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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 months

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Mike Luckovich

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 28, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Behind the horse race–type coverage of the contest for presidential nominations, a major realignment is underway in United States politics. The Republican Party is dying as Trump and his supporters take it over, but there is a larger story behind that crash. This moment looks much like the other times in our history when a formerly stable two-party system has fallen apart and Americans reevaluated what they want out of their government.

Trump’s takeover of the party has been clear at the state level, where during his term he worked to install loyalists in leadership positions. From there, they have pushed the Big Lie that he won the 2020 election and have continued to advance his claims to power.

The growing radicalism of the party has also been clear in Congress, where Trump loyalists refuse to permit legislation that does not reflect their demands and where, after they threw House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) out of office—dumping a speaker midterm for the first time in history—Trump lieutenant Jim Jordan (R-OH) threatened holdouts to vote him in as speaker. Jordan failed, but the speaker Republican representatives did choose, Mike Johnson (R-LA), is himself a Trump loyalist, just one who had made fewer enemies than Jordan.

The radicalization of the House conference has led 21 members of the party who gravitate toward actual lawmaking to announce they are not running for reelection. Many of them are from safe Republican districts, meaning they will almost certainly be replaced by radicals.

The Senate has tended to hang back from this radicalization, but in a dramatic illustration of Trump’s takeover of the party, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell today announced he would step down from his leadership position in November. McConnell is the leading symbol of the pre-Trump party, a man whose determination to cut taxes and regulation led him to manipulate the rules of the Senate and silence warnings that Russian disinformation was polluting the 2016 campaign so long as it meant keeping a Democrat out of the White House and Republicans in control of the Senate.

The extremist House Freedom Caucus promptly tweeted: “Our thoughts are with our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine). No need to wait till November…Senate Republicans should IMMEDIATELY elect a *Republican* Minority Leader.”

Trump has also taken control of the Republican National Committee (RNC) itself. On Monday, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel announced that she is resigning on March 8. Trump picked McDaniel himself in 2016 but has come to blame her both for the party’s continued underperformance since 2016 and for its current lack of money.

Now Trump has made it clear he wants even closer loyalists at the top of the party, including his own daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. She has suggested she is open to using RNC money exclusively for Trump. This might be what has prompted the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity to pull support from Nikki Haley in order to invest in downballot races.

But the party that is consolidating around Trump is alienating a majority of Americans. It has abandoned the principles that the party embraced from 1980 until 2016. In that era, Republicans called for a government that cut taxes and regulations with the idea that consolidating wealth at the top of the economy would enable businessmen to invest far more effectively in new development than they could if the government interfered, and the economy would boom. They also embraced global leadership through the expansion of capitalism and a strong military to protect it.

Under Trump, though, the party has turned away from global leadership to the idea that strong countries can do what they like to their neighbors, and from small government to big government that imposes religious rules. Far from protecting equality before the law, Republican-dominated states have discriminated against LGBTQ+ individuals, racial and ethnic minorities, and women. And, of course, the party is catering to Trump’s authoritarian plans. Neo-nazis attended the Conservative Political Action Conference a week ago.

But these changes are not popular. Tuesday’s Michigan primary revealed the story we had already seen in the Republican presidential primaries and caucuses in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Trump won all those contests, but by significantly less than polls had predicted. He has also been dogged by the strength of former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. With Trump essentially running as an incumbent, he should be showing the sort of strength Biden is showing—with challengers garnering only a few percentage points—but even among the fervent Republicans who tend to turn out for primaries, Trump’s support is soft.

It seems that the same policies that attract Trump’s base are turning other voters against him. Republican leadership, for example, is far out of step with the American people on abortion rights—69% of Americans want the right to abortion put into law—and that gulf has only widened over the Alabama Supreme Court decision endangering in vitro fertilization by saying that embryos have the same rights as children from the moment of conception. That decision created such an outcry that Republicans felt obliged to claim they supported IVF. But push came to shove today when Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) reintroduced a bill to protect IVF that Republicans had previously rejected and Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) killed it again.

The party has also tied itself to a deeply problematic leader. Trump is facing 91 criminal charges in four different cases—two state, two federal—but the recently-decided civil case in which he, the Trump Organization, his older sons, and two associates were found liable for fraud is presenting a more immediate threat to Trump’s political career.

Trump owes writer E. Jean Carroll $88.3 million; he owes the state of New York $454 million, with interest accruing at more than $100,000 a day. Trump had 30 days from the time the judgments were filed to produce the money or a bond for it. Today he asked the court for permission to post only $100 million rather than the full amount in the New York case, as required by law, because he would have to sell property at fire-sale prices to come up with the money.

In addition to making it clear to donors that their investment in his campaign now might end up in the hands of lawyers or the victorious plaintiffs, the admission that Trump does not have the money he has claimed punctures the image at the heart of his political success: that of a billionaire businessman.

Judge Anil C. Singh rejected Trump’s request but did stay the prohibition on Trump’s getting loans from New York banks, potentially allowing him to get the money he needs.

As Trump’s invincible image cracks with this admission, as well as with the increased coverage of his wild statements, others are starting to push back on him and his loyalists. President Biden’s son Hunter Biden testified behind closed doors to members of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees today, after their previous key witness turned out to be working with Russian operatives and got indicted for lying.

Hunter Biden began the day with a scathing statement saying unequivocally that he had never involved his father in his business dealings and that all the evidence the committee had compiled proved that. In their “partisan political pursuit,” he said, they had “trafficked in innuendo, distortion, and sensationalism—all the while ignoring the clear and convincing evidence staring you in the face. You do not have evidence to support the baseless and MAGA-motivated conspiracies about my father because there isn’t any.”

After an hour, Democratic committee members described to the press what was going on in the hearing room. They reported that the Republicans’ case had fallen apart entirely and that Biden had had a “very understandable, coherent business explanation for every single thing that they asked for.” While former president Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself more than 440 times during a deposition in his fraud trial, Biden did not take the Fifth at all.

The discrediting of the Republicans continued later. When Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN) tried to recycle the discredited claim that “$20 million flowed through” to then–vice president Biden, CNN host Boris Sanchez fact-checked him and said, “I’m not going to let you say things that aren’t true.”

That willingness to push back on the Republicans suggests a new political moment in which Americans, as they have done before when one of the two parties devolved into minority rule, wake up to the reality that the system has been hijacked and begin to reclaim their government.

But can they prevail over the extremists MAGA Republicans have stowed into critical positions in the government? Tonight the Supreme Court, stacked with Trump appointees, announced that rather than let the decision of a lower court stay in place, it would take up the question of whether Trump is immune from criminal prosecution for his actions in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. That decision means a significant delay in Trump’s trial for that attempt.

“This is a momentous decision, just to hear this case,” conservative judge Michael Luttig told Nicolle Wallace of MSNBC. “There was no reason in this world for the Supreme Court to take this case…. Under the constitutional laws of the United States, there has never been an argument that a former president is immune from prosecution for crimes that he committed while in office.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#History #Putin Caucus #Corrupt SCOTUS #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #minority rule

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dhaaruni · 10 days

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See, that's where we disagree. I think the idea of the Romney-Democrat voter is a stone cold lie; some R voters may virtue signal about abandoning Trump, but is it really believable they actually did it? Trump got more popular votes than Romney ever did.

Romney-Democrats didn’t generally vote for Trump! They’re like, wealthy college-educated types who think Trump is crass and either blanked 2016 or voted for Hillary (and then Biden). These are like, NoVa Biden-Youngkin voters, you know? They may vote Republican downballot but generally they’re not anti-choice or anti-LGBT on a legislative level, they’re just rich and judgmental lol. Basically, these are the people who think Mitt Romney’s 47% comment and Hillary Clinton’s deplorables comment are both correct lmao.

A lot of people in Arizona in particular are also McCain republicans who ended up voting for Biden in 2020 because Cindy McCain endorsed him and ended up voting for Mark Kelly and Katie Hobbs not least since Kari Lake said that McCain Republicans should fuck off. John McCain’s sons are out there doing fundraisers for AZ Dems like these people aren’t Trumpists at all.

My point is that it remains to be seen what all these people do if and when the Republican Party becomes the party of Glenn Youngkin and Brian Kemp like will ancestral Republicans stay loyal Democrats or will they revert to the GOP?

#politics #answered #anonymous

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nodynasty4us · 7 months

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Donald Trump controls the Republican Party because he threatens to destroy it. He owns maybe 30, 40, 50 percent of the Republican voters. If he formed a new party and told his people to vote only for him and not Republican candidates downballot, they would do it. If he didn't form his own party (or couldn't get on the ballot) and told his people to go fishing on Nov. 5, 2024, they would do it. That would destroy the Republican Party. He has the power to destroy the Party and is not afraid to do it. He cares not a whit about the institutional Republican Party and would not hesitate to destroy it as revenge for failure to obey him. The Republican senators, who do care about the Republican Party, but who mock Trump privately, know this and know he has them by the [insert body part here]. That's why they won't challenge him.

Electoral-vote.com, summarizing Jonathan Last

#donald trump #republicans

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puppetmaster55 · 1 year

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watching the results of a primary happening in other sections of my state is really hammering in just how important an individual vote can matter in the downballot (the smaller, local election matters)

there’s a town levy that had sixteen votes total. 3 for it and 13 against it. that’s the only people that showed up, apparently

voting matters. voting matters so dang much, never let anyone try to convince you otherwise

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arizonaconservativegal · 2 months

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Who do you think are promising candidates for the presidential election and Arizona’s elections?

I wouldn't say anyone is particularly promising like they're fresh blood who might go places. There isn't really anyone new running for the federal stuff here and I'm not expecting any big shakeups. Even downballot stuff doesn't look too exciting yet, but that might change. Here's what I'm thinking federally:

Obviously the presidential is pretty much just between Trump and Biden at this point. Biden will win, both in Arizona and nationally.

Congress:

AZ Senate - Kari Lake will be the nominee and lose to Democrat Ruben Gallego, who I cannot stand.

AZ CD1 - Schweikert has like seventy five primary challengers but I doubt any of them take him out this year. He probably squeaks by with another win in the general, but his days in office are numbered.

AZ CD2 - For a while I was hearing rumors that Eli Crane might not run for re-election but I guess he decided to run. I don't think he'll have any trouble holding the seat.

AZ CD3 - literally not even worth talking about any Republicans that may or may not run for this one. It's D+53. The Dems will pick their candidate - probably either Raquel Teran or Yassamin Ansari, who are both dreadful - and that will be that.

AZ CD4 - Probably Kelly Cooper for the nomination again. I like him quite a bit but it doesn't matter. Greg Stanton will be re-elected.

AZ CD5 - Andy Biggs is the incumbent and Andy Biggs will hold that seat until the day he decides he longer wants it.

AZ CD6 - Ciscomani is probably safe but he's going to have to put up a good fight still. Dems are pissed about losing that seat.

AZ CD7 - again, not worth even asking which Republican is dumb enough to run for this one. D+35 means Raul Grijalva will hold that seat until he either drinks himself to death or manages to piss off the wrong cartel boss.

AZ CD8 - probably Abe Hamadeh will win the primary, which means he will win the general. I don't even know who the Dem is in that race. Doesn't matter, it's R+15. If I were going to call anyone 'promising,' it would be him. That's a seat where he could either just sit on cruise control for the rest of his life or he could use the safety of the voter spread and do something really interesting.

AZ CD9 - I'm hearing rumors about Gosar stepping down in the near future but I'm always hearing those rumors about him so I'll believe it when I see the announcement. If he runs again, the seat is his. If he doesn't, the list of people to replace him will be long and probably very annoying.

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tomorrowusa · 8 months

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When you understand that Republicans are not entirely cookie cutter, you can frame messaging to instigate division among the various GOP subgroups.

Data journalist Nate Cohn separates the GOP into six groupings based on poll responses regarding various issues.

In a specific state or legislative district you might be able shape issues in such a way as to make a Republican candidate seem unpalatable to certain elements within the party. Even if disaffected Republicans don't vote for the Democratic candidate outright, they may simply skip voting for any candidate for that particular office.

In Arizona in 2022 the GOP nominated a particularly dreadful slate of candidates for statewide office. They lost by several percentage points even while the GOP did passably in downballot races.

[W]hile majorities of Republicans side with Mr. Trump on almost every issue, those majorities are often quite slim: Around 40 percent of Republican-leaning voters support aid to Ukraine, support comprehensive immigration reform or say abortion should be mostly or always legal.

The closer the race, the more useful microtargeting becomes.

