No headline theme this week. There are too many items where it's just not appropriate. It will be back next week, for sure.

One Senate Seat Filled, One to Go

As far as we know, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) hasn't actually resigned his seat, as yet. It's inevitable, though, as soon as the Senate formally confirms him to be the next secretary of state. This being the case, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) yesterday announced his pick to succeed Rubio: Florida AG Ashley Moody (R).

This pick was both expected, and safe. Moody knows how to win statewide, and she's a hardliner on the GOP issues du jour, including immigration and anti-trans rights. Further, creating a vacancy in the state AG's office means that DeSantis now has yet another ripe, juicy plum to hand out. We noted yesterday morning that the likely replacement would be DeSantis' chief of staff, James Uthmeier (R). Yesterday afternoon, DeSantis announced that he would indeed choose Uthmeier.

The Moody appointment ends the jockeying for position... for now. However, while incumbent senators elected in their own right have a roughly 90% success rate in reelection campaigns, the success rate for appointed senators is more like 50%. That means that any Florida politician who might like a nice promotion knows that the time to strike is 2026, when there will be a special election for the balance of Rubio's term (which runs to 2028). Already, Reps. Kat Cammack and Cory Mills, along with state Sen. Jay Collins (all R-FL), have indicated they will likely mount bids, and there will likely be other contenders, as well.

Making things more complicated, and more interesting, is that DeSantis will be term-limited in 2026, so his job will also be up for grabs. There's going to be a fair bit of dancing about, as ambitious Florida Republicans decide if they like their gubernatorial odds, or their senatorial odds, better. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) has already said he's getting into the governor's race, and Miami mayor and former "presidential candidate" Francis Suarez is expected to jump in, too. As with the Senate seat, there will be other contenders, as well.

Do the potential bloodbaths on the Republican side of those two contests mean that there might be an opening for a Democrat to win one, or both, elections? Maybe, if there's a blue wave driven by anti-Trump backlash, although the Sunshine State is pretty red these days, and the Democratic bench there is not very deep. Regardless of what happens on the state level, however, there is still likely to be a federal impact that works to the benefit of the blue team. Running for the Senate or for governor is a full-time job, and so the various representatives who are considering a bid will likely resign their seats in the House, eventually. By terms of Florida law, they actually have to resign once they qualify as candidates, though some of them will probably resign prior to that. So, even once Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) conference is back at full strength in a few months, he can anticipate a future where his margins are once again reduced to razor-thin status.

There's also some news about the other U.S. Senate seat that is up in the air right now, the one that J.D. Vance is leaving behind in order to become vice president. Gov. Mike DeWine's (R-OH) preferred pick is Lt. Gov. Jon Husted (R-OH), but Husted really wants to be Gov. Husted, not Sen. Husted. You know, better to be the biggest fish in a medium pond than a medium fish in the biggest pond. This being the case, DeWine is reportedly taking a long look at... Vivek Ramaswamy.

If DeWine were to tap the utterly inexperienced venture capitalist, he'd be doing Donald Trump a big favor, although not in the way you think. Trump is reportedly sick of Ramaswamy, the way he's sick of Elon Musk, and would be grateful to be rid of his co-DOGEy without having to go through a messy divorce. The downside for DeWine, and for the GOP, is that if anyone could lose the special election that would be held in 2026, it's Ramaswamy (especially against Sherrod Brown). The downside for everyone else is that being a senator would give Ramaswamy a platform, and so would mean everyone would get to listen to his finger-wagging and his blather, on a regular basis, for the next 2 years.

DeWine will have to make his pick soon, so we won't have to wait long to see if he goes with a real DOGE of a candidate. (Z)

Only 4 Days Left for the Media to Preemptively Kowtow to Trump

One of the most depressing storylines of the last few months has been the various media outlets falling all over themselves to curry favor with Donald Trump, prior to his re-inauguration. There were a few developments on that front yesterday.

First up is The Washington Post, which continues to bring shame upon itself. It would seem that the slogan the paper adopted back in 2016, "Democracy Dies in Darkness," does not jibe too well with its current editorial mission. While the slogan is not going to be retired, at least not yet, it is going to be downplayed. Meanwhile, the newspaper's staff will be expected to take to heart the paper's new mission statement: "Riveting Storytelling for All of America." We are generally disdainful of mission statements, but this one might be the worst we've ever seen.

