But we hear the footfalls of our old nemesis, coronavirus, and the miseries it brings. Not just sickness and death, but lockdowns, masks, shuttered stores, and canceled events. 

“If this feels like déjà vu, it should,” the Washington Post ominously intones. 

“While only about a dozen cases of the new BA.2.86 variant have been reported worldwide — including three in the United States,” the paper warns, “experts say this variant requires intense monitoring and vigilance that many of its predecessors did not.”

The new variant doesn’t appear to be more lethal, or even likely to make people sicker than whatever has been knocking around for the past couple of years. It’s just more contagious. Which is what we’ve come to expect of the many variants of the original COVID-19: higher transmission, but not the lethality of the first surge. Endemic, like the flu, not pandemic like the first COVID wave.

The remarkable success in getting more than 8 in 10 Americans at least partly vaccinated has helped enormously, too.

But as Noah Rothman at National Review observed, the pandemic infrastructure and hardline COVID fighters are nowhere near ready to throw in the towel:

“Yes,” University of Texas epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina declared without hesitation earlier this month when PBS Newshour host John Yang asked if she would again recommend masking in response to a recent uptick in COVID-19 infections. “You should be wearing masks in crowded areas, especially during a surge.” But “what about at home?” or “when you’re walking on the street?” Yang asked. “So, certainly at home it works, if you want to reduce household transmission,” Jetelina replied. She did, however, admit that masking while “walking your dog” is unnecessary as long as you preserve your “distance” from the society around you.

I will leave it to experts to debate the science of what Rothman rightly calls the “mask wars,” but as a political malady, the diagnosis is an easy one. Masking, for or against, has become a potent shibboleth in America’s civic life. Today, the use of a mask in public, or the refusal to wear one when asked, is as strong of a symbol as a MAGA hat. While this is unfair to those who have to wear masks because of their own health concerns, or those of their loved ones, there’s no missing the larger signals.

COVID conscientiousness or laxity early on defied easy political sorting. But certainly by the end of the pandemic, it had been divided along hard, intense partisan lines. In a country as thoroughly geographically sorted as ours, though, neighborhoods can follow their own preferences on these matters.

But the partisan sorting of COVID response has serious consequences for the parties themselves. 

When we look at how Donald Trump lost his re-election bid, there are many causes, but none so clear as his inability to address public concerns about COVID. At a time when the country was looking for steady leadership and reassurance, Trump was all over the place. In a world in which Trump could have summoned the self-discipline to allow his well-regarded coronavirus task force, led by then-Vice President Mike Pence, to continue to lead the response, it’s easy to see Trump winning a second term. He went another way … 

The most obvious reason for Trump’s incoherence on COVID was the competing political pressures from the general electorate that was sincerely worried and a Republican base that was increasingly hostile to the control being exerted by public health authorities at the federal, state, and local levels.

President Biden has faced similar problems from the other direction. As the general electorate grew weary of the rules and disruptions of pandemic policies, especially after vaccines became widely available, the base of his own party was reluctant to let go. The defeat of the once heavily favored Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia in 2021 had many causes, but none more evident than the frustration of families with schools that had remained shuttered well into a fourth semester.

The demands of education unions and general COVID concern in the Democrats’ urban, progressive strongholds were in tension with what Biden needed to show the general electorate: that things were finally getting back to normal.

For most of the past year, those tensions have faded. While Biden took some heat from the party base for officially ending the pandemic emergency in April, the march toward normalcy has continued apace. While Americans are unhappy with the lingering effects of inflation driven by the massive bipartisan spending glut from the shutdown era, the conversation has moved on. There’s even some optimism creeping in.

That’s why the return of COVID anxiety poses a significant potential problem for the party in power. If the “intense monitoring and vigilance” phase returns in any significant way, regardless of transmission rates, it will cost Democrats dearly with the same suburban voters on whom the party’s hopes rest for 2024. 

Anything that looks like a lockdown, a school closure, or a mask mandate will be anathema to the very constituency that put Biden in the White House and spared Democrats from a midterm wipeout in 2022.

Holy croakano! We welcome your feedback, so please email us with your tips, corrections, reactions, amplifications, etc. at STIREWALTISMS@THEDISPATCH.COM. If you’d like to be considered for publication, please include your real name and hometown. If you don’t want your comments to be made public, please specify.

STATSHOT

Biden Job Performance
Average approval: 41.0%
Average disapproval: 53.2%
Net score: -12.2 points 

Change from one week ago: ↑ 1.0 points                        
Change from one month ago: ↓ 2.8 points

[Average includes: Emerson: 42% approve-47% disapprove; Fox News: 42% approve-58% disapprove; Marist: 42% approve-52% disapprove; Quinnipiac: 39% approve-55% disapprove; Reuters/Ipsos: 40% approve-54% disapprove]

Polling Roulette

[NBC News/Des Moines Register poll of Iowa GOP, August 13-17, 2023]

TIME OUT: LIVE MÁS, GREGORY GREGORY 

Washington Post: “Gregory Gregory is a man of many titles: a grandfather, a Jersey Shore restaurateur and raconteur, a 71-year-old with the same first and last name. … But he is best known for something else: Gregory has promoted the bar as the home of the original Taco Tuesday. … It’s a custom that comes in the form of two hard-shell ground beef tacos with taco seasoning, lettuce, tomatoes and shredded cheddar cheese that Gregory’s serves with a spork in a red basket and sells for $3.50. … The future of Gregory’s Taco Tuesday trademark in the state of New Jersey now faces uncertainty amid Taco Bell’s petition seeking to cancel the trademark. … Gregory acknowledges he does not know how long his business can keep up a legal fight with a conglomerate like Taco Bell. … But he can’t think about that now, because he needs to get back to work. It is Taco Tuesday, and tacos are still on the menu.”

VIVEK STEALS SPOTLIGHT AS TRUMP EMERGES UNSCATHED

Wall Street Journal: “Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy entrepreneur, started the debate as one of the least-known candidates of the eight on stage. But he was a formidable if combative presence throughout the event, interrupting and tussling with far more experienced politicians and exciting the feisty audience with red-meat statements. … Ramaswamy also offered a forceful defense of Trump. … Ron DeSantis didn’t make any apparent slip-ups during the debate, a steady performance that might reassure any voters and donors. … But he didn’t draw direct attacks or engagement from the other seven candidates on the stage, a suggestion that they no longer saw him as the same threat. … The question for the GOP field is whether Ramaswamy can turn his debate performance into more support, even if overtaking Trump still appears unlikely.”

But on defense over 9/11 conspiracy questions: The Hill: “Vivek Ramaswamy is seeking to clean up comments he made that appeared to cast doubt about the origins of the 9/11 attacks as part of an interview released just before the first GOP presidential debate. … In the quote in question, Ramaswamy said: ‘I think it is legitimate to say, “How many police, how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers?”’ … After Ramaswamy claimed he was misquoted, The Atlantic responded by saying that Ramaswamy was quoted correctly. It also released a recording of the interview showing the quote was correct. … It is way too early to tell whether the 9/11 remarks will hurt Ramaswamy, who has cast himself as a millennial version of former President Trump.”

Higher thresholds will thin second debate field: New York Times: “To qualify for the second debate, which will be held on Sept. 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., candidates must register at least 3 percent support in a minimum of two national polls. … The R.N.C. is also lifting its fund-raising benchmarks. Only candidates who have received financial support from 50,000 donors will make the debate stage, which is 10,000 more than they needed for the first debate. … As of Wednesday, seven Republicans were averaging at least 3 percent support in national polls. … Based on the R.N.C.’s polling requirements, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor, are in jeopardy of not qualifying for the second debate.” 

Iowa Poll: DeSantis secures second, Scott surges to third: Des Moines Register: “Donald Trump holds a commanding lead over the rest of the 2024 Republican presidential field in Iowa—and a more than 2-to-1 lead over his closest rival. … Among those likely caucus goers, 42% say they plan to support Trump — a lead of 23 percentage points over DeSantis, who is at 19%. U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina follows in third place with 9%. … The poll finds many indicators of Trump’s strength, but the race is not settled and may be ‘closer than it may first seem,’ said J. Ann Selzer. … Plenty could shift by Caucus Day on Jan. 15. A majority, or 52%, of likely GOP caucus goers have a first choice for president and say they could still be persuaded to support a different candidate, while 40% say their minds are made up. Seven percent do not have a first-choice candidate.”

Georgia GOP infighting could tilt Peach State to Biden: Wall Street Journal: “Fani Willis’s expansive racketeering case, which alleges that Trump and his allies ran a criminal enterprise seeking to seize a presidential term, has shown that the Trump loyalists and the increasingly vocal ‘let’s move on’ faction are still worlds apart. … The divergent visions for the party put it at a disadvantage on messaging, fundraising and organization ahead of 2024, calling into question Republicans’ ability to win over voters in a battleground state. … Some Georgia Republicans worry their own drama will hand the Democrats a victory. … Others hope the indictments will unite the party against Democrats, who many in the GOP say are weaponizing the legal system to go after political opponents. … [The charges] have animated Trump stalwarts in the GOP but potentially damaged Trump’s general-election chances with swing voters.”

BRIEFLY

Dems draw solid recruit to challenge Florida Sen. Rick Scott—Politico

Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor dips a toe into New Hampshire —NBC News 

Redistricting fight leaves New York battlegrounds in flux—Politico

Virginia Dems try to hamper GOP midterm effort with talk of Youngkin presidential  bid—NBC News

WITHIN EARSHOT: SOCIALLY DISTANT

“You may see eye candy sitting down somewhere, you may want to park and come and slip them your number. Hey, listen, come have fun, man.”—Mayor Eric Adams announces the extension of New York City’s outdoor dining policies in a press conference last week. 

MAILBAG

“There’s been some talk of third parties at The Dispatch lately, so I figured I’d ask you about them. Not No Labels, though. I was wondering about Andrew Yang’s venture, the Forward Party. What do you think their impact will be, if any, on the elections in 2024?”—Jack Funke, Poplar Bluff, Missouri

I have done my best to ignore the Forward Party, not out of any animus but mostly out of considerations of time. The group, founded by former Democratic presidential candidate Yang and the former Republican governor of New Jersey, Christine Todd Whitman, seems like it is in about the same place as No Labels was a decade ago. It strives to create an alternative to the dysfunctional and unpopular two-party duopoly—so far, so good—but has no ideological North Star to guide it—uh, oh—and seems defined by the ambitions of a founder, Yang, who is focused on process and procedure—woof. It feels like the Libertarian Party, but for big government. No Labels works as a congressional coalition, the Problem Solvers Caucus, because it is a haven for the small number of members who hail from swing districts. They found a way to increase their power in a narrowly divided House of Representatives by banding together. It is explicitly moderate and seeks to exercise a veto on radicalism in both parties. It’s like a governor on an engine that is prone to overheating. That same mission seems to inform the presidential component of the No Labels effort. It’s not a replacement for the two-party system so much as an extension. The two biggest problems facing No Labels right now are ballot access (10 states is a start, but only barely) and candidate selection. I don’t mean which candidate it selects, but how the process works. There are plenty of people who might be interested in being the alternative candidate in an election as glum as the one next year is shaping up to be. But here, No Labels could take something from Yang’s project. A party without a transparent process for picking a nominee seems unlikely to inspire confidence and would seem to be more astroturf than grass roots. 

