LATEST TALLY: Trump failed for the third time to win 50% of the vote! No mandate yet again!

 By Dem

Community

Daily Kos

Wednesday, November 20, 2024 at 7:01:45a MST

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

 

Vice President Kamala Harris won more than 74 million votes. She won a greater percentage of the popular vote than Former Secretary Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump is below 50% of the vote for the third consecutive election. Most voters don't like him. He has no mandate.

When I was looking at the numbers a few days ago, I predicted that Donald Trump was going to end up with less than 50% of the vote. Unfortunately, I didn't post it. You say who cares, he still won. 

It matters even though it doesn't alter who won. Even after a pandemic and pandemic driven inflation led incumbent parties to lose vote share in every democracy that had an election and with voters angry at President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the Democratic Party because a guy flipped a fair coin and it came up tails, he still could not get 50% of Americans to vote for him despite a massive propaganda network and a campaign of lies by the sociopathic felon. 

It rained yesterday, so voters decided to take it out on the incumbent administration. Even in the most favorable possible environment, more than 50% of voters voted for somebody other than Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is claiming a mandate when his proposals are less popular than Vice President Harris' proposals according to a blind poll. But when your campaign is a torrent of lies   and you win less than 50% of the vote and your opponent's proposals are more popular than yours, then you don't have a mandate. 

I need to say thank you to Daniel Dale for his honesty, hard work, and his exposure of the lies of Donald Trump.

For the third consecutive presidential election, the Republican presidential nominee is running a relentlessly dishonest campaign for the world’s most powerful office. Wildly exaggerating statistics, grossly distorting his opponent’s record and his own, regularly just plain making stuff up, Trump is lying to American voters with a frequency and variety whose only precedent is his own previous campaign... it may help whip up his loyal base

All presidents lie. Historians say, however, that there has never been a president who has lied this much, has lied about so many different things, or made up so many things out of whole cloth. 

Harris, a far more careful speaker than Biden, has made false claims about Project 2025, Trump’s economic record and her own policy shift on fracking. That’s in addition to various disputed predictions about what Trump would do in office if elected.

But when it comes to the facts, the two sides in this election are just not alike.

I have to carefully inspect the transcripts of Harris speeches to see if there might be a claim or two that might be inaccurate. Trump tends to make dozens of obvious false claims in each speech.

In other words, Trump habitually tells more public lies in a single public appearance than Harris tells over the course of a month or more.

Again, you don't have a mandate when you lie like this because nobody will ever know the share of the vote you would have been given if you had been about as honest as a normal candidate. If you believe the respondents in exit polls, then the biggest issue seems to be inflation. They don't say that they voted to get a solution to inflation. However, those who are enduring severe hardship did vote 3 to 1 for the guy who will make it worse. A majority of voters, 54% of them, say that they are doing about the same or better than they were four years ago. About the same, Vice President Kamala Harris won 69% to 28%. She won those who are doing better 82% to 14%. He won those who are doing worse, 46% of the electorate, 81% to 17%. 77% of voters said that they were experiencing moderate or severe hardship because of inflation. The only thing that there's a "mandate" for is to lower inflation. 

​​The reason this matters is that Donald Trump has made it plain that he intends to implement an extreme agenda that is unpopular. But that's not what voters want. Most voters did not vote for him. They don't want his extreme unpopular agenda. 

Voters prefer her policies over Donald Trump's.

As presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck in polls. But if the race were solely about their policies, Harris would win handily. That’s because voters — whether they know it or not — overwhelmingly prefer the vice president’s agenda to the former president’s.

These eight questions were drawn randomly from a recent YouGov survey, which blind-tested voters on more than 100 policy proposals. Nearly all of Harris' proposals receive majority support among registered voters. Only half of Trump's did. Trump and Harris are arguably both competitive on immigration, foreign policy and the economy.

Part of Harris’s advantage overall is that her policies appeal to voters across the political spectrum. Maybe this strategy sounds obvious, but it hasn’t been to Trump — at least for most of the campaign. He largely catered to his base, and it shows.

But Harris bests Trump on pretty much everything else, including health care and the environment. Harris' proposals are much more popular among undecided voters. Heck, even Trump supporters like much of her agenda.

​Again, voters prefer Vice President Harris' proposals to Donald Trump's proposals. So, this is not because voters prefer Donald Trump's proposals or like them. This was ignorant voters lashing out to punish the incumbent administration regardless of whether they merited it or not and regardless of policy preferences. It is my view that they weren't looking for solutions. They just wanted to punish the incumbent administration and express their bigotry. Therefore, Donald Trump, his incoming cabinet, his administration, his campaign team, and his voters are badly misinterpreting the results if they believe that the election results give them a mandate to carry out his policies.

