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DeSantis Says He Will “Start Slitting Throats” After His Election; Federal Employees Object to Threats of Violence

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2023 //
42

Ron DeSantis is campaigning to be more racist, more homophobic, angrier and more violent than Trump. To get to Trump’s right is not an easy matter. DeSantis must work hard to reach the militias, Proud Boys, and KKK element in the GOP. He has to sound like a fascist.

He recently proclaimed while campaigning in New Hampshire that if he is elected, he will “start slitting throats” of federal employees, otherwise known as “the Deep State.” On Day One.

The union representing federal employees thought that was a disgusting proposal.

The knives are out in a seemingly avoidable war between Florida’s Governor and a union representing 760,000 federal employees.

In a pointed statement, the American Federation of Government Employees‘ head said Ron DeSantis had “no place in office” after the Governor’s vow to eliminate members of the federal workforce by violent means.

“We’re going to have all these deep state people, you know we’re going to start slitting throats on day one,” the Governor said in Rye, New Hampshire this week at a BBQ event.

“We’ve seen too often in recent years – from the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 to the sacking of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 — that violent anti-government rhetoric from politicians has deadly consequences. Any candidate who positions themselves within that shameful tradition has no place in public office,” asserted AFGE National President Everett Kelley Thursday.

“No federal employee should face death threats from anyone, least of all from someone seeking to lead the U.S. government,” Kelley added, calling on DeSantis to “retract his irresponsible statement.”

Ironically, the Granite State promise to slit throats is only one recent time he used the vivid image to make a point about reshaping the federal government to his liking.

During a July 27 interview with Real America’s Voice, DeSantis said he wanted a Defense Secretary who was ready to “slit some throats” and be “very firm, very strong” in imposing their will.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Ohio: Vote NO on Issue 1 on Tuesday to Preserve Majority Rule

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2023 //
4

Ohio Republicans are trying to ban abortion by limiting it to six weeks, before women know they are pregnant. The legislature passed a law prohibiting abortions after six weeks of pregnancy but a federal judge halted the implementation of the ban. However, people who support reproductive rights want to write them into the state constitution. They gathered more than 700,000 signatures, nearly double what the state requires. They succeeded in getting their referendum on the ballot in November.

The state Republicans want to stop them but they know that abortion rights have prevailed in other red states (think Kansas). So the legislature came up with a new ploy: there will be a special election on Tuesday August 8, to require that any change in the state constitution get not a simple majority, but at least 60% of the vote. Furthermore, any proposal to change the constitution would require signatures from all 88 counties, not the current 44. Obviously they want to blunt the pro-abortion campaigners by making it nearly impossible to get on the ballot.

Republican strategists are hoping that turnout will be low and that the abortion rights side will fail to block the referendum. Polls have shown that some 58% support abortion rights, so they will never pass an amendment if Issue 1 succeeds and raises the threshold to 60%.

Politico wrote:

Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, a nonpartisan coalition of abortion-rights groups, submitted the ballot language earlier this year, kicking off a four-month dash to collect signatures and campaign across the state. Proponents, including state Democrats, ACLU of Ohio and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, anticipate spending upward of $35 million on the effort heading into November.

Opponents have pushed against the measure by arguing that it would allow for gender-affirming care without parental consent, even though such a provision is not in the initiative’s language.

Aside from the abortion issue, there is a question about whether it’s right to impose a 60% requirement to get a referendum on the ballot. Why not let the majority (50% plus 1) decide?

Paul Waldman wrote on MSNBC’s site that the issue is stark: Now Ohio Republicans are trying to duck the will of the voters with some clever maneuvering. The state’s voters will decide on two ballot initiatives in two separate elections in a matter of months. One is explicitly about abortion, while the other is only implicitly about abortion but would go even further, to the very question of whether democratic accountability should exist at all…

Lest there be any doubt, the Legislature scheduled the vote on Issue 1 for a special election in August, when it could be assured a lower turnout. So if it succeeds, the abortion amendment on the ballot in November would have to get 60% to pass. Ohio Republicans are so committed to this farce that the Legislature ignored the law it passed in December banning almost all August special elections. When liberals pointed out the obvious contradiction, the Republican-majority on the state’s Supreme Court ruled the Legislature could simply break the law it passed less than a year ago.

Meanwhile, doctors in Ohio have mobilized against the abortion ban, according to ProPublica.

In her eight years as a pediatrician, Dr. Lauren Beene had always stayed out of politics. What happened at the Statehouse had little to do with the children she treated in her Cleveland practice. But after the Supreme Court struck down abortion protections, that all changed.

The first Monday after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling was emotional. Beene fielded a call from the mother of a 13-year-old patient. The mother was worried her child might need birth control in case she was the victim of a sexual assault. Beene also talked to a 16-year-old patient unsure about whether to continue her pregnancy. Time wasn’t on her side, Beene told the girl.

“What if it were too late to get her an abortion? What would they do? And I just, I felt sick to my stomach,” Beene said. “Nobody had ever asked me a question like that before.”

Beene felt she had to do something. She drafted a letter to a state lawmaker about the dangers of abortion bans, then another doctor reached out with an idea to get dozens of doctors to sign on. The effort took off. About 1,000 doctors signed that letter, and they later published it as a full-page ad in The Columbus Dispatch.

Beene felt momentum building within the medical community and decided to help use that energy to form the Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights coalition. Now, Beene and the coalition are working to pass a citizen-led amendment to enshrine reproductive rights into the state constitution. The state’s six-week ban on abortion was blocked by a judge in October 2022.

The group is a part of an emerging political force: doctors on the front lines of the reproductive rights debate. In many states, the fight to protect reproductive rights is heating up as 14 states have outlawed abortion. Doctors who previously never mixed work with politics are jumping into the abortion debate by lobbying state lawmakers, campaigning, forming political action committees and trying to get reproductive rights protected by state law.

Reasons to vote NO on Issue 1:

ARGUMENTS AGAINST ISSUE 1

The following argument was prepared by senators Paula Hicks-Hudson and Vernon Sykes along with representatives Dontavius Jarrells, Bride Rose Sweeney and Dani Isaacsohn…

This amendment would destroy citizen-driven ballot initiatives as we know them, upending our right to make decisions that directly impact our lives. It takes away our freedom by undermining the sacred principle of ‘one person, one vote’ and destroys majority rule in Ohio.

Last year, Ohio politicians eliminated August special elections saying, “Interest groups often manipulatively put issues on the ballot in August because they know fewer Ohioans are paying attention.”

