Biden Raised $27 Million in 24 Hours after "Disastrous" Debate

The debate was a near-disaster. We know that. We went through that Saturday ad nauseum. If you took the weekend off, you might want to take a look, as (Z) really outdid himself.

Why "near-disaster" rather than "full-on, total, unmitigated disaster"? Well, Joe Biden raked in $27 million in the 24 hours after the debate (and $33 million in the first 48 hours). While Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman are crying in their white whine, ordinary Democratic voters reacted to the debate by whipping out their credit cards and going to ActBlue. According to the staff accountant, $33 million is technically considered a lot of money. It is even more than the $26 million Biden got from the star-studded event in March at Radio City Music Hall that featured Biden along with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Stephen Colbert, Lizzo, Mindy Kaling, and many other stars. A haul of $33 million does not speak to disillusion and despair among the grassroots. Thursday was the best fundraising day of the entire campaign and Friday was second. In contrast. Donald Trump raised only $8 million in the first 24 hours after the debate.

Money leads to more money. When the big donors see that the small donors are still on board, it may cause some of them to reevaluate and get out their checkbooks. If the small donors (a.k.a. voters) are not giving up, maybe a sense of hopelessness is a bit premature, especially after Biden's speech in North Carolina. If he can repeat that in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, hopelessness may give way to hope. Also, we may have to wait, say, 2 weeks to see what the polls are like after the debate and after a few (powerful?) performances like the one on North Carolina. Don't forget, the general public generally has the memory of a flea. A few reminders of what life was really like under Trump may jog that memory. Yes, young Black men look to be moving in Trump's direction. Maybe this video of the Ku Klux Klan in Charlottesville and Trump's remark about "Very fine people on both sides" might remind them a bit:

And Biden could bring this up a couple of times when in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit, Raleigh, or Atlanta. (V)

If Not Biden, Then Who?

By now you have almost certainly seen calls everywhere to replace Biden. All of the articles say that if Biden wants to continue running, no one can stop him. It would take a concerted effort by insiders, especially Jill Biden and Barack Obama, to get Biden to throw in the towel even if 60% of the voters, most of whom are Republicans, want him out. Obama has reminded Biden of his own disastrous first debate with Mitt Romney in 2012, yet he went on to win easily. Obama said: "Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know."

Nevertheless, serious news outlets are presenting lists of alternatives in the (unlikely) event that Biden withdraws. Here is the top-five list from Axios. Each candidate has pros and cons. None of them are perfect. No politician is perfect. That also holds for people who are not politicians.

Kamala Harris (59):

Pros: As the sitting vice president, she is the heir apparent. She is very widely known and wouldn't have to waste time introducing herself. She has a strong résumé, including California AG and U.S. senator before getting her current job. Black women, the Democrats' most loyal constituency, would largely walk over broken glass barefoot to vote for her. She knows enough to be capable of doing the job. She could run a campaign based on abortion, abortion, abortion, and maybe also abortion. She has been under the big microscope already and there probably aren't any scandals yet hidden.

Cons: Many people think Trump was a reaction by many voters to the very idea of a Black man as president. We suspect those folks would go absolutely ballistic over the prospect of a Black woman as president. Some voters who could tolerate a Black man might not be able to tolerate a Black, Yellow, Red, Green, or Purple woman. Also, her 2020 campaign was so bad that she dropped out before the Iowa caucuses. Furthermore, her approval rating is worse than Biden's.

Gretchen Whitmer (52):

Pros: The two-term Michigan governor is a bright new face and a rising star, She has all but declared her 2028 candidacy for president. We have oft-noted that the northern route is easier for the Democrats and she is a popular governor of one of the three states there and is a neighbor of one of the others (Wisconsin). If she can hang onto those two and win Pennsylvania plus the normally blue states of Maine, Virginia, and Nevada, she's in. Since the Democrats won the trifecta in Michigan, she has signed over 1,000 bills covering jobs, taxes, infrastructure, education, free breakfasts and lunches for public school students, child care, health care, public safety, guns, LGBTQ+ rights, and much more, all without raising taxes. She also turned a budget deficit into a $9 billion surplus. She has basically covered nearly all of the national Democrats' wish list in her state. Trump hates her. She is practically the Democrats' ideal candidate.

