Dec.24
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Saturday Q&A

The most popular subject of questions this week? Donald Trump's NFTs. And to think we considered not even writing that story up.

Current Events

J.B. in Bend, OR, asks: How do we know Donald Trump's trading cards were actually purchased? It would be extremely embarrassing for him if they didn't sell out. If sales were flat initially, what's to prevent him from either lying or buying them himself? If he bought them himself, the money would just circle back to him, minus whatever commission the creator of the cards was owed (good luck collecting that).

V & Z answer: Well, the announcement that they were sold out came just a few hours after the cards were announced. We think it is unlikely that he would push the eject button that quickly, no matter how slow sales were.

It is at least possible that he purchased (or withdrew from availability) some number of the NFTs, so as to create the impression of high demand and extreme scarcity. They are already for sale on eBay for two to three times the sale price, and the terms of the NFT contract dictate that Trump gets a cut of every resale.


O.Z.H. in Dubai, UAE, asks: This NFT stunt by Trump has really confused me. I've come to the conclusion that it can only mean one of three things:

  1. Trump is so colossally clueless that he didn't realize it would turn off even his staunchest supporters (like Steve Bannon);
  2. He knew it would turn off voters but the $4.5m he gained from it was worth it; or
  3. He isn't serious about running and just wants to use the "run" to further his grifting.

Which do you think is most likely, or are there other possibilities I am not considering?

V & Z answer: Assuming that there's nothing illegal going on here (which is a somewhat sizable assumption), we would guess that it's a combination of #1 and #2. He's pretty out of touch, and so probably didn't realize quite how bad the blowback would be. Further, by all indications, he's the type of person who just can't say no to easy money.

That said, there is another possibility. Keep reading.


J.G. in El Cerrito, CA, asks: What do you think of this possibility that the Trump NFT debacle was a money laundering scheme? In which case the Trumps profit from the tokens twice...

V & Z answer: Given that the maximum allowable purchase was 100 cards (i.e., $9,900, which is just below the $10,000 that would require disclosing the purchaser's identity to a bank), and given that one of the acceptable forms of payment was Bitcoin, and given that Trump profits from re-sales of a thing that has no clear value (are they worth $100 each, or $100,000 each?), and given that Trump has been involved in situations previously that look a lot like money laundering (e.g., selling condos to Russian oligarchs at above-market prices), it is certainly well within the realm of possibility that this is a money-laundering scheme.


C.W. in Carlsbad, CA, asks: I'm guessing we will not be able to avoid having a GOP-led House during the next debt-ceiling vote. My question is this: Are there any realistic scenarios where that vote won't fail? What will happen when it doesn't pass? Will the Senate just cave to whatever ridiculous demands the House makes?

V & Z answer: Yes, there are realistic scenarios where the vote won't fail. First of all, the Senate will pass a bill raising the debt ceiling. Then, Joe Biden will make it very clear that he'll sign it as soon as it reaches his desk. That will put the ball in the court of the House of Representatives, and anyone paying attention will know that, and will know that the Republicans control that chamber.

At that point, the Republicans will very much be at risk of getting the blame if the country defaults on its debt. That is a big deal, the kind of thing that can and will affect people's votes at the next election. And who would be most likely to be booted out of office over a stunt like this? It would not be the Republicans from deep-red districts, who instigated the stunt. No, it would be the Republicans from moderate districts, particularly the 18 GOP members who represent districts won by Joe Biden. So, it is entirely plausible that some (or all) of those folks would not be willing to play chicken, and would vote with all the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling.


S.C. in Mountain View, CA, asks: Where would you place the odds that, if Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) fails to be elected speaker on the first ballot, the Democrats join forces with the Republican members of the Problem Solvers Caucus to elect one of the latter as speaker?

V & Z answer: If we were betting that this scenario would come to pass, and the odds offered were 5-to-1, we would not take that bet. If the odds offered were 10-to-1, we would take the bet. That suggests that, at least according to our gut feel, the odds are less than 20% but greater than 10%. So, let's call it 15%.


D.S. in Cleveland Heights, OH, asks: What is the flaw if any in this plan: House Democrats select the five most moderate Republicans (they should know), meet with them and say "You guys choose which from among you five you want to be Speaker, and you five pledge not to vote for Kevin McCarthy. All of us Democrats will vote for the one chosen, so that person will become Speaker, regardless of what the rest of the Republicans do."

V & Z answer: We think this is certainly within the realm of possibility, and if an ambitious moderate Republican wanted to make a serious baller move, they would be pursuing this possibility right now.

