Welcome to a week that included TikTok, March Madness and St. Patrick’s Day!
The House overwhelmingly passed legislation to ban TikTok:
But will it ever become law?
Trump said the quiet part out loud:
Insulin remains under threat:
Yes, Big pharma is suing the Biden administration for making insulin affordable. They say his actions are “unconstitutional“. It’s important to remember that they didn’t invent insulin and it is cheap to make.
The GOP’s double standard on documents:
The mystery surrounding Princess Kate isn’t going away:
Boeing is so badly broken it’s hard to see how it recovers:
(This is most likely the only column this week, as Wrongo is working on an outside project.)
Today let’s cover a few disparate topics that are about clean-up from the Biden State of the Union address. The Hollywood Reporterreports on Biden’s viewership ratings with this headline:
“The 2024 State of the Union address drew a larger TV audience than the 2023 address.”
Biden’s speech averaged 32.23 million viewers across 14 broadcast and cable outlets, almost 5 million more viewers than the 2023 State of the Union. Viewership rose on all of the largest outlets by about 18%. More:
“The vast majority of viewers — 28.47 million — watched the State of the Union on the big four broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) and the three largest cable news outlets (CNN, Fox News and MSNBC). All seven outlets drew a bigger audience than they did for last year’s address.”
So much for viewer apathy. One big surprise to Wrongo is that Fox News led with 5.84 million viewers, beating out the 5.24 million for ABC, which had the largest viewership among the broadcast networks. NBC’s 4.47 million viewers finished third, followed by MSNBC at 4.43 million, (its largest audience ever for a State of the Union).
Why would Fox have more viewers when their network demographics skew far more to the Right than the others? Did they tune in hoping to see a Biden senior moment?
Second, Sen. Katie Britt (R-Jesus) lied in her rebuttal for the GOP.
Third, Umir Haque’s newsletter, the issue has some good insights that Wrongo hasn’t seen elsewhere. About leadership: (emphasis, parenthesis and brackets by Wrongo)
“We recently discussed the difference between occupying a leadership position—and being accepted as a leader. This Biden’s been hid[den] away by the Democratic machine….Those roaring, electrified [people attending the speech)? Those surging positivity ratings? That’s…going from merely occupying the position, to being accepted as a leader.”
More:
“Biden quietly proposed something very much like a new America. A new American social contract. The ideas came so fast and furious that they were almost easy to miss, sandwiched between philosophy and persuasion.”
More:
“…most State of the Unions aren’t like that. They’re pretty boring because Presidents tout their accomplishments. They’re backwards looking…sort of performance reviews….This one really was…profoundly different.”
Haque who lives in the UK, says that the ideas Biden put forth, are very popular in Europe:
Taxing billionaires, which is part of a new movement, arising mostly in Europe, to reduce inequality, by having a global tax on the ultra-rich.
Taxing executive compensation on salaries over $1 million by making them no longer tax deductible. This is also linked to recent moves by European nations to make economies more equal again.
Giving home buyers tax credits. This is a first step towards fixing America’s badly broken housing market…..many European nations are trying to fix that through incentives like this.
Lowering drug prices. One of Biden’s most revolutionary policy ideas was to let the government negotiate prices for many more drugs—this is a big deal, because of course Americans are ripped off incredibly badly by their version of “healthcare.” This would bring the US in line with other Western nations.
More: (brackets by Wrongo)
“if you read between the lines….Biden [is] recognizing how badly broken many aspects of the American social contract [are] —healthcare, housing, inequality, salaries, taxes—and how all that adds up to an incredibly precarious life even [if you are] at or above the median [income].”
More:
“Taxing billionaires, limiting salaries, intervening in broken markets, giving people actual support—none of these are ideas we associate in the slightest with…American politics. They’re the stuff of social democracy, and Biden’s setting out a sort of lightweight…social democratic vision. It’s not quite one fully, but what it does…is begin to put America on the path to becoming one, like the rest of the Western world.”
This sets a clear distinction between the Parties in 2024. Democrats since Bill Clinton have not had a clear definition of what they stand for: What do they stand for? What’s their overarching idea? Are they after a just society, and a good life for all Americans?
This theory of the good life, the just society, and how they’re linked now has Biden championing a politics that isn’t simply another version of “life’s about winners and losers”. Haque thinks this is an incredibly important evolution in US politics.