The Nation puts this in context

As of Monday afternoon, Trump was at 49.94 percent, while Harris was at 48.26, according to the authoritative Cook Political Report’s tracking of results

So, the failure to win a majority won’t cost Trump the presidency. But he’s lost his ability to suggest that he trounced the Democrat. In fact, she’s now trailing him by just 1.68 percent of the vote.

Let’s put this in perspective: Trump is winning a lower percent of the popular vote this year than Biden did in 2020 (51.3), Obama in 2012 (51.1), Obama in 2008 (52.9), George W. Bush in 2004 (50.7), George H.W. Bush in 1988 (53.2), Ronald Reagan in 1984 (58.8), Reagan in 1980 (50.7), or Jimmy Carter in 1976 (50.1). And, of course, Trump numbers are way below those of the presidents who won what could reasonably be described as “unprecedented and powerful” mandates, such as Richard Nixon’s 60.7 percent in 1972, Lyndon Johnson’s 61.1 percent in 1964, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 60.8 percent. As Trump’s percentage continues to slide, he’ll fall below the thresholds achieved by most presidents in the past century.

Harris, on the other hand, is looking like a much stronger finisher than she did on election night. In fact, the Democrat now has a higher percentage of the popular vote than Presidents Trump in 2016 (46.1), Bush in 2000 (47.9), Clinton in 1992 (43), or Nixon in 1968 (43.4). She has also performed significantly better than recent major-party nominees such as Trump in 2020 (46.8), Trump in 2016 (48.2), Mitt Romney in 2012 (47.2), John McCain in 2008 (45.7), George W. Bush in 2000 (47.9), Bob Dole in 1996 (40.7), George H.W. Bush in 1992 (37.4), Michael Dukakis in 1988 (45.6), Walter Mondale (40.6), Carter in 1980 (41), or Gerald Ford in 1976 (48).

A cartoon by Clay Bennett

Chattanooga Times Free Press

Daily Kos

Blue (and some red) states unite to resist "threats of autocracy" under Trump

Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker speaks onstage at the CNN-POLITICO Grill during the 2024 DNC Convention on Aug. 20 in Chicago. | Rod Lamkey Jr. for POLITICO

JB Pritzker, Jared Polis behind effort aimed at ‘fortifying the institutions of democracy.’

By Shia Kapos

Politico

11/22/2024 05:01 AM EST

Two blue state governors are behind a new organization working 

to fend off efforts to dismantle or undermine state government 

agencies, elections and state courts.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis will lead the Governors Safeguarding Democracy initiative in response to Donald Trump’s reelection — though they didn’t mention him by name as they announced the effort.

“What we’re doing is pushing back against increasing threats of autocracy and fortifying the institutions of democracy that our country and our states depend upon,” Pritzker said in a press briefing.

Both governors are Democrats from Blue states where party leaders are bracing for backlash.

Governors Safeguarding Democracy is non-partisan, and Pritzker and Polis are talking to Republican governors to join in the project, which they hope will “leverage collective experience and institutional knowledge… to protect the rule of law,” said the Illinois governor.

Polis said the organization was founded “because we know that simple hope alone won’t save our democracy. We need to work together, especially at the state level, to protect and strengthen it.”

The organization is privately funded — not by Pritzker, who is listed on the Forbes billionaire list. Its goals are similar to the National Governors Association, which Polis now chairs, but is a separate entity with its own staff and researchers.

Polis said the group isn’t singling out any particular threat. “It’s about being proactive around educating people and making sure governors have the toolkit to support our small and democratic institutions.”

Pritzker and Polis have known each other for 30 years and have juggled similar challenges recently in managing immigration.

They represent sanctuary states, which do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. That stance could create conflict with the new administration: Trump has threatened to withhold federal law enforcement grants from jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis with family.

"Trump voters are morally responsible for the harms from Trump's policies"

They seem nice...

“MAGAland is filled with racists, fascists, misogynists.  They are not good people." 

 

By sepiasiren

Community 

Daily Kos

Wednesday, November 20, 2024 at 3:14:47p MST

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

The party of “personal responsibility” sure has an impressive knack for dodging accountability, don’t they? As someone who follows a wealth of brilliant Substack writers, including the ever-scathing The Opinionated Ogre, I’ve found my frustrations eloquently mirrored.

This isn’t just about policies or political differences—it’s about a pervasive refusal among Republican voters to own the consequences of their choices, no matter how damaging and hateful they are.

