Unity for a Day, Then More Divisions

Saturday was the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attack on the United States, probably the worst day for the country since Dec. 7, 1941, maybe the worst ever (but supporters of April 12, 1861, could also make a good case). There were ceremonies honoring the dead in New York, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. Joe Biden paid tribute to the victims in lower Manhattan; Shanksville, PA; and at Arlington National Cemetery. He chose not to make remarks at each of the stops, simply referring to a video he released on Friday honoring the people who died in the attacks.

The difference between Sept. 11, 2001 and Sept. 11, 2021 couldn't be more stark. Yes, Democrats made fun of George W. Bush for continuing to read The Pet Goat to a class of Florida fifth-graders even after Chief-of-staff Andy Card told him about the attacks, but in the end most of them grudgingly noted that he acted like a leader and the country came together. He promised to bring the perpetrators to justice, and almost everyone cheered. On Sept. 20 of that year, Bush addressed the nation and described the world in Manichean terms: the fight between good and evil. His job approval hit 90%. Trust in government shot up from 30% to 64%.

That was then. This is now. A day after the ceremonies and required expressions of grief for the victims and their families, we are back to normal. Here is the above-the-fold part of yesterday morning's Washington Post. The nine headlines were (from left to right):

• Democrats sorting through painful sacrifices as social bill enters final stretch
• At-home testing is becoming part of Biden's plan for managing the pandemic
• Pope Francis, during visit, urges Viktor Orban's Hungary to 'extend its arms toward everyone'
• In the shadow of the towers: Five lives and a world transformed
• After the attacks, a rush of national unity. Then, quickly, more and new divisions.
• For the nation, 9/11 brought devastation. For the D.C. area, it was the start of 13 months of terror.
• Elon Musk is dominating the space race. Jeff Bezos is trying to fight back.
• Apple called its Epic ruling a "huge win." It wasn't.
• There's lunacy, near-lunacy and galloping Hogs trampling Texas

Only two are about 9/11. One of those is about how the country is more divided now than ever. The other has profiles of how a few carefully selected people were affected by 9/11 over time. Coverage of a football game and a court case involving how people pay for smartphone apps together also were two top stories. George Bush's Manichean view of the world still holds, only it is not "us vs. the terrorists," it is Democrats vs. Republicans or blue states vs. red states. Bush's phrase "with us or against us" applies equally now to hundreds of activist groups, whether they are trying to ban abortion or save the planet. Unity is nowhere to be seen. (V)

Bush Calls Out Domestic Terrorism

Although George W. Bush has tried to stay out of politics since leaving office, yesterday he went to the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, PA, and gave a speech. In it he called out terrorists. Given that 9/11 happened on his watch, this was a completely appropriate topic to discuss. Only the terrorists he called out weren't the foreign jihadis who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001, they were the American jihadis who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. While he didn't name Donald Trump by name, Bush clearly regards him as terrorist-in-chief. This is the first time Bush has gone after Trump at all, and effectively labeling him as a terrorist leader is a pretty big first step.

Bush also lamented the state of the union. He said: "A malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument, and every argument into a clash of cultures. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together." He ought to know. It was his political strategist, Karl Rove, who made the culture wars the centerpiece of Bush's election campaigns. Bush also said that violent extremists in the U.S. and abroad are "children of the same foul spirit" and likened the foreign terrorists and domestic terrorists in other ways.

This is probably the first time a high-profile Republican has essentially called Trump a terrorist, even if he didn't use those exact words. Of course, Bush is not going to run for office again, so he had nothing to lose by giving his speech. Still, if he had just expressed his condolences to the victims and their families, no one would have thought it odd. He didn't have to go after Trump and domestic terrorists. Maybe this is a sign of something. (V)

Christie Attacks Trump Directly

Bush isn't the only Republican to join Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) in taking potshots at Donald Trump. While he didn't call Trump a terrorist, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has called on the Republican Party to rid itself of Trump and his cult of personality. In a way, this is an even stronger denunciation of Trump than Bush's, since Christie called for Republicans to purge Trump from the Party; Bush merely insinuated that he is a terrorist, but didn't call for any action.

Christie also went directly after Trump's current pet project, namely claiming that he won the election. Christie said: "Pretending we won when we lost is a waste of time, energy and credibility." He also went after Trump's endless lying, saying: "If the requirement in today's politics for getting your support is to say a bunch of things that aren't true—no, thank you." Finally, he rejected Trump's model of authoritarianism, saying: "Authoritarian dictators are not strong leaders to be admired. They are bullies hoping to fool the crowd just one more time."

