Supreme Court – Page 4 – The Wrongologist

Remembering 9/11

The Daily Escape:

This mass includes parts of five floors of the North Tower of NYC’s World Trade Center that compacted on 9/11/2001 during the building’s collapse. iPhone photo by Wrongo taken at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, September 2016.

The above is among Wrongo’s favorite pieces at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. It is a charred and pitted lump of fused concrete, melted steel, carbonized furniture and other, less recognizable elements. It weighs between 12 and 15 tons and is four feet high. If you ever thought that humans who were in the Twin Towers when they collapsed might have survived, consider this pancake.

The 9/11 Memorial’s email today asked this question:

“Did you know that over 100 million Americans have been born since September 11, 2001?”

Although Wrongo has a grandson who was born later that week and who’s now turning 22, Wrongo had no idea that roughly 30% of Americans have no memory of this event that profoundly shaped America in the past 22 years.

What do those of us who do remember 9/11 want to tell those who can’t remember it? Maybe that there’s too much fear in America, and all of that fear is grinding us down. The visible scars of 9/11 are gone, but more than ever, America lives in persistent fear.

We distrust Russia. We worry about inflation. We worry that our budget deficit will bankrupt us. We fear for our kids’ safety while they’re in school. We worry that if we lose our job we won’t find another one. Some of us worry that we’ll never find the job we’re looking for. Some of us think the rest of us are Communists. The Lefties think the Righties are fascists, and we’re still afraid that ISIS will attack us on our streets. We fear the mob outside our gates trying to get in. We fear the immigrants already inside the gates.We think most of the news we see is fake. Many of us distrust our public school teachers.

Hell, we don’t trust our government!

Succumbing to so much fear has enabled the growth of internal threats that could end our democracy:

We’re so angry that we’ve lost much of our social cohesion
We aren’t willing to deal with income inequality
We’re seeing overt racism grow before our eyes
We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them

So today’s wakeup call is for America, particularly for those Americans born after 9/11. Don’t forget the heroes and the victims of 9/11, but please, learn to stop letting fear drive you as much as it drives those of us who are old enough to remember 9/11.

Here’s a 9/11 tune: The October 20, 2001 “Concert for New York” can’t be beat. It was a highly visible and early part of NYC’s healing process.

One of the many highlights of that 4+ hour show was Billy Joel’s medley of “Miami 2017 (seen the lights go out on Broadway)” and his “New York State of Mind”. Joel wrote “Miami 2017” in 1975, at the height of the NYC fiscal crisis. It describes an apocalyptic fantasy of a ruined NY that got a new, emotional second life after 9/11, when he performed it during the Concert for New York:

Check out the audience reaction to Joel’s songs. That doesn’t look like fear. That’s where we all need to be today in 2023. It isn’t hyperbole to say that the city began its psychological recovery that night in Madison Square Garden. Please visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum if you haven’t been there yet.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 9, 2023

You’ve all heard about Zuckerberg’s Meta taking on Musk’s Twitter. Meta’s product is called Threads. It’s a simple app that looks almost exactly like Twitter. Because it is linked to users’ Instagram accounts, it was immediately adopted by about 50 million people who have posted on the platform some 95 million times. It’s become the most rapidly downloaded app of all time.

That also eclipsed several other Twitter wanna-be’s like BlueSky (which has a million users), Mastodon (10+ million), Post, and Notes, all of which have been up and running for a few months but together, haven’t reached Threads’ 50+million users.

What Threads’ place in the social mediaverse will look like is anybody’s guess. But there are things we know right now, with certainty:

Meta is a for-profit social media businesses. Its business model relies on selling ad space based on targeted markets and selling users’ information.
Meta has been operating under a consent decree issued by the FTC in 2011 after it violated users’ privacy. Then it violated that agreement, resulting in a $5 billion fine which it has fought against paying.
Meta’s track record on privacy isn’t great. It includes the non-consensual collection of personal data that was later used by Cambridge Analytica/SCL and may have been involved in influence operations during the 2016 election.

