Liz Trussâs big bet since taking over as UK prime minister is to lower taxes just like St. Ronnie and Trump did in the US. Said Truss:
âLower taxes lead to economic growth, there is no doubt in my mind about that,â
Trickle down will work this time, we promise, say UK Conservatives.
The tax reductions will require the UK government to borrow bigly to balance their budget. They hope that there will be so much growth that the UK will make it all back in future tax payments. Just like in the US, the lie is that these tax cuts will pay for themselves! Something that has never happened.
The UK Treasury said that the top personal rate will be cut from 45% to 40%. That will be more beneficial for the wealthy than the majority of British society. Shortly after the cuts were announced on Friday, the pound sank almost 2.6% to its lowest level against the US dollar since 1985. Wrongo hates to quote Larry Summers, but he said this:
“The UK is behaving a bit like an emerging market turning itself into a submerging market…it is pursuing the worst macroeconomic policies of any major country in a long time.”
âLiz Truss just announced the UKâs biggest giveaway to the rich since 1972, which resulted in an IMF bailout. Now the pound is crashing in the middle of the worst inflation since the 70s. Bold strategy….Letâs see if it pays off.â
Itâs hard to believe this will go well with the UK already in a recession. On to cartoons.
Sunrise, Willard Beach, South Portland, ME – September 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photo
Last week, Wrongo wrote about how if you know a little about politics, your issues are guns, abortion, and taxes. We need to think about adding immigration to that list. Blog reader Craig G. asked, âwhen is enough, enough?â in response to Wrongoâs column on DeSantis sending immigrants to Marthaâs Vineyard.
Itâs a great question. We tend to think of immigration as an American/Mexican border problem, but it is much, much worse than that. The UNâs High Commissioner for Refugees reported in May 2022, that the world, for the first time in history, had 100 million forcibly displaced people either in camps or on the move.
Of those who were on the move, âconflict and violenceâ accounted for 14.4 million, and âweather-related eventsâ accounted for 23.7 million. The distinction between these numbers is often hard to understand. The civil war in Syria for example, produced large numbers of refugees. In 2021, more than 6.8 million refugees were from Syria, more than any other country in the world. At the same time, another 6.9 million people were displaced within Syria. The Syrian civil war followed the most profound drought ever recorded in what used to be the Fertile Crescent.
About 100 million migrants is huge, more than the population of Germany, Turkey or, Vietnam. But it could get worse as the impacts of climate change broaden throughout the 3rd world. The International Organization for Migration has predicted that we could see 1.5 billion people forced from their homes by 2050.
These numbers are staggering. Now couple them with Americaâs declining birth rate. Econofact reports that the US birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007. They say the decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. So, what if it continues while the number of people knocking on Americaâs doors continues to grow?
As Craig G. implies, there could come a time when all Americans will agree to limit immigration. Otherwise, a smaller, aging America will be asking what some on the Right are asking today: Who are the ârealâ Americans? What do we owe recent immigrants?
âAll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.â
How will we adjust when the majority of our population are from different cultures, different races and speak different languages? The children of first-generation immigrants generally are well-adapted to the broad American culture; for the most part, they sound and act like Americans. If they were born here they ARE Americans. But the first generation migrant has an understandably difficult time.
This has caused the Right and specifically, the Christian nationalists on the right to be stingy about who they say is a true American, despite when many kids of immigrants are born here in America.The 14th Amendment doesnât require any ideological, racial or language prerequisite.
Our low birth rates mean we canât replace our population, so our economic growth will slow. If we replace our population with immigrants, weâll have economic growth, but our culture will inexorably change.
Our history gives us some pointers. Immigration to the US peaked in the 19th century in the decade 1880-89 when it reached 5,248,568. The first decade of the 20th century saw another record with 8,202,388 people entering the country. In 1910, 75% of the population of New York, Chicago, Detroit and Boston consisted of first and second generation immigrants.
Remember that the US population was 62,979,766 in 1890, an increase of 25.5% percent since the prior census in 1880. Â Contrast that with today. Stastia says that 710,000 legal immigrants arrived here in 2021, and that we had 11.39 million illegal immigrants living in the US at year end 2018. Weâre five times larger today.
Time to wake up America! A tsunami of immigrants will try to move from the 3rd world to the developed world. The numbers will be staggering, beyond anything experienced so far by Europe or the US. Our ability to cope with so many people in motion in some even modestly humane fashion will determine the character of our country over the next century.