And it gets worse. With this new mission statement comes "three pillars" of the newspaper's overall battle plan: (1) "great journalism," (2) "happy customers" and (3) "make money. "We have the sense that not all of those pillars are equal, since Chief Strategy Officer Suzi Watford also revealed that a key element of fulfilling her vision is making the Post "an A.I.-fueled platform for news." It is hard to believe that people can say such things with a straight face. In any case, it's no surprise that so many high-profile staffers have jumped ship in recent weeks. Maybe nobody has told Watford that what AI does is absorb a huge amount of information from the Internet and answer questions based on what it found there. That doesn't work for something that happened 3 hours ago, which is what news is. If they really do this, expect many, many errors.

Moving on, CNN is also looking for ways to keep themselves, and parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, out of Trump's crosshairs. Jim Acosta, who currently anchors the 10:00 a.m. hour, is Trump's least-favorite CNN anchor. At a 2018 news conference, for example, Acosta and Trump had a testy exchange that culminated in the then-president declaring: "You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn't be working for CNN. You're a very rude person."

In order to solve this apparent problem, CNN chief executive Mark Thompson just told Acosta that the anchor may be moving from 10:00 a.m. to... midnight. Thompson framed this as "shaking up the network's lineup," but nobody takes that seriously. The overnight shift is the TV news equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle; broadcasters go there and then are never heard from again. A midnight exile works particularly well when trying to keep Trump happy, as he keeps a senior citizen's sleep schedule, and is rarely awake that late at night.

And as long as we are on the subject of CNN, there was another news item yesterday that is not directly related to kowtowing, but is related to the right-wingers vs. the media war that has been ongoing for years, so we'll mention it here. Zachary Young is a U.S. Navy veteran and a Trump supporter who does a thriving business in extracting refugees from unfriendly countries. When you are a brown-skinned Mexican in that line of work, they call you a "coyote." When you are a white-skinned American in that line of work, they call you a "security consultant."

Anyhow, in the final days of the Afghanistan mess, Young extracted 22 Afghans, at $14,500 a pop. Obviously, that is a lot of money, even in a wealthy, western country. In Afghanistan, it's a veritable fortune. CNN did a segment on this generally exploitative practice, mentioning Young, among several others. The chyron that was on screen, for at least part of the segment, used the phrase "Black Market." Young argues that because CNN did not report that his fees were paid by corporate sponsors, and because the outlet used the phrase "Black Market," implying "illegal activity" (although he was not mentioned while the chyron was up), he was defamed.

Young sued, of course, and yesterday the case concluded and was sent to the jury. By the letter of defamation law, his case is shaky, since his lawyers would have to prove that CNN acted with malice, or that the network had reckless disregard for the truth. Still, you can never know what a jury will do, particularly if they see Young as "the little guy" who got screwed by the corporate behemoth. As you might imagine, this case has gotten a lot of attention from right-leaning media figures, focusing either on how biased the non-right-wing media is, or else how CNN's alleged defamation of Young is even worse than Fox's defamation of Smartmatic/Dominion Voting Systems. This latter claim is dubious, to say the least.

Finally, while The Washington Post and CNN are capable of being preemptive, so too is the incoming presidential administration. Yesterday, Trump announced that he wants to make Hollywood "bigger, better and stronger," and so he was appointing three "Special Ambassadors to a great but very troubled place": Mel Gibson, Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone. Why James Woods, Tim Allen and Kelsey Grammer were not also tapped is anyone's guess. It's definitely not because they were asked and declined; Trump made his announcement without talking to anyone. Gibson, in particular, was surprised to learn about his new title.

It's not clear what the new "ambassadorial" trio might actually do, since the entertainment industry is pretty decentralized, and since all three of them are decades removed from being A-list stars. Presumably, this is mostly performative theater for the base, along with a shot across the bow for the major film producers ("You damn well better fall in line, like CNN, the Post, The Los Angeles Times, etc."). Given that the biggest and richest studio in Hollywood is Disney, and Disney has already kowtowed to Trump in other ways (e.g., paying off his flimsy defamation claim), maybe this maneuver will cause the Mouse to examine its upcoming slate of films. For example, the next Star Wars movie is going to be Star Wars: New Jedi Order. The other films in the franchise were anti-fascism; perhaps this one will take the position that fascism isn't so bad. (Z)

Tough Call: Fight AIDS or Give Tax Cuts to Billionaires

Yesterday, Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), who is chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, warned that PEPFAR might be on the chopping block. As readers will recall, PEPFAR is the initiative, launched by Republican president George W. Bush, that works to combat AIDS in Africa.

