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What horse-race polls don’t show

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 19, 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.

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.

Are Republicans Antide?

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 19, 2023

If Antifa is anti-fascist….

“Weird how this keeps happening and it keeps being Republicans,” Brian Beutler tweeted this morning on X in reference to Douglass Mackey (Politico):

A right-wing social media influencer was sentenced to seven months in federal prison on Wednesday for spreading falsehoods via Twitter, now known as X, in an effort to suppress Democratic turnout in the 2016 presidential election.

Douglass Mackey, who posted under the alias Ricky Vaughn, was convicted in March of the charge of conspiracy against rights after a trial in federal court in Brooklyn.

Prosecutors said Mackey, who had 58,000 Twitter followers, conspired with others between September and November of 2016 to post falsely that supporters of Democrat Hillary Clinton could vote for her by text message or social media post.

For example, they said, Mackey tweeted a photo of a woman standing in front of an “African Americans for Hillary” sign. “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” the tweet said. “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925.”

Meanwhile, election fraud propagandists are still “banging the drum” to promote their conspiracy theories, Molly Olmstead reports at Slate:

The Kansas Legislature hosted an odd contingent last month. Proponents of QAnon conspiracy theories, lobbyists from conservative “dark money” groups, and vigilantes willing to take covert action to find proof of election crimes showed up for a two-day forum to present on such topics as “Election Machine Vulnerabilities,” “Voter Roll Maintenance,” and “Ballot Harvesting.”

[…]

Because the session was an invite-only event, actual election administrators and legitimate voting rights groups such as the League of Women Voters were shut out of the proceedings. So, for two days, Kansas legislators were treated to hours and hours of conspiracy theory propaganda.

The effort is small-scale. The movement has largely subsided save for the hard core (corps?).

Presenters were the usual assortment of self-described “experts” common on the left and right fringes. Where New Agers once had crop circle researchers, the far right has election conspiracy hobbyists. The similarities are striking. The potential damage is not.

“But there is some vocal shrinking minority of folks who are throwing a lot of energy at this stuff still,” says Daniel Griffith, the senior director of policy at Secure Democracy USA. “In pretty much every state, you have at least a couple legislators who will entertain their ideas and introduce bills. I don’t think it’s going away.”

“We do know there’s multistate orgs that are coordinating these efforts and providing ideas to the folks,” said Griffith.

Mark Cook—an IT worker who has been a featured guest on MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s show Lindell TV to promote the theory that Dominion Voting Systems rigged the 2020 election—also appeared at the event. He has the distinction of having actually participated in potential crimes related to voting.

Cook has previously been accused of helping an elections clerk smuggle data out of voting machines in an effort to try to find evidence of hacking. It doesn’t matter that his scheme ended up implicating him in potential crimes rather than exposing others; he sticks to his belief that the 2020 election was stolen. “Think about that: What does dominion mean?” Cook said at the Kansas session, referring to Dominion Voting Systems. “They want to have dominion over us. We need to open our eyes.”

“Open your eyes!” says the woman in the Kayak ad, too. Do your research!

Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, also spoke about “an interdependent network” of individuals who are pushing these ideas at the state level. “Those who come testify are often the same people who are driving those strategies,” she said.

The efforts to keep this conspiracy alive may be diffuse, but they reach all the way to the top of the Republican Party, including the failed Republican legislator who now wants to be Speaker of the House.

Aaron Blake reported on Monday, that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) “has yet to get a bill signed into law since being elected in 2006.” But promoting conspiracy theories and conspiring (allegedly) to overturn a presidential election? He’s hell at that. (Listen to the audio.)

There are early signs that a few Republicans in the House find Jordan’s candidacy a bridge too far. Most people who run for these offices have overactive egos. The upside is that the less-crazy want to leave some kind of official legacy. With Jordan in the driver’s seat, they’ll have none.

“Those gas stove hearing aren’t going to hold themselves,” quips Molly Jong Fast.

The legacy MAGA Republicans dream of is turning this country into an autocracy with Donald Trump or someone like him at the top, even if it takes verbal harrassment, “credible death threats and a barrage of threatening calls” to get there.