To help you wake up, listen to John Moreland perform âUgly Facesâ from his 2022 album âBirds in the Ceilingâ.
Sample Lyric:
You’re seeing ugly faces in your dreams
Let me know what it means
We told ourselves we’d tell it true
But I learned how to lie, watching you
This dirty place don’t want you here
Looks like you’re stuck another year
You close your eyes, a scene rolls by
A strip mall under sunburst sky
My back was to a corner, lonely in a crowd
I couldn’t hear you calling, the bullshit was so loud
On Friday, the DOJ filed a motion in the 11th Federal Circuit Court for a partial stay of judge Cannonâs order appointing a special master to review the stolen documents that the FBI recovered at Mar-a-Lago (MAL). They are asking the federal appeals court to temporarily block Cannonâs ruling that prevents the DOJ from using thousands of pages of government documents seized from Trump at MAL.
It came after judge Cannon, for the second time in two weeks, issued a ruling in Trumpâs favor that flabbergasted legal experts. From the WaPo:
âUS District Judge Aileen M. Cannon on Thursday night rejected the Justice Departmentâs request to allow it to review the documents seized from Trumpâs residence at Mar-a-Lago that were marked classified. Cannon previously ruled that a special master review all the seized documents, at least temporarily delaying the governmentâs criminal probe.â
âPlaintiff has no claim for the return of those records, which belong to the Government and were seized in a court-authorized search. The records are not subject to any possible claim of personal attorney-client privilege. And neither the Plaintiff nor the court has cited any authority suggesting that a former President could successfully invoke executive privilege to prevent the Executive Branch from reviewing its own records.â
Letâs leave it to Robert Hubbell to point out the double standard at work in a recent Supreme Court decision: (brackets and emphasis by Wrongo)
“Here is a fun fact: âExecutive privilegeâ is not mentioned in the Constitution. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that executive privilege is âimpliedâ in the Constitution because it is âinextricably rooted in the separation of powers under the Constitution.â
Another fun fact: The Constitution does not mention âseparation of powers.â So, executive privilege is an implied right based on an implied principle [in the Constitution].
Compare the Courtâs recognition of the implied right of a president to invoke executive privilege to the Courtâs recent pronouncement in Dobbs regarding reproductive liberty: âThe Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.â
With its decision in Dobbs, the Supreme Court eliminated an implied right that offends its religious agenda.
But Cannon and most likely, the Supremes will likely protect Trump by implying a right based on the general structure of the Constitution. On to cartoons.
Judge Cannon bars the DOJ from Trump. We thought weâd hit bottom and then we heard knocking from below:
âThe migrant group, which included children, arrived on two planes around 3 p.m. without any warning, said State Senator Julian Cyr, a Massachusetts Democrat representing Cape Cod, Marthaâs Vineyard, and Nantucket. Officials and volunteers from the islandâs six towns âreally moved heaven and earth to essentially set up the response that we would do in the event of a hurricane,â
âTo embarrass Northern liberals and humiliate Black people, southern White Citizens Councils started their so-called “Reverse Freedom Rides,” giving Black people one-way tickets to northern cities with false promises of jobs, housing, and better lives.â
Maybe DeSantis and Abbott should have read a few history books before deciding to ban books.
DeSantis knows that Florida is home to 60% of the Cubans living in the US. These immigrants fled to the US to escape poverty, violence, and a Communist dictatorship. Many didnât follow immigration laws at the time. More still try to reach Florida every week. Is DeSantis saying that he doesnât want Venezuelan migrants but sure, more Cuban migrants are ok?
MA State Rep. Dylan Fernandes, whose district includes Marthaâs Vineyard, tweeted: (brackets by Wrongo)
âThe Governor of one of the biggest states in the nation has been spending time hatching a secret plot to round up & ship peopleâchildren, families-lying to them about where [theyâre] going just to gain cheap political points on Tucker [Carlson] and MAGA twitter….These immigrants were not met with chaos, they were met with compassion. We are a community & nation that is stronger because of immigrants.â
Another thing: Have these plane/bus operators committed crimes? Airlines usually file manifests about who is onboard and where theyâre going. Why would they, most likely private/charter operators, agree to be part of a political stunt?
The companies that transported the migrants should be told that while Abbot or DeSantis can hire them, the transport companies also have legal obligations to their passengers. If the charter companies are MAGA and won’t comply, they could have their permission to operate revoked.
And one more thing: Why are people who may not qualify for asylum being sent to other parts of the US rather than being sent back to their country of origin? And by self-professed law-and-order type governors?
