Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Things are better than we think.

Ed Kilgore takes on the question of why Biden isn’t getting any credit for our improving circumstances. (It’s because people don’t feel it yet…)

These days it often seems like we’re caught in a deluge of bad and worrying news on everything from artificial intelligence and UFOs to homelessness and smoke in the air. But you could argue that life has been getting better in the USA overall, as Washington Monthly’s Bill Scher did recently in examining some of the issues people, and especially Republicans, blame on President Joe Biden. He offers as an example this indictment of Hellhole America from Ron DeSantis in his candidacy announcement last month:

Our southern border [has] collapsed. Drugs are pouring into the country. Our cities are being hollowed out by spiking crime. The federal government’s making it harder for the average family to make ends meet and to attain and maintain a middle-class lifestyle … Stop pricing hardworking Americans out of a good standard of living through inflationary borrow, print, and spending policies.

Actually, notes Scher, the “inflation rate for May is down to 4 percent, less than half of the June 2022 peak.” Illegal border crossings “have dropped by 70 percent in the last few weeks, according to the Department of Homeland Security, after Biden implemented a new border-management policy.” And aside from the fact that rising crime rates during the last few years left crime much, much lower than it was in the late 20th century, any “crime wave” claims are now clearly questionable:

Murder is down about 12 percent year-to-date in more than 90 cities that have released data for 2023, compared with data as of the same date in 2022,” according to crime data analyst Jeff Asher, writing in The Atlantic, a trend that could lead to “one of the largest annual percent changes in murder ever recorded.” That follows a 4 percent drop in homicides in 2022 from the prior year, according to the Council on Criminal Justice analysis of data from 35 cities. …

Another set of promising data comes from the Violent Crime Survey by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which looked at data from 70 cities. During the first quarter of 2023, homicides, rapes, and robberies dropped about 8 percent from the first quarter of 2022.  

So all the dystopian talk from Republican politicians is at best anachronistic, and at worst deliberate disinformation based on reflexive partisanship, right? Well, sort of. There are some other things going on.

When you are a politician, perceptions about how things are going in the nation are just as important as the facts. Polling on Biden’s job-approval ratings on various issues help illuminate the nature of the public’s discontent.

According to the RealClearPolitics polling averages, 41 percent of Americans approval of Biden’s overall job performance, while 54.5 percent disapprove. His 13.5 percent net disapproval is at its highest level since August 2022. But the ratio is worse in surveys that look at Biden’s performance on inflation, immigration, and crime specifically (though the number of polls doing this detailed approval polling is limited). The averages show Biden at 31.3 percent approval to 64.3 percent disapproval on inflation, 32.5 percent approval to 62.3 percent disapproval on immigration, and a relatively benign 38 percent approval to 56 percent disapproval on crime. (By comparison, his average ratios are 40.8 percent approval to 53.8 percent disapproval on foreign policy, almost identical to his overall approval ratings, and a nearly above-water 45.3 percent approval to 49.7 percent disapproval on his handling of the Russia-Ukraine war.)

Do these numbers just reflect partisanship? Not really, though Republican antipathy holds all of Biden’s approval ratings down. When you look at a poll that breaks down these approval levels by partisan ID, as a June 3-6 Economist/YouGov survey did, you see that the Republican numbers are fairly flat. Ten percent of Republicans approve of Biden’s overall job performance, the same percentage that approves of what he’s doing on inflation. Eleven percent of Republicans are happy with Biden on immigration, and 15 percent on crime. There’s more variation among independents; 30 percent approve of Biden’s job approval overall, but the approval number drops to 24 percent on crime, 23 percent on inflation, and 22 percent on immigration. And the most movement is among Democrats — there, Biden approval ratings drop from 82 percent overall to 63 percent on immigration and inflation and 66 percent on crime.

It’s unlikely that Democrats and independents who are less than thrilled with Biden’s record on inflation, immigration, and crime have a negative view because they spend too much time listening to Republican talking points from politicians or Fox News. Clearly Team Biden needs to do a better job of getting the recent good news out to members of his own party and persuadable independents. But it’s also true that perceptions of where the country is on various issues can take time to change.