By any measure, PEPFAR has been a runaway success—arguably the crowning achievement of the Bush administration. It has saved an estimated 25 million lives, and at a relatively modest cost of $5 billion per year. If we were somehow to serve as president, and we could leave office with that on our résumé, we'd be pretty happy, even if the rest of our presidency had been a disaster.

So, what seems to be the problem? Well, Mozambique is one of the countries that receives PEPFAR funding, to the tune of about $200 million per year. In one of that nation's smallest provinces, several nurses at a clinic receiving PEPFAR funding performed abortions. That is legal under Mozambican law, but is a violation of U.S. law, as the Helms Amendment prohibits U.S.-funded clinics from performing abortions. Once the issue came to light, an investigation was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, and the offending clinic refunded its PEPFAR funding, a total of... $4,100. In other words, approximately 0.002% of the funding for Mozambique, and approximately 0.000082% of the overall PEPFAR funding.

Despite the relative smallness of the error, and the fact that restitution has been made, Risch described the situation as "disgusting," called for heads to roll, and warned that the entire program "is certainly in jeopardy." This is not an idle threat, either, as the program's current authorization runs out in March, and the re-approval process would run through Risch's committee.

As readers might have gathered by now, we cannot take seriously Risch's complaint. One clinic in one country misunderstood the rules, and that justifies killing the whole program? Please. We can only see two plausible explanations for Risch's response. The first is that he's doing a little anti-abortion posturing, in advance of his 2026 reelection bid. We tend to doubt this explanation, however, as he probably won't run (he's 81 right now), and even if he does, he wins every election in a walk. He didn't even have a primary opponent in 2020, and when he did face a GOP challenger in 2014, he won by 60 points. He has no real need for political theater.

That leaves us with the alternate explanation: If the 2017 tax cut is going to be extended, then there are going to be cuts elsewhere. The PEPFAR funding is discretionary, is $5 billion annually, and goes to "sh**hole" countries. The Republican Party of the early 2000s saw merit in the program; the MAGA Party presumably does not. It sure looks to us like Risch is helping lay the groundwork for at least one budget cut that will be used to (sort of) balance out the next tax-cut bill. (Z)

Worst Predictions about 2024

It is (finally) time for us to start reviewing the predictions that we, the readers, and outsiders made for 2024, and to present some new predictions for 2025. To start, let's look at some spectacularly wrong pundit predictions from 2024:

• Derek Thompson: 2024 will be boring. In one 8-day period in July, these things happened: Donald Trump was shot and almost killed, then he appeared at the Republican National Convention with a bandage the size of a toaster strudel, then Joe Biden euthanized his own reelection campaign and Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee. Boring? We think not.
  
  
• John Harwood: Joe Biden won't pardon Hunter. When ABC's David Muir asked Joe Biden on June 6 if he had ruled out a pardon, Biden said yes. When White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the pardon, over and over, the answer was always: "No, he will not do it." Until he did it.
  
  
• Rob Reiner: Harris will win. In a widely circulated tweet on Nov. 4, Rob Reiner wrote: "A woman gave birth to each and every one of us. Tomorrow a woman will give birth to a renewal of our democracy." Of course, filmmaker Reiner wasn't the only one who predicted that Harris would win. Many pundits did and they were all wrong.
  
  
• Scott Galloway: Elon Musk will either lose control of Twitter or sell it. Galloway thought Musk would get rid of eX-Twitter because it was too expensive: Even the world's wealthiest man can have cash-flow problems. Needless to say, Musk has held onto his shiny toy, no matter how much money it costs him.
  
  
• Scott Adams: The 2024 election will see a landslide of election-rigging claims. MAGAworld believes that the election system is rigged. How else could Joe Biden gotten into the White House in 2020? But somehow, the claims of a rigged election melted away this year, like a light snowfall in late April. We wonder why? After all, the Democrats managed to rig the 2020 election, when Trump was in the White House, but not the 2024 election, when Biden was in the White House. Odd.
  
  
• Michael McKenna: If Trump wins, there will be riots in Washington and New York. We seemed to have missed the riots this time. Maybe they were smaller than the one on Jan. 6, 2021.
  
