Flynn Endorses a Coup

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to the idea of violent rebellion. 

Here is the video of former national security advisor Michael Flynn saying that he thinks a coup like the coup in Myanmar should happen in the US. pic.twitter.com/7mGYjfXg18

— Mamie 😌 (@MC_Hyperbole) May 30, 2021

In February, Alex Kaplan reported at Media Matters:

Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory and users on far-right message boards are lauding the military coup in Myanmar and saying the U.S. military should take similar action against President Joe Biden over false claims of voter fraud.

On February 1, Myanmar’s military initiated a coup against the country’s civilian government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, after her party won a majority in parliament in November. The military claimed the coup was necessary due to allegations of voter fraud in the election, though it has not provided concrete evidence of those claims. The Biden administration has condemned the coup and threatened to reimpose sanctions on the country in response.

Far-right message boards and those in the QAnon community cheered the coup as Myanmar “awakening,” drawing parallels to their own false claims that Biden was elected due to voter fraud and questioning “when will this happen here” and when the military will “arrest [American] politicians too.

HIspanic Voters and BIden

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses voter demographics.

 Harry Enten at CNN:

Take a look at Gallup polling during the Biden presidency. Aggregating all the polls it has conducted so far (in order to get a large sample size), Biden's approval rating with Hispanics stands at 72% compared to a 55% overall approval rating.

That 72% is a clear improvement from how Biden did in the election with Hispanics. Biden won 65% of Hispanics, according to the network exit polls. An estimate from the Democratic firm Catalist (which lines up well with what we saw in pre-election polls) had Biden taking 61% of Hispanics. So this Gallup data suggests Biden's support may be up anywhere from 7 to 11 points from the election.

...

 Recent incumbents seem to see their support among Hispanics rise in their reelection bids. In fact, the last five incumbents since George H.W. Bush did better with Hispanics than they did when they were elected to their first term.

What's notable about Bush is that he did better even though he lost when he sought reelection. Bush went from winning by 8 points in 1988 to losing by 6 points in 1992 (a 14-point swing). Yet, Bush went from losing Hispanics by 40 points in the 1988 exit polls to losing them by 36 points in 1992 (a 4 point swing in his direction).

Nicole Narea at Vox:

Latinos who switched their votes, backing Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Trump in 2020, also played a role in the former president’s gains.

Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who previously oversaw Latino outreach for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, conducted focus groups with some of them. He said that the women in those groups, who tended to identify as independents, voted for Clinton because they wanted to see the first woman president. The men, on the other hand, associated her with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who they believed to be good for the economy in the 1990s.

As for Trump, they gave him full credit for a robust economy prior to the Covid-19 downturn, and they didn’t blame him for mishandling the pandemic. But in most cases, they could just as well be persuaded to vote for a Democrat again.

“The good news for Democrats is that they’re all very encouraged about what they’re seeing from Joe Biden on getting the country opened back up because of vaccinations, about the stimulus checks — that went a long way,” Rocha said. “I think that 80 percent of all the Latinos that we talked to in these last focus groups could be persuaded back to vote for Joe Biden because, in their words, they’re seeing real results from his administration.”

Democrats should also be paying attention to people who haven’t participated in elections or have done so infrequently. Though there was massive growth in the number of new Latino voters in 2020, there are still many more non-voters: About half of Latino citizens of voting age did not turn out in November. That means “sky-high potential” for both parties in future elections, Odio said.

 

 

The Grand Nihilist Party

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties.

The state of the GOP is not good. 

Tom Nichols at The Atlantic:

The survival instinct that this white-minority rage has triggered in craven Republican politicians is how the GOP mutated from a party championing individual liberty into a movement pushing monstrously statist authoritarianism. It is how the party of limited government began agitating for government truth ministries. It is how the party of exuberant free marketeers became a cabal of crony capitalists and knee-jerk protectionists. It is how the party that once fought Kremlin expansionism provided top cover for Russian intelligence attacks against U.S. institutions.