Wrongo joined Threads to see what the fuss is all about. It does look a lot like Twitter, and at the moment has a wild west feel. From Kyle Tharp:

“The social internet is in the midst of a massive upheaval right now, and no one really knows how it’s going to impact our politics next year. Americans’ social media diets are becoming more distributed and less trackable….I obviously think the internet will still have a major role to play next year, but predicting the future is harder than ever.”

If Threads has staying power, it will present both new opportunities and challenges for Meta. Facebook has been withdrawing its investments in news and politics over the past few years, which included killing its news partnerships division and deprioritizing political content in users’ Facebook feeds.

If Meta is going to become the online place for news consumption and political debate, it will face the same questions that Twitter and Facebook had to face: How will it handle content moderation and the spread of false or misleading content? How will fact-checking work on the platform? How much money is Meta willing to spend on that, especially after cutting those same investments in policy and integrity at Facebook? Will they allow political ads? On to cartoons.

Will Twitter unravel?

We’re melting:

Supremes add to their must carry rules:

Supremes have redefined their branch of government:

They’ve also redefined property ownership:

The Supremes say they’re ending racism:

Saturday Soother – July 8, 2023

The Daily Escape:

There are currently 13 turkey chicks roaming the Fields of Wrong. One mom has nine and the other, four. While each year we hope for the best, we live amongst always hungry Coopers and Red Tailed hawks. Oh, and watch out for the foxes, coyotes and bobcats – July 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo.

In Wrongo’s last column, he talked about the need to fight and win the long battle to reclaim rights that were lost in recent Supreme Court decisions:

“It won’t be easy to win these rights back, but it isn’t impossible.”

And new data from NBC offers a ray of hope:

“Republican primary voters are older, whiter and much more conservative than the electorate at large…. 39% of Republican primary voters are age 65 and older, compared with 25% of the overall electorate and 25% of Democratic primary voters, according to the poll…..89% of GOP primary voters are white, versus 72% of all voters.”

Here’s a chart from the poll:

Only 24% of GOP voters are under age 50, compared to 57.9% of the US population. More:

“…67% of Republican primary voters say they are conservative, including 41% who are “very” conservative…..That compares with 36% of all voters who are conservative, including 18% who are “very” conservative.”

There’s more bad news for the GOP in recent census data:

One of the most significant developments in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election is that census data show that the number of white people without college degrees (a core of Trump’s support) has fallen by 2.1 million since 2016.
Over the same period, the number of white people who have graduated from college (an increasingly Democratic constituency) has grown by 13.3 million.

Worse for the GOP and Trump, the reliance of the GOP on the electorate without college degrees has grown. In 2012, 48% of Republicans didn’t have college degrees. By 2016, that percentage had increased to 58%, but according to the NBC News poll, it’s now 63%.

They’ve also lost many of the college educated over the past eight years. And the population of the non-college educated is shrinking. It’s not a good formula for victory. It all points to having a decent chance to win the town by town, state by state fight to blunt the Supreme Court’s extremism. Forget what the media are saying, 2024 doesn’t have to be a close election.

And let’s also forget about the news, or where in the world Prigozhin is hiding. Rumors say he’s in St. Petersburg, Russia. Soon we’ll want proof of life.

And if you want to know just how far to the right the House Freedom Caucus has moved, they just ousted Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for being too liberal.

But it’s time to leave all of this behind and concentrate on our Saturday Soother.

We’re in the middle of a heat wave here in northwest Connecticut, and that makes all of the necessary yard work much more difficult to do. This year, we’ve had rabbits in our vegetable garden along with the usual horde of chipmunks, so Wrongo put up some of the deer fencing we use in the winter around the garden. We’ll see if it is successful.

This morning grab a cold brew coffee and take a seat in the shade outdoors. Now put on your Bluetooth headset and watch and listen to Sissel Kyrkjebø, a Norwegian soprano, perform “Going Home”. This song is about Antonin Dvorak, who wrote his Symphony No. 9, “From the New World” soon after arriving in America in 1893.

