The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[N.E. Brigand]

I didn't know about the special election for the rest of the term either until I voted last week.

Thanks for the quick response! May I ask: when you voted last week, did it say on the ballot that the winner next week takes over for Butler now? That boggles me because the Secretary of State's website says there will be both a regular election and a special election in November. If I'm following you, Garvey, if he wins next week (with about 40% of the vote?) could be senator for nine months starting in March? But also he could lose twice in November and Schiff would take over then and thus Garvey would only be a senator for seven months? Is that right, or am I misunderstanding?

[narya]

I've already voted as well. The Official Voter Information Guide states the following, on pages 17 and 20. It could have been worded more clearly. My comments are added in italics.

Elections in California
The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act requires that all candidates for a voter-nominated office be listed on the same ballot. Previously known as partisan offices, voter-nominated offices include state legislative offices and US congressional offices. e.g. the primary race for the Senate.

In both the open primary and general elections, you can vote for any candidate regardless of what party preference you indicated on your voter registration form. In the primary election, the two candidates receiving the most votes - regardless of party preference - move on to the general election. If a candidate receives a majority of the vote (at least 50% + 1), a general election still must be held.

California's open primary system does not apply to candidates running for US President, county central committee, or local offices.

United States Senate

The office of US Senate will have two separate contests on the March 5, 2024, Presidential Primary Election ballot. You may vote on both. These two contests may or may not both be primaries.

The first contest is the regular election for the full 6-year term of office beginning on January 3, 2025 (full term). It doesn't state it, but this is a primary, to be settled in the November 2024 General Election.

The second contest is a special vacancy election, since the current office holder is temporarily filling a vacancy, for the remainder of the term ending on January 3, 2025 (partial/unexpired term). It doesn't state it, but this may be a primary, or a final vote. There is no indication of when this partial term begins, but presumably there is a time period for election certification after the election. If it's a single event special election, the newcomer could fill in as soon as the election is certified. If it is just a primary, to be settled in the General Election in November 2024, and is a close race, it may not be settled by January 3, 2025, and may be a moot point. IIRC, when Katy Porter was elected to the House of Representatives, it was disputed and recounted, and she didn't find out for sure that she would go to Washington until well after January 3rd.

If others are as confused as I was, and tried to game the system on the special vacancy election, by voting for someone other than the one they really wanted in office, and it turns out this was actually a one-shot election, we could have someone who wasn't the actual majority favorite serving from about May 2024 to January 3, 2025.

[N.E. Brigand]

For a very specific reason, I just listened to the entirety of Donald Trump's campaign rally in Richmond, Virginia (the second rally at which he spoke yesterday; the first was in North Carolina). I wish someone would issue quick transcriptions of these things, so I didn't have to go through this. But I did, so here are some takeaways:

I don't think he's suffering from dementia. He's all over all the place (it must suck to be running his teleprompter), and he lies a lot, and he pushes an awful agenda and plays to people's worst impulses, but most of the time you can follow his bizarre and gross train of thought.

He repeats himself. It's not so much a 90-minute speech as three or four shorter speeches touching on the same points again and again (with some minor variances), each with its own digressions. For example, there were two or three references to Fani Willis and "her lover" Nathan Wade, and three or four times where he got the crowd to boo the press in attendance (he calls journalists the "enemy of the people"), and four or five times where he noted his polling (and to be sure, there were some bad polls for President Biden over the weekend, as Americans continue to believe the economy is terrible, even though it's the best it's been in my lifetime).

At several points in the speech he talks about himself in the third person. I note two such instances from near the end: "Can we be energy dominant again? 'Yes, oh, yes,' says President Trump" is one. Another is that Hamas "would never even have thought" to attack Israel "if President Trump was behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office."

At one point he says that there are shy-Trump voters who respond to polls by saying "F. you" (i.e., that polls underrate his electoral prospects), and he says he won't say the full F-word because there are "little ears" in the audience. Except that he previously said "bullshit" during the same speech!