That said, here are the two flaws in the plan. The first is that whichever Republican benefited from the scheme would become public enemy #1 for the extremist elements of the Party. They would be lambasted all day long on Fox, Newsmax, OAN and all the right-wing talk radio programs. This could encourage one or more nutty Americans to target the person for an act of violence. Remember that we are just weeks removed from someone invading the home of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and assaulting her husband. It could be that no Republican member wants to take this sort of personal risk.

The second problem is that there may be some Democratic members who cannot afford to support a Republican for speaker, even if it is a tactically sound move. Someone like, say, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) could find themselves primaried from the left, by someone who runs on the promise that "I will never vote for a Republican for speaker." We do not know if this is a real risk, since progressive voters tend to be pretty savvy about 3-D chess, but it's at least possible.


J.B. in Hutto, TX, asks: As I read the summaries of the January 6 report, I keep thinking: "This was awful but could have been so much worse." Which leads to my question: Based on what we now know, what would have been the worst possible outcome on January 6?

V & Z answer: There are two outcomes, fairly independent of each other, that could have come to pass. In terms of the actual day of the insurrection, it is possible the rioters might have reached the locations where various members of the government were holed up, and might have killed some number of them.

Longer term, it is at least possible that the rioters might have caused Congress to stop counting the electoral voters, throwing the whole process into some sort of doubt. If right-leaning elements in Arizona and a couple of other states had seized on that, and had passed some sort of bill "awarding" their electoral votes to Donald Trump, or calling for a new election, the country might have been plunged into a constitutional crisis, with roughly 60% the country believing that Joe Biden was the legal president, and 40% believing Trump had the right to remain in the White House.

We do not think that the constitutional crisis scenario was very likely, but it was at least possible. What was absolutely not possible was for Trump to remain in power, with no questions as to his legitimacy and no pushback. Had he remained in the White House, he would have been seen as a pretender by more than half of the population, and would have had relatively limited power. It is entirely possible that blue states would have rebelled, probably not Civil War-style, but perhaps refusing to pay taxes to the federal government, or to abide by federal laws.


P.L. in Denver, CO, asks: Jack Smith's work may or may not lead to the charging and conviction of Donald Trump. I have two questions related to this: (1) If in fact Trump is convicted of serious crimes and sentenced to some sort of jail time, would it likely be house arrest? And if so, could he continue to trapse around Mar A Lago, go golfing and eat in his restaurant as that is all his residence?; and (2) How prevalent is it for heads of government to be sent to jail (home or otherwise) in more modern times and for legitimate reasons (as opposed to political persecution)?

V & Z answer: There is just no way to know the answer to the first question until it happens. All we can say is that it's not unusual for convicted leaders to be given house arrest, since that makes life easier for the government in terms of the unique security demands posed by their imprisonment. That said, a big part of convicting Trump would be to send a message to the country that lawbreaking cannot be tolerated, no matter how prominent the citizen. In order to underscore that, the government might find it to be necessary for Trump to spend some time in the clink, and to be photographed thusly.

And it is actually rather common for heads of government to end up in prison. Limiting ourselves to just the 2020s, the list is:

We are not in a position to judge the legitimacy of the charges, since that would pretty much require being in the courtroom. But they're not all trumped up.


G.W. in Oxnard, CA, asks: Should Donald Trump be charged with insurrection, could his lawyers argue that he has already been tried in the U.S. Senate for insurrection and was not convicted and therefore the charge is rendered moot? Could such an argument win in court? Is there any legal precedent for someone being impeached and not convicted but being criminally charged and convicted for the same crimes?

V & Z answer: Although an impeachment is a form of trial, it is not a criminal proceeding, and so a "double jeopardy" argument would be laughed out of court. To give a rough parallel, if a person robs a house, they can be tried criminally for the break-in and civilly for the damages they caused and double jeopardy would not attach. Same deal here.

There is no legal precedent for someone being federally impeached, cleared, and then criminally convicted. However, that is primarily because there have been so few impeachment trials in U.S. history (21 of them), only eight of those ended in acquittal, in four of those eight the charge was not criminal (for example, Andrew Johnson was impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act), and two of the remaining four, the impeachee was Donald Trump.

In other words, there have only been two occasions in U.S. history thus far where a person could plausibly have been cleared at their impeachment hearing but then criminally tried and convicted (Judge Harold Louderback for corruption and Bill Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice). One cannot reach too many conclusions based on a pre-Trump sample size of two.


A.F. in Portland, OR, asks: Can we stop calling Donald's fake tweets "truths"?