The song is based on the larghetto movement from Dvorak’s 9th. One of Dvorak’s students, William Arms Fisher, put words to the melody from the second movement. He called the new song, “Goin’ Home“. It was published in 1922.

Dvorak outlived his entire family, and returned home to Bohemia from the US. He died in 1904, at the age of 63. Sissel, who Wrongo knew nothing about before today, sings beautifully. Consider that English may not even be her primary language:

You Say You Want A Revolution

The Daily Escape:

17 Palms Oasis, Anza-Borrego SP, CA – June 2023 photo by Paulette Donnellon. When Wrongo and Ms. Right lived in LA, we hiked to this spot twice with grandkids.

This year, the Fourth of July just won’t let go of Wrongo. Political historian Eli Merritt has an op-ed in the LA Times: The Fourth of July is all about America’s first principle — the right of revolution:

“This right of resistance against inequality and tyranny is the American way. It is the essence of the American experiment, beginning in the 1760s and 1770s with the colonists’ defiance of the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, the Tea Act and the Intolerable Acts; and in the 19th and 20th centuries with the abolitionist movement, women’s suffrage movement, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments, and the civil rights movement; and today with nonviolent fights for racial justice, equal voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights and women’s reproductive rights.”

We’re a country born of revolution. But after the Jan 6 insurrection, people are probably put off by the very idea of it. It’s what Trump’s seditionists did when they stormed the Capitol. Their goal was to prevent, or at least to obstruct, the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

And they did so by summoning the spirit of 1776. But in contrast to the J6 “protesters”, the people who approved the Declaration signed their names to a document. They didn’t wear hoods, masks, or camo gear and beat up people. The country’s “revolution” began with paper, pen and ink, with “revolutionaries” plainly identifying themselves. As Merritt points out:

“…the Declaration of Independence is a nonviolent manifesto. It makes no mention of swords, guns or war. Separately, the Continental Congress called upon American patriots to arm themselves, yet only in self-defense of God-given natural rights.”

Yet here we are in 2023, facing once again a fight for rights that we had already won, says The Guardian’s Rebecca Solnit: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The first thing to remember about the damage done by the US supreme court this June and the June before is that each majority decision overturns a right that we had won…. What this means is that the right wing of the US supreme court is part of a gang of reactionaries engaging in backlash.”

In the 303 Creative v. Elenis case, the Supreme Court made a decision based on nothing, in which a woman refuses to perform a service she didn’t provide, to a gay couple that didn’t exist, in the name of religious “liberty.” That six Supremes jumped on this case is a travesty. We either back down and accept the direction these extreme Justices are pushing the country toward, or we fight.

Wrongo wants to fight, just like he did in the 1960s. It won’t be easy to win these rights back, but it isn’t impossible. And this from WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin:

“On…Independence Day, which celebrates rebellion against a monarch lacking consent of the governed, it behooves us to dedicate ourselves to robust and authentic democracy: government of the people, by the people, for the people — not by arrogant right-wing justices.”

The Supreme Court is the point of the American Conservative movement’s spear, and it must be our goal to blunt their extremisim. The ballot box is our only way out of this mess, so it will take an immense amount of organizing and effort to overcome the gerrymandering, active voter suppression and massive disinformation campaigns conducted by the media.

The current SCOTUS cannot change our beliefs and values. These rights are ours, regardless of what six Supremes say. From Solnit:

“If you didn’t believe that equal access and rights were wrong yesterday…you don’t have to believe it now. Not just because those rights were denied by six justices….”

The country is on our side. Gallup has a new poll of approve/disapprove of the Supreme Court:

This shows that the people agree with blunting the power of today’s Supreme Court. The final words go to Solnit:

“…history shows us that when we come together with ferocious commitment to a shared goal we can be more powerful than institutions and governments. The right would like us to feel defeated and powerless. We can feel devastated and still feel powerful or find our power. This is not a time to quit. It’s a time to fight.”

