Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

What’s happening in the House is taking us over the cliff

This post by Lee Drutman says it all:

The US House is now in uncharted territory.

Yes, you probably know this from following the ongoing drama over the vacated House speakership. As of this writing, we are now 17 days into this manufactured crisis.

But how uncharted?

And if we’re off the map, where are we headed? And are we off to “There be dragons” land? (Possibly, yes)

In the pixels ahead, I’ll visually map where we are.  As we’ll see, there are some historic parallels. But not enough to feel like we’ve really been here before.  

Here’s what’s distinct about this moment, based on the best metrics we have.

–Congress is more polarized than ever.
-The Republican Party is more far-right than ever.
–The share of House districts that are truly competitive is tinier than ever (less than 10 percent).
–The share of House districts splitting their tickets hit a 100-year low in 2020 (fewer than 4 percent).
–Partisan margins in the House are uniquely narrow.
–The dimensionality of voting in the House has collapsed into a single dimension.
–The Republican Party is growing more internally divided.

To close observers of politics, none of these findings may be that surprising. But I hope by seeing them all together, we can appreciate how unusual this moment is — and just how far we’ve sailed away from the “normal” patterns.

My simple takeaway is: We’re not going back.

So we need to ask: where do we want to head now?

If we are deliberate, we have possibilities. If we are not deliberate, the sea of dragons may chew us into pieces.

So come aboard. We’re going on a data journey.

(The data will cover only the U.S. House of Representatives. Similar patterns hold in the Senate, but since the House is in crisis right now, and the trends are clearer in the House, that is the focus of this piece, which is already long-ish)

He goes on to xplain all this in detail and I highly recommend that you read the whole thing if you’re interested in this subject. I’ll just include some of the charts he uses to illustrate his points here:

I have one final graph, and it describes some very uncharted territory.

Uncharted Territory means we have to invent our own chart of the future

The hard thing about Uncharted Territory is that, being uncharted, it’s really hard to know how where we are headed.

Some aspects of the current moment reflect Rarely Charted Territory. For example, the contentious parallels of 1910 (when insurgent Republicans stripped Speaker Joseph Cannon of his powers) and 1931 (when an evenly divided Congress agreed on a liberal discharge petition rule). To the extent history offers parallels, the most likely outcome would be an end to the strong Speaker model of Congress, and a move back towards a more decentralized, committee-based organizational structure.

However, in those earlier periods, politics was less nationalized, and voting was less one-dimensional. There was still some play in the joints, some flexibility in the coalitions. Today, that seems much less likely. Too many of aspects of this current period are unprecedented.

From my readings into the dynamics of complex systems, the trends (particularly the collapse of dimensionality) suggest a system on the verge of a significant transformation.  The current arrangements feel quite shaky because we are experiencing the tremors of an organizational arrangement that can no longer hold.

If we are truly in uncharted territory, the map of the past offers little advice.

It’s normal to fear the uncharted. This is our natural conservative instinct  —  however imperfect the status quo might be, it at least reflects the accumulated wisdom and traditions of years; most alternatives are likely worse.

 But in this uncharted territory, we are beyond the accumulation of traditions. We are in the unknown, whether we like it or not. And all the signals suggest big change ahead. There is only one option: start thinking creatively about how we might govern ourselves in the years to come. The future, after all, belongs to those who show up with a plan.

Here, of course, is where I cue my song and dance about the need for electoral system reform to Break the Two-Party Doom Loop: Fusion voting and proportional representation, people. We’re in uncharted territory. It’s time to take alternatives seriously while we still have time to consider them.

Again, I highly recommend you read his entire explanation of those charts. But even a cursory observation shows clearly that something is happeneing here. And it probably isn’t good.

Trump and his co-defendants should be worried

There’s a lot going on in the world and here at home at the moment so it’s not surprising that Donald Trump and his legal problems aren’t front and center in our political coverage. Trump himself is very upset by this, lamenting on Truth Social earlier this week that he’s forced to appear at the Courthouse in New York where his fraud trial is being held (he isn’t) and complaining that nobody’s paying attention to him, posting, “despite my being here, the talk is all about Biden getting ready to fly to the Middle East…”

But even though nobody is paying close attention to all his troubles at the moment, there is quite a bit of news on the Trump legal front and some of it may have some very unpleasant consequences for the former president. The fraud trial is not going particularly well for him with his CFO possibly having committed perjury on the stand which could mean his plea deal with the Manhattan Disctrict Attorney in the Trump Organization case is in danger. Weisselberg went to jail for five months in that case but could easily see more time if that’s proven.

Legal filings by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith in both the Mar-a Lago classified documents case and the January 6 case have been flying back and forth and none of them have been particularly helpful to Trump. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is hearing the January 6th case issued a narrow gag order saying“First Amendment protections yield to the administration of justice and to the protection of witnesses. His presidential candidacy does not give him carte blanche to vilify … public servants who are simply doing their job.” Trump has promised to appeal, no doubt in the hopes of delaying the trial since simply complying with that order would actually be quite easy to do.