And yet here we are, voting in August on just one question: should Ohio permanently abolish the basic constitutional right of majority rule?

Special interests and corrupt politicians say yes. They don’t like voters making decisions, so they’re trying to rewrite the rules to get what they want: even more power.

Here’s why we’re confident Ohio citizens will resoundingly vote NO:

  • Issue 1 Ends Majority Rule: It means just 40% of voters can block any issue, putting 40% of voters in charge of decision-making for the majority.
  • Issue 1 Shreds Our Constitution: It would permanently undo constitutional protections that have been in place for over 100 years to check politicians’ power at the ballot box.
  • Issue 1 Takes Away Our Freedom: It would destroy citizen-driven ballot initiatives as we know them, guaranteeing that only wealthy special interests could advance changes to our constitution.
  • Issue 1 Applies to All Issues: If this amendment passes, it will apply to every single amendment on any issue Ohioans will ever vote on – you name it, just 40% of voters will decide.

We all deserve to make decisions that impact our lives. We must protect our freedom to determine our future, not permanently change our constitution to give up our rights. Vote NO.

Categories Elections, Gender, Health, Ohio, Science

Scott Maxwell: Florida Digs in Deeper on the Good Side of Slavery

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2023 //
12

Scott Maxwell is an excellent columnist for The Orlando Sentinel. He brings us up to date on Florida’s efforts to promote the bright side of slavery.

He writes:

Every week lately, Florida seems to make more headlines for trying to turn public schools into a political war zone. The two latest examples:

The Sentinel revealed the Florida Department of Education has hired a new political operative who’s working with the book-censoring Moms for Liberty — and won’t say how many of your tax dollars the state is paying him or even why.

Also, the state has approved new classroom videos made by a guy who admits his goal is “indoctrination.”

One video features a cartoon version of Christopher Columbus telling kids that, while slavery might not be great, “being taken as a slave is better than being killed.” Another tells students that one of the most important things kids “need to know” about slavery is that “White men led the world in putting an end to the abhorrent practice.”

White men as saviors is quite the top-line takeaway on slavery.

The Orlando Sentinel first broke the news about the new hire, revealing that the state had hired Terry Stoops, a guy who pushed GOP education policies in North Carolina, to lead its newly created Office of Academically Successful and Resilient Districts.

The office title sounds like gobbledygook. But what are Stoops’ job responsibilities? And how much are you, as a taxpayer, paying him? Well, the state wouldn’t answer either question.

Even Florida’s online employee-salary database somehow omitted Stoops.

But emails obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project — which is leading the fight against classroom book-banning and censorship — showed that Stoops seemed to be working as a state liaison to right-wing crusaders.

In one email, Stoops wrote a Volusia County school board member to say: “We would be happy to meet with the Conservative Coalition of School Board Members as a group to explore ways that our efforts may align.”

In another, he told Orange County school board member Alicia Farrant, a Moms for Liberty member leading Central Florida’s in-school book-banning crusade: “I just wanted to pass along a note to thank you for serving on the board and standing up for families.”

Just for argument’s sake, let’s say you think it’s a swell idea for government to use tax dollars to push a political agenda. What excuse could you possibly have for hiding from taxpayers how many of those dollars you’re using and for what allegedly public purpose?

In normal times, that secrecy would be big news. But that revelation was eclipsed by the even more disturbing news that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education department had also decided to welcome videos into classrooms from a guy who admits his goal is indoctrination.

As the Miami Herald reported, the Department of Education said it had concluded that the controversial PragerU program “aligns to Florida’s revised civics and government standards” and “can be used as supplemental materials in Florida schools at district discretion.”

If you’re not familiar with Prager, you should first know that PragerU is an actual university in the same way Dr. Dre is an actual doctor. It’s not. Instead, it’s the creation of conservative radio show host Dennis Prager who freely admits his goal is to indoctrinate kids.

Just last month, at a Moms for Liberty event, Prager said that when critics say to him “you indoctrinate kids,” he responds that is true. “That’s a very fair statement,” he said. “But what is the bad about our indoctrination?”

In Florida, where DeSantis often decries the evils of indoctrination, we’re again reminded that every accusation is often a confession.

I encourage you to watch some of the PragerU videos for yourself.

In one video, a cartoon version of Columbus tells kids who ask about his support of slavery: “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no?”

That’s quite a bar you’ve set for yourself, cartoon Chris. And for the kids.

Another video — “A Short History of Slavery,” narrated by conservative pundit Candace Owens — tells kids: “Here’s the first thing you need to know: Slavery was not ‘invented’ by White people.”

Yes, that’s actually “the first thing” PragerU thinks kids need to know about human captivity. Not how slavery destroyed generations of lives to help slavemasters enrich themselves. Or that, heaven forbid, that was wrong. But that White folks didn’t pioneer the system.

So were the harsh realities of human captivity at least the “second thing” kids need to know about slavery? Nope. According to PragerU and Owens, who is Black, the second-most important thing kids should know is that “White people were the first to put an end to slavery.”

So one of PragerU’s top two lessons on slavery is basically: Yay, White people!

Bizarre? Yes. Yet it seems to work well with the new Florida curriculum standards you read about last week — the ones that tell teachers to stress the “personal benefit” some slaves received in terms of learning job skills. And also with the laws GOP legislators passed that instruct educators to censor discussion about “systemic racism” and to sanitize history lessons that might upset some children’s parents.

The Freedom to Read organization is suggesting Florida families use the state’s new “parental rights” law to opt-out of PragerU’s indoctrination.

But it seems like it might be simpler to, oh, I dunno, maybe just not indoctrinate?

Maybe just teach history like it really happened, warts and all.

And maybe be fully transparent with taxpayer money and public positions.

Unfortunately, that all seems like too much to ask.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, History, Lies, Racism

Washington Post Asks Eight Left-Leaning Columnists About Biden

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2023 //
167

I enjoyed reading this candid conversation among left-leaning columnists at the Washington Post about Biden’s candidacy. The conversation was moderated by Chris Suellentrip, the politics opinion editor of the Post.

What do you think?

President Biden is 80 years old and is running for a second term, more or less unopposed, in the Democratic primary. So I gathered a group of our left-leaning columnists for a conversation over email and asked: How do you feel about that?

Has Biden failed to be a “bridge” to a new generation of leaders, as he pledged to be in 2020? Should he have declared himself “one (term) and done,” like a college basketball star? Should the party have held a competitive primary instead of clearing the field, as is traditional for an incumbent president? Is the fascination with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s not-gonna-happen campaign a sign of nervousness about Biden 2024 in some portion of the Democratic primary electorate? And will you change your mind about any of these things if someone other than Donald Trump is the 2024 Republican nominee?