Could Trump actually be purged from the GOP? There is some (weak) precedent for it. During the 1950s, the John Birch Society labeled Dwight Eisenhower, a conservative Republican, a "Communist sympathizer." The Party eventually rid itself of those people. But they never had the grip on the Party that Trump does.

Some observers think that Christie is preparing a 2024 run for the presidency and wants to run in the much-less-crowded non-Trump lane. One potential scenario for 2024 is that Trump doesn't run for whatever reason (e.g., having been convicted of various state crimes and trying to stave off his various creditors). In that case, a dozen or more Republicans are likely to run in the Trump lane. Christie is apparently betting that if the pro-Trump Republican vote is split 12 ways and all the anti-Trump vote goes to him, he could get the most votes in many primaries. Since many Republican primaries are winner-take-all, being first with 15% of the vote gets you all the delegates. Christie knows this. It could be a viable strategy, unless some other Republican gets the same idea. And, in our view, Liz Cheney had this idea 6 months ago.

One thing Christie was careful to do in his speech is say that he supports Trump's policies, just not the man. For Republicans who don't like Trump's personal behavior, but do like the judges he appointed, his attempts to keep the country white, and the tax cuts he signed, Christie could be an attractive candidate: the same policies but without all the baggage, hysterics, and lying.

One thing that may hinder Christie in 2024, even if things turn out as he is hoping, is the video of him endorsing Trump in 2016. He was the first high-profile Republican to endorse the then-candidate. If some other high-profile Republican decides to run in the anti-Trump lane in 2024, that video might deflate Christie like sticking a pin in a balloon. (V)

Poll: Republicans Evenly Split on 2024 Trump Candidacy

A new CNN/SSRS poll asked American adults about whether Donald Trump should be the leader of the Republican Party. Among Republican respondents, 63% said yes and 37% said no. However, among the same Republican respondents, when asked if the Republicans would be better off with Trump as the 2024 presidential nominee, it was a statistical tie, with 51% of the Republicans saying Trump would be the best candidate and 49% saying someone else should be the nominee. It is doubtful that either George W. Bush or Chris Christie saw this poll before lighting into Trump, but other Republican presidential wannabes may notice it going forward and could be less deferential to Trump as a result. By way of comparison, when SSRS asked the same question in March 2019 (about the 2020 election), 78% of Republicans wanted Trump to run and only 17% wanted someone else. Clearly he has slipped a lot.

Trump has repeatedly flirted with a 2024 run and probably doesn't pay a lot of attention to polls. He has said that he has made a decision, but refuses to say what it is. But although his slippage in the polls probably won't affect him much, it could make other politicians more willing to take him on. Some might be like Christie, and promise Trumpism without Trump, but others might go an entirely different route, such as returning to Reaganism. It's too early to tell, but if Trump keeps slipping on this question, expect other wannabes to become more willing to challenge him. (V)

Lexico-Political Battles, Part I: What's a Woman?

Words matter and Democrats have this special knack of using them to turn sure winners into sure losers. After a policeman murdered George Floyd in cold blood, just because he could, a large part of white America was truly shocked and began, probably for the first time, to understand the need for racial justice. If played right, this could have led to big wins for the Democrats by campaigning on the need for a new civil rights bill and more. But what happened is that some genius threw out "Defund the police" as the slogan for this. Cue the Tucker Carlsons of the world describing a world with no police and angry mobs burning and looting cities with no one to stop them. That slogan, which was never endorsed by the Democratic leadership, probably played a role in the Democrats' losing 12 House seats in 2020 as well as losing potentially winnable Senate seats in Montana, Iowa, and Maine. Telling (white) people you want to eliminate the police is not a winner.

Fast forward to the next installment. The new Texas law that is going to force all the in-state abortion clinics to close is very unpopular nationally. A clear majority of people want to keep abortion safe and legal. By talking endlessly about women who were raped and then forced to bear their rapist's child, the Democrats have a talking point that could potentially overshadow Afghanistan and everything else and allow them to hold the House and Senate in 2022.

However, a small group of activists don't like talking about abortions as something only women have. They want to include people who were assigned female at birth and who now identify as male but can still be raped, get pregnant, and want an abortion. So in their view, men can also get pregnant and need abortions. To their way of thinking, talking about the need for women to get abortions marginalizes the need for some men to get abortions as well.

To a large extent, this comes down to the definition of what is a woman. Dictionary.com says it is "an adult female person." So what's a female? It defines female as:

A person bearing two X chromosomes in the cell nuclei and normally having a vagina, a uterus and ovaries, and developing at puberty a relatively rounded body and enlarged breasts, and retaining a beardless face; a girl or woman.