Take a recent conversation I had with an old-school Reagan conservative. When discussing MAGA supporters’ lack of understanding of basic economic concepts like tariffs, I was told—wait for it—that the Democratic Party was to blame.

According to this person, Democrats should’ve educated the public more effectively, perhaps with some Schoolhouse Rock-style explainer videos. Never mind that Republicans laugh at such “liberal nonsense” while actively undermining education and dismissing experts. Apparently, ignorance is only inexcusable when it’s not their own.

When I pointed out the blatant hypocrisy—this same person often preaches that “ignorance is no excuse in the internet age”—they backpedaled faster than a cat caught knocking over a vase.

Somehow, the responsibility for Republican voters’ ignorance still wasn’t theirs but ours.

This is where I draw the line. It’s time for liberals, progressives, and marginalized voters to stop extending olive branches to those who weaponize their votes to harm us.

The Real Costs of Their Votes

The Opinionated Ogre tackled this head-on with the assertion: Dear Trump Voters: You're All Fucking Guilty, where he broke down an excellent article from ABCs Jessica Wolfendale, Are Trump voters morally responsible for the harm caused by his policies?

The answer, of course, is an unequivocal yes. As Ogre put it:

“Like other forms of individual participation in a collective act, the act of voting communicates a voter’s values: the policies and beliefs they support, the policies and beliefs they are willing to tolerate, and how they view the welfare of those who are likely to be affected by a candidate’s policies.”

—

In 2016, many Trump voters feigned ignorance, claiming they were just voting “against Hillary” or acting out of “economic anxiety.” That excuse no longer holds water. By 2020, they’d seen firsthand Trump’s cruelty, corruption, and incompetence. Yet even more of them turned out to support him. These voters weren’t fooled—they were complicit.

—

“For the potential victims of these policies, therefore, there is no real moral difference between voters who wanted those policies to be enacted and voters who were ‘only’ willing to have them enacted.” - Jessica Wolfendale

The Weaponization of “Civility”

Let’s not ignore the weaponization of civility by these same voters. They insist on “respect” and “understanding” while gleefully mocking and undermining the very communities their policies harm.

This hypocrisy was perfectly summarized by Ogre in his post Fuck You, WaPo, I Do NOT Have To "Understand" Trump Voters:

“MAGAland is filled with racists, fascists, misogynists, and every last one of them is an asshole. They have made it clear that they are cruel, violent, and in love with evil. They are not good people. They will never BE good people. Don’t fucking tell me I have to meet them halfway or compromise with them.” — The Opinionated Ogre

There’s no compromise with people who vote for concentration camps, bans on gender-affirming care, or the systematic erosion of democratic norms. We cannot—and should not—befriend or align with those who weaponize their votes to destroy our communities.

Legacy Media’s Complicity

A significant contributor to this problem is the mainstream media’s reluctance to hold Republican voters accountable. After every election, the narrative shifts to “understanding their rage” while completely ignoring the devastation their rage leaves in its wake.

The Washington Post’s post-2020 editorial infamously urged Americans to “keep an open mind” about Trump’s second term, as if four years of chaos weren’t enough to form an opinion.

This refusal to call out fascism for what it is emboldens Republican voters to double down. Why wouldn’t they? If there are no consequences for their actions—if the press keeps coddling them with puff pieces about their “economic concerns” and “disdain for elites”—why would they change?

Why Accountability Matters

We’ve seen this cycle play out repeatedly. Republican voters embraced Reaganomics despite its devastating effects on the middle class. They cheered Bush into endless wars and financial collapse. Then came the Tea Party, MAGA, and now whatever flavor of extremism is next. Each iteration gets more dangerous because they’re never held accountable.

It’s time for that to change. As Ogre reminds us:

“If 9 people and 1 Nazi are sitting at a table and eating together willingly, you have a table with 10 Nazis.”

Accountability isn’t optional. It’s a moral imperative. If Republican voters refuse to take responsibility for their choices, then it falls on us to remind them—relentlessly—that their votes have consequences. votes have consequences.

First it was the Virgin Mary in a tortilla.  What's next? MAGAs seeing their savior in a piece of Texas toast.

TRUMP'S CLOWN SHOW CONTINUES: Picks Dr.Oz to head Medicare/Medicaid

THE CRUDITE CANDIDATE": And yet another third-rate charlatan with big baggage"

 

By TheCriticalMind 

Community 

Tuesday, November 19, 2024 at 3:51:56p MST

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Donald Trump’s latest cabinet pick is yet another third-rate charlatan with baggage. Last seen running for a PA US Senate seat from his home in NJ, TV's Dr. Oz is Trump’s pick to head the the agency that oversees Medicare/Medicaid. 