The Mar-a-Lago case has turned out to be trickier as most observers expected after it drew the inexperienced Trump appointee (and Federalist Society guru Leonard Leo protege) Judge Aileen Cannon. It appears that she will be helping Trump to drag the case out for months by slow walking her decisions at every turn. But at some point he knows the law is coming for him in that case and it’s a very strong one for the government. He’s hanging his hopes on winning the presidency so he can shut the whole thing down on his very first day.

The big news, however, was Thursday’s guilty plea and cooperation agreement by former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell in the Georgia RICO case just one day before she was scheduled to go on trial with co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro, another former Trump lawyer. Powell agreed to plead guilty on six misdemeanor counts relating to the Coffee County election machine tampering charges and to fully cooperate with the government as these cases go forward.

Powell is the biggest fish to flip in any of these cases so far but it’s unclear whether or not she will be solely testifying as a witness in that Coffee County case or if she is expected to tell what she knows about Trump and Giuliani and the rest of his indicted henchmen’s activities leading up to the January 6th attempted coup. She certainly should have some stories to tell. And in fact, her involvement in that notorious meeting on December 18th, 2022 when the discussions of seizing voting machines was brought up could even be related directly to Coffee County — and Donald Trump was signing off on all kinds of nefarious deeds that night, most of which did not come to fruition, thank God.

According to reporting by Rolling Stone on Thursday night, the Trump team was very surprised at this news. Powell is the most MAGA of all the lawyers for “team crazy” and she was the truest of believers. One source told the magazine, “[Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis and her team] managed to break the woman who was never supposed to be breakable.” But perhaps she isn’t as deluded as they thought. There have been numerous leaks for months now that Powell was likely to be thrown to the wolves:

Before her plea agreement, some of Trump’s legal and political counselors had been working to cast Powell as a “fall guy” in the election-related cases against him and hoped to shovel the criminal exposure and blame for the failed attempt to overturn the election on to her and others, in the hopes of shielding former President Trump

They should be worried. As one former federal prosecutor told The Daily Beast, “One thing to note is just how favorable this plea deal is for her. She’s been permitted to plead guilty to misdemeanors… to get this good of a deal, she really has to know something.”

Her former co-defendant whose trial begins today, Kenneth Chesebro, was reportedly offered a similar deal but refused. He’s had a couple of setbacks as well this week which may make him rethink his strategy. On Wednesday, Judge Scott McAfee, ruled that some of the emails Chesebro wanted to protect as attorney client privilege are actually admissible under the crime-fraud exception, which means they were used in furtherance of a crime under the crime fraud exception. And to make matters worse, The NY Times got a look at some of Chesebro’s emails and they are doozies.

He wrote that the cases they were filing alleging fraud had little chance of success and admitted that the “relevant analysis is political.” He said that just getting it on file means that the Supreme Court will have ruled on it by January 6th or will have “appeared to dodge again” which would give Trum the argument that the courts “lacked the courage to fairly and timely consider the complaints, and justifying a political argument on Jan. 6 that none of the electoral votes from the states with regard to which the judicial process has failed should be counted.” Even more damning, he wrote “I think the odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.”

It’s pretty clear that he and his lawyer comrades were not just making legal arguments. They were engaged in plotting a coup which even included attempting to intimidate the US Supreme Court by suggesting that Trump’s “will be wild” invitation was going to cause violence. Perhaps Chesebro is prepared to take the fall for all that but you have to wonder why. It was clearly all of a piece with what Trump was tweeting and bleating through that whole period.

Starting today, Donald Trump is going to have two trials affecting his future taking place at the same time. The case against Kenneth Chesebro is all about him even if his own trial hasn’t started yet. The NY case is ongoing and it’s driving him crazy, mostly because he can’t stand having anyone question his net worth. And that’s just the beginning. The saga of Trump on trial has begun.

Salon

Update: Ken Chesebro pled guilty this morning. Oh my.

Here we go-go again-again

There was a time in this country when redistricting happened once every ten years. Not in North Carolina since 2011. I’ve lost count of the number of maps we’ve seen. So many that the local League of Women Voters sponsored the first Gerrymander 5k here in 2017.

Well, the latest batch of maps from the GOP coven dropped late Wednesday. Daily Kos Elections offers this summary:

● NC Redistricting: North Carolina Republicans unveiled new congressional and legislative maps on Wednesday that would rank as some of the most extreme gerrymanders in the country. The new proposals would cost three to four House Democrats their seats in Congress and lock in GOP majorities in the legislature in this longtime swing state. And in the near term, there’s little Democrats can do to stop them.

Republicans put forth a pair of congressional maps that would both upend the state’s House delegation, which currently includes seven Democrats and seven Republicans thanks to a court-drawn plan. Instead, if these new maps go into effect, North Carolina would almost certainly send 10 or 11 Republicans to Washington and just three or four Democrats.

