Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

“Incredibly bad luck, bad place”

Yes, sitting in the bullpen at a baseball game is a very bad place. You could get shot at any time. You really should be more careful.

An 18-year-old baseball player is recovering after being struck by a bullet during a game Saturday afternoon at George Dobson Field at Spring Lake Park.

The Texas A&M University-Texarkana player was hit once in the chest as he sat in the left field bullpen during an Eagles game, said Shawn Vaughn, Texarkana Texas Police Department spokesman. The incident happened about 6 p.m.

The player was taken to a local hospital for emergency surgery.

Vaughn said it does not appear anyone was the target of the shooting. The stray bullet seems to have been fired from a neighborhood near the ballfield.

“Incredibly bad luck, bad place,” Vaughn said.

Around the time of the shooting, police were alerted to shots being fired from cars traveling through a nearby neighborhood, Vaughn said.

The shooting happened about the fifth inning of the Eagles’ game against the University of Houston-Victoria.

“The announcer said, ‘Shots fired! Shots fired,’” said a game attendee who asked not to be identified.

He should have taken precautions, I guess.

The only answer is for everyone in America to wear body armor and carry an AR-15 whenever you leave your house. Inside you can probably take the body armor off — depending on how close to the road you live. You’ll have to assess you own risk. Otherwise we might have to do something about the insane proliferation of guns and that would be wrong.

Democrats have learned they cannot appease terrorist Republicans

If you think that old dogs can’t learn new tricks you need to take a look at Joe Biden. Back in 2011, during the first serious Republican debt ceiling hostage crisis and the protracted negotiations that followed, Biden undercut Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and wrecked a deal he had made for a terrible one. There was a lot of hand-wringing at the time over Biden’s tendency to give away the store so when the Republicans pulled their hostage maneuver again in 2013, Reid stipulated that Biden needed to stay out of the negotiations — and the White House agreed.

The Obama administration, including Biden, had learned their lesson: Negotiating with the extremist GOP on the debt ceiling is a very bad idea. They refused and the Republicans capitulated, sparing the country and the world economy another jolt. The days of dreaming about a “Grand Bargain” were blessedly over.

You may have noticed that we never had one of these fights during the Trump years when the deficit was growing at a very fast pace.

Obama regularly offers three telltale notions that will define his presidency — if events allow him to define it himself: “sacrifice,” “grand bargain” and “sustainability.”

To listen to Obama and his budget director Peter Orszag is to hear a tale of long-term fiscal woe. The government may have to spend and cut taxes in a big way now, but in the long run, the federal budget is unsustainable. That’s where sacrifice kicks in. There will be signs of it in Obama’s first budget, in his efforts to contain health-care costs and, down the road, in his call for entitlement reform and limits on carbon emissions. His camp is selling the idea that if he wants authority for new spending, Obama will have to prove his willingness to cut some programs and reform others.

The “grand bargain” they are talking about is a mix and match of boldness and prudence. It involves expansive government where necessary, balanced by tough management, unpopular cuts — and, yes, eventually some tax increases. Everyone, they say, will have to give up something.

Not one Republican came to the table to negotiate on the Affordable Care Act. When it came time for all that sacrifice and sustainability they dug in their heels and demanded that Obama eliminate his signature achievement and cut more taxes or the country gets it. It was a hard-earned lesson of the first Obama term: The modern Republican Party does not act in good faith. They argue among themselves constantly, with the far-right faction continually upping the ante even when leadership has made a deal. You can’t negotiate with people like this when you have a metaphorical weapon aimed at your head.

The debt ceiling is an anachronistic, unnecessary procedure that should have been scrapped altogether long ago. (The Democrats probably should have tried harder to do that when they had both houses although the Diva Twins, Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin probably made that impossible.) The nation has to pay its bills and this formerly pro-forma vote is now often used as a political cudgel to try to force spending cuts because holding the world economy hostage provides more leverage than the normal budget process.