Call them "falses" or "statements" or "pretend tweets." Lending them a positive word like "Truth" just helps people think he's telling the truth.

V & Z answer: We are fairly sensitive to the nuances of language and grammar. And you will note that when we refer to messages posted to Twitter, we call them tweets. But when we refer to messages posted to Donald Trump's social media platform, we call them "truths" (note quotation marks, with all that their presence implies). That is our solution to this particular problem.


P.F. in Fairbanks, AK, asks: Is it Zelensky, or Zelenskyy? And y the different spellings in different media outlets?

V & Z answer: As we note above, we try to be sensitive to the nuances of language and grammar. In Ukrainian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy's last name is rendered thus: Зеленський. As you can see, there is a double letter at the end, which transliterate to English as two different versions of the letter 'y.'

English does not have a pronunciation that matches the second of those double letters, the й. So, whether the name is rendered as Zelensky or Zelenskyy, it's pronounced the same way in English. For a while, we used "Zelensky," since we are an English-language site. However, we eventually decided that we agreed with many other outlets that it was more respectful to approximate the Ukrainian spelling as accurately as possible, and so we switched over to Zelenskyy. One of us, namely (V), even wrote a script that gives us a warning if we accidentally use the single-y version, so we can correct it.

Politics

F.L. in Denton, TX, asks: You wrote that the House passed a bill that would give Puerto Ricans a plebiscite on statehood. I agree that it's not a lock that that would give the Democrats two more seats in the Senate. However, what about the House?

In reading this (slightly dated) article, it suggests that Puerto Rico would get five seats at the expense of Minnesota, California, Texas, Washington and Florida, all of whom would lose a seat and would have to redistrict. Texas and Florida freely employ gerrymandering, so do you think the GOP actually might gain a seat or two?

V & Z answer: Probably not. The first thing to note is that Puerto Rico has three viable political parties, the Partido Nuevo Progresista, the Partido Popular Democratico, and the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño, and those parties' issues do not line up cleanly with the Republican-Democratic dichotomy in the U.S. This is what makes it hard to predict what would happen if the island were to elect a House delegation. The likelihood is 3D, 2R. Next most likely is 4D, 1R. So, that would add either one or two Democrats to the House.

And that... is where the answer ends. When new states are added to the union, there is no immediate reapportionment. Instead, the House just expands its membership until the next reapportionment. The most recent Congress to have more than 435 representatives was the 87th, which sat from 1961 to 1963 and had 437 representatives, with the new states of Alaska and Hawaii each contributing one.

So, if Puerto Rico were to gain statehood in a year or two or three, the House would just have 440 members for a few terms. The next reapportionment is far enough out that it's impossible to say what would happen once it shrunk back down to 435 in 2033.


R.H.D. in Webster, NY, asks: There were two Democratic lieutenant governors who ran for the U.S. Senate this year: John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin. One won and the other lost. If these men had switched states, would both of them had won?

V & Z answer: Probably not. Mehmet Oz was not a great candidate, but he wasn't as atrocious as, say, Herschel Walker. His big problem is that he drew the worst possible opponent, since John Fetterman has a blue-collar/down-to-earth image, and since he was very good at turning Oz's missteps into memes.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) was arguably a worse candidate than Oz, given his far-right politics, his involvement with 1/6 schemes, his two-term promise, and other liabilities. So, we think Fetterman could have beaten him. But we don't think Barnes was likely to defeat Oz.


C.C. in St. Paul, MN, asks: You wrote: "Some day the filibuster will probably bite the dust and then it will pass."

I was hoping you could expand on why you predict the filibuster will be gone someday.

V & Z answer: Generally speaking, the filibuster is allowing the Republicans to exercise outsized influence on the government relative to the number of people they represent. Not coincidentally, it has thus become very unpopular with Democrats, such that opposition to the tactic is now commonplace among Democratic officeholders, and is very nearly a required campaign plank in many blue states. By all indications, there are currently 48 votes in the Senate to kill the filibuster, and once John Fetterman is sworn in, it will be 49.

One day, probably not too far off, the Democrats will control the House of Representatives, the White House and will have those 50 votes in the Senate. Then, the filibuster will likely go away. Alternatively, there may be a day when the Republicans have all three of those things and, seeing the writing on the wall, decide to make the first move themselves.


D.T. in San Jose, CA, asks: Are there any competitive states where the Democrats control all necessary levers of power (Secretary of State plus State Supreme Court?) required to disqualify Donald Trump, under the Fourteenth Amendment?