Dana Milbank: If hand-wringing translated into votes, Democrats would never lose an election. I find their fretting over Biden’s age tedious — and probably exaggerated by the disinformation from the right portraying him as drooling and senile. The wandering speeches, the gaffes and the other traits people now assign to his advanced age are the same traits I observed when covering him in the 1990s.

As a Gen Xer, sure, I would have preferred if Biden had offered himself as a one-term anti-Trump savior and cleared the way for a new generation. But a competitive primary would only have turned him into Carter ’80. It’s also just as likely that a decision not to run for reelection would have had the effect of anointing Kamala D. Harris, who by virtue of being a woman of color would make it easier for Trump to foment a 2016-style backlash of racism and misogyny.

Would all this change if Trump (or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis) isn’t the GOP nominee? Well, sure. I suppose if Asa Hutchinson were the nominee it wouldn’t matter as much whom the Democrats put up, because he wouldn’t pose the same existential threat to American democracy. But I’m not yet declaring victory for Hutchinson.

Jennifer Rubin: So Biden is 80. Live with it. He’s certainly sharp enough to have solidified and expanded NATO, snookered Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in the debt ceiling negotiations and racked up as impressive a first-term domestic record as any incumbent in memory. If inflation is less than 3 percent and job growth is still strong on Election Day, Biden will have pulled off the near-impossible soft-landing (with Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell as his co-pilot).

Paul Waldman: Of course Biden’s age is a concern, even if at the moment it’s only a theoretical one. The presidency is an extraordinarily demanding job, and it would have to be a pretty unusual 86-year-old (the age Biden would be at the end of a second term) who could handle it. But we haven’t yet seen any evidence of age having an effect on Biden’s decision-making or his energy. There are occasions when he appears old in public — a shuffling gait, a momentary inability to find the word he’s looking for — but that’s not the same as him not being able to perform the job.

For all the talk of building a bridge to the next generation, Biden was never going to serve one term and step down. He spent half a century trying to get to the Oval Office, and he won’t leave it voluntarily.

Perry Bacon Jr.: I am not thrilled that Joe Biden is running for a second term.

His approval ratings are significantly lower than Bill Clinton’s, George W. Bush’s or Barack Obama’s were at this stage of their presidencies, midway through their third years in office.

They are very similar to Trump’s numbers. In polls of a potential 2024 matchup, Biden is effectively tied with Trump. Biden would be the favorite against Trump (and probably DeSantis). But that’s because of how unpopular those two Republicans are, not Biden’s political strength.

I think the driving factor here is Biden’s age. People just feel like he is too old. I personally don’t see any evidence that Americans shouldbe worried about his health or mental capacity. But I hear concerns about his age all the time from people in my life who aren’t partisan Democrats. This concern about age shows up in basically every poll.

I think an incumbent Democratic president with Biden’s record who wasn’t 80 years old would be more popular and therefore have a better chance in next year’s election. And while I don’t think just any Democrat under age 80 (or 70) who was the party’s presumptive nominee would be polling better than Biden is against Trump, I think many younger Democrats would be stronger candidates in a 2024 general election.

For example, it seems pretty clear that if Democrats could agree, without a primary, that the party’s 2024 ticket would be Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (Mich.) as president and Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (Ga.) as vice president, that would be stronger electorally than Biden-Harris. Or say, Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.). What I mean is a ticket with a White person and a person of color, a man and a woman, two people who are generally in the mainstream of the party ideologically — and no one over age 70.

But there is no magic way to skip a primary, of course!

Ruth Marcus: Riffing off of how Perry phrased it, I wish Biden did not have to run for a second term. He is too old. No, he is not the drooler of overheated GOP imaginings, but he has slowed down, obviously and measurably. And 80 is too old, period, for the demanding job of the presidency. Let the torch be passed, etc.

Except for this: Biden needs to run. He (and Democrats) are correct about that assessment. If he were to have announced that he was stepping aside, the internecine warfare that would have erupted over Harris, the heiress apparent, versus everyone else, would have torn the party apart, or risked doing so, and opened the door too wide to risk a Republican president being elected.

And not just Trump. He is the biggest, most existential risk, and the primary driver of my “Biden must run” mentality. I used to believe Trump was a singular threat, and that there would not be Trumpism without Trump. But that was wrong. The forces he has unleashed are powerful and dangerous, and exist even in his absence from the scene. From my point of view, the risk to the Supreme Court alone is enough to justify doing whatever it takes to maximize the chance of a Democrat being elected (which means: Biden, Biden, Biden).

Eugene Robinson: Look, we all wish that Biden were, say, 60 instead of 80. But is there a younger Democrat who could have beaten Donald Trump in 2020? I doubt it. And is there a younger Democrat who could beat Trump in 2024? Maybe. I like Perry’s ticket of Whitmer and Warnock. But I don’t like the idea of taking another existential gamble with our democracy. If Trump is the GOP nominee, which seems likely, this will almost surely be another close election. We don’t have landslides anymore; and no matter how queasy Republican voters might be about four more years of Trump’s insanity, we should expect most of them to support their party’s nominee. It is unwise to count on the justice system to bail the nation out. On Election Day, Biden will be 82 and Trump will be 78. The “age issue” should be de minimus.

And, not incidentally, Biden has been a highly effective president who has instituted policies, at home and abroad, that I support. A president with his record deserves a second term — and congressional majorities to go along with it.

Greg Sargent: Improbably, Biden has been the guy with enough appeal to the middle needed to both beat Trump and to pass (parts of) a historically progressive agenda (bringing Bernie Sanders into the tent) while recasting it to the electorate (including affluent suburbanites who supposedly lean right economically) as sensible moderation. Biden seems uniquely well-positioned to not just beat Trump again but also to cement a broad, center-left ideological consensus with paradigm-shifting durability.

As for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., historically there have always been candidates who tap into disaffected pro-insurgent constituencies in the Democratic Party (Bill Bradley, Howard Dean, etc.). Kennedy represents a particularly ideologically heterodox and unbalanced version of this. It’s hard to imagine his support, such as it is, says anything meaningful or predictive about eventual support for Biden.