  
• George Conway: Trump will lose his immunity case, go on trial March 4, and spend the rest of his life in prison. Actually, Trump did lose at the district-court level and at the appeals-court level. But the Supreme Court ruled: Nope, the president is like a king and the king can do no wrong.
  
  
• James Carville: Trump will no-show his debate with Biden. The early debate was unusual. Biden wanted to stop Trump in his tracks early. Trump showed up, but it didn't go well for Biden. His line "We finally beat Medicare" will go down in history.
  
  
• Howard Lutnick: RFK Jr. won't be picked to lead HHS. On Oct. 30, the co-chair of Trump's transition team told CNN's Kaitlan Collins that Robert Kennedy Jr. would not be getting a job at HHS. He might end up being right, but not in the way he meant it.
  
  
• Nikole Killion: Trump will pick a female running mate. It might have made sense, what with the Dobbs decision potentially a big problem for Trump. But, he marches to his own drummer and picked a guy with a beard, the first one of those on a presidential ticket in 90 years.
  
  
• Ari Fleischer: Nikki Haley will be the No Labels candidate for president. Remember when Democrats were buying worry beads by the gross because No Labels was going to run some moderate and Democrats would swoon over that person and pull votes from Joe Biden, thus allowing Donald Trump to win? Well, the Manchin/Haley or Haley/Manchin ticket didn't quite make it.
  

Note that this is NOT the list of pundit predictions that we put together last year. That list, which we will revisit next week, is here.

Anyhow, we would again like to solicit predictions from readers, in any/all of the following seven categories: Joe Biden and the Democrats, Donald Trump and the Republicans, Elections and Officeholders, Economy and Finance, Congress, Foreign Affairs and Wildcard. Please send them to comments@electoral-vote.com, preferably with subject line "Prediction" (or "Predictions"). Please note that predictions should be things where it can be clearly declared "that happened" or "that did not happen" by the end of 2025.

Also, we are once again going to ask a pair of questions we asked last year:

1. What item that we produced this year was, in your view, the weakest? (And why?). Send a link to the item, or a description, along with your feedback to comments@electoral-vote.com with the subject line "Bad Job."
   
   
2. What item that we produced this year was, in your view, the strongest? (And why?). Send a link to the item, or a description, along with your feedback to comments@electoral-vote.com with the subject line "Good Job."

If you would like to see the results those questions generated last year, here is the "Bad Job" rundown, and here is the "Good Job" rundown. As you will see, if you look back, some of the comments were general, as opposed to being about a specific item. That's fine, of course.

We look forward to your responses. Please do remember to include your initials and city. (V & Z)

10 Short Stories about Jimmy Carter, Part IV

We doubt that, within our lifetimes, there will be another passing quite like Jimmy Carter's. He was the most popular politician in America on the day he died, and someone respected by partisans on both sides of the aisle. Hence our rather extensive coverage of his passing.

Here, in case anyone would like to look back, are the first three sets of stories about Carter and his life and times:

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III

And now, the fourth and final set, focused on his life in general, and on his post-presidential years:

1. The Gipper: In the second part of this series, we noted that, on his inauguration, Carter had the grace to compliment outgoing president (and rival) Gerald Ford. Not all presidents are so gracious, at least not these days.
   
   After Carter left office, he was on the receiving end of the same sort of gracious verbiage several times, courtesy of his successor (and rival) Ronald Reagan. For example, at the dedication of the Carter Presidential Center, Reagan delivered an effusive speech that included this observation:

   For myself, I can pay you no higher honor than to simply say this: You gave yourself to your country, gracing the White House with your passionate intellect and commitment. Now you have become a permanent part of that grand old house, so right in tradition, that belongs to us all.

   When Reagan passed away, the Carters returned the favor:

   Rosalynn and I join millions of people around the world who mourn the loss of President Reagan. He was a formidable political campaigner, who provided an inspirational voice to America when our people were searching for a clear message of hope and confidence. He had unshakeable beliefs and was able to express them effectively, both in America and abroad. During the past 10 years, Rosalynn and I have often conveyed to Nancy Reagan our friendship and admiration for her own great service, not only to her husband but to our nation. We extend our condolences to the entire Reagan family during this time of grief.

   Sometimes, it's nice to be able to put politics aside.
   
   
2. The Gospel According to Jimmy: It's not a secret that Carter, though he regarded himself as an evangelical Christian, was very critical of elements within the evangelical movement that he found, well, un-Christian. It's worth going into some detail, however. To start, the former president felt that many evangelicals had fallen into a form of idol worship. In an interview, he declared:

   Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words.