“Help me understand how polls are even +\- whatever accurate these days? Since the 2016 polling debacle this has been on my mind. Phone polls: who answers unknown numbers these days? Small business people? Journalists looking for a scoop? Okay, probably so but are they going to take the time to answer a survey? Old people who are desperate to talk to anyone? That’s a great cross-section of America … Internet surveys: probably the most responsive method nowadays but that still limits the participants to people who check their email regularly and have the time and inclination to answer surveys. How many young parents think, oh, I will take time from my family, work, and ME to take a survey? Full disclosure, I’m retired and agreed to participate in Ipsos surveys mainly to see how this survey process works. You are one of my favorite writers at The Dispatch, shhhhh, don’t tell Jonah … well, or Nick, or Kevin or Sarah or Declan!! This is my first year as a subscriber and I’ve finally found a political home.”—Nan Sansone, Chesnee, South Carolina

You are very kind and very welcome here, Ms. Sansone! First, the good news: Polls did very well in 2022. Now the bad news: We have little idea if that success can be replicated in 2024. You have correctly identified the big problem in public opinion research these days. Response rates for traditional polling, the kind conducted by live interviewers calling voters on cell phones and landlines, have taken a beating. The ubiquity of caller ID and an aversion to annoying spam calls have conditioned Americans to not answer calls from unknown numbers. Online polls don’t make the grade because there is too high a degree of self-selection. You have to be a) online and b) willing to risk phishing expeditions by scammers. As for the 2016 polls, they were actually better than they were in 2012, when polls dramatically understated the performance of the incumbent president. What makes the 2016 contest so memorable is that in a very close race, the error fell on the wrong side of the result. We knew Donald Trump would lose the popular vote, but because polls understated his support, we weren’t looking closely enough at his potential path to, as Jonah would say, “pick the lock of the Electoral College.”

“I hate to say this, but if I were Trump I’d do exactly what he’s doing. If you’re ~50 points ahead of your next rival, why give them a chance to make nasty accusations at you on TV?  And this is a good thing for Tucker Carlson too. Fox fired him, not because the audience didn’t love him, but because his stupid emails revealed things that cost them a fortune in a lawsuit. I assume the Republican debate is on Fox—if the Trump/Carlson love fest on Truth Social wins the ratings war against the debate, they’ll both have the last laugh.”—Michael Taglieri, Staten Island, New York

I think America’s political class continues to overcompensate for its 2016 misapprehensions about Trump. It is certainly true that Trump is leading his closest competitors by 40 points or so in recent polling. Sitting on slightly more than half of the national GOP vote is definitely a good place to be before Labor Day the year before the election. But which direction do you suppose Trump is heading from here? I don’t imagine there can be many Republicans who haven’t formed clear opinions about Trump. He may end up with two-thirds of the party’s support in the end, but that would be from the coalition effect among persuadable voters after the outcome is clear. Between now and then, though, Trump will face increasing pressure as other candidates gain name recognition. While he didn’t need to participate in the first debate, it was a decision he could afford to make because of the size of his advantage. Essentially, he could cash in some of his lead in exchange for not facing the risks that would come from being in the barrel in Milwaukee. But in the weeks to come, he will have to figure out a way to deal with Vivek Ramaswamy, who is a genuine threat to Trump’s support with younger, more radical voters. Trump’s support will sag at some point between now and Iowa—at least once—how much and for how long will depend on many factors including how Republicans perceive his vulnerability to criminal conviction, the canniness of his competitors, and his capacity to remain disciplined. Trump is obviously the most likely winner of the GOP nomination next year, but that won’t happen, if it does, in a straight line from today.   

You should email us! Write to STIREWALTISMS@THEDISPATCH.COM with your tips, kudos, criticisms, insights, rediscovered words, wonderful names, recipes and, always, good jokes. Please include your real name—at least first and last—and hometown. Make sure to let me know in the email if you want to keep your submission private. My colleague, the perspicatious Nate Moore, and I will look for your emails and then share the most interesting ones and my responses here. Clickety clack!

CUTLINE CONTEST: THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING

You people made the last week of the August contest very tough! Lots of great entries for the picture of former President Donald Trump looking pained in his follow-through on a drive. The winner, and final contestant for this month’s fabulous prize, followed the immortal wisdom of golf sage Harvey Penick: “Take dead aim!”

“All right Donnie, don’t let them know you missed the ball, just keep looking at the pin and declare a hole in one.”—Mitch Reed, Ballston Lake, New York

Winner, Kim Jong-il Sportsmanship Award Division:

“That guy from North Korea shot an 18? I will beat that today.”—Doug Leo, Scottsdale, Arizona

Winner, Ty Webb Institute for Leadership and Dolphin Hunting Division:

“Oh, don’t sell yourself short, Donny. You’re a tremendous slouch.”—Bob Culwell, Englewood, Colorado

Winner, People Are Spraying Division:

“TEN! Fore is for losers.”—Linda McKee, DuBois, Pennsylvania

Winner, Your Honor Division:

“Four!”—Richard Miles, Washington, District of Columbia

Winner, That’s a Lot of Skins Division:

“Look Brad, I just need 11,780 strokes. Because I won and it’s not fair that they are saying I didn’t.”—Albert Turk, Benson, Arizona

Winner, No Malarkey Division:

“Hoo boy! That’s more Mulligans than the Dublin phone directory”—Steve McCardell, Redding, Connecticut

Winner, Hey-o Division: 

“Not ANOTHER hooker!”—Jim Laufenberg, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin

Our August contest winner was also channeling the distinctive voice of the former president. Reader Bob Lepine of Little Rock, Arkansas, overcame stiff competition with his caption for side-by-side photos of President Biden and Trump holding up clenched hands: “Some people say mine is a rock too, but it’s actually a wadded up piece of paper, and paper covers rock, so I win. Again.” Your prize, Mr. Lepine, is a 1961 edition of Schaper Toys’ honest-to-goodness rock, paper, scissors board game. What could be more mid-century than developing a plastic game in a box to replicate a game that is appealing because it requires no special equipment and can be played anywhere? Pop a Swanson TV Dinner in your Frigidaire Thrifty 30 and get ready for hours of family fun! Just email us your address so we can send it along.

Send your proposed cutline for the picture that appears at the top of this newsletter to STIREWALTISMS@THEDISPATCH.COM. We will pick the best entrants for each week and an appropriate reward for the best of this month—even beyond the glory and adulation that will surely follow. Be hilarious, don’t be too dirty, and never be cruel. Include your full name and hometown. Have fun!

PORCH PIRATES, LEVELED UP

WAGA: “An Arnco [Georgia] man is accused of being a porch pirate, literally stealing a porch from a neighbor’s front yard. Robin Swanger is facing a felony charge. Investigators say it happened on Clemit Harris Road in Arnco. Although the property from which the porch was stolen has the appearance of being abandoned, the owner says the stuff on it was not up for grabs. … For one thing, there were ‘no trespassing’ signs up, and investigators say Swanger blew past them when he helped himself to a wooden porch left on the property when the home was taken away. ‘It’s a full 8’ by 10’ porch. It would be what goes onto [a home] for entry and exit,’ said Investigator Chris Stapler with the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office.”

Chris Stirewalt is a contributing editor at The Dispatch, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the politics editor for NewsNation, co-host of the Ink Stained Wretches podcast, and author of Broken News, a book on media and politics. Nate Moore contributed to this report.

The post The Return of COVID Anxiety Poses Problems for Democrats appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Don’t get me wrong, when Americans vote next year, most won’t be thinking about Taliban forces marching into Kabul in 2021, horrific images of Afghans clinging to and then falling from departing U.S. military aircraft, or the 13 Americans killed by a suicide bomber at the Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate. But those catastrophic moments indelibly shifted Americans’ opinions of Biden’s presidency.

Continue reading in The Washington Post.

The post Biden’s Disastrous Pullout from Afghanistan Could Cost Him Reelection appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Show Notes:

– The Remnant with Michael H. Parsons (rat guy)

– The Dispatch Podcast on the debate that didn’t matter

– A post-debate Dispatch Live 

– Jonah breaks down the debate with Chuck Todd

– Tevi Troy: “Moderators Have Ruined Presidential Debates. Let’s Get Rid of Them.”

– The Remnant with Luke Coffey

The post Rat Races appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

In a 126-page detailed legal analysis, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen conclude that the 14th Amendment, added to the Constitution after the Civil War, bars “any person who had previously taken an oath to support the Constitution” from “any office, civil or military, under the United States, if that person “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Obviously, this language was initially intended to bar from office any person who had sworn allegiance to the Constitution but had then been an official of the Confederacy. But as the authors point out, there is no reason to suppose that the language is not still binding on a person who has sworn allegiance to the Constitution and then violated that oath.

Importantly, this constitutional provision can be enforced by any citizen, or by any official of a local, state, or the federal government, so it’s now only a matter of time before a suit is brought to disqualify Mr. Trump. Obviously, this case will have to be resolved by the Supreme Court.

The key issue before the Court will be whether Mr. Trump has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States, or gave “aid and comfort” to its “enemies.” On this issue, professors Baude and Paulsen write:

Did President Trump’s “willful, deliberate refusal to accept the outcome of the lawful constitutional election resulting in his defeat for re-election and, instead, his (and others’) attempt to overthrow constitutional election results and install or maintain himself in office, by force, by fraud or by attempted de facto political coup d’etat against the regime of lawful constitutional government, constitute engaging in ‘insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution of the United States’”? “We think the answer is yes.” [emphasis in the original]

This is also the issue in Mr. Trump’s second indictment (the so-called January 6 case). That case is based on his alleged violation of various US statutes—but many lawyers have found the statutory foundation of the indictment to be weak and vague. For example, the statutory prohibition against insurrection was not cited in the indictment, probably because an insurrection today implies violence. Instead, Mr. Trump was charged with (i) conspiracy to defraud the United States, (ii) conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, (iii) obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and (iv) conspiracy against rights. These statutes may be applicable to the facts as presented at trial, but may not be clear enough to persuade jurors to convict Mr. Trump.

However, professors Baude and Paulson point out that the language of the 14th Amendment may be read more broadly than a statute, since its purpose was to disqualify someone from office who has violated his previous oath to support the Constitution.

The case for disqualification is strong. There is abundant evidence that Trump deliberately set out to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election result, calling it ‘stolen’ and ‘rigged’; that Trump (with the assistance of others) pursued numerous schemes to effectuate this objective; that among these were efforts to alter the vote counts of several states by force, by fraud or by intended intimidation of state election officials, to pressure or persuade state legislatures and /or courts unlawfully to overturn state election results, to assemble and induce others to submit bogus slates of competing state electors, to persuade or pressure Congress to refuse to count electors’ votes submitted by several states, and finally, to pressure the Vice President to overturn state election results in his role of presiding over the counting of electors’ votes. . . The bottom line is that Donald Trump both “engaged in” “insurrection or rebellion” and gave “aid and comfort” to others engaging in such conduct, within the original meaning of those terms as employed in Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The reference to “original meaning” in this sentence should not be ignored. The authors are talking to an originalist Supreme Court and urging upon them a rule that Donald Trump—who previously had sworn to support the Constitution at his inauguration—had now betrayed his oath of office and is no longer eligible to hold an office under the United States.