The GOP’s legislative maps, meanwhile, would turbocharge their existing gerrymanders and make it effectively impossible for Democrats to secure majorities, even though they’re routinely capable of winning statewide elections. (The current governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat, as is Attorney General Josh Stein, who is running to succeed Cooper next year.)

Even worse, the new proposals would likely ensure that, in all but the most Democratic of election years, Republicans would maintain the three-fifths supermajorities they’d need to override gubernatorial vetoes and to place constitutional amendments on the ballot.

The GOP’s two different congressional maps aim to elect 10, if not 11, Republicans. The maps would do this by packing Democrats into three overwhelmingly blue districts while meticulously spreading out Republican voters to ensure their own seats are just red enough to be safe without wasting GOP votes. The maps’ approaches differ somewhat, even though their end goal is the same: One of the maps features 11 safely Republican seats, while the other would have 10 solidly red seats and one GOP-trending swing district.

Both maps would make it all but impossible for Democratic Reps. Jeff Jackson, Kathy Manning, and Wiley Nickel to win reelection by giving them districts that Donald Trump would have carried by double-digit margins in 2020. The maps also target 1st District Rep. Don Davis but in different ways. The first map would draw him and fellow Democratic Rep. Valerie Foushee into the same heavily blue district, guaranteeing the state would lose one of its three Black members. And the second map would place Davis in a district that would have voted just 50-49 for Joe Biden in 2020 and 52-46 for Republican Sen. Ted Budd in 2022.

Republicans held committee hearings on their new maps on Thursday and have previously said they could pass them into law as early as next week. While none of the targeted Democrats have announced what they’ll do in response to the new maps, Jackson strongly implied he wouldn’t seek reelection. Should either map pass, he said in his newsletter Thursday, “I’m completely toast,” calling both plans “absolutely brutal gerrymanders.”

New congressional maps for NC just dropped.

A brutal gerrymander.

Just being honest: I’m probably toast in Congress. pic.twitter.com/Y0rnrBANyX

— Rep. Jeff Jackson (@JeffJacksonNC) October 19, 2023

Before the new maps were released, Jackson had refused to rule out running for state attorney general to succeed Stein, so the GOP’s decision to target him could come back to haunt Republicans as they seek to win the post at the ballot box for the first time since 1896.

Nickel also blasted the maps, saying they would allow Republicans “to hand-pick their voters and predetermine the outcome of elections before they ever happen,” though he didn’t address his own future. Davis was noncommittal, saying only that he was “reviewing both maps.” Manning, meanwhile, had said last week that she would run for a third term, though she doesn’t appear to have said anything about the new proposals yet.

While many Republicans could run for these new, gerrymandered districts, one is of particular note. Tim Moore, the powerful speaker of the state House, has long been rumored to be interested in running for Congress. He refused to rule out the prospect when he announced earlier this year that he would not seek reelection. Very conveniently for Moore, both proposed maps would dismantle Jackson’s solidly blue 14th District and create a new district west of Charlotte that would be safely Republican and include Moore’s home base—but no GOP incumbent.

North Carolina is in this situation due to critical elections for the state Supreme Court that Republicans won by modest margins last fall and in 2020. Those victories allowed them to turn what had been a 4-3 majority for Democrats last year into a 5-2 GOP advantage that Republicans swiftly used to reverse a series of major rulings in favor of voting rights.

One of those decisions by the previous Democratic majority had struck down the GOP’s maps for both Congress and the state Senate, ruling that partisan gerrymandering violated the state constitution. However, the new GOP-run court took the unprecedented step of rehearing the case months later and overturned the court’s prior ruling. That immediately paved the way for a new round of Republican gerrymandering.

That decision echoed a similar one issued by the U.S. Supreme Court a few years earlier when it prohibited voters from challenging gerrymanders in federal court. That leaves North Carolina Democrats with only one realistic path to undo this state of affairs: retaking the state Supreme Court. However, the earliest that would be possible, barring unexpected vacancies, would be five years from now. To prevail, Democrats would have to win four of the next five court elections between 2024 and 2028. Democrats are defending one seat each in 2024 and 2026, while three Republican seats will be up in 2028.

Locally, they’ve redrawn local state House and Senate districts to create liberal ghettos again. Not to mention scrambling the distict numbers.

NC 114 is now the safest, bluest state House district (the city) occupied by Rep. Caleb Rudow (D; currently 116). They’ve drawn the new 115 to be roughly 54% Democrat, although our incumbent, Rep. Eric Ager (D), won the existing district (114) with 69% of the vote in 2022. Rep. Lindsey Prather (D), our incumbent living in District 116 (currently 115) won with about 58% of the vote in 2022. Her new district is drawn to be 52% Republican. They’ll all want to review my analysis of how the unaffiliated voters break in those precincts.