We must take every available measure in our democracy to revoke consent and remedy these unconstitutional decisions. It will require active engagement in all levels of the democratic political process, from local school boards to the presidency. We can’t take any political office for granted.

Help new voters obtain ID and register to vote. Educate yourself about the candidates, vote in the primaries. Get your friends and families to vote. Make sure no seat goes uncontested wherever a GOP politician holds office or runs without opposition.

Above all, do not let them assume that you consent to the loss of our rights.

July 4, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Kilauea Caldera showing a blackened lava lake, Hawaii Volcanoes NP – June 2023 photo by J. Wei for the NPS

Kilauea stopped erupting on June 19, but the threat of another eruption is always present. That could be a metaphor for America in 2023: We could erupt at any moment.

The 1960s were an optimistic time. There were demonstrations for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. There was police violence against the demonstrators, and assassinations of JFK and MLK. But a throughline of those times was a belief that righteous change was possible.

Wrongo graduated from Georgetown in 1966. His specialty was American colonial history. Those also were times of optimism, and there also were factions and different priorities and beliefs throughout the land.

Back in the 18^th century, we overcame our differences, declared our independence, and formed a nation.

Now, 247 years after our revolution, it seems that staying united is difficult, if not impossible. Today, facts are fungible, and so is the truth. As Wrongo stated in his last column, about one third of Americans fail to vote. They are apathetic because they can’t see what would change if they did vote.

Having one third of Americans regularly fail to vote has surrendered control over our politics and our courts to a minority, mostly a few at the top, supported by some people in the middle, and enabled by the apathy of most of the rest of us.

Worse, most of those in today’s controlling minority are extremists. They have exploited the imperfections in our system to impose a return to the social mores and politics of an earlier time.

The best example of this is the string of far-Right decisions handed down in 2022 by the Supreme (Extreme) Court. From Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern:

“Consider the issues that SCOTUS has resolved….The constitutional right to abortion: gone. States’ ability to limit guns in public: gone….Effective constraints around separation of church and state: gone. The bar on prayer in public schools: gone. Effective enforcement of Miranda warnings: gone. The ability to sue violent border agents: gone. The Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases at power plants: gone.”

Vast areas of law that took decades to establish were overturned in a year.

And in 2023, the Court’s reactionary majority has continued to overturn more of the American social order. Those rulings: ending affirmative action, preventing the forgiveness of student loans and an egregious decision on gay rights, show that the Court has lost any sense of judicial restraint.

The Court is no longer “calling balls and strikes” as Chief Justice John Roberts famously said. In fact, there could be a highlight reel of umpire John Roberts’ blown calls. It’s clear that the Extreme Court wants to go further, and given today’s politics, there’s zero risk of the other two branches of government agreeing to override their decisions.

So, on this Fourth of July weekend, let’s hit pause. Let’s take time to reflect on how our founders were able to weave a message that united many factions against a common enemy. It should be very clear that at this point that the common enemy to unite against is the partisan power of a partisan minority.

Real power no longer lies with the People or with their politicians, it resides in the Supreme Court. The antiquated and undemocratic elements of our government: the Electoral College, lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices and the malapportionment of the Senate, would require Constitutional amendments to fix. But we’re too divided to amend the Constitution.

Imagine attempting to fix the Senate’s malapportionment by getting a Constitutional amendment through that same malapportioned Senate.

But there may be reason for optimism in the fact that the two of this term’s negative rulings related to college students (admissions and debt relief). Those issues will motivate young voters in 2024.

Here are some numbers that give some cause for optimism about younger voters helping to change our politics:

Voters 47 and younger will be in the majority beginning in 2028.
Younger voters have historically voted in significantly higher numbers for Democrats.
Young women, especially young Hispanics and young African Americans are substantially higher voters for Democrats.
Fifty-five percent of white male voters under 45 voted Democratic in 2022, as did 52% of younger white females.

Here are a few other facts that should make us optimistic going forward:

Abortion was youth’s #1 issue in 2022.
Mid-term voter turnout for people under 29 was 23%, lower than 2018 (28%), but much higher than in 2014 (13%).
Michigan had the highest youth turnout in the country (37%).
Two swing states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, were among the four states to have the highest youth turnout in 2022.