Most Americans do not follow monthly inflation, crime, or border-crossing statistics. They experience inflation through more expensive bills, less abundant grocery purchases, and delayed big-ticket investments; crime through if-it-bleeds-it-leads local news broadcasts and major events like mass shootings; immigration through vivid images of people in migrant camps or the frequency with which they hear foreign languages spoken in their own communities. The positive statistics Bill Scher recites need to be reflected over time in real-life experiences — and they need to persist until the moment voters decide how to vote. But pushing back when Biden haters pretend the country is going straight to hell is probably a good idea for Democrats. A swing voter might hear them.

I have said many times that the nation is suffering from mass PTSD from trump and the pandemic. It’s been stressful to say the least and he isn’t going away which means people are triggered every single day. All these other experiences could be interpreted in different ways but as long as the mood is bad, it’s going to be tough sledding for any leader.

It’s going to be a very tough race based on negative partisanship as the last two have been. It’s not pretty but it’s all we’ve got until we can emotionally move past this strange, discombobulating Trump era.

Again

He breaks the law and his cult members have to pony up to pay his expenses:

Facing multiple intensifying investigations, former President Donald J. Trump has quietly begun diverting more of the money he is raising away from his 2024 presidential campaign and into a political action committee that he has used to pay his personal legal fees.

The change, which went unannounced except in the fine print of his online disclosures, raises fresh questions about how Mr. Trump is paying for his mounting legal bills — which could run into millions of dollars — as he prepares for at least two criminal trials, and whether his PAC, Save America, is facing a financial crunch.

When Mr. Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign in November, for every dollar raised online, 99 cents went to his campaign, and a penny went to Save America.

But internet archival records show that sometime in February or March, he adjusted that split. Now his campaign’s share has been reduced to 90 percent of donations, and 10 percent goes to Save America.

The effect of that change is potentially substantial: Based on fund-raising figures announced by his campaign, the fine-print maneuver may already have diverted at least $1.5 million to Save America.

And the existence of the group has allowed Mr. Trump to have his small donors pay for his legal expenses, rather than paying for them himself.

I should feel sorry for them but I just can’t. It’s absurd that this supposedly vastly wealthy man can’t pay his own legal bills and people who send him money are, in my mind, fools. They should be able to see through this grift by now.

From Amy Walters at The Cook Report:

For a while now, political prognosticators and armchair campaign analysts have mused that the GOP presidential primary is almost a carbon copy of the 2016 contest. A crowded field of candidates, few of whom are willing to confront Donald Trump directly, will once again ensure that Trump will roll-up primary wins and ultimately capture the nomination in 2024. 

Yet it’s also true that things are very different from the 2016 cycle. 

First, Trump is a lot more popular among Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters than he was in 2015-2016. 

A Marist poll taken in July 2015 found just 41% of Republicans had favorable opinions of Trump compared to 49% who viewed him unfavorably. By July 2016, most Republicans had warmed to the GOP nominee, but a considerable percentage still viewed him unfavorably: 65% favorable to 29% unfavorable. This month, the former president — who has been indicted in two cases, found liable in a battery and defamation lawsuit and faces more potential legal jeopardy stemming from his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and alleged voter interference in Georgia — enjoys almost universal support among GOP voters, at 79% favorable to 19% unfavorable.

Back in 2016, plenty of GOP voters were wary of nominating the former reality TV star. A CNN poll taken in August 2015 found that just 38% of GOP voters thought Republicans had a better chance of winning in 2016 with Trump as the nominee, while another 58% thought Republicans would have a better chance with someone else. The most recent June CNN poll found Republicans more evenly divided, with 51% saying they had a better chance with Trump and 49% saying someone else.

In other words, back in 2015, Trump’s vulnerabilities within the Republican primary electorate were the size of a semi-trailer. Today, they’ve been reduced to the size of a motorcycle. 

Former New Jersey governor and 2016 GOP candidate Chris Christie argues that the only way to beat Trump is to go directly at him. “If you want to be the nominee, you got to go through Donald Trump. I don’t think there’s any other way to do it.” 

That may have been a good strategy in 2016, but it’s not all that clear that it will work in 2024. 