“Jordan’s rise, like Trump’s own commanding lead in the 2024 GOP presidential race, provides more evidence that for the first time since the Civil War, the dominant faction in one of America’s two major parties is no longer committed to the principles of democracy as the U.S. has known them,” writes Ron Brownstein in The Atlantic. “That means the nation now faces the possibility of sustained threats to the tradition of free and fair elections, with Trump’s own antidemocratic tendencies not only tolerated but amplified by his allies across the party.”

Open your eyes, indeed.

If Antifa is anti-fascist, is the new Republican brand Antide?

You Cannot Make This Stuff Up

Published by digby on October 18, 2023

The putative GOP nominee shows his priorities

And he doesn’t have to be at the trial ever. He just wants the attention he gets at the Courthouse. It’s his current version of chopper talk.

How To Lose A Majority

Published by digby on October 18, 2023

Act like a bunch of clowns

The Republican circus is not playing well in those swing districts. How could it? These people are a joke:

In California’s 45th Congressional District, along Western Avenue in Buena Park, a giant billboard is set to display a photograph of Representative Michelle Steel next to former President Donald J. Trump and Representative Jim Jordan, the Republican hard-liner from Ohio she voted for twice this week for speaker.

“Rep. Steel Supports Extremism,” the billboard reads. “Stop the extremism.”

The advertising campaign, paid for by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, is part of a broad effort by Democrats to target Republicans like Ms. Steel, who represent congressional districts that President Biden won in 2020. A dozen of those vulnerable G.O.P. lawmakers have stood on the House floor this week and cast their votes to put Mr. Jordan second in line to the presidency.

Another group, the Congressional Integrity Project, began a digital ad campaign this week in those same districts, focusing on Mr. Jordan and his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election.

“Every House Republican who votes for Jim Jordan to be speaker of the House should be held accountable for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his role in the Jan. 6 fake electors plot, and his continued attacks on our democracy,” said Kyle Herrig, the executive director of the advocacy organization.

Republican groups are pushing back on a narrative of extremism and dysfunction. The American Action Network is running an ad campaign lauding 16 Republicans in Biden districts who voted to prevent a government shutdown last month.

But 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.”

He said his hard-right colleagues who moved to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this month and touched off the intractable scramble to replace him “want to be in the minority. I think they would prefer that. So they can just vote no and just yell and scream all the time.”

Mr. Bacon opposed Mr. Jordan’s candidacy, but he and other mainstream G.O.P. lawmakers worry that, no matter who is ultimately elected speaker, the Ohio Republican’s nomination has only boosted Democrats’ efforts to tie them to the most hard-right members of their party, placing their seats at risk in 2024.

“Jim Jordan is the poster boy for MAGA extremism,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, said on Tuesday night.

In a speech on the House floor in which he nominated Mr. Jeffries for speaker, Representative Pete Aguilar of California, the No. 3 House Democrat, laid out a case against Mr. Jordan that could have doubled as a template for a campaign attack ad against any Republican who supported him.

“A vote today to make the architect of a nationwide abortion ban, a vocal election denier and an insurrection inciter to the speaker of this House would be a terrible message to the country and our allies,” Mr. Aguilar said.

The candidacy of Mr. Jordan, the combative co-founder of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus and a key player in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, has left many House Republicans in a no-win position.

If Mr. Jordan were to prevail — a prospect that appeared less likely on Wednesday after he lost a second ballot — his ascension would confirm concerns among a large swath of voters. Many believe that the G.O.P. is an extreme party that is badly out of step with most of the country, and that the House Republican conference is essentially composed of Mr. Trump’s loyal foot soldiers. And if the hard-right lawmaker continues to fail in his bid, it only hardens the view of Republicans as completely incapable of governing.

For mainstream Republicans representing politically competitive districts, the damage may already be done regardless of the outcome of the vote, or how many rounds it takes.

“It’s hard to present yourself as a figure of bipartisan compromise and moderation when you vote for someone who resolutely stands against any bipartisan compromise and is the furthest thing from a moderate a voter can imagine,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster.