On the state Senate side, the GOP has again sequestered all those troublesome lefties even more tightly together in the city by ringing it with conservative precincts. Sen. Julie Mayfield (D) need not worry. District 46 extends two counties east. What was red got redder.

Sucks to be me. Sucks worse to be Jeff Jackson, Kathy Manning, and Wiley Nickel.

(h/t BF)

But not just in foreign affairs

Joe Biden’s Oval Office speech Thursday night is yet another example of how his life and his faith have shaped him. This is not going to be an apologia for his failings, but rather a review of whether, despite Americans’ chest-thumping about their faith, they really mean what they say.

Biden does. “Biden’s throwback, almost corny optimisim about the country he’s spent his life serving feels authentic. When he says he’s not kidding, he’s not kidding,” I wrote just yesterday. When he said last night, “We’re facing an inflection point in history,” he says it with an almost George Bailey sincerity.

He emphasized “the humanity of innocent Palestinians who only want to live in peace and have an opportunity.” Biden called out recent waves of antisemitism and Islamophobia at home.

We can’t stand by and stand silent when this happens. We must without equivocation denounce antisemitism. We must also without equivocation denounce Islamophobia.

And to all you hurting, those of you who are hurting, I want you to know I see you. You belong. And I want to say this to you: You’re all America. You’re all America.

Biden drew a quick parallel between Russian atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine and Hamas butchery in Israel. He spent much of his brief address reminding Americans, members of Congress, and NATO allies that their interests and security are bound up with Ukraine’s as well as with non-NATO Israel’s.

American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe. American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with. To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it.

America cannot walk away, Biden insisted. “We are the essential nation.”

Biden’s unflagging faith in the American idea is perhaps out of step with the times, like George Bailey’s struggle to provide a better life for the good people of Bedford Falls. Red-hatted Donald Trump fans want to see America made “great again,” but “again” feels less like Bedford Falls than Pottersville. Trump, after all, began his dubious business career as a slumlord. Trump is Potter.

Amanda Marcotte writes:

… President Joe Biden and the now criminally indicted leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have demonstrated very different models of leadership. The stark differences between the two leaders are another example of how America’s democracy crisis is not “just” a political problem: It is a moral and cultural sickness that is far greater than any one political leader, political party, or political movement.

[…]

In a time not too long ago, America’s mainstream political leaders, on both sides of the partisan divide, followed an informal rule that politics and partisanship stopped at the ocean. In the Age of Trump and ascendant neofascism, that rule has been jettisoned by the right wing because getting political power at any cost with the goal of ending America’s multiracial pluralistic democracy is more important than standing in unity in a time of crisis.

David Rothkopf told Salon Biden and Trump simply are not comparable:

Joe Biden is a good man, a dedicated and effective public servant who’s trying to do a good job, who believes in our institutions, who believes in our values, who believes in alliances, who believes people are fundamentally good, and who is the kind of person Donald Trump thinks is a sucker. Donald Trump is a bad man; he is all about himself. He doesn’t care. He has no moral code whatsoever. He doesn’t believe in the rule of law. He doesn’t believe in the Constitution. He doesn’t believe in American values.

Marcotte cites several recent polls investigating Americans’ ostensible values. Trump supporters view the twice-divorced, alleged tax cheat with a history of cheating on his wife, a man facing 91 felony charges including for fomenting a violent insurrection, as more moral than evangelical former Vice President Mike Pence.

Racism, white racial resentment, hostile sexism, and other forms of prejudice and hatred in the form of social dominance behavior and authoritarianism have also played a powerful role in why Republicans and other “conservatives” have embraced the moral corruption of Trumpism and American neofascism. This is channeled through a yearning for a return to “the good old days” and “traditional values” and “Making America Great Again”.

[…]

With their embrace of Trumpism, American neofascism, and hostility to real democracy more broadly, have the MAGA people and other members of the right-wing just forgotten basic standards of human decency, morality, and good leadership? Or have they instead actively chosen Donald Trump and what he represents knowing how destructive and evil such forces are because the power is intoxicating and a way to get what they want in an America they feel increasingly hostile to and alienated from – even if that means ending democracy?

I’m pretty sure both are rhetorical questions and not mutually exclusive.

In the Looking Glass World of Trumpism, morality and American values spelled out in the Declaration are filligree on a pig. There are no American flags big enough to conceal the contempt MAGAstan holds for the Norman Rockwell vision of America Joe Biden holds dear if “created equal” and “and justice for all” stand proudly at its heart.

America is indeed at an inflection point in history. But American foreign policy is only one facet.

If you want to know why half the people in his own party don’t trust him, this is it

Philip Bump on Jim Jordan:

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) had a job to do Wednesday afternoon, and darned if he wasn’t going to do it.

Cole joined the lengthy roster of Republican representatives given the opportunity to nominate their party’s candidate for speaker before a vote in the House — a roster on which he might admittedly already appear, given that the Republican conference is well into the double digits on such nominations this year. But given that task, his job was to convince the House broadly, his colleagues specifically and the viewing audience potentially of the preparedness of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for the job.