Will Biden’s move leftward bring enough votes to win in November? We have to hope it will. Conservative Republican Peter Wehner in the NYT reminds us that there’s just 34 weeks to the election:
“The next 34 weeks are among the more consequential in the life of this nation. Mr. Trump was a clear danger in 2016; he’s much more of a danger now. The former president is more vengeful, more bitter and more unstable than he was, which is saying something…..He’s already shown he’ll overturn an election, support a violent insurrection and even allow his vice president to be hanged. There’s nothing he won’t do. It’s up to the rest of us to keep him from doing it.”
It’s time on this Monday morning, to wake up America! IF he gets to run the country, Trump will act like a juvenile delinquent, flipping over as many of the cafeteria lunch tables as he can. In a nutshell, that’s his MAGA platform. And like the Zombie Apocalypse come to life, sooner or later all Republicans who hold public office will endorse him.
The rest of us have to put aside our ideological differences and support Biden. To help you wake up watch and listen to The Clash perform “(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais” from their 1979 album “The Clash”. This is far from their best, but it’s on point for today’s column:
This song is from a time when the youth began to realize that sticking together was actually a better idea than allowing themselves to be divided. That has to come back.
Sample Lyric:
White youth, black youth
Better find another solution
Why not phone up Robin Hood
And ask him for some wealth distribution
Saguaros and poppies, Catalina SP, Tucson, AZ – March 2024 photo by Paul J Van Helden
You’ve all heard and read about Biden’s State of the Union (SOTA) speech last Thursday. But maybe you’re unaware of the White House strategy for the speech. This was the first SOTA in history to be streamed live on Instagram, in addition to a primary stream on YouTube. Playbook reported that the 9 pm and10 pm hours were the best periods of grassroots fundraising for Biden since the President’s campaign launch.
The White House Office of Digital Strategy also held several events to brief and engage digital creators and media brands around the SOTA. There was a creator watch party in the White House State Dining Room during the speech. Given the declining reach of legacy media, these creator engagement strategies are important.
Trump had planned to comment on Biden’s speech in real time on his Truth Social platform but it went down for the first part of the SOTA. It took over an hour to read what he had to say. When the site came back, we learned that Trump had pretty much just been ranting about Biden’s coughing and warning people not to shake his hand because it had germs.
As an aside, Trump has been a germophobe forever. A casual friend knew him quite well in the 1980’s. Then Trump was a young real estate entrepreneur wanting to get into a fancy Westchester, NY country club. My friend’s husband was also in the real estate business, and Trump’s father Fred prevailed on him to get the Donald into their club. That led to multiple weekends where Trump would take a limo to Westchester to play golf with my friend’s husband and several buddies, all of whom were club members.
It turned out that Trump was a good golfer, so the men were ok with playing with him, except for the obvious cheating on the course. But after each round, the group would adjourn to one of the members’ homes for a potluck, and there Trump’s germophobe flag would fly. He wouldn’t shake hands, and he washed his hands often. He clearly preferred going through the buffet line first, to the extent that if he couldn’t he wouldn’t eat.
Apparently, Trump has done a lot to overcome his germ fears but it all came back when Biden didn’t wash his hands before leaving the podium.
A little on Biden’s strategy: Biden isn’t banking on turning out 100% of Democratic voters. He’s not necessarily counting on low-propensity voters who normally have very little interest in politics. His goal is for Trump to continue to be himself, while Biden, in addition to getting high Democratic turnout, will peel off about 10% of self-identified Republican voters (up from 8% in 2020) and then win Independents. Wrongo has stated previously that he’s certain that Trump will not get near the same number of votes he got in 2020.
Next up, the Biden campaign is rolling out a $30 million ad buy and many more campaign travel stops.
What to say about the rebuttal speech? Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) spoke from her kitchen table. By the end of the evening, there seemed to be less talk about her vice presidential chances than about who might play her on Saturday Night Live’s cold open.
Let’s turn our attention to gasoline consumption in the US. Wolf Richter reports that for 2023, gasoline consumption was where it had been 20 years ago, even though miles driven set a new record. This was largely due to more efficient internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and the shift to electric vehicles (EVs). Wolf provided two handy charts:
Gasoline consumption in the US in terms of product supplied to gas stations rose by 1.5% in 2023, to 376 million gallons per day. But that was still down by 3.9% from 2019. It’s finally back where it was in 2003, (20 years ago).