Cons: The sexists won't embrace her, although she is a lot more relatable than Hillary. Also, she is not well known outside the Upper Midwest, but that would change in an instant if she became the nominee.

Gavin Newsom (56):

Pros: He is already running for the 2028 nomination. In fact, he has already had his first presidential debate, against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). He is an excellent debater and can think fast on his feet. He would go for the jugular and tear Trump to shreds in a debate. Every sentence would contain either "rapist," "convicted criminal," or "liar." If any job in the country prepares you to be president, it is being a two-term governor of California, which has the fifth-largest economy in the world, after the U.S., China, Germany, and Japan (being the supreme commander of an army that defeats the Nazis is also pretty good prep, but that job is currently not open). He's relatively young and vigorous and is well known nationally.

Cons: Republicans would call him a communist, socialist, and left-wing radical. They would show videos of homeless people in San Francisco and L.A. and blame it on him. They would also turn his stupid dinner at the French Laundry restaurant during the pandemic into the biggest news story since Hillary's e-mail server. Finally, he's got an overabundance of the slick, city-boy vibe. In that way, he's the anti-Bill Clinton.

J.B. Pritzker (59):

Pros: He is the governor of a big state (Illinois) in the Midwest, which could help pull in Michigan and Wisconsin. He is also worth about $3.5 billion, although he inherited it all (his family owns the Hyatt Hotel chain). Still, it could impress some people who like rich businessmen and he could easily dump a few hundred million into his campaign to bootstrap it. He is extremely aggressive and would lambast Trump in no uncertain terms. In fact, he is already doing it. Here's an eX-Twitter post from him after the debate:



Cons: He is not well known nationally the way the top three are and doesn't give off a vibe of being young and dynamic the way Whitmer and Newsom do. He's Jewish, which would put his views on the Middle East front and center. This is not a great time for that, politically.

Pete Buttigieg (42):

Pros: He's young and smooth and could run as the second coming of Jack Kennedy. He also has run for president before. In fact, he won the Iowa caucuses in 2020. He was put under the big microscope after that and handled himself well. As secretary of transportation, he has been in the news as a result of the East Palestine train derailment, the Southwest Airlines winter meltdown, the bridge collapse in Baltimore, and the crisis at Boeing. He handled himself well.

Cons: Being secretary of transportation and small-town mayor is a weak résumé for being president. He's also married to a man. Not all voters are going to like that when they find out.

We wouldn't have put Buttigieg on the list. He doesn't have the experience or gravitas—yet. We don't count him out for the future, just not in 2024. If we had to pick a #5 for the list, it would be Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA). He is also Jewish, like Pritzker, but has the enormous advantage that he could easily win Pennsylvania, which is a must-win state for any Democrat. He is also more moderate than the others and that could make it easier for disaffected Republicans to vote for a Democrat, just this one time.

If the next round of polling shows Joe Biden taking a big hit as a result of his poor performance in last week's debate, we could be approaching the Goldwater moment—when some Democrat(s) tell Joe Biden the show is over and he has to exit stage left. The most likely person to play the role of Barry Goldwater (who told Nixon to resign or be impeached and convicted) is Barack Obama. Biden knows him extremely well and respects him enormously. If Obama says that Biden can't win, it will put Biden under enormous pressure to throw in the towel. But for the moment, Joe thinks he is the comeback kid, and Obama appears to think so, too.

But suppose new polls show that Trump has gained significantly on Biden and the president decides to take one for the team and drops out. Then what? What the Democrats don't want is a messy convention that goes to 48 ballots with supporters of Harris, Whitmer, Newsom, and maybe Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) clawing each other to death. One way out would be to have a single round of ranked-choice voting for all the nominees. At a certain point in the process, there would be only two people left, probably two among Harris, Newsom, and Whitmer. Then those two could have a televised debate at the convention moderated by a couple of respected television journalists, who ideally will actually moderate.