Republicans have tried to argue that if they are not in power, the Democrats and their ultraliberal allies will destroy our system of government and create a majoritarian nightmare. We must stay in power, they mewl, so that democracy itself will survive long enough to outlive the encroaching authoritarianism of the left.

These defenses are risible nonsense in the wake of Trump’s constitutional mayhem and the GOP’s descent into conspiratorial lunacy. But even on their own terms, Republican excuses are little more than lightly veiled defenses of minority rule. The GOP long ago abandoned any effort to convince women, people of color, immigrants, and others that the party had a place for them. Instead, Republicans in Congress have surrendered to the ignorance and racism of their most extreme voters in exchange for a continued life of privilege inside the comforting embrace of the Capital Beltway.

The Republicans, facing an investigation into an insurrection provoked by their own leader, have armored up and gone into armadillo mode. They will protect their own—rather than their nation and the Constitution they swore to defend. This behavior should serve as a warning: A party that doesn’t believe in anything ends up believing only in its right to rule. And a movement that believes only in its own power is a deadly enemy of constitutional democracy.

Openly Supporting Violent Rebellion

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection. 

 Public Religion Research Institute:

A nontrivial 15% of Americans agree with the sweeping QAnon allegation that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation,” while the vast majority of Americans (82%) disagree with this statement. Republicans (23%) are significantly more likely than independents (14%) and Democrats (8%) to agree that the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.

Similarly, one in five Americans (20%) agree with the statement “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders,” while a majority (77%) disagree. Nearly three in ten Republicans (28%), compared to 18% of independents and 14% of Democrats, agree with this secondary QAnon conspiracy theory. Trends among demographic groups are similar to those of the core QAnon conspiracy theory.

Fifteen percent of Americans agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” while the vast majority (85%) disagree. Republicans (28%) are twice as likely as independents (13%) and four times as likely as Democrats (7%) to agree that because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence.

Matt Gaetz claimed the 2nd Amdt is for "maintaining within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government."

That's ludicrous—but alarming given 28% of Republicans think “American patriots may have to resort to violence."https://t.co/2TkMeBgV5r

— Cameron Joseph (@cam_joseph) May 28, 2021

Newsom Leads in Recall Fight

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state elections.,

Mark Baldassare at PPIC:

As a recall of Governor Gavin Newsom looks ever more likely, proponents and replacement candidates face an uphill battle to reach the majority needed to remove him from office. The May PPIC survey finds that 40% of California likely voters say they would vote yes to remove Newsom as Governor if a special election were held today. This is unchanged from the 40% who said this in our March survey. While the state’s Democratic leanings drive much of the current opposition to the recall, voter expectations also play a critical role. And in 2021, the voters’ mood is very different from what it was in 2003, during the successful recall of Governor Gray Davis.

What do voters expect a recall to do? In 2003, many expected it to make things better. In our August 2003 survey, 47% of likely voters said that things would get better if Davis were removed from office, while 17% said that things would get worse. This trend was replicated in the September 2003 PPIC Survey—and in the October 7, 2003 recall election, 55% voted to remove Davis and 49% voted to replace him with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Today, when asked what would happen if Governor Newsom were recalled, just 29% say that things would get better, while 34% say things would get worse—and 28% say it would make no difference. For a recall election to gain traction this time, many more voters need to believe that things would get better afterward. Nearly all who say that things would get better if Newsom were recalled would vote to remove him (90%) and nearly all who say that things would get worse would vote to keep him (95%). And those who say it would make no difference? Only 32% would vote to remove him, while 63% would vote to keep him in office.

Trump's Takeover, Late May

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties.

The state of the GOP is not good. 

Quinnipiac:

As candidates begin to enter races for the 2022 mid-term elections, more than 8 in 10 Republicans (85 percent) say they would prefer to see candidates running for elected office that mostly agree with Donald Trump, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll of adults released today. Overall, a majority of Americans (53 - 39 percent) say they would prefer to see candidates running for elected office that mostly disagree with Trump.

