but there are some exceptions: Louisiana holds primaries on Oct. 14 and Nov. 18. Utah holds a special congressional election and mayoral races on Nov. 21. And some elections, such as Houston’s mayoral race, could extend into December with runoffs.

Throughout 2023, we also covered individual elections—with an eye to those that’ll affect voting rights and criminal justice. Read our reporting on Ohio’s referendum on abortion, on Pennsylvania’s supreme court race, on prosecutors in western Pennsylvania and across the south, on the Louisiana governor’s race, on sheriffs in Louisiana, Virginia and Washington, on the races to decide the local officials who will run the 2024 elections in Pennsylvania and Washington, and on Maine’s voting rights referendum.

Finally, as millions head to the polls on Tuesday, many others will not have the chance because of harsh disenfranchisement laws. Our three-part series, “The Ghosts of the 2023 elections,” tells their stories.

Click here for the full rundown.

She says that Attorney General Tish James is “not that bright”

I’m sure she’s just repeating what Trump says every day:

Habba, in a Newsmax interview Monday, said James doesn’t have a good case. However, Judge Arthur Engoron already ruled that the fraud occurred, and the ongoing trial is set to determine damages.

“She’s just not that bright. I’m sorry, I have to say it,” Habba said. “I’ve seen their case; I’ve seen their lawyers. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

She argued that what the judge ruled is fraud is actually industry standard behavior.

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“Just because a bank who’s giving you a loan says it’s worth what the loan amount is, which is what happens when anybody takes a loan out, they’re never going to say the real value,” she continued. “They’re going to say what they want to say and not a penny more, or what the loan amount is and not a penny more.”

“She needs to educate herself, maybe go to some — I don’t even know how to express how ridiculous this is,” Habba said. “It’s like being in a circus with a bunch of — I mean, what I want to say I can’t say on TV, but it’s crazy. You know, it’s just ridiculous. Anybody with a brain understands that this is just completely insane.”

Hello Pot? This is Kettle….Hi.

G. Elliott Morris  of 538 (the man who took Nate Silver’s place) has thoughts on the polls. I think you will find it reassuring:

Where does the 2024 election stand one year out?

We modeled six scenarios for the presidential race.

American voters cast 158 million ballots in the 2020 presidential election. Yet the winner was ultimately decided by about 43,000 voters across Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin — the states that carried President Joe Biden over the 270 Electoral College votes he needed to win the presidency. The 2016 election, also closely contested, was similarly settled by about 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And if the 2024 election were held tomorrow, it would likely be very close too.

At least, that’s what the polls say. According to an average of national 2024 general election polls I’ve run using 538’s current polling average methodology, Biden and former President Donald Trump are currently neck-and-neck among likely voters, with Trump at 42.9 percent and Biden at 42.4 percent. Support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, both of whom have announced runs as independents, is hovering around 11 percent and 4 percent, respectively. Although there’s a long way to go before next November, these numbers suggest that 2024 at least starts out as a close election.

Today, 538 is also happy to release our live-updating average of polls of the national generic congressional ballot, which ask Americans which party they intend to support for Congress in 2024 without naming specific candidates. Since this is our first general election polling average of the 2024 cycle, we’ve also taken the opportunity to update our polling average methodology to adjust polls from partisan firms or sponsors (which tend to favor the party that releases them) and decrease the weight given to polls of all adults or registered voters in horse-race averages (we prefer likely voter polls for these averages). As of Monday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern, the average shows Democrats and Republicans locked in a dead heat for the House popular vote — Democrats technically lead by 0.4 percentage points, but that’s well within the margin of error for our average. That’s even closer than generic ballot polls were on Election Day 2022, when Republicans were leading our average by 1.2 points (they ended up winning by about 1.6 points, after accounting for uncontested seats).

When the polls are this close, it’s important to remember that which polls you include and how you average them could lead to different conclusions about who is currently “winning” or “leading” in a given race. The important takeaway is not who’s up or down, but that the election is close in the first place. We have much more confidence that an election, if it were held today, would turn on a knife’s edge than we do that Trump or House Democrats are leading.

Of course, the 2024 election will not be held today, so it’s incumbent on us to ask …

How useful are early polls?

The answer, frankly, is “not very.” For one thing, the two major parties have not officially selected their nominees. While Trump leads handily in both state and national polls of the Republican primary, there is still time for one of his challengers to turn their luck around — or for a major news event to significantly disrupt his campaign. Biden, too, has primary challengers, and there are persistent whispers that he still may decline to seek reelection due to his age. Neither party will officially pick its nominee until next summer; until that point, these polls are little more than hypothetical exercises.

The general election is also still a year away, leaving plenty of time for the polls to change. At this point in the campaign, most past presidential nominating contests have not had clear leaders, and it was anybody’s guess what issues would be most important to voters come the general election. That makes early polls of little use to campaigns and prognosticators. Research from political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien shows that, between 1952 and 2008, polls taken 300 days before the general election had no predictive value. In statistical terms, they found that polls have an R-squared value of roughly 0 in January of an election year. That’s basically the track record of an (untrained) monkey throwing darts at a dartboard. Plus, as of today, we’re currently 365 days out from the election — quite a bit further out than Erikson and Wlezien were even willing to look, given the variability of their data.

True, there is persuasive evidence that presidential vote preferences are more stable now than they were in the 20th century, and that could make early polls more predictive. But given how often early polls have misled us in the past, it would still be risky to place your faith in them this far in advance.

What about the Electoral College?

Another caveat still is that the national popular vote does not determine the winner of U.S. elections — either at the House or presidential level. It’s the states and congressional districts that do the deciding.