So the definition of a "woman" is a person with XX chromosomes, with a uterus and ovaries being optional (in part because sometimes they need to be removed for medical reasons). In this definition, which aligns pretty well with the popular definition of "woman," abortions can only be performed on women, so abortion is a women's issue.

The leaders of the Democratic Party are on this page. They see abortion as a women's issue. They know that if they were to say: "Men can also get pregnant and may need abortions," that Sean Hannity and the entire right-wing media will go off the rails and say: "Democrats are beyond crazy. They think men can get pregnant and need abortions." This is probably even worse than "Defund the police." To a large part of the population, a fully intact XX-person who claims to be a man is way beyond the pale. Maybe some day this won't be the case, but in Nov. 2022 claiming that Texas is discriminating against men who get pregnant and want an abortion is not a winning theme. One former leader in the reproductive rights movement said: "What is the end goal here? Is the end goal actually winning, or is it just using the right language at that moment and winning is apparently not a priority?" (V)

Lexico-Political Battles, Part II: What's a Religion?

Let's continue with the theme "the meaning of words," although this installment is about COVID-19 rather than abortion. As companies, government agencies, universities, and other organizations begin implementing vaccine mandates, some of them are including religious exemptions. In effect, those employers may say: "You have to be vaccinated unless you have a medical or religious reason for not being vaccinated." Now the problem is: "What is a religion?" It's not easy to get away with: "I'm a Catholic/Baptist/Jew/Muslim/Hindu and my religion prohibits vaccinations," because no major religion prohibits vaccinations, so a person has to make a case based on their own personal religion. Since the anti-vaxxers are looking for an escape clause, religion appears to be a much easier one than a medical exemption because that will require getting some doctor to lie, something the vast majorities of doctors won't do, especially not to help someone avoid being vaccinated.

So the battle, in many cases, is about what a religion is. Again consulting dictionary.com, we get:

A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

Note that all that is actually required is a set of beliefs about the nature of the universe, or what religious scholars call "ultimate reality." There is no cutoff saying "with at least 250 adherents," or anything like that. So if you decree that vaccinations are against the nature of the universe, presto, you technically have a religion. Supreme beings are not needed. Confucianism and Buddhism do not have otherworldly supreme beings yet are widely considered to be religions.

And what about Pastafarianism, which does have a supreme being, namely the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Is it a religion? This has come up in places where photos for passports and driver's licenses prohibit headgear unless it is for religious purposes. Pastafarians believe that a colander is religious headgear. Some people have claimed that Pastafarianism is a religion and thus they are entitled to their required religious headgear in official photos, just as male Sikhs are entitled to wear turbans in their official photos. Among other states, California, Arizona, Utah, and Oklahoma have accepted that claim, as well as countries from Austria to New Zealand. Here is an example of a Pastafarian with his religious headgear:

Some tenets of Pastafarianism may seem peculiar to some people, such as its belief that heaven has a beer volcano and a prostitute factory and that hell is similar, except the beer is stale and the prostitutes have sexually transmitted diseases. Is that really stranger than religions that believe virgins can give birth and that wine is really God's blood?

The Internet is already full of websites advising people how to get a religious exemption from vaccination. This is causing major headaches for HR personnel. Barbara Holland, an adviser at the Society for Human Resources Management, said: "How much can we ask? How far can we push? Do we have to accommodate this?" This is not an academic question. As soon as the city of Tucson announced a vaccination requirement for employees, almost 300 people immediately applied for a religious exemption. The city had to assign four administrators to process them. So far, half have been approved, so it looks like a carefully drawn up set of beliefs about the universe will work, and the Internet is full of advice about what might work and what might not. On the other hand, not all private employers are as tolerant as Tucson. United Airlines said that employees asking for a religious exemption would be placed on unpaid leave until better safety and testing procedures are in place.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has previously ruled that religious objections do not have to be based on an organized religion. However, social or political beliefs do not qualify as religious beliefs. Is an ad hoc collection of online conspiracy theories, misinformation, and stories from conservative media a religion?

Some traditional religious leaders are willing to help out. Pastor Sam Jones of the Faith Baptist Church in Hudson, IA, is willing to provide any congregant with a four-paragraph letter stating that "a Christian has no responsibility to obey any government outside of the scope that has been designated by God." This comes very close to stating that America is a Christian theocracy and religion can overrule the government.