Trump boasts that no U.S. servicemembers were killed in Afghanistan for a period of 18 months because he pressured the head of the Taliban. However, (1) that was in part because Trump told the Taliban the U.S. would pull out of the country, i.e., the Taliban would have resumed their offensive if not for that. And (2) six of those months happened during Joe Biden's presidency. And (3) 46 U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan while Trump was president vs. 13 while Biden was president. (Yes it's true that all 13 during Biden's term died in one incident during the evacuation. I think had the U.S. tried to pull out even faster, as Trump wishes, it would have gone worse.) Trump also says again it was a mistake for the U.S. to abandon Bagram air force base as part of the withdrawal, but as far as I know, there is nothing in the deal Trump reached with the Taliban about the U.S. retaining that base. (He further says that China controls the base now. I don't think that's true.)

He once again says that his infamous quid pro quo call with Ukraine's president was "taped." He said that after he questioned a U.S. general, who told him the conversation was recorded, he listened to the tape and it completely exonerates him. But as I've said before, no such tape was ever produced.

I'm curious to know what Elon Musk, who is obviously a Trump supporter now, thinks about Trump's attack on electric vehicles.

Did Joe Biden ever accidentally say "Iran" when he meant "Idaho"? Trump claimed that during this speech, but my searches aren't yielding any results. Trump then said that Biden also once said "Iowa" when he meant "Idaho" (Trump added that he feels this one is an allowable mistake), but in 2020, Politifact said that wasn't true. So I'm inclined to think the supposed Idaho/Iran mix-up likewise is a fabrication.

In the latter part of his speech, Trump says he that always asks the television/video press to pull back the shot to show how large the crowd really is but that they never do it. Well, the camera operator on the linked video does pull back to show the crowd (shortly after 1 hr. 12 min.), and what it shows is a full room, but not an enormous room. It's the exhibit hall at the Richmond convention center, whose website says maximum occupancy is 12,186. I don't think it's anywhere near that, unless there are a bunch of people behind the media stand. The only Barack Obama rally I ever attended, in 2012, seemed to me to have more people than this event. The folks here are not too densely packed. Perhaps 8,000 attendees?

Starting at about 1-hour, 7-minute mark, he gets into some culture war material (if you ignore the border and his obvious distaste for dark-skinned immigrants, which constituted a sizeable portion of his speech). This turned out to be the moment I was looking for, about which more below. And then with about 15 minutes remaining in the speech, he goes into what I believe has become his standard and pretty creepy peroration: he concludes the bulk of the speech by referencing the "greatest nation in the history of the world," and then music starts to play under the rest of his words, and it's just really weird and gross but also he sounds half asleep for this section. (If you're ever looking for a quick recap of his talking points, just start there.)

He says "we are a failing nation." Routine for him, but I think very few mainstream presidential candidates have used such language in the past.

He describes broken supply chains, stores not being stocked, and "deliveries not coming," but in my experience, while there has occasionally been a weird but brief shortage of certain items (cat food and cat litter come to mind), those are largely a thing of the past and were of course driven by the pandemic and worst under Trump's administration.

He says we have "the highest inflation rate in 50 years." Well, 50 years ago was March 1974. The highest inflation in that period was 14.7% in April 1980. Inflation during Joe Biden's presidency peaked at 9.1% in June 2022. It was higher than that for 4 1/2 years of the past five decades, although admittedly not since November 1981, which was more than 42 years ago. However, inflation has been at or below 4% for ten months. It was higher than that more recently: Sep. 2008. And it was above 4% at various points in the presidencies of George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan, including almost the entire year leading up to Reagan's 1984 reelection.

He says "interest rates are skyrocketing." The Federal Funds Rate is currently 5.3%. It's true that it hasn't been this high since June 2007. But it was higher than that for most of the 1990s (peaking at 6.5% in July 2020) and even higher for most of the 1980s with peaks of 19% in June 1981, 11.5% in July 1984, and 9.9% in March 1989. And the Federal Reserve has signaled their intention to reduce interest rates later this year. That's a big reason for the repeated record stock market closes since October -- and the market was already higher than at any point in Trump's presidency.

