The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I doubt that any of this will pass, or probably even get any traction, but it is interesting nonetheless, particularly since Haley Barbour is (or at least was) a pretty prominent Republican.

Fmr RNC Chair Proposes Resolution to Ban RNC From Paying Trump Legal Bills

[Sunsilver]

As much as we'd like to see this happen, Voronwë, you're probably right. Trump would never forgive any GOP party member who voted in favour of such a bill.

[N.E. Brigand]

AP: "Delaware's early voting and permanent absentee laws are unconstitutional, a judge says."

[N.E. Brigand]

From Politico: "The prospect of a second Trump presidency has the intelligence community on edge." It starts like this:

Former top officials from Donald Trump’s administration are warning he is likely to use a second term to overhaul the nation’s spy agencies in a way that could lead to an unprecedented level of politicization of intelligence.

Trump, who already tried to revamp intelligence agencies during his first term, is likely to re-up those plans — and push even harder to replace people perceived as hostile to his political agenda with inexperienced loyalists, according to interviews with more than a dozen people who worked in his administration.

That could empower the former president’s top subordinates to shield him from information that doesn’t conform with his politics and even change the wording of assessments with which he disagrees, many said.

America’s spy agencies are never completely divorced from politics. But an overhaul of the type Trump is expected to attempt could undermine the credibility of American intelligence at a time when the U.S. and allies are relying on it to navigate crises in Ukraine and the Middle East. It could also effectively strip the intelligence community of the ability to dissuade the president from decisions that could put the country at risk.

There's some news in the article about Donald Trump's past (and I hope only) presidency: Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, submitted his resignation in February 2019, much earlier than has previously been known, but Trump refused to accept it, "saying it would cast a negative light on the Oval Office at a time when Congress was looking to oust him from power". That would have been just before Michael Cohen's public Congressional testimony and the conclusion of Robert Mueller's investigation. Coats finally departed in July of that year (just as Trump was trying to blackmail Ukraine). Coats says that Trump's recklessness would likely get Americans killed if he were reelected.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

But Biden is old! And he didn't magically make Netanyahu do the right thing! So he is just as bad as Trump!

America is going to get what we deserve.

[N.E. Brigand]

(I've also seen online reports that when speaking to CPAC earlier today, Trump referred to his wife Melania by the name Mercedes. I suspect that may be an error in the reports, because CPAC is run by Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes. HIs speech is 80 minutes long, and I haven't listened to the whole thing to check.)

OK, I put the CPAC speech on in the background as I did some other things. I understated before: it actually runs 86 minutes. ... About two-thirds of the way in, he did mention his wife, as part of a possibly improvised section of the speech ... But here's my transcript of five minutes (53:35-58:40) ...

But one of these guys will run up and grab him and take him off the stage. This is what we have as our president. But the worst thing is when I do that, the fake news--I call up my wife, the great First Lady, she was a great--people love her [audience applauds], yeah people love her. [Trump looks to his far left] Oh look at that! Wow! Mercedes, that's pretty good! Ah, she's good. And she loves our country, and she loves the people. It's true. When I give these big rallies -- we give rallies -- they say: "We love our First Lady." [Trump waves his right hand as if holding a sign] They have signs. "We love our"--they always show a high heel, you know? "We love our First Lady." ...

So did he refer to his wife Melania as "Mercedes"? I don't think so. That video never cuts from Trump, but this one does have an occasional crowd shot, including a cut to the audience at the moment in question. As far as I can tell, Melania isn't even there. He's apparently expressing to Mercedes Schlapp his reaction to the audience giving the absent Melania a brief standing ovation. It's weird because he never mentions Melania's name at all. (Edited the next day to note that this regular Trump critic agrees with me.)

Two other points may have jumped out at you:
1. Trump is very sensitive about the subject of his competence and intelligence. This whole five-minute ramble is very defensive.
2. If Melania is actually watching Donald's speeches on TV, as he claims, then why would she rely on news reports and ask him if he wandered off?

Well, the incorrect notion seems to have stuck. Seth Myers made a joke about this during a monologue last night, and then when Myers questioned President Biden about his age, Biden also joked about it. I think they both would have done better to focus on Donald Trump forgetting his son Eric than on supposedly getting Melania's name wrong.

Anyway, here's the interview:

[N.E. Brigand]

All the major media outlets called Trump's victory almost immediately after the polls closed, and Trump spoke soon after. In those remarks, speaking from notecards,* Trump began by thanking "my family: Melania, Barron, Don Jr. and Kimberly, Ivanka and Jared, Tiffany and Michael. They're so supportive, so supportive of me and we really appreciate and love them. We have a great family." That's right: Donald Trump forgot to mention his other son and daughter-in-law, Eric and Lara. And this despite the fact that he's been trying to get Lara installed as a co-chair of the Republican National Committee. (Edit: I didn't see the whole speech. Apparently he did thank them later, but I there's no way they were deliberately omitted from that opening.)

