Category: 2020 Election

While Wrongo Was Away

The Daily Escape:

Morning storm, Grays Beach, Cape Cod, MA – August 2022 photo by David J. Long

It’s good to be back. Did Wrongo miss anything besides the fraught decision by a Trump-appointed judge about the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago (MAL)? Or, the contrasting apocalyptic speeches by Biden and Trump?

First, with the end of summer in sight, a few words about what Wrongo did on his vacation. We attended a Judy Collins concert at Tanglewood, MA. At 83, her voice remains remarkable. She opened with “Both Sides Now” and although Joni Mitchell owns the song’s copyright, Judy Collins owns the song. Collins performed songs by many other artists and led the crowd in several folk-style sing alongs. It was a very worthwhile evening.

Let’s turn to the two big news items that occurred over the Labor Day break.

First, the competing views of America by President Biden and the former president. Last Thursday, Biden gave a speech identifying Trump and MAGA Republicans as a threat to democracy. Then on Saturday, Trump gave a speech in Pennsylvania that proved Biden’s point.

Trump reprised his “Pocahontas” attack on Elizabeth Warren. He claimed that the FBI planted evidence at MAL. He called for the death penalty for drug dealers, and a ban on electric vehicles. Trump took on the FBI and DOJ:

“The FBI and the Justice Department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do.”

David Frum in The Atlantic:

“For the 2022 election cycle, smart Republicans had a clear and simple plan: Don’t let the election be about Trump. Make it about gas prices, or crime, or the border, or race, or sex education, or anything—anything but Trump….Republicans had good reason to dread the havoc he’d create if he joined the fight in 2022.”

Now, Biden’s attacks have pushed Trump over the edge — exactly where Democrats want him in the run-up to the midterms. More from Frum:

“Biden dangled the bait. Trump took it—and put his whole party on the hook with him. Republican leaders are left with little choice but to pretend to like it.”

Sounds hopeful to Wrongo.

Second, Monday brought the order by federal judge Aileen Cannon approving Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review the documents seized by the FBI from MAL. This stops at least temporarily, federal prosecutors from using those documents in their investigation into obstruction and mishandling of government secrets by Trump.

From a political viewpoint, while her incorrect reading of the facts and the law may slow the investigation, the DOJ was never going to indict Trump before the midterms. They’re saying they are still at the early stages of the investigation.

The judge’s decision is wrong, because stolen defense secrets aren’t privileged; they are the evidence that Trump committed a crime.

It seems clear that the DOJ hasn’t decided whether to appeal her decision to the 11th Circuit, or to play out the special master fight. Of course, it could start by complying with the order and then appeal once the judge has: a) selected a special master, and b) provided instructions on the scope and duration of effort by the special master.

The DOJ’s delay may be caused by the fact that after an appeal to the 11th Circuit, any further appeal is first heard by a single Supreme Court Justice before it goes on to an expanded Supreme Court hearing. In this case, that initial hearing would be before Justice Clarence Thomas, who would likely side with Trump.

Like in Biden’s attack on democracy strategy, Trump’s theft of government secrets will remain a front page story throughout the mid-terms, and regardless of what happens afterwards, all the way to the 2024 presidential election.

The end game politically is to persuade the few persuadables on the Right, along with the majority of Independents to agree with Biden: That we’re in a “war” about the future of our democracy. The threat from one side of our political spectrum is grave. And it’s Biden’s obligation to do whatever he can to pull people away from the brink. On Friday, Biden said to Peter Doocy on FOX:

“I don’t consider Trump supporters a threat to the country. I do think anyone who calls for the use of violence, refuses to acknowledge an election….changing the way you count votes, that is a threat to democracy.”

That clarifies a message that could reach a few Republicans. They and most Independents should then vote with the Dems in November. The Dems now need to carry that message to its logical conclusion.

These can be good developments for Democrats. Before the Dobbs decision and the raid on MAL, Republicans had convinced Americans that the greatest threat to democracy was high gasoline prices.

Now Dems should be going for a win.

