DeSantis Promises to Violate the Constitution

Our recent 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.  Trump is now under indictment.

Kimberly Leonard and Jacob Shamsian at Business Insider:

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida pledged Thursday that state officials would not help extradite former President Donald Trump from Florida to New York in a charged political attack on the prosecutor, following the first-ever indictment of a former president.

DeSantis in a statement on Twitter accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of "stretching the law to target a political opponent," though he didn't name Trump or Bragg.

"Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda," he wrote on Twitter, referring to Democratic super PAC megadonor George Soros who did not directly support Bragg.

... 

And interstate extradition is required by Article 4, Section 2 of the US Constitution.

Indicted

 

Trump posts on Truth Social that he has been "INDICATED." pic.twitter.com/GORUzWHboG

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 30, 2023

A friendly reminder that the case in which the Manhattan DA has indicted Donald trump originated with the Mueller investigation. From appendix D of The Mueller Report. #indicted pic.twitter.com/XopM669IbX

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) March 31, 2023

There is literally a crystal clear provision of the Constitution that says no state may refuse an extradition request from another state. So what DeSantis is saying here is that he plans to openly defy the Constitution. https://t.co/YFQCWxlBA3 pic.twitter.com/Rz7sIYeBWe

— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) March 30, 2023

Public: Cut the Budget but Don't Cut Spending

Our recent 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. 

Josh Boak at AP:

In the federal budget standoff, the majority of U.S. adults are asking lawmakers to pull off the impossible: Cut the overall size of government, but also devote more money to the most popular and expensive programs.

Six in 10 U.S. adults say the government spends too much money. But majorities also favor more funding for infrastructure, health care and Social Security — the kind of commitments that would make efforts to shrink the government unworkable and politically risky ahead of the 2024 elections.

These findings from a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research show just how messy the financial tug-of-war between President Joe Biden and House Republicans could be. At stake is the full faith and credit of the federal government, which could default on its obligations unless there is a deal this summer to raise or suspend the limit on the government’s borrowing authority.

New @AP poll neatly captures the paradox of budget politics. Americans say abstractly the government should cut spending, but show them the list of things it actually spends money on and they say nice, spend more on that.https://t.co/lSYaIJjxYY pic.twitter.com/2J9J5fbLwe

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) March 29, 2023

Andy Ogles and the Nashville Massacre

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 -- as every new mass shooting reminds us.  Charlie Sykes:

Let me also introduce you to Andy Ogles, the congressman who represents the district where the Covenant School is located

Yesterday, Ogles said in a statement that he and his family “are devastated by the tragedy that took place at The Covenant School in Nashville this morning.”

“We are sending our thoughts and prayers to the families of those lost,” he said. “As a father of three, I am utterly heartbroken by this senseless act of violence. I am closely monitoring the situation and working with local officials.”

This Andy Ogles, who put out this Christmas card:

“MERRY CHRISTMAS!” he wrote, followed by a fake quote attributed to George Washington: “The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”

This Andy Ogles: “Businessman, economist, cop, international sex crimes expert? The stories of Congressman Andy Ogles.”

Cutting Programs for Low-Income Americans is Bad Politics for the GOP

 In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  

House Republicans want to cut the budget without cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and the military.  David Leonhardt at NYT:

The largest remaining category involves health care spending that benefits lower- and middle-income families, including from Medicaid and Obamacare. Hard-right Republicans, like some in the Freedom Caucus, have signaled they will propose reductions to these programs. Party leaders, for their part, have said they would eye cuts to anti-poverty programs such as food stamps.

But cuts like these would have a big potential downside for Republicans: The partisan shifts of recent years mean that Republican voters now benefit from these redistributive programs even more than Democratic voters do.

As The Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein recently wrote, “The escalating confrontation between the parties over the federal budget rests on a fundamental paradox: The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is now more likely than Democrats to represent districts filled with older and lower-income voters who rely on the social programs that the G.O.P. wants to cut.”

Almost 70 percent of House Republicans represent districts where the median income is lower than the national median, according to researchers at the University of Southern California. By contrast, about 60 percent of House Democrats represent districts more affluent than the median.

The politics of class, as Brownstein puts it, have been inverted.

Trump Predicts Russian Victory in Ukraine

Our latest 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.  Russia helped Trump through 2020.  As Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine, Trump lavished praise on Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. 