Not surprisingly, the issue of religious exemptions to vaccination mandates is already partisan. Republicans are (mock) outraged at not giving religious exemptions to anyone who asks for one. But they are overflowing with hypocrisy. Gov. Tate Reeves (R-MS) is furious with Joe Biden's vaccination orders, calling it "terrifying." However, Mississippi has one of the strictest vaccination mandates in the country. Children there are required to be vaccinated against chickenpox, diphtheria, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, pertussis, polio, rubella, and tetanus and there are no religious, philosophical, or conscientious exemptions! Now Biden is a tyrant for mandating a vaccination against a potentially fatal disease when Mississippi itself mandates a vaccination against chickenpox, which is rarely fatal? (V)

Redistricting Will Help the Republicans

Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball has now concluded its long series on redistricting. There is a lot of uncertainty because the maps haven't been drawn yet and we don't know how aggressive the gerrymanders will be. Here is a rough summary of what is probably a best case for the Democrats. The second and third columns show the current breakdown. The fourth is how many seats the state gains. The fifth is the "expected" net Democratic gain, but see below. The six states with a single at-large district are not listed because nothing changes there.

State	Dem	GOP	New seats	Exp. D+	Notes
Alabama	1	6	0	0	No new seat and will remain 1D, 6R
Arizona	5	4	0	0	Independent commission
Arkansas	0	4	0	0	No change expected
California	42	11	-1	-1	Independent commission will probably eliminate a Dem Seat in L.A.
Colorado	4	3	1	1	Draft map out already; new seat will probably go Democratic
Connecticut	5	0	0	0	No changes here
Florida	11	16	1	-1	Florida Republicans will grab the new seat
Georgia	6	8	0	-1	Georgia Republicans can grab a seat by gerrymandering
Hawaii	2	0	0	0	No changes here
Idaho	0	2	0	0	No changes here
Illinois	13	5	-1	1	Democrats will eliminate a GOP seat
Indiana	2	7	0	0	Republicans probably can't knock off either Democrat
Iowa	1	3	0	0	Republicans will just shore up their 3 incumbents
Kansas	1	3	0	0	Republicans will try to knock off Sharice Davids in KS-03
Kentucky	1	5	0	0	Republicans probably won't be able to knock off John Yarmuth
Louisiana	1	5	0	0	Probably no change
Maine	2	0	0	0	ME-02 may get a tad bluer but that's all
Maryland	7	1	0	0	National Democrats want 8-0 but probably won't get it
Massachusetts	9	0	0	0	Democrats will keep all 9 seats
Michigan	7	7	-1	0	Hard to say with independent commission
Minnesota	4	4	0	0	Divided government means the courts will decide
Mississippi	1	3	0	0	No changes here
Missouri	2	6	0	0	GOP goal will be to strengthen Ann Wagner in MO-02
Montana	0	1	1	-1	Any way it is sliced, Republicans gain a seat here
Nebraska	1	3	0	0	Don Bacon (R) in NE-02 will probably keep his Biden-won seat
Nevada	3	1	0	0	Democrats will bolster their three seats
New Hampshire	2	0	0	0	Republicans probably won't be able to grab a seat
New Jersey	10	2	0	0	Commission has majority Democrats but it won't get them much
New Mexico	2	1	0	0	Democrats might be able to get the third seat, but tricky
New York	19	8	-1	4	If they try really hard Democrats could get 4 new seats
North Carolina	5	8	1	-1	If the courts don't intervene, GOP might get the new seat
Ohio	4	12	-1	0	New system may constrain Republicans
Oklahoma	0	5	0	0	Republicans will shore up all five seats
Oregon	4	1	1	-1	Republicans have a seat at the table and may get the new seat
Pennsylvania	9	9	-1	1	"The courts will have to do this one, but a GOP seat could vanish"
Rhode Island	2	0	0	0	No changes here
South Carolina	1	6	0	0	GOP goal is to shore up Nancy Mace (R) in SC-01
Tennessee	2	7	0	-1	Republicans will target Jim Cooper (D) in TN-05 big time
Texas	13	23	2	-2	Republicans will definitely gain 2 seats, maybe more
Utah	0	4	0	0	Republicans will shore up their only competitive district
Virginia	7	4	0	0	Democrats are lamenting the new independent commission
Washington	7	3	0	0	The independent commission likes to protect incumbents
West Virginia	0	3	-1	0	One of the Republicans will not be returning
Wisconsin	3	5	0	-1	State Supreme Court will draw the map; GOP may gain WI-03
	221	209	0	-2