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Monday Wake Up Call – August 29, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Estacada, OR with Mt. Hood – August 2022 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography

The WaPo has a stunning exclusive story about Trump and the top secret files found in Mar-a-Lago. Apparently, he had been keeping them in the White House residence long before they were moved to Florida, and while in office, he took them on foreign trips: (emphasis and brackets by Wrongo)

“The Archives battle to secure records from Trump began while he was still president, according to records reviewed by The Post. Gary M. Stern, the [National Archives] agency’s top lawyer, began asking the former president’s attorneys to return two dozen boxes in the residency of the White House before he left. In an email Stern wrote to others, Trump’s counsel, Pat Cipollone, agreed with him. But Trump did not return them.”

This paints a troubling picture. First, these boxes had been kept in the residence of the White House for some time. The WaPo quotes Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s former director of communications:

“Any documents that made it to the White House residence were these boxes Trump carried around with him….Usually the body man would have brought them upstairs for Trump….They would get handed off to the residence and just disappear.”

Second, Grisham goes on to say that boxes of documents even went with Trump on foreign travel, following him to hotel rooms around the world — including countries  that are considered foreign adversaries. More:

“There was no rhyme or reason — it was classified documents on top of newspapers on top of papers people printed out of things they wanted him to read. The boxes were never organized….He’d want to get work done on long trips so he’d just rummage through the boxes. That was our filing system.”

Wrongo thinks Republicans will say that Trump took the documents when he traveled to satisfy his voracious appetite for reading. There’s not much about Trump that could shock America at this point, except perhaps him going to jail for something related to reading.

And do you think he did his own packing for those trips? Clearly there were staffers who ignored their signed acknowledgment of the criminal penalties for mishandling documents and brought them along because Trump said he wanted them.

It’s clear that many people were aware that Trump liked to keep top secret compartmentalized information nearby. They must have been acutely aware of the danger that might come with that. Has anyone checked to see if there might be more secret documents at his Bedminster, NJ, or New York places?

Sadly, that isn’t the only unbelievable story about Trump’s security breaches today. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is reporting about a woman, fluent in several languages who people at Mar-a-Lago knew as Anna de Rothschild, mingled with Trump and his supporters. She also attended a golf outing with Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham.

She wasn’t a Rothschild; she was a fake. Apparently, she invented this other Anna. From the Post-Gazette:

“But the 33-year-old woman was not a member of the famous banking family and is now a subject of a widening FBI investigation that has delved into her past financial activities and the events that led her to the former president’s home.”

More:

“A year before the FBI’s spectacular raid of the former president’s seaside home, the woman whose real name is Inna Yashchyshyn, a Russian-speaking immigrant from Ukraine, made several trips into the estate posing as a member of the famous [Rothschild] family while making inroads with some of the former president’s key supporters.”

One suspects that if we knew the entire truth, it would reveal another unthinkable security breach. The ability of Ms. Yashchyshyn (who is the daughter of an Illinois truck driver) to bypass Trump’s security should make the National Security establishment very, very nervous, what with all of those secret documents hardly under lock and key.

And Wrongo thought they let only “the best people” into Mar-a-Lago.

Time to wake up America! Read what Wrongo said here about the potential damage done when the US government has to assume that secret operations have been compromised by mishandling of top secret information. Taken together, these two stories demonstrate clearly why the DOJ and the National Archives were so worried about classified documents stored insecurely by Trump.

To help you wake up, watch, and listen to Larkin Poe, a Nashville-based sister group, (featured once before on the Wrongologist) perform a new song “Georgia Off My Mind” from their album, “Blood Harmony” coming out in November:

Good groove, nice wordplay.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 21, 2022

The GOP’s reflexive instinct to defend Trump was expected. But it’s vilification of the FBI is sickening. And this is coming from Wrongo, a 1960s radical who has always distrusted them. Garrett Graff, writing in the NYT said this about the FBI:

“Historically…the FBI has been arguably the most culturally conservative and traditionally white Christian institution in the entire US government. It’s an institution so culturally conservative, even by the standards of law enforcement, that Democratic presidents have never felt comfortable — or politically emboldened — enough to nominate a Democrat to head the bureau.”