California banning Trump from the 2024 ballot might be a symbolic victory, but it will have no impact on electoral votes, because Trump was never going to win California anyway. Are there any states that Trump might plausibly win, where the Democrats have a shot at blocking him?

V & Z answer: We will start by noting that there are two ways that might happen. One is that someone sues, and a court disqualifies Trump. The second is that the state legislature passes a decree finding him to be ineligible. So, we think it's necessary to note the situation in the governor's mansion and the state house as well. And with that said, here is a list of the 2020 states where the presidential contest was decided by less than 3.5%, and which party controls the various elements of the government in each:

State Governor Legislature Sec. of State Supreme Court
Arizona
Democratic
Split
Democratic
Republican
Florida
Republican
Republican
Republican
Republican
Georgia
Republican
Republican
Republican
Republican
Michigan
Democratic
Democratic
Democratic
Democratic
Nevada
Republican
Democratic
Democratic
Split
North Carolina
Democratic
Republican
Democratic
Republican
Pennsylvania
Democratic
Split
Democratic
Democratic
Wisconsin
Democratic
Republican
Democratic
Unknown

The identity of Pennsylvania's next secretary of state is not known, but the person will be appointed by Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro (D), and so will surely be a Democrat. The Nevada Supreme Court has three Republicans, three Democrats and one independent. And currently, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is 4-3 Republican, but there will be an election in April that could flip that.

Anyhow, as you can see, the prime candidate for a Trump disqualification is Michigan. If it's going to be done though the court system, then Nevada, Pennsylvania and maybe Wisconsin are also possibilities. Further, don't assume that partisan leanings are entirely determinative; the law is the law and it's entirely plausible that even a Republican-controlled court could find that the Fourteenth Amendment is very clear in what it says.

Civics

D.A. in Brooklyn, NY, asks: For years I've been reading on your site, and others, about various caucuses in the House. I have about a million questions (the staff mathematician can fine-tune this estimate if he hasn't yet found the right eggnog):

  1. Are these strictly unofficial bodies, that is, having no recognition, governance, or limits under House rules? Have they always existed in one form or another?

  2. To what degree are they "disciplined" bodies (like European parliamentary parties)? Can members be tossed out?

  3. The Congressional Progressive Caucus claims over 100 members. The New Democratic Coalition claims to be the largest caucus with 99 members. What's up with that? Are they using different numeral bases? Is the CPC in octal and the NDC in hex? (Another job for the staff mathematician, I guess.)

  4. Besides the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the New Democratic Coalition caucus, and the Tea Party Caucus (is that their official name?), what other caucuses are there?

  5. Is being the House like being in the Big House? Do you have to join a caucus (gang) to survive?

  6. Are the two parties different in their caucus structure and relationships?

  7. Are there any caucuses that are bipartisan?

V & Z answer: In order:

  1. The caucuses have always existed, on some level, though they did not acquire any sort of formal status until the mid-19th century. That said, the only caucuses specifically recognized by House rules are the party caucuses (and conferences).

  2. The larger caucuses do have formal rules and members can be tossed out, usually by a two-thirds vote. The smaller caucuses, some of them with as few as two members, are generally more casual.

  3. The largest caucus in the House is the... House Democratic Caucus, followed by the House Republican Conference. That will soon flip, of course. Any other caucus that claims to be the biggest is just engaging in some PR. That said, the New Democratic Coalition includes only House members, while the Congressional Progressive Caucus includes Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), so it's entirely plausible for one of them to claim to be the largest non-party caucus in the House and the other to claim to be the largest non-party caucus in Congress.

  4. There are actually close to 500 caucuses in the House, most of them dedicated to particular issues or interest groups. Some of the more exotic ones include the Bourbon Caucus, the Congressional Cigar Caucus, the Hepatitis Caucus, the Ohio River Basin Caucus, the Small Brewers Caucus, the Tire Caucus, the Unexploded Ordnance Caucus, the Volleyball Caucus and the Zoo Caucus. The Tea Party Caucus no longer exists; its members have left for the Liberty Caucus and/or the Freedom Caucus.

  5. If a member doesn't join one of the two major party caucuses/conferences, then they will find themselves with a lot of free time, since they won't get any committee assignments. Beyond that, caucus membership is a useful selling point for the voters back home. For example, it helps Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) to be able to tell the voters in her 37.9% Asian-American district that she chairs the Asian Pacific American Caucus.

  6. The two parties organize their party caucuses in pretty much the same way, although the Republicans prefer theirs to be known as a conference.