Asked whether they would like to see Trump run for president in 2024, Republicans say 66 - 30 percent they would. Overall, two-thirds of Americans (66 - 30 percent) say they do not want to see him run.

Six months after the 2020 presidential election, two-thirds of Republicans (66 - 25 percent) say they think that Joe Biden's victory was not legitimate. Overall, Americans say 64 - 29 percent that Biden's victory was legitimate. Among registered voters, it's also 64 - 29 percent, which is fairly similar to polls taken in December 2020 and January 2021.

Collusion Evidence Piles Up

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses foreign influence and Trump's attack on democracy. 

 Mary Papenfuss at HuffPost:

Former Donald Trump campaign manager and now-pardoned felon Paul Manafort lied repeatedly to investigators about arranging to share polling data on U.S. citizens with a Russian spy, according to federal prosecutors.

The revelation was included in court files unsealed Monday by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson.

Manafort lied about his relationship with spy Konstantin Kilimnik during the time Robert Mueller was the special counsel investigating suspected Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in order to manipulate the presidential election, according to the files.

Manafort and his campaign deputy Rick Gates “periodically” fed internal polling data from the Trump campaign to Kilimnik, according to the documents submitted to the District of Columbia federal court. He then passed the information on to the Kremlin.

Kilimnik, a “known Russian Intelligence Services agent,” was one of 16 individuals and 16 entities sanctioned last month by the Treasury Department for conducting “Russian government-directed attempts to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election,” according to a White House fact sheet.

Manafort insisted he never told Gates to share the campaign files with Kilimnik, but that was contradicted by emails and testimony from Gates, according to the released files.

The documents were filed to show that Manafort had violated a plea deal with federal investigators with his repeated lies, according to federal prosecutors

The Threat of Violence

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection. 

Michael Gerson at WP:

If Trump has a political philosophy, one of its main tenets is toxic masculinity — the use of menace and swagger to cover his mental and moral impotence. And the mini-Trumps have taken their master’s lead. When Trump operative Stephen K. Bannon proposed that Anthony S. Fauci should be beheaded, when Trump ally Joseph diGenova said a federal cybersecurity official should be “taken out at dawn and shot,” when Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani urged Trump supporters to engage in “trial by combat,” all of this was more than paunchy, pathetic, aging White men talking smack they could never back up. It exemplified a type of politics where cruelty is the evidence of commitment, brutality is the measure of loyalty and violence is equated with power.

Peter Wehner at The Atlantic:

Georgia Republicans who in the aftermath of the 2020 election would not go along with Trump’s false claims about election fraud in that state faced death threats, intimidation, and harassment, according to Gabriel Sterling, a Republican official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office. The home of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, also a Republican, was targeted too. This week I talked with a Republican election official in Arizona, Stephen Richer, who has spoken out against what he refers to as Trump’s “unhinged” claims about election fraud in Maricopa County. (Richer says Trump’s claims are “as readily falsifiable as 2+2=5.”) He told me he has received death threats and has been forced to take measures to protect his and his family’s safety. And these examples are hardly unusual.

Marianna Sotomayor and Paul Kane at WP:

Members’ concerns have been validated by the U.S. Capitol Police, who report that threats against lawmakers have increased by 107 percent in just the first five months of the year compared with last year.

“Provided the unique threat environment we currently live in, the Department is confident the number of cases will continue to increase,” the Capitol Police wrote earlier this month in response to an inspector general report.

Democratic leaders said they are trying to be responsive to the concerns of members and included $21.5 million for member safety regarding travel and district office security upgrades as part of a $1.9 billion proposal to fortify security at the U.S. Capitol following the Jan. 6 attack. The bill passed the House on a narrow 213 to 212 vote last week.

Buying the Big Lie

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties.

The state of the GOP is not good. 