To help you reflect on how we might take back control, let’s listen to Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America” performed at the Greek Theater in Los Angles in 2012.

There are many versions of this tune on YouTube, but this one makes the point that virtually all of us are descended from immigrants, in this case, Diamond’s grandmother, who immigrated from Kyiv:

The Two-Edged Sword Of Federalism

The Daily Escape:

Mount Evans Road, 14,100′, Idaho Springs, CO – May 26, 2023 photo by Reid Neureiter

Here at the Wrongologist, we often talk about Constitutional rights, but we rarely talk about Federalism. So today, let’s lean into federal vs. states’ rights. We’ll start with the recent Supreme Court decision in Sackett vs. EPA, which concerned the power of the EPA to regulate wetlands. Last week, the Supreme Court concluded that the Clean Water Act only applies to wetlands with “a continuous surface connection” to bodies of water.

This defined what waterbodies are considered waters of the United States (WOTUS), an issue that has been in the courts for years. The ruling narrowed the scope of the Clean Water Act, and severely limits the federal government’s ability to regulate wetlands.

Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion affirmed the principle that bureaucrats cannot broadly define statutory language. Alito’s opinion struck a blow for federalism. Federalism is a system of government in which the same territory is controlled by two levels of government. The US Constitution originally divided the exercise of political power between one national and many state governments. The national government is given control over matters affecting the whole nation. All other issues were reserved to the states.

Article VI of the Constitution contains the Supremacy Clause, which says that when the laws of the federal government are in conflict with the laws of a state’s government, the federal law supersedes the state law.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution describes specific powers which belong to the federal government. These powers are referred to as enumerated powers.
The Tenth Amendment reserves to the states those powers that are not delegated to the federal government.

The Sackett vs. EPA decision is another step in the Right-wing program to move as much federal government rule-making authority as possible to the states. This is the continuation of Nixon’s efforts to shrink the federal government’s power by devolving decisions to state and local governments. The best recent example of this is the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on abortion that wiped out the precedent set in Roe v. Wade that guaranteed a national right to abortion and passed that responsibility back to the states.

At the same time, the Right is moving to nationalize policy on social issues, from what books to allow on library shelves to limits on transgender rights, a rollback of state environmental actions, and an attack on anything that can be labeled as “woke.”

So we’ve got Red states pushing to centralize decisions about social and cultural issues in Washington, while the Right-wing Supreme Court pushes devolution of voting rights, abortion rights, and indeed national agency rule-making (EPA) to the states.

This 2023 brand of two-way Republican federalism is upending the delicate balance of power between the federal government and state governments. It raises questions about the allocation of authority, cooperation, and the ability of the national government even to define what is a pressing national issue.

Today’s Washington gridlock makes policymaking nearly impossible. That has shifted much of today’s policymaking to the states, where the Parties often have comfortable majorities. Many states (39) have government trifectas, with one Party controlling the governorship while holding majorities in the legislature, making policymaking simpler than in a divided and polarized US Congress.

Interest group activists have followed this trend and focused their efforts on these 39 states. Much of a state’s policies – abortion, voting rights, gun control, immigration, LGBT rights, healthcare, or taxation – are on widely divergent paths. For example:

In Democratic states it is easy to vote; in Republican states there are many barriers to voting.
In Democratic states fewer people are medically uninsured; in Republican states there are more uninsured people.
In Democratic states access to abortion is easier; in Republican states it is harder, if not criminalized.

Although federalism (for now) seems to protect the country from presidents amassing power in dictatorial ways, anti-democratic figures (think DeSantis and Abbott) are able, because of the resurgence of state-level policymaking, to transform Republican states into laboratories against democracy.

The Covid pandemic also put federalism to the test. The response to the pandemic highlighted the tension between national coordination and state autonomy. While the federal government provided guidance and resources, the implementation of measures like lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccination campaigns, was largely left to individual states. This decentralized approach led to significant variations in pandemic response across the country, creating challenges in coordinating efforts and potentially exacerbating the spread of the virus.