The second chart above, “per-capita gasoline consumption” makes what’s going on clearer. The US population has grown over the past 20 years, but while gasoline consumption has been flat, per-capita gasoline consumption has plunged by 15% from 2003 and by 21% from 1978.
Further, average fuel economy has increased by 42% over the past 20 years, along with average horsepower, because of technical innovations that make today’s ICE vehicles more powerful and more economical than ever before. From Wolf:
“Since 1975, fuel economy for highway driving doubled from 14.6 mpg to nearly 30 mpg in 2023!”
Where will gas consumption go from here? Biden says we should be at zero emissions by 2050. How will we replace the tax receipts from federal and state gas taxes?
Enough. Let’s punt on the election and on the debate over EV cars. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, when we take a break from the assault on our consciousness by media and social media, and instead, focus on calming ourselves before launching into another week of disinformation.
Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we’re planning for projects on the Fields of Wrong, preparing for a meeting with our yard guys. We’ve finally convinced them that because of global warming, yard work must begin in early March rather than in early April.
To help you get centered on this Oscars weekend, grab a seat by a big window, then watch and listen to famed conductor Michael Tilson Thomas lead the USA’s National Youth Orchestra in a 2018 performance of Aaron Copland’s “Hoe-Down” from his ballet “Rodeo” in Beijing:
“Democrats want to do something for you. Republicans want to do something to you.” – Tom Sullivan
Super Tuesday is in the rearview, and Nikki Haley announced her exit Wednesday. Haley was a useful person for the Democrats for as long as she was campaigning against Trump. Think about the picadors in bull fighting: Their primary role is to weaken the bull by piercing its neck muscles and tissues, making it easier for the matador to ultimately kill the bull.
That was Nikki, weakening Trump for the past few months. Wrongo reported that Haley overperformed in the GOP primaries:
“We’re seeing Trump consistently underperform the polls by 7-8 points. Worse for Trump, Fox News’ John Roberts talked about an alarming exit poll finding that 59% of Haley voters in South Carolina last night (equal to 40% of the electorate) would not vote for Trump in the general election.”
Depending on the state, between 25%-40% of Republican and conservative independents voted for her.
But now she’s left the ring, ceding the Republican nomination to Trump. You know, the guy who drove the American economy into a ditch, mismanaged a pandemic resulting in hundreds of thousands of excess American deaths, was found guilty of both sexual assault and fraud in two American courts, and is currently facing charges for mishandling national secrets and fomenting a coup.
Haley earned the votes of millions of Republican voters in her brief time in the spotlight. But she’s made a business decision to try and remain relevant to the MAGA world in case Trump cannot go forward with his campaign. JVL reports Haley said this:
“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party who did not support him, and I hope he does. This is now his time for choosing.”
Sounds good, right? But JVL calls Haley out about the above:
“If there’s been a more cowardly statement over the last year, I can’t think of it. Haley refuses to acknowledge that she was supported by a broad coalition of voters—Republicans, independents, and Democrats. She claims that she is rooting for Trump to win over only the Republican voters who supported her. And instead of leading and standing for the Constitution, she fobs off all questions of agency to Trump. It’s not time for Nikki Haley to choose.
She believes that she’s preserving her political viability by seeming to put Trump in a box, making winning her supporters Trump’s job to succeed or fail to do. It won’t be long before Haley endorses Trump, becoming just another useful tool for MAGA world.
Biden on the other hand immediately invited Haley supporters to join his campaign. From The Hill:
“It takes a lot of courage to run for President — that’s especially true in today’s Republican Party, where so few dare to speak the truth about Donald Trump….Nikki Haley was willing to speak the truth about Trump: about the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to see right from wrong, about his cowering before Vladimir Putin.”
“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign…”
Then there’s the hot steaming pile of Mitch McConnell. From the WaPo:
“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States…It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”
From Norm Orenstein:
“…McConnell, once again, demonstrates a level of moral cowardice that is destructive and pathetic. He was responsible for letting Trump off the hook and having him as the Republican nominee when he deep sixed impeachment trial. Now he endorses the vicious autocrat. Shame.”
Why do these Republican hacks support a guy who has attacked their wives? Mitch does it, Cruz did it. Trump attacked Haley’s husband. She’ll most likely endorse him as well.