  7. The vast majority of caucuses are bipartisan. Not the party caucuses, of course, nor a few of the exotic caucuses (like the House Prayer Caucus), but at least 95% of them have members from both parties.

D.R. in Omaha, NE, asks: With all of the chatter of "reinstating" an office-holder, "re-doing" an election, "installing" a governor, etc., out there on the interwebs, I would like to ask the staff historian if there were any actual cases in U.S. history of an election being re-done, or a former office-holder being "reinstated" due to election irregularities, etc.?

V & Z answer: There is no such thing as someone being reinstated to federal office. When someone is elected, the term in office that they win has an ironclad, drop-dead, no-questions-about-it expiration date. That person might be reelected to an additional term, but they cannot otherwise remain in office, no matter what the circumstances are.

And there are plenty of examples of elections being re-done in the face of problems that call the final result into question. The most recent case was in NC-09 in 2018-19, when chicanery by the Republican candidate tainted the results and caused the North Carolina Board of Elections to order another election (which was won by a different Republican, namely Rep. Dan Bishop). The most famous case is probably the U.S. Senate election in New Hampshire in 1974. Louis C. Wyman (R) initially defeated John A. Durkin (D) by 355 votes, then the first recount gave Durkin the win by 10 votes, then the second recount gave Wyman the win by 2 votes. Eventually, the two candidates consented to a court's strong suggestion that a new election be held. Durkin won the rematch easily.


M.M. in San Diego, CA, asks: Is it feasible for the voters of NY-03 to mount a recall of their newly elected representative George Santos (R)?

V & Z answer: Nope. Federal officeholders cannot be recalled. The only possibility, at this point, would be for the House to reject his credentials, or to vote to expel him.


K.S. in Dauphin County, PA, asks: I see the Dixon/Davis Media Group and Impact Research will refuse to work with Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) now that she has left the party. Although this is probably in the best interest of both the companies and the Senator, I would like to know if it's the same type of situation as a baker refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding. I never hear controversy when political companies refuse to work with a certain candidate. If it's allowed politically, can't a baker just say it's the politics of the gay couple they object to?

V & Z answer: Political ideology is not a protected class. A business can refuse service if you're a Republican, or a Democrat, or you're too tall for their tastes, or you're wearing a yellow t-shirt, or they don't like the way you smell. So, even if Sinema were to sue, she'd have no case.

By contrast, in Colorado (and 22 other states), sexual orientation is a protected class (along with, in the case of the Centennial State, race, color, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, pregnancy, age, physical or mental disability, and marriage status). Normally, when people like the anti-LGBTQ baker and the anti-LGBTQ web designer (both of them based in Colorado) want to discriminate, they do find some non-illegal excuse for doing so. But the baker and the web designer were deliberately trying to create a legal case, with the backing of conservative legal groups, because social conservatives wanted to force the issue.


J.H. in Boston, MA, asks: This is a purely grammatical or vocabulary question. I have often seen people refer to the House of Representatives and the Senate as the two "houses" of Congress. It is my understanding that this term, "house," is incorrect, and the word to describe what those two bodies are is "chamber." Congress has two chambers. The House of Representatives is one chamber, and the Senate is the other chamber. They are not called houses. But ... I see it often enough, and of course one notices that the House of Representatives has "house" in the title. Is it acceptable to refer to these two bodies as houses instead of chambers?

V & Z answer: Yes. Congress is modeled on the English Parliament, which has an upper house (the House of Lords) and a lower house (the House of Commons). The reason that "chambers" is often used is that "house," depending on circumstances, might refer to "chamber" but it might also refer to "House of Representatives." For our part, we rarely write about a "house" of Congress, but we do sometimes use the phrases "lower house" and "upper house."

History

J.G. in El Cerrito, CA, asks: With regard to Hunter Biden's $50,000/month Burisima payments, you wrote: "There is a long history of presidential family members selling the promise of access."

I'd love to see that long list, if you have the time to generate it. I would imagine it is pretty evenly divided between the parties and across the span of our history, tho with a few real outliers like the Trump clan.

V & Z answer: A comprehensive list would be tough, since the further we go back into the past, the harder it is to be certain what was going on. But here are five recent examples that do indeed span both parties:

  1. Donald Nixon, brother of Richard, "borrowed" $200,000 from tycoon Howard Hughes.

  2. Billy Carter, brother of Jimmy, accepted more than $200,000 from the Libyans, and tried to lobby the White House on their behalf.

  3. Roger Clinton, brother of Bill, accepted money in exchange for trying to secure pardons for drug offenders.

  4. Neil Bush, son of George H.W. and brother of George, was paid over $2 million to serve on the board of Grace Semiconductor, despite knowing nothing about semiconductors.