Donald Trump on Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine: "He wanted to get a piece. Now it looks like he'll end up probably getting the whole thing." pic.twitter.com/zoTHdvzzkn

— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) March 26, 2023

He also said that biggest threat facing the U.S. is not China or Russia, but high-level politicians such as Senate leaders Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and President BidenAnd not just Trump:

Moscow Ron Johnson argues that the US should've just let Russia have Ukraine pic.twitter.com/k6AtZljirQ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 26, 2023

Trump and Evangelicals

 In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  

 Tim Alberta at The Atlantic:

Trump’s relationship with the evangelical movement—once seemingly shatterproof, then shaky after his violent departure from the White House—is now in pieces, thanks to his social-media tirade last fall blaming pro-lifers for the Republicans’ lackluster midterm performance. Because of his intimate, longtime ties to the religious right, Pence understands the extent of the damage. He is close personal friends with the organizational leaders who have fumed about it; he knows that the former president has refused to make any sort of peace offering to the anti-abortion community and is now effectively estranged from its most influential leaders.

...

The scale of his trouble is difficult to overstate. In my recent conversations with some two dozen evangelical leaders—many of whom asked not to be named, all of whom backed Trump in 2016, throughout his presidency, and again in 2020—not a single one would commit to supporting him in the 2024 Republican primary. And this was all before the speculation of his potential arrest on charges related to paying hush-money to his porn-star paramour back in 2016.

...

The most offensive part of Trump’s commentary was his ignorance of the new, post-Roe reality of Republican politics. Publicly and privately, he spoke of abortion like an item struck from his to-do list, believing the issue was effectively resolved by the Supreme Court’s ruling. Meanwhile, conservatives were preparing for a new and complicated phase of the fight, and Trump was nowhere to be found. He didn’t even bother with damage control following his November outburst, anti-abortion leaders said, because he didn’t understand how fundamentally out of step he was with his erstwhile allies.

...

Before long, evangelical leaders were publicly airing their long-held private complaints about Trump. Mike Evans, an original member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, told The Washington Post that Trump “used us to win the White House” and then turned Christians into cult members “glorifying Donald Trump like he was an idol.” David Lane, a veteran evangelical organizer whose email blasts reach many thousands of pastors and church leaders, wrote that Trump’s “vision of making America as a nation great again has been put on the sidelines, while the mission and the message are now subordinate to personal grievances and self-importance.” Addressing a group of Christian lawmakers after the election, James Robison, a well-known televangelist who also advised Trump, compared him to a “little elementary schoolchild.” Everett Piper, the former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, reacted to the midterms by writing in The Washington Times, “The take-home of this past week is simple: Donald Trump has to go. If he’s our nominee in 2024, we will get destroyed.”

Another Threat of Violence: Call and Response

   Our 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 violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  Yesterday,, Trump posted a picture of himself holding a baseball bat, right next to a picture of DA Bragg.

While you were sleeping, Donald Trump went and threatened “death and destruction” if he’s indicted.

He’s not being subtle, he’s threatening prosecutors with violence. pic.twitter.com/DvI4XiKxjh

— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) March 24, 2023

New and exclusive from me + @jonathan4ny + @ryanjreilly:

We spent the week working with extremism researchers, who warned Alvin Bragg was being targeted with threats to “take him out” on pro-Trump forums.

Bragg just received a letter with white powder.https://t.co/pjNIehng11

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 24, 2023

Violent, Extreme Posts

  Our 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 violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  

Trump posts article with photo of himself holding a baseball bat next to a photo of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. pic.twitter.com/B1XRbM5LGJ

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) March 23, 2023

In case anyone wondered what a desperate Trump is capable of, he's now accusing Alvin Bragg of "doing the work of the Devil."

For years now he and his flunkies have cultivated a Christian Nationalism that prepares supporters for extreme violence. He's trying to pull the trigger. pic.twitter.com/uyeepTmB1a

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) March 23, 2023

Trump, Violence, Racism, Anti-Semitism

 Our 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 violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  

The innuendos to violence worked leading up to and on J6, with enough wiggle room in his mob boss language to give him semi-plausible deniability. Will it work again? Not with a big group uprising like before, but now it is the intimidation of isolated incidents that he wants. pic.twitter.com/a9PKuUwGd1

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) March 23, 2023

"Soros backed animal" is a nice racist two-fer https://t.co/paNi6XFagC

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) March 23, 2023

DeSantis and Trump: Feud Update

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The early stages of the 2024 race have begun.  The race between Trump and DeSantis is nasty. 