Finally, there’s Elon Musk who jetted to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. From Judd Legum:
“On Tuesday…Musk told his 175 million followers on X that President Biden had committed “treason” by “secretly” flying “320,000 illegal immigrants” from Latin America to US airports:
Nearly everything said above by Musk is a lie. Then Trump said that Biden “flew in 325,000 immigrants” into the country.
Musk was retweeting Collin Rugg who references a report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) about a program expanding humanitarian parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. CIS is a notorious anti-immigrant think tank.
Nothing about the expanded humanitarian parole program is “secret.” Biden announced it in a White House speech on January 5, 2023.
“…Today I’m announcing that my administration is going to expand the parole program for people not only from Venezuela but from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti.”
The program was then detailed in a White House press release. The release specifies that the program allows:
“…up to 30,000 individuals per month from these four countries.” To qualify, individuals must have an “eligible sponsor and pass vetting and background checks.”
Musk was amazed that the Biden administration was able to keep the program secret when it involved chartering thousands of planes, flying to dozens of airports. Wrong again. The reason why no one noticed all the planes chartered by the Biden administration is that they didn’t charter planes.The parole program requires the individuals to purchase their own flights to the US.
Musk says that this program constitutes “treason”. But it is fully within Biden’s legal authority. Every president has used parole authority since it was established in 1952, except Trump. Somebody in Washington ought to look into what the consequences should be when a major defense contractor like Musk says the Commander-In Chief is committing treason.
Bee in a Fishhook Cactus bloom, Anza Borrego SP, CA – February 2024 photo by Paulette Donnellon
“I worry that no matter how cynical I get, it’s never enough…” – Lily Tomlin
There are abundant reasons for cynicism today. First, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will step down as Senate minority leader, three years ahead of his retirement from the Senate. McConnell said the recent death of his wife’s sister reminded him of his mortality, which encouraged him to step down and take a seat in the back. But for an 82 year-old man who is in iffy health, McConnell may not want to keep sweeping up after the growing number of rogue elephants in the Senate any more.
Wrongo is glad he’s finally going because he’s an awful human being. However, after the Republicans in the Senate replace him, Wrongo is certain to miss the good old days when McConnell was in charge, because whoever follows him will be much worse.
A short look back on Mitch’s tenure: He made it his mission to ensure that nothing would get done under Obama, even if it meant the country went into a default. McConnell denied Obama the chance to fill a Supreme Court seat, holding it open for Trump. If it wasn’t for Mitch’s partisan warfare, Trump wouldn’t have appointed three right wingers to the current Supreme Court; Roe v. Wade would still be the law of the land.
McConnell fundamentally changed the way the Senate works. Now we all know that if something passes the Senate it needs 60 votes. Mitch McConnell made votes for Cloture (the procedure by which debate is ended and an immediate vote is taken on the matter under discussion) a huge thing. Under McConnell’s leadership, cloture votes went from a handful each term to hundreds.
McConnell will be remembered for his cowardly votes in two Trump impeachment trials. His failure to lead the Senate to a Trump conviction for the Jan. 6 insurrection may well have doomed our democracy. We remember him for his brazen/unprofessional treatment of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) (“…nevertheless, she persisted…”). If it hadn’t been for John McCain, Mitch would have dismantled the ACA, leaving millions of Americans without health insurance today.
His legacy will be his success in his decades-long work of damaging America:
Today’s second reason for cynicism is the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the question of whether Trump enjoys total Presidential immunity for his actions in the January 6th case. Their decision sent a shockwave through the nation, dismaying Democrats and any American who understands the implications of the delay. Thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court, the most important of Trump’s four (four!) criminal trials may not be finished before Americans cast their ballots in November.
“The Court handed…Trump two gifts last night: time and comfort….The gift of time was so deliberate that it can only serve as one more blow to the Supreme Court’s battered reputation. The Court…should move with dispatch in vital cases….If the immunity case isn’t of the most critical urgency and consequence, what is? Take it as given that the Supreme Court of 2024 is the most intensely political of our lifetimes….”
The Court’s surprise grant of review was a gut punch for many Democrats. They set the oral argument for April 22, 2024. It is doubtful that an opinion will be issued before June 2024. So, there is little chance that Trump will be on trial in the federal election interference or defense secrets cases before the November election.