With that goal in mind, he at one point in his speech hailed the House Judiciary Committee chairman’s moral fortitude.

“He is a person of absolute personal integrity,” Cole said of Jordan. “I’ve never once had to question something that he told me. He’s an honorable man.”

This is a more important testimonial than it might seem. Jordan’s reputation is built to a large extent on his carefully tended bulldog persona, on his apparent willingness to upend dishonesty and to call out bad actors. To cite an admittedly anecdotal example, as I was watching C-SPAN open up the phone lines before Wednesday’s vote, more than one caller indicated that they backed Jordan because they trusted him to dig up dishonesty — including, one suggested, among members of his own party. (This was used to explain why he had failed to secure a majority Tuesday and will presumably be used to explain Wednesday’s similar failure.)

But the past few years have offered plenty of reason for Cole and anyone else to not take Jordan’s assertions at face value. In fact, he has repeatedly made presentations that are obviously false and, on occasion, has repeated those presentations after their falsity has been made publicly obvious.

It was during Donald Trump’s presidency that Jordan really began to lean into the persona that those C-SPAN callers appreciated. He began earning more airtime on Fox News once Trump was inaugurated, eventually outpacing Republican House leadership. When Trump faced his first impeachment in 2019, Jordan served as one of the president’s primary defenders, snapping and yowling at Democrats as he worked energetically to distract from the evidence being presented. By 2020, he had ascended to top positions on congressional committees.

His track record over this period is filled with occasions on which Cole or anyone else might pause before testifying to his credibility.

During that first Trump impeachment, for example, Jordan misrepresented the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. He made untrue claims about testimony that had been heard. That was clear in real time. Later reporting revealed the extent to which he’d been willing to serve as Trump’s defender rather than someone seeking out the truth, including making false claims to reporters and the public. He was a bulldog, all right, but not one whose claims could be taken at face value.

We can quickly dispatch with Jordan’s well-documented effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election to Trump’s benefit. It is worth noting, though, that he also made false claims aimed at blaming then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for the extent of the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Just before the 2022 midterms, Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, offered an accusation against President Biden that was characteristically laced with exaggeration, dishonesty and politics. He and his colleagues presented what they described as a 1,000-page report documenting how the Biden administration had politicized the FBI. The “report” included a few dozen pages of rhetorical allegations — and hundreds of pages of letters the committee had sent requesting more information. Fully 290 pages included nothing but the signatures of legislators on those letters.

Once Republicans took the majority, things didn’t improve. Jordan, for example, joined an accusation against Biden’s 2020 campaign that was undercut by testimony already in his committee’s possession. And then arrived the effort to investigate and potentially impeach Biden.

The effort was led at the outset by House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), but Jordan quickly began to champion the thin set of allegations against the president. When a former business partner of Biden’s son Hunter offered testimony before congressional investigators, Jordan joined Comer on Fox News to make obviously false insinuations about then-Vice President Biden being summoned to Ukraine to aid his son. This was quickly debunked.

But after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) authorized an impeachment inquiry predicated on those same thin allegations, Jordan began repeatedly offering a punchier version of the same false argument. Now, he said, he could offer the public “four fundamental facts” about Joe Biden’s dubious actions — “facts” that included claims that were not demonstrably true at all. Among them, the claims Jordan had made on Fox News and even, somewhat amazingly, claims about Biden’s actions in Ukraine that mirrored ones Jordan and other Republicans had made in 2019 in their effort to defend Trump from impeachment.

It’s worth quickly noting how time has only further undercut the impeachment probe that Jordan so energetically champions. The first hearing was Sept. 28, at which legislators heard from witnesses who admitted they had no factual claims about wrongdoing to present. There have been no further hearings over the following 20 days and none scheduled.

Compare that with the 2019 effort. The first public hearing took place on Nov. 13, with legislators hearing testimony from two people who spoke about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine. There were subsequent hearings from fact witnesses on Nov. 15, Nov. 19, Nov. 20 and Nov. 21. By Nov. 25, investigators announced that they were moving forward with a final report.

All that took less than two weeks.

By itself, this timeline is an indictment of the inquiry’s — and by extension Jordan’s — seriousness. But there are plenty of other points at which Cole or any American might have been inspired to caution about taking Jordan’s claims as unfailingly true.

Of course, Cole’s job Wednesday was not to give an honest assessment of Jordan, but a compelling one.

Here’s his record of achievement:

That explosion at the hospital in Gaza has inspired a contentious debate about who is responsible and I don’t think people are going to be persuaded either way if it violates their priors. However, I think that spending too much time pointing fingers on that single incident is really counterproductive for both Israeli people and Palestinian people caught in the crossfire. There is much more at stake.