Federalism properly implemented, brings government closer to the people and holds it accountable. But when badly implemented, you get the USA in 2023: A country trending toward autocracy.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 7, 2023

(The Monday Wake Up Call will be published on Tuesday this week.)

America has been waiting for more than a year for the Federal Reserve to get control over inflation. In that time, they’ve jacked up interest rates to over 5%. A year ago, raising rates that high seemed unthinkable, but here we are. Wages have also risen.

There was some damage: A few horribly managed banks collapsed. A couple of auto dealer-lender chains that specialized in selling overpriced used cars to subprime customers collapsed. And there were some fiascos in commercial real estate.

All of that has led the Fed to indicate that there could be a “soft landing” for our economy. But with the latest jobs growth numbers, maybe the Fed will have to keep circling the airport. In April, 253,000 jobs were created. There are now a record 155.7 million payroll jobs. Over the past 3 months on average, 222,000 jobs were created per month. So is a soft landing ahead?

Please raise your seat tables to the upright position and pass your trash to the attendant. On to cartoons.

Coronations aren’t just for the Brits:

(Wrongo watched the coronation of King Charles III yesterday. Seventy years ago, he also watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on a 9″ black & white Philco television. Yesterday’s was on a 55” Samsung.)

The reality about the GOP:

What to expect after the GOP talks with Biden about the Debt Ceiling:

Proud Boys found guilty, but who pulled the strings?

Kremlin complains:

Justice Thomas needs to be taller to take the ride:

Time to buy more cards:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 23, 2023

Another busy week filled with news we didn’t want to hear. Fox’s huge $787.5 million payout in the Dominion lawsuit seems appropriate, but Lever News reports that Fox can take a tax deduction from the settlement. Ironically the financial consequences of lying are just a cost of doing business for Murdoch and Co.

Fox Corporation reported $1.2 billion in net income in 2022, so the $787 million Dominion settlement is equivalent to about two-thirds of the company’s profits last year. The Lever quotes Daniel Shaviro a tax professor at NYU:

“If your business model is to tell lies so that you’ll get viewers and have lots of advertising revenues, then, odious though this business model may be, the tax system’s job is to tax you on the profits that you actually make from it…”

Fox reported paying an effective income tax rate of 27% in 2022 (the combination of federal and New York taxes). If Fox can write off the full settlement payment to Dominion, it could amount to an estimated $213 million in tax savings. On to cartoons.

Fox didn’t even have to do this:

Losing the lawsuit didn’t cost Fox any viewers:

Justice Sam Alito was in an especially grumpy mood after the other Justices on the Supreme Court ruled that access to Mifepristone will remain unchanged while the case continues to wind through the courts. Alito and Thomas dissented even though the underlying suit is frivolous:

Note that Thomas is drinking a coke.

That the SpaceX rocket crashed and burned was totally on brand for Elon:

Kevin McCarthy explains his position:

Dalai Lama must retire:

My Way Or The Highway

The Daily Escape:

Azalea gardens at the Biltmore, Asheville NC – April 2023 photo by Sherry Maddock

We all know that the US is staring down a series of domestic threats to American democracy. Here’s a short list: Corruption on the Supreme Court, fundamental rights being lost via Supreme Court decisions, and voting rights being on the ballot in many states. Then there’s the question of whether any high level politician will ever be held to account for the Jan. 6, 2021 coup attempt.

These threats require that we convince every voter to turn out in 2024. Even so, surprisingly the presidential race in 2024 could be very close.

All of this could be undermined by the plans of the emerging political party called No Labels. They are gathering signatures to get on the presidential ballot in all 50 states in 2024, while recruiting both Democrats and Republicans to run as a bipartisan ticket. The WaPo reports that the group has already gained ballot access in Arizona, Colorado, Alaska and Oregon. Apparently, they are backed by shadowy donors who have provided them with $70 million in seed money.