#republicans #six subgroups of republicans #nate cohn #close elections #microtargeting #framing messaging

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virovac · 1 month

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Do not write "Gaza" as a protest vote in these states Primary for president for these states

Seeing articles suggesting that in Illinois, but protest votes like that aren't counted in many states

To register a non-Biden vote in the tallies [ of aCategory 4: No Uncommitted Option, Most Write-Ins Not Counted, Blank Ballots Not Counter], you have to vote for someone pre-approved by the state, whether that be a named candidates on the ballot or a qualified write-in candidate. For most states, this leaves you with Dean Phillips and/or Marianne Williamson if you want your vote to count. Feel free to choose between the two at your own discretion, although you can always vote for another listed candidate or even pick someone from your state’s list of qualified write-in candidates if you really want to avoid voting for either of them.

note I found one contradicting opinion to my source

ReadingRambo Mar 3 Hold on. Blank ballots do count for something in Category 4 and 5. Because President isn’t the only race on the ballot. If I vote on all the other lines but not that one, my other votes count. If Biden gets fewer votes than his fellow Dems downballot, that shows up. And it might actually be really important: it’s looking increasingly likely that people will do this in the general. I know I will. SHARE ettingermentum Mar 3Author That’s a little more abstract I think. The idea here is replicating the Michigan thing—i.e., reducing his percentage. ReadingRambo Mar 3 It still matters! Don’t rob us of our agency! I promise you they’ll notice. Ballot underhang gets attention.

Something I am unsure of:

[although you can always vote for another listed candidate (unsure what this means, would I put in a senator candidate or something as a protest vote? Or do some states have extra candidates exclusive to that state?)]

I have been unable to find a list of qualified write-in candidates for my state but maybe you can? I can understand wanting to do so if Dean Phillips is too conservative and in past voted along Biden's lines. Leaving blank might also be an option so long as vote for locals as stated above... [Or if any others are an option as a state exclusive presidential candidate as discussed above]

March 19th: Arizona (D and M), Illinois (D and M), Ohio (Dean only) April 23rd: Pennsylvania (Dean only) May 14th: Nebraska (Dean only), West Virginia (Dean only)

Here's sorted by alphabetical state

Here is sorted by date

Always look at a sample primary ballot ahead of time for this year.

and states without writeins

States/Territories Without Write-ins

March 23rd: Louisiana (Both Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson on ballot)

May 7th: Indiana (No D or M or anyone else.)

June 4th: South Dakota (Both Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson on ballot)

June 8th: Guam (Candidate list currently unavailable)

#protest votes #Illinois primary 2024 #Arizona primary 2024 #Ohio primary 2024 #voting #Pennsylvania primary 2024 #Nebraska primary 2024 #West Virginia primary 2024 #protest vote

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treemaidengeek · 2 months

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Why should anyone vote in the presidential election when the electoral college decides the president? What's even the point of the popular vote in that instance? I don't see the purpose in voting in the presidential election because of 2016.

I apologize for the delay... I ran out of spoons. 🫠

Your downballot votes always matter, full stop. The more local, the more your vote counts, and the more concretely the outcome will affect the lives of your friends and neighbors. Please, please don't let presidential despair turn you away from making real change where you live.

If you live in a contested state: the brokenness of the system gives your presidential outsized impact. Electors overwhelmingly cast their electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote in their state, all or nothing. That margin can be pretty damn thin.

If you don't: by a strict utilitarian argument, your single PRESIDENTIAL vote doesn't matter. California is gonna go blue whether or not I vote. Texas is gonna go red whether or not an individual there votes. If you favor a third party, you could reasonably decide to cast your vote for that party if your state's presidential outcome is a foregone conclusion.

I'm personally one of many who consider voting a civic duty, like paying taxes & showing up for jury duty. It's a right and a responsibility. There's a saying about how rights are like muscles - if you don't exercise them regularly, you will lose them.

There are years of momentum behind reform efforts to unfuck our electoral college. The more often the popular vote is misaligned with the electoral, the stronger the arguments for that unfucking become.

Relatedly, voter turnout has (in my experience) consistently been seen as a measure of voter engagement in public affairs. IE voter turnout in recent elections has been up because people care passionately about what's at stake, and that sends a message to politicians that we are (or are not) paying attention. Protesting, contacting your elected officials, etc do this too. Voting is one crucial piece of a bigger puzzle.

There are lots of good addendums in the comments n reblogs of the voting poll & post that (presumably) led you to my inbox. it's pinned at the top of my blog if you want to read more. I reblogged a generous sample of the meaty ones with the tag #get out the vote.

Finally here are two solid articles that go into more depth about the electoral college, whose votes count how much, & the history of popular/electoral vote misalignment.

#get out the vote #us politics #electoral college #conversating

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