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Early in the administration, I thought Biden wouldn’t seek a second term. He would find it appealing, I thought, to declare that he had achieved what he promised when he decided to run in the first place. He saved the country from a Trump second term, defended democracy, solved a bunch of big problems, restored the country’s standing abroad, notched a number of bipartisan victories and created an opening for a better kind of politics. Call it the Cincinnatus Option. He would spend the rest of his term being more praised than damned, the Republicans would have less interest in attacking him, and his popularity would go up because a lot of Americans (with their instinctive mistrust of politicians) would admire someone who could walk away from power.

That still sounds pretty good to me, but it’s not what happened. The reason it didn’t is, as Greg suggested, that Biden might be the only Democrat who can sit atop the various factions of the Democratic Party and bring them together.

If you ask yourself why Democrats are united behind Biden, why only cranks are running against him, it’s because Democrats across their various divisions agree that now is not the time for ideological Armageddon, which is what would happen if Biden stepped aside. And anyone who claims that a tough primary would be good for Biden should consider history. When they were incumbents, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were all weakened by primary fights (against Ronald Reagan, Ted Kennedy and Pat Buchanan, respectively), and they all lost in the general election.

Does Biden’s age create challenges? Of course. Especially against anyone other than Trump. At the margins, Biden’s age could cost him votes, and the margins matter. My hunch is that Biden’s camp will try to find subtle ways of making his age at least a partial asset by stressing his seasoning, wisdom, experience, etc. It won’t be easy, but they have to do some of this. His camp also made a mistake by not lifting up Harris early on and trying to turn her into an asset. They have realized this and are working on doing that now. Biden’s age means more voters will be looking at her as a possible successor, and her favorability ratings need to go up.

Rubin: It’s a relief to have an empathetic, decent human being in the White House. While it is fashionable to pine for someone new and young, with our democracy still frightfully fragile and with war raging in Europe, I don’t think a younger governor or senator would be a better choice. Biden can pass the baton in 2028. Maybe with age comes some old-fashioned sense of propriety, civic virtue, common courtesy and, dare we say, dignity. I’ll take it.

Milbank: I think the Biden-is-too-old theme is itself a demonstration that we’re all forced to live in a world shaped by disinformation from the right. We’ve been hearing from Fox News since the 2020 campaign (when Biden was hidden in his “basement”) about Biden’s “cognitive decline” and his struggle to “string two sentences together.” He has been routinely described since then as “senile,” as a man with “obviously declining mental faculties” who is “a cognitive mess, and he has no idea that today is Wednesday.” During the debt ceiling fight, Kevin McCarthy offered to bring “soft food” to the White House for Biden. After the debt deal, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) marveled that “Republicans got outsmarted by a president who can’t find his pants.”

There’s every reason to believe this “senile” old coot will outwit his Republican opponent in ’24.

Sargent: Democrats have won or outperformed in the last three national elections. Yet we’re still constantly running down rabbit holes into debates about why Dems suck so much at politics and how Trump continues to outfox them among working-class voters.

Democratic struggles with some working-class constituencies are real, but some proportion is in order here. MAGA continues to alienate a majority of the country.

Robinson: I’ve had a couple of occasions to spend extended periods of time with Biden, including a long chat on Air Force One, and I can attest that whatever else anybody thinks about him, he’s not senile. And I’ve seen him turn a scheduled quick half-hour of meet-and-greet with supporters into an hour-plus marathon, at the end of a long day, that exhausted aides half his age.

Dionne: Without formally breaking with either Clinton or Obama, Biden has moved the party’s policymaking past the consensus that influenced those earlier administrations. His appointments have given the party’s progressive wing a strong voice in areas such as labor rights, civil rights, trade and antitrust, even as he has kept the party’s more middle-ground legislators and voters on his side — by, for example, refusing to challenge the Federal Reserve’s efforts to contain inflation (even if the administration devoutly hopes it lets up on rate increases).

And the president’s economic record turns out to be very good. Inflation has come down much faster than Biden’s critics expected, and the country has so far avoided the recession many of those detractors predicted. It’s a long way between now and November 2024, but at least for now, Biden has the better of the economic argument.

The age issue is obviously one of the right’s favorite talking points, but from my own encounters, I share Gene Robinson’s view that a picture of Biden as some sort of doddering old guy is flatly wrong. Biden is especially sharp when he turns to U.S. foreign policy and makes a persuasive case that the United States is now in a much stronger position in the world, partly because it is building alliances across Asia to contain China’s power. Foreign policy won’t decide the next election, but voters who have a sense of security are more likely to support the incumbent.

But realism requires coming to terms with the age issue anyway. Like it or not, Biden’s age will be brought into play whenever he makes a miscue or garbles a sentence or stumbles or looks less forceful — even if whatever is going wrong has nothing to do with his age. Beneath the surface, the Biden forces know it’s something they have to struggle with, not because of what Fox News commentators will say but because of conversations among not particularly ideological voters over back fences and in neighborhood cafes.

Bacon: If the Democrats’ only potential options for the 2024 ticket were: 1) Nominate Biden without a real primary; 2) Conduct a primary in which Harris would likely win without any serious challenge; 3) Conduct a primary in which Harris carried the Black primary vote overwhelmingly but lost to someone with a heavily White base (say Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg), I can see why the party kind of informally opted for No. 1. After all, Harris wasn’t a great candidate in 2019, few Black voters backed Buttigieg in that primary and Biden has the electoral advantages of being White, male and the incumbent president.

But I suspect there were two other potential outcomes, if Biden had announced in January that he was not seeking a second term: 4) Harris wins against a crowded primary field and in doing so demonstrates she is a strong candidate for a general election, like Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016; or 5) Harris runs but another candidate (say, Whitmer) builds a broad coalition and decisively defeats her in the primary.

So I am frustrated that Democrats are running a candidate who in my view is too conciliatory and centrist in the face of a radicalized Republican Party, but also a candidate whose centrism and conciliation isn’t being rewarded by centrist/independent/swing voters with more approval and support. Biden’s age makes his reelection really dicey — something voters keep saying in poll after poll but the Democratic Party has decided to ignore.

All that said, Biden has been fairly good on policy and would be much better than any of the Republicans running. So I will be voting for him next November without any hesitation. I think he has been a better president than Clinton or Obama. He has been less centrist and cautious than I expected. He has embraced the progressive thinking that emerged from 2013 to 2020, instead of being stuck in old ways. He has appointed some great judges, most notably Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. He has also been very pro-labor and more skeptical of big business than other modern presidents.

The Democratic Party has moved in a more liberal direction — and Biden moved with the party. Great.

