Senate page     Jul. 21

Senate map
Previous | Next

New polls:  
Dem pickups: (None)
GOP pickups: (None)

Bipartisan Group of Senators Finalizes Update to the Electoral Count Act

Yesterday, a group of senators led by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Susan Collins (R-ME) produced two bills to update to the 1887 Electoral Count Act. The bills clarify what the role of the vice president is when the electoral votes are being counted and a few related issues.

The first bill states that the veep has no authority to discard electoral votes, or question them, or even pause the proceedings. He or she is not an umpire. He or she is like the sportscaster up in the booth reporting on what happened. Republicans support the bill because they know Kamala Harris will supervise the counting on Jan 6, 2025, and they don't trust her. Democrats support the bill because they know some day there will be another Republican vice president, and in advance they don't trust him or her. So both parties have an interest in making it explicit that all the veep is supposed to do is watch and then announce the result.

The bill also states that the governor of each state must submit the electoral votes. This means that stunts like Donald Trump's getting a rogue slate of electors to submit their votes can't be done anymore because the rogue slate would not have the governor's seal and signature and thus would be instantly discarded. Also, the bill removes the part of the old law that allows the legislature to declare a "failed election." Instead, the legislature can change the date if there are catastrophic events that prohibit it on the original date. For example, if there was a hurricane that blocked roads, flooded polling places, and knocked out electric power all over the state.

The update also raises the number of members of Congress who have to object in order to force Congress to deliberate and possibly discard electoral votes. Right now it takes only one senator and one representative to force a discussion. If the bill passes, it would take one-fifth of the members of each chamber to challenge a state's electoral vote. That is a much bigger barrier than requiring only one in each chamber.

The second bill raises the penalty for people who intimidate poll watchers, election officials, or candidates from 1 year to 2 years. It also provides guidance for handling absentee ballots and reauthorizes for 5 years the Election Assistance Commission that used to help states run elections. In addition, it makes tampering with voting systems a federal crime and requires election records to be preserved.

So far nine Republican senators have said they support the bills. If all the Democrats support them, only one more Republican is needed. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is not among the nine, but has said he supports updating the Act, so he might be the tenth.

The bills have a few other provisions but fall far short of what the Democrats tried (and failed) to pass in H.R. 1, which would have done many things to prevent states from disenfranchising voters. (V)

The Congressional Hearings Are Having an Effect after All

Many political professionals initially felt that the Select Committee's public hearings wouldn't dent Donald Trump's armor at all. Now it appears that Trump fatigue may be setting in and that even Republicans are getting tired of the drip-drip-drip of bad news. Politico went out and talked to over 20 Republican strategists, pollsters, and politicians and confirmed that Trump has been at least somewhat weakened.

For example, Bob Vander Plaats, an evangelical leader in first-in-the-nation Iowa, said: "Frankly, I think what I sense a little bit, even among some deep, deep Trump supporters ... there's a certain exhaustion to it." Randy Evans, a Georgia lawyer who served as Trump's ambassador to Luxembourg, said: "This is all undoubtedly starting to take a toll—how much, I don't know. But the bigger question is whether it starts to eat through the Teflon. There are some signs that maybe it has. But it's too early to say right now." Dick Wadhams, a long-time Republican strategist in Colorado, said of Trump: "I do think he's compromised himself into a situation where it would be very difficult for him to win another election for president." John Thomas, who works on Republican House campaigns across the country, said what he is hearing is: "Love Trump, love his policies, wish he would just be a kingmaker." It goes without saying that a kingmaker is not a king. Thomas added that it is not Trump hatred that he is seeing, but Trump fatigue. People are tired of him ranting.

Sarah Longwell, a Republican pollster who has been running focus groups all year, says that the number of Republicans who want to see Trump run again has dropped since the hearings began. In fact, in three recent focus groups, nobody wanted him to run again. She also noted that people wanted to move on from all the talk about Jan. 6.

Part of the reason former supporters are souring on Trump is that the number of people who feel Trump misled them has increased, while the number who think Trump committed a crime is now a majority.