He is not Trump’s worst pick — Gabbard, Gaetz, Hesgeth, and RFK Jr. lead that race to the bottom. However, he has no obvious qualifications for the role.  

It’s a position that needs management ability, while Oz’s talents lie in separating the gullible from their hard-earned by shilling snake oil and useless weight-loss nostrums. 

Not that anyone, besides the easily deluded, thinks that Trump picks people because they can do the job. The man is a vandal looking to tear things down. Ergo, he is looking for incompetents to blow things up.

But that explanation does not hold water. If you want to raze a building, you don’t send in mouth-breathers with bags of dynamite and no plan. Destruction may require less strategy than construction, but demolition is still a skill. 

The people behind Project 2025 are probably ecstatic at the general tenor of Trump’s appointments. However, I expect there is whispered muttering in the right-wing think tanks expressing consternation that their boy is not appointing the best people for the teardown. 

They would like to see efficiency in their fascism. Their role models are people like Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and armaments minister. A man who managed his bailiwick with Teutonic precision — and increased Nazi war production every year until 1944, even as the Allies carpet bombed everything that could make or move materiel. Dr Oz has yet to show such mission commitment.

Trump is stupid, but he’s not an idiot. So why is he picking people who will not get the reductio ad nihilum completed as quickly and comprehensively as more able candidates?

I think the answer is twofold. On the one hand, he is playing chicken with the Senate. He aims to browbeat, cajole, and threaten the Republican Senators into rubber-stamping absurd cabinet picks. Thereby reducing them to the independent status enjoyed by Saddam Hussein’s legislators.

The other reason is that this self-aggrandizing buffoon thinks he can do all the jobs himself. If he had ever studied he would have noticed that the federal government is not a mom-and-pop store. It isn’t that easy to dismantle a nearly $7 trillion annual dollar enterprise (10x the global revenues of #1 company Walmart).

I suppose you could try to fire all federal employees and ignore the court cases saying the job cull is against the law. But that would come with a downside. It would be like curing someone of bone cancer by removing all their bones — technically effective, but the patient dies. Killing the federal government would kill the country — and what’s the point of being a plutocrat in a wasteland where no one has the money to buy stuff?

Downsizing the government, hurting the right people, and installing compliant drones takes skill. Does Oz have it? I doubt it. Not that Trump gives a shit. He’s just taking the piss. 

As I write this my phone tells me Trump has picked ex-WWE impresario Linda McMahon to be the Education Secretary. There is no risk of the MAGAs getting smarter.

 From your friendly party in power: "Take this, my fellow Americans."  And you're worried about the price of eggs?

Ode to a Gay "Dawn" Trump

 

Renowned Lake Wobegon humorist ponders the ultimate "what if?"

By Garrison Keillor / Garrison Keillor's Website 18 November 24

 

Every morning when I wake up, I ask myself: what have I done the previous day that entitles me to draw upon the nation’s precious water supply and enjoy a hot shower? I don’t see this as a basic human right; it should be earned. And what I did the other day was accompany my beloved to the Met to see Puccini’s Tosca.

She dearly loves grand opera and I dearly love her, and I was glad to go for the chance to see the tenor be executed and the soprano leap to her death. I enjoy violence more when it’s accompanied by great music.

What makes the Met’s Tosca remarkable is that the tenor’s girlfriend Tosca, sung by the six-two Norwegian goddess Lise Davidsen, towers over him and when they embrace, he disappears, and when they sing a duet, you forget he’s there. Her voice can go from pianissimo to pee-in-your-pants forte in two seconds and during one duet I somehow found myself thinking about transgenderdom. When I listen to people sing in Italian, my mind wanders.

The subject of transgender was more prominent in Trump’s 2024 campaign than in any presidential election I can recall. Reagan never went there, nor did George W. Maybe I’m hanging out with the wrong people but I wasn’t aware that it was such a major issue, the fear of trans boys competing in girls’ basketball.

I am not without prejudice and I admit that I would prefer that my cardiologist be okay with his or her birth gender. I’m not proud of it but there it is. As for basketball, I take no interest in it whatsoever and haven’t for years.

But the current bromance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, World’s Richest Man, forces me to take up the subject. I’ve long thought that there is something sopranoish and prima Donald about Trump, the fussiness with the hair, the adoration of the spotlight, the reverence for makeup. And Mar-a-Lago with all the frilliness and glitz, the gilded cherubs, the ladylike glamour — no man I know would feel comfortable there.