There is no doubt that the Court was aware that they’ve delayed the Jan. 6 trial at least four months, past the point at which Trump will be the Republican Party’s nominee. That time frame is traditionally when the Department of Justice (DOJ) refuses to pursue cases against presidential candidates. Will Attorney General Garland have the cojones to let the case proceed, or will he tell Special Counsel Smith to pause it?
In some ways, this changes nothing. Wrongo has said that the courts were never going to derail Trump’s candidacy before November. We, the American people, remain in charge of our destiny, and thereby, Trump’s eventual accountability. Our remedy lies in defeating Trump in November. If that happens, Trump will be convicted. There is no cavalry coming. There is no miracle solution.
If we fail to do so, when Trump is again president, he will use the DOJ to end his federal criminal prosecutions.
It was clear that no conviction of Trump (including appeals) for Jan. 6 or the secret documents cases could possibly be final before the November election. A final verdict wouldn’t be achieved before the election, so obsessing over when any Trump trial begins is pointless.
Those who hoped the legal system would stop Trump are disappointed. As is anyone who hoped McConnell’s Senate would stop Trump in February 2021. As are those who hoped Garland’s DOJ would move (quickly) to hold him accountable in 2021 and 2022.
Once again the US Supreme Court has put its thumb on the scales of justice to preserve Republican political dominance. We all recall Bush vs. Gore where an earlier version of a Right-wing Supreme Court gave the 2000 presidential election to GW Bush. Back then, everyone said it was a “one-off” intervention in the democratic process. But here we are, 24 years later with another one-off.
To pull together these two stories, Mitch McConnell didn’t steal the Supreme Court for nothing,
Wrongo thinks that the many elite lawyer pundits are starting to realize that maybe, just maybe, a majority of the justices on the Supreme Court are robe-wearing political hacks doing whatever they can to perpetuate Republican Party policy.
There remains only one guardrail left to check the Conservative goal of restoring rich, white-Christian hegemony: Voters.
(The Wrongologist will not publish a Monday Wake Up Call column this week)
Last week ended with a New York judge handing Trump a crushing defeat in his civil fraud case, finding the former president liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordering him to pay a penalty of $355 million. In addition to the monetary penalty, Justice Engoron imposed a three-year ban preventing Trump from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity for three years.
The verdict was civil, not criminal. That means Trump hasn’t yet been convicted of a crime, but he has been declared a fraud by the state of New York. He’s settled numerous fraud trials before this one, notably the Trump University case, in which he was barred from ever running another charity in New York after he defrauded little kids with cancer.
It’s the Democrats’ job to see that this stays in the forefront of the voters’ minds. When you’re barred from running a business in New York, how can Republicans make the case that you’re qualified to run the country? Or if you’re in debt bigly, wouldn’t it be tempting to take a few bribes? Or sell a few classified documents? On to cartoons.
Trump now has some thinking to do:
OTOH, he’s proving surprisingly difficult to kill:
The Kansas City Super Bowl parade becomes just another unsafe place:
The Ukraine city, Avdiivka fell on Friday because it didn’t receive ammo from the US on time:
Grand Canyon, South Kabab Trail, AZ – February 2024 photo by Lynsey Schroeder
We’ve made it to Super Bowl weekend, but not without bumps and a few bruises caused by this week’s edition of America’s dysfunctional politics. Today, let’s do a lightning round of mostly bad and a few good stories from the past week.
First up, Special counsel Robert Hur has released his report declining charges against Biden in his classified documents case but finding he did willfully retain information. In the report, Hur goes out of his way to paint a damning portrait of the President. He cites several examples of memory lapses and describes Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Hur’s message boils down to this: a well-intentioned, forgetful old man took the wrong stuff home from work. He “willfully retained” it, but we’re gonna let him go. Not because he’s president, but because we’re nice guys. Sotto voce: (because we probably couldn’t prove criminal intent). Maybe the DOJ felt Trump needed a win after 91 felonies.
There’s a pattern to the DOJ’s appointments of special counsels:
What’s amazing is that Biden now faces more heat from the media for being found innocent than Trump will if he’s found guilty. The multiple questions by reporters at Thursday night’s Biden press conference showed just how difficult it is for America’s media to focus on what’s important. The White House Press Corps should collectively be ashamed of its behavior during the press conference. They behaved like a pack of rabid hyenas.