   Carter was also critical of anti-evolution elements in right-wing evangelicalism. He had this to say after the Georgia legislature passed a bill limiting the teaching of evolutionary theory in the state's classrooms:

   The existing and long-standing use of the word "evolution" in our state's textbooks has not adversely affected Georgians' belief in the omnipotence of God as creator of the universe. There can be no incompatibility between Christian faith and proven facts concerning geology, biology, and astronomy. There is no need to teach that stars can fall out of the sky and land on a flat Earth in order to defend our religious faith.

   And the former president was also concerned about the extent to which Christianity in particular, and religion in general, were being used to subjugate women: "I have become convinced that the most serious and unaddressed worldwide challenge is the deprivation and abuse of women and girls, largely caused by a false interpretation of carefully selected religious texts."
   
   
3. Bernie Bro?: Although Carter won all of his elections as a moderate Democrat, in his post-presidency he came to embrace a much leftier political program. He advocated for a higher minimum wage, less stringent drug laws and a reduction of the prison population, protections for abortion access, tighter regulation of corporations, and more government management of the financial sector. That sounds a fair bit like the platform of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and indeed, Sanders got Carter's primary vote in 2016.
   
   
4. Favorite President: If we gave you a second to think about it, you could probably guess the name of Carter's favorite president. You should be thinking "Democrat," although we already revealed that Carter had reservations about Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, and he generally did not care for presidents with less-than-solid moral fiber, which also excludes Lyndon B. Johnson. He was not terribly likely to embrace the racist Democrats of the 19th century, which means we're now down to just a few possibilities. Choose the Southerner from among those, and you've hit the bullseye.
   
   Yep, Carter's favorite president was Harry S. Truman. In an interview with The Guardian, he explained:

   My favorite president, and the one I admired most, was Harry Truman. When Truman left office... He didn't serve on corporate boards. He didn't make speeches around the world for a lot of money. I thought he was the greatest president of this century. He was always the one that I mentioned when I was asked that question, never anyone else. I thought about him often when I was in the White House. He was involved deeply in many of the issues that I had to address [and] I felt that he was down-to-earth. He was honest. He told the truth even when it was painful. He didn't try to shift blame for disappointments or failures to other people. He was courageous, and he never ducked an important issue because it might cost him a few points in the public opinion poll. Also, I felt kind of a kinship with him. We both came from a kind of community that was similar in some ways, and we went back home after the election and the service in the White House.

   Carter could obviously be describing himself there.
   
   
5. Favorite Poet: Carter's love of poetry is well known. He was the first (and, to date, only) president to hold a "poets' summit" at the White House. And he was the first (and, to date, only) ex-president to publish a volume of poetry. However, while you might have guessed Carter's favorite president, you aren't too likely to guess his favorite poet. Not because the poet is obscure, but because his themes (and his lifestyle) don't seem terribly Carter-like. It is... Dylan Thomas.
   
   Carter acquired an interest in Thomas' work in the mid-1950s, reading volumes of the poet's work during times when business was slow. And the first Thomas composition he read, the one that hooked Carter for life, was "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London." The former president admitted that he did not understand the verse at first, but it made him think. Ultimately, Carter paid five different visits to Thomas' stomping grounds in Wales, in 1982, 1986, 1988, 1995 and 2008. The 1986 trip just so happened to coincide with Ronald Reagan's decision to bomb Libya, with the result that a sizable American military contingent tracked down the peanut farmer, as he was fishing on Clywedog Reservoir, to make sure he was not targeted for retaliation.
   
   Carter did not make it to Wales while he was president, but he did visit Westminster Abbey, including poets' corner. Although Thomas is not interred there, Carter was nonetheless disappointed that there was no cenotaph honoring the Welshman. Shortly thereafter, the Brits rectified the problem:
   
   
   
   
6. The West Wing: Carter took inspiration from Harry S. Truman and Dylan Thomas. In turn, actor Martin Sheen took inspiration from Carter. Sheen is a well-known liberal activist, and volunteered for the Carter presidential campaign as a (fairly) young man. When the actor was cast as President Jed Bartlet on the television show The West Wing, he based his portrayal substantially on the 39th president.
   