So watching the man’s victory speech on Election Night in which he spoke so admiringly about Musk’s Space-X rocket, it struck me as odd: you’ve just been elected Leader of the Free World and you’re fascinated by the size of another man’s rocket?

It just made me wonder if we haven’t elected our first trans president before electing our first woman.

El Don’s obsession with trans people in his campaign bore unmistakable signs of self-loathing and I think that we hippy-libs have a duty to encourage him to come out of the locker room and embrace his identity.

It’s heartwarming to see a 78-year-old person head-over-heels for a guy devoted to cars and rockets, and now that La Donna is elected, he can cut the macho act and bring out the pantsuits and high heels and just be himself. I’m an old Marxist-Communist but still I think power should be liberating: take that Oval Office and ovulate to your heart’s content, pal. “Trump Will Fix It” was the slogan and now it’s time for him/her/them to fix him/her/them. Everybody could tell that he needed a new pronoun and now he can have it by executive order.

Dawn is in love with his Musk,

They’re dancing together at dusk.

Each little fist bump

Makes her heart jump,

His tail and his tush and his tusk.

I wish Kamala had become First Woman President because she seemed actually interested in government and policy issues, more than in sharks and electric boats and Arnie Palmer’s manhood. But so be it, the voters have spoken. But let’s try to see the bright side.

If you are a soybean farmer in North Dakota and you feel God made a mistake in giving you a penis, you are in a tough spot and most trans farmers would take the easy way out and move to West Palm Beach, but a President with the courage to come out publicly on Day One and accept what is so clear about him could change that instantly.

He is a great storyteller. He loves the unexpected. His nomination of a Fox News host to head the Defense Department, and Matt Gaetz, under investigation for drug use and sex trafficking, nominated to be Attorney General. So why not hold a press conference wearing a sparkly red gown and jangly jewelry? People want entertainment. They’ll be talking about it for weeks. Fashion will trump inflation.

 

The case for the glass half full

 Kamala Harris herself performed better than I could have ever imagined. She was disciplined, focused and charismatic. She’s a brilliant orator and debater.

By Cosecant 

Community 

Daily Kos 

Saturday, November 16, 2024 at 4:34:20p MST

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

I’m off cable news for the next 4+ years, only getting little glimpses here and there of what’s going on in print. But the takes I’ve been reading from the so-called pundit class have been really bad.

I’m not sure the presidential election was ever winnable. Kamala Harris performed fantastically well. Much better that I expected. The campaign was also very good. It’s painful because the polling, which was also pretty good, showed a coin toss race. Unfortunately the polling error was not in our favor.

Inflation is a nearly impossible force to counter. I remember Americans going nuts over small blips in gas prices in 2012. Food and shelter price increases feel ten times worse. Here’s a look at how governments in the G7 have fared (or are projected to fare*) since 2022

Country	Party in Power	Previous election	Recent election	change
UK	Conservative	43.6%	23.7%	-19.9%
France	Ensemble	38.5%	24.5%	-14%
Japan	LDP	48.1%	38.5%	-9.6%
Italy	The League	7.8%	37%	-29.2%
Canada*	Liberal	32.6%	23.3%(polling)	-9.3%
Germany*	SPD	25.7%	15.5%(polling)	-10.2%
US(Pres)	Democratic	51.3%	48.3%(projected)	-3%

Add to this the fact that the war in Gaza put Democrats in an impossible position. Polls went from Biden +4% to Biden -4% in fall of 2023 and never really bounced back. I still believe that if the war had ended, Harris might well have won.

There are lessons to be learned from every election, but the Democrats ran a very good campaign. Kamala Harris’s favorability increased 13%. She dramatically closed the gap on the economy and immigration. On exit polling, “defence of democracy” was cited as the most important issue, followed by the economy and then abortion (so much for Republicans owning the top two issues).

Kamala Harris herself performed better than I could have ever imagined. She was disciplined, focused and charismatic. She’s a brilliant orator and debater. 

The ground game also worked just like it was supposed to. Harris ran 2-3 points better than her average in the 5 battleground states that are far away from Mexico.

Pundits are gonna pundit and there will be lots of over-interpretation to be had, but the bottom line is this: sometimes life deals your side a bad hand, and there’s not much you can do about it.

But, but, what if she picked Josh Shapiro????  VP candidates hardly ever make a difference. Even if she won PA, she still loses MI and WI. There was potential for some unwanted palace intrigue here too as Shapiro didn’t really want to be chosen. This might have saved Bob Casey though.