The post A Summary of the Baude-Paulsen Paper on Donald Trump’s Ineligibility to Run for President appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) is growing in popularity among election reformers, who have coalesced in particular around Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), a specific form of RCV that has recently been adopted in Maine and Alaska and will likely be proposed in many more states as ballot initiatives in the coming years. While reformers hope that IRV can ameliorate extremism and political polarization, this paper presents empirical evidence that undercuts these hopes. For instance, Alaska’s very first election following the state’s adoption of IRV signaled that the method may fail to elect the candidate most preferred by a majority of the state’s voters. Extrapolating from Alaska’s experience, and using a nationally representative sample of over 50,000 voters, we analyze the prospective effects of adopting IRV in every state. This analysis shows that IRV tends to produce winning candidates who are more divergent ideologically from their state’s median voter than do other forms of RCV. And the effect is most pronounced in the most polarized states—precisely the electorates for which IRV is being promoted as an antidote to existing divisiveness. We conclude by highlighting other formulations of RCV that result in more representative outcomes and are thereby better positioned to combat extremism and political polarization.

Click here to access the current version of the paper.

The post Beyond the Spoiler Effect: Can Ranked Choice Voting Solve the Problem of Political Polarization? appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Show Notes:

–Dr. George’s webpage

–Dr. George: “Universities Shouldn’t Take Political Positions”

–Dr. George: “How Universities Can Restore Academic Freedom and Free Speech”

–Dr. George’s advice for incoming students

–Julien Benda’s The Treason of the Intellectuals

The post He Ain’t Heavy, He’s Brother George appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

But how much stronger is the Democrats’ case in this regard? For partisan Democrats, the answer is “infinitely stronger”—but it is not among partisan Democrats that the next election will be decided but among more persuadable voters for whom this is a tougher call. This is reflected in the continuing failure of Biden to open up much of a lead over Trump, his probable general election opponent, and even tighter polling in the generic congressional ballot for 2024.

This should worry Democrats a great deal. Given the dysfunctional and weakened nature of today’s Republican Party, why isn’t their party an easier sell? The simplest answer is that they, themselves, are not that attractive. What might it take for Democrats to get over the hurdle and make themselves the clear and easy choice as America’s common-sense, normie voter party and not just in the friendly environs of the country’s cosmopolitan metro areas?

Below are ten statements that I first formulated a couple of years ago that encapsulate some of what “Common Sense Democrats” might stand for. Since then these statements have been tested in statewide polls in the very blue state of Massachusetts and the purple state of Wisconsin and received overwhelming support. (I should note that the statements were simply tested as is, rather than reworded for survey purposes, but the results were striking nonetheless.) Most recently, the ten statements were tested nationally from April to June among over 18,000 registered voters by RMG Research.

Here are the results:

• Equality of opportunity is a fundamental American principle; equality of outcome is not. (73 percent agree/13 percent disagree)
• America is not perfect but it is good to be patriotic and proud of the country. (81 percent agree/14 percent disagree)
• Discrimination and racism are bad but they are not the cause of all disparities in American society. (70 percent agree/24 percent disagree)
• No one is completely without bias but calling all white people racists who benefit from white privilege and American society a white supremacist society is not right or fair. (77 percent agree/15 percent disagree)
• America benefits from the presence of immigrants and no immigrant, even if illegal, should be mistreated. But border security is still important, as is an enforceable system that fairly decides who can enter the country. (78 percent agree/14 percent disagree)
• Police misconduct and brutality against people of any race is wrong and we need to reform police conduct and recruitment. More and better policing is needed for public safety and that cannot be provided by “defunding the police.” (79 percent agree/15 percent disagree)
• There are underlying differences between men and women but discrimination on the basis of gender is wrong. (82 percent agree/12 percent disagree)
• There are basically two genders, but people who want to live as a gender different from their biological sex should have that right and not be discriminated against. However, there are issues around child consent to transitioning and participation in women’s sports that are complicated and far from settled. (73 percent agree/17 percent disagree)
• Racial achievement gaps are bad and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism and standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races. (74 percent agree/16 percent disagree)
• Language policing has gone too far; by and large, people should be able to express their views without fear of sanction by employer, school, institution or government. Good faith should be assumed, not bad faith. (76 percent agree/14 percetn disagree)

It could be argued that these statements are too easy to agree with and are just common sense. But if they’re all just common sense, why do so many Democrats have trouble saying these things? Indeed, how comfortable would most Democratic Party politicians be endorsing the full range of these views? Would Joe Biden? I don’t think so.

Here’s another common-sense proposition:

• Climate change is a serious problem but it won’t be solved overnight. As we move toward a clean energy economy with an “all of the above” strategy, energy must continue to be cheap, reliable and abundant. That means fossil fuels, especially natural gas, will continue to be an important part of the mix.

While this specific proposition has not been tested, items close to it have been. In a question originally posed by Pew, the public has been asked to choose their preferred approach to the country’s energy supply: “Use a mix of energy sources including oil, coal and natural gas along with renewable energy sources” or “Phase out the use of oil, coal and natural gas completely, relying instead on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power only.”

Likewise, in a 6,000 respondent survey recently conducted by AEI’s Survey Center on American Life and the National Opinion Research Center, the split between these options was overwhelming: 72 percent for the all-of-the-above approach, including fossil fuels, to 26 percent for the rapid renewables transition. The split was even more lop-sided among working-class (noncollege) respondents, as it was among political moderates. Another victory for common sense.

Similarly in The Liberal Patriot’s recent 3,000 respondent survey conducted by YouGov, voters were given three options:

• We need a rapid green transition to end the use of fossil fuels and replace them with fully renewable energy sources;
• We need an “all-of-the above” strategy that provides abundant and cheap energy from multiple sources including oil and gas to renewables to advanced nuclear power; or
• We need to stop the push to replace domestic oil and gas production with unproven green energy projects that raise costs and undercut jobs.

The first position, emphasizing ending the use of fossil fuels and rapidly adopting renewables, most closely resembles the current Democratic approach—but was embraced by just 29 percent of voters. In contrast, the most popular position was the second, all-of-the above approach that emphasizes energy abundance and the use of fossil fuels and renewables and nuclear, favored by 46 percent of voters. Another quarter just wanted to stick with fossil fuels.

Further analysis shows that moderates favored the all-of-the-above approach by 58 percent to 23 percent support for the rapid renewables transition, as did 54 percent of independents, with a mere 18 percent favoring the rapid transition to renewables. Once again, common sense carries the day.

This common-sense approach, and the Democrats’ failure to clearly embrace it, is likely to loom ever-larger in coming months. The Democrats’ energy and general economic strategy as instantiated in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act is heavily invested in a rapid transition to a renewables-based energy system. It is becoming increasingly obvious, and not just in Europe, that this strategy does not, in fact, produce energy that is cheap, reliable, and abundant, and therefore virtually guarantees voter backlash.

A recent Politico article detailed the evolving situation in the very blue state of New York:

A generational push to tackle climate change in New York is quickly becoming a pocketbook issue headed into 2024.

Some upstate New York electric customers are already paying 10 percent of their utility bill to support the state’s effort to move off fossil fuels and into renewable energy. In the coming years, people across the state can expect to give up even bigger chunks of their income to the programs — $48 billion in projects is set to be funded by consumers over the next two decades.

The scenario is creating a headache for New York Democrats grappling with the practical and political risk of the transition.

It’s an early sign of the dangers Democrats across the country will face as they press forward with similar policies at the state and federal level. New Jersey, Maryland and California are also wrestling with the issue and, in some cases, are reconsidering their ambitious plans….

The costs of the state’s renewable energy mandates are being paid for almost solely by New York residents and businesses through their electric bills. With renewable developers asking for higher subsidies to deal with inflation, those costs are expected to increase while expected savings from the transition takes longer to materialize.

Democrats who control New York’s government are increasingly worried about the fallout.

“I’m very concerned about the cost and the impact on our ratepayers, our constituents,” said Assemblymember Didi Barrett, a Hudson Valley Democrat who chairs the chamber’s Energy Committee. “People right now are already complaining about where their utility costs are, so it has to be part of the conversation.”

We’ll see more of this as Democrats continue to press the accelerator on their preferred energy approach, instead of the public’s preferred common sense approach. So… on this, as on all the other issues mentioned above, what is preventing Democrats from embracing common sense and meeting voters where they are, as opposed to demanding that voters abandon their common sense and meet Democrats where they are?

The answer has a great deal to do with the shifting base of the Democratic Party and its increased domination by liberal, college-educated voters. But it’s not just the demographics of these voters and associated activists, it’s the style of politics they tend to practice.

As Matt Yglesias has pointed out, it’s the moralization of political choices, which has made sensible, pragmatic positions increasingly difficult for Democrats on issues favored these voters. Everything has become a matter of principle and cannot be compromised on because compromise is immoral on matters of principle:

Over the past 20–30 years, the voting base of the Democratic Party has become a lot more educated and upscale.

One might have predicted that would lead to the adoption of a more moderate stance on economic issues, but that hasn’t really happened.…At the same time, it’s not a coincidence that the Biden administration has enacted only small increases in the generosity of the welfare state, even though they’ve proposed huge ones. Democrats didn’t have the votes to enact the full Biden agenda, and running up against hard fiscal constraints, they chose to spend more on climate change than on welfare state expansion. And I think you can see how, from the point of view of a working-class person who (like most people) does not care that much about climate change, this can look like an abandonment of the traditional economic agenda.

That’s especially true if thought leaders are putting forward the idea that economic issues have, in some sense, lower moral stakes than other issues.

In particular, I think it’s worth considering the impact of this way of thinking on cross-pressured voters. Imagine a Texan who favors Medicaid expansion but thinks student athletes should play on chromosomally-appropriate sports teams. Well, you could tell that person that Medicaid has enormous concrete stakes for 1.4 million uninsured Texans while the sports issue impacts a tiny number of people.

But if progressives take the view that identity issues are fundamental moral principles and are too important to brook any compromise, that encourages people with the non-progressive view to see it the same way….

As Democrats have become more upscale, they haven’t shifted their policy platform on economics to the right. But they have become less interested in forming big tent electoral coalitions to maximize the odds of welfare state expansion and more interested in ideological purity and uncompromising moral stands.

That’s today’s Democratic Party. And that’s why Democrats are not yet the common-sense, normie voter party despite their abysmal competition. That’s too bad, since America could really use one about now.

The post Normie Voters Want Common-Sense Politics! appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

“A movement can’t be about the personality of one individual,” DeSantis told the Florida Standard. “If all we are is listless vessels that’s just supposed to follow, you know, whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning, that’s not going to be a durable movement.”

He prefaced his “listless vessel” line, by noting that the case for Trump has been “totally detached from any type of substance.” Conservatism and the Republican Party, he said, have got to be about the question, “What are you trying to achieve on behalf of the American people? And that’s got to be based in principle.”

It’s a bit frustrating that DeSantis is only saying this now, as some of us have been saying this for the better part of a decade. Years of listlessness have created an environment where Republican voters now say they think Trump tells the truth more than religious leaders or their own families. I’m not convinced they actually believe this, but the response certainly speaks to the dysfunction on the right.

Even more annoying: DeSantis is himself a recovering listless vessel. His most famous ad in his 2018 bid for governor showed him reading bedtime stories to his baby about Donald Trump and teaching his daughter to read with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” yard signs.