   
7. You Can't Keep a Good Man Down: In this series, we're mostly trying to highlight lesser-known parts of Carter's story. That said, we don't think we can completely overlook his work for Habitat for Humanity, as widely known as it may be. So, we will share a photo from 2019. While working on a project, Carter suffered a pretty bad fall. And the next day... he showed up for work, with a big bandage and a black eye:
   
   
   
   Let us keep in mind that on the day this picture was taken, the man was 95 years old.
   
   
8. Guinea Worm: One of the main projects of the Carter Center was endeavoring to eradicate Guinea worm disease. It launched its anti-Guinea-worm campaign in 1986, when the disease was endemic in nearly every African country, and there were 3.5 million infections worldwide. A quarter of a century later, Carter said: "I'm still determined to outlive the last Guinea worm."
   
   So, did he achieve his goal? Maybe not by the letter, but certainly by the sprit. There is no remaining country in which the Guinea worm is endemic, and in 2023, the last year for which there are statistics, there were only 13 reported cases. Very soon, it will become the second disease to be completely eradicated by humans, after smallpox.
   
   
9. ILYTG: Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter knew each other for a very long time. How long? Well, recall that we noted, in the first part of this series, that Lillian Carter was a nurse at the local hospital. Like Jimmy, Rosalynn was born at that hospital. And, on Aug. 21, 1927, Lillian took 3-year-old Jimmy to visit 3-day-old Rosalynn. So, Jimmy knew his wife for 96 years and 89 days of her 96 years and 92 day life.
   
   Despite their childhood acquaintance, things did not turn romantic until Jimmy was home on break from the Naval Academy. He spontaneously canceled a date with another woman and asked young Eleanor Rosalynn Smith to a movie. Neither of them remembered what movie it was, unfortunately, but Jimmy nonetheless decided that night that Rosalynn was the one he wanted to marry. It took her a little longer to come around, but they were finally wedded on July 7, 1946, and remained together for more than 77 years. That is the longest presidential marriage, of course, outdistancing the 73 years that #2 George H.W. and Barbara Bush were together. The closest living competition is the Clintons, who would need to remain married for a mere 29 more years to take the top spot on the list. Can Bill hold on to age 107, and Hillary to age 106?
   
   From his parents, Jimmy borrowed the phrase "I love you the goodest" and the acronym "ILYTG." He presented Rosalynn with a compact engraved with that acronym as a gift during the Christmas before their wedding:
   
   
   
   Both spouses used the phrase frequently, and it was well known to reporters covering the Carter family.
   
   Of course, a 77-year marriage is not always going to be sunshine and roses. Both of the Carters agreed that the single greatest trial they faced was... when they wrote a book together. Rosalynn lamented the "ugly letters back and forth on the word processor," while Jimmy concurred "It was breaking up our marriage." This will happen when you have two strong-minded people. They did finish the book, however, which was published in 1987 under the title Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life.
   
   
10. The World's Most Exclusive Club: It does not happen too often that five (or six) presidents are all alive at the same time. It's even rarer for five of them to get together in the same place. Here is the second-most recent occasion when five presidents were photographed together:
    
    
    
    This was at a 2017 benefit for victims of Hurricane Harvey. Within the next year, Carter stopped traveling, and Bush 41 died, bringing a temporary end to five-president photos.
    
    The most recent occasion on which five presidents were photographed together, of course, was a little over a week ago:
    
    
    
    
There will be another five-president conclave on Monday, and then, given that certain members of the club are not terribly popular with other members of the club, there may not be another one again for a long time.

And there you have it. It took a couple of weeks and nearly 20,000 words, but that's our best effort at memorializing James Earl Carter. Rest in peace, Mr. President. (Z)

Reader Reflections on Jimmy Carter, Part VI

We didn't get to run any reader reflections yesterday, so we're going to run a longer group of them today. If you'd like to read the previous entries, here they are:

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part IV

And now, the conclusion:

• W.H. in Cooperstown, NY: The only president I ever met person to person, at one of his Sunday morning sermons. I'm NOT religious but his sermon was enlightening and uplifting. An honest, decent, humble man. We need more like him.
  
  
• J.M. in Summit, NJ: About 25 years ago, my wife and I were attending a business conference in London. On the first night of the conference, the attendees were invited to a special dinner at the Tower of London, hosted by the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom. My wife and I happened to sit next to the ambassador at dinner, and were fortunate enough to receive a private invitation to visit the ambassador's London residence in Regent's Park the next day.
  