  5. Jared Kushner, son-in-law of Donald Trump, assumed management of $2 billion in Saudi assets, at a well-above-market rate.

In each case, except the last, the president in question was chagrined by their relative's behavior. But the fact is that it's a free country, and the presidents' hands were tied.


J.K. in Charleston, SC, asks: In a recent interview, Donald Trump said that Paul Ryan was the worst speaker in history. What is your take on this? Knowing Trump's hyperbole, I doubt his statement comes close to being even a little true.

V & Z answer: First of all, we doubt that Trump can even name, say, five people who served as speaker. So, he's hardly in a position to make that particular judgment. Second, Trump has also called Nancy Pelosi the worst speaker of all time. So, Trump has applied that label to roughly 66.6% of the speakers he does know (we would guess he also knows Newt Gingrich).

In any case, Paul Ryan was no great shakes as speaker, in part because he faced a virtually unmanageable House Republican Conference, and in part because he was wedded to weird Ayn Rand-inspired economic ideas that were never going to get majority support. Still, he clearly wasn't the worst. Here are five who were clearly worse, in chronological order:

  1. Howell Cobb: He was an outspoken white supremacist who eventually turned traitor and joined the Confederate Congress.

  2. William Pennington: He tried to add an amendment to the Constitution that would have protected slavery everywhere.

  3. Theodore M. Pomeroy: He was Speaker for one day. How good could he have been?

  4. Newt Gingrich: He turned Congress poisonous, and we're still suffering the consequences.

  5. Dennis Hastert: He was convicted of fraud due to financial transactions meant to hide his history of pedophilia.

There's a pretty big gap in between the first three and the latter two, due to the fact that the House had a run of long-serving, generally competent speakers.


S.T. in Glen Rock, NJ, asks: If by 1820 (Missouri Compromise) or 1833 (resolution of the Nullification crisis) it was evident that a North/South split was significant, and it was also obvious that, eventually, more states would be admitted over time, why didn't the South secede in 1820 or 1833? We obviously have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight that they did in fact secede, but even at the time it would have seemed secession or separation was likely inevitable. It would also appear that the gap between the North and South (in terms of industrial and military might) was not as large in 1820 or 1833 as it was in 1860 nor was the level of anti-slavery sentiment as high in the North at that time as it was by the 1850s (i.e., post Uncle Tom's Cabin and Dred Scott), so is it also fair to think a Southern secession in 1820 or 1832 would have been more likely to be successful?

V & Z answer: Probably not. Secession was a very risky move, and it only had a chance of succeeding if at least 10 Southern states participated. While South Carolina might have been ready to secede in 1820 or 1833, it is not at all clear that other Southern states (except maybe Mississippi) would have joined. Certainly not 8 or 9 more, and certainly not Virginia, which was somewhat essential given its wealth and industry. And so, the rebellion would have failed and John C. Calhoun, et al., would probably have been hanged.

Gallimaufry

J.S. in Rockville, MD, asks: In Friday's post, you made two separate references to the length of published documents: the January 6 final report and the omnibus spending bill, and the fact that, due to timing, neither were able to be fully examined. For the January 6 report, it meant pundits had not yet had time to digest everything, for the budget you noted that most senators did not know everything in it. Given how often lengthy published pieces emerge, I am wondering who reads them, when, and how fast? In this case specifically, with the January 6 report, will either of you read it in its entirety and how long would something like that take you? Do you take notes as you read? Do you skim and scan? And as far as elected folks go, do any of them actually read things or do they simply have staff that reads and then highlights and distills things for them?

V & Z answer: With legislation, the members of Congress do indeed have staffers who read through long bills and note anything worth noting. Beyond that, it's mostly think tanks and lobbyists who read things cover-to-cover.

As to documents like the 1/6 Committee report, there is usually one reporter at each major outlet who draws the short straw and has to sit and read the whole thing. Or, sometimes, they parcel it out to 3-4 staffers who each take a chunk. For our part, we won't do much more than skim it. What it says isn't particularly significant to what we do; the response to the report is what matters.

That said, if we do need to read a long document, we generally do it the way that academics are trained to do. Go through it, figure out the main points, figure out what evidence is being used, mark/take brief notes on key passages. This is less relevant for (V), but in graduate school, (Z) had to learn how to "read" a book to the point of being able to hold a conversation about it, in 1-2 hours. It's not too hard to do, with a little practice.