The Trump world’s response to DeSantis’ “listless vessel” line—which was clearly not intended as an insult, given that he referred to “we”—was not only predictably whiny, it largely proved his point. All weekend, with ample boosting from Fox News, Trump surrogates tried to spin the comments as a replay of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” moment. The spokesperson for the aptly named MAGA Inc. declared, “DeSantis must immediately apologize for his disgraceful insult.”

Given that DeSantis’ campaign motto is “Never Back Down,” one would hope he won’t give in to Trump’s patented crybullying.

But that’s not assured. A debate prep memo from a super PAC supporting DeSantis was made public last week. (Super PACs can’t directly coordinate with campaigns, so this was apparently seen as a clever work-around.)

In the hothouse world of campaign nerds, it has already earned a spot in the Hall of Fame of unforced errors, given that it’s a pas de deux of banality and listlessness. Drafted by the shop of Never Back Down PAC’s chief strategist Jeff Roe, it advised DeSantis to: “1. Attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times. 2. State (DeSantis’) positive vision 2-3 times. 3. Hammer Vivek Ramaswamy in a response. 4. Defend Donald Trump in absentia in response to a Chris Christie attack.”

The first problem is that by making this advice public, it’s much harder for DeSantis to follow it. It’s almost an in-kind donation to Christie, who will surely monitor DeSantis’ attacks and sarcastically point them out.

Second, DeSantis shouldn’t need to be told points 1 and 2, while points 3 and 4 reveal how scared his campaign is of Trump.

Of course, DeSantis is not alone. With the exception of Christie, Asa Hutchinson, and the underrated Will Hurd, the other candidates are all desperately running to come in second to Trump. Hence the advice to DeSantis to defend Trump and “take a sledge-hammer” to Ramaswamy, preferably with Trumpy nicknames like “Fake Vivek” or “Vivek the Fake.”

Mike Pence, by his own book-length eyewitness account of the events that led to Trump’s federal and state criminal indictments, argues that Trump tried to violate the Constitution and overturn the election. Yet now he says Trump should be given the “presumption of innocence” and that he “would have preferred that these matters be left to the judgment of the American people.” That’s fine for legal punditry, but rhetorically weird for someone running against the quarce-indicted Trump.

To one extent or another, all of the candidates—Christie included—have been complicit in turning the GOP into a vast armada of listless vessels. But at least Christie’s trying to atone by honestly, and full-throatedly, addressing Trump’s unfitness for office.

The rest are waiting for a deus ex machina to remove the runaway frontrunner for them. It’s the only way to explain why DeSantis’ brain trust wants him to “hammer” Vivek the Fake while defending Trump. Of course, the only plausible mechanism for that deus ex machina is the criminal justice system, which all of the candidates have spent their days attacking and delegitimizing.

I’m glad DeSantis sees the mess he helped create so clearly, but identifying the problem is only the first step to remedying it. What’s required is more truth-telling and listfulness than the GOP crowd wants, which is why both qualities are in such short supply.

The post Will DeSantis Stay on the Attack Against Trump? appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Show Notes:

–Robert’s webpage

–Robert’s new book, The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China

–Robert: “Order After Empire: The Roots of Instability in the Middle East”

–Robert: “Will America Share Rome’s Fate?”

–Frederick Kagan: “Biden Could Have Stopped the Taliban. He Chose Not To.

–Orlando Figes’ The Story of Russia

The post The Kaplan Chronicles appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Reporters have an incentive to focus on such things. Being the first to spot a change in course — leading the pack — is a source of professional pride. But the fundamentals remain potentially dispositive.

Jimmy Carter’s astute advisers were able to keep his campaign above water for months in the 1980 cycle. But when the election returns came in, his low job rating on most issues was reflected in his 41 percent share of the vote, enough to carry only six states.

One lesson of that campaign, and of many others, is that voters seek in presidential candidates qualities that they find lacking in the current president. Voters in 1960, accustomed to what were then considered elderly incumbents (every president for the preceding 18 years was in his 60s, and Dwight Eisenhower turned 70 three weeks before Election Day), opted for the outwardly vigorous 43-year-old John Kennedy.

The fundamentals in this case are that majorities of voters are inclined to reject each of the two most recent incumbent presidents, even though they register hefty majorities in polls of their party’s primary voters, 64 percent for Joe Biden and 55 percent for Donald Trump.

Majority rejection of the 45th and 46th presidents is not a momentary phenomenon. In the 91 months since Trump was inaugurated, incumbent presidents have enjoyed majority approval in only seven months and have fallen short in 84 months.

That’s 92 percent of the time over the last seven years and seven months, an even higher percentage than during the seven years leading up to the 1980 election, during the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter.

It’s not hard to think of reasons why: Trump’s uncouth insults and vacillating policies, Biden’s visible aging and extreme policies, both men’s penchant for transparent untruths (or, in the opposition party’s parlance, lies).

Their support in primary polling seems to reflect a sincere inability on the part of their co-partisans, in a time of sharp partisanship, to understand why most of their fellow citizens do not appreciate their performance.

But not all partisans are blind to the views of others. In the early caucus and primary states, where candidates have been most active and voters most engaged, Trump has been polling below 50 percent, significantly below his national average — 43 percent in Iowa, 44 percent in New Hampshire, and 46 percent in South Carolina.

The Des Moines Register/NBC poll, conducted by the astonishingly good pollster J. Ann Selzer, showed Trump leading DeSantis by a 42-19 percent margin. That sounds like a whopping lead, and in a general election poll, where most voters tend to support their party’s candidates, it would be.

But in primaries, and especially the Iowa caucuses, preferences are more fluid. As the veteran poll analyst Nate Silver points out, since 2004, only one of the Republican or Democratic candidates leading in Iowa polling at this stage of the cycle has won the Iowa caucuses, and that candidate (Hillary Clinton in 2016) won by only 1 percent.

“The Selzer poll is good for Trump, but it’s not consistent with the view that his nomination is more-or-less inevitable,” Silver wrote. “Trump is ‘only’ 68 percent at prediction markets, which to me seems low, but lotta folks here are treating him at ~99 percent, which is definitely too high.”

That suggests that Silver puts a Trump opponent’s chances of winning the Republican nomination somewhere around 29 percent, which his Fivethirtyeight.com estimated as Trump’s chance of winning the 2016 general election.

The problem Trump’s current opponents face is akin to the classic tension between the need to go right (or left) to win the party nomination and then go to the center to win the general election. To be Trump-like enough to win the nomination and to present, for the general election, a contrast with the untruthfulness and aging which, to varying degrees, afflict Trump and Biden.

That’s a difficult but not impossible task. Upsets or even surprisingly strong second-place finishes in early contests can, as in the past, change millions of votes in ensuing primaries. And a potential Republican nominee without Trump’s weaknesses could lead to ructions among Democrats suddenly terrified that Biden could lose.

This week’s debates could change the course of the presidential contest. But so could the fundamentals.

The post Republican Debate: Whatever Happens in the Debate, Fundamentals Could Still Matter appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Nevada’s Republican chairman is named Michael McDonald, and he led a bogus slate of electors from the state trying to help then-President Donald Trump swindle his way to a second term in 2021. Was it more What a Fool Believes or Takin’ it to the Streets? Who knows. What we do know for certain, though, is that he seems determined to make sure Trump is the state party’s choice in its February 8 presidential caucus.

Under normal circumstances, that would still only be a big-ish deal. The caucuses are a relatively new institution, with whatever significance they have carried born of Hillary Clinton’s efforts in 2008 to leverage her support among the Latina voters in the state’s service worker unions into a symbolic win against a surging Barack Obama. It would subsequently become a haven for Bernie Sanders and the democratic socialists. 

On the Republican side, the contest has carried even less weight. It doesn’t award any actual delegates, but works as a kind of a straw poll to inform the decisions of the attendees at the state convention in awarding delegates. With a public, time-consuming process at a limited number of locations, the Republican caucuses in a good year might draw 75,000 participants in a state with more than half a million registered GOP voters.

Nevada was poised this cycle to play its largest role yet on the Republican side. The state legislature voted in 2021 to establish a presidential primary for both parties, rather than the often-convoluted caucus system. Adding to the new status: A February 6 primary date that would put Nevada second on the Democratic calendar and third for the GOP—more than two weeks before the previously pivotal South Carolina contest. 

But McDonald sued to stop the state from holding a Republican presidential primary. Not only would a regular election with a broader electorate raise potential challenges for Trump, it would deprive the Nevada GOP of a massive money-making opportunity. The party is asking $55,000 from every candidate who wants to participate, with an October deadline to decide. Plus, McDonald imagines the possibility for a debate, candidate forums, and other high-profile events ahead of the caucuses, which are set to take place three days before Las Vegas hosts the Super Bowl.

A judge, though, disagreed. Because the primary is nonbinding—the parties don’t have to award delegates based on the outcome—a Carson City court denied the state GOP’s bid to bar elections officials from holding the vote. McDonald and Co. appealed last week to the state Supreme Court, but there’s not much reason to think justices will invalidate a duly passed and enacted law in service of the marketing plan and machinations of caucus planners.

The state party has also vowed that no candidate who enters his or her name in the Tuesday, February 6, primary will be permitted to participate in the Thursday, February 8, caucuses. 

Whatever happens, Nevada Republicans will have a messy 2024. But so what? Lots of state Republican parties are disordered these days. And if history is our guide, the state won’t be that competitive in the general. No Republican presidential candidate has won Nevada since George W. Bush in 2004 and Democrats are 3-0 in Senate contests since 2012.  If the state and its six electors are in play, it will join New Hampshire as the small-state maybe, just maybe possibilities for Republicans to knit together 270 electoral votes.

But the Nevada GOP’s dysfunction will be consequential anyway. The competing presidential nominating contests mean that Nevada is likely to have two different winners in the same week. Given the high probability that Trump will win the caucuses, there’s little disincentive for other candidates to save their $55,000 and enter the primary and there’s zero incentive for Trump to do the same. 

The state accounts for just 1 percent of the total delegates to the Republican National Convention, so the math should be easy for everyone other than Trump: Skip the controversial caucuses and forgo delegates that never had much of a shot to begin with. It will be a muddle, and by the time campaigns and commentators have explained that actually the second contest was more significant than the first, though not itself binding, blah, blah, blah … Nevada will be forgotten faster than a bad hand of blackjack.

And that will have significant effects on the race. The big, fat asterisk the Nevada GOP has put on its contest means that a wide gap in the Republican calendar is getting wider. Iowa starts the process on January 15. Eight days later, New Hampshire will cull the field. And then … zippo, save Nevada’s weirdness, for 32 days until February 24 when South Carolina Republicans vote.

The comparable gap in 2016 was 11 days, and that was long enough to push half of the candidates out of the race. Imagine what will happen in a span three times that long. Would either Nikki Haley or Tim Scott, for example, feel free to spend a month dragging around until their home-state primary if they don’t have a top-shelf showing in Iowa and New Hampshire?  

Imagine also how that length of time will work toward the advantage of the survivors in retooling and fundraising for South Carolina and the following four weeks, during which time 69 percent of all available delegates will be awarded.

On Wednesday, the first debate will start the next phase of the nominating process. That phase runs until January 14. Then Iowa and New Hampshire will remake the race for what promises to be a very consequential month, in which the GOP, if there is to be a real battle for the nomination, will have a chance to sort itself out. 