He complains that the U.S. is "not energy dominant," but the U.S. is producing more gas and oil than ever, i.e., than was the case while he was president. (He's also upset that, following announcements from Russia and Saudi Arabia of oil production cuts and price hikes, the Biden administration responded "by announcing that we will no longer be drilling for oil in large areas of Alaska and elsewhere on our precious land." I see a weird tension there: if the land is so precious, why mar it with drilling?)

He raises the prospect of Vladimir Putin using nuclear weapons to start World War III.

He says as president he will impose "the powerful death penalty for drug dealers." That gets a big cheer, but I guarantee you there are users in that crowd. And he says that "drugs like fentanyl are easier to get than ever," which is all the more ironic in light of some new Rolling Stone reporting I'll cite in a separate post.

He describes the convicted Jan. 6th criminals as "hostages" (and thinking back, I don't believe he ever called for Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages).

At one point, going through a list of famous people born in Virginia which sounds like someone on his staff searched Wikipedia, he complains that "a high school in California wants to get rid of the name George Washington" and praises, with no details whatsoever, Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. I think there's an opportunity for President Biden to do straightforward patriotic stuff. Biden could praise George Washington and the others with some specifics about why they still deserve respect. In general, I think it's important for Biden to talk about all the good things in this country. And Biden could take one of the lines in this speech wholesale and use it as his own: "It was hard-working patriots like you who built this country, and it is hard-working patriots like you who are going to save this country ... we will never bend, we will never break, we will never back down." But whereas for Trump it's part of a sleepy closing mantra, Biden could deliver it like he means it and understands it.

And I think Trump is still afraid of abortion. He didn't mention that word once, nor Roe v. Wade or Dobbs and how his Supreme Court appointments made the latter decision possible. His only reference to the subject came right after he talked about upholding the 2nd Amendment (which has led to so many deaths) by saying, "We will also protect innocent life." Clearly Democrats need to hammer this message. It's only been four months since 57% of Ohioans enshrined Roe into the state constitution -- in a state where Trump got 56% of the vote in 2016 and 2020. Surely those voters aren't going to give up on choice now. But they need to understand that Trump will totally sign a federal law that overrules what they just enacted.

Finally, to return to the reason I listened to this garbage: the culture war stuff. In that section, Trump says that he would send the Secret Service "and all the other people" to "get rid of those tents" when he saw remove homeless people making shelter in D.C. Is the Secret Service supposed to be involved in that sort of thing? He says that San Francisco was "the greatest city in the country" ten or fifteen years ago, and I wonder how many of his audience would have agreed with him about that in 2009-2014. He says, "I will keep men out of women's sports, 100%." That is such a minor issue, but boy, it works people up. But here's how that section starts: "On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children. And I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate."

I'd seen a reference to that passage I've bolded widely shared online, but nobody had an exact quote or a link to video of that statement. And a few Trump supporters were pushing back, claiming that he was only talking about Covid-19 vaccines (which would be bad enough). I wanted to be sure this wasn't mispresentation or hyperbole. Nope. He doesn't qualify it in any way. As intoned by Trump, we're going to bring back polio and measles and mumps and whooping cough and all the diseases for which most public schools currently require vaccinations. Are you ready for your iron lung?

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Nikki Haley just won a Republican primary, taking 62.8% of the vote in the District of Columbia (to Donald Trump's 33.3%) and all 19 delegates up for grabs. But only about 2,000 people voted. Still, Trump won the D.C. primary with no challengers in 2020, but he was third in the district in 2016.