First, as a messenger, Christie is a flawed vessel. The June CNN poll found that 61% of Republican voters said they would not support his candidacy “under any circumstances.” A recent Marist/PBS NewsHour/NPR poll found Christie’s favorable ratings with Republicans deeply underwater by 28 points. In other words, not many Republicans are even open to hearing what Christie has to say, nevermind agreeing with his message.

Beyond the messenger problem, there’s a messaging challenge as well. When asked how they’d prefer other Republican presidential candidates to address Trump’s indictment, just 12% of Republican voters in a June CNN poll agreed that those candidates should “condemn Trump’s actions,” while 45% said they shouldn’t take a stand on it either way. Another 42% preferred that the Republican candidates “publicly condemn the government’s prosecution of Trump.” Overall, almost 75% of Republicans think Trump should continue his campaign for president despite his indictment, and almost 60% think he should continue to run even if he is convicted. 

That does not look like an electorate eager to support a “truth teller” about the dangers of nominating Trump again. 

Another new poll, this one from Marist/NPR/PBSNewsHour, suggests that an “electability message” is far from compelling to potential primary voters. When asked which was more important in choosing a nominee for president, a candidate who stands “on conservative principles” or one who had “the best chance to beat Joe Biden,” only 35% chose defeating Biden.

Based on this data, it is easy to understand why many of Trump’s rivals, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, are attacking Trump for being insufficiently conservative on everything from abortion to fiscal policy to “woke” politics. If most Republicans aren’t interested in seeing Trump’s legal troubles litigated in the primary, but are eager to support a candidate with well-defined “conservative principles,” this looks like a winning strategy.

However, I’m not convinced that traditional poll questions like asking voters to choose between “electability” and “values” or asking them whether Trump should stay in the race or drop out based on his legal liability, are able to fully capture the gray area in which many voters are currently residing. 

Reporting from early states is picking up some of this ambiguity. 

“Right now I am a Trump supporter,” said 76-year-old Karen Szelest of Indian Land, S.C., in a recent interview with the Associated Press.

“However, I think they’re doing everything they can to have him not run for president of the United States. And I think perhaps, for the betterment of the country, I may vote for somebody else because they keep going after Trump, going after Trump, going after Trump.”

“They’re going after Trump” but they just can’t admit that he’s brought it all on himself by being corrupt and committing crimes. It’s pathetic.

Nobody really knows…

The internet is recommending this early analysis from Yaroslav Trofimov in the WSJ of the failed Russian coup over the weekend. I thought I would share some of it:

One widely shared conclusion in Russia, however, was that none of the key players in the power struggle that began when Prigozhin seized the southern city of Rostov on Saturday morning has been strengthened by the ordeal that brought the country to the edge of civil war.

Putin, who earlier in the day demanded his security forces crush what he described as a treasonous mutiny, ordered amnesties for Prigozhin and his men by the evening, after Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko negotiated a face-saving compromise.

Prigozhin, who showed Wagner’s strength by marching two-thirds of the way toward Moscow with little opposition, ended up aborting the rebellion and accepting, at least for now, exile in Belarus. The Russian army and security forces, meanwhile, displayed little glory as their troops proved reluctant, if not outright afraid, to try stopping Wagner. Flying Russian flags, large Wagner columns on Sunday were driving south on the Moscow-Rostov highway.

“The entire system has lost yesterday, including Prigozhin, who is also part of the system,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who was in Moscow on Saturday. As for Putin, he added, “it turned out that the czar is not a real czar because he couldn’t control a man from his own system who’s supposed to be under his full control.”

As a result, the authority and self-image of the Russian state has sustained lasting damage, likely fueling future challenges to its writ regardless of what happens to Prigozhin. That is especially so as the war in Ukraine, which helped precipitate the Wagner mutiny, continues raging with no end in sight, causing mounting casualties on both sides.

“Our country will never be the way it used to be. Wagner’s column didn’t move on the asphalt, it moved through people’s hearts, cutting them in half,” noted Aleksandr Khodakovsky, a veteran of the pro-Russian movement in Ukraine’s Donbas region who is now deputy commander of the Russian National Guard in Donetsk. “Yesterday, everything was hanging on a very thin thread.”