After the debate, the convention would pick one of the two. The nominee would then pick the veep, possibly the runner-up, but not necessarily. An all-female ticket of Harris & Whitmer would probably be a bridge too far, so the nominee should make that call based on his or her instincts. Is this procedure a good idea? It is probably better than a repeat of 1924, in which it took 103 ballots over 16 days to nominate John Davis. He won every state in the South and lost every state not in the South. Calvin Coolidge won the election with 382 electoral votes to Davis' 136 and 13 for Robert La Follette, who won his home state of Wisconsin. Nobody wants a repeat of that. (V)

Biden's Aides Are Perplexed

The Washington Post has contacted eight of the people who prepped Joe Biden for the debate and wrote a story about the prep. Short summary: Boy, were they surprised with how it went. Our take: Given the prep, we are not surprised.

For a full week, Biden was sequestered at Camp David, 55 miles northwest of the White House in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland. At least 18 aides pumped information into him on all topics they thought might come up. He also did mock debates with his personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, standing in for Donald Trump, at all hours of the day and night in a mock studio they built in an airplane hangar. He rehearsed his answers over and over and wrote some of them on index cards. The whole exercise was focused on loading him up with as much information as possible.

He's 81 and the whole thing just overwhelmed him. The aides should have known that Biden was going to be judged on whether he seemed alert and in command. He wasn't going to be judged on whether he knew exactly how many immigrants crossed the border illegally every day or how many abortions were done in the third trimester nationally last year. There appeared to be no prep at all on how to attack Trump as a disgusting person who cares only about himself. There should have been. The prep seems to have been oriented around not making some factual error that the Post could pick apart the next day. It should have focused on looking sharp and in control. Voters don't care about the facts. Also, with so many people helping with prep, there were contradictions among the staffers and this probably confused Biden. It was just too much for an old guy to handle.

There were also disagreements among the staffers about whether Biden should even do the debate. Some thought he had to in order to dispel the notion that he was old and feeble. Others thought the risk was too great. There was also disagreement about the rules. Some aides wanted no studio audience but others wanted one because they thought Trump would then play to the groundlings and look like a fool to viewers at home. There was also disagreement about the date. Some wanted it early to stop the bleeding but it had the opposite effect, with calls for him to withdraw. Others were afraid he might botch it.

All in all, the focus of the prep was all wrong. It shouldn't have been learning as many facts as possible. It should have been about looking in command and getting under Trump's skin to get him to make an unforced error. Suppose Biden replied to a question about abortion by asking Trump: "How come you are against abortion considering how many women have said you raped them?" That would have done three things. First, remind people that Trump is against abortion. Second remind them that many women have accused him of rape. Third, Trump would have exploded and probably said something dumb. Is that dirty pool? A bit, but no worse than Trump's stream of lies. All in all, the prep would have been fine for someone on the Harvard debating team, but Biden's opponent wasn't on the Yale debating team. (V)

Happy Birthday, Sonia

If you want to skip wild speculation and get back to generic speculation, skip this item. Sonia Sotomayor's 70th birthday was June 25, 2024. A belated Happy Birthday to her. No doubt she plans to live forever, just like Ruth Bader Ginsburg did. Ginsburg wasn't healthy—she had cancer multiple times—but neither is Sotomayor. She has a serious case of Type I diabetes. However, if she has learned anything from The Ginsburg Story, she might consider resigning this month now that the Supreme Court session is through and for the next 6 months, the Democrats control the White House and Senate and could get a successor confirmed. If The Ginsburg Story doesn't do the job, then how about The Dianne Feinstein Story or The Mitch McConnell Story? If Sotomayor stays on and either Donald Trump wins or the Republicans capture the Senate, the chance of a liberal being appointed and confirmed in the period 2025-2027 in the event of her incapacitation or death is zero, whereas it is 100% if she retires now.

If Sotomayor were to retire now (and we don't expect her to do it, since all prominent public officials plan on living forever), that would open a potential new option for Joe Biden. One of the problems that he faces is that some voters are afraid he will die in office and they don't like the idea of Kamala Harris as the spare tire. If Sotomayor retires, Biden could appoint Harris to the Supreme Court, which would give him some street cred with Black voters. That would be his second appointment of a Black woman to the Court and result in fully one-third of the justices being Black.

Of course, Harris would have to accept the deal, but a guaranteed powerful position for life might look better than 50-50 odds at another four years as veep and then a tough primary race in 2028 against Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer, a race that she would probably lose. Officially, the White House has said Sotomayor's retirement is a "personal decision." English translation: It is not a personal decision. The future of democracy in the country could depend on your doing it right now.