From Ipsos:

Former President Donald Trump’s stronghold over the Republican party remains. His refusal to concede the 2020 election and calls of widespread fraud have raised doubts about the integrity of its results among his Republican base. Consequently, 56% of Republicans believe the election was rigged or the result of illegal voting, and 53% think Donald Trump is the actual President, not Joe Biden. Only 30% of Republicans feel confident that absentee or mail-in ballots were accurately counted, compared to 86% of Democrats and 55% of independents. As a result, 87% of Republicans believe it is important that the government place new limits on voting to protect elections from fraud. Finally, 63% percent of Republicans think Donald Trump should run for President again in 2024, compared to only 8% of Democrats and 23% of independents.

 

I'd love to see the cross-tabs showing the extent of overlap between the 48% of Rs who said the 1/6 insurrectionists were mostly law-abiding and the 54% who said they were Antifa. https://t.co/iDszVxMpTn pic.twitter.com/HSbiCHJ8IO

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) May 22, 2021

Daniel Dale at CNN:

Perhaps the most consequential result of Trump's lies about what happened in 2020 is the slew of 2021 efforts by Republican state legislators to make it more difficult to vote.

Among other things, Republican proposals would reduce the availability of ballot drop boxes, shorten early voting periods and absentee voting periods, make it harder for voters to obtain mail-in ballots, increase voter identification requirements, prohibit 24-hour voting and drive-through voting, eliminate Election Day voter registration, limit who is allowed to return someone else's absentee ballot and more aggressively purge voter rolls.

In many cases, it's not clear whether Republican legislators actually believe the 2020 election was fraudulent or whether they are cynically using voters' own misapprehensions about the election as political cover. The distinction is irrelevant in practice, since the lies are turning into suppressive bills no matter what the real reason is.

The Peculiar Rhythm of Senate Elections and 2024

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

At Roll Call, Stuart Rothenberg notes that the 2006 Senate class yielded a partisan imbalance that affects future contests

But we already know that while handicappers’ initial ratings for the Senate class of 2022 suggest a relatively even fight involving only a handful of states, the 2024 map strongly favors the GOP.

At least nine Democratic-held seats in competitive states will be up in 2024 — Arizona (Kyrsten Sinema), Michigan (Debbie Stabenow), Minnesota (Amy Klobuchar), Montana (Jon Tester), Nevada (Jacky Rosen), Ohio (Sherrod Brown), Pennsylvania (Bob Casey), West Virginia (Joe Manchin III) and Wisconsin (Tammy Baldwin).

In addition, the seat of Maine independent Angus King, who caucuses with the Democrats and recently turned 77, will be up.

...

Heading into the 2006 balloting, Democrats were defending 18 Senate seats (including that of Vermont independent Jim Jeffords) to the GOP’s 15. But Republican Senate losses in Missouri (Jim Talent), Montana (Conrad Burns), Ohio (Mike DeWine), Pennsylvania (Rick Santorum), Rhode Island (Lincoln Chafee) and Virginia (George Allen) produced a Senate class that included only nine Republicans and 24 Democrats, including two independents who caucused with them, Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman and Vermont’s Bernie Sanders.

The class then ran in good Democratic years:  2012 (when Obama won reelection) and 2018 (midterm backlash against Trump).

All of this explains why the class of 2024 is so different from the other two Senate classes, each of which includes considerably more Republicans than Democrats. Those other classes took advantage of Obama’s two midterms to make huge gains, adding six Senate seats in 2010 and a stunning nine seats in 2014.

Asian American Population and Turnout

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the demographics of the 2020 election.

Ronald Brownstein at The Atlantic:

Asian Americans still represent a small sliver of the population in all but a few states. But census figures show that from 2010 to 2019, the group grew rapidly, increasing its population nationwide by nearly 30 percent, or just over 5 million people. In percentage terms, that was by far the biggest increase over the past decade for any major racial group. Among adult citizens eligible to vote, Asian Americans have doubled their share, from 2.5 percent in 2000 to 5 percent in 2020, according to calculations by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program.
...