Zachary Basu at Axios:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is no longer veiling his presidential ambitions or his criticism of former President Trump, taking a new gloves-off approach in a wide-ranging — and rare — interview with British journalist Piers Morgan.

Why it matters: DeSantis and Trump have long been on a collision course as the two front-runners for the 2024 GOP nomination. Trump's escalating attacks on his former ally have become more personal in recent weeks — and now DeSantis is punching back.

Driving the news: Hours after igniting outrage in Trumpworld with a shot at Trump over the former president's alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, DeSantis told Morgan that the "underlying conduct" in the Manhattan DA's investigation is "outside my wheelhouse.""

• At the end of the day as a leader, you really want to look to people like our Founding Fathers," DeSantis said when Morgan asked if personal conduct in a leader matters.
• "[I]t’s not saying that you don’t ever make a mistake in your personal life, but I think, what type of character are you bringing?"

"Truth is essential," DeSantis responded when asked if there’s been a departure from the truth being a key component of leadership. "We have to agree that there’s a certain reality to the world we live in."

This is one of the funniest tweets I have ever read. https://t.co/g6FVFVBwi7

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) March 21, 2023

DeSantis and Trump: Nasty Men

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The early stages of the 2024 race have begun.  The race between Trump and DeSantis is nasty. 

Ron DeSantis is asked about a possible Trump indictment. He immediately blasts the Manhattan DA as a "Soros-funded prosecutor." But then he also says, "look, I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair." pic.twitter.com/g63X2U3xlk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 20, 2023

Ron DeSantis is asked about a possible Trump indictment. He immediately blasts the Manhattan DA as a "Soros-funded prosecutor." But then he also says, "look, I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair." pic.twitter.com/g63X2U3xlk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 20, 2023

Ron DeSantis is asked about a possible Trump indictment. He immediately blasts the Manhattan DA as a "Soros-funded prosecutor." But then he also says, "look, I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair." pic.twitter.com/g63X2U3xlk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 20, 2023

Trump: Wounded but Dangerous

 Our 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 violent rebellion, coups, and secession. 

Maggie Haberman at NYT:

To those who believed that the secret to banishing Mr. Trump was to deprive him of attention — that ignoring him would make him go away — he has shown that to be wishful thinking.

To fully understand that, one need look no further than the events of Saturday. The day began with a 7:26 a.m. post by Mr. Trump on his social media site, Truth Social, declaring that he would be arrested on Tuesday, even though the timing remains uncertain, and calling on people to “protest” and “take our nation back.”

The effect was like that of a starter’s gun: It prompted Republican leaders to rush to Mr. Trump’s side and to attack the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a Democrat, who has indicated he is likely to bring charges against Mr. Trump in connection with 2016 hush money payments to a porn star who said she’d had an affair with him.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Trump ally, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Bragg’s investigation was an “abuse of power” and that he would direct congressional committees to investigate whether any federal money was involved — a thinly veiled threat at a key moment before Mr. Bragg makes his plans clear.

...

The authorities in New York City were already preparing for possible unrest in response to an indictment before Mr. Trump’s Saturday morning call to action. And while some Republicans did not echo his call for protests while defending him, relatively few publicly objected to them. Mr. McCarthy on Sunday seemed to split the difference, saying he did not believe people should protest an indictment and did not think Mr. Trump really believed they should, either, according to NBC News.

Trump Arrest: The Lights Are Blinking Red

 Our 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 violent rebellion, coups, and secession. 

It's the January 6 playbook all over again. https://t.co/e6bOmIPmRT

— George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) March 18, 2023

 Adrienne LaFrance at The Atlantic:

What happened in Portland, like what happened in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, was a concentrated manifestation of the political violence that is all around us now. By political violence, I mean acts of violence intended to achieve political goals, whether driven by ideological vision or by delusions and hatred. More Americans are bringing weapons to political protests. Openly white-supremacist activity rose more than twelvefold from 2017 to 2021. Political aggression today is often expressed in the violent rhetoric of war. People build their political identities not around shared values but around a hatred for their foes, a phenomenon known as “negative partisanship.” A growing number of elected officials face harassment and death threats, causing many to leave politics. By nearly every measure, political violence is seen as more acceptable today than it was five years ago. A 2022 UC Davis poll found that one in five Americans believes political violence would be “at least sometimes” justified, and one in 10 believes it would be justified if it meant returning Trump to the presidency. Officials at the highest levels of the military and in the White House believe that the United States will see an increase in violent attacks as the 2024 presidential election draws nearer.