[N.E. Brigand]

New from Rolling Stone: "Trump's White House was 'awash in speed' and Xanax. If you ever looked at the actions of the Trump administration and wondered, 'Are they on drugs?' -- the answer was, in some cases, yes. Absolutely, yes. Under Trump, the White House Medical unit was 'like the Wild West,' and staffers had easy access to powerful stimulants and sedatives. Trump staffers on the edge would often pair Xanax with booze. As one former senior Trump administration official puts it: 'You try working for him and not chasing pills with alcohol.' (We first got interested in this story because of a ledger reprinted in a Pentagon report which seemed to suggest that there might be Ketamine and Fentanyl in the Trump White House. Turned out they ordered the stuff, but only to be ready in case of emergency problems.)"

[N.E. Brigand]

From the Associated Press: "According to AP VoteCast surveys of the first three head-to-head Republican contests, 2 in 10 Iowa voters, one-third of New Hampshire voters, and one-quarter of South Carolina voters would be so disappointed by Trump’s renomination that they would refuse to vote for him in the fall."

However, something like one-third to one-half of those Republican primary voters are independents or Democrats, so you have to cut those numbers in half. And of course there are many people who don't vote in the primaries, and it's hard to extrapolate from these politically active voters to those who don't really tune into elections until later in the year.

[narya]

The County of Alameda Voter Information Guide is more clear than the State of California Guide I discussed in my post above. It states:

Voter-Nominated Offices

The March 5, 2024 Offices: US Senator, US Senator (Partial/Unexpired), US Representative, State Senate, Member of the State Assembly

Who advances to the General Election: The top-two vote-getters, regardless of party preference will move on to the General Election.

So I'm going to assume that the partial/unexpired seat will not be determined until November, and if hotly contested, may not even be filled by January 2025. Meanwhile, this seat will continue to be filled by Laphonza Butler.

[Frelga]

I don't think he's suffering from dementia. He's all over all the place (it must suck to be running his teleprompter), and he lies a lot, and he pushes an awful agenda and plays to people's worst impulses, but most of the time you can follow his bizarre and gross train of thought.

I could always follow my FIL's train of thought even when his dementia was advancing. In fact, he remained much more coherent than our potential next president, even if he, too, sometimes talked about things that were not real.

Dementia is nothing to joke about, and I genuinely do notice concerningly familiar patterns.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thanks, naryan for clarifying. As narya notes, I was incorrect in assuming that the special election would fill the seat as soon as it was certified. Like the regular seat it is a primary and then there will (ridiculously) be two general election races in November and the winner of the special election will only hold the seat a very short time. Until then, Butler is still the Senator.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here is the U.S. Supreme Court's per curium opinion reversing the Colorado Supreme Court and ruling that the power to enforce section 3 of the 14th Amendment rests solely with Congress, not the states.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/2 ... 9_19m2.pdf

ETA: Of particular note, however, are the concurring opinions, particularly the one by Justice Barrett. I feel quite confident that there will not be five votes to grant Trump immunity from prosecution.

[N.E. Brigand]

As we expected. Haven't read the whole thing yet. I have heard that that the three liberals led by Justice Sotomayor voted against disqualification based on federalism -- which I believe is a flawed argument for reasons previously expressed in this thread -- and that Justice Barrett concurs with the opinion only insofar as it says that only Congress, not states, can disqualify. As for that argument, just eight pages in, am I wrong that footnote 2 on page 8 undermines the whole opinion?

2 Shortly after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, for instance, Congress enacted a private bill to remove the Section 3 disability of Nelson Tift of Georgia, who had recently been elected to represent the State in Congress. See ch. 393, 15 Stat. 427. Tift took his seat in Congress immediately thereafter. See Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 2d Sess., 4499–4500 (1868). Congress similarly acted postelection to remove the disabilities of persons elected to state and local offices. See Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 3d Sess., 29–30, 120–121 (1868); ch. 5, 15 Stat. 435–436.

That note says that Congress took away the disqualification of Congressman-elect Tift. Which means that that Congress believed the disqualification was in place. And as far as I can tell, he hadn't been disqualified by any express act of Congress. (I did search the opinion for Tift's name. That's the only time it appears.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Supposing Trump wins the presidency in 2024 but in 2026, Democrats win both houses of Congress.