Democrats have been circulating data from YouGov Blue, a research division for progressive and Democratic clients, that found that 63 percent of respondents in a recent poll said that moderate Republicans should work with Democrats to form a bipartisan governing coalition. Only 37 percent of respondents said those moderate Republicans should only work with other Republicans to elect a new speaker.

Christina Bohannan, a Democrat challenging Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks in a competitive Iowa district, said her opponent’s vote for Mr. Jordan on Tuesday “shows her true values and how contrary they are to Iowa values.”

She said that more than 60 percent of Iowans reject Mr. Jordan’s position in support of a nationwide abortion ban, and noted that he has never voted for a farm bill, one of the most critical issues for the state.

“This is a real slap in the face to Iowa women for Miller-Meeks to support him,” Ms. Bohannan said. “I can’t imagine a clearer example of how Representative Miller-Meeks is selling out Iowans to the extreme members of her party rather than take a more bipartisan position.”

Ms. Miller-Meeks on Wednesday switched her vote, backing off her support for Mr. Jordan and voting for Representative Kay Granger of Texas, instead. But the damage had already been done.

Some Republicans were admitting as much on Tuesday.

“There’s no way we win the majority if the message we send to the American people is we believe in the election was stolen, and we believe that Jan. 6 was a tour of the Capitol,” Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, said on CNN. Mr. Buck was one of 22 Republicans who refused to vote for Mr. Jordan on Wednesday. He has said he is opposed in part because Mr. Jordan has been unwilling to say that Mr. Biden won the 2020 election.

Representative Jen Kiggans, who represents a Virginia district won by Mr. Biden, also was outspoken about her opposition to Mr. Jordan.

“Mr. Jordan’s government funding plan has the potential to further cut the defense budget, which is already inadequate,” she said in a video posted on social media. She also voiced concerns about his vote last month against keeping the government open.

The Republicans are brushing this off saying that nobody will remember any of this next November. I’m pretty sure the Democrats are going to make sure they do.

BTW: Here are the 12 Republicans who voted for Jim Jordan twice.

  • Rep. David Valadao: CA-22 had a Biden margin of 12.9 percentage points.
  • Rep. Mike Garcia: CA-27 had a Biden margin of 12.4 points.
  • Rep. John Duarte: CA-13 had a Biden margin of 10.9 points.
  • Rep. George Santos: NY-03 had a Biden margin of 8.2 points.
  • Rep. Brandon Williams: NY-22 had a Biden margin of 7.5 points.
  • Rep. Michelle Steele: CA-45 had a Biden margin of 6.2 points.
  • Rep. Mark Molinaro: NY-19 had a Biden margin of 4.6 points.
  • Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick: PA-01 had a Biden margin of 4.6 points.
  • Rep. Tom Kean: NJ-07 had a Biden margin of 3.9 points.
  • Rep. Young Kim: CA-40 had a Biden margin of 1.9 points.
  • Rep. David Schweikert: AZ-01 had a Biden margin of 1.5 points.
  • Rep. Juan Ciscomani: AZ-06 had a Biden margin of 0.1 points.

FWIW

Published by digby on October 18, 2023
Truth

Josh Marshall on the Gaza Hospital blast. Like him, I have zero expertise on these issues so I have to try to find credible sources to inform me. I have been seeing the same thing:

I have no ability to evaluate grainy videos or make sense of what different blast patterns look like. But I’ve spent several years developing lists of open source intelligence and forensics analysts who are consistently credible. You’ve seen some of this in the various Twitter lists I sometimes post here. Credible doesn’t mean always right, of course. By credible in this case I mean analysts who are highly knowledgeable in one relevant domain, use an empirical framework for analyzing videos, open source data, etc., and have a proven track record of the appropriate level of caution and skepticism in drawing conclusions. Many of these people come out of the Bellingcat world, others got started (at least publicly) analyzing the Syrian and Ukraine conflicts. It’s actually remarkable what people not drawing on any state or property “intelligence” can demonstrate with overlapping provenance-proven video evidence, geolocation, satellite photography, open source weapons information, tracking data and more.

I watched this group very closely overnight (even at the expense of not getting much sleep) as more videos and data emerged about the hospital blast in Gaza and from what I can tell none of these people think the evidence points to an Israeli bomb as the source of the blast.