Why the horrible behavior toward Biden, and the deference to Trump? Mainstream media outlets have long been obsessed with Biden’s age. They have not, however, given the same attention to Trump’s age or to his gaffes and incoherent comments. It’s sad that we’re in a situation where Trump’s multiple indictments seemingly are politically advantageous to him, and Biden’s exoneration is politically terrible for him.
Given the media’s obsession, it won’t matter how well Biden does in public. If he makes one mental slip it becomes confirmation that the biggest concern about him is true. He can’t be perfect every day for the next nine months. Nobody can.
Next, Reuters reported that the Hawaii Supreme Court has upheld the state’s laws that generally prohibit carrying a firearm in public without a license. In the process, they criticized the US Supreme Court’s rulings that have expanded gun rights:
“The history of the Hawaiian Islands does not include a society where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others.”
This is a direct attack on the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in “New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen” which recognized for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense. More:
“The Government’s interest in reducing firearms violence through reasonable weapons regulations has preserved peace and tranquility in Hawai’i. A free-wheeling right to carry guns in public degrades other constitutional rights….The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness encompasses a right to freely and safely move in peace and tranquility. Laws regulating firearms in public preserve…liberty and advance these rights….There is no individual right to keep and bear arms under Article I, Section 17. So there is no constitutional right to carry a firearm in public for possible self-defense.”
Hawaii for the win!
Third, on February 9, 1964, 60 years ago, Ed Sullivan hosted the Beatles on his show. If you’re a member of the baby boomer generation, chances are you were sitting in front of a television that night. Seventy-three million Americans joined in to watch something they had never seen before. You can wake up old memories by watching “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” here.
Fourth, after blocking the border bill on Wednesday, Senate Republicans allowed a clean funding bill for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan to advance toward a vote. In the meantime, Ukraine is close to losing Avdeevka, a major eastern city to the Russians.
“The disinformation campaign…expanded after Russian politicians spoke out when the US Supreme Court lifted an order by a lower court and sided with….Biden’s administration to rule that US Border Patrol officers were allowed to take down razor-wire fencing erected by the Texas National Guard…..There also appear to be a number of Russian accounts on X posing as pro-Texas groups, in another echo of 2016 when an account that claimed to be run by Tennessee Republicans was outed as Russian-run.
One of the suspect accounts is the Texan Independence Supporters, which has already been called out for spelling errors and constantly referencing Ukraine and Russia. On Sunday, the account claimed “we are a Texan organization, not Russian. We can definitely assure ya’ll [sic] that we’re not Russian.”
Another reminder that the internet is a cesspool.
Enough! It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we stop obsessively scrolling through our news feeds and take a few moments to chillax and gather ourselves for another week hearing all the reasons why it’s necessary to continue bombing Palestinians.
Here at the Mansion of Wrong we’re preparing to host a small Super Bowl viewing party with as many high-calorie, high-fat appetizers as we can eat.
To help you relax, find a spot near a south-facing window and watch and listen to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. February 12th is the 100th anniversary of this work that combines jazz and classical origins into an iconic American work. Here it is performed by Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic while playing solo piano in 1976 in Frankfurt, Germany:
(hat tip to Marguerite S.)
Wrongo was struck by how Bernstein was able to conduct and play. Maybe multi-tasking IS possible.
After the storm, Southern AZ – February 2024 photo by Leila Shehab
Welcome to the Monday Wake Up Call. Let‘s start with a quick review of the South Carolina Democratic primary: Biden won. He swept every county, garnering 96% of the vote overall and 95% or better in every county. At the watch party, people were headed out the doors less than an hour after polls closed. Here’s an MSNBC screen grab that says it all:
With the Biden vote so dominant and the race so noncompetitive, turnout was low, at 131,000. In 2020, with no competitive Republican primary and 12 Democrats on the ballot, 536,949 people voted. That means we didn’t learn very much about voter engagement for 2024.
And once again, the advance polling couldn’t be trusted. Here’s what Emerson College found on Jan. 5, 2024 just four weeks prior to the primary:
This meant that there were 23% undecided in early January. We all know that there are months to go before the general election this fall. It seems certain that Biden and the Democrats are currently testing the effectiveness of messages across the various voting cohorts in the US.