*The notecards are worth mentioning because there was reporting in Axios yesterday that Democratic donors are concerned that President Biden uses notecards. That reporting was by a journalist who can been using notecards when he conducts interview.

David Frum chimes in to note that presidents regularly use notecards. He wrote those that Pres. George W. Bush used.

(Frum has been absent online for more than week. Today he mentioned this is due to bereavement. It turns out his 32-year-old daughter died.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Malcolm Turnbull, who was Australia's prime minister from 2015 to 2018, and a member of that nation's major conservative party (which confusingly for Americans is called the Liberal Party), said today, based on in-person observations, that Donald Trump behaved toward Vladimir Putin "like the 12-year-old boy that goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team. 'My hero!' It’s really creepy. ... It struck everybody. You could touch it. The creepiness was palpable."

Video at link. Something I hear a lot from Trump supporters is that he was respected by the rest of the world. This is good evidence to the contrary.

[N.E. Brigand]

Earlier today, Donald Trump said he would defeat Nikki Haley tonight in Michigan's Republican primary by 90%.

Of course he is winning, but not by even half that margin.

But the New York Times is carrying his water:

Donald Trump is "victorious ... again coasting" as his margin currently is 65%-31%.

While President Biden "faces a robust protest vote" and is "facing significant opposition" as his margin currently is 79%-16%.

(Most of Biden's opposition tonight comes from "uncommitted," a deliberate protest vote in opposition to his Middle East policies.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think the fact that 16% (thus far) voted uncommitted in a state that is a toss-up is a very bad sign.

[N.E. Brigand]

It was 11% when Barack Obama ran for reelection in 2012. Too soon to say where it will end up tonight.

- - - - - - - - -
Edited to add: However, Michigan 2012 was a caucus not a primary for Democrats. Obama got 174,000 votes. Biden is going to get about 675,000, nearly four times as many. But that means the uncommitted total is going to be much higher too.

Some "uncommitted" supporters were predicting 20% vote share. That ain't happening. (15% is still possible. Edit: but it's fallen to 13.9% now, and across all counties where counting is complete, it's averaging 11.5%. However, the counties where "uncommitted" is expected to do best are also some of the slowest to count.) Others, more cannily, were saying that 10,000 votes would be a big win. But that would be just 2% of the total vote, much lower than the 2012 results. So that was never going to happen either.

- - - - - - - - -
And to consider another point: about half of Nikki Haley's primary voters have been saying that they won't vote for Donald Trump in the general election. Haley is going to get about 350,000 votes tonight. So potentially 175,000 Republican primary voters in Michigan aren't going to vote for Trump. (Most of those won't vote for Biden, either; they'll just stay home.)

Additionally, about one in five Republican primary voters have been saying they won't vote for Donald Trump in the general election if he's convicted. There will be roughly 1.3 million votes counted in Michigan's Republican primary. So if Trump is convicted (and who knows?), that's 260,000 Republican voters who won't be backing Trump in the fall. (I figure all of the first groups of 175,000 falls into the second group of 260,000.)

In either case, however, some of those Republican voters won't do in November as they say now.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump's own prediction aside, the polling average had him leading by 57%. At the moment he's leading by 39.5%, and the New York Times needle predicts he'll win by 45%. So that would be a polling miss of 12% -- once again, as in New Hampshire and South Carolina -- going against Trump.

[N.E. Brigand]

Here are the candidates' results (with 1,000 or more votes) across this year's Nevada Democratic primary, Republican primary, and Republican caucus:

112,611 -- Joe Biden (D)
59,545 -- Donald Trump (R - caucus)
47,077 -- None of These Candidates (R - primary)
22,611 -- Nikki Haley (R - primary)
7,017 -- None of These Candidate (D)
3,714 -- Marianne Williamson (D)
2,895 -- Mike Pence (R - primary)
1,014 -- Tim Scott (R - primary

I don't know if it's more notable that there were 135,000 Republican voters vs. 125,000 Democratic voters or that Biden got almost twice as many votes as Trump.

Marianne Williamson suspended her campaign a few weeks ago, but after finishing slightly ahead of Rep. Dean Phillips in last night's Michigan Democratic primary -- albeit still a distant third -- she is "unsuspending" and returning to the race.