DeSantis says heâs a Christian, but heâs not clothing the naked or feeding the hungry. Heâs doing the opposite: Driving them from his state, not because itâs required legally, but because he can use them to advance his political ambitions. Heâs using vulnerable human beings for his personal advancement. Thatâs evil personified.
Are we now a country of political gotcha? Should Chicago and NYC send their gang bangers to Florida and Texas? What do any of these stunts solve? From Digby about DeSantis:
â…his despicably cruel, racist worldview has been embraced by conservative Christians [for] as long as I can remember. Certainly in the years after 9/11 it was on display everywhere you looked. Their view of Christianity is that Jesus loves white people like them, period. Everyone else can literally go to hell.â
There is nothing Christian or Conservative about what DeSantis did. The folks in Marthaâs Vineyard, who welcomed the immigrants, were the ones who acted as Christians. DeSantis is surely aware of the passage in Matthew:
âWhatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me.â
The requirement of that passage is what a Christian church on Marthaâs Vineyard did to help these migrants. All that DeSantis and his friends do is complain that they can’t have their preferred prayers said in public schools.
Christian nationalism as it is practiced today in the US is becoming the worst and most destructive heresies to afflict American Christians. More about this tomorrow.
This incident on Marthaâs Vineyard is another reminder that a central conceit of Republican politics is that everyone is secretly as cruel as they are. And because of that, no one would be genuinely willing to help the people Republicans pack into planes and buses and ship off to liberal land.
Sunset, Housatonic River, New Milford CT – 2022 photo by Tony Vengrove
There are just 55 days left until the 2022 midterm elections, and Wrongoâs crystal ball remains cloudy. For example, take the US Senate race in Pennsylvania. Democrat John Fetterman leads Republican Mehmet Oz by 48.5% to 40.4% in the 535 average of polls as of September 8. Sounds like a big lead, no?
But the US Chamber of Commerce told Axios on Sept. 11 that it was donating $3 million to support Oz’s campaign. Who is the US Chamber? They are an industry group that represents virtually every major American corporation. From Judd Legum:
âCorporations â whether individually or through a trade organization like the Chamber â are prohibited from donating $3 million directly to Oz’s campaign. (Corporate PAC donations are capped at $5,000 per election.) So instead, the Chamber is routing the money through the Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC set up by Republican Leader Mitch McConnell….The Senate Leadership Fund can raise unlimited funds from any source and spend them to boost Oz and other Republican candidates.â
In a statement, Chamber EVP Neil Bradley described Oz as “a pro-business champion” and said Fetterman “subscribes to a far-left, government-knows-best approach.”
So, Americaâs big corporations are against Fetterman. Sounds like a reason to be for him.
Legum takes a deep dive into where the US Chamber gets the millions it is donating to promote Oz’s candidacy: It comes from dues paid by member corporations. And which corporations are members? The Chamber keeps its membership list secret. More from Legum:
âWe know, however, that virtually every major American corporation is a member of the Chamber. The Chamber’s board of directors includes representatives from FedEx, Bristol Myers Squibb, Facebook, AT&T, United Airlines, Abbott, 3M, Microsoft, Deloitte, Fidelity, Chevron, Intuit, Xerox, Pfizer, Dow, AllState, Delta, and many others.â
And most member companies donât have a board seat. Their donations are secret as well, but CVS disclosed that it paid $500,000 to the Chamber in 2021 and $325,000 to a related organization, the US Chamber Institute for Legal Reform. And CVS isnât a board member! Imagine how much the really big guns paid.
A few major corporations arenât members. Apple, for example, resigned its membership in 2009 in protest of the Chamber’s policy on climate change.
Sadly, corporations are not accountable (or even visible) in their support of the extreme policies of the GOP when they donate through vehicles like the US Chamber. We have to hope that as the Republican message gets ever more extreme, corporations will have a harder time continuing their support for this type of Citizens United chicanery.
This shows just how scummy our politics have become with the help of the Roberts Court and the Federalist Society. If it’s illegal to donate a certain amount directly to this person or organization, we simply create a PAC or a Super-PAC, and then donate huge sums directly to them.
If creating a PAC achieves this result, how is the individual limitation protecting democracy?
There’s an old joke about how if you know a little about politics, your issues are guns, abortion and taxes. If you know a lot about politics, your issue is campaign finance reform.
Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states that could determine which Party holds the majority in the Senate. While Fetterman has a lead, Pennsylvania is still a competitive state, with money pouring into its governorâs race as well. This $3 million from the Chamber could have a real impact on the outcome.