By trying to fill its coffers and help Trump, the Nevada Republican Party may have done harm to both objectives. 

The post Nevada Republicans Go Bust appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

But it is also clear that Trump bears much responsibility for his predicament. To see why, consider five disastrous choices Trump made over the past three years — mistakes that have given his enemies the pretext to go after him in court, while alienating swing voters and undermining his chances of winning back the presidency.

Continue reading in The Washington Post.

The post Five Trump Mistakes That Undercut His 2024 Reelection Campaign appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Although Democrats will be 100 miles south in the Windy City for their convention this year, the Biden campaign has certainly not forgotten Milwaukee. Vice President Kamala Harris has already visited the city twice since launching her campaign schedule. Last Tuesday, President Joe Biden stopped in Milwaukee to tour a wind turbine facility, his third trip to the Badger State this calendar year.

Milwaukee’s place on center stage is well earned. Few areas will play a more crucial role in deciding the presidential election. The GOP, however, is less concerned with competing in the city itself, which votes overwhelmingly Democratic, and more with their performance in the surrounding suburbs.

Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington—the “WOW” counties—were once a deep red collar around an equally blue Milwaukee. Though still far more Republican than corresponding Midwestern suburbs—think Michigan’s Oakland County and Illinois’s DuPage County—the WOW counties have still trended leftwards in the era of Trump. Between 2016 and 2020, despite dramatically higher turnout, the GOP net vote gain from the trio dropped nearly 10,000 votes. Should Republicans hope to carry Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes, they must stem the bleeding in the Milwaukee suburbs.

A pair of recent state legislature special elections—Senate District 8 (SD-8) and Assembly District 24 (AD-24)—offer mixed signs for the GOP.

First, the expected: the Republican advantage in each legislative district has declined considerably in recent years. In 2016, Trump carried SD-8 by 12.2 points and AD-24 by 23.6. Four years later, his margin of victory had declined to 4.9 and 16.5, respectively. Should Trump emerge as the nominee for the third time, a similar drop is likely—and SD-8 may even flip blue.

However, in well-educated white suburbs, rising Democratic vote share is hardly a new phenomenon. What’s fascinating about these two districts is the dramatic Democratic overperformance in off-year, down-ballot special elections. In April, the Democratic nominee in SD-8 lost to Republican Dan Knodl by less than 2 points. Just last month, Democrats lost AD-24 by 7.4 points, well above the presidential baseline.

There are two primary explanations for the surprising results. First, Republicans traditionally have enjoyed advantages with highly educated voters who cast a ballot in every election. But as Democrats increasingly become a party of college-educated whites, the built-in GOP advantage in low-turnout special elections may be fading. In a high-turnout general election scenario, however, this would be of little concern. More worrying for Republicans is the second explanation: the current political environment, despite perceptions of a poor economy, continues to benefit Democrats—particularly in the suburbs. The April and July vote totals counted only in the thousands, so drawing broad conclusions is difficult, especially with the general election still 15 months away. But if Biden can lop off a yet another sizeable portion of the GOP’s WOW margin, Wisconsin Republicans are in trouble.

The 2022 Senate results do offer a bright spot for Republicans in the Milwaukee suburbs. Incumbent Senator Ron Johnson reversed the party’s slide in SD-8 and AD-24, carrying each by well more than Trump did two years prior. More interesting is the level of ticket splitting when compared to the governor’s race: Johnson outperformed gubernatorial nominee Tim Michels by 5 points in each district. A noticeable portion of WOW voters decided to cast their ballots for Democrat Tony Evers and Republican Ron Johnson. Though each man’s incumbency certainly helped, the ticket splitting offers important strategy lessons for Republicans. If Republicans can match Johnson’s suburban margins, they stand a much stronger chance of flipping Wisconsin, especially if ancestrally Democratic rural Wisconsin continues shifting right.

There is plenty of time for the issue landscape to change prior to next November. General election polling remains unreliable and fluky special elections can lend false confidence. Barring an unforeseen landslide, Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington will remain in Republican hands for another cycle. But in a battleground like Wisconsin, margins matter. The attention the Milwaukee metro is receiving is well justified and will only increase as the election heats up.

The post Milwaukee’s WOW Counties and the Coming Battle for Wisconsin appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

That is, of course, exactly as Trump wanted it to be. Debates are all about beating expectations, and by playing hard to get, Trump could start out with a substantial advantage just by showing up. If he doesn’t participate, though, it shifts the burden to whatever he would do instead. 

Even if it were within his character to shun the spotlight (it isn’t), Trump is a lead news story every day already because of the ongoing prosecutions he is facing in four jurisdictions. He’s due to surrender himself to authorities by Friday in Georgia for trying to strongarm his way into the state’s 2020 electoral votes, two days after the debate. It’s not like Trump could say he was going on a fishing trip with his grandkids away from the public eye, even if he wanted to.

The reported plan for an alternate event looks like a potential debacle. When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tried a similar gambit to launch his campaign, it exploded on the launchpad. Trump would certainly draw a huge online audience, but it won’t match the production values and spectacle of real political gladiatorial combat. And the voters Trump needs to persuade or reassure in Iowa and New Hampshire are likely to skew toward TV, not streaming on their phones. 

The best-case scenario Trump could hope for is that many viewers of the actual debate would open up a second screen and flit their attention back and forth. 

Trump’s return to Twitter after the rescinding of his lifetime ban would certainly be a big news story, but the downsides are significant. First, Trump would be back on Twitter. Second, it would be boring. Short of an outbreak of decency and self-restraint, there’s not much he can do in an interview to shock and surprise anymore. As Trump learned the last time he skipped a Republican debate as the frontrunner, his very public negotiations over participating increased interest in the contest, but his absence ceded those benefits to his competitors. Third, and potentially most dangerously for him, it would allow Republicans to see their party, literally, without him.    

What about the downsides of showing up? Imagine he goes for maximum shock and awe: He gets booked in Atlanta in the morning and then rides Trump Force One to Milwaukee to stand center-stage and face his rivals. He might get 20 million people watching at home and a media circus the likes of which he hasn’t generated since he left the White House. But what if he can’t meet the yuge expectations? What if he is, as Trump often has been in high-pressure situations, limp? 

Having to fight with the other candidates on stage while simultaneously avoiding legal peril in the cases against him would be a tough job for the the most energetic and disciplined campaigner. For Trump, it might be impossible.

If he looks harried, Trump could well see the cloak of inevitability he is wearing start to slip. And if that happens at the same time as a standout performance by an alterna-Trump, particularly Vivek Ramaswamy, it might start a migration by some of the less fanatical MAGA faithful.

Trump wouldn’t need a commanding performance, though. If the former president were only able to mostly lay back while the also-rans sucked up screen time, it might be enough for him to just lob in a few verbal hand grenades. A boring-ish debate would be a win for Trump. When you’re the frontrunner, all you need is the status quo.

There’s no obvious answer for Trump here. But, given his criminal troubles and the dangers of allowing any of his rivals to gain momentum at precisely the moment that the race intensifies, the downsides of skipping look more dangerous than the risks of a bad debate.

Holy croakano! We welcome your feedback, so please email us with your tips, corrections, reactions, amplifications, etc. at STIREWALTISMS@THEDISPATCH.COM. If you’d like to be considered for publication, please include your real name and hometown. If you don’t want your comments to be made public, please specify.

STATSHOT

Biden Job Performance
Average approval: 40.2%
Average disapproval: 53.4%
Net score: -13.2 points 

Change from one week ago: ↓ 1.0 points                        
Change from one month ago: ↓ 3.6 points

[Average includes: Marist: 42% approve-52% disapprove; Quinnipiac: 39% approve-55% disapprove; Reuters/Ipsos: 40% approve-54% disapprove; NPR/PBS/Marist: 41% approve-52% disapprove; New York Times/Siena; 39% approve-54% disapprove]

Republican Nomination, Average National Support

Donald Trump: 53.6% (↑ 3.6 points since June)
Ron DeSantis: 15.2% (↓ 7.8 points)
Vivek Ramaswamy: 6.6% (↑  4.6 points)
Mike Pence: 5.0%  (↓ 1.0 points)
Nikki Haley: 2.8% (↓ 1.1 points)
Tim Scott: 2.6% (↓ 1.0 points)

Chris Christie: 2.0% (no change)

[Average includes:: Fox News, Quinnipiac, Reuters/Ipsos, New York Times/Siena, I&I/TIPP] 

TIME OUT: HOT TUB TIME MACHINE

New York Times: “Candido Jacuzzi didn’t set out to turn his last name into a global brand. Nor did he intend to power a business which, though it created the family fortune, nearly tore them apart. He just wanted to ease the physical pain suffered by his son, any way he could. The Jacuzzi … may now be geared for backyard socializing, but its technology was conceived with just one person in mind: Kenneth Jacuzzi, a boy under 2 years old, stricken with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis after a severe case of strep throat. The Jacuzzis were, at the turn of the 20th century, a large clan in Casarsa, a farming commune in Northern Italy. … As change swept through Europe, and war threatened, Giovanni hatched a plan to get his sons to the United States. … The brothers, speaking only basic English, worked first in the California orange groves before banding together … to establish a machine shop in Berkeley in 1915. … The move to water made them well placed to venture into hydrotherapy when, in 1943, Candido’s 15-month-old son fell ill.”

LEAKED DESANTIS MEMOS DIVULGE DEBATE STRATEGY

New York Times: “Ron DeSantis needs ‘to take a sledgehammer’ to Vivek Ramaswamy, the political newcomer who is rising in the polls. He should ‘defend Donald Trump’ when Chris Christie inevitably attacks the former president. And he needs to ‘attack Joe Biden and the media’ no less than three to five times. A firm associated with the super PAC that has effectively taken over Mr. DeSantis’s presidential campaign posted online hundreds of pages of blunt advice, research memos and internal polling. … The trove of documents provides an extraordinary glimpse into the thinking of the DeSantis operation. … Key among the documents is one entitled ‘Debate Memo,’ dated Aug. 15, which cynically describes how Mr. DeSantis … could wring the most favorable media attention from the debate. … The strategy memo also highlights one of Mr. DeSantis’s long-running political vulnerabilities, his reputation for awkwardness or aloofness on the campaign trail.” 

Heritage Foundation helped DeSantis into policy problems: Reuters: “In mid-March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis described the Ukraine war as a ‘territorial dispute’ that was not of vital strategic interest to the United States. … His comment dismayed allies and drew fierce rebukes. … Playing a quiet but important role in shaping the governor’s remarks was the Washington-based Heritage Foundation. … Heritage personnel have held near-daily conversations with DeSantis officials in recent months about key issues.”

As DeSantis bogs down, Scott sees an Iowa opening: Wall Street Journal: “Sen. Tim Scott has a window of opportunity in the Republican presidential primary race as the top two polling candidates face their own unique challenges. The question is whether he can open it. The expanding legal entanglements confronting former President Donald Trump and the stalled campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could prompt some Republicans to look harder at alternatives before the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses kick off the nomination process. Unlike some of the more combative candidates in the race, Scott offers an optimistic message, generally refrains from attacking rivals, and is almost universally liked among GOP primary voters… Scott’s campaign has booked a $6 million ad buy in Iowa and New Hampshire and an $8 million booking is expected. The super PAC supporting his candidacy has reservations in place for roughly $47 million in advertising for states that are early on the nomination calendar.” 