Here are the combined results as of this morning:

754,136 -- Donald Trump (R -- 68.2% [1st])
614,416 -- Joe Biden (D -- 81.1% [1st])
293,243 -- Nikki Haley (R -- 26.5% [2nd])
100,368 -- Uncommitted (D -- 13.3% [2nd])
33,178 -- Uncommitted (R -- 3.0% [3rd])
22,575 -- Marianne Williamson (D -- 3.0% [3rd])*
19,441 -- Dean Phillips (D -- 2.6% [4th])
13,294 -- Ron DeSantis (R -- 1.2% [4th])
4,739 -- Chris Christie (R -- 0.4% [5th])*
3,688 -- Vivek Ramaswamy (R -- 0.3% [6th])*
2,342 -- Ryan Binkley (R -- 0.2% [7th])*
1,075 -- Asa Hutchinson (R -- 0.1% [8th])*

*indicates a campaign that was suspended prior to yesterday's primaries

Although this is obviously a disappointing performance by Haley, she did finish slightly better (-41.7%) than the New York Times was forecasting last night (-45%) -- and as I mentioned, well ahead of the polling average (-57%). Are 15% of Republican voters afraid to tell pollsters that they're voting against Trump?

On the Democratic side, 100,000 "uncommitted" Democratic voters is obviously a lot (although the 33,000 uncommitted Republican voters is nothing to sneeze at either) -- while 13.3% is not a huge increase over the 2012 results (10.6% against Obama), no other Democratic candidates got votes in Michigan's caucus that year -- and Joe Biden should definitely be thinking about how he can motivate them to come out to polls in November. (I think very few of them will vote for Trump, but some portion will just stay home.) Democrats also need to be thinking about how to convince as many Haley voters as possible to just stay home in the fall.

And of course, these results are just a sampling of the more committed and partisan voters, missing in particular independents. More than 1,800,000 Michiganders voted yesterday, but more than 5,500,000 are likely to vote in November.

[N.E. Brigand]

Rep. Lauren Boebert, the handsy Republican of Colorado, has announced that she instead of running for reelection in her state's 3rd Congressional district, which she won by only 546 votes in 2022, she's running to represent the 4th Congressional district. ("Boebert doesn’t have to live in the 4th district to represent it.") Results for 2016-2020 indicate that the 3rd district leans 9 points toward Republicans while the 4th district leans 27 points in that direction. The 4th district is currently represented by Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican who announced earlier this year that he's not seeking reelection. (This will probably help Republicans hold the 3rd district.)

CO-4's got a pretty crowded primary field already. Her loyalty to Trump might play well but she did get effectively run out of her previous district because of her poor job performance and embarrassing behavior. I'm sure her opponents will bring that up. In addition to Frisch raising all the money in CO-3, Boebert was facing a primary challenger with teeth. No idea what happens to Frisch now that she's out. Keeping CO-4 was a foregone conclusion for the CO GOP and shunting Boebert to 4 makes it possible for them to hold both districts. I'm not sure they really care about what happens to Boebert's career in the process.

Rep. Lauren Boebert’s 18-year-old son has been "arrested after a rash of robberies in her district [and] faces 22 charges."

[River]

I think she needs to step back from national politics and spend some time with her family. Don't mean that to be snarky either. The Boebert household needs tending to.

[N.E. Brigand]

Marcy Kaptur's Republican opponent, J.R. Majewski, is an election-denying, Trump-endorsed, QAnnon-supporting "U.S. army veteran and rapper," per Wikipedia, who has claimed that his service in the armed forces included a grueling stint in Afghanistan including a stretch of 40 days when he went without even a shower.

The AP reports today that Majewski was never in Afghanistan. Mind you, he did spend six months in Qatar loading planes that were flown to Afghanistan, but most of his military service was in Japan.

Majewski responds!

[Ron Filipowski: "Trump-endorsed Congressional candidate J.R. Majewski today says that the reason why there is no record of him serving in combat in Afghanistan is because it is 'classified.'"]

J.R. Majewski, the fabulist who was the 2022 Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio's 9th District, lost that year to long-serving Democratic incumbent Marcy Kaptur, 56.6%-43.4%. He's trying again this year. Two weeks ago, Majewski said this during a podcast interview:

Shout out to all the Democrats living in Mom's basement that like to talk shit on the Internet. You know, no matter how hard you try, arguing on the Internet, it's like being in the Special Olympics. No matter how good you perform, you still have--you're still fucking retarded at the end of the day.

Majewski has since apologized, but he's staying in the race, saying that to withdraw would be to appease the "Washington Establishment Machine."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Is that your district?

[N.E. Brigand]

Is that your district?

No. Kaptur was my Congressperson from 2012 to 2022 when the district where I live on Cleveland's west side was connected by a narrow strip (sometimes just the width of a road) running about 100 miles along the Lake Erie shoreline to her base in Toledo, but as of the 2022 redistricting (marginally better than the previous decade but still not fair), the 9th is entirely in northwest Ohio. I'm now in Ohio-11 and my House representative is Shontel Brown.

[N.E. Brigand]

"Undecided" did well enough in Dearborn and environs to earn two Michigan delegates yesterday (vs. 115 for President Biden), which is funny. However, so is this:

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, a judge in Illinois has ruled that Trump is disqualified because of the 14th Amendment. Of course, that decision will likely get overturned when the SCOTUS reverses the Colorado Supreme Court.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 354c6&ei=5