Waldman: The good news for Democrats is that, at the moment at least, they have so much going for them heading into 2024: a strong economy, a broadly popular agenda, and an opposition committed to a hateful politics that their base seems to want, but that a majority of the electorate finds repugnant.

Finally, you have the likely nomination of Trump, who cost the GOP the elections of 2018, 2020 and 2022. Everything that made people choose Biden over Trump three years ago — that Biden is a decent human being with conciliatory impulses who would govern in a responsible way — is no less true today than it was then. So for all the unease among Democrats (which Perry is absolutely right about), they’re in about as good a position as they could have hoped for.

Categories Biden, Democrats, Education Reform, Elections, Politics, Republicans, Trump

Robert Hubbell: An Unprecedented Indictment

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2023 //
61

Yesterday was a momentous day in American history. A former President was charged with the crimes of conspiracy to overturn the election that ousted him. We watched the events of January 6, 2021, unfold on national television. We did not know all the details of the conspiracy, which happened in secrecy. But independent counsel Jack Smith interviewed people who were in those secret sessions. Some of them blabbed.

Robert Hubbell summed up the dramatic events of last night. Open the link and keep reading.

Hubbell writes:

At 7:14 PM EDT on August 1, 2023, special counsel Jack Smith strode to a lectern in Washington, D.C., opened a folder, and said, “Today, an indictment was unsealed . . . .” With those plain words, Jack Smith announced the most remarkable legal proceeding in the history of our nation. The indictment (US v. Trump) alleges that a former president of the United States attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power between presidents—the hallmark of American democracy.

          Smith cut to the quick of the indictment in his brief remarks, saying:

The attack on our nation’s Capital on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant.

          And the indictment cuts to the quick of the injury inflicted by Trump: It alleges that Trump engaged in a conspiracy “against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.”

          There it is: Trump attempted to deny the American people the right of self-determination. If that right is abrogated, a free people become vassals of an authoritarian state that exists to perpetuate itself rather than serve the people.     

          In its economy and focus, the indictment lays bare Trump’s betrayal of the Constitution and the American people. In damning Trump with words of one syllable, it seeks to persuade the jury that will determine his guilt and the American people who will determine his fate.

          The indictment is the product of deep strategic thinking. Jack Smith seeks a conviction before the 2024 presidential election. To increase the likelihood of that outcome, the indictment charges a single defendant—Donald Trump. The indictment alleges that Trump was assisted by six un-indicted co-conspirators—five attorneys and one political consultant who can (and will) be tried later.

          In charging a broad conspiracy involving six un-indicted co-conspirators, Smith will be able to use the statements of the seven co-conspirators against one another. The indictment bristles with incriminating admissions and confessions of guilty knowledge by inept and clueless amateurs whose proximity to the presidency caused them to take leave their senses.

          The indictment deftly seeks to hold Trump accountable for the violence on January 6th without assuming the burden of proving he incited the violence. Rather, the indictment alleges that Trump exploited the violence by using it as an excuse to justify the unlawful delay necessary for the false electors plot to succeed.

          The indictment focuses on the false electors’ plot, one of the most straightforward and easily provable elements of Trump’s attempted coup. The indictment does not seek to hold Trump directly accountable for inciting the violence—a difficult proposition to prove.

          On August 2, 2023, Americans who yearn for justice and accountability should feel buoyed by the powerful indictment against Trump. We have much to be grateful for, including the following:

  • That Merrick Garland chose Jack Smith to prosecute Trump;
  • That Jack Smith and his staff (attorneys and FBI agents) acted with the urgency and dispatch appropriate after an attempted coup—and before a threatened second coup.
  • That former Speaker Nancy Pelosi had the foresight to proceed with a select committee to investigate the events of January 6th over objections from House Republicans.
  • That the dedicated members of the House J6 Committee (and their staff) presented an overwhelming case of Trump’s guilt to the American people.
  • That state prosecutors and civil litigants in Georgia and New York pursued justice against Trump when it appeared that federal prosecutors temporized.
  • That the men and women who defended the Capitol on January 6th were able to hold the line long enough for the coup plotters to lose their nerve. As Jack Smith said of the law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol, “They are patriots and they are the best of us.”

          The indictment is momentous. It should speak for itself and deserves to be read in full by you. Indeed, it is your civic duty to do so. The indictment is here: US v. Trump. It is eminently readable. To whet your appetite, here is the introduction:

1.    The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was the forty -fifth President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020. The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election.

          2. Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3,2020, Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.

          3. The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.

Early analysis of the indictment by legal commentators.

          We will spend months and years reviewing the indictment. The early analysis started to arrive on Tuesday evening. A good place to start is with the question of whether it is in the interest of the nation to prosecute a former president for resisting the peaceful transfer of power. It is. See Ruth Marcus op-ed in WaPo, Prosecuting Trump is perilous. Ignoring his conduct would be worse. Marcus writes,

There is a reasonable argument to be made that Trump is already facing criminal charges for his behavior in other matters and proceeding against him on the suite of election-related offenses is unwise and unnecessary.

I disagree, and reading Tuesday’s indictment bolsters that conviction. The Mar-a-Lago indictment charges a separate set of crimes: illegal retention of national defense information and obstruction of justice. These are serious allegations, but to say that their existence obviates the need to prosecute Trump for his efforts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power is akin to arguing that it is not essential to bring murder charges if the putative defendant is already accused of armed robbery.

Prosecuting Trump on these charges is a grave, even perilous, step. Condoning his behavior by ignoring it would be far worse.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Elections, Trump

North Carolina: Why Tricia Cotham Betrayed Voters and Gave GOP a Supermajority

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2023 //
22

Last April, newly elected Democrat Tricia Cotham announced that she was switching from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. This was after she had campaigned as a supporter of abortion rights, an opponent of school vouchers, and a loyal Democrat. Her betrayal of voters in her blue district shook up the state’s politics, because it meant that the hard-right Republicans in the state legislature (the General Assembly) could override the vetoes of Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.

Everyone who saw the damage wrought by Cotham wondered why she did it. She claimed that Democrats didn’t appreciate her enough. That’s a strange reason to flip positions on big issues.

The New York Times reporters Kate Kelly and David Perlmutt found out why she switched: she was wooed by powerful Republicans, encouraged to run, and flipped knowing full well that she lied to her voters.

When Tricia Cotham, a former Democratic lawmaker, was considering another run for the North Carolina House of Representatives, she turned to a powerful party leader for advice. Then, when she jumped into the Democratic primary, she was encouraged by still other formidable allies.