GOP Staff Boot Camp

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses campaign finance.

The iron law of emulation is at work. Conservative groups have made extensive use of dark money.  Liberal groups copied their example, and conservatives are copying them back.

Heidi Przybyla at Politico:

A group closely aligned with former President Donald Trump helped organize a “bootcamp” for GOP congressional staff this past February, training them on how to conduct aggressive oversight of the Biden administration, according to new disclosure forms filed with the U.S. House clerk’s office.

The sponsor, the Conservative Partnership Institute, counts Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows among its leaders and has been described as the “nerve center” for the MAGA movement and MAGA-aligned lawmakers. It was one of three organizations to host the gathering.

...

Among those who briefed the congressional aides was a former Trump administration official, an energy lobbyist and a reporter from Epoch Times, a nonprofit media company tied to the Falun Gong Chinese spiritual community and known for its conspiratorial, pro-Trump views.

Founded in 2017 and chaired by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), CPI is a relative newcomer in the Washington conservative advocacy ecosystem. Yet it is raising massive sums — $45 million in 2021 alone — and rapidly gaining influence, particularly with members of the Trump-friendly House Freedom Caucus. Among fellows it lists on its website are Cleta Mitchell, one of the key attorneys who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election.

The Feb. 15-17 gathering was, according to disclosures, among roughly a dozen congressional staff trainings hosted over the past year at “Camp Rydin,” a 2,200-acre compound recently purchased by CPI. Situated in Cambridge, Md., the compound is named after Mike Rydin, a recently retired software magnate and advisory council member to the conservative group, Turning Point USA.

...”

According to an itinerary for the mid-February gathering, staffers were transported to the compound from The Heritage Foundation, a long-standing conservative think tank that also sponsored the event. Once there, they were offered the opportunity to attend 10 different panel discussions.

Blame America First

  Our latest 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.  Russia helped Trump through 2020.  As Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine, Trump lavished praise on Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. 

And Trump continues to blame  America first.

Trump says Russia is not a threat, our greatest threat is our American representatives, we need to reevaluate the purpose of NATO, and most of the people in the State Dept, DOD and Intel Services need to be fired so he can put the right people in. pic.twitter.com/9PC6PrONM9

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) March 16, 2023

Jeane Kirkpatrick at the 1984 GOP convention:

The American people know that it's dangerous to blame ourselves for terrible problems that we did not cause.

They understand just as the distinguished French writer, Jean Francois Revel, understands the dangers of endless self- criticism and self-denigration.

He wrote: "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

With the election of Ronald Reagan, the American people declared to the world that we have the necessary energy and conviction to defend ourselves, and that we have as well a deep commitment to peace.

 

Democrats and Palestinians

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses foreign policy's role in US elections.

Lydia Saad at Gallup:

After a decade in which Democrats have shown increasing affinity toward the Palestinians, their sympathies in the Middle East now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, 49% versus 38%.

Today’s attitudes reflect an 11-percentage-point increase over the past year in Democrats’ sympathy with the Palestinians. At the same time, the percentages sympathizing more with the Israelis (38%) and those not favoring a side (13%) have dipped to new lows.

Sympathy toward the Palestinians is also at a new high among political independents, up six points to 32%. However, more independents still lean toward the Israelis (49%).

Republicans’ views are unchanged, with nearly eight in 10 (78%) continuing to sympathize more with the Israelis while 11% side with the Palestinians.

Liberal Dark Money and Election Funding

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses campaign finance.

The iron law of emulation is at work. Conservative groups have made extensive use of dark money.  lLiberal groups copied their example, and conservatives are copying them back.

Steve Miller at RealClearInvestigations:

Democrats and their progressive allies are vastly expanding their unprecedented efforts, begun in 2020, to use private money to influence and run public elections.

Supported by groups with more than $1 billion at their disposal, according to public records, these partisan groups are working with state and local boards to influence functions that have long been the domain of government or political parties.

Registering and turning out voters - once handled primarily by political parties – and design of election office websites and mail-in ballots are being handed over to those same nonprofits, which are staffed by progressive activists that include former Democratic Party advocates, organized labor adherents and community organizers.