Wagner’s forces Saturday shot down six Russian helicopters and an IL-22 airborne command-center plane, killing 13 airmen, according to Russian military analysts—deaths that will not be easily forgotten, particularly inside the Russian air force, which is commanded by Prigozhin’s onetime ally Gen. Sergei Surovikin. Damage included bridges and roads destroyed by authorities that aimed to stop Wagner’s march, and a jet-fuel depot that was hit and burned down in the city of Voronezh.

Prigozhin late Saturday night left the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov, to an unknown destination. Disconcertingly for Putin, many locals cheered Wagner’s troops as they withdrew from the city—and jeered the regular police that reappeared on Rostov’s streets after hiding for a day.

In Moscow, too, feelings about Prigozhin were mixed at best on Saturday. “There was a moment of total loss of control. Moscow was already awaiting him, the city froze in expectation that some groups of people would enter,” Kolesnikov said. “And people were not afraid. Putin was afraid of him, but not the country’s population.”

A volatile personality and a former inmate of Soviet prisons, Prigozhin isn’t necessarily the favorite alternative for many Russians, particularly the Moscow elites. That is especially so because Wagner’s ranks include thousands of violent criminals recruited in Russian prison camps.

Yet, the very fact that there was so little spontaneous rallying for the Russian president on Saturday, in Rostov or in Moscow, showed the pent-up hunger for change after 23 years of Putin’s rule, many Russian analysts noted.

As of Sunday morning, Wagner remained in charge of the Millerovo military airfield in southern Russia, according to Russian reports. It wasn’t clear when and how Prigozhin will leave for Belarus, and how many of his men will follow suit.

Fighters loyal to Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, who has had his own feud with Prigozhin, deployed to the outskirts of Moscow and erected roadblocks—once Wagner had turned around its columns.

Prigozhin, so far, hasn’t spoken in public about leaving Russia, saying only that he had agreed to Lukashenko’s request to cease the march on Moscow in order to avoid bloodshed. Putin, too, hasn’t made any public remarks since accusing Prigozhin of treason on Saturday morning.

Russia’s minister of defense, Sergei Shoigu, whose removal was Prigozhin’s key demand, hasn’t been seen since before the mutiny. Neither has the chief of general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. Shoigu maintained silence on Sunday, even as Russian social media lit up with unconfirmed rumors of his likely replacement in coming days.

“The entire world has seen that Russia is on the brink of the most acute political crisis,” Sergei Markov, a former Putin adviser and a political analyst in Moscow, said on Telegram. “Yes, the putsch failed now. But putsches have fundamental reasons. And if the reasons remain, a putsch will happen again. And it could be successful.”

Nobody knows nothin’ but at this point it does appear that if Putin wants an off-ramp there’s no need to “give” him piece of Ukraine to do it. If he wants to withdraw he’ll make one. He just demonstrated that.

You’ll be shocked

You know you want one. Now there’s a study to support why:

Millions of Americans who had never owned a gun purchased a firearm during a two-and-a-half-year period that began in January 2019, before the pandemic, and continued through April 2021.

Of the 7.5 million people who bought their first firearm during that period, 5.4 million had until then lived in homes without guns, researchers at Harvard and Northeastern University estimated.

The new buyers were different from the white men who have historically made up a majority of gun owners. Half were women, and nearly half were people of color (20 percent were Black, and 20 percent were Hispanic).

“The people who were always buying are still buying — they didn’t stop. But a whole other community of folks have come in,” said Michael Anestis, the executive director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center, who was not involved in the study.

“The real question I wanted to answer was, What do people get out of having a gun?” said Nick Buttrick, a psychologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Why would somebody want to take this really dangerous thing and bring it into their lives?” So devised a study using mild electric shocks, Dr. Peter Venkman-style.

Seriously?

While the shocks were administered, participants were given a friend’s hand, a metal object or a prop that looked and felt like a pistol but had no firing mechanism. For participants who grew up around guns, holding the prop that resembled a firearm provided the greatest comfort, Dr. Buttrick said.

“If you came from a gun-owning household, just having a gun present makes you feel more at ease,” said Dr. Buttrick, whose study has not yet been published.

John Lennon was satirically onto something. We know how that ended.