She won the primary in a redrawn district near Charlotte, and then triumphed in the November general election by 18 percentage points, a victory that helped Democrats lock in enough seats to prevent, by a single vote, a Republican supermajority in the state House.

Except what was unusual — and not publicly known at the time — was that the influential people who had privately encouraged Ms. Cotham to run were Republicans, not Democrats. One was Tim Moore, the redoubtable Republican speaker of the state House. Another was John Bell, the Republican majority leader…

Three months after Ms. Cotham took office in January, she delivered a mortal shock to Democrats and to abortion rights supporters: She switched parties, and then cast a decisive vote on May 3 to override a veto by the state’s Democratic governor and enact a 12-week limit on most abortions— North Carolina’s most restrictive abortion policy in 50 years…

More perplexing to many Democrats was why she did it. Ms. Cotham came from a family with strong ties to the Democratic Party, campaigned as a progressive on social issues and had even co-sponsored a bill to codify a version of Roe v. Wade into North Carolina law…

Late in March, just a few days before switching parties, she skipped a pivotal gun-control vote, helping Republicans loosen gun restrictions in the state. After she became a Republican, she sponsored a bill to expand student eligibility for private-school vouchers, voted to ban gender-affirming care for minors and voted to outlaw discussions of race or gender in state job interviews.

“This switch has been absolutely devastating,” said state Representative Pricey Harrison, a Democrat from Greensboro.

Ms. Cotham received a standing ovation at North Carolina’s state Republican convention in June. She was invited to meet privately there with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and former Vice President Mike Pence.

“She’s a rock star among the Republican Party activists and voter base,” said U.S. Representative Dan Bishop, a Republican who said he encouraged Ms. Cotham to join his party and who stood behind her when she announced the decision.

There were clues that should have raised suspicions. In an earlier stint in the legislature, Cotham was loud in demanding greater accountability for charter schools. After she left the legislature, she was a lobbyist for the charter school industry. When she returned this year and flipped parties, she led the Republican demand to transfer control of charters from the State Board of Education to the General Assembly.

The move would, at first, shift independent oversight of charter schools from a board largely appointed by the governor to a board largely appointed by the General Assembly….

Cotham, a former teacher, has been a supporter of school choice. She was the president of a corporation that ran charter schools. Cotham is one of three chairs of the House Education Committee, a role she’s held since the start of the session when she was a Democrat, a rare position for a Democrat in the GOP-controlled chamber.

Real Democrats support public schools, not corporate charter chains or vouchers.

Categories Accountability, Democrats, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Hypocrisy, Lies, North Carolina, Republicans, Scandals, Vouchers

Thom Hartmann: Trump’s Big-Lie Ad Threatens Our Democracy

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2023 //
23

Journalist Thom Hartmann shows that Trump’s latest ad is an exercise in the Big Lie Technique. It contains vile smears that simple-minded people are likely to believe. It resounds with echoes of fascism.

He writes:

Trump’s people are promoting a new lie-filled fascist advertisement, which even the normally unflappable Frank Luntz called “disturbing.” It follows a fairly ancient pattern of destructive Big Lies that goes back to Renaissance Italy and even the Roman republic and ancient Greece.

German filmmaker Fritz Hippler, one of Goebbels’ most effective propagandists (he produced the infamous movie The Eternal Jew), said that two steps are necessary to promote a Big Lie so the majority of the people in a nation would believe it.

The first is to reduce an issue to a simple black-and-white choice that “even the most feebleminded could understand.” 

The second is to “repeat the oversimplification over and over.” 

If these two steps are followed, Hippler and Goebbels both knew, enough people will come to believe a Big Lie that it can change the politics of a nation.

In Hippler’s day, the best example of his application of the principle was his 1940 movie “Campaign in Poland,” which argued that the Polish people were suffering under tyranny — a tyranny that would someday threaten Germany — and that the German people could either allow this cancer to fester, or preemptively “liberate” Poland.

Hitler took the “strong and decisive” path, the movie suggested, to liberate Poland, even though after the invasion little evidence was found that Poland represented any threat whatsoever to the powerful German Reich. The movie was Hitler’s way of saying that invading Poland was the right thing to do, and that, in retrospect, he would have done it again.

The Big Lie is alive and well today in the United States of America, and what’s most troubling about it is the basic premise that underlies its use. For somebody to undertake a Big Lie, they must first believe Niccolo Machiavelli’s premise (in “The Prince,” 1532) that “the ends justify the means.”

Hitler, after all, claimed to have based everything he did on the virtuous goal of uniting Europe — and then the world — in a thousand-year era of peace, which he claimed was foreshadowed in the Bible. If you believe that a thousand years of peace is such a noble end that any means is justified to reach it, it’s a short leap to eugenics, preemptive wars, torture of dissidents and prisoners, and mass murder.

Believing that the end justifies the means is the ultimate slippery slope. It will kill any noble goal, because even if the goal is achieved, it will have been corrupted along the way by the means used to accomplish it…

In real life, it’s the story of the many tinpot dictators around the world who quote America’s Founders while enforcing a brutal rule, of fossil fuel executives pushing for lax CO2 rules to “help the American economy,” of the legion of lobbyists who work daily to corrupt democracy in the name of GMOs, pharmaceuticals, and the insurance industry (among others).

Here in the US it was used by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to lie us into murderous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and when there was little consequence to them personally or the GOP, Republicans decided to continue the Big Lie strategy and are using it to this day.

Gandhi, Jesus, and Buddha all warned us about this, as did Tolstoy, Tolkien, Hemingway, and Kafka.

Be it “small sins” like the Green Party and No Labels getting into bed with Republicans to get on state ballots, or “big sins” like rightwing think-tanks working to turn America into a strongman oligarchy with their Project 2025, trying to accomplish a “good” by using the means of an “evil” like a Big Lie inherently corrupts the good.

Now the Trump campaign and its allies are encouraging a new series of Big Lies to assail President Biden and the very idea of democracy itself.

With the smug assurance of damage done to the enemy, Republican governors are rewriting American history (the Big Lie that white children are injured by learning about Black history), criminalizing the LGBTQ+ community (the Big Lie that queer people are “groomers”), and throwing millions of people in Blue cities off the voting rolls (the Big Lie of voter fraud).

They are pushing and celebrating nakedly fascist policies, tropes, and memes.