Republicans have opposed such efforts, passing legislation in 24 states since 2020 curbing the private financing of elections. But the GOP does not have a comparable, boots-on-the-ground effort to influence election boards and workers, and the private-funding bans haven’t proved absolute in some states.

...

 Many of the progressive groups seeking to influence elections are connected to Arabella Advisors, a Washington-based, for-profit consulting company founded and led by Eric Kessler, a White House appointee during the Clinton administration.

Arabella’s projects, which include the New Venture Fund, the Hopewell Fund, the Sixteen Thirty Fund and Secure Democracy USA, had combined revenues of $1.3 billion between 2020 and 2021, tax filings show. Nonprofits supported by Arabella in 2020 gave out $529 million to “defend democracy.”

That coincided with the rise of private-public election partnerships as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated an estimated $350 million to the progressive Center for Tech and Civil Life (CTCL) to support local efforts in the pandemic-challenged 2020 election.

DeSantis: "A Territorial Dispute Between Ukraine and Russia"

 Our latest 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.  Russia helped Trump through 2020.  As Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine, Trump lavished praise on Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. 

Now DeSantis has joined J.D. Vance in the "Don't Care" camp.

Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman at NYT:

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has sharply broken with Republicans who are determined to defend Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, saying in a statement made public on Monday night that protecting the European nation’s borders is not a vital U.S. interest and that policymakers should instead focus attention at home.

The statement from Mr. DeSantis, who is seen as an all but declared presidential candidate for the 2024 campaign, puts him in line with the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination, former President Donald J. Trump.

The venue Mr. DeSantis chose for his statement on a major foreign policy question revealed almost as much as the substance of the statement itself. The statement was broadcast on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” on Fox News. It was in response to a questionnaire that the host, Mr. Carlson, sent last week to all major prospective Republican presidential candidates, and is tantamount to an acknowledgment by Mr. DeSantis that a candidacy is in the offing.

On Mr. Carlson’s show, Mr. DeSantis separated himself from Republicans who say the problem with Mr. Biden’s Ukraine policy is that he’s not doing enough. Mr. DeSantis made clear he thinks Mr. Biden is doing too much, without a clearly defined objective, and taking actions that risk provoking war between the U.S. and Russia.

Mr. Carlson is one of the most ardent opponents of U.S. involvement in Ukraine. He has called President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine a corrupt “antihero” and mocked him for dressing “like the manager of a strip club.”

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness with our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” Mr. DeSantis said in a statement that Mr. Carlson read aloud on his show.

On September 27, 1938 Neville Chamberlain spoke in similar tones about Czechoslovakia and Nazi Germany: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel which has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war."  

CA GOP: Sad Trombone

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

Seema Mehta reports on the CA GOP convention:

No presidential candidates attended despite the state’s primary taking place less than a year from now, and California offering the largest cache of delegates of any state in the nation. Orange County GOP Chairman Fred Whitaker referred to the 2024 presidential race as a “crusade” during an invocation Saturday.

Laurel Rosenhall's Friday report at LAT:

Will a prominent Republican jump into next year’s race to replace California Sen. Dianne Feinstein?

It’s a question that’s top of mind as more than 1,000 members of the California Republican Party and their guests gather in Sacramento this weekend for a convention that kicks off today.

The fact that no prominent Republican has so far announced plans to seek California’s open Senate seat is another sign of the decline of a onetime GOP powerhouse that produced two presidents and four governors in the span of just over a half century, reports my colleague Seema Mehta.

The GOP is now so marginalized in California that a Republican has not won a statewide election since 2006. California hasn’t elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since Pete Wilson in 1988.

Republicans who ran in two of the last three Senate races in California did not make it past the nonpartisan primary, allowing two Democrats to advance to the general election in 2016, when then-Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris won over Rep. Loretta Sanchez, and in 2018 when Feinstein won reelection over Kevin de León, who serves on the Los Angeles City Council.

In 2022, appointed incumbent Alex Padilla easily dispatched GOP challenger Mark Meuser 61-39% 

GOP registration in California dropped from 35.21% in 2002 to 23.85% in 2022.

Turnout 2022

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

Drew DeSilver at Pew:

After soaring in 2018 compared with the previous midterm, voter turnout in the 2022 midterm elections for the U.S. House of Representatives fell back to, if not Earth, then at least the lower atmosphere.