You may have noticed that we never had one of these fights during the Trump years when the deficit was growing at a very fast pace, which is interesting. They held both chambers of Congress during his first two years and surely for the good of the country they could have made these same demands, but they didn’t. Neither did they enact a budget with the spending cuts they are now insisting must be enacted or else. In fact, we hardly talked about any of this during Trump’s term, all of which proves their overwhelming hypocrisy on this issue and explains why Democrats are saying, “talk to the hand.”

Today, Joe Biden and the rest of the Democratic leadership are firmly refusing to negotiate around the debt ceiling, which is as it should be. There is a process for cutting spending, if that’s what these Republicans want to do, and it’s called appropriations. They can negotiate night and day in the budget talks and use every trick in the book to get their way with that (and there are a few.) But they cannot be allowed to pull this bs over and over again. If they want draconian spending cuts to happen they have to bargain for them or win a real majority and pass legislation like normal elected officials.

Unfortunately, the Republicans once more have a great friend in the media which is always inexplicably drawn to the idea of spending cuts and are once again pushing stories of fiscal doom due to deficits. (Weirdly, they too didn’t say a peep during the Trump years when he was running up the debt without restraint.) Pundits love to insist that we must “learn to take our medicine” many of whom are well-off celebrities who will face little hardship from the “shared” pain and cost such policies will bring.

And when it comes to describing the politics of the situation they seem to be constitutionally incapable of accurately reporting that the Republicans are threatening to destroy the economy in order to force draconian spending cuts under a Democratic president while the Democrats are simply doing what they do under both Republican and Democratic presidents: paying the bills. Instead, they are laying the responsibility for the potential default on the debt on Biden, who is apparently falling down on the job if he doesn’t capitulate to the insane demands of a bunch of radical extremists who very often won’t take yes for an answer anyway. It’s absurd and luckily, so far, the Democrats are standing fast.

Late Sunday night, Axios published a story with this headline: Congressional Democrats splinter on debt ceiling strategy. Apparently, a few centrist members of the House “Problem Solvers caucus” and the above-mentioned Diva, Joe Manchin, want to negotiate. That’s no surprise. There are also a few Republicans who voted against Kevin McCarthy’s wrecking ball of a bill that the House passed last week requiring the repeal of Biden’s signature legislation. There are a few defections at the margins in both parties, making it a wash.

Overall, the Democrats are hanging tough: a clean debt ceiling vote, period. It’s what has to be done. Unless we want to just cash in our chips and give Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene lifetime appointments to run the country, this hostage taking has to stop. The damage they did with this gambit back in 2011 is still being felt and the country can’t afford another round of that insanity.

The more they warn, the less we’ll listen

Technology has a momentum all its own. It has a tendency to take us places before we consider whether they are places we need to or ought to go, I wrote here in 2014.

Following up on Danielle Allen’s warnings about artificial general intelligence, A.I. pioneer Dr. Geoffrey Hinton gets space in the New York Times to express his concerns:

Dr. Hinton said he has quit his job at Google, where he has worked for more than decade and became one of the most respected voices in the field, so he can freely speak out about the risks of A.I. A part of him, he said, now regrets his life’s work.

Hinton, “the Godfather of A.I.,” worries what his creation may do when loosed “into the wild,” as the Times’ Cade Metz puts it.

Allen signed onto a March open letter with technologists, academics, and others calling for a six-month pause in “the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” Days later, “19 current and former leaders of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a 40-year-old academic society, released their own letter warning of the risks of A.I.”

Hinton signed neither, reluctant to go public with his concerns until he resigned from Google. Now he has.

Dr. Hinton, a 75-year-old British expatriate, is a lifelong academic whose career was driven by his personal convictions about the development and use of A.I. In 1972, as a graduate student at the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Hinton embraced an idea called a neural network. A neural network is a mathematical system that learns skills by analyzing data. At the time, few researchers believed in the idea. But it became his life’s work.

In the 1980s, Dr. Hinton was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, but left the university for Canada because he said he was reluctant to take Pentagon funding. At the time, most A.I. research in the United States was funded by the Defense Department. Dr. Hinton is deeply opposed to the use of artificial intelligence on the battlefield — what he calls “robot soldiers.”