The Asian American population isn’t nearly large enough to decide those states on its own. Although Asian Americans represent almost 9 percent of eligible voters in Nevada, they represent only about 3 percent in Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina, Frey shared with me. Yet the rise in voter participation has proved crucial for Democrats in several closely balanced states. A growing number of Asian American voters—mostly in the Washington, D.C., suburbs—were central to tilting Virginia blue over roughly the past 15 years. They played a comparable tipping-point role in Democrats’ victories in Georgia last year, at both the presidential and senatorial level. TargetSmart, a Democratic voter-targeting firm, calculates that some 60,000 more Asian Americans voted in the state in November than had in 2016—an increase that far exceeded Joe Biden’s narrow margin of victory there. “In Georgia, they delivered this election for Joe Biden,” [AAPI Victory Alliance Executive Director Varun] Nikore said. “And then they delivered Joe Biden the Senate.”

Nationwide, Asian Americans increased their turnout at an astounding pace last year—soaring from about 49 percent in 2016 to just over 59 percent, the census found. Although turnout rose substantially for every major racial and educational group in 2020, the increase among Asian Americans was significantly larger than the growth among college-educated white voters (just over three percentage points), Latinos (just over six points), and even Trump’s core supporters, white voters without a college degree (also a little more than six percentage points)....

Higher turnout from an expanding pool of eligible voters combined to produce a dramatic rise in votes from the Asian American community. In its recently released analysis of voter files nationwide, Catalist calculated that the total number of votes cast by Asian Americans grew from 2016 to 2020 by almost 40 percent, reaching about 7 million. TargetSmart, in its analysis, put the increase even higher, at about 47 percent.

...

The biggest problem for the GOP may be that Trump’s words stamped his party precisely at a moment when the clay was soft—in other words, when 2020 produced a huge influx of young and first-time Asian American voters without long attachments to either party, according to research from both[political scientist Karthick] Ramakrishnan and Catalist.

Investigations

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection. 

Some say that we should not establish a 1/6 commission because it would overlap with other investigations.  That consideration has not stopped Congress in the past, as Philip Bump notes at WP:

Insurrection Update, Mid-May

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection. 

#Breaking: #FBIWFO releases new videos of suspects in 2 of the most violent & horrifying assaults on federal officers during the riots on Jan. 6th at the Capitol. We need your help to identify these individuals. https://t.co/pkUTjfqHQ9

— FBI Washington Field (@FBIWFO) May 19, 2021

Andrew Clyde (@rep_clyde), the person screaming at the far left of this photo, is the person who recently likened the brutal, wildly out of control, deadly violent Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol to overthrow the will of the people, to a "normal tourist visit." pic.twitter.com/bs4twxu1lZ

— Bryan Smith (@bryrsmith) May 18, 2021

Grassroots Support for Purging Cheney

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. It also discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. House Republicans voted to depose Liz Cheney as conference chair because she told the truth about the insurrection.

 From CBS:

Eighty percent of Republicans who'd heard about the vote agree with Cheney's removal — they feel she was off-message, unsupportive of Mr. Trump, and that she's wrong about the 2020 presidential election. To a third of them, and most particularly for those who place the highest importance on loyalty, Cheney's removal also shows "disloyalty will be punished." 

Antivaxxers and the Insurrection

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.

At AP, Michelle R. Smith and Johnatan Reiss report on antivaccine entrepreneurs Ty and Charlene Bollinger:

The Bollingers last year founded a political action committee called United Medical Freedom Super PAC, which raised more than $60,000 in donations, according to reports Ty Bollinger filed with the Federal Election Commission. A chiropractor who has been featured as an “expert” in their videos donated multiple times, twice in the amount of $1,776 -- a phrase that later became a rallying cry for insurrectionists as they stormed the Capitol. Super PACs can raise unlimited money from individuals and corporations to spend on independent political activities

In a video posted on the Super PAC website 10 months ago, Charlene Bollinger explained to [Robert] Kennedy that anti-vaccine influencers have to band together, “Because we know the other side, they’re working together. They’re very efficient. They’ve got their agendas,” she said.
...