Democratic politicians and MSNBC pundits keep hammering on Trump’s threat to democracy. But how to tell the story about Biden’s first term in ways that normal people can understand? Is the implied threat of an authoritarian takeover by Trump enough to propel turnout in the fall? Or should the message focus on how much better off people are three years on from Trump?
The continued strength of the broader economy is finally starting to break through to people’s consciousness. But Biden and the Democrats still have to sell the Biden recovery and not flinch from fears that voters won’t buy it because they don’t feel it. Anat Shenker-Osorio famously said in an article in 2017 for The Hill, that Democrats shouldn’t just take the country’s temperature, they should change it.
“Biden and his allies are framing this election as order against chaos. The party that gets things done against the party that will make America come undone.”
More:
“…Democrats are right that voters are craving stability. But…Trump is leading in many polls because voters believe that he is the one who might offer it. What Trump is pitching….is a push for order — ‘I am going to be the one who secures the border. I’m going to be the one that cracks down on crime. I’m going to be the one that tries to stabilize your prices.’”
More:
“I’ve struggled with this portrayal of Trump as the candidate of stability. I doubt it can survive the gale-force winds of the actual campaign he will run, of the things people will hear and see from him when they tune in to the election.”
Finally:
“…Democrats are having trouble persuading voters of their central pitch: that they are the party of stability. It does not feel like a stable time. It is not Biden’s fault that the world is tumultuous. But that does not mean he will not be blamed for it.”
That’s where Wrongo parts ways with Ezra. He’s not certain that voters who yearn for stability will cast their lonely eyes on Trump. Think about how effective Nikki Haley’s message is that chaos follows wherever Trump goes. Trump’s base isn’t buying that, but that criticism was successful for Haley with Independents in New Hampshire, and will be effective with the “never Trumpers”.
As far as what will motivate 2024 voters to turn out? Wrongo is struggling with how to balance the need to defend America from the authoritarian Right and the kitchen table issues. Wrongo was in high school when the John Birchers were insisting that the threat of creeping communism required a militarist leader to keep America safe. That led to the Republicans nominating Barry Goldwater, at the time a member of the radical Right. The Birchers’ Republican heirs today have moved beyond Goldwater. They hunger for a fascist strong man.
Do average voters see this threat, or are they fretting so much about overpaying for their rent and groceries to care?
And the stability argument resonates with Wrongo. This Sunday brings the Super Bowl, which used to be the one television event that would still unite America. But a significant minority of Americans now think it’s a PsyOp to make Trump lose the election. Klein says in his article that:
“The cliché used to be that Democrats fell in love and Republicans fell in line. The reality, in recent years, has been that Democrats fall in line and Republicans fall apart.”
Time to wake up America! The choice whenever voting starts in your precinct this fall is between chaos and stability. We must stay obsessed with turning out Independents and unaffiliated, along with the Republican “never Trumpers” whose collective votes will ultimately determine the 2024 election.
Biden has to lead the way, and he’s got to do more interviews even though it increases exposure to his age as an issue.
To help you wake up, watch and listen to Doreen Shaffer & the Skatalites tune, “You’re Wondering Now”. This was covered and popularized by the UK group The Specials in the 1980s. The Skatalites did this in 1968. But they were covering “You’re Wondering Now” by Andy and Joey, another Jamaican group who first performed it in 1963. Ska is a happy sounding form of music that featured a bass line on the off beat. In the early 1960s it was the dominant music genre in Jamaica and was also popular with the British mods. Shaffer’s voice is pure and wonderful:
Sample Lyrics:
You’re wondering now, what to do, now you know this is the end
You’re wondering how, you will pay, for the way you did behave
Curtain has fallen, now you’re on your own
I won’t return, forever you will wait
(We will not publish a Saturday Soother this week, but there will be a Sunday cartoons column)
In doing research for this week’s Fascism in America column, Wrongo came across this from Rick Perlstein:
“And I think…what…we have in the United States: a very weak political establishment, but a civil society underneath it that’s looking for a kind of expression. And the expression that it’s taking is pathological….Because the party system is unable to answer the demands they have.”