  The following day we were greeted at the Winfield House by the ambassador and his wife, and generously taken on a personal tour of the beautiful grounds and mansion, which had been donated to the U.S. by Barbara Hutton. As we were completing our tour we saw two crumpled people coming in the front door, dressed in fly-fishing gear and holding tackle boxes. We instantly recognized the pair to be Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, who happened to be guests at the Winfield House that week. They were just returning from a morning of fishing.
  
  To our amazement, Jimmy and Roz put their gear down, introduced themselves to us, and sat with us for the next hour or so in the parlor, getting to know us and inquiring about our family and careers. They were the kindest people, eager to hear our stories and to share their stories with us. Jimmy did not dominate the conversation; Roz more than held her own. By the end of our time together, my wife and I felt as though we had just spent time with two very dear friends. The Carters were a lovely couple, very much in love with one another, and genuinely interested in getting to know other people—even two visiting strangers they would never meet again.
  
  
• E.G.G.-C. in Syracuse, NY: My memories of President Carter are those from a young kid in Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship, and having Carter upholding human rights and trying to protect them for Chileans. It was impressive, after Richard Nixon, to have the U.S. President care about us so much!
  
  
• A.H. in Brier, WA: About ten years ago, Jimmy Carter came to Seattle for a book-signing event. A friend of mine planned to go, and asked me what he should say to him. I gave him my advice.
  
  After the book-signing, my friend reported back. When he got to the front of the long line of people, he said, "Mr. President, thank you for legalizing homebrewing." Carter suddenly stopped in the middle of signing my friend's book, looked up, got that big Jimmy Carter smile on his face, and replied, "Yeah, that worked out pretty good, didn't it?"
  
  
• M.B. in San Antonio, TX: One of Jimmy Carter's greatest and long-lasting accomplishments was almost single-handedly (with help from Congressman Morris Udall) saving the state of Alaska. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 designated more than 100 million acres of Alaska as federally protected lands, including wilderness areas, national parks and preserves, wildlife refuges, wild and scenic rivers, the Iditarod National Historic Trails, the Steese National Conservation Area, and the White Mountains Recreation Area. Subsequent administrations (including, almost immediately, Ronald Reagan and his horrific Interior Secretary James Watt), tried and failed to dismantle the Act. I'll always be thankful to Carter for having done this.
  
  
• D.S. in Oscoda, MI: When Jimmy Carter went on TV and asked Americans to turn our furnaces down to 68 and put on a sweater, I thought "This is what great leadership looks like, to set an example for the good of the planet and all of us who live on it. "When I saw the freak-out that ensued from that simple ask, I thought "This is what mass denial of common sense looks like." That's when I knew we Americans were not interested in saving the planet.
  
  
• R.K. in Laurel, MD: When I was a child, my parents took a detour from going down to Disney World so we could visit Plains, GA. There's a photo of me in the Plains Train Depot, as giddy as my sister would be when we finally made it to Orlando. Jimmy Carter was my favorite living president then (out of the four at that time) and he's way up in my list of favorite presidents overall now. He was the last truly honest man to hold the position, the last man who did not cash in on the fact he had been president. He worked for the greater good of humanity, not the greater good of his pocketbook. None of his successors have had (and none will ever have, I'm sure) a better post-presidency.
  
  The loss of President Carter, while not unexpected, still hits hard because while the sunny optimism and empty platitudes of Ronald Reagan may have been easier to swallow, had the whole of America been as forward thinking as its 39th President, the country would be in a much better place, I'm sure.
  
  
• J.F. in Bronx, NY: I had the pleasure to speak with Carter at a book signing in Huntington, NY, in November 1996. As he was signing my copy of Living Faith, I mentioned that his mother's Peace Corps service in India had inspired me to join Peace Corps. He looked up and asked where I had served. And when I told him Papua New Guinea, he said: "Oh really? Rosalynn and I will be going to Papua with Habitats (for Humanity). You should come with us!" At this point, with probably another thousand customers still in line behind me, a Secret Service agent ushered me along. I knew it was not likely a serious invitation. But it was a kind thing for him to say and I'll always be appreciative for having this story I can tell.
  
  
• J.S. in Palm Springs, CA: My paternal grandfather, a trumpet-playing jazz musician and fruit tree farmer on the slopes of western Colorado, was a lifelong Democrat. One of the most important days of his life came along while he was standing there fishing one afternoon down in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. A river raft came ashore and out stepped the man my Grandad revered most, former president Jimmy Carter. For a few minutes, Grandad had president Carter all to himself. He never stopped talking about it.
  