They’re not all saying it’s open and shut. In fact, I’m not sure any of them are saying that. That’s a very high standard. But every one that I follow is saying the weight of evidence points to some version of a failed rocket launch from within Gaza. And they’re saying that with varying degrees of certainty.

Significantly, several different kinds of evidence appear to point to this same conclusion — nighttime video of the explosion, audio analysis of the sounds immediately prior to the blast, day after photographs of the impact site and blast zone, et al. Israel has published what it says is audio of Hamas operatives discussing the blast and ascribing it to the failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch. I don’t disbelieve that audio because it fits with the other evidence. But I place it in a separate category because a lot of people are going to be inherently skeptical of any evidence coming from one of the interested parties. All the evidence discussed above is from photographs and videos from international news organizations. Indeed, the key blast video, I believe, comes from a Hamas-run TV station.

I’m not looking at whatever comes over the transom and generated by whatever algorithm. I’m only looking at sources and experts who I had experience with prior to the conflict.

One interesting example of this analysis is tied to the photo at the top of this post. I’ll just speak generally since I’m no expert. I’m just summarizing. (Here is some more detail in a larger thread. Here’s video from Tass of the hospital the morning after.) But if you look, there’s a small crater at the center of this parking lot. The cars right next to it are totally demolished. But cars just no more than twenty or thirty feet away have no more than blown out windows and some are almost totally unscathed. To a trained eye that suggests a relatively small blast.

With daybreak there are growing questions about whether the blast was of the magnitude reported last night and whether the alleged number of fatalities can be accurate. Unlike the ‘who did this’ question, this analysis seems less clear to me. If I’m understanding the discussion it seems like the actual blast as opposed to the subsequent fire was fairly small and much of the blasted building is actually intact. But I’d recommend looking at the discussion yourself and drawing your own conclusions.

One red flag last night is that there were almost instant, very large and very round fatality numbers. The two I saw circulating in global media, based on the accounts from the Gazan (Hamas) health ministry, was either 200-300 or 500 dead. It’s almost impossible to actually count numbers of dead and wounded that quickly. So at best those were estimates in a highly chaotic situation. But while most global media showed some caution about who was responsible, these death counts were reported more or less as fact. It’s possible they’ll prove to be accurate. But there’s significant skepticism about whether what’s visible in daylight squares with those immediate claims. I don’t know what numbers of fatalities are credible, just that credible analysts are skeptical of those original estimates.

In case it isn’t clear. This isn’t a booyah! conclusion. This doesn’t change the fact that an estimated three thousand people have died in Gaza during this war. But as best as I can tell this is what people who have a proven track record of credibility in those earlier conflicts (as opposed to people popping up in algorithms) are saying as of this morning.

If you’re interested in reading some of this stuff yourself a lot of it comes from my list of military analysts tracking the Ukraine War. There’s also my list of reporters tracking events in Israel. There’s also this list of open source intelligence analysts which I look at, but I am not the curator of. That list is a bit more raw however. So I’d be more cautious with it.

Generally, if you dip into this stuff, don’t take any one analysis as the one that settles it. Look at the weight of an opinion, whether it seems to point clearly in one direction or another. Also, run towards expressions of caution and away from expressions of certainty.

I don’t know when, or if, this will ever be settled. I do know that it seem illogical that Israel or Islamic Jihad would have purposefully targeted that hospital. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen but that seems the least likely. So, if it was a accident, it was a horrific aaccident regardless of which side did it, and it’s one that we can easily anticipate with all those rockets flying all over the place. War is an abomination. This is what happens. It’s all a terrible nightmare.

A January 6 Defendant Laid It All Out

Published by digby on October 18, 2023

He made their political motives clear

Trump’s lawyer Kenneth Chesebro wrote some things down that he probably shouldn’t written:

On Dec. 24, 2020, Kenneth Chesebro and other lawyers fighting to reverse President Donald J. Trump’s election defeat were debating whether to file litigation contesting Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in Wisconsin, a key swing state.