Most recently, a Trump-aligned group rolled out an ad that strings a whole series of Big Lies together. It says:

If I was the deep state and I wanted to destroy America, I would rig the election with a puppet candidate, one that was so compromised that they would never say a word about it. I would create a false flag that allows for mail-in ballots. I would be in charge of the ballot-counting machines. I would create a false flag to blame all who question the results of the election.

If I was the deep state, I would prosecute anyone that went against me. I would sue and prosecute anyone that spoke up about the fraudulent election. I would use my powers to shut down all your internet businesses and bankrupt you.

If I was the deep state, I would make everyone an example why you should never question a Democrat ever winning an election. I would imprison my foes. I would use my corrupt DAs and blackmail judges to destroy you. I would make sure all crimes I ever committed never happened. I would prosecute my biggest competition. I would make sure they could never run for office ever again.

If I was the deep state, I would convince everyone that Ukraine Nazis were good, and women are men.

If I was the deep state, I would own every politician that mattered.

If I was the deep state, I would push my pedophilia ambitions on you.

If I was the deep state, you’d question your sexual identity, but not the medical establishment.

If I was the deep state, you would fear to ever resist me.

If I was the deep state, you would wish I was really the devil.

If I was the deep state, I would say mission accomplished.

Frank Luntz wrote of it, “This is the most disturbing political ad I’ve seen this year.”

Defenders of the Trump campaign are overrunning social media, defending the lies and threats in this new ad and Trump’s previous, “If you fuck around with us…” statements. They claim that Joe Biden is reviving our economy with “socialism and communism,” and Jack Smith and the DOJ prosecuting Trump and the January 6th traitors is some sort of “deep state tyranny.”

There is no equivalence, moral or otherwise, between the work the administration is doing to punish seditionists and rebuild our economy from the wreckage of the Trump years and these sorts of naked appeals to fascism.

Truths and issues — however unpleasant — cannot be weighed on the same scale as lies, threats, and character assassination, explicit or implicit.

Lee Atwater, on his deathbed, realized that the “ends justify the means” technique of campaigning he had unleashed on behalf of Reagan and Bush was both immoral and harmful to American democracy.

“In 1988, fighting Dukakis, I said that I ‘would strip the bark off the little bastard’ and ‘make Willie Horton his [Dukakis’] running mate,’” Atwater said. “I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not. Mostly I am sorry for the way I thought of other people. Like a good general, I had treated everyone who wasn’t with me as against me.”

But Atwater’s spiritual and political protégés in the Trump campaign soldier on. He and his GOP allies in Congress are using Big Lies with startling regularity, and old Big Lies are being resurrected almost daily, most on social media, right-wing talk radio, podcasts, and TV.

The most alarming contrast in the coming election of 2024 is between those who will use any means to get and hold power, and those who are unwilling to engage in a Big Lie.

History tells us that, over the short term, the Big Lie usually works. Over the long term, though, the damage it does — both to those who use it, and to the society on which it is inflicted — is often incalculable.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, History, Ignorance, Lies, Propaganda, Trump

Trump Claims That He Is Prosecuted to Silence His Base

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2023 //
30

I heard it on the radio while driving and couldn’t believe it. Trump claimed that the prosecutors pursuing him for a variety of crimes are actually targeting his supporters. He portrayed himself in near-Biblical terms, as a savior who is being persecuted and crucified on behalf of his devout followers. He said, and I paraphrase, “When they come for me, they are really coming for you.” I couldn’t but think of the phrase “Jesus died for our sins.”

Then I read Philip Bump in The Washington Post, who explained how Trump has made this tack a central part of his campaign. He has done nothing wrong. He wrote a perfect letter. He made a perfect phone call. He is blameless. It is not he but his followers who are targets of wicked prosecutors.

Bump wrote:

Visitors to Donald Trump’s campaign website are immediately implicated in his current legal travails.

“They’re not after me,” text in the primary image on the site reads. “They’re after you … I’m just standing in their way!”

As though attribution were needed, the quote is sourced to Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States.

This idea that Trump faces a legal threat as a proxy for his base of support was offered explicitly during Trump’s speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition over the weekend.

“Every time the radical-left Democrats, Marxist, communists and fascists indict me, I consider it a great badge of courage,” Trump said. “I’m being indicted for you, and I believe the you is more than 200 million people that love our country.”

That phrasing is dripping with hyperbole. Trump’s federal indictment came at the hands of an experienced federal prosecutor who is in no realistic way a “radical-left Democrat,” much less any of the other (contradictory) categories offered. Trump’s implication that his base of support numbers 200 million is heavily inflated.

Those exaggerations have a purpose. Two-hundred-million Americans are more than three-quarters of the adult population, but they’re also obviously more than half of the country, bolstering Trump’s long-standing claim that he is leading a “silent majority” (despite earning less than a majority of the vote in the 2016 presidential primaries, 2016 election and 2020 election). His framing of his opponents as politically opposed to that base — using vaguely defined pejoratives very familiar to supporters who remember the Cold War — is also familiar in a terrain littered with “Republicans in name only.”

Everyone agrees with him and anyone who doesn’t is a traitor. Simple enough.

I have lived through many Presidential elections but I can’t remember any candidate saying that everyone who votes against him is “radical left Democrats, Marxist, communists, and fascists.”

I recall that John McCain defended Obama when one of his supporters called him a Muslim. McCain did not traffic in the politics of personal destruction.

Trump’s inflammatory language and his disrespect for democratic norms undermines our democracy, just as do his attacks on the Justice Department and the rule of law and on the press. He attacks the integrity of our electoral system, our judicial system, and every part of our government. He is a Samson who would dearly love to tear down the pillars of his society unless he controls it. He inspires violence and relishes his ability to mobilize an armed mob.

If you don’t support him, you are a traitor. You don’t love your country. You are radical left. Or a Marxist or a communist or a fascist.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fraud, Lies, Trump

William Galston: How Will Third Party Candidates Affect the Election of 2024?

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2023 //
27

William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a long-time analyst of national politics. He speculates here on the effects of independent candidacies on the 2024 election.

In 1948, President Harry Truman was on the ropes. He was personally unpopular and faced breakaway candidates to his left (former Vice President Henry Wallace, running as the head of the Progressive Party) and to his right (the Dixiecrats, headed by Strom Thurmond). Although Truman lost 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes to Thurmond and another 2.4% of the vote to Wallace, he managed to beat Republican Thomas Dewey by 49.6% to 45.1% (4.5 percentage points).