Maybe that should change. Wrongo is old enough to remember that the FBI twice torpedoed Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. He’s read excerpts of the FBI dossiers on James Baldwin (it’s 1,884 pages), and about its targeting of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

So, maybe Wrongo is the um, well, wrong person to defend the FBI. But that doesn’t mean their execution of a search warrant approved by a federal judge is prima facie evidence that the FBI has suddenly become a tool of the Democrats. On to cartoons.

You don’t have to be a detective to see the difference:

More hypocrisy from the GOP:

Polls are beginning to show that the GOP has some political weakness:

Teflon Don wins again:

Lindsay Graham and Rudy have to testify about the GOP’s Georgia voting mess:

Teachers leave the job in droves:

Unintended consequences of certain policies:

If Liz Cheney has political ambitions, she needs to become a citizen of a more compatible state:

 

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Tuesday Wake Up Call, Voter Fraud Edition – August 16, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Monsoon season, Sonoran Desert, Tucson, AZ –  August 2022 photo by Rene Martinez

The November mid-term election is 12 weeks away. Some Republicans who do not accept our country’s democratic tenets are focusing on getting elected in the battleground states in an effort to energize a future coup. From the WaPo:

“…in the six critical battlegrounds that ultimately decided the 2020 presidential contest, where Trump most fiercely contested the results…..Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, at least 54 winners out of 87 contests — more than 62% of nominees — have embraced the former president’s false claims.”

As an aside, reporters must stop using the term “election deniers”. It doesn’t convey what these Republicans believe. They know Trump lost, but they tried to steal the 2020 election anyway.

And they’re promising to steal the next one. These people call the government their “enemy”. Now, they’re calling for violence against the FBI. They say our elections can’t possibly be fair, yet they’re doing all they can to make them less fair.

There are many tools in the GOP tool kit to help a state create election-related chaos. They could decertify voting machines or block the electronic counting of ballots. They could empower their legislatures to determine how many of a presidential candidate’s votes are actually counted.

The GOP says that our local electoral processes and voting machines are highly suspect. In 2020 we saw Republican efforts to find voter fraud in several states, all of which failed. Still, in 2022, the GOP persists in saying there are voting machines that flipped votes in 2020 from Trump to Biden.

The gold standard for voting in America is hand-marked paper ballots. They leave a paper trail that is hard to challenge. Today states (including Connecticut where Wrongo votes) use digital scanners to read those hand-marked ballots. The machine tabulators can be checked before voting for accuracy and ballots can be re-scanned in random precincts afterwards to verify totals, along with hand counts.

Verified Voting a non-partisan firm that promotes the responsible use of technology in elections, rates the integrity of voting machines at the county level throughout the US. They have an interactive US map that allows anyone to check the quality of the voting machines in their county. Here’s a screenshot image of that interactive map:

You should go to the interactive map for greater detail. The green portion of the map represents the 69.2% of US registered voters that use highly reliable hand-marked paper ballots. The yellow portion of the map represents the 23.4% of our registered voters that use mostly reliable Ballot Marking Devices (BMD), with marked pre-printed ballots; some print summaries of voter selections, often with those selections encoded in barcodes or QR codes. Together, these account for 92.6% of America’s registered voters.

The red portion of the map represents the 7.4% of American voters who use a less-reliable direct recording electronic (DRE) voting system. DREs allow voters to record their selections directly into computer memory.

Despite what Republicans think, most of America can vote with total confidence that their voting machines are accurate, and that their votes will be counted accurately. So relax Republicans, election fraud just isn’t very possible in the US.

But there are plenty of other shenanigans that can be pulled at the local and state level. And that’s a concern given what the GOP is focusing on for the November mid-terms. They could take away voting rights by canceling voter registrations. They can close polling places or gerrymander more districts. The WaPo has a chart showing how close the GOP is to controlling the voting process in the six battleground states:

By weakening trust in our election system, Republicans are paving the way for America to become a one-party state led by an authoritarian strongman. They intend to take away the single and best power the people have, our vote. These Republicans aren’t election deniers, they’re anti-democracy. If they are elected, they will end democracy as we know it.