Nationwide, nearly 107.7 million valid votes were cast in the 2022 House elections, representing about 45.1% of the estimated voting-eligible population, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of official returns from all 50 states. That was down from 48.1% turnout in 2018 – when midterm voting reached levels not seen in more than a century – but still higher than the 34.4% turnout rate for House elections in the 2014 midterms.

...

In 2022, 35 House seats, or 8% of the total, were noncompetitive or, at best, lightly competitive between parties, meaning that only one major party was represented on the ballot. (Republicans won 23 of those seats and Democrats won 12.) In 16 of these districts only one candidate was listed on the ballot, with opposition – if any – limited to write-in candidates. In 13 additional districts, a single major-party candidate faced only minor-party or independent opposition. And in six California districts, the November election was between two Democrats, due to that state’s “top two” primary system.

Republicans and Asian Americans

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.

 Ruy Teixeira at AEI:

Even in 2020, there were signs of defection in congressional races in California and in other local races. Like Hispanics, Asian voters were concerned about public safety and rejected demands to defund the police. Asian voters in California, New York and Virginia were also upset by the Democrats’ support for aggressive affirmative action policies that would be at their expense, since in gifted and talented high schools and in top-tier colleges, they were enrolled at percentages well above their percentage in the population and would be harmed by the imposition of the kind of quota systems Democrats were supporting. Partly in reaction to this, Asian neighborhoods in New York City swung by double digits toward Trump in 2020. In California, Asians, as well as Hispanics, played a large hand in the defeat of the affirmative action referendum, which lost by 57 to 43 percent.

In 2021 and 2022, Democrats also suffered from defections among Asian-American voters. In Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial contest, victorious Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin got 44 percent of Asian votes. In that year’s New York mayoral contest, Republicans also improved over their 2017 performance by 14 points in heavily Asian precincts.

In 2022, Asian voter defection from the Democrats was more broad-based than in 2020. Nationwide the Democratic advantage among Asian voters declined 12 points relative to 2020. And there were abundant signs that Asian voters in many urban neighborhoods were slipping away from the Democrats. In New York City, the only precinct in Manhattan to vote for Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin was in Chinatown. In Brooklyn and Queens, Zeldin outpaced Democrat Kathy Hochul in the heavily Chinese 47th and 49th Assembly Districts and 17th State Senate District in Brooklyn. Zeldin also won the 40th Assembly District based in Flushing, which is dominated by Chinese and Korean immigrants.

More detail on these defections has just been provided by a very detailed New York Times analysis of Asian voter shifts in the Zeldin-Hochul gubernatorial election

Reagan, Trump, and Moral Equivalence

Forty years ago today, President Reagan gave the famous "Evil Empire" speech, in which he addressed the fallacy of "moral equivalence."

... I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

And on February 7 2017, Trump had this exchange with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: He is a killer though. Putin is a killer.
TRUMP: There are a lot of killers. Do you think our country is so innocent? Do you think our country is so innocent?
O'REILLY: I don't know of any government leaders that are killers in America.
TRUMP: Take a look at what we have done too. We've made a lot of mistakes. I've been against the war in Iraq from the beginning.
O'REILLY: Yes. Mistakes are different then --

A year ago, Gustaf Kilander wrote at The Independent:

Footage from 2019 has resurfaced of Volodymyr Zelensky looking less than optimistic as former President Donald Trump said he hoped the Ukrainian president would be able to work things out with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On 25 September 2019, the then-US President Trump told Mr Zelensky at UN headquarters in New York City that “I really hope that you and President Putin can get together and solve your problem”.

The 18-minute media availability took place on the same day as the phone call between the two men from earlier that year was released, in which Mr Trump asked Mr Zelensky for a “favour” – to investigate then-Democratic presidential primary candidate Joe Biden and his family, specifically his son Hunter Biden.

 

Tucker's Bad Day

 Our most recent 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. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie. 

Lots of big revelations coming out tonight in the exhibits to Dominion's lawsuit against Fox News.

Days before Jan. 6, Tucker Carlson wrote in a text message exchange about Trump: "I hate him passionately" and "I truly can't wait" to ignore him. pic.twitter.com/ykk5s4jvLo

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) March 8, 2023

"Tucker Carlson’s effort to rewrite history isn’t just laughably incompetent; it’s already falling flat," @RadioFreeTom writes: https://t.co/jPfD59EbT7

— Jim Swift (@JimSwiftDC) March 8, 2023