  
• C.L. in Glendale, AZ: Flying in the face of my Republican upbringing, I cast my first vote in a presidential election for Jimmy Carter when he ran against Gerald Ford in 1976. Decades later, I remain proud of the choice made by my 21-year-old self. And although I'm an agnostic, it would be nice to believe that Jimmy may in some way be reunited with Rosalynn, now that his long and distinguished life has reached its end.

That seems like a particularly appropriate sentiment on which to end. (Z)

This Week in Schadenfreude: They Said "No"

State Sen. Colton Moore (R-GA) is an obnoxious gasbag. We don't write about state legislature-level politicians all that often, but he's such an obnoxious gasbag that we've made him the subject of "This Week in Schadenfreude" before, thanks to his one-man crusade against Fulton County DA Fani Willis (a crusade tinged with no small amount of dog-whistle racism). And we are not the only ones who think he's an obnoxious gasbag. His fellow Republicans in the Georgia state Senate have thrown him out of their party caucus, while his fellow Republicans in the Georgia state House have banned him from entering that chamber.

Yesterday, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) delivered his state of the state speech. And, as with the state of the union address, the speech is delivered from the floor of the lower chamber of the legislature. That would be the same floor from which Moore is banned. The Senator took the position that he was entitled to be there, and that he was obligated to be there, to represent the interests of his constituents. He also saw an opportunity to get enough material for a week's worth of social media postings. So, he crashed the party. And, for his trouble, he got himself arrested.

Needless to say, Moore is going to get plenty of mileage out of this, particularly since he ended up in the same jail where Donald Trump was booked. And he actually has a decent argument that he should have been allowed to be in the audience in the speech. Still, it is now national news that Moore's fellow Republicans despise him so much that they have tried to forbid his presence, and that they are willing to back that prohibition by having him arrested. There is certainly some schadenfreude in that. (Z)

This Week in Freudenfreude: He Said "Yes"

We debated whether to use this story for this purpose, as it runs the risk of being a little cliché. However, it works so well as a counterpart to this week's schadenfreude that we decided to go with it.

As we note above, we don't often write about state legislators. So, this must surely be the first time we've given over both "This Week in Schadenfreude" and "This Week in Freudenfreude" to officeholders at that level. For this item, the legislator in question is State Rep. Venton Jones (D-TX). Jones is a bit better known than most state legislators, as he made it into a bunch of those "election firsts" pieces in 2022, by virtue of being one of the first out, gay Black men to be elected to the Texas legislature.

By virtue of his office, Jones is often asked to vote upon anti-LGBTQ bills. Indeed, during his first term in office, there were a staggering 55 of them put before the legislature. Given that, by the terms of Texas law, the legislature only meets for 140 days every other year, that means that there was an anti-LGBTQ bill proposed roughly every 2½ days. Regardless of your views on that particular subject, does it not raise the question: Don't these people have anything better to do?

Yesterday, the 2025 session of the legislature commenced, which means that Jones was sworn in for his second term. And this time, he decided to be a little bit more proactive. Surely his colleagues must know where he stands on LGBTQ rights, but just in case, promptly after being sworn in, he turned around, dropped to one knee, and proposed to his partner, Gregory Scott Jr. Scott said "yes," of course. You can see the video here, if you wish.

There is a story, possibly apocryphal, that after Galileo was punished for arguing for a heliocentric solar system, he said: "Eppur si muove" (and yet, it moves). Scott and Jones sent a very similar message to Jones' anti-LGBTQ colleagues yesterday. In his own words: "In a time when our love and our very existence are challenged, often in the halls of this very building, this moment is a reminder that love conquers all."

Congratulations to the newly betrothed couple, and have a good weekend, all! (Z)

---

If you wish to contact us, please use one of these addresses. For the first two, please include your initials and city.

• questions@electoral-vote.com    For questions about politics, civics, history, etc. to be answered on a Saturday
• comments@electoral-vote.com   For "letters to the editor" for possible publication on a Sunday
• corrections@electoral-vote.com To tell us about typos or factual errors we should fix
• items@electoral-vote.com            For general suggestions, ideas, etc.

To download a poster about the site to hang up, please click here.

---

Email a link to a friend.

---The Votemaster and Zenger