Time to wake up America! We can’t leave the vote-counting to people who won’t count all of our votes! America has a long tradition of subverting the voting process and denying millions of people the right to vote, and these Republicans want to take us right back to those days in our past. To stop that, they must be beaten in November’s mid-terms.

To help you wake up, watch, and listen to “Queen Bee” played by Taj Mahal and friends in this Playing For Change video, that features Ben Harper, Rosanne Cash, and many others from around the world.

The tune is from Taj Mahal’s 1997 album, “Señor Blues”, which won a Grammy. It’s an album that Wrongo highly recommends:

 

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 14, 2022

(Tomorrow’s Monday Wake Up Call will appear on Tuesday)

Let’s talk about the religions that are implicated in two news items this week.

First, the attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie in upstate New York on Saturday. He was hospitalized after suffering serious injuries in a stabbing attack. We don’t know for certain that this was someone carrying out the death threat that Iran’s then-leader Grand Ayatollah Khomeini put on Rushdie in 1989. But it seems to be the most likely explanation.

Police detained a suspect named Hadi Matar, 24, who is California-born, but moved to Fairview, New Jersey in 2014. NBC NY News reported that a review of Matar’s social media accounts showed he is sympathetic to Shia extremism and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps causes. One of Matar’s former high school classmates told The Daily Beast that Matar “was a very devout Muslim” who participated in debate and had several friends.

If religion is behind this, the attempted revenge has occurred two generations later.

Second, Polio was found in wastewater samples from New York City. Polio has been eradicated in the US since 1988. Finding it in NYC water samples follows a confirmed case of Polio in Rockland County, NY, just 35 miles north of the City. The County announced that an analysis of more wastewater samples revealed that the polio viruses have been circulating in the area since May.

Worse, the 20 positive samples detected in the two counties are genetically linked to the virus that paralyzed the unidentified man in Rockland County.

The broader context of both stories is that religions played a part in each. The Polio case in Rockland was found in a resident of one of the orthodox religious towns where a predominantly Hasidic Jewish community lives. Rockland County currently has a polio vaccination rate of 60.5% among 2-year-olds, compared to the statewide average of 79.1%.  This same group had a measles outbreak (312 cases) in 2019, and low COVID vaccination rates.

There is a strong anti-vaxx mentality in this community, and that helps create fertile conditions for a formerly eradicated disease to be revitalized. Polio is entirely preventable, and yet, many parents remain hostile to vaccination.

In the Rushdie attack, we’re speculating about the influence of religion. Saying the attacker is sympathetic to Shia Islam isn’t sufficient to make it a religious attack. But Wrongo would be surprised if it turned out to be solely either personally or politically motivated.

On to cartoons. Despite the above, most of the news this week was about the FBI search.

The truth is revealed:

Trump explains:

 

Beach reading is different this year:

Reactions to IRS have changed:

GOP policy wonks are thinking they may need to change:

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Partisanship is Dragging Down Consumer Sentiment

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Smugglers Beach, Yarmouth, MA – July 2022 photo by Sue Frageau

We all hear the negative news, and fewer of us hear what’s positive. Bloomberg’s Matt Winkler says that the measures that track confidence in the economy are being skewed downward by politically disgruntled Americans, mostly people on the Right. Here’s a chart:

There’s plenty of evidence that the Democrats are terrible at political messaging. But, even though inflation is at 40-year highs, we need to ask why consumer sentiment seems so low when the economy is doing pretty well.

Winkler’s point is this level of negativity makes little sense economically but as the chart above shows, it’s consistent with partisanship. And he makes a compelling case that the current sentiment levels are disconnected from the overall state of the economy relative to historic levels. More from Winkler:

“Never mind that the deaths related to Covid-19 plunged 78% from the first to the second quarters, that 10 million new jobs have been created, that unemployment at 3.5% represents a 53-year-low, that corporate earnings rose to a record and that the confidence of chief executive officers remains above its long-term average. Not to mention that total household net worth soared by $18.1 trillion in 2021, the most under any president…”

Here’s a different chart from Barry Ritholtz showing the University of Michigan Sentiment Index going back to 1978, annotated to show previous economic turndowns:

The chart shows that the current sentiment readings are worse than:

  1. 1980-82 Double Dip Recession
  2. 1987 Crash
  3. 1990 Recession
  4. 9/11 Terrorist Attacks
  5. 2000-2003 Dotcom implosion
  6. 2007-09 Great Financial Crisis
  7. 2020 Pandemic Panic

Does it make any sense that today’s consumer sentiment would be worse than it was for all of those previous economic crises? It does not.