A weak political establishment means that Congress can barely get out of its own way. Our political institutions have become ineffectual. The current Congress is setting records for inaction:
“The 118th Congress is on track to be one of the most unproductive in modern history, with just a couple dozen laws on the books at the close of 2023…”
This void is being filled by judicial or political opportunists. This is even true when the US Supreme Court hands down a decision that Republicans don’t like. From the Texas Tribune:
“The US Supreme Court…ordered Texas to allow federal border agents access to the state’s border with Mexico, where Texas officials have deployed miles of concertina wire…..For now, it effectively upholds longstanding court rulings that the Constitution gives the federal government sole responsibility for border security.”
Last October, Texas sued the federal government after Border Patrol agents cut some of the wire strung along the Rio Grande, arguing the Department of Homeland Security destroyed the state’s property and interfered in Texas’ border security efforts. But in a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court vacated a previous injunction from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals that prevented Border Patrol agents from cutting the wire.
So what does a sovereign state like Texas do in response? It’s governor Greg Abbott, issued a “Statement on Texas’ Constitutional Right to Self-Defense,” following calls by numerous Texas Republicans to resist the high court’s order. Abbott’s statement says that he had invoked his state’s “constitutional authority to defend and protect itself” which “is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.”
OK, is it secession time anybody?
Houston Public Media quotes Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, teacher of constitutional law at South Texas College of Law in Houston:
“That’s a real blow to our separation of powers and the way that this country has governed itself….There have been situations in the past where governors and state officials have defied the Supreme Court, but that has led to constitutional crises.”
Teddy Rave, at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, another constitutional law expert, described the calls to defy the high court’s order as unconstitutional and dangerous:
“The last time that I’m aware of that this kind of defiance actually happened was resistance to desegregation orders after Brown v. Board of Education….The Supreme Court didn’t take it kindly and issued a unanimous decision in Cooper v. Aaron explaining that states need to follow its constitutional rulings.”
But since it’s Texas, won’t the Supremes give the Republican governor a hall pass to run amuck over the Constitution? Maybe so, maybe no. The decision was 5-4, meaning that two of the six conservative Supreme Court justices said Abbott had to comply. Could one switch sides? Certainly.
What can Biden do if Abbott refuses to comply with SCOTUS’s decision? He could federalize the Texas National Guard, which is what happened in Arkansas in 1957, when the then-governor Faubus tried to defy court orders allowing Black students to attend white schools in Little Rock.
Much like Abbott, Faubus’s fight was politically motivated. Faubus used the Arkansas Guard to keep blacks out of Central High School largely because he was frustrated by his political opponents’ success in using segregationist rhetoric to whip up support with white voters.
That eventually led President Eisenhower to federalize the Arkansas National Guard to effectively remove them from Faubus’s control. Eisenhower then sent the 101st Airborne Division to Arkansas to protect the black students and enforce the federal court order. The Arkansas National Guard later took over those protection duties, and the 101st Airborne returned to their base.
There seems to be a growing movement in Texas to fight the SCOTUS decision. A Texas nationalist urged Abbott to militarize the Texas State Guard if Biden federalizes the Texas National Guard. The Texas State Guard cannot be federalized. It has about 1,900 personnel, substantially smaller than the roughly 23,000 members of the Texas National Guard, but Abbott could attempt to beef up its headcount.
The Hill is reporting that Trump has urged states to deploy National Guard troops to Texas in support of Abbott. Various Right-wing twitter accounts are reporting that 25 Republican states have signed a statement supporting Texas against the Supreme Court. It’s not certain as Wrongo writes this is if these reports are true, but a presidential candidate and the governors of several states challenging the federal government seems an awful lot like the beginning of an insurrection.
Their joint statement isn’t in support of Texas, it’s in support of treason. This is what America has come to. It’s also symptomatic of the Supreme Court’s inability to check radical Trump-placed judges in lower courts who issue rulings with devastating consequences for democracy and human rights. States have no constitutional prerogative to nullify federal law. This principle was established during the nullification crisis of the 1830s and the Southern resistance to desegregation during the Civil Rights era. Nor, under the Constitution’s supremacy clause, can states interfere with the lawful exercise of federal authority. This rule is one of the oldest and most entrenched in all of our Constitutional law.
We often talk about Constitutional crises, and this could easily become one if Abbott and his enablers try to limit by force the US Border Patrol’s access in the upcoming days.
It’s also a test for Biden in an election year. Will he have to put down another insurrection by Republicans? If he does, what will be the political fallout?