Behind the Ramaswamy polling surge: Politico: “Ramaswamy’s early rise represents the most significant movement in the still-nascent race for the GOP presidential nomination. Or does it? [T]here are some methodological curiosities that raise questions about just where Ramaswamy fits within the tiers of Republican hopefuls. … Ramaswamy’s strength comes almost entirely from polls conducted over the internet, according to a POLITICO analysis. … In polls conducted mostly or partially over the telephone, in which people are contacted randomly, not only does Ramaswamy lag his average score—he’s way back in seventh place… There’s no singular, obvious explanation for the disparity, but there are some leading theories for it, namely the demographic characteristics and internet literacy of Ramaswamy’s supporters.”

Haley walks identity politics tightrope: Politico: “When Nikki Haley launched her bid for president, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador proclaimed it was time to ‘put a badass woman in the White House’ and that kicking back at bullies hurts more ‘if you are wearing heels.’ … And with the first presidential debate looming … Haley is trying to carve out a lane for herself as a no-nonsense, results-oriented underdog who, yes, happens to be the only woman in the race. … It’s also been a race consumed with attacks on ‘woke’ ideology, which has made Haley’s attempts to elevate her status as a woman and an Indian American tricky with voters who can be suspicious of such assertions of identity.”

GOP STRUGGLES WITH THE TRUMP/SENATE CONUNDRUM 

The Hill: “GOP strategists say there’s growing concern that if Trump is not the nominee, many of his core supporters, who are estimated to make up 25 percent to 35 percent of the party base, ‘will take their ball and go home.’ … ‘If somehow he’s not the nominee, it will hurt turnout,’ [strategist Brian Darling] said. ‘He’s got a unique coalition. He brings a lot of nontraditional voters to the Republican Party, and it will be difficult to win a state like Ohio’ and other Midwestern states ‘if you lose all those Trump voters or make them disaffected voters, and they don’t show up.’ … At the same time, the strategist acknowledged that Trump’s overwhelming popularity with blue-collar and rural voters is offset by his unpopularity with college-educated women and suburban voters.”

Trump menaces Ohio Senate primary: NBC News: “Former President Donald Trump tuned back into Ohio’s Senate primary at a pivotal moment this week—as Secretary of State Frank LaRose, one of the Republican contenders for the seat, answered for the failure of a ballot measure that he had championed. … Host Chuck Todd asked if then-Vice President Mike Pence was right to ignore Trump’s pressure to block certification of the 2020 election results. LaRose said he believed that Pence ‘made the best decision he could with the information in front of him.’ … Siding against Trump can be costly in GOP primaries, especially in states like Ohio… It’s unclear if LaRose’s comments on Pence will result in Trump punishing him in the Senate race. The two are not particularly close, and LaRose has in the past been critical of Trump. … But Trump endorsed LaRose’s successful re-election bid for secretary of state last year.”

MAGA candidate brings baggage from abroad to Nevada Senate race: Politico: “Republican Senate hopeful Jeffrey Gunter is learning a painful lesson: What happens in Reykjavik doesn’t always stay in Reykjavik. … His stint abroad earned him plenty of enemies who don’t want to see a Senator Gunter. That points to a tough road ahead as he seeks the GOP nomination to take on Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.). … National Republicans were wary of Gunter’s candidacy to begin with and warned him not to enter the Senate primary. … Republican leaders are pulling for Army veteran Sam Brown to win the nomination in Nevada amid a crowded field of upstarts. … Though Nevada is challenging ground for Republicans, Nevada GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo did oust a Democratic incumbent last year—a sign that with the right candidate and circumstances, Republicans can win in the fast-growing and diverse state.” 

McCormick faces residency questions as he preps repeat Senate bid:  AP: “As Republicans aim to gain the one seat they need to retake the Senate in next year’s elections, Dave McCormick is a top recruit. And before his anticipated campaign, he’s working to avoid Oz’s fate, frequently noting his upbringing in Pennsylvania, his ownership of a home in Pittsburgh and a family farm near Bloomsburg. … But the reality is more complex. While McCormick does own a home in Pittsburgh, a review of public records, real estate listings and footage from recent interviews indicates he still lives on Connecticut’s ‘Gold Coast,’ … Recent Senate history suggests that even favorite sons can be stung when loose ties to home become a campaign issue. … It also presents an opportunity for Democrats, who are likely to seize on his ties to Wall Street in what is expected to again be one of the most competitive Senate matchups in the country. ”

BRIEFLY

Dems back bid to take redistricting power from Ohio GOP—Ohio Capital Journal

Virginia drops out of multi-state election compact, claiming overreach—NBC News

MAGA takeover prompts chaos for Michigan GOP—Wall Street Journal

WITHIN EARSHOT: DOUBLE DOWN, ADVANCED EDITION 

“I have a lot of things to think about. Am I going to be a part of President Trump’s cabinet? Is it possible that I’ll be VP?”—Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene dreams of the vice presidency during an interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution about her future political plans. 

MAILBAG

“I spent most of today driving through the beautiful woods of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, which brought back a vague recollection of hearing someone (probably Chris) discuss the idiosyncratic leftward lean of rural Scandinavian voters. Hoping to refresh my memory, I spent some time googling various permutations of ‘why do Scandinavian Americans vote for Democrats,’ to no avail. Imagine my delight when I opened my inbox tonight and found this wonderfully well-researched article on exactly that topic! Thank you, Nate and Chris, for giving me yet another reason to be grateful for my Dispatch membership.”—Luke Henkel, Indianapolis, Indiana

Brother Nate is the one who deserves your thanks there, Mr. Henkel. He’s a marvel at data and research, so for the humble aims of this note, it’s kind of like having a Porsche 911 pulling a plow. It’s nice to let him get out on the track and blow the carbon off his pistons. I promise more engine revving in the months to come as we find opportunities to look more closely on the deeper demography and voter trends that will shape the election.

You should email us! Write to STIREWALTISMS@THEDISPATCH.COM with your tips, kudos, criticisms, insights, rediscovered words, wonderful names, recipes and, always, good jokes. Please include your real name—at least first and last—and hometown. Make sure to let me know in the email if you want to keep your submission private. My colleague, the talented Nate Moore, and I will look for your emails and then share the most interesting ones and my responses here. Clickety clack!

CUTLINE CONTEST: WOOF 

Dogs, as you may have heard, are the best. So it is no surprise that this week’s photo of Pumpkin with her owner, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler, would elicit great responses. Our winner followed the best path to victory: Simplicity and fidelity to character voice, in this case, the character being the voting public itself.

“… wait, can we vote for a dog?”—Dave Carter, Palmer, Alaska 

Winner, Furry Frontrunner Division:

“Pumpkin, backed by her adoring family, announces candidacy.”—Linda McKee, DuBois, Pennsylvania

Winner, Gives You Paws Division:

“Any Functioning Adult Mammal 2024”—Max Marshall, Charleston, South Carolina

Winner, Stand up to the Poodles Division:

“Here we are, ready for the Bernese Bros. rally. Wait, what?”—Nathan Wurtzel, South Riding, Virginia

Winner, Negative Reinforcement Division:

“My name is Pumpkin. Are you tired of the behavior of others in my line of work? Are you weary of Major and Commander indulging their taste for Secret Service Shank? You deserve a better First Dog. Seriously. Would I bite you? I approved of this message.”—Richard Kennedy, Ferndale, Michigan

Winner, Socks Could Not Be Reached for Comment Division:

“Finally, a way to reuse this old Clinton ’96 campaign sign.”—Joel Stewart, Guthrie, Oklahoma

Winner, Goodest Girl Division:

“Sign of the times: Therapy dogs being trained to accompany distressed voters into the voting booths.”—Rick Fellenbaum, New Holland, Pennsylvania

Send your proposed cutline for the picture that appears at the top of this newsletter to STIREWALTISMS@THEDISPATCH.COM. We will pick the best entrants for each week and an appropriate reward for the best of this month—even beyond the glory and adulation that will surely follow. Be hilarious, don’t be too dirty, and never be cruel. Include your full name and hometown. Have fun!

TO SERVE MAN 

Guardian: “A New Zealand supermarket experimenting with using AI to generate meal plans has seen its app produce some unusual dishes—recommending customers recipes for deadly chlorine gas, ‘poison bread sandwiches’ and mosquito-repellent roast potatoes. The app, created by supermarket chain Pak ‘n’ Save, was advertised as a way for customers to creatively use up leftovers during the cost of living crisis. … When customers began experimenting with entering a wider range of household shopping list items into the app, however, it began to make even less appealing recommendations. One recipe it dubbed ‘aromatic water mix’ would create chlorine gas. The bot recommends the recipe as ‘the perfect nonalcoholic beverage to quench your thirst and refresh your senses’. … Recommendations included a bleach ‘fresh breath’ mocktail, ant-poison and glue sandwiches, ‘bleach-infused rice surprise’ and ‘methanol bliss’—a kind of turpentine-flavored french toast. … ‘You must use your own judgment before relying on or making any recipe produced by Savey Meal-bot,’ [the store] said.”

Chris Stirewalt is a contributing editor at The Dispatch, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the politics editor for NewsNation, and author of Broken News, a book on media and politics. Nate Moore contributed to this report.

The post Can Trump Afford a Debate No-Show? appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Show Notes:

–Jonah’s problem with small dollar donors

–This weekend’s Dispatch Podcast

–The Remnant with Daniel Hannan

–The Remnant with Ken Pollack

–Advisory Opinions on the Georgia indictments

The post The Right Regime appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Eliana is out this week, but we have the great Kevin Williamson stepping in for her. We’re jumping into indictment coverage from the Washington Post and then moving onto Fox News woes, local news “solutions” and closing out the front page with BBLs (Brazilian butt lifts). Wretch on!

Time Stamps:

09:16 Front Page

1:13:13 Obsessions

1:21:24 Reader Mail

1:27:27 Favorite Item of the Week

If you have a story you want us to talk about, e-mail us at wretches@nebulouspodcasts.com.

Follow us on Instagram @InkStainedWretches

Show Notes:

WaPo: Trump insults D.C. to get his trial moved. The city rolls its eyes.

Hollywood Reporter: CNN Overhauls Lineup: Abby Phillip Takes 10 p.m., Laura Coates to Host 11 p.m., New Morning Show Hosts and Weekend Programs

NYT: Fox’s Top Lawyer, Viet Dinh, Will Depart

Yahoo: ‘A dangerous decision’: Canadian news is disappearing from Instagram, Facebook

The Atlantic: The Local-News Crisis Is Weirdly Easy to Solve

Kansas Reflector: Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper, seizing computers, records and cellphones

The Dispatch: The Perils of Activist Journalism

Cincinnati Enquirer: Retired Reds beat writer John Fay’s life story is a love story

Axios: As BBLs grow more popular, deaths rise in South Florida

APNews: Armed Utah man shot by FBI last week carried AR-15 in 2018 police encounter, records show

The Fire: Don’t tread on my editorial independence

NYTimes: The Frothy Saga of the Jacuzzi Family

The Spectator: Wolves and the Greens: why Germans are flocking to the AfD

The post RICO Suave appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

It is therefore valuable to have a sense of where various constituencies across the American polity stand, and one such group is Jewish Americans who have historically been donors, activists, influencers and voters in high numbers. 