But in Canada in 2012, Hinton and two assistants constructed a neural network for identifying photographs: flowers, dogs, cars, etc. Google came calling, checkbook in hand. More research, more improvements followed at Google and elsewhere.

Hinton now shares Allen’s concerns about the disruptive nature of A.I. But “disruption” is beneficial, to hear Silicon Valley tech bros tell it, “shorthand for something closer to techno-darwinism,” Nitasha Tiku warned at Wired in 2010. Sounds fine so long as you are not the one being selected for extinction. By them. She observed, “The tech visionaries’ predictions did not usher us into the  future, but rather a  future where they are kings.”

Uncertainty over where this technology goes next gnaws at Hinton:

Down the road, he is worried that future versions of the technology pose a threat to humanity because they often learn unexpected behavior from the vast amounts of data they analyze. This becomes an issue, he said, as individuals and companies allow A.I. systems not only to generate their own computer code but actually run that code on their own. And he fears a day when truly autonomous weapons — those killer robots — become reality.

“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he said. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

Metz adds, “Many other experts, including many of his students and colleagues, say this threat is hypothetical.” Threats always are until they’re not. Fierce competitors Microsoft and Google will not stop without global regulation. If that’s even possible.

Technology wants what it wants. The Market wants what it wants. The Corporation as well. All are human inventions so ubiquitous as to be invisible. Mary Shelley warned us.

“I don’t think they should scale this up more until they have understood whether they can control it,” Hinton said.

Dr. Hinton said that when people used to ask him how he could work on technology that was potentially dangerous, he would paraphrase Robert Oppenheimer, who led the U.S. effort to build the atomic bomb: “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it.”

He does not say that anymore.

Hell, my plate is full just trying to stop Republicans.

It’s been on the GOP’s chopping block for decades

E.J. Dionne notes this morning, as I did, how President Joe Biden’s 2024 launch video leads with the word “Freedom.” Biden deployed it six times in all. He means to reclaim that brand from the faux patriots.

“Joe Biden has made defending our basic freedoms the cause of his presidency,” the ad declares. Before continuing, Dionne asks readers to hold their skepticism until he’s fleshed out what that means.

Franklin D. Roosevelt made “four freedoms” the centerpiece of one his most important speeches: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. Since then, Democrats have ceded freedom to conservatives, preferring in Dionne’s telling, “to talk about justice, equality, democracy, fairness or community.”

“The chance to live a life of your choosing, in keeping with your values: that is freedom in its richest sense,” Pete Buttigieg declared during his 2020 run for the presidency.

Dionne writes:

I chatted with Buttigieg about freedom last week, and though he did not want to get into the campaign or Biden’s video out of respect for the Hatch Act, he was happy to relate the concept to his own work and the administration’s.

“You are freer to pursue a life of your choosing if you’re literally physically freer to move about to where you need to go,” he said. “We’ve always associated the idea of freedom with physical movement. Right. I mean, what’s the opposite of freedom? It’s confinement.”

Then he got to the core philosophical point inherent in Biden’s argument. “Freedom isn’t just about freedom from. It’s freedom to,” he said, noting that while it’s important to protect people from “government overreach,” government can also enhance the “freedom to live the way you want to live by providing basic services and resources.”

And he couldn’t resist adding: “You can be for liberty, or you can be for banning books. You cannot be for both.”

“Freedom has always been a contested value,” says Anat Shenker-Osorio. Freedom is a winner with Americans across the political spectrum, Shenker-Osorio says of her messaging research. “It is not coincidental that freedom to vote is the name of the newer form of what was the For the People Act. That name was very deliberately chosen.”

Freedom is the #1 value Americans across demographics associate with being American. We cannot allow the right to co-opt a concept this integral, especially not when they so openly demolish it.

— Anat Shenker-Osorio 🟧 (@anatosaurus) July 27, 2022

Republicans use freedom as a prop. In the end (see Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis), the authoritarian right will freely trample your freedoms. They’ve long since rejected “democracy.” Your freedom to choose your leaders and have your votes count as more than political eyewash is at stake as it’s never been.