The story of the 2024 presidential campaign could be a rerun of 1948 — with a different ending. As in 1948, an unpopular incumbent Democratic president may well face Democratic defections to his left and his right. A leading Black public intellectual, Cornel West, will be filling Henry Wallace’s slot as the presidential nominee of the Green Party. To Joe Biden’s right, No Labels is threatening to run an “independent bipartisan” ticket that could be headed by centrists such as Larry Hogan, the former never-Trump Republican governor of Maryland; Joe Manchin, the moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia; or Arizona’s independent senator, Kyrsten Sinema.

It is much too early to assess the impact of this dual threat, but the early signs are not encouraging for Biden. A recent poll by Echelon Insights, a Republican-leaning survey research firm, found that while Biden would narrowly defeat Donald Trump in a rematch of their 2020 contest, Cornel West would receive 4% of the vote in a three-way race, giving the edge to Trump. West would draw about three-quarters of his support from potential Biden voters, especially Blacks, young people, and voters with graduate degrees.

Meanwhile, a poll by Data for Progresssuggested that a centrist independent candidacy would also hurt President Biden more than former President Trump. Like Echelon Insights and other polling firms, Data for Progress found that Biden would defeat Trump in a closely contested two-way race. But in a three-way race featuring Trump, Biden, and an unnamed “moderate Independent candidate,” Trump would come out on top, because the third choice would draw 6 percentage points from Biden’s support versus 3 points from Trump. Otherwise put, in a two-way race, 41% of the potential supporters of a moderate independent choice would support Biden, compared to just 24% who would opt for Trump.

It is very early in the race, of course, so these findings should be read with a healthy pinch of skepticism. Still, they suggest that a four-way race might not go as well for Joe Biden in 2024 as it did for Truman in 1948. The difference, I would suggest, is the baseline balance between the two major parties. In 1944, Democrats were on a roll. In that election, Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Thomas Dewey by 7.5 percentage points, 53.4% to 45.9%. The Republicans nominated Dewey a second time in 1948, and the Republican candidate ended up with roughly the same share of the popular vote as he had four years earlier. Truman could afford to lose almost 5% of the baseline Democratic vote to breakaway candidates to his left and right and still prevail. Still, it was a narrow victory. If Dewey had done 1 percentage point better in the popular vote, he probably would have won three large states — Ohio, Illinois, and California — that he lost by less than 1 percentage point, allowing him to win a majority in the Electoral College despite losing to Truman in the popular vote.

By contrast, Joe Biden begins with a narrower advantage in what I am calling the “baseline” vote. In 2020, when just about everything went right for him, he defeated Trump by 51.3% to 46.8% (4.5 percentage points) in the popular vote. Because Biden’s baseline edge is 3 percentage points lower than Truman’s, he cannot prevail with losses to his left and right as large as those Truman experienced. If a four-way election were held tomorrow, Biden would probably lose.

Fortunately for the incumbent, the election will not occur for another 16 months. As often happens with new Third-Party possibilities, Cornel West’s 4% showing in the Echelon Insights poll may well prove to be a high-water mark. Running on the Green Party ticket in 2016, Jill Stein received just 1.1% of the popular vote. And notably, when the Data for Progress poll replaced the generic No Labels candidate with an actual candidate (Larry Hogan), support for the moderate independent option fell by more than half.

Still, Joe Biden’s room for maneuver is dangerously small. Even though Stein received just over 1% of the vote in 2016, her vote total was higher than Trump’s margin of victory in three key states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — with enough electoral votes to turn Hillary Clinton’s defeat into a narrow victory. Although we cannot say for sure that Stein cost Clinton the election, we cannot rule out the possibility that she did.

Even though Biden gained a healthy popular vote victory in 2020, a shift of a handful of votes in three states — Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin — would have created a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College, throwing the election into the House of Representatives, where Trump would have prevailed. If Cornel West ends up with even half of his current support, he will double Stein’s share, imperiling Biden’s reelection chances. If a No Labels candidate were also in the race, the hill Biden must climb would be even steeper.

Categories Biden, Elections, Politics, Trump

Two Billionaires Lose Enthusiasm for DeSantis

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2023 //
14

Ron DeSantis thought he could succeed by running to the right of Trump. So far, it’s not working, as most Americans don’t understand his zeal for culture war issues, like fighting gays, banning abortion, and suing Disney.

Two billionaires are reconsidering their support for DeSantis because of his extremism. According to the Orlando Sentinel, billionaires Nelson Peltz and Ken Griffin are not happy about DeSantis’s positions on controversial issues.

Nelson Peltz, a billionaire hedge fund manager from Palm Beach, reportedly is rethinking his support for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ bid for the Republican presidential nomination…

“Peltz has taken issue with his stance on abortion,” the Financial Times reported.

The Financial Times said Peltz declined to comment, but quoted a person familiar with his thinking saying: “Nelson Peltz thinks that most of DeSantis’s policies are acceptable, but his position on abortion is way too severe. … That may undermine Peltz’s desire to financially support DeSantis as a candidate.”

Earlier this year, DeSantis supported and signed into law sweeping restrictions banning virtually all abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy. In 2022, DeSantis signed a law banning almost all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. The 15-week ban is in effect; the six-week is on pause until the state Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the 15-week ban.

Polling shows DeSantis’ position is more restrictive than most Americans support. Gallup reported earlier this month that 69% of Americans said abortion should be legal in the first trimester of pregnancy, which runs through the 12th week and most oppose laws that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected around the sixth week of pregnancy.

Peltz isn’t the only billionaire hedge fund manager seen as holding doubts about DeSantis two months after the governor formally announced his candidacy, following more than a year of unofficially campaigning and courting supporters.

The Financial Times said Ken Griffin, the hedge fund manager who moved his firms and himself to Miami last year and had been a public cheerleader and donor to the governor’s reelection campaign, has also cooled.

In April, the New York Times reported that Griffin’s support for DeSantis had become “murkier” than people thought.

The Times, also citing people familiar with Griffin’s thinking, said Griffin was concerned about DeSantis’ statements about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the DeSantis-signed six-week abortion ban.

Citing a person familiar with Griffin’s thinking, the Financial Times reported he “objects to a recent clampdown on teaching about gender and sexuality and DeSantis’s ongoing fight with Disney.”

The story goes on to say that Peltz’s daughter was recently married and told the wedding planners that under no circumstances was DeSantis to be invited, even though hundreds of guests were invited. Methinks that Nelson’s daughter has strong views about abortion and gender that differ from those of Governor DeSantis. Even billionaires must listen to their children.

Categories Billionaires, Cruelty, DeSantis, Elections, Extremism, Florida, Gender
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