My analysis of almost 100 Jews in a spring 2023 survey organized by the Survey Center on American Life found that the Jewish community is not particularly focused on economic matters, and this is a marked difference from earlier elections. Rather, broadly speaking, American Jews are more motivated by cultural concerns and social policy. As such, parties and politicos should take note that social issues may be more critical in motivating and engaging with the Jewish community as the election of 2024 unfolds.

The survey presented 15 sociopolitical and economic policy issues and asked respondents to evaluate how much each one is a problem in the country today. Jews, like Americans broadly, are not particularly concerned about job opportunities for all Americans. Only 16% of Jews and 21% of Americans see the state of the labor market as an issue. While 62% of Americans view inflation as a very big problem, about 50% of Jews agree. This discrepancy appears again when a question is posed about the federal budget. Fifty-one percent of Americans see the budget deficit as a very big problem, while only 37% of Jews agree. On these questions, Jewish voters evidence less concern with the economy than others and they seem in concert with liberal economists.

On economic issues involving costs and significant capital, Jews are very much aligned with the nation at large. They respond similarly to other Americans with respect to such issues as college affordability (42% for all Americans and 50% for Jews), health care affordability (58% for all Americans and 61% for Jews), and the quality of K-12 education (42% for all Americans and 45% for Jews). 

On social and cultural issues, Jewish voters deviate repeatedly from the American public. For instance, as many as 79% of Jews see gun violence as a very big problem compared to 58% of Americans who believe the same. Jews’ positions may simply reflect the overall attitudes of highly educated liberals. But gun violence may be an issue of particular salience for the Jewish community.

With the potent rise in antisemitism and violence against Jewish communities across the nation — 41% of American Jews say their status in the United States is less secure compared to a year ago — this high level of concern with gun violence is understandable. This fits with the observations of conservative rabbi and founder of Online Jewish Learning Danielle Eskow, who stated that the most pressing issue facing Jews today is “antisemitism, especially in America right now. It’s a bigger issue than ever before, and that’s scary.”

Abortion is another issue where Jews and other Americans part company. While more than a third (35%) of Americans consider abortion a very big problem today, half of Jews do. 

When asked about climate change, sizable gaps emerge. While about 40% of Americans see climate change as a very big problem, 56% of Jews agree. The same pattern plays out on questions of racism, where 54% of Jews see racism as a very big problem, compared to only 40% of the American public.

And amid a nationwide loneliness epidemic, about a third of Jews (33%) and about a quarter of Americans (24%) see loneliness as a very big problem. 

All these question evoke broader and deeper reactions among Jews than among other Americans. While there are certainly economic components here, these issues tend to trigger moral and social questions which are top of mind for those in the Jewish community. Such behavior is consistent with the position of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who noted that Judaism has a “positive attitude to the creation of wealth” and with wealth comes “an obligation to use it for the benefit of the community as a whole” and look outward toward communal and social needs. 

Put somewhat differently and more recently, Rabbi Jay Moses notes that economics are important to Jews, but there is something else, too: “Jews have always valued earning a living, even a comfortable one; but we have valued caring for our community and those in need even more highly,” and that is what we see in the data today.

Come November 2024, in addition to a presidential election, 33 senators and 11 governors will be on the ballot, not to mention a host of other state and local representatives. Primaries will happen well before the general election that will help establish the direction and tones of both the Democratic and Republican parties, and the Jewish community will undeniably be a force in electoral politics. 

While it is not wise to make claims that describe the Jewish community as a monolithic, liberal bloc, there are a handful of political issues ranging from gun control and abortion to the environment and racism that are of real concern to Jewish Americans today. Candidates and party organizations which address these issues are most likely to engage with the Jewish community. Contrary to so much literature about the centrality of pocketbook voting and economic considerations, as was the case in prior elections, social and identity issues are driving Jewish politics at the moment, not economics.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

The post When It Comes to Jewish Voters, Social and Cultural Issues Matter Most appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

A much-needed wake-up call for the Democrats, which reveals how the party has lost sight of its core principles and endangered its political future―from the authors of “one of the most influential political books of the 21st century” (The New York Times)

For decades, American politics has been plagued by a breakdown between the Democratic and Republican parties, in which victory has inevitably led to defeat and vice versa. Both parties have lost sight of the people at the center of the American electorate, leading to polarization and paralysis. In Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira reveal the tectonic changes shaping the country’s current political landscape that both pundits and political scientists have missed.

The Democratic Party, once the preserve of small towns as well as big cities and of the industrial working class and the newly immigrated, has abandoned and even actively alienated many of these voters. In this clarion call and essential argument for common sense and common ground, Judis and Teixeira reveal the transformation of American politics and provide a razor-sharp critique of where the Democrats have gone awry and how they can avoid political disaster in the days ahead.

The post Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

We’ve got a crossover episode, folks! Our friends of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour podcast (Steve Hayward, “Lucretia” and John Yoo) join to talk about the wacky legal matters of our time. There are environmentalists claiming the positive right to enjoy cooperative weather; they discuss the plush and cozy Hunter Biden tier of criminal justice compared to the briar patch tier that The Donald’s living in; James dishes out some, ahem, tough love to the yutes; plus our guests pick the word that annoys them most these days.

The post A Sparkling Powerline appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Show Notes:

– Dr. Pollack’s page at AEI

– Dr. Pollack: “Iran’s Grand Strategy Has Fundamentally Shifted”

– The Remnant with Frederick Kagan

– The Remnant with Daniel Hannan

The post The Trouble with Tehran appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

The sentiment seems to be: we got this! How could we lose to a candidate (assuming it’s Trump) who’s under a blizzard of legal scrutiny for undermining democracy and represents a party that wants to take away women’s right to choose—especially when we, the good guys, are doing such a great job with the economy?

This “how can we lose?” attitude is uncomfortably reminiscent of Democrats’ attitude in 2016. Then too they thought they couldn’t lose. And yet they did.

Perhaps it’s time to take out an insurance policy. It may be the case that a multiply-indicted Trump is now toxic to enough voters and abortion rights such a strong motivator that even a candidate with Biden’s weaknesses will beat him easily. But it might not and that’s where the insurance policy comes in.

Consider that right now the race looks very, very close. The RealClearPolitics poll average has Biden ahead of Trump by a slender four-tenths of a percentage point. If that was Biden’s national lead on election day, he’d probably lose the presidency due to electoral college bias that favors Republicans.

In the latest Quinnipiac poll, Biden has a one-point lead over Trump consistent with the running average. Among white working-class (noncollege) voters, he’s behind by 34 points, considerably worse than he did in 2020. If Trump (or another Republican) does manage to prevail in 2024, we can be fairly sure that a pro-GOP surge among these voters will have something to do with it.

States of Change simulations show that, all else equal, a strong white working class surge in 2024 would deliver the election to the GOP. Even a small one could potentially do the trick. In an all-else-equal context, I estimate just a one-point increase in Republican support among the white working class and a concomitant one-point decrease in Democratic support (for a 2-point margin swing) would deliver Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin (and the election) to the Republicans. Make it a 2-point increase in GOP support and you can throw in Pennsylvania too.

So an insurance policy to prevent such a swing is in order.

The problem: these are very unhappy voters. In the Quinnipiac poll, white working-class voters give Biden an overall 25 percent approval rating versus 70 percent disapproval and 72 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him. On handling the economy, Biden’s rating is even worse—24 percent approval and 73 percent disapproval. Just 20 percent say the economy is excellent or good, compared to 79 percent who say it is not so good or poor. By 63 to 16 percent, these voters believe the economy is getting worse not better. Evidently they haven’t yet heard the good news about Bidenomics.

The temptation among Democrats is to ascribe the stubborn resistance of these voters to Democratic appeals and openness to those of Trump and right populists to misinformation from Fox News and the like and, worse, to the fundamentally racist, reactionary nature of this voter group. The roots of this view go back to the aftermath of the 2016 election.

As analysts sifted through the wreckage of Democratic performance in 2016 trying to understand where all the Trump voting had come from, some themes began to emerge. One was geographical. Across county-level studies, it was clear that low educational levels among whites was a very robust predictor of shifts toward Trump. These studies also indicated that counties that swung toward Trump tended to be dependent on low-skill jobs, relatively poor performers on a range of economic measures and had local economies particularly vulnerable to automation and offshoring. Finally, there was strong evidence that Trump-swinging counties tended to be literally “sick” in the sense that their inhabitants had relatively poor physical health and high mortality due to alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide.

The picture was more complicated when it came to individual level characteristics related to Trump voting, especially Obama-Trump voting. There were a number of correlates with Trump voting. They included some aspects of economic populism—opposition to cutting Social Security and Medicare, suspicion of free trade and trade agreements, taxing the rich—as well as traditional populist attitudes like anti-elitism and mistrust of experts. But the star of the show, so to speak, was a variable labelled “racial resentment” by political scientists, which many studies showed bore a strengthened relationship to Republican presidential voting in 2016.

This variable is a scale created from questions like: “Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.” The variable is widely and uncritically employed by political scientists to indicate racial animus despite the obvious problem that statements such as these correspond closely to a generic conservative view of avenues to social mobility. And indeed political scientists Riley Carney and Ryan Enos have shown that responses to questions like these change very little if you substitute “Nepalese” or “Lithuanians” for blacks. That implies the questions that make up the scale tap views that are not at all specific to blacks. Carney and Enos term these views “just world belief” which sounds quite a bit different from racial resentment.

But in the aftermath of the Trump election, researchers continued to use the same scale with the same name and the same interpretation with no caveats. The strong relationship of the scale to Trump voting was proof, they argued, that Trump support, including vote-switching from Obama to Trump, was simply a matter of activating underlying racism and xenophobia. Imagine though how these studies might have landed like if they had tied Trump support to activating just world belief, which is an eminently reasonable interpretation of their star variable, instead of racial resentment. The lack of even a hint of interest in exploring this alternative interpretation strongly suggests that the researchers’ own political beliefs were playing a strong role in how they chose to pursue and present their studies.

In short, they went looking for racism—and they found it.

Other studies played variations on this theme, adding variables around immigration and even trade to the mix, where negative views were presumed to show “status threat” or some other euphemism for racism and xenophobia. As sociologist Stephen Morgan has noted in a series of papers, this amounts to a labeling exercise where issues that have a clear economic component are stripped of that component and reduced to simple indicators of unenlightened social attitudes. Again, it seems clear that researchers’ priors and political beliefs were heavily influencing both their analytical approach and their interpretation of results.

And there is an even deeper problem with the conventional view. Start with a fact that was glossed over or ignored by most studies: trends in so-called racial resentment went in the “wrong” direction between the 2012 and 2016 election. That is, fewer whites had high levels of racial resentment in 2016 than 2012. This make racial resentment an odd candidate to explain the shift of white voters toward Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

Political scientists Justin Grimmer and William Marble investigated this conundrum intensively by looking directly at whether an indicator like racial resentment really could explain, or account for, the shift of millions of white votes toward Trump. The studies that gave pride of place to racial resentment as an explanation for Trump’s victory did no such accounting; they simply showed a stronger relationship between this variable and Republican voting in 2016 and thought they’d provided a complete explanation.