So Trump's main problem is the gradual accumulation of evidence that he encouraged the riots and broke the law that is getting to the voters. That may increase with today's hearing, which is going to focus specifically on the 3 hours during the riot when he could have tried to stop it and chose not to. This will be the most direct attack on Trump personally of all the hearings and could have the biggest impact. (V)

House Conservatives Praise Pence

In a warning sign to Donald Trump, yesterday the Republican Study Committee—the largest bloc of either party in the House with 157 members—praised Mike Pence for his courage in certifying the 2020 election. As readers well know, Trump cheered on the mob that wanted to hang Pence. This suggests that some Republicans are coming to realize that there is strength in numbers and if over 150 Republicans band together to support Pence (and implicitly oppose Trump), they can get away with it and live to tell about it. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) even stood up during the meeting and told Pence: "I just want to say thank you for defending our Constitution. I'm happy to shout it from Mar-A-Lago to Bedminster but I just want you to know how grateful we are." Make no mistake about it. This is a direct attack on Trump from a conservative Texas Republican, something unthinkable 6 months ago. And the assembled Republicans clapped after Roy finished speaking. So it may be that the hearings are (indirectly) having an effect on congressional Republicans as well as on Republican strategists (see above item). It is perhaps noteworthy that Pence was invited to address the RSC by its chairman, Jim Banks (R-IN), a solid (?) Trumpist.

Messages like this implicitly tell Pence that a run against Trump in 2024 might not be a waste of time and that in a multiway primary with Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and others, he might well have a chance. On Tuesday, Mitch McConnell said: "I think we're going to have a crowded field for president." Turtles are not known for sticking their necks out when that isn't needed, and this one is especially cautious. All of these hints suggest that Trump will not be a shoo-in for the GOP nomination if he runs in 2024, especially not if he is also under indictment in Georgia and elsewhere.

The main thing going for Trump in the primaries, if there are indeed multiple candidates, are the rules. Unlike Democratic primaries, in which delegates are allocated in proportion to the candidates' vote totals, most Republican primaries are winner-take-all. This means in a six candidate field, if Trump consistently gets 30%-40% of the vote and that is more than anyone else, he scoops up all the delegates.

The combination of the hearings, Trump fatigue, and the reaction to Pence by House conservatives all suggest that the 2024 Republican primary may be more open than has been assumed so far. Trump generally has a pretty good feral sense of which way the wind is blowing. If he feels that he is no longer a shoo-in for the nomination, he may decide to cut his challengers off at the pass by announcing his candidacy before the midterms. (V)

Judge Orders Giuliani to Testify

Rudy Giuliani was subpoenaed to appear before a special grand jury in Atlanta on July 13. He blew it off and didn't show up. Since Giuliani doesn't live in Georgia, he thought he could just ignore orders from Georgia courts with impunity. Not so fast, Rudy. Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, who is investigating whether Donald Trump violated any Georgia laws while trying to cling to power, was not amused and asked the New York Supreme Court to force him to appear. The Court agreed and yesterday Justice Thomas Farber ordered Giuliani to show up in Atlanta on Aug. 9 to testify. If Giuliani fails to show up in Georgia, he could be held in contempt of court in New York, where he does live. If that happens, he could be arrested in New York and be possibly even shipped involuntarily to Georgia.

Willis' investigation keeps spreading. At first she was interested only in whether Donald Trump's call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), asking him to "find" 11,780 votes, violated Georgia law. But now she seems to have widened her net and is looking at other aspects of Trump's attempt to steal Georgia's 16 electoral votes. In particular, she has informed all 16 of the fake electors who signed a fake electoral vote certificate that they are potential targets for criminal charges related to forging an official document. In practice, the letter to the fake electors is an invitation to flip and rat out the people who asked them to become a fake elector and tell her all they know about the plan.

The reason Willis wants Giuliani to testify is that she wants to know what role he played in assembling the fake slate of electors. She also wants to ask him about the hours-long testimony filled with lies that he gave to the Georgia legislature. He claimed massive voter fraud, but was unable to provide evidence of it and spewed other falsehoods.

Giuliani and the fake electors aren't the only people Willis has subpoenaed. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and failed Georgia secretary of state candidate Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) also got orders to appear before the grand jury. Graham made two phone calls to Raffensperger after the election. Willis wants to hear from him what he said to Raffensperger.

Unlike AG Merrick Garland, Willis is actively and publicly vigorously pursuing her case against Trump, collecting witness testimony and evidence she can use in court. It sure looks like she's going to get to the finish line before New York AG Tish James, and certainly before Garland. (V)

Twenty Counties Will Decide the Midterms

We (and others) have written a lot about redistricting, and which districts are competitive with the new maps. Politico has taken a slightly different view and has published an article about the 20 counties that will probably determine which party controls the House next year. This has value, because people usually have a better concept of where counties are than where (badly gerrymandered) House districts are. Here is their list.

Of course, these are not the only battleground counties, but they are certainly important counties to watch. (V)

Republicans Are Planning to Investigate Everything Next Year

House Republicans are expecting to take over the chamber next January. However, they realize that Joe Biden will still be president until Jan. 20, 2025, so passing bills has only symbolic value because even if they get through the Senate (impossible if Democrats retain control, and unlikely due to the filibuster if Republicans get control), Biden will veto them all.