Tired: We're a republic, not a democracy.
Wired: We're Republicans. No democracy! https://t.co/Tqjz8Y8HQk

— Paul Rosenberg (@PaulHRosenberg) April 30, 2023

Democrats had best make clear that that freedom is under attack. From within. By MAGA Republicans. Biden is trying to make clear that he stands for defending that basic freedom. To keep doing that, he has to win in 2024.

If Biden means to run on the defense of freedom in both the from and to senses, he and his party need not only to have a resonant message, as Anat suggests, but also bring an enhanced skill set to the table. Elections are not just competitions of messages.

Winning elections requires a mix of skills. Leadership experience, discipline, fundraising ability, an easy way with people, organizational skills, a resonant message. Some are more important than others. Clearly.

Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 against likely the most qualified candidate Democrats had ever nominated, and yet his personal deficits were legion. But his “Make America Great Again” slogan encoded a mix of messages his base heard loud and clear. They embraced it and him. He spoke to their anxieties, their grievances, and their baser instincts as if injecting it into their veins.

But Democrats must also, as I’ve said, “play the game for real. At some point, you have to run the election and count the votes. At some point, you have to win on the ground instead of in your head. You’d best be good at it.”

The Josh Hawley ‘Manhood’ book tour has begun, and I am insanely inspired already. pic.twitter.com/qfqF84djEJ

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 30, 2023

He seems to be creating a new niche as a motivational speaker for the Men’s Rights Movement. I’m just surprised he’s gone for the plain black t-shirt instead of full camo. Shouldn’t he at least have an AR-15 slung over his shoulder?

More power to him. The world will be better off if he just goes around the country talking to incels about how to be a man than being a US Senator.

Democrats had better do this or we are well and truly screwed:

Democrats are rebuilding their strength in the “blue wall” states that former President Trump won in 2016, raising the party’s hopes in a region that will prove critical to races up and down the ballot next year. 

The party is riding high after key victories in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin over the past six months, signaling a newfound momentum after Trump’s win called into question the party’s standing in the rust belt. 

But Democrats say they’re not taking the states for granted and still have more work to do as President Biden looks to clinch a second term and several senators in those states face reelection. 

“It’s clear that the path to the White House, the path to retaining a Senate majority cuts through the Midwest,” said Kaitlin Fahey, a Democratic consultant who led the successful bid to host next year’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago and former chief of staff to Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.).  

Meanwhile, Republicans clearly have their sights set on pummeling the “blue wall,” choosing to host the Republican National Convention in nearby Milwaukee next year.  

“Both on the Republican and Democratic sides, it’s indicative of their choice how critical they view the path of the Midwest, the Rust Belt, some describe it as flyover states,” Fahey said. “Those are states and constituencies who cannot be forgotten about; who have been at times felt left behind, especially in previous administrations.”  

The party made its focus on protecting the traditional “blue wall” clear earlier this month when Biden and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) selected Chicago to host the 2024 party convention. Governors of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota each signed onto a letter supporting Chicago’s DNC bid in which they said the party “must do everything we can to ensure the blue wall becomes an impenetrable blue fortress.” 

In addition to being swing presidential states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are also home to competitive Senate races this cycle.  

While the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates these Senate races as “lean Democratic,” that does not mean the party is complacent going into these elections — especially given the GOP primary fields are still solidifying over a year and a half out from Election Day.  

“This is Pennsylvania, the work never stops,” said one Pennsylvania Democratic strategist. “We will not be abandoning any part of the state.”  

In Pennsylvania, Democrats made gains up and down the ballot in 2022, winning the suburbs while making a play for rural areas usually dominated by Republicans.  

“From a GOP perspective, those margins that Trump was able to do in 2016 are good, but it’s also [because] he was able to have much better margins in the suburbs,” the strategist said.  

Michigan was also a major success story for Democrats at the ballot last year, but like Pennsylvania Democrats, Michigan Democrats say that’s a sign to keep going. 

“Make no mistake, Michigan is still a purple state and if we turn our backs on it, if we get complacent, it can go in the wrong direction,” said Andrew Feldman, a Democratic strategist who works closely with Michigan Democrats. “Michigan Democrats across the board from the state Legislature all the way up to the top of the ticket in the state have done the work since Trump won in 2016 to rebuild the party and rebuild that infrastructure, and I think you’re going to continue to see them aggressively organize.”  

Wisconsin Democrats saw a major statewide victory earlier this month when Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s victory handed a majority to liberals on the state’s Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years. On top of that, Democrats also point to incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s (D-Wis.) reelection win in 2018, two years after Trump flipped the state in 2016.  

Biden has to win all three of those states plus two of Arizona, Nevada and Georgia to win in 2024. I know it’s hard to believe, after everything we’ve been through, that it will come back to that but it will. Luckily the Democrats seem to understand that.

This from Michelle Goldberg is just chilling. DeSantis and his minions are monsters of a different kind. He cannot be president. He just can’t:

When I first met Matthew Lepinski, the faculty chair of New College of Florida, he was willing to give the right-wingers sent to remake his embattled progressive public school a chance.

This was in January, a few weeks after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida appointed six activist conservatives, including the culture war strategist Chris Rufo, to New College’s board of trustees. Rufo, the ideological entrepreneur who made critical race theory a Republican boogeyman, was open about his ambition to turn the quirky, L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly liberal arts school into a public version of Hillsdale, a conservative Christian college in Michigan with close ties to both DeSantis and Donald Trump. He hoped the transformation would be proof of concept for his dream: a conservative takeover of higher education across the country.

So when Rufo and another new trustee, Eddie Speir, the co-founder of a private Christian school called Inspiration Academy, arrived at New College for meetings with students and faculty, they were received with skepticism and hostility. But Lepinski, a computer science professor and the faculty representative on the board of trustees, was hopeful that they might figure out a way to work together, and he urged the school community to hear them out.

In the ensuing months, there was concern among Lepinski’s colleagues that he wasn’t doing enough to stand up to their new overlords. “Some of us had been a little frustrated with his willingness to try and play nice,” Amy Reid, a French professor and the head of New College’s gender studies program, told me. But Lepinski believed in dialogue and compromise. “I thought maybe there was a path forward with this board where we could focus on the things that unite us instead of the things that divide us,” he said.

That’s why it was so striking when, at the end of a combative three-hour meeting on Wednesday in which the trustees rejected five tenure applications, Lepinski quit. He’s not just leaving the board, but New College altogether. “I can no longer see a way that I can be effective here, given the current board of trustees,” he said at an impromptu news conference afterward.

When I spoke to Rufo in early January, he said that New College would look very different in the following 120 days. Nearly four months later, that hasn’t entirely come to pass, but it’s clear where things are headed.

The new trustees fired the school’s president, replacing her with Richard Corcoran, the Republican former speaker of the Florida House. They fired its chief diversity officer and dismantled the diversity, equity and inclusion office. As I was writing this on Friday, several people sent me photographs of gender-neutral signage scraped off school bathrooms.

But day-to-day, students, parents, and professors told me, life at New College has been pretty much the same. Faculty have mostly been left alone to do their jobs. Corcoran, several professors said, was rarely on campus. Sam Sharf, who chose New College in part because she feels safe there as a trans woman, said that classroom discussions in her Politics of the African Diaspora and Alternatives to Capitalism classes haven’t changed, though she’s constantly aware that such subjects might soon be taboo, and is planning to transfer.

Whatever New College’s administration does, this will likely be the last year classes like the ones Sharf is taking are offered, because a bill making its way through the Florida Legislature requires the review of curriculums “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States.” The sense of dread on campus, however, goes beyond what’s happening in Tallahassee.

Eliana Salzhauer, whose 17-year-old son is a New College economics student, compared the seemingly inexorable transformation of the school to Twitter under Elon Musk: It looked the same at first, even as it gradually degraded into a completely different experience. “They are turning a top-rated academic institution into a third-rate athletic facility,” she said.

Salzhauer was referring, in part, to the hiring of Mariano Jimenez, who previously worked at Speir’s Inspiration Academy, as athletic director and head baseball coach, even though there’s no baseball diamond on campus. In the past, New College hasn’t had traditional sports teams, but the administration is now recruiting student athletes, and Corcoran has said he wants to establish fraternities and sororities, likely creating a culture clash with New College’s artsy queer kids, activists and autodidacts. Before Wednesday’s board meeting, about 75 people held a protest outside. “We’re Nerds & Geeks, not Jocks & Greeks,” said one sign.

For many, the board of trustees meeting was the clearest sign yet that this is the last semester of New College as they know it. The pivot point was the trustees’ decision to override the typical tenure process. New College hired a large number of new faculty five years ago, and this year was the first that any of them could apply for tenure. Seven did, each going through the requisite hurdles, including getting a sign-off from New College’s former president. In the past, trustee approval had been a ceremonial matter, and tenure candidates would bring family and friends to celebrate.

Corcoran, however, had asked all the professors up for tenure this year to withdraw their applications because of the tumult at the school. Two of the seven agreed. The rest — three of them professors in the hard sciences — held out for the board’s vote. This was widely seen as a referendum not just on the individual candidates, but on faculty independence.

Fifty-four people registered to speak at the meeting. All but one of them either implored the trustees to grant the professors tenure or lambasted them for their designs on the school. Parents were particularly impassioned; many of them had been profoundly relieved to find an affordable school where their eccentric kids could thrive. Some tried to speak the language of conservatism: “You’re violating my parental rights regarding our school choice,” said Pam Pare, the mother of a biology major. One student, a second-year wrapped in a pink and blue trans flag, was escorted out of the meeting after cursing at Corcoran, but most tried to earnestly and calmly convey how much the professors up for tenure had taught them.

It was all futile. A majority of the trustees voted down each of the candidates in turn as the crowd chanted, “Shame on you!” That’s when Lepinski quit, walking out of the room to cheers.

The trustees framed their objections in terms of timing; the professors were applying after five years at New College instead of the more customary six, and would have the opportunity to reapply the next year. But, given Rufo’s plans, this explanation seemed like a pretext for an administration that wants to bring in its own, ideologically aligned faculty. And once denied tenure, it wasn’t clear how many of the professors were going to stick around to try again.

“Some faculty members have started to leave already, and obviously some students are thinking about what their future looks like,” Lepinski said right after quitting. A few days later, we spoke again. “There’s a grieving process for the New College that was, which is passing away,” he said. “I really loved the New College that was, but I am at peace that it’s gone now.”

Rufo couldn’t attend Wednesday’s meeting in person, because he’d been delayed coming home from Hungary, where he had a fellowship at a right-wing think tank closely tied to Viktor Orban’s government. (This seemed fitting, since Orban’s Hungary created the template for Rufo and Desantis’s educational crusade.) Instead, he Zoomed in, his face projected on a movie screen behind the other trustees.

After Lepinski quit, Rufo tweeted that “any faculty that prefer the old system unfettered left-wing activism and a rubber-stamp board are free to self-select out.” Turnover, he added, “is to be expected — even welcomed. But we are making rapid, significant progress.” He and his allies haven’t built anything new at New College yet. They are succeeding, however, in tearing something down.

This guy sprang out of nowhere to become powerful in the blink of an eye. And while DeSantis may very well flame out as a presidential candidate these ideas are now mainstream in the Republican party. It’s terrifying. If you think that teaching kids about America’s racist past or allowing teachers to talk about LGBTQ issues is the real problem in education today you aren’t paying attention.

https://twitter.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1652693109992722432

They all got jail sentences. (Dean only did a few months in detention since he was testifying.) The former Attorney General of the United States did 19 months.

Will we see that kind of accountability with Trump and his minions for attempting a coup/ (And all the rest…) I honestly don’t know. I wish I was more optimistic about it.