But, but, what about The View Interview, Biden’s Garbage comment, Joe Rogan????  No campaign is perfect. It’s like asking a pitcher who threw a 2-hitter, “why didn’t you pitch a perfect game?” Even when Democrats don’t make mistakes, Republicans make them up anyways (“You didn’t build that”, “Lipstick on a pig”). If the debate, which was watched by 67 million people only created a temporary 2 point bump, no singular event was going to make much of a difference.

But, but, if they only tried this message with the working class…. Give me a break. They had all the best coms people working on this and focus-tested the campaign messaging to death. Whatever message you think they should have used, they checked and it wouldn’t have worked any better.

But, but, Biden should have dropped out sooner……. Okay, yes, probably. But this would not have made a difference either. Let’s game this out. Harris would have had a huge advantage in the primary as a sitting vice president. She would have inherited a lot of Biden’s team and a ton of institutional support. 

Democrats had no appetite for a protracted primary process facing an existential threat. With her orating and debating abilities and competent campaign management, she would have very likely won any regular primary in a walk. During the primary, she would have taken damage and possibly have had to take more positions to the left of where she ran in the general election. Trump’s campaign would also be much better prepared for her. She had a phenomenal first month. You weren’t going to beat Brat Summer as an introduction.

This wasn’t a football game. The score still matters. The senate could be 57-43 right now and out of reach until 2030. We could be staring at a strong 25 seat Republican majority in the house. Not to mention a possible wipeout in state and local races that were mostly a wash.

Now for the bright side:

The House

Democrats are nearly guaranteed to regain the majority in 2026. Aside from 2002 when Bush’s approval was 70% and 1998 during the Clinton impeachment overreach, you have to go back to 1934 to find an election where the party out of power didn’t gain 4 seats.

The Senate

This will be a bit harder. Democrats have a good shot at North Carolina and Maine. Iowa looks possible as well as Joni super-pro-life Ernst won in 2020 with only 51.7% support in a state with a draconian, unpopular abortion ban. People write off Florida, but remember that Nelson lost by 0.1% in 2018. With Trump choosing the candidates, we can probably count on at least one Roy Moore, Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin situation. Admittedly, this would have been much easier if Bob Casey had pulled out a win. (edit: he still might have an outside shot now down only 19K votes)

The Presidency

Democrats have a deep bench for 2028. Donald Trump has remade the Republican Party to serve only himself. He’s destroyed its institutions and driven out a lot of the smart people. Nobody else can pull off what he did politically. Look at how his chosen candidates have fared when he’s not on the ballot. The low propensity voters that he got off the couch aren’t coming out to vote for anyone else and the suburban voters he lost aren’t coming back to a party enthralled to crazy.

Right now

I know it looks bad, but the defining feature of Donald’s Trump’s tenure is utter and complete incompetence. Harris was right when she said that Trump would have no guardrails, but he also has nobody around him who knows how to get anything done. He’s chosen the dumbest of the dumb to work for him.

Look at what happened last time he was in office. He passed one stupid tax bill. The bill is now expiring and also very unpopular. All of his executive orders can be undone with a pen in 2028. A great many of them will be held up in court since he doesn’t have anyone competent writing them. The non-partisan public service is still there, and Biden’s administration has spent the past two years putting up roadblocks to safeguard it. When Trump tries to purge it, there will be many lawsuits grinding the process to a halt. He won’t get to remake the courts since Republicans didn’t hold up 2 years of Obama’s nominees this time, and there is no more Mitch McConnell. 

Trump is also declining fairly rapidly. It becomes harder and harder to bully people when you can’t finish a sentence. And if you think that JD Vance and others will step in to fill the void, there is one constant about Donald Trump: his ego will never allow it. He will cling to every tendril of power until the last bit of orange fades from his face.

In two years, Trump will be a lame duck with a hostile congress and taking the blame for a bad mid-term. In four years, he will be gone forever. The Republicans may be craven, but their corporate masters will never support a full-on coup d’etat for a lunatic.

"The defining feature of Donald’s Trump’s tenure is utter and complete incompetence....  He’s chosen the dumbest of the dumb to work for him."

John Roberts Bet Big on Trump—and Won

 On the last day of democracy the voters gave to us: one president smirking...

 

Will he rubber-stamp the White House’s most authoritarian ambitions?  

 

 

 

Mark Joseph Stern / Slate 17 November 24

You have to hand it to John Roberts: The chief justice played his cards right. For more than a year now, Roberts has largely dropped his pose as an institutionalist, let alone a moderate. He has instead thrown his weight behind Donald Trump, reestablishing his control over the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority. These apparent acts of self-preservation, seemingly undertaken in anticipation of a second Trump term, turned out to be the smart bet. It’s easy to imagine an earlier version of the chief justice spending the next four years losing his grasp on the court’s direction and drawing Trump’s public ire. Today’s iteration of John Roberts need not fear this fate. His position of appeasement, if not outright capitulation, to a MAGA vision of the law is about to pay off in spades.