It seems that Republicans are indifferent to the positive developments. The University of Michigan’s national Consumer Sentiment Index has plummeted 50% under Biden to an all-time low, primarily due to Republicans’ disapproval of an economy led by a Democratic President.

Bloomberg found that Democrats also aren’t as approving when their Party isn’t occupying the White House. But in contrast to Republicans, Democrats’ confidence correlates closely with rising and falling gross domestic product and unemployment trends.

To be sure, the highest inflation level in 40 years, as measured by the Consumer Price Index at 9.1%, for June (although July measured a lower 8.5%) is punitive to the least affluent voters, the traditional base of Democrats.

Republican are amplified by FOX News in their views that the economy is in terrible shape. When the Commerce Department said on July 28 that the economy contracted for a second consecutive quarter, the Fox Business channel declared, “We are officially in recession.”  But, as Wrongo and many others have said, there is no “official” recession until the nonpartisan economists of the National Bureau of Economic Research declare it.

It’s a perplexing time for economists. Overall activity as measured by GDP has contracted, but it doesn’t feel like a recession. The economy has added 2.74 million jobs this year through June. This earnings season has shown that members of the S&P 500 Index are on track to post record profits for the second quarter.

But none of this is apparent in the Michigan Sentiment Index, perhaps because Republicans running for office across the country in 2022 are saying the economy is terrible. They are the same people who are still denying the results of the 2020 election.

Paul Krugman asks why Biden isn’t getting any credit for the 10 million new jobs created in his first two years in office:

“Some polling suggests that the public may not be aware that we’ve been creating jobs at all, let alone at a record pace. And we’re in a partisan environment where politicians…can make obviously false assertions and have their supporters believe them. The other day Trump told a crowd that gas in California costs $8.25 a gallon, and nobody laughed. (It was actually $5.43 at the time.)”

Meanwhile, Biden is doing exactly what he promised when he got elected. And he’s succeeding against the odds with only occasional bipartisan support. His success shows that what’s hurting the consumer sentiment polling is partisanship and disinformation.

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The FBI Search

The Daily Escape:

Wildflowers above 11,000’ at Paradise Divide, Carbondale, CO – July 2022 photo by Mountain West Photography

What to make of the FBI executing a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago (MAL)? Despite what most of the immediately outraged Republican Party is saying, the bar for getting a search warrant on a former President is understandably and correctly, set high.

Trump claimed that the search was “prosecutorial misconduct” and reflected “the weaponization of the Justice System.” But prosecutors can’t conduct searches of people’s homes on their own. The Fourth Amendment requires that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

For the FBI to conduct this search, it needed a warrant, which means everyone from frontline prosecutors and FBI lawyers to Attorney General Merrick Garland had to sign off on the warrant application, and then a federal judge had to examine the affidavit setting forth their evidence and concur. This is the system working as the Constitution intended.

Garland and the federal judge who authorized the warrant knew that it would set off a shitstorm of reaction by Right-wing politicians and by Trump loyalists, but they went ahead anyway. Oh, to see that affidavit!

It was predictable that the MAGAverse would erupt in fury, but the reaction by the so-called Republican “establishment” is both ridiculous and frightening. Elected Republicans, who always remind us that they are the party of law and order, could have: Either adopted a posture of strategic silence, or given the FBI the benefit of the doubt while they conduct a court-sanctioned investigation.