S.J. in Sacramento, CA, asks: Did (Z) notice a change in targeted ads after visiting all those right-wing news sites? Do you try to anonymize your browsing while doing such research in case sites (try to) tailor the headlines to your interests?

V & Z answer: (Z) uses an ad blocker, and barely notices the ads it doesn't catch. Further, his browsing is already so broad, given his work on the site and his research interests and his teaching responsibilities, that it's hard to imagine the algorithms have any idea what to show him.


J.C. in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, asks: This isn't a gotcha question—I expect you have a good answer—but could you describe how your polls on slogans are more scientific than those of Elon Musk? I also recognize that your polls have far less significant results in that you aren't asking us if a right-wing demagogue should start writing for E-V.com or, God forbid, if (V) and (Z) should step down from running the site (may you live forever).

V & Z answer: Neither our polls, nor Musk's, are the slightest bit scientific. That said, there's really no need for us to be so. For a political poll, a pollster selects a small subset of people, and from that extrapolates what a much larger group of people thinks, or what a much larger group of people plans to do in the future. So, the pollster has to make sure their sample is representative of the group whose thoughts/behavior are being projected.

By contrast, our polls of E-V.com readership presume to speak for... E-V.com readership. Musk's polls of Twitter users presume to speak for... Twitter users. It's true that the responses skew towards the people who are likely to vote in polls, but everyone who sees the results knows that, and can correct as they see fit.

And incidentally, for what it's worth, our polls actually tend to have more respondents than most of the political polls you see. That's because it doesn't cost us anything, it's voluntary, and there's no need for us to disqualify anybody (well, maybe the Canadians). On the other hand, each valid response is much harder for a pollster to acquire.


A.B. in Wendell, NC, asks: I have always wondered exactly how Benjamin NutAndYahoo came to be known as "Bibi." Could you tell me? P.S.: Part of this was an excuse to write in on the chance you will quote me and refer to the new old Israeli PM as "Nut And Yahoo"

V & Z answer: We allow a fair bit of latitude in readers' questions and letters, though you're not the first one to think of that. In fact, someone has even registered www.nutandyahoo.com.

Anyhow, in Hebrew, Benjamin is rendered as "Binyamin." And there are a lot of Binyamins in the Prime Minister's family. So, when he was young, his parents took to calling him "Bibi" to differentiate him from the other Binyamins.

In short, as always seems to be the case, it's all about the Binyamins.

Reader Question of the Week

Here is the question we put before readers last week:

S.R. in Englewood, CO, asks: Setting policy positions aside, can you think of any candidate(s) nominated by a major political party that approached or exceeded Herschel Walker in terms of awfulness? Roy Moore certainly, but perhaps you've got other nominations.

And here are some of the answers we got in response:

M.B. in Singapore: Todd Akin (R), Missouri candidate for Senate in 2012, immediately comes to mind for me. Claire McCaskill (D) knew he was a ticking time bomb, which is why her campaign spent money to influence the Republican primary resulting in her preferred matchup in the general. The only question was, would the bomb go off? It did.

Leading up to the election he stated, "if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing (pregnancy) down." My immediate thought was, this is just biologically inaccurate. Rape has resulted in pregnancy and offspring since the origins of the human race. But when considering his comment more deeply, I realized precisely what he was saying. If a woman finds herself pregnant, it could not have been a "legitimate" rape. Deep down, in the darkest corners of her mind, she really wanted it. She must have wanted it or she would not be pregnant.

To this day, his demented and vial comment still makes me want to vomit... and I'm a man. I can't imagine how the comment sits with women.


D.C. in Delray Beach, FL: The scary part is sometimes very bad candidates do win. Consider Senator Bill Scott (R-VA) who was narrowly elected in the Nixon landslide of 1972 over incumbent senator Shelby Spong.

Nina Totenberg wrote an article in The New Times in 1974 where she flatly labeled Scott as the top of the list of "the ten dumbest members of Congress."

Scott was known to confuse missile silos for grain silos. On a Middle East trip, he mixed up the Suez Canal with the Persian Gulf, and refused to enter a Mosque because "it's not a Christian building." He often made antisemitic remarks. He refused to consider Black people for staff positions, and when some ZIP code legislation was before the Senate in 1973, he was quoted as saying: "The only reason we need ZIP codes is because ni**ers can't read."

Thankfully he did not run for re-election in 1978.