Here’s Eric Levitz at NY Magazine:

An explosive fell on the parking lot of a hospital in Gaza City Tuesday, killing a large number of Palestinians. Hamas attributed the blast to the Israeli military. Many news organizations and critics of Israel attributed the catastrophe to the Israeli military.

This presumption of Israeli responsibility was not unfounded. Israel had struck the hospital just days earlier, according to video footage obtained by the New York Times. The Israeli military had ordered the evacuation of 22 hospitals in northern Gaza last week, according to the World Health Organization. And Israel had dropped more than 6,000 tons of bombs on the Gaza Strip since Hamas’s attack on October 7. The Israeli Defense Forces denied responsibility for the strike on the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, attributing it to a misfired rocket by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad. Yet Israel had attempted to frame Islamic Jihad for its own air strikes against civilians in the past.

Nevertheless, presenting Israel’s responsibility for the al-Ahli hospital as a proven fact was journalistically irresponsible. And this irresponsibility became more apparent on Wednesday, when new information cast doubt on early narratives about the attack. For example, there was a widespread sense Tuesday that the explosion had destroyed the hospital. This suggested that the blast was of a magnitude far larger than an Islamic Jihad rocket was capable of generating. In the light of Wednesday morning, however, a photo published by a Palestinian news source, and verified by the Times, indicated that the hospital was intact, as the explosion’s direct impact was concentrated on the parking lot. The crater left by the explosive appears quite small. U.S. intelligence claims that multiple strands of evidence indicate Islamic Jihad’s responsibility, including infrared satellite data. As of this writing, no independent news outlet has verified this conclusion.

The rush to judgment has costs. Initial reports of Israeli responsibility derailed President Biden’s planned summit with the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, which might have helped to spur a faster humanitarian response to conditions in Gaza. Still, for those seeking to advance a particular political narrative about Israel, the risks of epistemic immodesty may seem to pale in comparison with the potential benefits. In this view, one little (potential) lie can serve to promote a larger truth.

But I think this is a mistake, particularly in the present context. The case for a ceasefire in Gaza does not rest on Israel’s culpability for any single air strike. The undisputed facts are more than enough to indicate that Israel’s campaign against Hamas has featured a callous disregard for civilian suffering. We don’t need to rely on Hamas to know that Israel has cut off food, fuel, electricity, and water to much of Gaza’s population. Israel’s own government has told us that. Similarly, data from the Gaza Health Ministry is not our only indication that there have been massive civilian casualties in Gaza. The U.N. tells us that Gaza is running out of body bags, while photos published by the IDF portray the large-scale decimation of civilian infrastructure.

Virtually every war entails some number of civilian casualties. But in its previous campaigns against Gaza, Israel has shown a distinctive indifference toward civilian life. The IDF will attribute this reality to Hamas’s habit of embedding its military installations into civilian infrastructure. But it does not follow that Israel has no responsibility to give weight to Palestinian life.

More fundamentally, Israel wields de facto control over Gazans’ conditions of daily life. In a meaningful sense, Israel is the state that rules them. And Gazans are denied a voice in that state on the basis of their national and ethnic identities. It is true that, in surveys, Gazans express little interest in living in a single, binational democratic state from the river to the sea. But it is unclear whether this would be the case in a world where such a state were not such a far-fetched hypothetical. In any event, the fact that Gazans live under the subjugation of the Israeli state, rather than under the auspices of their own independent state, makes Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza all the more obscene.

Meanwhile, it is far from clear that the present campaign will be effective in ensuring Israelis’ long-term security interests. Already, the campaign has generated such enmity in the Arab world as to jeopardize Israel’s normalized relations with its neighbors. At the same time, the unprecedented scale of death within Gaza is all but certain to radicalize countless young people, minting the next generation of violent extremists.

Israel cannot tolerate Hamas attacks. But it is not clear that it couldn’t more effectively protect Israelis by simultaneously increasing its defensive capacities on the Gaza border, targeting some high-ranking Hamas militants, and addressing the Palestinians’ political grievances. For example, by abandoning its illegal settlement project in the West Bank, Israel could free up more troops for guarding its border with Hamas. At the same time, an Israeli government that made genuine concessions to Palestinian rights might eat into Hamas’s appeal in Gaza. Among the other merits of this approach, it seems likelier to bring about the safe return of the Israeli hostages still living in Gaza.

For all these reasons, the case for an immediate ceasefire — and durable end to a mode of warfare that takes mass Palestinian death as its acceptable price — is strong. And the question of whether Israel was responsible for the calamity at al-Ahli Hospital has essentially no bearing on that case. There is simply no reason for advocates of the Palestinian cause to dig in on a factual debate about a single incident, rather than focusing on making their moral case against the present war.

This is not the first time in this conflict that people have missed the forest for contested trees. In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s attack, there were reports that militants beheaded babies and raped Israeli women on a massive scale. As of this writing, such reports remain unconfirmed. I was among those who initially gave undue credence to such reports. Yet those, like myself, who wished to emphasize the barbarity of Hamas’s attack had no reason to quibble over these details. The undisputed facts were more than enough to establish the monstrosity of Hamas’s actions. It is not meaningfully worse to behead a baby than to burn one alive, as images released by the IDF suggest that Hamas did when it set houses on fire. The killing of 1,400 Israeli Jews was a historic crime, irrespective of whether it featured the decapitation of babies or rape at a mass scale. Insisting on the veracity of those contested details only served to deflect attention away from the horror of what was known.

Thus, it is not just irresponsible but also bad political practice, to wager one’s credibility on disputed, inessential details. The case against Israel’s campaign does not rest on its culpability for any single explosion, and the Palestinians’ allies do them no favors by acting as though it does.

Agreed. Once again, cooler heads need to prevail in a situation like this.

He was once the wingnuttiest of wingnuts. Now he’s the establishment. Did he change or did the party? A little bit of both:

You’re going to read that the 18-year House veteran is the “adult in the room” compared to other GOP hard-liners — a pragmatist who’s ready to govern and even has Democrats clamoring for him to run the House. But it wasn’t always that way.

Part of the reason the North Carolina Republican has any lingering cred with the far right — though it’s fading in the Matt Gaetz era — is that he used to be one of them, even before the rise of the GOP tea party movement.

McHenry entered Congress in 2005 at 29 and soon made his name as a self-described “bomb-thrower.” He rose through the House GOP ranks by attacking the government’s economic rescue plans in the wake of the global financial crisis, helping sink the Bush administration’s initial attempt to bail out Wall Street — a failed vote that triggered a market crash.

A Roll Call columnist in this early stage of McHenry’s career described him as “the GOP’s attack dog-in-training” as he fought Democrats in an ethics battle against Majority Leader Tom Delay, who faced criminal conspiracy charges.

But then McHenry got serious. He buckled down at the House Financial Services Committee, which writes rules for banking and stock trading, and became a Wall Street policy wonk. He also entered House leadership, emerging as one of the GOP’s top vote counters as chief deputy whip.

McHenry, now a father of three, had a shot at helping run the House after Republicans won back their majority last year. He turned it down — making clear he didn’t want to wrangle conservatives on government funding and the debt ceiling — and became chair of the Financial Services Committee to focus on “making law.”

How does he operate?

McHenry hasn’t quite abandoned his conservative ideals in his transition to GOP statesman. But he’s made clear that he can be flexible to get a deal done.

Just take McHenry’s approach at House Financial Services. McHenry has spent years courting Rep. Maxine Waters — the panel’s top Democrat and McHenry’s polar opposite — in a bid to craft legislation that would have a hint of a shot at getting through the Senate and signed by the president. Before taking the gavel, he described the committee as an active nook of bipartisanship.

“We’ve been able to find compromise around helping families and small businesses getting lending and access to capital,” he said.

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned to McHenry earlier this year to help resolve the debt-limit impasse. It warmed hearts on Wall Street because bankers had confidence that McHenry would be a voice of reason and help steer the country away from financial calamity. After all, he had warned publicly last year that taking the debt ceiling hostage was a bad idea, knowing McCarthy was going down that road.

McHenry is close to the middle of his party, according to one ideology score. He believes climate change is real and “we have to do something about it.” He’s supported aid for Ukraine. He has sidestepped some of the culture war issues that are dominating GOP politics and even drew flak from the right when he kept diversity and inclusion concerns — a priority of Waters — on the Financial Services oversight agenda.

After a sudden rash of regional bank failures in March, McHenry, unlike some other conservatives, held back from using the crisis atmosphere to attack the Biden administration for their handling of the situation — confirming the full transition from his bomb-throwing days of yore.

“I’m confident in their ability to do the right thing,” McHenry said at the time.

He also grew up a little bit.

It appears they won’t be able to get the “Temp Speaker” thing, which would be in effect until January, through because the anti-Jordan people don’t want to give Jordan time to rally the troops. (Jordan doesn’t plan to take his name out of consideration.) The pro-Jordan people don’t like it because they want Jordan now and quite a few of them like Matt Gaetz just believe that chaos is a good thing for its own sake.

This is what happens when the monster you created turns on you:

In the closed-door meeting, several GOP members urged Rep. Jim Jordan to drop his bid for the speakership, but he is resisting those calls, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Jordan, who sources say scrapped a third vote today after failing to get enough to win the speakership in his first two ballots, is is now leaning toward backing a resolution to expand interim Speaker Patrick McHenry’s powers, sources said, but he wants to see how today’s House GOP conference meeting goes. 

Here’s how it went:

A closed-door meeting of the House GOP Conference turned heated today, multiple sources tell CNN, a further sign of chaos as Republicans struggle to elect a speaker. 

At one point, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who led the effort to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker, was told to sit down by McCarthy but refused. Illinois Rep  Mike Bost then “got all emotional and ugly and was cussing him” and “telling him it’s all his fault,” one member said. 

Other lawmakers, including some who support Jim Jordan’s speakership bid, slammed the Ohio Republican for backing an expected resolution to empower interim Speaker Patrick McHenry, calling him “self-serving.” Some members encouraged him to drop out of the race. 

There was also an emotional and heated discussion over the death threats that some GOP lawmakers who oppose Jordan for speaker have faced.

Exiting the meeting, Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher said he was “going to the chapel to pray the rosary.” 

“Temperatures are really high in there,” a deflated-looking Gallagher said.

Republicans on empowering interim speaker Patrick McHenry so the House can function: pic.twitter.com/wIKujB36if

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 19, 2023

The word is that McCarthy told Matt Gaetz to sit down and shut up when he tried to speak. And Marge and the gang are not happy. Not one bit.

Unfortunately, it appears that hiring a temp Speaker, presumably Patrick McHenry, in order to avoid blowing up the country, isn’t going down well with a huge number of Jordan’s henchmen. So the talking heads on cable news are now all floating the the idea that it’s up to the Democrats to vote for this far right wing Republican to save the country from the Republicans.

What the hell is happening here?

Fox News' John Roberts: If Democrats were in the majority, how long would it take Hakeem Jeffries to get to 218 votes?

Jason Chaffetz: "Well, Hakeem Jeffries has now lost 17 races in a row. So 17 times in a row, he's been put up for Speaker and he's lost." pic.twitter.com/a6xlkCd7sp

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) October 19, 2023

It’ doesn’t get any more asinine than that.

Oh wait:

Scott: Democrats knew what they were doing when they took McCarthy out of the Speakership

Keilar: They didn’t take him out.

Scott: Sure they did

Keilar: You guys are in the majority. pic.twitter.com/lR71iYbSzQ

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 18, 2023

Republicans are underwater

A lot of polling these days is crap. Presidential horse-race polls, especially. That doesn’t keep them from drawing eyeballs like Bat Boy pics at the checkout counter. Morning Consult has another this morning sure to provoke anxiety.

Trump leads Biden in key swing states, per our survey with @business:

AZ
Biden: 43%
Trump: 47%

GA
Biden: 43%
Trump: 48%

MI
Biden: 44%
Trump: 44%

NV
Biden: 46%
Trump: 43%

NC
Biden: 43%
Trump: 47%

PA
Biden: 45%
Trump: 46%

WI
Biden: 44%
Trump: 46%https://t.co/ht2f2Sk2Wq pic.twitter.com/kAceURs9fv

— Morning Consult (@MorningConsult) October 19, 2023

But so does Navigator. While presidential polling a full year out from November 2024 suggests another close election, Navigator reports the Republican brand is suffering:

Key Takeaways:

• Overwhelming majorities disapprove of the job Republicans in Congress are
  doing, while nearly three in four report hearing negative information about them.
  Turmoil around electing a Speaker is dominating what Americans are hearing.
• Key House Republicans all have net negative favorability ratings, while a majority
  of Americans still have no opinion of Jim Jordan.
• More Americans would now blame Republicans if a shutdown were to occur, and
  three in five say a government shutdown would have a negative impact on them
  personally, including majorities across party lines.
• Awareness of a potential government shutdown this fall has eroded since a
  shutdown was avoided on September 30th
  .

From the newsletter:

Seven in ten Americans disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are handling their jobs, as favorability for prominent Republicans is underwater. For the first time, Republicans hold a net negative view of Republicans in Congress (net -4; 45 percent approve – 49 percent disapprove; a net negative 23-point shift since early September). Americans overall also disapprove of Republicans in Congress by a 43-point margin (26 percent approve – 69 percent disapprove), including over four in five Democrats (86 percent disapprove) and nearly three in four independents (72 percent disapprove). Disapproval is equally high among moderate Americans (net -47; 22 percent approve – 69 percent disapprove) and among Republicans who describe themselves as not very conservative, Republicans in Congress have double-digit net negative ratings (net -17; 38 percent approve – 55 percent disapprove).

Disapproval of Republicans today does not equal depressed turnout for them next year, nor a boost in turnout for Democrats. Many among the growing ranks of unaffiliated voters could stay home, making the general election look more like the primary.

Even Republicans can see it (New York Times):

The latest round of House Republican infighting has badly damaged the G.O.P. brand. It has left the party leaderless and one chamber of Congress paralyzed for more than two weeks. The chaos is raising the chances that Democrats could win back the majority next year, and it has given them ample ammunition for their campaign narrative, which casts Republicans as right-wing extremists who are unfit to govern.

“It hurts the country; it hurts the Congress; it’s hurting our party,” said Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, one of 18 Republicans who represent districts won by Mr. Biden in 2020. “It’s putting us in a bad hole for next November.”

The bad taste in voters’ mouths, if it persists, will impact the presidential race as well, and it probably won’t show in the head-to-head presidential polls. Factor that into the “close” polls you see.