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Error, Jordan

Wannabe speaker Jim Jordan (R-OH) thought he was close to 217 votes and thought that holding a floor vote would get the remaining holdouts in line. He was 0-for-2 with those assumptions.

This screen grab from C-SPAN's broadcast pretty much tells the tale:

212 votes for Hakeem Jeffries, 200 for Jordan, 20 for other candidates, no votes of 'present'

Not only was Jordan not elected speaker, he got one less vote than Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) did in the first round of January's 15-round extravaganza.

Can Jordan grab those last few votes, the way McCarthy did? It's not looking promising for him. Consider, first of all, the 20 "nay" votes. Here are their names, their districts, the PVI of those districts, whether or not they are among the "Biden 18," and who they voted for instead of Jordan:

Member     District  Dist. PVI Biden 18? Voted For
Don Bacon NE-02 EVEN Yes McCarthy
Lori Chavez-DeRemer OR-05 D+2 Yes McCarthy
Anthony D'Esposito NY-04 D+5 Yes former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY)
Mario Diaz-Balart FL-26 R+8 No Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)
Jake Ellzey TX-06 R+15 No Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA)
Andrew Garbarino NY-02 R+3 No Zeldin
Carlos Giménez FL-28 R+2 No McCarthy
Tony Gonzales TX-23 R+5 No Scalise
Kay Granger TX-12 R+12 No Scalise
Mike Kelly PA-16 R+13 No Scalise
Jennifer Kiggans VA-02 R+2 Yes McCarthy
Nick LaLota NY-01 R+3 Yes Zeldin
Mike Lawler NY-17 D+3 Yes McCarthy
John Rutherford FL-05 R+11 No Scalise
Mike Simpson ID-02 R+14 No Scalise
Steve Womack AR-03 R+15 No Scalise
Ken Buck CO-04 R+13 No Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN)
John James MI-10 R+3 No Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK)
Doug LaMalfa CA-01 R+12 No McCarthy
Victoria Spartz IN-05 R+11 No Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY)

As you can see, there isn't one, single problem that Jordan faces as he tries to find 17 more votes. It's not a group of, say, McCarthy allies who might be persuaded to fall in line by the former speaker. What you've really got here, to a greater or lesser extent, are about 10 members for whom Jordan is just too extreme and about 10 members who just dislike Jordan and/or the way he tried to claim power. In the latter group, for example, is Mario Diaz-Balart, who told reporters after the vote: "The one thing that will never work with me—if you try to pressure me, if you try to threaten me, then I shut off," and said he had no intention of changing his vote. Diaz-Balart's fellow Floridian, Carlos Giménez, agreed that he wasn't going to change his vote, "especially now, in the light of these pressure tactics."

Yesterday, we mentioned that the pressure tactics could include threats, direct or implied, against members or their families. Well, now there are specifics to back that up. The wife of Don Bacon shared with Politico some of the anonymous messages she's gotten on her cell phone in the past few days. For example:

Your husband will not hold any political office ever again. What a disappoint [sic] and failure he is.

And:

Talk to your husband tell him to step up and be a leader and help the Republican Party get a speaker there's too much going on in the world for all this going on in the Republican Party you guys take five steps forward and then turn around take 20 steps backwards no wonder our party always ends up getting screwed over.

As you can see above, Bacon is one of the "no" votes.

Jordan thought he could huddle with the 20 holdouts after the first vote, win them over to his side, and get himself elected in a second vote. With that faulty presumption, he made it 0-for-3, and he eventually concluded he would have to postpone the second round of voting to today. There is a very good chance that not only will he not make up ground in the next vote, he will actually drop below 200 votes. Several GOP members reportedly only pledged to vote Jordan on the first ballot, in the name of party unity. If they now regard themselves as free agents, who can do what's best for themselves as opposed to what's best for the Conference, then Jordan's bid is in even deeper trouble.

Meanwhile, the House keeps lurching toward the solution that has been in front of them from the beginning. The anti-Jordan forces want to confer additional powers upon Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry (R-NC). They have been talking to several moderate Democrats, who agree, and who have reportedly got House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) warming up to the plan.