Instead, except for Mitch McConnell who has stayed silent, they mostly went crazy, including House Minority Leader McCarthy’s threats of retaliation against Garland if Republicans take the House in the fall. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) tweeted:

Although Lil’ Marco said this in 2016:

This is the worst kind of lie by a member of the US Senate. Rubio knows that this was the lawful execution of a search warrant that was presented with probable cause, and issued by a Federal judge. These aren’t done lightly or carelessly.

Trump has spent years sowing distrust of federal law enforcement and the “deep state.” And the response by senior Republicans shows how deeply his campaign of subversion has penetrated their hive mind.

Republicans are claiming that the FBI’s search of MAL is abusive. But law enforcement leaves a copy of the search warrant, which itemizes what they are looking for, and what laws may have been violated. If Trump and the MAGA Republicans really think this search is abusive, Trump would have made the warrant public. Trump needs to show it or shut up about it.

We really need to stand back and appreciate the clarity with which the GOP is expressing that the role of law enforcement is only to police the powerless. Here’s the #3 GOP Representative in the House:

This is sick. Law enforcement does exactly this to average citizens all the time, all over America. So, expect that this fall, the Party of “LOCK HER UP” will become the Party of “How Dare the FBI Investigate Republican Politicians.”

People are getting a lesson in civics: If society has a rule, it must be enforced for everyone in the same situation. Trump is saying that the DOJ has been weaponized. But consider this list from Marshall Cohen:

Despite all the hope by Democrats and the fury of Republicans, no one has a handle on how this will progress, or whether it has an impact on Trump’s attempt to run again for president. Wrongo listened to a Republican political strategist on the BBC say that the fact of the search itself will hand the presidency to Trump in 2024.

That seems like GOP hopium to Wrongo.

The next few weeks will be filled with speculation and most likely, conflicting information as details emerge about the MAL search and what was behind it. One thing that’s sure is that the immediate and escalating talk of violence among Trump’s supporters is troubling. Some have been calling for “war” or “civil war,” referring to FBI “tyranny.”

In the not too distant past, we’d dismiss this kind of talk as braggadocio. But that disappeared on Jan. 6, when we realized these militants are more than willing to act on their warped beliefs.

So take a step back and place this story in a broader context: As a Constitutional matter, DOJ’s action is a message to future presidents that even though recently, other guardrails of presidential accountability have failed us, the criminal justice system still works, so long as someone of integrity—like Garland—is at the helm.

Does America need further convincing that this fall, aside from running on their accomplishments, Democrats up and down the ballot, need to amplify the opposing party’s lack of regard for the rule of law or, for truth itself?

How do we insure that they don’t use the powers of their office(s) to morph this country towards authoritarianism?

By voting them out of power.

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Should Legislative Wins Have Dems Feeling Optimistic?

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Colorado, NM, near Grand Junction, CO – July 2022 photo by David Shield

Robert Hubbell made a list of landmark legislation passed thus far during the Biden presidency so that we’d have it handy over the next few months leading to the mid-terms in November:

  • 03/11/2021 American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a $1.9 trillion relief bill to address the continued impact of COVID-19 on the economy, public health, state and local governments, individuals, and businesses.
  • 11/15/2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a $1.2 trillion investment in “hard infrastructure” including roads and bridges.
  • 03/29/2022, Emmett Till Anti Lynching Act, 120 years after an anti-lynching bill was first introduced and which failed on nearly 200 prior occasions, Congress passed a bill designating lynching as a hate crime. Only three representatives—one each from Texas, Kentucky, and Georgia—voted against the bill.
  • 06/25/22 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, extended background checks for gun purchasers under 21, funding for state red flag laws and other crisis intervention programs, and partial closure of the “boyfriend” loophole.
  • 07/29/2022 CHIPS and Science Act, the most significant research bill passed in a generation, including a $56 billion investment in American semiconductor production to incentivize companies to move chip production back into the US.
  • 08/02/2022, Honoring our PACT Act of 2022, expanded healthcare and other services for veterans who were exposed to toxic substances during military service.
  • 08/07/2022, Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the largest climate investment in US history, also lowers prescription drug prices by giving Medicare the power to negotiate the prices of certain prescription drugs and extends expiring Obamacare health care subsidies for three years.