If Sotomayor hung up her robe and decided to become a professor of constitutional law at her alma mater, Yale, or some other top law school and Biden continued his run for president, he could pick a more popular veep. He would almost have to pick a woman, but it could be a white one, if he appoints Harris to the Supreme Court. Biden could tell Black women: "I put not one, but two Black women on a court that seems to be running the country." The obvious choice for veep is Gretchen Whitmer, given her sterling track record of implementing nearly the entire Democratic agenda in her state and also guaranteeing that the ticket would carry Michigan and probably Wisconsin. Win or lose, it would also tee up Whitmer as a very strong 2028 candidate.

It would also ease the minds of some voters who think Biden won't hit Jan. 20, 2029, alive and think a vote for Biden is really a vote for Harris, who is less popular than Biden. Whitmer doesn't turn off nearly as many voters as Harris does (sadly, at least in part, because she is white). For Harris, being on the Supreme Court is clearly a promotion from being veep. She has a J.D. from the University of California at San Francisco and was California AG, so she is clearly as qualified as some of the current justices, and a lot less corrupt. If she is realistic, this might seem like a better deal than a small shot at winning the 2028 Democratic nomination and also winning the White House after that. (V)

Could a Veep Help Trump with a Demographic Where He Needs Help?

Donald Trump still hasn't named his running mate and there has been plenty of speculation about who he might pick. Trump has never gotten more than the 46.8% of the popular vote he got in 2020. A good running mate might add a couple of points to that. That could be the difference between winning and losing. Politico has a different take on the choice than everyone else. It looks at the categories of voters that Trump needs and which possible candidates might help there. Of course, Trump often flies by the seat of his pants and seems to prize loyalty above all else, but his advisers are much more rational and have no doubt also looked at it through the prism of how to win.

The Suburbs: Biden rolled up huge margins among affluent, well-educated suburban voters. While Biden's performance in the debate may have saddened some of them, Donald Trump's stream of lies dwarfed the Mighty Mississippi and college-educated voters know this. He could use some help here. Nikki Haley was a suburban state legislator before becoming governor of South Carolina. She did well in the suburbs in the primaries. For example, she crushed Trump in the collar counties surrounding Philadelphia in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania. Her main problem is that she refused to kiss his... ring. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has a good profile for the increasingly diverse suburbs. He has shown this not only in Florida but during his 2016 run, also in the suburbs around Atlanta, Chicago, and Nashville. However, he is known to be lazy and a poor campaigner, not to mention a Florida resident, which would force him to move out of state. That stunt could be challenged in the courts. Gov Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) also has done well in the suburbs. But his failure to capture the Virginia legislature in 2023 works against him. Also, he is not all that Trumpy. Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) is bland enough that nobody really hates him and suburban voters in most of the country would probably see him as presidential. However, he signed a very restrictive abortion ban, which could hurt among suburban women. Army veteran Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is very conservative and might play well in conservative suburbs.

Women: Women tend to vote Democratic and the E. Jean Carroll case could hurt Trump with women. Also, his picking three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade isn't going to help. Maybe picking a woman might help a little. There's Nikki Haley again, college-president enemy Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and dog-killer Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD). The latter two are more restrictive on abortion than Trump himself. That is not a winning position in the suburbs. Count on an all-male ticket.

Double Haters: One-fifth of the electorate hates both Trump and Biden. They tend to be young independents. They blame Biden for inflation and Trump for his temperament. The only person who might do well here is Haley, but Trump doesn't like her. Still, this is a large enough chunk of the electorate that the candidate who comes over as least bad could win here.

Nonwhite Voters: Polls suggest Biden is slipping with both Black men and Latino men. On the other hand, if his running mate is Kamala Harris, that could help somewhat. Trump could try to neutralize this by picking a person of color. Names that come up are Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), and Ben Carson. The biggest problem is that none of them have a history of winning Black votes. Scott, for example, never gets a majority in the state's nine majority-Black counties. In fact, he's never come close. Bad start. Donalds is a congressman nobody has ever heard of. People once knew who Carson was, but have long forgotten. Probably not one person in a hundred could name the job he once had in the Trump administration. Rubio is a possibility, except that Cuban-Americans don't play a role in any of the swing states.