One person it has supported is Roger Stone. United Medical Freedom paid the conservative political consultant, lobbyist and adviser to then-President Donald Trump more than $11,000 on Dec. 18. Stone told the AP that the money was for an appearance he made at a rally in Nashville in October.

Stone also was billed as the keynote speaker for the event the Bollingers held near the U.S. Capitol the afternoon of the Jan. 6, promoted as the “MAGA Freedom Rally D.C.,” which blended anti-vaccine “health freedom” activism with “Stop the Steal” rhetoric. Stone said he was supposed to speak at 3:40 p.m. but decided not to go because of the violence at the Capitol that day.

“I had no interest in going up to the capitol under those circumstances,” Stone said, adding that he was never supposed to be paid for speaking at the Jan. 6 event.

Video of the event was livestreamed but has since been made private. However, video posted online in various places shows it lasting for hours. Charlene Bollinger was emcee, calling for Congress to “Stop the Steal” as the rally kicked off following Trump’s speech that day.

Several people prominent in the anti-vaccine movement spoke, including Mikki Willis, who made the conspiracy movie “Plandemic.” He told the crowd he had just left the chaos at the Capitol.

“Our proud patriots just pushed through a line of riot police peacefully, as peacefully as that could happen, and are now at the stairs, at the doors of the Capitol,” Willis said from the stage. “And it was a beautiful thing to see.”

Charlene Bollinger cheered the Capitol breach.

“The Capitol has been stormed by patriots, we’re here for this reason, we are winning.” She added: “We are at war.”

Later that day, Ty Bollinger told the online “Robert Scott Bell Show” that he had been “maced” that day and had been among the people who crowded at the doors of the Capitol in an attempt to get inside, though he said he did not enter.

He called then-Vice President Mike Pence a “traitor,” called the people who got inside the building “patriots” and said “today, people’s true colors are being made known.”

Denying the Insurrection

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.

Philip Bump at WP:

It’s been a banner week for efforts to cast the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as something more innocuous.

In a hearing Wednesday, for example, Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.) said the mob’s breaking through windows and assaulting police officers was like a “normal tourist visit” to the building, which is a little bit like describing a wild pack of hyenas ripping apart a wildebeest as “a regular day at the zoo.” The idea is that tourists walk through the Capitol in appreciation of their surroundings — and on Jan. 6, a few trespassers in the building may similarly have stopped to appreciate the history around them. Before breaking it.

Happily for Clyde, his colleague Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) came along Friday to reset the bar for dishonestly downplaying the events of that day, which resulted in multiple people dying and scores of law enforcement offers being injured.

“I just want the president to understand,” he said: “There have been things worse than people without any firearms coming into a building.”

...

For Gohmert, though, there’s a more immediate concern. In the weeks before the riot, he was an active and vocal supporter of Trump’s false claims about the election being stolen. Gohmert elevated even the most ludicrous theories, such as the utterly ridiculous idea that vote totals had been funneled through Germany and then manipulated for some reason. Gohmert was there for that whole period, clapping along to every beat.

He also filed a last-minute lawsuit aimed at somehow forcing Vice President Mike Pence to block the finalization of Joe Biden’s victory. When a federal judge rejected the idea for a thousand obvious reasons, Gohmert was incensed.

He appeared on Newsmax to discuss the ruling.

“Bottom line is, the court is saying: ‘We’re not going to touch this. You have no remedy,’" he said — “basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you got to go the streets and be as violent as antifa and BLM.”

The “violent as antifa and BLM” line is a reference to right-wing rhetoric that often casts the Black Lives Matter movement as inherently violent and that identifies antifa — a loose-knit group of activists that opposes what it views as fascist actors — as a near-existential threat to the country. Both BLM and antifa were elevated by Trump and other Republicans as the 2020 election approached for having prompted violent riots across the United States, though later research made clear that such violence was the exception, not the norm.