When I hold you in my arms (ooh, oh, yeah)
And I feel my finger on your trigger (ooh, oh, yeah)
I know nobody can do me no harm (ooh, oh, yeah)
Because

Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is (bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm, yes it is, gun (happiness, bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Well, don’t you know that happiness is a warm gun momma?
(Happiness is a warm gun, yeah)

Ah, the good ol’ days!

Do you remember #SecondCivilWarLetters? When in 2018 Alex Jones announced a Second Civil War starting on the 4th of July? Twitter erupted in mockery with Ken Burns-ish “letters” from the front?

Nikki Haley touched off a sort of reprise (though much less fun) on Saturday with one tweet It was blowback a go-go!

Seriously?

Medhi Hasan: It was so simple when she was growing up that, per her own memoir, she wasn’t allowed to be in a child beauty pageant because it was divided into Black kids and white kids and she was neither. The good ol’ days!

That memory probably makes Nikki smile now.

Roger Sollenberger: When Nikki was growing up, she sure had it simple — the president of the HBCU where her father was a professor was shot by cops in the Orangeburg massacre while protesting racial segregation

Ted Lieu: Dear @NikkiHaley: I remember growing up, when folks called me Chink. Threw eggs at our house. Slashed our tires. Called the police on us because they thought Asians like us were stealing wild ducks for food. And no one in government looked like me or you.

Jeff Sharlet: 1970s? Nixon, Vietnam, every kid in my class terrified of nuclear annihilation, getting beat up for being a Jew, my divorced mom weeping because she couldn’t pay the bills, our rusty Plymouth—you *promise,* Nikki, you promise to bring all that back?

Kevin Baron: I remember when I was growing up no Jews were allowed to be members at the Country Club of Orlando. I know because our family was one of the first. No Blacks, either. No women, either.

Charles Gaba isn’t paying for this account: If by “growing up” you mean when I was 6 years old, sure it was simple, because I was six fucking years old and didn’t have to worry about getting gunned down in my 1st grade classroom among other things.

“Obsessed with this ratio,” tweets Molly Jong-fast

Jeff Tiedrich: I grew up in the 1960s. racism, sexism and homophobia weren’t just tolerated, they were openly encouraged. I guess for Republicans that’s a feature, not a bug . but you do you, Niks. enjoy never being president

MsSpentyouth: Life was so simple in small towns where I grew up. Neighbor guy: 18 kids w/ his wife (3 killed themselves bec incest), 11 kids in next town (2 suicides). Parish priest charged with sexual assault. Police chief who refused to arrest abusers he went to school with. Simple & easy…

Mrs. Betty Bowers: Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt? The sky was always blue. There were no winters or toothaches. Mom served us candy for dinner. Everyone got puppies. We can have that again, but we must first elect an angry fascist.

Candy canes and rainbows, y’all.

Aaaaaand… a view from a Real American:

Lot’s of palm trees and sunshine in both states but that’s where the similarities end:

Florida Governor and floundering presidential candidate Ron DeSantis traveled to California’s Bay Area this past week to fundraise and to cut a new ad.

He stands on a San Francisco street corner and portrays the city as a lawless, drug-infested hellhole that people are fleeing, in favor of Florida, because of “leftist policies.”

But he offered no statistics to back up his claims.

Here’s one stat he should know, from the CDC:

Drug overdose mortality by state, per 100,000 residents, for 2021

Florida: 37.5 (18th worst state)

California: 26.6 (35th worst state)

It’s really galling to have most of the country subjected to this calumny about California every single day by assholes like DeSantis when their own states are actually much worse off. I really wish that Democrats would start fighting fire with fire on this stuff.

Well said.

It’s been a year and we are seeing the ramifications of the repeal of Roe v Wade. It’s as bad as we could have anticipated. As she says, women are dying, families are in crisis, lives are being ruined.

By the way, don’t rest on your laurals if you live in a blue state. Yesterday at the faith and Freedom convention, Mike Pence backed Lindsey Graham’s proposal for a 15 week national abortion ban. Graham was there and proclaimed, “we’ll be saving babies in California.”

“Fucking angry” doesn’t even begin to describe my reaction to that.