Itâs important to understand that more than 40% of the Pennsylvania electorate seems to want what Oz is offering. Thatâs scary, and it speaks to something that many in the media donât want to address. They’re actually scared to address what the Republican Party has become. It isnât surprising because the media are both a large part of the problem and not a part of the solution.
And when Biden accurately calls out what the Republican Party has become, when he says that Republican behavior and beliefs are inimical to what America is supposed to be, the media says heâs being divisive.
Oz is an example of what happens when one Party creates an existential situation out of whole cloth. When it’s backed by their 30 years of increasing extremism, the existential threat to democracy is now real.
No, Americaâs corporations arenât going to save you. Giving money and time to Democratic Senate candidates like Fetterman, or Georgiaâs Warnock (up by 2%), or Arizonaâs Kelly (up by 2%), or New Hampshireâs Hassan (up by 4%), or Ohioâs Ryan (up by 1%), or North Carolinaâs Beasley (up by 1%) MIGHT save you.
Itâs 21 years since the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As Michael de Adder says:
Twenty one years on, America is more at war with itself than with any foreign terrorists, despite having troops deployed in 80 countries. Our society and our democracy are threatened from within in a way that Osama bin Laden could never have managed. And where are we today? Cartoonist Mike Luckovich has a thought:
If ever so briefly after that fateful day. Today we face threats that might end our democracy:
Weâve nearly lost our social cohesion
We arenât dealing with income inequality
Weâre seeing racism grow
We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them
In these 21 years, Republicans have moved from being the Party of national security to the Party of grievance and anger. As Elliot Ackerman wrote last year in Foreign Affairs:
âFrom Caesarâs Rome to Napoleonâs France, history shows that when a republic couples a large standing military with dysfunctional domestic politics, democracy doesnât last long. The US today meets both conditions.â
MAGA asks the wrong question:
When you have no policies, this is what you get:
Letâs close today with a song by Mary Chapin Carpenter that she wrote back on the first anniversary of 9/11. Carpenter was inspired by an interview with Jim Horch, an ironworker who was among the early responders at the WTC site. Hereâs part of what Horch said:
âMy responsibility at the site was to try to remove big pieces of steel. The building fell so hard there wasnât even concrete. It was dustâŚ.I started to feel the presence of spiritsâŚnot very long after I was there. The energy that was there was absolutely incredible andâŚit was more than just the people that I was working withâŚit was energy left behindâŚ.One day when I was working, I felt this energy and it felt lost and it wanted to go home but it didnât know how to go home and it came to me to go to Grand Central Station. When I got off the subway, I walked into the Great Room. Into where the constellation is in the ceiling. And I walked around the perimeter andâŚout of the building. I didnât feel the energy anymore. I could feel it leave.â
And hereâs Carpenterâs âGrand Central Stationâ:
Morning storm, Grays Beach, Cape Cod, MA – August 2022 photo by David J. Long
Itâs good to be back. Did Wrongo miss anything besides the fraught decision by a Trump-appointed judge about the FBIâs 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 âBoth Sides Nowâ and although Joni Mitchell owns the songâs 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.
Letâs 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 Bidenâs point.
Trump reprised his âPocahontasâ 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:
âThe FBI and the Justice Department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do.â
âFor the 2022 election cycle, smart Republicans had a clear and simple plan: Donât let the election be about Trump. Make it about gas prices, or crime, or the border, or race, or sex education, or anythingâanything but Trump….Republicans had good reason to dread the havoc heâd create if he joined the fight in 2022.â
Now, Bidenâs attacks have pushed Trump over the edge â exactly where Democrats want him in the run-up to the midterms. More from Frum:
âBiden dangled the bait. Trump took itâand put his whole party on the hook with him. Republican leaders are left with little choice but to pretend to like it.â
Sounds hopeful to Wrongo.
Second, Monday brought the order by federal judge Aileen Cannon approving Trumpâs 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. Theyâre saying they are still at the early stages of the investigation.
The judgeâs decision is wrong, because stolen defense secrets arenât privileged; they are the evidence that Trump committed a crime.
It seems clear that the DOJ hasnât 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 DOJâs 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 Bidenâs attack on democracy strategy, Trumpâs 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 weâre in a âwarâ about the future of our democracy. The threat from one side of our political spectrum is grave. And itâs Bidenâs obligation to do whatever he can to pull people away from the brink. On Friday, Biden said to Peter Doocy on FOX:
âI donât 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.â
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.