Burn-it-down voters: The burn-it-down voters believe the wildest conspiracy theories. They want radical change, although they may not agree what that means. Maybe they will vote for Bobby Jr. But if Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is on the ticket, they might vote for Trump. Vance hates vaccines, masks, and all COVID restrictions. He is as angry as they are. He could bring them in. Only problem is that he would not play well in the suburbs or with women generally.

Swing states: The election is really about winning six or seven swing states. Vance might help in the Midwest. Scott's state shares a media market with North Carolina and Georgia. But veeps don't always even win their own states. John Edwards didn't pull in North Carolina for John Kerry in 2004. Paul Ryan didn't help win Wisconsin for Mitt Romney in 2012. And none of the veepables is actually from a swing state.

Will Trump do this analysis? We doubt it. He just picks the guy who is most loyal to him. If we were forced to guess now, we'd guess he would look in the mirror and say: "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the Trumpiest of them all?" And the mirror would display "J.D. Vance" in 72-point boldface type. (V)

Are Presidents Immune?

Donald Trump claimed that presidents are like kings: They are above the law and cannot be prosecuted, even when they commit crimes. He asked the Supreme Court to support this claim. It is expected that the Court will release its ruling on the matter today. It could rule that yes, presidents are like kings; no, presidents are not like kings; or sometimes presidents are like kings. The latter option could be that presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts (e.g., killing civilians in drone strikes they ordered) but could be prosecuted for private acts (e.g., shooting someone on Fifth Avenue). We will probably find out today.

But in a larger sense, by delaying the case so long, Trump may already have won, no matter what the ruling. Trump filed his claim on Feb. 12 and it took almost 5 months for the decision to be handed down. Even if it comes today, the trial on his egging his supporters to invade the Capitol, which was originally scheduled for March 4, is unlikely to happen before the election. That is what he wants. If he wins, he will just order the DoJ to drop the case. Of course if he loses, a trial will happen. This motivates Trump very much to win, by hook or by crook.

Is the Court in the tank for Trump? When the Colorado secretary of state ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment precluded Trump from being on the ballot because he incited an insurrection, the Court did the bunny hop and ruled on the case within a month. But on the simple case of whether a president can even be tried for allegedly committing a crime, it took 5 months. Strange, no? No matter what the ruling is today, it is only about whether a trial is even allowed. It is not about whether Trump committed a crime.

If the ruling is that official acts cannot be prosecuted but private ones can be, the Court is likely to order U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to hold hearings to determine if egging a mob on to attack the Capitol is part of the job description of the president. She might decide to hold the hearings this summer. Trump might try to appeal the timing, but Chutkan might rule that appeals of timing decisions cannot be appealed. If hearings commence before the election, they could be quite damaging, since Special Counsel Jack Smith would then formally present all the evidence against Trump to show that giving a political speech is not an official presidential act. We will probably know more later today. We'll have a rundown of this, and all the other rulings the Court has handed down in the past few days, tomorrow. (V)

America Is Already Great Again

Donald Trump is a very unusual candidate in so many ways. One of them is his incredibly negative view of America as an unmitigated hell-hole. Contrast this with Ronald Reagan's view of America as a shining city on a hill. The difference is that Trump is focused entirely on grievance voters, mostly those in rural areas who hear stories about crime-ridden cities where people think men are women. When they think of America, they think of Trump's depiction of San Francisco, not the actual San Francisco or even their own little town. They don't have a clue how things really are.

Gen. Wesley Clark (ret.) has written an op-ed for the Washington Monthly that sets the record straight. It shows that America is actually in extremely good shape by any measure and is not about to be eaten alive by China. It is worth reading the whole thing, but we'll give a brief summary.

Clark starts out by admitting that America is far from perfect. Immigration is a problem, the political system is dysfunctional, the national debt is growing, schools are a mess, and entanglements in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East don't help our image in the world.