Since we don’t have very many state-level polls of the 2024 presidential election (and I wouldn’t really trust them if we did), the safest assumption at this point is that states will vote how they did in 2020, plus or minus some amount of (1) national shift toward or away from Biden and (2) state-level noise. We can only make guesses at these numbers right now, but I put together a bare-bones, no-polls model for the presidential election that can simulate a range of outcomes given various inputs for those two settings. Scroll down to the bottom of the article if you want to read my full methodology.

Let’s look at six possible scenarios for the 2024 election under this model:

–Scenario A is essentially the “2020 rerun” scenario: I take Biden’s state-level margins from the 2020 election and add the expected level of correlated noise.

–Scenario B is roughly what the national polls indicate today: a tied popular vote, plus noise again.

–Scenario C again uses Biden’s 2020 performance as the starting point, but it also assumes that the Electoral College’s bias toward Republicans will shrink between 2020 and 2024.* We got hints this may happen from the 2022 election, when the presence of abortion rights on the Michigan ballot and other state-level factors gave Democrats a relative boost in northern battleground states.

–Scenario D is another tied popular vote, but this time with the lower Electoral College bias as well.

–Scenario E uses the 2020 election as its starting point but increases the Electoral College’s bias toward Republicans by 1 point relative to the last election.

–Scenario F is the worst scenario for Democrats, simulating what would happen with a tied popular vote and a higher Electoral College bias.

Here is what the model says about how many electoral votes Democrats are likely to win in each scenario, and what odds of victory that translates to:

The 2024 election is likely to be close

Democrats’ range of electoral votes and chances of winning in six different sets of simulations of the 2024 presidential election

	ELECTORAL VOTES FOR DEMOCRATS
SCENARIO	5TH PERCENTILE	95TH PERCENTILE	CHANCE OF WINNING
2020 repeat	222	388	61%
Tied popular vote	197	321	23
2020 with lower Electoral College bias	226	388	71
Tied popular vote with lower Electoral College bias	199	335	34
2020 with higher Electoral College bias	217	388	54
Tied popular vote with higher Electoral College bias	197	321	20

Based on a rough model of U.S. presidential elections that predicts future election results based on (1) historical year-to-year variance in state-level Democratic vote margins and (2) how correlated vote shifts are between states. The “percentile” columns show the upper and lower bound of our prediction for Biden’s electoral votes in each scenario.

As you can see, Biden is favored in the scenarios where he wins the popular vote by a 2020-esque margin, and Trump is favored in the event of a tied popular vote. But in each scenario, the underdog still has a respectable chance — at least 1-in-5 — of winning. Most simulations don’t point to an Electoral College landslide, either. The probability of a 365+ electoral vote win (on the magnitude of Barack Obama in 2008 or Bill Clinton in 1992) is less than 1-in-5 in all scenarios. In other words, neither party can assume an easy path to victory.

It’s worth re-emphasizing: It is still early days. The 2024 election will be decided on Nov. 5, 2024 — 365 days in the future. But all of the data we currently have points to another close race.

Prosecutors: Trump “stands alone in history”

Famous? Infamous? What’s the difference? So long as Donald Trump can wiggle out of accountability yet again, this time for conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. His attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the federal charges brought against him over events leading to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Law & Crime:

Urging a federal judge to disregard Donald Trump‘s latest attempt to cast off his indictment in Washington, D.C., for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, prosecutors at the special counsel’s office argue Trump’s criminality “stands alone” in history and that even if he genuinely believed the 2020 election was stolen, he still used “fraud and deceit” as a means to achieve illicit ends.

In his 79-page motion filed Monday, Jack Smith challenges Trump’s attempts to rewrite history and recast himself as victim. What he did leading up to Jan. 6 was not “advocacy.” (Emphasis mine.)

Trump, prosecutors continued, has wrongly attempted to “rewrite the indictment” by coloring his defense with suggestions that his conduct was justifiable because, among other reasons, he only targeted election officials who “were the most informed politicians on the planet” and would “come to their own conclusions” without relying on his assertions of rampant fraud.

“He is wrong,” prosecutors wrote Monday, “lack of success provides no defense to a charge of conspiracy to defraud, much less any basis to dismiss the charge.

In the U.S., a defendant does not have to pull off a conspiracy successfully to be convicted of participating in one or leading one.

“Were it otherwise, defendants captured en route to a bank robbery could not be charged with conspiracy because their crime did  not succeed,” prosecutors wrote. “Indeed, a conspiracy can be committed even if the object of the conspiracy is unattainable.”

Special counsel also urged presiding U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to reject Trump’s insinuations that his speech and conduct around Jan. 6 were “admirable” or that because others in the past had objected  to election results through legitimate means, it excused his speech and conduct as alleged.

“[The] defendant stands alone in history for his alleged crimes. No other president has engaged in conspiracy and obstruction to overturn valid election results and illegitimately retain power,” Smith wrote.

Trump told “knowing lies” to subvert the 2020 election and “knowing lies are neither opinions nor pure advocacy,” the motion states.

“And in any event, the defendant could not use so-called advocacy as a cover for his scheme to obstruct a governmental function through deceit,” Smith continued. “Knowing deceit aimed at defeating a government function constitutes a violation of the defraud clause, notwithstanding his attempts to sanitize his conduct.”

Team Trump is throwing against the wall everything they can get their hands on to see what sticks, no matter how laughable: claims he was exercising free speech, claims the election was rigged, claims of being treated unconstitutionally (double jeopardy).

Trump’s chances in federal court are slim to none. Delay is his game and reelection his “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Plus, the judges are not his principal audience. He’s making himself a martyr to MAGA confederates who sacked the Capitol and to those who stayed home. He raised a mob once.

The South will rise again. The losers have been waiting for nearly 160 years. But their fearful leader couldn’t give shit about them. Donald Trump is the black hole at the center of his personal galaxy.