In short, we may have an answer today to the question of who will run the House (at least, in the short term). It's just not the answer that Jordan was hoping for. (Z)

Lesko Is Done With This Mess

Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) was first elected in 2018, and so is now in the middle of her third term in the House. It will also be her last term, as she announced yesterday that she will not run for reelection.

In the statement announcing her decision, Lesko said her primary motivation for retiring is "to spend more time with my husband, my 94-year-old mother, my three children, and my five grandchildren." That said, if you doubt it is a coincidence that the Representative got to this point at this particular moment, you are right to think that way. She also explained: "Right now, Washington, D.C. is broken; it is hard to get anything done. Please know that I will continue my work to improve Congress and to help my constituents and the American people. We must all work toward that end." She is, incidentally, an outspoken Trumper and one of the members who supported the overturning of the 2020 election, so she may not have the most credibility when it comes to fixing what is broken in Washington or working together with everyone.

Consistent with Lesko's Trumpiness, her district, AZ-08, is quite red at R+10. She only won by 4 points in her first election, which was a special election prompted by the resignation of Trent Franks in the midst of a sexual harassment scandal. She won election in her own right in 2018, and again in 2020, in a walk both times, and she was unopposed in 2022. So, even though the seat will be open, it is going to be a Republican hold barring something very strange. Super Trumpy former AG candidate Abe Hamadeh (R) has already declared, while super Trumpy former Senate candidate Blake Masters (R) may jump in as well. So, it could be quite the show. (Z)

Biden Will Take a Pass on Jordan

No, not that Jordan. The country of Jordan. During his Middle East trip, which commences today, Joe Biden was supposed to go to Israel to meet with PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and then head to Jordan for a sit down with King Abdullah II, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. However, after an explosion at a hospital in Gaza left hundreds of people dead, the leaders all agreed that it would neither be safe nor appropriate for Biden to go to Jordan. So it's just Israel.

On the subject of the President's travels, we wrote yesterday that, from where we sit, Biden seems to be handling this crisis very well. In response to that, reader J.E. in Brooklyn, NY, brings to our attention this article about the President's trip from The New York Times. If you think of the comments section as being something like a Democratic-leaning focus group, the early indications are... mixed. Quite a few commenters are with Biden all the way. Others are not happy, either because they think he is taking an unnecessary risk, or they think he hasn't done enough to free American hostages, or they think he is too strong/too weak in his support for Israel/the Palestinians.

The point here is that this is a rather more fraught foreign affairs crisis than is generally the case. With the attack on Ukraine, it was pretty clear who was in the right and who was in the wrong, unless you are Donald Trump. With Israel and Palestine, it's a little more complicated.

It's not only the comments section of the Times and other websites that speak to this, it's also the mail we've been getting from readers. If you look back at the most recent mailbag, there were relatively few 100% pro-Israel letters and considerably more "this situation is messy" and/or "Let's not give Israel a free pass" letters. We were neither surprised nor concerned that it worked out this way. It wasn't a surprise because if one is pro-Israel, there isn't too much to say, other than "I stand with Israel." On the other hand, if one thinks the current crisis is more complicated than that, there is quite a bit to say.

We weren't concerned, meanwhile, because we think it's very fair to say (or write) that what is happening right now is not as simple as "Israel good, everyone else bad." Reader S.C. in Mountain View, CA, puts it rather more succinctly than we could hope to do:

The war crimes that Hamas committed against Israeli civilians do not justify the war crimes that the State of Israel is now committing against the civilians who live in the Gaza Strip.

When I was a child in Sunday school in the late 1950s, bringing quarters my parents gave to me to the synagogue so that trees could be planted in Israel to make the desert bloom, my classmates and I were told that Israel was "a land without people for a people without land."

The first part of that phrase was a lie. It seems that there has been a 75-year project to erase the Palestinian people both figuratively and literally. It has to stop. The illegal settlements have to be removed. The people on both sides who hate each other have to step aside so that the people on both sides who are willing to compromise can achieve the lasting peace with justice that both sides deserve.