Here’s a good analysis of the DeSantis flop (so far) from Harry Enten:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent the past few months running to the right ahead of his expected entry into the 2024 Republican presidential primary campaign. From signing into law a six-week abortion ban to fighting with Disney, the governor has focused on satisfying his party’s conservative base.

So far at least, those efforts have not paid off in Republican primary polling, with DeSantis falling further behind the current front-runner, former President Donald Trump.

Things have gotten so bad for DeSantis that a recent Fox News poll shows him at 21% – comparable with the 19% that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has pushed debunked conspiracy theories about vaccine safety, is receiving on the Democratic side.

DeSantis was at 28% in Fox’s February poll, 15 points behind Trump. The Florida governor’s support has dropped in the two Fox polls published since, and he now trails the former president by 32 points.

Early polling problems

The Fox poll is not alone in showing DeSantis floundering. The latest average of national polls has him dropping from the low 30s into the low 20s.

This may not seem like a big deal, but early polling has long been an indicator of how well presidential candidates do in the primary the following year. Of all primary elections since 1972 without incumbents running, candidates at around 30% in early primary polls (like DeSantis was in February) have gone on to become their parties’ nominees about 40% of the time. Candidates polling the way DeSantis is now have gone on to win about 20% of the time.

I will, of course, point out that 20% is not nothing. DeSantis most certainly still has a chance of winning. The comparison with Kennedy is not a remark on Kennedy’s strength but on DeSantis’ weakness.

There is no historical example of an incumbent in President Joe Biden’s current position (over 60% in the latest Fox poll) losing a primary. At this point in 1995, Bill Clinton was polling roughly where Biden is now, and he had no problem winning the Democratic nomination the following year.

In that same campaign, Jesse Jackson was polling near 20% in a number of early surveys against Clinton. So what we’re seeing from Kennedy now is not, as of yet, a historical anomaly.

‘His people skills are very, very bad’: Hear what Billionaire GOP donor thinks about DeSantis

Jackson didn’t run in that 1996 race. The power of incumbency is strong enough to deter most challengers.

The last three incumbents to either lose state primary elections (when on the ballot) or drop out of the race – Lyndon Johnson in 1968, Gerald Ford in 1976 and Jimmy Carter in 1980 – were at less than 40% of the vote or up by fewer than 10 points at this point in primary polling.

The good news for DeSantis is that he doesn’t need to beat an incumbent, though one could make the case that Trump is polling like one.

In fact, DeSantis’ decline is at least in part because of Trump’s rise. The former president, who has been indicted on felony criminal charges in New York, has gone from the low to mid-40s to above 50% in the average 2024 polling. (Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges.)

DeSantis missteps

But one could also argue that DeSantis isn’t helping his cause. He has yet to formally announce his 2024 campaign – most past nominees had already done so or had filed with the Federal Election Commission at this point in the race. And the governor’s play to the right doesn’t line up with where the anti-Trump forces are within the Republican Party.

Trump has continually been weakest among party moderates. A Quinnipiac University poll released at the end of March found that he was pulling in 61% among very conservative Republicans, while garnering a mere 30% from moderate and liberal Republicans.

This moderate wing is the part of the party that is least likely to want a ban on abortion after six weeks. A KFF poll taken late last year showed moderate and liberal Republicans split 50/50 on whether they wanted a six-week abortion ban.

This group isn’t small. Moderates and liberals made up about 30% of potential Republican primary voters in the Quinnipiac poll.

Indeed, DeSantis’ other big newsmaking action (his fight with Disney) has managed to split the GOP as well, a Reuters/Ipsos poll from last week found. Although a clear majority sided with the governor (64%), 36% of Republicans do not.

For reference, over 80% of Republicans said in a Fox poll last month that Trump had not done anything illegal, with regard to the criminal charges against him in New York.

DeSantis, at the moment, is not building a base. He’s dividing Republicans and allowing Trump to claim an electability mantle. The general electorate remains opposed to a six-week abortion ban and his position on Disney.

We’ll see if that changes should his polling position improve after an official campaign launch. If it doesn’t, this may end up being one of the most boring presidential primary seasons in the modern era, given Biden’s and Trump’s significant advantages.