But Trump conveniently forgets that the U.S. economy is the envy of the world, and ultimately military power, diplomatic power, and technological power all flow from the economy. Bidenomics, or whatever it is now called, works on the demand side of the economy, not the supply side as Reaganomics did. It uses public investment, empowering middle-class workers, and promoting business competition to produce an economy that works for everyone, not just a sliver of the population at the top. The Infrastructure and Jobs Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act all worked towards achieving these goals.

The results have been remarkable. During the Biden administration 15 million new jobs (including 800,000 in manufacturing) were created, 5 million new small businesses have been started, unemployment has been below 4% for the longest streak since the 1960s, and GDP is way up, from 24% of world GDP in 2019 to 26% now. The date at which China's GDP would overtake America's has been pushed back from the 2020s to the 2030s and maybe the 2040s, if ever. Investments in renewable energy are soaring, huge chip plants are being built in Ohio and Arizona, many drug prices have been reduced, competition-reducing mergers have been blocked and much more.

The U.S. has crucial leads over China in AI, quantum computing, and biotech. The Chinese COVID vaccine didn't work. U.S. anti-satellite warfare is ahead of China's. The U.S. is the world's leading producer of oil—ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia. It also has abundant natural gas. While hydrocarbons are not the future, they will continue to be important for years to come until sustainable energy catches up.

The U.S. stock market is the biggest and strongest in the world. Since Biden took over, the S&P index is up 41%, the NASDAQ is up 30% and the Dow is up 24%. For the 12th year in a row, the U.S. is the top destination for foreign investment. When people want to park money safely it is in T-bills, not C-bills (or whatever Chinese paper is called). The dollar, not the euro or the renminbi, is the world's reserve currency. Half of Europe's trade is in dollars and 70% of the rest of the world's trade is in dollars. And payments for that trade use the SWIFT network and flow over U.S. underseas fiber-optic cables.

China has the lead in rare earth minerals, simply because it accepted the huge environmental costs for refining the ores. But the U.S. actually has plenty of deposits of them and is making rapid strides in cleaning up the processing of them.

On the diplomatic front, the U.S. has formed The Quad, consisting of the U.S. Japan, Australia, and India, to counterbalance China in the Pacific. It also is building new bases in the Philippines and working with island countries in the Pacific. There are challenges on the diplomatic front, especially since China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have formed a loose alliance based on thwarting the U.S. But ultimately, diplomacy rests on hard power, which in turn rests on the economy. The North won the Civil War because its economy was stronger than the South's. The same applied to World War I and World War II. It's the economy, stupid.

Clark concludes by saying that American power is on the rise. Trump is simply wrong: It is not declining. The U.S. has the ability to meet every challenge. It only needs the will to do so, and that depends on the voters in November. (V)

The Jig Is Up for Steve Bannon

Trump adviser Steve Bannon was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee. He refused to show up because, well, he didn't want to and besides, executive privilege said he didn't have to. Additionally, he told the committee: "What are you going to do about it?" What the committee did was ask the DoJ to indict and try him since the law says that willfully defying a subpoena is a crime. That's what happened. He was found guilty and ordered to show up at the prison on or before July 1. That's today. His last appeal failed and today's the day he is supposed to report.

With Bannon, you never know. He is still defiant. Maybe he will show up and maybe he won't. He would probably think it is cool for U.S. marshals to try to find him and arrest him.

When asked what his endgame is, he said: "Victory or the death of this republic." He will almost certainly go to prison unless he skips the country and evades the feds for a bit. But that would be a new crime and more time. Bannon still advises Trump frequently, but from prison, he won't be able to contact Trump so easily. Prisons generally don't issue cell phones to prisoners. In fact, they tend to limit communication between prisoners and the outside world. This means that until Nov. 1, when he will be released, Bannon won't be able to help Trump much. (V)

Pushing the Envelope

A progressive super PAC in Pennsylvania may be breaking the law with this ad. Here is a screen shot of how it starts:

After the title screen, there is a clip of Donald Trump saying: "MAIL IN VOTING IS TOTALLY CORRUPT." In fact, the entire ad features Trump telling people how bad mail-in voting is. The end title is "Stand strong with PRESIDENT TRUMP AGAINST MAIL IN VOTING!" Except for the opening and closing screens, the entire ad is video clips of Trump attacking mail-in voting. It is clearly aimed at convincing Trump supporters not to vote by mail.