Mr. Chesebro argued there was little doubt that the litigation would fail in court — he put the odds of winning at “1 percent” — as Mr. Trump continued to push his baseless claims of widespread fraud, according to emails reviewed by The New York Times.

But the “relevant analysis,” Mr. Chesebro argued, “is political.”

The emails have new significance because Mr. Chesebro is scheduled to be one of the first two of Mr. Trump’s 18 co-defendants to go on trial this month on charges brought by the district attorney’s office in Fulton County, Ga. The indictment accused Mr. Chesebro of conspiring to create slates of so-called fake electors pledged to Mr. Trump in several states that Mr. Biden had won.

Mr. Chesebro’s lawyers have argued that his work was shielded by the First Amendment and that he “acted within his capacity as a lawyer.” They have called for his case to be dismissed, saying he was merely “researching and finding precedents in order to form a legal opinion, which was then supplied to his client, the Trump campaign.”

Scott R. Grubman, a lawyer for Mr. Chesebro, said lawyers often argue for positions that are not widely held. “For example, any lawyer who has ever filed a pleading challenging existing Supreme Court precedent falls within this category,” he said. “Maybe a long shot, but far from criminal. In fact, it’s how the law changes over time.”

Mr. Trump has also signaled that one of his possible defenses is that he was simply acting on the advice of his lawyers.

But Mr. Chesebro’s emails could undercut any effort to show that the lawyers were focused solely on legal strategies. Rather than considering just the law and the facts of the case, Mr. Chesebro made clear he was considering politics and was well aware of how the Trump campaign’s legal filings could be used as ammunition for Republicans’ efforts to overturn the results when Congress met to certify the Electoral College outcome on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Just getting this on file means that on Jan. 6, the court will either have ruled on the merits or, vastly more likely, will have appeared to dodge again,” Mr. Chesebro wrote in the email chain. He added that a lack of action by the Supreme Court would feed “the impression that the courts lacked the courage to fairly and timely consider these 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.”

Of the chances of success, Mr. Chesebro estimated the “odds the court would grant effective relief before Jan. 6, I’d say only 1 percent.” But he wrote the filing has “possible political value.”

Mr. Chesebro wrote that it was “hard to have enormous optimism about what will happen on Jan. 6, but a lot can happen in the 13 days left until then, and I think having as many states under review both judicially and in state legislatures as possible is ideal.”

He said the legal filings could produce a “political payoff” to bolster the argument that “there should at least be extended debate in Congress about election irregularities in each state.” He added that “the public should come away from this believing that the election in Wisconsin was likely rigged, and stolen by Biden and Harris, who were not legitimately elected.”

Responding to the email chain was John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who has also been charged in the Georgia election case. Mr. Eastman said he believed the legal arguments were “rock solid” but the odds of success were “not based on the legal merits, but an assessment of the justices’ spines. And I understand that there is a heated fight underway.”

This is the real smoking gun, to me:

Mr. Chesebro responded: “I particularly agree that getting this on file gives more ammo to the justices fighting for the court to intervene. 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.”

The promise that January 6th “will be wild” was seen as a way to intimidate the US Supreme Court. Wow. And we still have to wonder where Eastman was getting his “inside information” on the Court. He was good friends with the Thomases …

I’m sure Jack Smith has all these emails as well as the Fulton County DA. Whether they can tie Trump into it is unknown but remember, Trump sent the “will be wild” email right after that raucous meeting at the White House featuring the Overstock.com guy.

The Right Message

Published by digby on October 18, 2023

Joe Biden went to Israel today and spoke from experience

Joe Biden urged Israel not to repeat “mistakes” the US made after 9/11 as he made a statement during his visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, 18 October, following Hamas’ attack earlier this month.

The US president told people not to be “consumed” by rage as he compared the attacks to the events of September 11 in the US.

“After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes,” he added.

Mr Biden’s statement came as he announced a new $100m aid package to Gaza after a hospital explosion that is feared to have killed hundreds of people on Tuesday.

I suspect the right wingers will have a fit about this because American presidents are never allowed to admit to mistakes. On the other hand, they must be confused because Trump is hostile to Netanyahu and they’ve recently been programmed to be against war in the Middle East (what they now call “forever wars” no matter what the circumstances.) So, we’ll see.

