Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

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.

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.

The following is a recording of Jim Jordan addressing a closed meeting of the House Republican Conference on January 5, 2021—one day before Congress was to certify the 2020 election.

This is why Jim Jordan should never be Speaker. pic.twitter.com/PEimudCL3D

— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) October 18, 2023

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?

The putative GOP nominee shows his priorities

Trump: They want to keep me here instead of campaigning in Iowa… They want me to be here

*3 minutes later*

Reporter: Will you be back tomorrow?

Trump: Probably not. We’re having a very big professional golf tournament at Doral, so probably not pic.twitter.com/l8TUIbASUv

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) October 18, 2023

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.

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.