The obvious goal is to reduce votes for Trump. A Trump voter who forgoes voting by mail might get sick on Election Day or there could be a big storm or his or her car could be in the repair shop or something else that prevents voting that day.

There are a couple of problems with this ad. First, telling Republicans that mail-in voting is corrupt will only fuel more distrust of elections, especially if the Election Day total in some state favors Trump but when the mail-in votes are counted the next days, Biden pulls ahead.

That is just politics at its finest, but the ad might also be illegal. Federal law makes it a crime for two or more persons to "conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person... in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States." Discouraging people from voting might qualify.

In 2016, far-right activist Douglass Mackey, using the alias "Ricky Vaughn," had 58,000 followers on Twitter. He encouraged Clinton voters to "avoid the line" by voting via text message to a phony number. About 4,900 very gullible people did this. Needless to say, those "votes" didn't count. Mackey was indicted in Feb. 2021 and tried in March 2023. The jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to 7 months in prison. Of course, the case raised significant First Amendment issues. Mackey argued that he never intended to deceive voters but he was merely engaging in lawful satire. Naturally, Mackey appealed, but the appeals process is ongoing.

Is the Pennsylvania ad, which consisted mostly of Trump speaking, illegal? It is unclear, since although the ad makers were clearly trying to discourage a particular behavior, they didn't themselves (except maybe for the end title) urge people not to vote absentee. That is at least somewhat different than lying about how to vote.

If this ad is legal, the next step would be an ad in which two people are discussing voting. The first one could say: "I think Trump is crazy but I have never voted for a Democrat in my entire life." The second one then says: "I agree, I have decided not to vote at all this year." Would that be legal? (V)

The Far Right Comes in First in the French Election

French President Emmanuel Macron was shocked by the results of the European Parliament elections, so he called for national elections for the National Assembly, the lower chamber of the French parliament. Bad move. Early results show that Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally got 34% of the vote, the leftist parties got 29%, and Macron's Together Alliance got 22%. Small parties got the rest.

This was just the first round of voting. The system is somewhat complicated. Members of the 577-seat National Assembly are elected by district. If no candidate gets 50% outright or at least 25% of registered voters in the first round, there will be a second round next Sunday. Any candidate who gets at least 12.5% of registered voters in the first round advances to the second round. Sometimes if a National Rally candidate, a socialist, and a centrist candidate all get above 12.5%, either the socialist or the centrist will drop out in order to make sure the National Rally candidate does not win the district.

It is possible that the National Rally gets a majority next week, which would mean that Le Pen's protégé, the 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, would become prime minister. However, if the National Rally fails to get 289 seats, Bardella has said he will refuse to become prime minister because he doesn't want to become "the president's assistant." In that case, some kind of coalition would be necessary. Le Pen and Bardella want to halt immigration, stop globalization, and try to repeal multiculturalism. They also want closer ties with Russia. Bardella has said that if he becomes prime minister, he will block the delivery of certain French weapons to Ukraine. He would certainly get along better with Donald Trump than with Joe Biden.

The upper chamber consists of 348 senators who are elected by an electoral college of 165,000 local officials for a 6-year term, with half of the Senate up every 3 years. The Senate is controlled by conservatives because small villages are over-represented, compared to big cities. Sound familiar? However, the Senate doesn't have a lot of real power. When there is a dispute between the chambers, the Assembly wins.

No matter what, Macron would still remain as president until 2027, but he wouldn't be able to get any laws passed or block laws he doesn't like. The situation would be similar to a Democratic president dealing with a Republican Congress, except the French president doesn't have the power to veto laws. This mixed control is called "cohabitation" in France. It has happened three times, most recently 1997-2002.

Nevertheless, the French president does have some hard power. He has some control of foreign policy, European affairs, and is the commander in chief. He can also issue government ordinances (like XOs) but the National Assembly can override him. The leftist coalition has said that if it wins, it will immediately recognize a Palestinian state.

None of these outcomes is good for Macron's good friend, Joe Biden. A far-left National Assembly is better for Biden than a far-right one. Biden's hope has to be that no party gets a majority in the second round and the socialists and Macron form a center-left coalition. (V)

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