Newtie’s Favorite Grandson

Published by digby on October 18, 2023

Jim Jordan is the heir to the Gingrich Revolution.

Another day, another clusterf***k in the US House of Representatives. After days of behind the scenes haggling (and reports of strong-arming) Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said he was ready to call for a vote to make him the new Speaker of the House. The word on Tuesday morning was that they believed they had commitments for the necessary votes and the worst case scenario would be defections in the single digits, which were being rationalized as protest votes that would fall away on a second ballot. As it turned out Jordan lost 20 votes and after originally calling for another vote in the afternoon they postponed until Wednesday morning.

By the time you read this that vote might have taken place already or perhaps Jordan has seen the writing on the wall and dropped out. The rumors are that serious discussions of making the “acting” Speaker Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina a temporary Speaker with full powers to get the House through the appropriations process although nobody seems to know exactly how that would work. Some congressmen are even calling for Kevin McCarthy to be reinstated, which would be the perfect coda to this absurd brouhaha.

One of the main objections to Jim Jordan is that he’s too ideologically extreme and will hurt the Republicans’ chances of maintaining the majority in 2024. There are 18 House members who were elected in those districts that Biden won and it’s assumed they will be in danger if a full-blown MAGA wingnut becomes Speaker of the House. Some of those members voted for Jordan on Tuesday so they aren’t convinced but the Democrats are making it clear that they see this as an opportunity. Jim Jordan’s record is as far right as it gets and he’s joined at the hip with Donald Trump who is as toxic as ever in those districts.

But the idea that Jordan would be a departure from all the alleged statesmen who previously served as Republican Speakers and that the maelstrom that’s engulfed this congress since they took over is competely unprecedented isn’t true. In fact, Jordan and the rest of the House GOP rebels are following in a recent tradition.

Back in the 1980s the Reagan Revolution brought into the Republican House caucus a group of backbench bomb throwers led by an obscure Georgia congressman named Newt Gingrich. He was very adept at getting attention from the nascent right wing media represented in those early days by talk radio. He first came to national notice when he maneuvered to oust the then Speaker of the House over an ethics complaint. He said at the time, “I’ll just keep pounding and pounding on his ethics. There comes a point where it comes together and the media takes off on it, or it dies. What I really want is to get some people with subpoenas poking around.” (That Gingrich himself had a very similar ethics problem made it a “chef’s kiss” of a political gambit and secured his place in the GOP as a bold, risk taker. )The Speaker in that case was a Democrat and was hastily replaced by another Democrat but that was the play that started it all and led us to where we are today.

Gingrich started his climb into the leadership right away and by 1994 he was not only the undisputed leader of the House Republicans, he was the undisputed leader of the Republican party. When he led them to their massive win in that midterm election, there was talk in the political media that he was going to be a co-President with Bill Clinton and might have to run against him in 1996 for the good of the country.

He and his accomplices reveled in the tales of small state corruption and lurid sexual misdeeds of Arkansas’ gothic political culture and launched the practice of non-stop tabloid House investigations that continues to this day. Their smashmouth rhetoric, the crude character assasination was not unprecedented in American politics but the modern conservative movement under Newt Gingrich took it mainstream.

But the old “live by the sword, die by the sword” trope came back to bite him in 1997 when an insurgent group of 20 or so Representatives from the Gingrich class of 94 felt that he had betrayed their principles and they recruited the Speaker’s top lieutenants to go to him with an ultimatum that he was to step down or they would remove him by parliamentary maneuver. Unfortunately for them, the top lieutenants were a bunch of Keystone Kops and began fighting among themselves only to have the plot leaked to the press before any action could be taken. Gingrich survived but it was clear he was hanging on by a thread.

When his predictions of a massive gain in the 98 midterms turned to dust, he knew he no longer had the support of the caucus and he resigned. At the time half the men in Washington were being exposed as philanderers, and Gingrich was among them, as was the man who maneuvered behind the scenes to edge out his more likely successor, Bob Livingston of Louisiana. They finally settled on a little known member of the leadership Illinois Congressman Dennis Hastert who went on to become the longest serving Republican Speaker of the House. It was only later that it was discovered that he had been paying off a former student to keep quiet about his molestation of boys when he was a wrestling coach, which landed him 15 months in jail.