To see how much the chief justice has changed, remember the role he played in Trump’s first term: the uneasy guardrail against some of the president’s most extreme policies and grievances. After Trump condemned an “Obama judge” for ruling against his administration in 2018, Roberts issued a rare public rebuke, scolding the president for besmirching the “independent judiciary.” (Trump fired back over Twitter, keen to seize the last word.) In 2019, Roberts cast the decisive vote to block a citizenship question on the census, correctly accusing the administration of misrepresenting its reasoning for adding one and then shabbily trying to cover its tracks. In 2020, he once again cast the key vote to halt Trump’s rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program protecting Dreamers from deportation. That year, he also voted to protect LGBTQ+ people under civil rights law, impeding the administration’s anti-trans agenda.

During this period, Roberts was still delivering significant victories to the conservative legal movement. But there was a limit to his tolerance for big swings, especially those that reflected poor lawyering by unscrupulous Trump loyalists. SCOTUS was divided 5–4 along ideological lines, and Roberts sat at its center, allowing him to guide a majority back toward the middle to reject some MAGA excesses. After Justice Amy Coney Barrett replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in late 2020, however, she shored up a new ultraconservative majority that left Roberts in the dust on hot-button issues over the next two years. This five-justice bloc weakened COVID restrictions to promote “religious liberty.” It abused the shadow docket to revive Trump-era regulations. Most infamously, it fully abolished the constitutional right to abortion. All as Roberts stood on the sidelines, pleading for compromises that his hard-right colleagues spurned. As recently as 2022, it felt as if the chief justice was losing control of the court that he nominally led.

The lesson Roberts took from this losing streak was simple: If you can’t beat them, join them—and if you join them, you might as well take the reins. Trump’s steady return to power in 2023 and 2024 coincided with the chief justice going full MAGA. When the five other conservatives held together, Roberts joined them every time, refusing to be sidelined with the liberals. And, most revealingly, the chief justice powered the court toward huge victories for the former president in a trio of cases that helped pave the way for his comeback.

First, Roberts prohibited states from removing Trump’s name from the ballot under the 14^th Amendment, which bars insurrectionists from returning to office. According to the New York Times, he wrote the court’s unnecessarily broad ruling, which went out of its way to ensure that Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election would not prevent him from reclaiming the presidency. Second, he wrote the court’s opinion undermining obstruction charges for many Jan. 6 participants, including Trump himself, weakening the legal basis for the former president’s prosecution. Third, he steered the court toward a sweeping decision granting Trump shockingly broad immunity for criminal acts undertaken in office. Behind the scenes, Roberts never wavered on his position in the immunity case, and his muscular intervention helped run out the clock for Trump, ensuring his case would not reach a trial before the election.

The immunity decision came down on July 1, just days after Joe Biden’s catastrophic debate performance made Trump’s victory seem inevitable. Roberts and his colleagues purported to be crafting an opinion for the ages. But given the obvious direction of the election, the ruling seemed tailor-made to let Trump off the hook for his misdeeds, helping him skate straight back to the Oval Office. The former president praised it as a “big win for our Constitution” and, on the campaign trail, seemed to view it as a license to do anything he wanted in his second term. His first-term spats with Roberts had become a distant memory. The chief justice was back in his good graces.

At the dawn of Trump’s next term, Roberts will arguably hold more power than ever. He has reestablished himself as the leader of the court, the justice with the greatest influence over the most important opinions. The question now is how he’ll use that power in a second Trump term. Will there be a limit to what he’ll seek to allow from the second Trump administration? What comes next may well be far worse than what came before, including mass deportations and vindictive prosecutions that test the boundaries of executive authority. With Trump promising to staff his administration with staunch allies, and Republicans poised to take total control of Congress, there will be no other guardrails but the judiciary.

The question mark that hovers over the Supreme Court in the years ahead is straightforward. Will Roberts expend any of the capital he’s amassed to rein in Trump? How far will he and the rest of the court’s conservatives allow Trump to go? Even if no other conservative will stand athwart Trump, will the chief justice sound the alarm in dissent? Or will he rubber-stamp the White House’s most authoritarian ambitions? Roberts himself may not even know the answers yet. But his decision to take the path of least resistance to Trumpism over the past four years suggests that he will not pose an obstacle to it in the four years ahead.