There’s a lot of historical evidence that someone in DeSantis’ position a year out isn’t going to do very well in the primary. On the other hand he polls much better than anyone but Trump so if something were to happen to Dear Leader it stands to reason that he would be in the best position to pick up the pieces. I have a feeling that’s the bet — Trump being arrested on federal charges or passing away in his sleep would be Ron’s best chance.

But I don’t know if that’s even true. Trump would probably run even if he’s under indictment so that’s not a given. The way it’s going DeSantis is rapidly turning himself into a joke and it’s not as if there aren’t others waiting in the wings. Depending on the timing, Someone like Christie or Youngkin could throw their hats in and there’s Haley, Scott, Hutchinson and probably a few more whose names will probably be on the ballot. Even if Trump shuffles off his mortal coil it’s not a shoo-in. He’s this guy now:

Ron Desantis in Japan, shaking like a bobble head doll when asked about Trump.

Why? pic.twitter.com/FtMY0mBL0j

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) April 25, 2023

This is what we’ve come to in the era of Donald Trump. It’s not just that his criminal behavior is overlooked by his idiotic followers. It’s a plus:

During E. Jean Carroll’s first day on the witness stand, her lawyer asked what had brought her to a federal courtroom in Manhattan.

“I am here because Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,” Ms. Carroll replied. “He lied and shattered my reputation, and I am here to try to get my life back.”

A day later, Mr. Trump, who has denied the attack and called Ms. Carroll a liar, campaigned in New Hampshire, joking to a crowd about his changing nicknames for Hillary Clinton and President Biden. He did not mention Ms. Carroll’s testimony, or the civil trial going on 250 miles away. But he remarked cheerfully on a poll released that day, which showed him far and away leading the 2024 Republican primary field.

Since Mr. Trump was indicted last month in a criminal case brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, his legal travails and his third presidential campaign have played out on a split screen. The courtroom dramas have taken place without news cameras present, even as the race has returned Mr. Trump to the spotlight that briefly dimmed after he left the Oval Office.

Ms. Carroll’s harrowing testimony, a visceral demonstration of Mr. Trump’s legal peril, has emphasized the surreal nature of the divide. Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. But he has also been indicted on 34 felony false records charges, and in Ms. Carroll’s case faces a nine-person jury that will determine whether he committed rape decades ago. And then there are the other investigations: for election interference, mishandling sensitive documents and his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“To see a former and potential future president of the United States confront all these legal issues at once is bizarre,” said Jennifer Horn, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican Party and a vocal opponent of Mr. Trump. “But what’s really disturbing about it is that he’s the front-runner for a major political party in this country. And you can’t just blame that on him. You have to blame that on the leaders of the party and their primary base.”

The past week brought the former president a steady stream of setbacks. Ms. Carroll gave detailed and graphic testimony about the encounter with Mr. Trump. The judge in the case sought to limit Mr. Trump’s posts on social media, as did the Manhattan district attorney’s office in its own case. And former Vice President Mike Pence testified before a grand jury hearing evidence about Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Mike Murphy, a Republican political strategist who advised John McCain and Jeb Bush, said that trials and investigations of Mr. Trump often create “a psychological roller coaster for Trump-hating Democrats,” giving them hope that he will be taken down, only to leave them disappointed. Mr. Trump’s legal problems have yet to create significant political problems given the unflinching loyalty of his core supporters.

Since Mr. Trump was indicted, his poll numbers have risen. Criminal investigations against him, in Georgia and Washington, as well as Ms. Carroll’s trial and a civil fraud lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general’s office, have done little to hamper him with his supporters. The poll he mentioned Thursday predicted that he would receive 62 percent of the vote in the Republican primary. His closest opponent, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has not yet declared that he is running, was polling at 16 percent.

Tens of millions of our fellow Americans are totally stupid and/or immoral. It’s not really on him. He’s a hustler taking advantage of the opportunity to cover his wrongdoing. It’s them.

It’s so easy to see how 1930s Germany happened now.