When Hastert left he was succeeded by Ohio Rep. John Boehner, one of the original Gingrich coup plotters. As we all know, Boehner was eventually forced out by Tea Party back benchers, Jim Jordan among them. His successor Paul Ryan found himself being jeered at townhalls and rallies and left after two years to be followed by Kevin McCarthy who was just ousted in a parliamentary maneuver much like the one with which the Keystone Kop coup plotters were supposed to threaten Gingrich in 1997.

Jim Jordan is certainly an extremist whose legislative record is non-existent and whose entire career in congress has been devoted to nothing but culture war issues, Fox News hits, insurrection and character assasination. But he’s not unique. (He even has a wrestling coach molestation scandal in his background.) In fact, he is the natural heir to the Gingrich revolution. And there are plenty more just like him.

Salon

Update:

Jordan lost his second vote by more than the first one. Back to the drawing board.

Another reason we’re here

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 18, 2023

And a way out of cynicism

Polling has been bad for years. Traditional models seem to be failing. Too many focus on horse-race politics. But why?

Dan Pfeiffer this morning:

Despite historically high turnout in the last several elections, people are disconnected from politics, angry at politicians, and distrustful that the political process can make an iota of difference in their lives. To be fair, Americans have always had some cynicism about politics and a distrust of government dating back to dumping tea in the Boston Harbor. But the levels of discontent are unprecedented and happening across the political spectrum.

Pfeiffer is commenting on a Pew survey that came out in September. Is it any good? Who knows? But its findings may be instructive for Democrats in 2024, Pfeiffer believes:

  • Can Democrats run on saving democracy when people are so down on our political system? The common explanation for our surprising success in 2022 is that Democrats upended expectations by centering the election on the threat Republicans posed to democracy. I think the story is more complicated, but Democrats are planning to make saving democracy a central part of the 2024 campaign. I am not arguing that this is the wrong decision. Democracy is at stake. Still, we must factor the distrust and disillusionment into our messaging — otherwise, we will become the defenders of a broken, corrupt political system.
  • How do we talk about Democratic accomplishments? The primary theory for President Biden’s high levels of disapproval on economic issues is that voters are largely unaware of his major accomplishments. And therefore, educating them about those accomplishments is a strategic priority. How we talk about those accomplishments must start from a place that acknowledges the high level of distrust in the federal government. Some of Biden’s biggest accomplishments have yet to go into effect. This distrust creates a hurdle for convincing people that these policies will really deliver for them.
  • What’s the best message against Trump? Given the close election, it’s fair to say that the Democrats’ anti-Trump message was not as effective as we thought it would be in 2020. In a moment when the public is livid at politicians, we have to be careful not to inadvertently help Trump with a message that makes him seem even more like an anti-politician.

That last bit is good advice. Trump’s brand is rule-breaking. Even if his instincts are criminal.

https://www.threads.net/@jefftiedrich/post/Cygns2VJqjE

But Joe Biden has instincts too. Not for what Americans tell pollsters they believe about this country, but for what they want to believe about it. He may not deliver his message as skillfully as Michael Douglas in Rob Reiner and Aaron Sorkin’s The American President (1995), or as endearingly as Kevin Kline in Ivan Reitman’s Dave (1993), or bring people to tears the way Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) does singing “La Marseillaise” in Casablanca (1942), but 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.

Americans love a redemption story. They’ll soon be watching Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and Miracle on 34th Street (1946) and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (in all its incarnations) for they’ve lost count of how many times. Even at our most cynical, we want to believe things will work out, and that people can change for the better.

Democrats running on redeeming democracy will feel more authentic if Biden is their messenger, and if their message is more aspirational than confrontational, although they need both. Under Trump, under McCarthy, under Jordan, all MAGA Republicans offer America is more fear, decay and hate, chaos and carnage. Republicans cannot lead, do not lead. Look how far Obama got with Hope. Underneath the cynicism, Americans still want to believe. In spite of all he’s suffered, so does Joe.