On the last day of democracy the voters gave to us: one president smirking, six dudes a-milking, and three ladies up a pear tree.

A giant middle finger from a tiny, malevolent man

Will "bootlicker" Senate majority cave to Trump on craven cabinet picks?

By Sabrina Haake

Community

The Substack

DailyKos 

Thursday, November 14, 2024 at 3:02:31p MST

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Giving the middle finger to anyone who bought his schtick about lasting peace, Trump has chosen stunningly unqualified cranks and loyalists to help him burn down the government.  

Matt Gaetz, more barking clown than lawyer, is under investigation relating to alleged sex with a minor. In an SNL skit that writes itself, Trump would name him Botox King Attorney General.  Tulsi Gabbard, who thinks it’s ‘defensible’ to gas civilians then bomb the clinics treating them, would be Director of National Intelligence. Trump’s deputy chief of staff, the dead-eyed Stephen Miller, says red states will send their National Guard units into blue states to execute mass deportations. (Civil war, anyone?) Pete Hegseth, a white nationalist tattoo-sporting Fox News commentator, would lead the Defense Department, condoning preemptive strikesand seeking pardons for war criminals. Worm-on-the-brain RFK? I can’t even. Too bad Jeffrey Epstein is gone, he's missing a short-window opportunity at the Education Department.  

And how many Hannibal Lecters must Trump want to appoint, that he’d try to strong-arm the Senate into taking recess just so he can bypass their advice and consent? The Senate’s role on presidential appointments is more than window-dressing. It’s a core Article II Constitutional function, foundational to the separation of powers. Advice and consent from the Senate was designed to keep nutjobs away from the seat of government. Given that the GOP will have a solid 53 member majority of bootlickers in the Senate come January, Trump’s desire to bypass them is even more alarming than who he’s picked so far.

These developments would be funny if they weren’t so dangerous. Trump now has a SCOTUS imprimatur to sic Seal Team Six on domestic enemies. One wonders if President Biden has read that opinion. A president’s first duty is to protect and defend, and it’s often said that the best defense is a good offense. Why not use the next two months to put Trump on an island or behind bars sans Twitter for the rest of his miserable life, if it will prevent the bloodshed he’s promising?  The right already projects Trump’s “lawfare” and criminality onto Biden anyway, why not earn the label?  

Buzzing narratives ignore a remarkable global trend

Trump’s asinine choices make clear that we’re in for a bumpy ride for the next two years, but Democrats need to knock it off with the intra-party blame game. In pontificating about what Dems “did wrong,” the line between helpful introspection and destructive navel-gazing is thin already. The most common rejoinder is: ‘If only Biden/Harris/Dems had done X, they’d have won, and it just so happens I’ve been arguing for X for years.’ But there’s a major difference between data-informed reality and narratives that regurgitate pre-existing worldviews.

Instead of bald recriminations, Democrats should look at the numbers. Harris lost by 3 million votes, out of a national total of 151,318,415 votes. This loss by less than 2 percent of all voters is hardly a mandate. Whatever the spin of the hour is, it should be tempered with awareness of global reality. In defeating Biden’s party, the US did what every other industrialized nation in the world did, with shocking uniformity:  We punished the incumbent party, the party who was holding the bag during the worst years of post-covid economic pain, regardless of who caused it.

In a remarkably under-reported phenomenon, in 2024, whichever ruling party occupied the seat of government was voted out of office, world-wide. This chart from Financial Times plots the increase and decrease in share of votes for incumbent parties dating back to 1910. Over the past century, there’s been a fairly even distribution of incumbent gains and losses, at least  through 2020. But in 2024, in elections across the globe, whichever party was in charge- left or right- was shown the same exit door. In 2024, for the first time dating back to 1910, incumbent parties were removed from office with ZERO wins, without regard to partisan ideology.

So, the real narrative isn’t right vs. left, progressive vs. moderate, Trump vs. Harris.  Democrats lost due to post-covid economic pain outside their control, as it was for every other incumbent party in the world. I realize this is an argument so nice I made it twice, but I offer it again to not only encourage democrats to stop the blame game, but also to give comfort. As horrific as sending a craven felon to the White House is, US voters fell in line with the same global upset displayed by voters around the world.

It's important to get behind that reality and remember that this too shall pass. There’s another election in two years. Every seat in the House and a third of the Senate — mostly Republicans — will be up for reelection. And if Trump keeps up the juvenile shenanigans, voters will punish his party hard, most likely all the way through 2032.

So as painful as this is, it’s temporary. The only enduring quality about elections is that, as soon as the victor is announced, the next election has already begun.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. She writes the Substack, The Haake Take.