Does today's ruling mean that in January 2027, Congress could remove Trump from office per the 14th Amendment by a simple majority vote in both houses?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It is unclear to me how Tift became disqualified, or even whether he ever was, or Congress was just assuming he was disqualified since he had fought for the confederacy and therefore took action to remove his presumed disqualification.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40584054

Supposing Trump wins the presidency in 2024 but in 2026, Democrats win both houses of Congress.

Does today's ruling mean that in January 2027, Congress could remove Trump from office per the 14th Amendment by a simple majority vote in both houses?

My tentative answer is yes. I know that Jamie Raskin has already said that he is immediately going to revive such an effort.

[N.E. Brigand]

Mark Joseph Stern notices that the Court didn't fully clean up their document before publishing it:

If you double click where it says "JJ." at the top, then copy and paste it, that line reads: SOTOMAYOR , J., concurring in part and dissenting in part.

And if you do a control-F search for "SOTOMAYOR , J., concurring in part and dissenting in part," it highlights that same line.

It looks like the liberals' opinion was originally styled as a partial dissent written by Justice Sotomayor, but got changed to a concurrence in the judgment authored jointly by all three liberals. ...

It's also still in the metadata!

Marcy Wheeler asks what Sotomayor got in exchange for changing to a concurrence without dissent. Yesterday Wheeler wondered if the sudden announcement of today's decision (there had been no decisions previously scheduled for today) meant that there was a connection to the Court hearing the immunity case.

[N.E. Brigand]

I'm not sure how useful collations like this are in convincing even swing voters of Trump's awfulness, but perhaps they can motivate the base?



"We will expel the wall-mongers"? And note the music underneath!

As others have noted, the most important line is probably "Anybody that loves me, I like them!"

[N.E. Brigand]

A new poll in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania of voters who don't identify as being part of Donald Trump's base finds that only 31% of them had heard of any of the "most explicit authoritarian" comments that Trump has made. These voters were asked about ten statements including Trump's statement that he would be "dictator for one day," this call for "termination" of parts of the U.S. Constitution, his description of immigrants as "poisoning the blood of our country," his promise to pardon January 6th criminals, his claims that he would prosecute Joe Biden and his family, and his description of his opponents as "vermin." However:

The good news for Biden is that when respondents were presented with these quotes, it prompted a rise in Trump’s negatives. For instance, after hearing them, the percentage who see him as “out for revenge” jumped by five points, the percentage who see him as “dangerous” rose by nine points, and the percentage who see him as a “dictator” climbed by seven points.

[RoseMorninStar]

Sounds like the Lincoln project needs to put out more ads.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

One point that I heard raised today on NPR is that Biden has a huge war chest of money that he has not spent at all thus far, as he is waiting until Trump is officially the nominee. Monetarily he and the Democrats are in much better shape that Trump and the GOP. That doesn't always translate to votes, but there certainly is a lot for them (as well as orgs like the Lincoln project) to work with. Generally, I prefer positive campaigns to negative ones, and Biden's campaign certainly needs to do a better job of communicating what Biden has achieved so far, but I think the only way he is going to win is to make sure that people outside Trump's core base know just how bad he really is.

[RoseMorninStar]

I agree V. I much prefer positive ads telling the people what one stands for/what to expect from the candidate in question, but I think ads using the opponents own words can be very effective. Far more effective than a negative ad where one candidate bashes the other.

[N.E. Brigand]

I think there was a study released in 2021 that found the Lincoln Project's 2020 ads juiced the base but held no appeal for swing voters.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I recall that as well.

Meanwhile, Kyrsten Sinema has announced that she is not running for re-election. That will result in a straight race between Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake (who has engaged in an extended effort to rebrand herself as a moderate Republican after running as a ultra-MAGA in her failed run for Governor).