Gohmert’s point, though, was that his legal loss left only violence as an outlet for blocking the election. He said that Jan. 2.

 

The Rep. Clyde news reminded me of this:

UNITED STATES - JANUARY 6: Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., second from top left, helps barricade the House chamber door as rioters disrupt the joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College vote on January 6, 2021. pic.twitter.com/ewizgiuwLn

— Tom Williams (@pennstatetom) May 15, 2021

Don't Mess with Liz

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. It also discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. House Republicans voted to depose Liz Cheney as conference chair because she told the truth about the insurrection.

Maura Hohman at NBC:

Rep. Liz Cheney isn't backing down from her criticism of former President Donald Trump, even after Wednesday's vote by House Republicans to remove the Wyoming congresswoman from her leadership role as House Republican Conference Chair, the party's third-ranking position in the House.

In a TODAY exclusive interview with Savannah Guthrie shortly after the vote took place and aired Thursday, Cheney said she would do "whatever it takes" to prevent Trump from becoming president again when asked if she'd consider running herself.

"He's unfit. He never again can be anywhere close to the Oval Office," she told Savannah.

"How far are you willing to take this? Would you run for president?" Savannah asked.

"I think that it is the most important issue that we are facing right now as a country, and we're facing a huge array of issues, so he must not ever again be anywhere close to the Oval Office," Cheney replied. "I'm going to do everything that I can, both to make sure that that never happens, but also to make sure that the Republican Party gets back to substance and policy

Divided We Stand

  January 6, 2021:

THERE HAVE BEEN NASTY TIMES BEFORE:

The caning of Charles Sumner 1856:

BUT OUR TIMES ARE STILL PRETTY DIVIDED

From the Public Religion Research Institute:

From the Pew Research Center:

From the Survey Center on American Life:

Both Democrats and Republicans have become more certain that the opposing party’s vision for the country represents a clear and present danger. Three-quarters (75 percent) of Republicans say the Democratic policies pose a threat, while nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of Democrats say the same about the GOP’s agenda. Only 30 percent of Democrats say Republican policies are misguided or wrong but not dangerous, while 19 percent of Republicans say the same of Democratic policies

DIVIDED BY DEMOGRAPHICS:

\

DIVIDED BY THE PRESIDENTIAL PREFERENCE.  FROM THE PEW RESEARCH CENTER:

Nearly two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (65%) say they would prefer to live where houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away.

Most Democrats and Democratic leaners (58%) would rather live where houses are smaller and closer to each other, but schools, stores and restaurants are in walking distance. 

DIVIDED BY GEOGRAPHY

And so where do all these divisions take us?

Daniel Cox at the Survey Center on American Life:

More than one in three (36 percent) Americans agree with the statement: “The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” Six in 10 (60 percent) Americans reject the idea that the use of force is necessary, but there is significant partisan disagreement on this question.

A majority (56 percent) of Republicans support the use of force as a way to arrest the decline of the traditional American way of life. Forty-three percent of Republicans express opposition to this idea. Significantly fewer independents (35 percent) and Democrats (22 percent) say the use of force is necessary to stop the disappearance of traditional American values and way of life.

Lilliana Mason and Nathan P. Kalmoe:

The most basic finding is that a significant minority of Americans will not reject violence outright. Several of our surveys asked respondents if they believed “it is justified for [their own party] to use violence in advancing their political goals these days.” In a 2017 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 8 percent of partisans agreed that violence is at least “a little bit” justified. In 2018, it rose to 15 percent and has hovered around there since.

We also asked whether violence would be okay if their party lost the 2020 presidential election. Across nine surveys in 2017-2019, about 20 percent said that it would be at least a little bit okay. In fall 2020, the political science project Bright Line Watch asked: Would violence be justified if opponents acted violently first? Forty percent of partisans said yes, at least a little.