L.T.G. in Bexley, OH: One that leaps to mind is Arthur J. Jones, the Republican candidate for Congress in Illinois's third Congressional district in 2018. There were no mere tweets of the dog whistle from Jones: He is an avowed neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier. He ran unopposed for the Republican nomination in 2018—he has otherwise been a perennial loser in primaries—and was denounced by the Illinois Republican Party and by many prominent Republicans, including the RNC and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). I don't recall whether Donald Trump joined in. Jones was soundly defeated though, somewhat disquietingly, with pretty much the same percentage of the vote as his predecessors as Republican nominees.

The problem with this query is the vast number of political candidates, especially when one includes state and local races. There may well be someone who ran for dog catcher in East Podunk in 1924 who's even worse than Arthur Jones, but no one outside the East Podunk Historical Society is likely to remember (and East Podunkians probably would prefer to forget). But I think Jones is sufficiently vile to make the Hall of Infamy, even if he doesn't beat out Roy Moore.


J.P. in Horsham, PA: The first name that comes to my mind is the Libertarian candidate for president in 1992, Andre Marrou. (Note that I'm assuming the Libertarian Party qualifies as a "major political party" per S.R.'s question; if Wikipedia can be trusted on this point it is the third largest political party in the U.S.). It seemed like every time we turned around, Marrou was enmeshed in a different scandal, ranging from the resignation of his staff over federal campaign subsidies, to lying about the number of times he had been married, to outstanding arrest warrants and just general financial improprieties. And this was in 1992, when Ross Perot—someone whose playbook for running a presidential campaign was... unorthodox, if we want to be polite—had a few dings against him as well.


R.K. in Pepperell, MA: I'm sure there were worse, but my personal favorite is Delaware's Tea Party warrior, Christine O'Donnell, who after winning the GOP Senate primary in 2010 had to run ads just before the general election denying she was a witch! Whoops. She lost big time.


F.L. in Denton, TX: Dennis Hof, even though he was a dead pimp, won election by an overwhelming majority (63/37) in Nevada's 36th Assembly District.


D.F. in Ann Arbor, MI: I'm drawn to 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern. Any Democrat would have had a hard time against the then-popular Richard Nixon, and most considered McGovern a decent man, but he was a liberal from a small state who emerged from a crowded primary field without a true mandate from his party. Angry about changes to convention rules that favored McGovern, many refused to back him, which gave birth to a "Democrats for Nixon" campaign. After being rejected by nearly ten other potential VP candidates, McGovern finally selected Thomas Eagleton as his running mate, after minimal vetting. After barely securing the convention's VP nomination (at 1:40 a.m. on the last night, forcing McGovern and Eagleton to give their acceptance speeches at 3 a.m.), it was revealed two weeks later that Eagleton had had electroshock therapy for depression and that he was taking a powerful anti-psychotic drug. Even after discovering that Eagleton had lied to him about his medical history, McGovern still initially professed his support for Eagleton and dithered publicly before finally forcing him to withdraw. By the time McGovern had selected Sargent Shriver as his new running mate, he had fallen to 24% in the polls after many thought the incident reflected poor judgement. Ultimately McGovern won just Massachusetts and the District of Columbia in what was, at the time, the second worst electoral landslide in presidential history.


M.G.F. in Minneapolis, MN: In an interesting intersectionality with your Word Cup feature, my immediate thought was Edwin Edwards' (unauthorized) 1991 gubernatorial campaign slogan: "Vote for the Crook, It's Important." Edwards would eventually be convicted of racketeering. But that was later.

In 1991, this clearly damaged candidate was attempting a comeback. But he's not even the worst candidate in the election because his opponent was (former?) Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke.

Admittedly, this case might not quite fit the parameters given Louisiana's unusual open primary process. One could argue that Duke was not actually nominated by a major party. But he did advance to the runoff.


T.W. in Norfolk, England, UK: In my opinion, despite Herschel Walker's ineptitude, he still very nearly got his hands on the marbles. As awful as he was, Sarah Palin, however, is demonstrably awfuller—she was so bad that her preferred (and usually reliable) constituency preferred to vote Democrat instead, displacing her even from their second partisan choice, and delivering her a resounding message of "Bye, Felicia!" She will be, forever, utterly, completely and wholly unelectable, while Walker was only just unelectable.


F.A. in Belmar, NJ: The most ignorant on policies and how government operates, and most unqualified, and most corrupt and morally bankrupt, is surely Donald Trump.


L.C. in Amherst, MA: If we're looking for a Canadian to compare with Mr. Trump, let's not forget Rob Ford.


Here is the question for next week:

S.A. in Salisbury, MD, asks: Could provide examples of unpopular presidential decisions which later have come to be viewed as the right choice?

Submit your answers here!


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