The scope of the issues addressed is significant: the pandemic and its economic fallout, highways, bridges, broadband, rail, manufacturing, science, semiconductors, prescription drug prices, health insurance, veterans’ health, climate change, deficit reduction and tax equity.

And they were passed within the constraints of a 50/50 Senate. Five of these laws, and all but the two biggies: the American Rescue Plan, and the IRA received Republican support. It’s pretty amazing that the Dems got this much.

So, whenever someone asserts that “Biden or the Democrats haven’t achieved anything” or that “Biden’s presidency has been a failure,” ask them to name as many significant pieces of legislation passed by Trump. Or, by Obama, Bush II, Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Carter, Ford, or Nixon.

Only LBJ stacks up to the progress Biden has made so far.

But, it’s unclear how much this will help the Democrats in November. The Dems went into the 2010 midterms having passed Obamacare, a landmark piece of legislation, but they lost 60 seats and the leadership of the House. That was the biggest swing since 1948. Republicans also reduced the Democrats’ Senate majority.

So, as Wrongo stated yesterday, the political challenge for Democrats turns in large part to messaging —and targeting their message to the cohorts that make up the Democratic Party. Ruy Teixeira, a Democratic strategist affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in the WSJ that Hispanics are no longer a sure cohort for the Democrats:

“It seems clear that Democrats seriously erred in 2020 by lumping Hispanics in with other “people of color,” assuming that they sympathized with the racial activism that dominated so much of the political scene that year. In reality, Hispanic voters are not a liberal voting bloc, especially on social issues.”

More:

“In a Pew postelection survey, just 20% described themselves as liberal, while 45% were moderate and 35% conservative. Surveys show that Hispanics are overwhelmingly an upwardly mobile and patriotic population whose main concerns are jobs, the economy, healthcare, effective schools, and public safety.”

Teixeira cites the polling firm Civiqs’ survey in late July that showed that just 12% of Hispanic working-class voters said their family’s financial situation had gotten better in the last year, while 50% said it had gotten worse.

In general, Hispanic voters cite inflation and the economy as by far their top issues for 2022. They could be a tough get for Dems who want to focus voter attention on abortion rights, their legislative achievements, and the Jan. 6 hearings.

How should Democrats message Hispanic voters?

We’re at an inflection point. All of the above happened because there were 50 Democratic Senators. It wouldn’t have happened with 49. It might have been bigger with 52 or more. Lose control of the House in November, and see Biden impeached.

These are things all Democrats should be reckoning with. Let’s leave the last words to Hubbell: (brackets by Wrongo)

“We have the policies, the positions, the values, and the candidates necessary to win. We need to….engage without fear or hesitation…..Let’s capitalize on the string of mistakes and “pulling back the curtain” moments that have revealed…[Republican] depravity as never before. We have every reason to be confident but no reason to be complacent!”

 

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 31, 2022

Q: Why do people take an instant dislike to Justice Samuel A. Alito?  A: It saves time.

Alito spoke in Rome dismissing criticism from foreign officials who he said “lambasted” his opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade. Alito spoke at a conference promoting religious liberty, saying:

“I had the honor this term of writing I think the only Supreme Court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders who felt perfectly fine commenting on American law…”

Alito called out Prince Harry as making a particularly hurtful comment. What Harry said at the UN:

“This has been a painful year in a painful decade….Climate change wreaking havoc on our planet, with the most vulnerable suffering most of all. The few weaponizing lies and disinformation at the expense of the many. And from a horrific war in Ukraine, to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States, we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom, the cause of Mandela’s life.”

Alito said in response:

“But what really wounded me…was when the Duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare the decision…with the Russian attack on Ukraine…”

To quote Charlie Pierce:

“The conservatives on the Supreme Court are now not simply ruling like political animals, they’re behaving like political animals as well.”

This guarantees that Alito will be forever known internationally as a dickhead. On to cartoons.