They had not. When you look at the actual population of voters and how racial resentment was distributed in 2016, as Grimmer and Marble did, it turns out that the racial resentment explanation simply does not fit what really happened in terms of voter shifts. A rigorous accounting of vote shifts toward Trump shows instead that they were primarily among whites, especially low education whites, with moderate views on race and immigration, not whites with high levels of racial resentment. In fact, Trump actually netted fewer votes among whites with high levels of racial resentment than Mitt Romney did in 2012.

Grimmer and Marble did a followup study with Cole Tanigawa-Lau that included data from the 2020 election. The study was covered in a New York Times article by Thomas Edsall. In the article, Grimmer described the significance of their findings:

Our findings provide an important correction to a popular narrative about how Trump won office. Hillary Clinton argued that Trump supporters could be placed in a “basket of deplorables.” And election-night pundits and even some academics have claimed that Trump’s victory was the result of appealing to white Americans’ racist and xenophobic attitudes. We show this conventional wisdom is (at best) incomplete. Trump’s supporters were less xenophobic than prior Republican candidates’ [supporters], less sexist, had lower animus to minority groups, and lower levels of racial resentment. Far from deplorables, Trump voters were, on average, more tolerant and understanding than voters for prior Republican candidates…

[The data] point to two important and undeniable facts. First, analyses focused on vote choice alone cannot tell us where candidates receive support. We must know the size of groups and who turns out to vote. And we cannot confuse candidates’ rhetoric with the voters who support them, because voters might support the candidate despite the rhetoric, not because of it.

So much for the racial resentment explanation of Trump’s victory. Not only is racial resentment a misnamed variable that does not mean what people think it means, it literally cannot account for the actual shifts that occurred in the 2016 election. Clearly a much more complex explanation for Trump’s victory was—or should have been—in order, integrating negative views on immigration, trade and liberal elites with a sense of unfairness rooted in just world belief. That would have helped Democrats understand why voters in Trump-shifting counties, whose ways of life were being torn asunder by economic and social change, were so attracted to Trump’s appeals.

Such understanding was nowhere to be found, however, in Democratic ranks. The racism-and-xenophobia interpretation quickly became dominant, partly because it was in many ways simply a continuation of the approach Clinton had taken during her campaign and that most Democrats accepted. Indeed, it became so dominant that simply to question the interpretation reliably opened the questioner to accusations that he or she did not take the problem of racism seriously enough.

We are still living in that world. Scratch a Democrat today and you will find lurking not far beneath the surface—if beneath the surface at all—a view of white working-class voters and their populist, pro-Trump leanings as reflecting these voters’ unyielding racism and xenophobia.

This is neither substantively justified nor politically productive. Democrats desperately need that insurance policy for 2024 and getting rid of these attitudes toward 40 percent of the electorate (much more in key states!) should be part of it. Think of it as a down payment on the “de-Brahminization” of the Democratic Party. This attitude adjustment might irritate some of their activist supporters, but considering the stakes, that seems like a small price to pay for a potentially vital insurance policy.

The post An Insurance Policy for Democrats appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

RICO prosecutions are not limited to organized crime families or gangs, but there has to be an actual criminal enterprise and related criminal acts to further the enterprise. This is true even in Georgia, whose RICO statute is broader than others, including the federal one, because it combines a longer list of predicate offenses with a looser definition of “enterprise” and “racketeering.” A Georgia RICO conviction is a felony that has a statutory prison term of five to 20 years, a fine of the greater of $25,000 or three times the amount of money gained from the criminal activity, or both a prison sentence and a fine.

Right off the bat, the indictment’s first alleged overt act against Trump is his nationally-televised “victory” speech on the day after the election, which already goes beyond RICO case norms. Yet at the time of the speech, there was insufficient information available as to whether any voting fraud in Georgia had tipped the scales, no plan existed for alternate electors, and Trump seemed to genuinely believe that he won. Trump’s speech was protected under the First Amendment, which protects political speech, even if no one else believes the speaker, and even if it contains false information.

Furthermore, while Georgia RICO forbids defendants to “acquire or maintain, directly or indirectly, any interest in or control of any enterprise, real property, or personal property of any nature, including money,” no one alleges that Trump engaged in his post-election shenanigans because he was trying to gain money or property or control of a business. Moreover, unlike in a traditional RICO case, Trump did not create or belong to a criminal enterprise, as traditionally known, nor did he intentionally commit criminal acts for the purpose of keeping that enterprise going for the acquisition or control of property, money, or businesses. Instead, Trump wanted to be declared the winner of the 2020 election because he apparently genuinely believed that he won, regardless of what some advisers told him.

The indictment also cites as crimes the legal advice that Trump received. This sets a very dangerous precedent, because legal advice, even outlandish or bad advice, should not be criminalized, especially where the issues are novel and untested in court. For example, lawyers in famous Supreme Court cases such as Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda, Griswold, and many others argued against the existing precedent and legal thinking of their time, and certainly they were not and should not have been prosecuted.

Furthermore, it is quite possible that Trump’s post-election lawyers’ misguided strategy to create alternate slates of electors and the legal advice supporting it were based on two historical events: the 1876 Electoral College drama between Rutherford B. Hayes (R) and Samuel J. Tilden (D), and the 1960 presidential election drama in Hawaii between Richard M. Nixon (R) and John F. Kennedy (D). In 1876, Tilden won the popular vote and 184 electoral votes, but Republicans challenged the election results in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, because, they claimed, the Democrats engaged in election fraud and intimidated Black voters. Hayes eventually won with 185 electoral votes, but the Democrats had presented alternate slates of electors from Oregon, South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Vermont, knowing that their alternate slates from at uncertified or doubtful. No one was criminally charged, nor should they have been, even though Tilden’s nephew, William Tilden Pelton, admitted that he tried to bribe local election officials in Oregon, Florida, and South Carolina.

Similarly, in 1960, Hawaii Democrats challenged Nixon’s initial win, signed alternate elector certificates, and sent them to Capitol Hill, even though JFK was not declared to have won Hawaii until later. Again, no one was criminally charged and in fact the judge praised the Democrats for creating and signing an alternate slate.

In fact, on November 4, 2020, while Pennsylvania was still counting votes, Van Jones of CNN and Professor Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law published a CNN article citing these events and endorsing alternate electors! Indeed, it’s worth noting that after the 2016 election, the Clinton campaign and allied groups such as Unite for America recruited celebrities like Martin Sheen to importune electors not to cast their electoral votes for Trump; electors received death threats, harassing phone calls, and hundreds of thousands of hostile emails. The Clinton campaign also tried to request an intelligence briefing on foreign election intervention in order to sway the electors with false information; the Clinton team cooked up the phony “Steele Dossier” and knew that it and other claims regarding Trump and Russia were false. Anyone who thinks that Clinton or her campaign staff—an actual organization or enterprise—should not have been criminally charged, as they were not, must therefore also think long and hard about whether Trump should be.

It may have been an irresistibly tempting part of District Attorney Willis’s calculus to file criminal charges against the leading Republican presidential candidate, especially because Fulton County is reliably Democratic and went for every single Democratic presidential candidate since 1976. However, her over-broad indictment should serve as a cautionary tale against twisting and distending criminal laws beyond their norms. Prosecutors should recognize that what can be charged is not always what should be charged.

The post The Democrats Are Using Criminal Law to Fight Their Political Battles. It’s Very, Very Dangerous. appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Is Donald Trump toast? Are the walls closing in on Hunter Biden? Those are questions that can’t adequately be answered by two minutes of cable news. Luckily, Professors Richard Epstein and John Yoo are here with one of the all-time deep-dive Law Talk episodes: a thorough look at the cases facing Donald Trump in Georgia, Florida, D.C., and Manhattan as well as the increasingly inscrutable case of Hunter Biden. Which case is most likely to take Trump down? What kinds of questions are raised by the DOJ’s bobbling of the Biden charges? And who’s going to be left standing when the dust clears? All that and more  — plus a chance to submit your questions for the professors — on this episode.

The post Indictments: Infinity War appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Virtually every popular idea in American life has cheerleaders for this fallacy. You’ve surely heard someone say something like: “The only cure to the problems with free speech is more speech.” Or: “You can never have too much inclusion or diversity.” 

Broadly speaking, I take the opposing point of view on nearly all such claims. This doesn’t mean I oppose free speech or diversity any more than I oppose cheesecake or scotch. Rather, I subscribe to the view that life, and especially politics, is full of trade-offs. All medicines or poisons are determined by the dose. 

Nowhere does this longstanding view earn me more grief than when the subject of democracy comes up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favor of democracy. I just don’t think it’s the answer to every problem any more than hammers are the right tool for every DIY project.

For years, I’ve opposed lax rules about mail-in voting and other trends that make voting too easy. Maybe it’s the journalist in me, but I think deadlines are really useful and having an Election Day (or even an Election Weekend) that means something would be better. I think lowering the voting age is a ridiculous idea. Our 50-year-old experiment with democratizing candidate selection—the primary system as we know it today—has gone awry.

Such arguments were once well received on the right and absolutely loathed on the left. They’re still mostly loathed on the left, but in this populist age they’re increasingly despised on the right, too.

For instance, last week, on CNN, I made a fairly conventional point about the distorting effects of the rise in small donors have had for democracy. Candidates who depend on small donors tend to take more polarizing positions. In part because they don’t care much about electability, they push their party to more extreme stances, making the party “brand” less appealing to moderates.

Such observations are not particularly controversial among experts. Election expert Richard Pildes writes, “One of the most robust findings in the empirical campaign-finance literature is that individual donors are the most ideological and polarizing sources of money flowing to campaigns.”

You don’t have to be a political scientist to see this. Democrats routinely waste millions on ideologically “blue state” candidates in “red” states—Beto O’Rourke in Texas, Amy McGrath in Kentucky—who pander to the views of liberal out-of-state donors rather than more conservative but persuadable in-state voters.

On the right, small donations tend to flow to candidates and grifters vowing to wage war on the mythologically all-powerful “establishment.” After she lost her bid for Arizona governor, Kari Lake raked in $2.5 million, 80 percent of which came from out of state. She promised to spend the money on court challenges to her “stolen” election but barely spent $1 for every $10 on that effort. 

As uncontroversial as this in the real world, it’s now heresy on certain quarters of the right, particularly among those who make a living trying to keep small donors angry enough to provide a credit card number. 

For instance, in response to my CNN comments, Sen. J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio, claimed I’m just angry that the fat cats I allegedly depend on have lost their influence in politics. I laughed not just because Vance’s candidacy was launched with $10 million of his billionaire former boss Peter Thiel’s money but also because, last year, the newly pro-Trump Vance insisted that the GOP’s “red wave” failed to materialize not because of Trump’s meddling but because of the baleful power of Democratic small donors.

A common refrain among my dyspeptic critics is that small donors are enriching democracy by participating. Obviously, this is true for plenty of individual small donors. But it leaves out the fact that, at scale, they cut out the parties and disproportionately reward performative rabble-rousers on the left and right. Again, the most ideologically polarized candidates monetize the most ideologically polarized small donors who in turn reward further polarization. This monetization of fear and outrage is a big business. 

Most Americans don’t vote in primaries, religiously watch cable news, or make small donations. But the tiny slice of Americans who do all three have captured the primary process, and because most candidates worry more about primary challenges than general election ones, this sliver has outsize influence over politics generally.  

I’m not for banning small donors, but if you think polarization is a problem for democracy, then it’s hard for me to see how they’re not part of it.

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