A thought experiment about Trumpâs collection of classified documents. Forget for a minute that we’re talking about Trump.
What does the US government (USG) do if it finds out a former employee took home dozens of boxes of sensitive/classified government information without authority? And then the USG finds out that the documents the former employee had taken included information on some of its foreign operations. And that the employee kept them in an unlocked closet for eighteen months?
The USG would assume that every one of those operations had been compromised, because itâs totally wrong to assume otherwise. So, the USG would move to close the affected operations down. It would pull its people and invent a cover story that the other side might buy as plausible. It would attempt to insulate its foreign operatives.
The agencies involved (CIA, DIA, AID, State Department, FBI) would lose some credibility for a blown operation, along with the budget for those operations. It would need to find the money to wind up and cover them up. They would have to lay the groundwork for replacement operations along with new budgets. That would take time. They would have to repair the damage to their networks: The foreign governments and recruited private actors, all because some shit for brains former USG employee stole classified records.
How do we estimate the costs Trump has imposed on this country, just from the activities implicated in his set of stolen secret documents? And what was his purpose? On to cartoons.
He canât just take his sharpie and write DECLASSIFIED on it:
What the forgiveness means in real life:
Opinions differ about the value of the bailout:
How is it possible to get everything wrong?
Midterm voters now cite “threats to democracy” as their top issue:
Wrongo and Ms. Right are streaming â5 Days at Memorialâ a dramatization of the tragedy at a downtown New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina. Itâs adapted from the 2013 book âFive Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospitalâ by Sheri Fink. Ms. Right highly recommends the book.
It is difficult to watch something when you already know the outcome is a terrible loss of life. Hurricane Katrina happened in 2005, some 17 years ago. When we visited New Orleans three years ago, damage was still visible in parts of the city.
â[Louisiana] Attorney General Jeff Landry successfully pushed [the State Bond Commission] commissioners to withhold the funds as punishment, after the New Orleans City Council passed a resolution asking law enforcement officers not to enforce Louisianaâs near-total abortion ban…â
Yesterday, Wrongo quoted Dan Pfeiffer who said: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âDemocratic efforts to turn this midterm from a progress report on Democratic governance into a referendum on GOP extremism failed to connect until the Dobbs decision. That was when Republican extremism went from an abstract argument to lived reality.â
The Demâs performance in Tuesdayâs primaries showed that Pfeiffer may be right, as many Democrats outperformed in swing districts. And whatâs happening in New Orleans is another example of Republican extremism around the Dobbs decision. From Salon:
âThe New Orleans City Council on July 7 passed a resolution in which local policymakers proclaimed their support for reproductive healthcare access and asked police, sheriff’s deputies, and prosecutors not to… enforce Louisiana’s draconian prohibition on abortion…â
That led to the stateâs Bond Commission voting 7-6 to defer a motion to approve flood prevention funding until next month. CNN reported that this was the second time in two months that the panel rejected financing for a $39 million project that is meant to pay for drainage pumps critical to protecting New Orleans from flooding.
The Louisiana AG Landry sent a letter urging the bond commission to:
â…defer any applications for the City of New Orleans, Orleans Parish, and any local governmental entity or political subdivision under its purview….Any other funding that will directly benefit the City of New Orleans…should also be paused until such time as the council, mayor, chief of police, sheriff, and district attorney have met with and affirmed that they will comply with and enforce the laws of this state and cooperate with any state officials who may be called upon to enforce them.”
New Orleans mayor, LaToya Cantrell told CNN that she is unwilling to budge on abortion and criticized Landry and other Republican members of the bond commission for endangering public health by holding flood mitigation funding hostage:
“We cannot afford to put politics over the rights of people, and particularly safeguarding people from hurricanes and other disasters, because we are on the front lines of climate change…”
Republicans used to favor local control. They always say federal policies shouldnât apply unless the states agree. Now theyâll only say that if itâs politically convenient. This is political blackmail, not simply politics.
The sad part is how short sighted it is. This Landry guy and his Republican supporters who live outside of New Orleans think this canât harm them. But, how long has it taken Louisiana to recoup all of its losses from Katrina?
And this bad behavior is becoming normalized. It happened in Texasâ Harris County when Houston was denied funds related to 2017âs Hurricane Harvey until recently. In Houston, the funds were not denied due to the abortion issue, but for other political reasons (including voting rights). Texasâs decision matrix favored more sparsely populated areas and areas with higher property values, which worked against Houston and Harris County, Harris County is a Democratic stronghold in a very Red State.