Manchin had a surprise:

The GOP’s burning its mid-term chances by walking away from the PACT act:

And this incarnation of GOP plumbers need tech support:

The stuff of nightmares:

Change brings things to light:

DHS scrapped the effort to collect agency phones in order to try to recover deleted Secret Service texts:

Putin’s staff misunderstands:

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Electoral Count Reform Act

The Daily Escape:

Clunker gold, Goldfield, NV – July 2022 photo by Ted Matzek

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WVA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) aren’t Wrongo’s idea of Senators who exhibit statesmanship. Both are more his idea of how political hacks look and operate. And for Collins at least, that viewpoint is based on several unproductive meetings with the Senator from Maine.

But Wrongo could be – well, wrong in the case of their authorship of the Collins-Manchin Electoral Count Reform Act bill, (ECRA) which fixes some of the deficiencies in the 1887 Electoral Count Act (ECA) that controls how Congress counts Electoral College votes.

The entire process was a ceremonial afterthought until Trump and his henchmen tried to subvert the ECA via occupying the US Capitol in the Jan. 6 coup. According to Slate: (parenthesis by Wrongo)

“The Collins-Manchin Electoral Count Reform Act bill would fix a lot of the ambiguities and contradictions in the (Electoral Count) act and do much more. It…would confirm…that a vice president has no unilateral power to accept or reject election results. It would also raise the threshold for senators or representatives to object to valid electoral college votes, eliminate the chance that a state legislature could rely on that “failed election” language to send in alternative slate of electors, and provide a mechanism for federal judicial review of any action by a rogue governor to send in a fake slate of electors.”

Sounds promising. What does the new bill do to prevent these things? From the WaPo: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…the proposal would require a state to appoint presidential electors in the manner dictated by the state’s laws as they existed before Election Day. As long as every state’s laws require appointment of electors in keeping with the popular vote, this would prevent a state legislature from appointing electors in defiance of that vote.”

More: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Second, the proposal would require the governor to certify the correct electors by a hard deadline before Congress counts them. This is supposed to prevent a governor from certifying the electors for the losing candidate. What if a state legislature and governor simply ignored those requirements and their constitutional duty? [T]he proposal would allow an aggrieved candidate to trigger expedited judicial review by a federal three-judge panel, subject to expedited Supreme Court appeal….[then] Congress would be required to count the electors that the courts deemed the correct one.”

The proposal clarifies that the vice president’s role is purely ceremonial. And while the ECA currently requires one member from each Congressional chamber to force a vote on whether to invalidate electors, a very low bar, the proposal would require one-fifth of each chamber to force the vote for each state.

It begs the question of whether this Congress’s law would bind a future Congress to count only electors the courts deem legitimate. It’s likely that a future Congress would have to repeal this new law to wiggle out of following it. And it would also require a presidential signature, all of which might be difficult (but possible) to pull off in the middle of a contested post-election.

And it raises the question of whether we can count on the federal courts to do the right thing.

Wrongo thinks we should do away with the Electoral College, or at least pass the National Popular Vote Compact in enough states to eliminate any effort to steal the EC votes.

If American had a modern suffragette-type movement, maybe the oligarchical Senate could be changed. Think about an Amendment that created 50 Senatorial Districts, roughly equal in population, across state lines where necessary, with 2 Senators per District.

You know, letting us begin to act like a real democracy.

But in 2022, we shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the good. Slate says that right now, there are nine Republican senators who have co-sponsored the ECRA, just one short of the 10 necessary to overcome a potential Senate filibuster, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated his general support for this kind of reform.

The ECRA has a realistic chance of passing if enough Democrats and Republicans are willing to compromise. This opportunity is unlikely to last past the convening of the 118th Congress next January. If Democrats lose the House, there’s no way that Kevin McCarthy, the likely Speaker, would willingly bring it up.

Even though the ECRA doesn’t address voter suppression, its introduction was welcomed by a coalition of civil rights and voting rights leaders who recognize that election subversion must be fixed urgently.

Let’s leave the last word to Slate’s Rick Hansen:

“On top of all this, we need legislation on a state and local level to prevent election subversion, such as that which guarantees transparency in vote tabulating by election officials and removes discretion of election officials when they fail to do their jobs as mandated by state law.

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