Consequently, all the Republicans' plans are focused on holding hearings. The hearings will have no legislative purpose whatsoever. They will be 100% focused on trying to weaken the Democrats in advance of 2024. Nothing more, nothing less. The Republicans have a long history of picking some microscopic issue and turning it into the most important thing in the history of the republic. Was Hillary's e-mail server really the biggest issue facing the country in 2016? You betcha! Just wait until the hearings over Hunter Biden's business practices begin. That will break all records. In second place will be the withdrawal from Afghanistan based on the agreement Donald Trump signed. In third place will be the temporary shortage of baby formula that was caused when one of the plants that makes it was found to be producing tainted baby formula and shut down by health inspectors who were actually pro-life. Inflation will be in there somewhere, too, only that is a bit harder to pin on the Democrats and the causes (the pandemic and the war in Ukraine) are easy to understand.

The House has 20 regular committees, five select committees (one of which will be abolished the first day the Republicans get control, if they do) and four joint committees. The Republican leadership is now busy deciding which "scandal" each committee will hold hearings about. Some of them may be external to the government (e.g., Hunter Biden's business dealings) but some will be about investigating some agency of the Biden administration using the House's oversight power. There haven't really been a lot of mismanaged departments, so Republicans will mostly drag high-ranking officials before them and ask them rhetorical questions in the hope of embarrassing them.

It is possible the Republicans plans could be upset, to some extent, by turf wars. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), one of the biggest bomb throwers in either chamber, will probably head the Judiciary Committee if the Republicans win 218 or more seats. He is hell-bent on investigating immigration policy and what is going on at the Mexican border. This really is outside his jurisdiction, since the border situation probably falls under the jurisdiction of either the Foreign Affairs Committee or the Homeland Security Committee. Certainly not Judiciary. But Jordan is a force to be reckoned with, so he may be able to wrestle this away from the other chairmen. He is good at that since he was an NCAA wrestling champion in college.

Always lurking in the background is a potential investigation of the 2020 presidential election and who won it. No doubt Donald Trump will push a Republican-controlled House to do that and if Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) becomes speaker, he won't have the backbone to tell Trump to shut up. Republican strategists know that making the 2020 election the main focus of the House for the next 2 years is not the way to win in 2024, but Trump may just trump them.

To some extent, what the House does depends on which party controls the Senate. If the Republicans control both chambers, firebrand House Republicans can force votes in the Senate by passing bills that the Senate majority leader will bring to vote simply to embarrass Democratic senators up in 2024. However, if the Democrats hang onto the Senate, then embarrassing bills sent over from the House will just die in the Senate without a floor discussion or a vote.

In any event, Republicans are now working out their plans so if they get a House majority, they can hit the ground running and start their hearings on Jan. 3, 2023 or shortly thereafter. (V)

New Study: The Supreme Court's Rulings Match What Republicans Want

A new study by researchers at the University of Texas, Stanford University, and Harvard University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, further demonstrates what a lot of people already suspected: The Supreme Court is now operating outside the bounds of mainstream America. Until fairly recently, most Supreme Court decisions were in line with what the average American wanted. Now they are in line with what the average Repblican voter wants and are far to the right of what the average American voter wants.

For the study, the authors conducted polls that asked specifically about the issues before the Court to gauge public opinion on them. Then they compared the Court's decisions to what Democrats and Republicans wanted and concluded that the actual decisions lined up well with what Republicans wanted, not what all voters wanted.

The justices are not elected and thus don't have to worry about being voted out in 2024 or any other year. Still, when they get out of line with public opinion, respect for the Court (which is the main thing that keeps it from being irrelevant) drops. This provides a stress test for the law. That rarely works out well. In the 1960s, whites in power in Southern states shut down public services and closed schools rather than integrate them as the Court required. Now we are seeing an analogous scenario, with blue state governors signing bills designed to thwart recent Court decisions, such as bills that promise to protect women traveling to their states for an abortion banned in their home states.

Sometimes something has to give. Either the Court moves to moderate its rulings and bring them more in line with public opinion or the opposition ultimately accepts the decisions and moves on. So far, the researchers see neither of these things happening. When governors use their powers to try to undermine Supreme Court rulings, the rule of law is severely tested, but that seems to be the immediate future. (V)

Whither Polling?

Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball has an excerpt from G. Elliott Morris' new book on the history of polling Strength in Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them. The polling industry clearly has some problems and this book addresses some of them and makes some suggestions, as follows:

In short, Morris thinks that the current system of calling people at random and hoping for the best needs to be rethought. (V)


Previous | Next


Back to the main page