Former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman is associated with No Labels. Other names often mentioned as possible No Labels candidates are Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WVA), Kirsten Sinema (I-AZ), Susan Collins (R-ME), and former Republican Governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan.

Here we go again. Another centrist third party effort to create a “unity” ticket that supposedly appeals to those Americans who say they want to end the partisan bickering in Washington. This year, it’s No Labels who are trying to throw a big monkey wrench onto our Electoral College map. If they are successful, it could possibly send Trump back to another term in Washington.

All in the name of unity, of course.

Lieberman is acutely aware of the impact third-party bids can have on presidential elections. He ran as Gore’s VP candidate in 2000, when the Democratic campaign fell 537 Florida votes short of an Electoral College victory. That year, Ralph Nader, the Green Party nominee, won more than 97,000 Florida votes.

It might be useful for Lieberman et al to remember that in the 2016 presidential election, Jill Stein got 50,000 votes in Michigan, allowing Trump to win Michigan by 14,000 votes. Ross Perot in 1992 arguably shifted the race to Bill Clinton.

The No Labels website specifically describes itself as an “insurance policy against a Trump-Biden rematch.” From Larry Hogan:

“The vast majority of people in America are not happy with the direction of the country and they don’t want to see either Joe Biden or Donald Trump as president.”

Hasn’t Biden worked productively with Republicans to pass a broad array of bipartisan legislation? His main partisan domestic initiative was essentially written by Manchin, who now wants a larger voice with No Labels.

First, it seems bizarre for No Labels to equate Biden with Trump. Comparing the two when Trump is under indictment in NY and likely to be indicted in several more cases, after having incited an insurrection is crazy. What’s Biden’s crime? Not paying off porn stars?

Second, why is a group dedicated to promoting moderate, bipartisan legislation working against a president who has actually accomplished just that? Jonathan Chait in NY Magazine reports that No Labels’:

“…own polling suggests its candidacy would serve as a spoiler on behalf of Republicans. In December, it found an unnamed moderate third-party candidate would win just 20% of the vote, against 33% for Trump and 28% for Biden.”

This result seems completely logical given Biden’s greater reliance on moderate voters than Trump. But still they persist. For Wrongo, you only needed to say “Joe Lieberman” to convey that this organization is wrong-headed on its face. When politically marginal people like Lieberman and Manchin are interested in a new political organization, you know they’re looking for a way to insert themselves more deeply into our politics, despite how little actual support they have.

They’re willing to cause great harm for an outside shot at real power.

We need to understand that political centrism isn’t the halfway point between today’s median Democrat and today’s median Republican. Biden has governed basically as a 21^st Century centrist; otherwise, the left of his Party wouldn’t be so frustrated with him. The No Label people need to realize that there’s already a perfectly good moderate Party in America, and it’s called the Democratic Party.

The No Label centrists seem to be living in some kind of dream world where the Electoral College isn’t closely divided and today’s political stakes aren’t monumental.

This is a vanity political project that could easily lead to a political disaster. Let’s hope it fizzles like most centrist third party bids have done in the past.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 16, 2023

America is in a literal death spiral. The more mass shootings take place, the more innocent people die. And then more of America’s Republican politicians tell us that only more guns will solve the problem.

Republicans say that school shootings would be minimized if we would just hire a security guard to cover the door of every school. But with school budgets under pressure, where will the money come from to hire them? And how would the GOP’s plan for out-gunning the next mass shooter turn out?

We need to see mass shooting as a form of domestic terrorism. We’ve moved from having ten Constitutional Amendments that most of us cared deeply about to a place where the Right only really cares about the Second Amendment. Maybe we shouldn’t be all that surprised that there are so many Americans who care more about guns than they care about people.

For a certain group, that seems to be what America is all about. If they cared about freedom, nothing would be more of a priority than defending every person’s right to go about their daily lives without the threat of violence. If we really cared about the sanctity of human life, we would prioritize people over guns. On to cartoons.

The unholy trio who prioritize guns over people: