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From (V), (Z), staff dachshunds Otto (left) and Flash, and everyone else at Electoral-Vote.com, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!
We hope 2024 will be a good year for you and full of interesting politics.
Trump Wins a Small Delay
Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to rule quickly on the matter of whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution because, well, when the president does it, it is not illegal (at least according to Richard Nixon). The Court refused to speed up the process and ruled that the case had to go through the regular order, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. handling the case first.
This will give Trump some breathing room. But not much. The appeals court will handle the case on Jan. 9 and is expected to rule very quickly thereafter. Then it goes back to the Supreme Court. From the Supreme Court's point of view: (1) the justices can have a nice holiday season without having to deal with this stuff and (2) when they get it again, they will have the appeals court ruling as a guideline, making their jobs easier.
The timing of the Supreme Court ruling is critical. The 1/6 trial is scheduled to begin on March 4, but Trump is trying to delay it. If the Supreme Court gets the case from the D.C. Court of Appeals in February, Trump will try to stall and have the March 4 trial be delayed. The Supreme Court could just sustain the lower court ruling without any hearings if it wants to keep things on track, but Trump will do everything he can to delay, delay, and delay more. In particular, he does not want to be a convicted felon by the time the Republican National Convention opens on July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee. (V)
House Republicans Have Painted Themselves into a Corner
Republicans have now formalized the process to impeach Joe Biden based on nothing. They will call a bunch of witnesses, some of whom will tell made-up stories and some of whom will say there is nothing to see here. When all the grandstanding is over, what then? It's probably going to backfire.
If they just end the process with no vote, the Trumpian base will be absolutely furious. That could lead to fire-breathing right wingers entering primaries against some House Republicans where the filing deadline hasn't passed yet. It could also lead to some Trumpist voters punishing Congress by not voting in November of next year. At the very least, it will infuriate a lot of Republicans.
If they hold a vote, that will put the Biden 17 and Republicans in swing districts in a real bind. A vote to impeach will anger the Democrats in their districts and put a real target on their backs, even if they are otherwise acceptable. In many closely divided districts, the Democrat will make the vote to impeach the only issue. That is bound to cost the Republicans a number of seats.
If the impeachment vote fails, which seems likely given the Republicans' tiny margin, the base will be furious and demand to know why Biden wasn't impeached. An answer like: "Our margin in the House is only 3 votes" won't fly any more than Biden's lament: "We didn't have the votes in the Senate to carry out my program." Partisans on both sides aren't interested in voting margins or process. They want results and not excuses.
If Biden is impeached, then the bear will be let loose. The Democrats control the Senate and thus can set the rules of the Senate trial. Expect there to be many witnesses for the defense claiming the entire thing is bogus and it is all the work of House Republicans who are Donald Trump's puppets. From Biden's point of view, an actual impeachment on vague charges ("He didn't defend the border") is almost certain to backfire, as it did in 1998 with Bill Clinton's impeachment. And remember, Clinton did actually commit a crime (perjury) and Biden hasn't. An actual impeachment vote and trial is almost certain to cost the Republicans the House in 2024.
Part of the Republicans' problem is that they have worked right-wing media into a frenzy and the Sean Hannitys and Laura Ingrahams of the world are now demanding Biden's head on a pike. It is hard to see what a possible off-ramp could be. Not holding a vote will expose the Republican caucus to withering fire but holding one and failing will as well. Holding a vote and succeeding may save some House Republicans but put others in great danger. It will also make the election about "Are Republicans capable of governing at all?" The die is now cast and there is no turning back. It probably won't end well for the Party of Lincoln. (V)
Georgia Wasn't the Only State Trump Actively Interfered with in 2020
By now, everyone who is paying attention to politics is aware of the infamous phone call between Donald Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" another 11,780 votes for Trump. Now the Detroit News has found an audio recording made just after the 2020 election in which Trump strongly urged the two Republican members of the Wayne County canvassing board, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, not to certify the election results. Wayne County is the home of Detroit and the most populous county in Michigan, a state that Trump narrowly lost. Previously, the board members were asked about the phone call and they said Trump was merely thanking them for their service helping to certify the election. The new recording shows that they were lying through their teeth. Trump was most certainly trying to convince them not to certify the election.
Among other things, Trump said: "We've got to fight for our country. We can't let these people take our country away from us." He didn't specify who "these people" are. He probably didn't have to. Wayne County is 47.8% white, 37.3% Black, 6.6% Latino, 3.6% Asian, and 4.0% mixed race.
Trump is not the only one implicated by the call. RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel was also on the line. She said: "If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. ... We will get you attorneys." Trump then added to that: "We'll take care of that." They listened and went home without signing the certification. The next day, they attempted to rescind their votes to certify, but were unsuccessful. Had they been successful, the winner of Michigan would be been uncertain and the Republican-controlled state legislature could have jumped in and pick their own preferred electors. When asked later if Trump had pressured them, they said no.
Although we doubt Jack Smith is a subscriber to the Detroit News, there is a pretty good chance he is aware of this story now since it is all over the place. We wouldn't be surprised if he gave Palmer a call and requested that she drop by for a pleasant chat. He might just be curious as to why she tried to rescind her vote the next day, after having talked to Trump. Getting Hartmann to show up will be tougher. He died in 2021. What Smith already knows is that the timestamps on the recordings, whose source has not been released, are consistent with the phone records he has subpoenaed from Verizon. The recording started at 9:55 p.m. The phone records show that the call lasted from 9:53 p.m. to 10:04 p.m., just after the board met.
Chris Thomas, a lawyer who served as Michigan's elections director for over 30 years, said that when someone offers a public official something of value (e.g., free legal services) for not performing a required duty, it raises legal issues. When Smith has his chat with Palmer, he might just bring that up. (V)
Why Did DeSantis Fail?
The end of the year is obituary time. Yesterday, New York Times reporters Shane Goldmacher, Maggie Haberman, and Nicholas Nehamas wrote the political obituary of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). The first two of these are big stars at the Times so it promised to be an interesting read. But after finishing, we think they missed the point completely, about which more later. First a summary of their take, then ours.
Early this year, DeSantis appeared to be the Great White Hope, the guy who could whittle Donald Trump down to size. It didn't happen. Not only is DeSantis not going to win the 2024 GOP nomination, but be is also not going to win the 2028 nomination, especially if he has to face Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA), Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), Nikki Haley and other heavyweights then. He's toast. How did this happen?
DeSantis clearly made a few serious strategic errors, these are what the obit focuses on. First, Trump was really on the ropes in late 2022 and early 2023. Many of the candidates he had strongly backed in the 2022 midterms went down in flames. Expectations were that the Republicans would win 30, 40, maybe 50 seats in the House and take over the Senate. Then won only nine seats in the House and lost one in the Senate, giving the Democrats an actual majority. The Republican Party was in shambles under Trump and was desperate for new leadership. DeSantis should have jumped in right then and tried to take command. Instead he waited until the end of May and then jumped in a glitch-ridden announcement on Twitter that nobody could watch. When Trump was down in January, DeSantis should have stomped all over him and finished the job. He didn't.
When DeSantis finally did get in, he created an extremely unorthodox campaign setup that was borderline illegal and staffed it mostly with loyalists who knew next to nothing about running a presidential campaign. He created a super PAC, Never Back Down, and transferred $80 million left over from his 2022 gubernatorial run to it. Individual donors could give money to his actual campaign, but they didn't. So he was in a situation where the super PAC, which wasn't legally allowed to coordinate with the campaign, had all the money and the campaign was broke. So he let the super PAC de facto run the campaign, which obviously created conflicts with his actual campaign manager, Generra Peck, who he eventually fired. There was a huge amount of infighting and backstabbing between the campaign organization and the super PAC. Recently, the super PAC's CEO and board chairman quit in disgust, three top officials were fired, and then the chief strategist packed up and left. This is no way to run a campaign, as the article points out in detail.
All of this said, and despite the obvious expertise and experience of Goldmacher and Haberman, we think they missed the point. The real problem was that the candidate was no good. Running for governor of Florida is very different from running for president. To run for governor of Florida, you assemble a half a dozen or more really rich donors who want something from the state of Florida. You get them to toss $50 million or $100 million into your campaign and allied super PACs. Then you hire top-flight ad makers who produce brilliant ads showing an upbeat candidate doing great things and carpet bomb the state with them. Meanwhile, the candidate is nowhere to be found.
To run for president you have to do retail campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire and meet the voters one at a time. Everywhere you go, you have to answer questions from voters and local reporters. They are not always polite and don't like it when you are evasive. DeSantis is a wooden candidate, does not like people, very much resents them asking pointed questions and gets angry when they demand an actual answer. He was a disaster on the campaign trail. An unknown candidate with not much of a campaign organization can do well is he is lovable and people like him. Think Bill Clinton in 1992. If DeSantis were warm and cuddly like Clinton, he could have survived, even with his campaign fighting his super PAC back in Florida. The people in Iowa don't know that and don't care. What they do know is that when a 15-year-old Iowa girl who has depression asked him if she could serve her country in the military, he mocked her. Ten million dollars in ads can't fix that. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has pointed out, candidate quality matters. DeSantis has the wrong stuff. In our view, that's what did him in, not the battles between the campaign and super PAC. (V)
State Supreme Courts Are Tossing Gerrymandered Maps
On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the highly gerrymandered legislative maps drawn by the Republican-controlled state legislature. The Court ruled that many of the districts were unconstitutional because they were not contiguous. Democrats had argued that the state Constitution calls for contiguous districts and many of the ones in the current maps consisted of two disjoint areas that are not connected, not even by the median strip on a divided highway.
The Court invited the legislature to draw new maps. However, Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) has veto power over the maps. The chance that the legislature will draw maps that Evers will sign is somewhere between nil and zero. The Court also invited all concerned parties to submit maps and arguments as to why their map is fair. The Court will then hire consultants to evaluate them. If none of them are acceptable, the Court is likely to hire a special master to draw new maps that meet can pass constitutional muster.
The ruling was 4-3, with newly elected justice Janet Protasiewicz in the majority. The Court also ruled that the current maps cannot be used in 2024, thus putting a lot of pressure on everyone. Until the districts are set, candidates can't file and the entire election process is on hold, except for statewide offices. If the new maps are fair and the parties have equal chances at winning each chamber of the state legislature, a Democratic trifecta in 2024 is conceivable. That will result in a flurry of laws enacted by Republicans in the past decade being repealed. This could be a truly seismic event.
Now that Democrats have a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, it is expected that many of the other shenanigans pulled by the Republicans in past years will be ruled unconstitutional.
Wisconsin isn't the only state where the state Supreme Court threw out some maps. In Michigan on Thursday, the state Supreme Court ordered the boundaries of 13 Detroit-area legislative districts to be redrawn. The Court said that were illegally racially gerrymandered. About 80% of Detroit residents are Black but the maps had districts in which the percentage of Black voters in each district varied from 19% to 45%. The Court ruled that this was a blatant racial gerrymander and illegal.
The Court ruled that all the disputants are to return in January to determine how to fix the problem. (V)
How Democracy Could Be Strengthened
It is hardly a secret that democracy in the U.S. is cracking in so many ways. There have been several articles about what needs to be fixed and how. Some of the ways can be fixed moderately easily if the Democrats get the trifecta and decide fixing it is a priority. Some of them are much harder. Dan Balz of The Washington Post has compiled a list of some of the things that would help. It is clear from his list that the Republicans will oppose them all because the current system enables minority rule and keeps them in power, even without a national majority. So it is up to the Democrats to do what they can when they can. Here is a summary of his major ideas:
- Gerrymandering: This is one of the easiest. It is also one of the worst offenders. In
states like Wisconsin and North Carolina, the population is almost equally divided between Democrats and Republicans yet
the state legislature is overwhelmingly Republican due to gerrymandered maps created by that same legislature. This
leads to hugely gerrymandered maps for the U.S. House. The maps for Illinois and Maryland are hugely gerrymandered in
favor of the Democrats, but that is less offensive to democracy because the states themselves are heavily Democratic.
The solution here is straightforward: Having an independent commission draw the maps. Of course the commission has to truly independent, which is not always easy to achieve, but that is easier than getting the politicians from the majority party to draw a fair map. The way to get this implemented is a ballot measure that amends the state Constitution creating the independent commission, describing its powers, and telling how its members are chosen. It could help if the rules say a two-thirds majority is needed, just in case the partisan balance happens to favor one party or the other.
- Expand the House: The House of Representatives was designed to be the "People's House,"
close to the people. That was the case back when the Constitution was adopted. It certainly isn't now; Here is a graphic
showing the number of people each member of the lower chamber represents in the Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) countries:
In the U.S., a House member represents seven times as many people as the average of the OECD countries. The solution is to expand the House from the 435 seats set by law about 90 years ago. All this would take is a law passed by Congress. One issue is space, so the House chamber would need to be radically renovated. There would also need to be a new House office building for members and staff. These can be done if the will is there. Once the will is there, the rest just takes money. There is nothing holy about 435 members.
- Proportional representation: All states have Democrats and Republicans but the minority
is poorly represented in most states. In California in 2020, Donald Trump got 34% of the votes but Republicans have only
23% of the California House seats. In Florida, Joe Biden got 48% of the votes, but Democrats have only 29% of the Florida House
seats. This problem could be solved by having multi-member districts with proportional representation. In the simplest
case, all members would be elected statewide, with the number of seats per party based on the percentage of the vote each
party got. In the case of large states, the state could be divided into a few districts, with proportional
representation in each one. Again, this can be done by Congress alone by passing a law stating how it is to be achieved.
- Ranked-choice voting and open primaries: Another fix is all-party primaries and
ranked-choice voting. Maine and Alaska have variants of this. The huge advantage of this system is that candidates can't
focus entirely on their base because if they do, they won't get any second-choice votes. With half a dozen or more
candidates, second choice votes are often the key to winning, and to get them, you usually have to get some from the
other party. A base-only strategy is very hard to pull off with ranked-choice voting and all-party primaries. There are
various ways to run such a system, but the bottom line is that being out on the fringe generally doesn't work for candidates, which tends to
eliminate fire-breathing extremists.
- Changing the Senate: The Senate is a gerrymander of the entire country. Senators from
small rural states represent far fewer constituents than senators from big urban states. This gives a minority a veto on
practically everything. The founding parents never anticipated highly polarized political parties. They thought the
senators would be wise men who had the best interests of the entire country in mind all the time. They blew that one. In
other democracies, the power of upper chambers has been trimmed over time. The power of British House of Lords was
curtailed a century ago. One solution would be to merge the two chambers into a single one. With the current sizes, the
new chamber would have 535 members, so the small rural states would not have a veto on everything. Alternatively, the
role of the Senate could be reduced in other ways—for example, it could hold up House-passed legislation for some
period of time, but not forever. All these changes would require a constitutional amendment, which would be very
difficult to get through Congress or the states.
- Filibuster: The Senate filibuster is just a Senate rule. It is not in the Constitution
and is not even a law. The Senate can change its rules whenever it wants to. In the 19th century, filibusters were rare.
In the 20th century, Southern Democrats used them to block civil rights legislation. Now virtual filibusters require 60
votes to pass almost anything, with only a few exceptions like budget reconciliation. If the Democrats get the trifecta
in 2024, they could abolish the filibuster altogether. Alternatively, they could re-introduce the Jimmy
Stewart-style talking filibuster, in which senators could talk until they dropped, but then a vote would be taken in a
few weeks.
- Electoral College:
The Electoral College has allowed the popular-vote winner to lose the election in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016.
That is about 8% of the time. The E.C. needs to go. Here, as with the Senate, a constitutional amendment is needed.
That's not going to happen. There is one way around this, however: the
National Popular Vote Compact.
This is an agreement by a number of states to cast their electoral votes for the popular-vote winner, regardless of how
their state voted. If states with 270 electoral votes join it, that is an effective end-run around the Electoral
College. Currently, 16 states and D.C. have joined it. Together that have 205 electoral votes. Michigan is likely to
join soon, bring the total EVs 220, so another 50 EVs are needed. That is not impossible.
- SCOTUS: Lifetime appointments for justices who carefully time their retirements to be
sure a president of their party replace them has enabled minority rule. Sometimes justices die at inconvenient moments
(ahem, Ruth Bader Ginsburg) but modern justices generally get the memo. Various improvements would be fixed terms of say, 18
years. An alternative would be to allow each newly elected president to replace the most senior member of the Court.
Vacancies would stay vacant until the next presidential election, in which case the president would replace the justice
who vacated his or her seat, instead of the most senior one. Another alternative is to have fixed terms and allow each
president to nominate one justice, which would cause the size of the Court to vary over time. There could be ties this
way, but if something is so disputed that it ends up 4-4 or 5-5, maybe it is better to let the appeals court ruling
hold, but only in its circuit.
- Voting rights: Who gets to vote has been contested since the Constitution was ratified.
At first, it was just propertied white men. Other groups were added later. Many states do their absolute best to make it
as difficult to vote as possible. Congress could fix this by enacting national voting laws, something the Constitution
clearly gives it the power to do. The H.R. 1 and H.R. 4 bills show how it could be done. All that would be required to
pass these would be a Democratic trifecta and an abolition or serious weakening of the filibuster.
In short, democracy in America is deeply flawed and there are many things that could be fixed, some easy and some not. The easy ones should be done quickly and a start should be made on the difficult ones. (V)
Schiff Leads in the California Senate Race
The California Senate race is interesting since the candidates are all so different, but a Democrat is favored to win in the end, so the partisan balance of the Senate is not really at issue. Here are the results of a recent Morning Consult poll:
As you can see, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is far and away the leader in the poll. He is also the leader in the money raising race. It seems very likely that he will be among the top two finalists.
Steve Garvey (R), Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) are all fighting it out for second place. It matters a lot who comes in second. If it is Garvey, then the general election will be Schiff vs. Garvey, in which case Schiff can go back to the House to do his work as a representative and not bother campaigning at all. Even if he does nothing in the general election, he will be a shoo-in. If Porter or Lee comes in second, it will be a real horse race in the general election. However, Schiff will still be favored because even in a race between two Democrats, Republicans get to vote. They are likely to pick the lesser of two evils and from their point of view, the moderate Schiff isn't as bad as the progressive Porter or the firebrand leftist Lee.
The demographics of the polling are interesting. Schiff leads heavily among older voters and men. Among seniors, Schiff is at 37% with Garvey at 22%, Lee at 13%, and Porter at 12%. Porter and Lee are much more popular with younger voters.
The three Democrats are not that far apart on most of the issues, although Lee is the most progressive of the three and Schiff is the most moderate (but not all that moderate). The one issue that separates them is Israel. Schiff says Israel should keep fighting until it has destroyed Hamas. Porter wants a ceasefire conditioned on Hamas releasing the hostages. Lee wants an unconditional ceasefire right now. Among likely voters, 59% think the U.S. is doing enough or too little to help Israel while 27% think it is doing too much. This tends to help Schiff. (V)
Arizona Is Trying to Deal with AI-Generated Disinformation Proactively
Everyone is expecting AI-generated disinformation to flood the zone in 2024. Voters are going to see AI-generated texts, photos, and videos that are simply made up. Unfortunately, many people will believe the fake information.
As you may recall, we showed a mix of photos in July, some of them real and some of them AI-generated, and asked readers to determine which were real and which were fake. Of the 13 fake photos, the percentage of people believing they were real ranged from 10% to 67%. The fake photos were something we put together quickly using Photoshop's AI engine without a lot of effort. And our readers were explicitly told that some were fake and some were real and they had plenty of time to look for details that gave the show away. Nevertheless, many people still got them wrong, in one case, two-thirds of our readers believed the fake photo. What is going to happen when less sophisticated readers are shown better quality AI-generated images made by AI-engines more advanced than Adobe's and not told some of the photos are fake?
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) is already very worried about this. Arizona was a magnet for conspiracy theories in 2020 and he is expecting it to get worse in 2024, buoyed by fake disinformation. To get a handle on this, he ran a two-day exercise with 200 stakeholders from across the state. In it, he tried to fool participants by presenting them with AI-generated audio and video of state officials spouting lies. It was similar to our test in July, but using audio and video instead of photos. Just as an example, imagine a fake video circulating on social media of the governor announcing that due to a technical glitch, the election would be delayed until Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,000 votes in 2020. What would have happened if 11,000 more Biden supporters than Trump supporters believed the fake video and didn't show on Election Day?
Cait Conley, a senior adviser at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, praised Fontes' experiment but acknowledged that AI is evolving quickly and may still fool people, even if they are alerted to the possibility of fake information. One problem is that AI is getting better every day at mimicking the voices of public officials, so when people see a fake video but the voice seems right, they may believe it.
Arizona plans to run more simulations in 2024 to get a better handle on how people react and try to deal with the fallout. Michigan is planning to run similar experiments next year as well. Conley said that her agency would be happy to help other states do the same thing. Remember, you saw it here first. (V)
A December to Rhymember, Part XV: Poetic Prose
We're still working out a few of the kinks that delayed the Sunday mailbag, so "reasons for optimism" will run tomorrow. For now, an optimism amuse bouche courtesy of T.W. in Norfolk, England, UK:
Love and empathy are the ultimate time machine.
We read or hear stories about those we've never met, and we care about their welfare and their happy endings. We learn about boys that went to war a century ago and we ache for their families and their fear. And then we rejoice in their safe return home or grieve for their loss, even though we've never once met them.
For those more personal to us, we love them while they're with us, while they're away from us, and when they have passed on to the great beyond, we love them still in our shared stories and our memories. We love others even when we're estranged, as hard as that is to endure sometimes. We often love them even if we don't like them.
We also love those who have not yet been born and those we have not yet met, knowing that there is a space for them waiting in our hearts - unshaped, unseen but present nonetheless. It is a thread that reaches back from the unknown future, calling us forward. It need only be grasped. It carries with it hope, if we should choose to accept it.
The bond of love endures time, it reaches back infinitely and it reaches forward expectantly with a strength beyond that of any matter. It has no concept of distance.
Who says that our lives are linear? Love extends to all times in all places. With it we experience histories and futures and with it we grow bigger than we can ever be physically.
Scientists may say the universe is made of matter. I say it's made of love.
Happy Christmas
Not poetry, exactly, but poetic prose.
More tomorrow; send your submissions to comments@electoral-vote.com. (Z)
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