This is a best case scenario for the Democrats because it assumes that the New York Democrats will squeeze the map for all it is worth and pick up four seats. This will require creating districts with only a slight Democratic lean and they might lose some of them. It also assumes that the Texas legislature will be content to pick up the two new seats and leave all the incumbents in place. They might get much more aggressive about this, but there are some downsides to trying and they might just decide to take the two new seats and shore up their incumbents instead. And the new seats in Oregon and Colorado are far from sure things. In short, this table is an educated guess, but it could be off by half a dozen seats either way, more likely for the benefit of the Republicans. Still, the national political environment in 2022 is also important. If there is peace and prosperity, that helps the incumbent party, but anything can happen. (V)

Breyer: Politics Could Factor into When I Retire

Justice Stephen Breyer was on "Fox News Sunday" yesterday. Not surprisingly, he was asked if he had any plans to retire. He said he wasn't planning to die on the Court. For the record, neither was Ruth Bader Ginsberg, but sometimes stuff happens. However, Breyer refused to speculate about when he might hang up his robes. He did say that politics could play a role in his decision, suggesting that it might be before 2025 so that a Democratic president could nominate his successor. He wasn't asked about the possibility of his waiting until after the 2022 midterms, at which time the Republicans might have a majority in the Senate and could refuse to confirm his successor while a Democrat was in the White House.

In short, he is aware of the situation but expects to live as long as he wants and then retire on his own terms. He knows there is a lot of pressure on him to retire, but he is having none of it. For the time being, he is staying on the Court. (V)

New Poll: Newsom in Strong Position for Tuesday's Recall Election

Recall Day is almost here. Tomorrow those California voters who have not already done so will get a chance to vote to keep or recall Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). Another poll came out on Friday showing that 61% of likely voters want to retain Newsom and only 39% want to dump him. The poll is from the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. Importantly, support for Newsom is 70% among people who have already voted but also 54% among those who have not. This means that a wave of anti-Newsom votes tomorrow is very unlikely, since even the people who haven't voted support him, albeit by a smaller margin than people who voted by absentee ballot.

Partisanship here is huge. A staggering 92% of Republicans but only 6% of Democrats want to recall Newsom. However, only 34% of independents/third-party voters want to give the governor the boot. Since non-Republicans outnumber Republicans 3-to-1 in California, that gives the pro-recall forces a nearly insurmountable hill to climb. Newsom's support is strongest in the Bay Area (74%) and Los Angeles (68%) and weakest in the North Coast and the Sierras (45%). Women (64%) like him better than men (56%) but there is no variation with age. Newsom is more popular with minorities (67-73%) than with whites (56%). Unless this poll is way, way, off—as in, one of the worst polls in history, "Dewey Defeats Truman" bad—Newsom will not be recalled.

But Joe Biden is not taking any chances. He will visit Long Beach, CA, today to campaign with Newsom. It will be his first visit to California since taking office. He will also go to Sacramento to inspect the wildfire damage. The visit may not really be that important since 6.5 million Californians have already voted. Still, Newsom is a Biden ally and Biden feels obligated to help him, even if the effect may not be very large.

The results will likely be known tomorrow night, but Republicans are already claiming defeat. They say that Newsom will win due to voter fraud. If, surprisingly, he is recalled, they will instantly retract the assertion of voter fraud. But the new normal in elections is that whenever a Democrat wins an election, Republicans will claim it is fraudulent. These claims may or may not change the results, depending on who the secretary of state is and whether he or she has a backbone made of steel or of steal. But they will keep the base enraged and make sure no Democrat can ever win an election that is not contested, except maybe in states with almost no Republicans, like Hawaii and Vermont.

The claims of voter fraud are not idle remarks to keep the base charged up. Larry Elder, the leading Republican in the recall race, has a "voter integrity board" set up, so if he loses, as expected, the lawyers on it will sue immediately. The idea is that the election is only round one. The final rounds take place in the courts.

If Newsom survives, what the Democrats, who control the state government, need to do now is end this nonsense once and for all by amending the state Constitution to read: "When the governor's office is vacant due to death, resignation, recall, or any other reason, the lieutenant governor becomes governor." After all, that's what lieutenant governors are for, kind of like the spare tire in the trunk of a car. California is going to have Democratic governors until the cows come home and Republicans are going to try to recall every one of them to make an end run around elections they can't win—but only if there is a possibility of replacing a Democratic governor with a Republican one. If the consequence of recalling a Democratic governor is simply a different Democrat, all the incentive for recalls will instantly vanish. A constitutional amendment requires a vote of the people, but this one would surely pass easily when the Democrats point out that these recalls distract the governor and cost the state money for strictly partisan reasons. If the change is made and a particular governor is incompetent or corrupt, the governor can still be removed by the people, only there will be much less incentive for the "out" party to do this for partisan reasons. (V)

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