This kind of blackmail wonât go away unless fair-minded people win these important state offices, like attorney general and secretary of state.
Democrats need to hold the US House and Senate in November and retake the Presidency in 2024. If not, we will have failed to meet the moment. The defense of our previous political wins must be a constant goal in the game.
The 2022 and 2024 elections are Americaâs political endgame. And right now, itâs unclear how itâs going to play out.
Thereâs trouble in the Republican Party. Theyâve believed the pundits who said that the GOP had a lock on the November mid-terms, but with terrible Senate candidates, along with the Dobbs decision and Bidenâs legislative comeback, things are getting very tight. From the WaPo: (brackets by Wrongo)
âRepublican Senate hopefuls are getting crushed on airwaves across the country while their national campaign fund is pulling ads and running low on cash….In a highly unusual move, the National Republican Senatorial Committee [NRSC] this week canceled bookings worth about $10 million, including in the critical states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona.â
Sounds serious. The NRSC has had a record fundraising year, bringing in $173 million so far this election cycle. But theyâve burned through much of it. The NRSCâs cash on hand was just $28.4 million at the end of June.
Republican spending has been augmented by Mitch McConnellâs super PAC, which announced a $28 million rescue effort in Ohio, where Republican candidate JD Vance has raised only $1 million in the second quarter and has spent less than $400,000 on ads.
McConnellâs super PAC also moved up by three weeks its spending in Pennsylvania, adding another $9.5 million, for a total of $34 million. The Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman, is building a lead over the Republican candidate, Mehmet Oz.
Many of this yearâs Republican Senate candidates havenât run for office before and have had to deal with nasty and expensive primaries that crushed their favorability ratings. A string of recent polls show Republican candidates in many battleground states trailing, or in toss-up races with well-funded Democratic opponents. From Charlie Pierce: (parenthesis by Wrongo)
âThereâs a pretty good chunk of evidence that the Republican Party is currently very nervous about its chances in this yearâs elections for the US Senate. When a partyâs C47 flies over your state and dumps a massive payload of cash-like ordnance…(you know youâre in trouble).â
The Republicans suddenly have to start using money theyâd earmarked for propping up people like Vance, as life support for the campaign of North Carolinaâs Senate candidate Ted Budd, whoâs in a dead-heat election with Cheri Beasley. Buddâs public statements on a violent insurrection are likely to cause any thinking Republican voter to stay home.
Republicans have climbed back into a familiar box. In 2010, the Republicans blew a chance to take the Senate because they couldnât resist nominating terrible candidates. For example, Sharron Angle in Nevada suggested that a teenage victim of rape shouldnât get an abortion but make a âlemon situation into lemonade.â Christine OâDonnell in Delaware finally had to say she wasnât a witch.
Besides Vance, Republicans this year couldnât stop themselves from nominating Herschel Walker in Georgia. They also are defending the indefensible incumbent Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, who in a Marquette University Law School poll, is seven points behind the Democrat Mandela Barnes.
While the odds of Democrats holding the Senate are improving, it is still more than possible that some or all of these Republican candidates could be sitting in the Senate next January. Itâs certainly possible that big money Republicans will ride to the rescue of their terrible candidates.
And thatâs the point. For the GOP, the worse the candidate, the more the Partyâs true believers embrace them. That’s how they prove theyâre true believers. Eventually, (hopefully already?) this will reach the point of diminishing returns.
Are we there yet? Can we get there before our democracy crashes and burns is the real question.
Time to wake up America! Itâs our job to deliver more than 50 seats in the Senate to the Democrats! There are 35 US Senate seats up for election in 2022, of which 14 are held by Democrats and 21 by Republicans. Democrats need to hold serve, and win two-four more!
We have an opening with the GOP choosing shitty candidates and spending their ad money frivolously. But it means Democrats must turn out in large numbers in all of these elections, from Warnock in Georgia to Fetterman in PA, to Barnes in Wisconsin. And donât forget Mark Kelly in AZ, and Catherine Cortez Masto in NV.
To help you wake up, watch, and listen to âLily Was Hereâ performed by saxophonist Candy Dulfer and the Eurythmicsâ Dave Stewart. Written by Stewart, it was the title track to a 1989 Dutch film called âDe Kassière, (The Cashier).â Here it is performed live by Stewart and Dulfer in 1989:
Dulfer was born in the Netherlands. Sheâs the daughter of saxophonist Hans Dulfer and started to play the soprano saxophone at age six. Sheâs very very good.