What it amounts to is that both the Israelis and the Palestinians (that's the Palestinians, mind you, not Hamas) have a compelling argument here.

In response to the mailbag, we got a number of messages taking exception to the general tone and tenor of the "it's complicated" letters. We expected that, as well. We definitely do not try to make readers upset, in hopes of provoking a response. After all, we are not Fox "News." But we can foresee when a strong response is forthcoming.

We've decided to share three of those response messages right now, for a couple of reasons. First, this is a big enough subject that it didn't quite feel right to let those very heartfelt letters sit there for a week. Second, it is a reminder of the main theme of this item, namely that the President has been handed an incredibly tricky challenge.

First up is S.H. in Hanoi, Vietnam:

Given the leftward lean of Electoral-Vote.com and its readership, I was not entirely surprised to see letters sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and critical of the Israeli government. To an extent, I am in agreement with the sentiments expressed in the Sunday mailbag by some of these correspondents, particularly those of V.P. in New York and E.B. in Seattle.

That being said, it was a bit disconcerting to see the first two sections of the mailbag ("I Stand With Israel" and "The Other Side of the Story") be as lopsided as they were, with two very brief statements of support for Israel, followed by seven letters generally more critical of Israel than of Hamas. It couldn't have been clearer that Hamas is playing by an entirely different set of moral rules than Israel, and yet the criticism of Hamas from many on the left has been, at most, grudgingly offered, and frequently framed in terms that blame, or just stop short of blaming, the Israelis for Hamas's murderous rampage.

Take, for instance, the terse summary from J.C. in Ulaanbaatar, who wrote that "[V]iolence in response to 75 years of apartheid is evil and completely unjustified. At the same time, no one should be surprised at violence in response to 75 years of apartheid." At first glance, that appears to be a straightforward condemnation of Hamas. But then comes that second sentence, which reasons that nobody should be surprised by what happened. Thus, J.C. seems to be saying that "evil and completely unjustified" murders of innocent civilians are also entirely "unsurprising." If no act of depravity would surprise J.C., then what was the purpose of adding that sentence other than to offer a backdoor justification for Hamas's actions, and suggest that the Israelis had it coming?

Taking a different tack, C.L. in Boulder offers a more detailed justification for what happened, and attempts to prophylax against the charge of antisemitism by noting: (1) that Hamas's attack "had nothing to do with Israel being a Jewish state"; and (2) that antisemitism is used as a verbal cudgel to short-circuit any criticism of Israel's foreign policy. The first notion strongly suggests that C.L. has, at absolute best, a superficial understanding of the politics of Gaza; making a distinction between "Israel" and "Jewish state" is an attempt for C.L. to have the cake and eat it, too. But it's a hair short of pure fantasy. Here, for instance, is the conclusion to Article Seven of the Hamas Charter of 1988:
The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems [sic] fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say 'O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' Only the Gharkad tree...would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.
This is most definitely not the kind of policy statement of a group that sees a distinction between Jews and Israelis, and it all but states that they also consider Jews who live outside the borders of Israel to be fair game for the kind of treatment they just meted out in southern Israel last week.

In the past 15 years there have been kinda-sorta partial backtracks issued by Hamas with respect to their charter, but they have never fully repudiated it, so it is safe to say that hatred of Jews, and not merely Israelis, remains very much at the root of Hamas philosophy and is shared by those who sympathize with them. Further, Hamas continues to refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist, which makes negotiations for a two-state solution a basic impossibility, since Hamas does not negotiate in good faith (the situation with the leadership in the West Bank is simultaneously more complicated but also marginally more hopeful).

I am inclined to agree with the notion that it's shortsighted and unproductive to accuse anyone who criticizes Israel of antisemitism. But I also think that there has been ample evidence this week of left-wing antisemitism. I would have hoped that the overt brutality of Hamas—actions which the Israeli army would never, ever organize or sanction against Palestinians—might have opened some eyes and lead to even a little self-examination of many on the left who equate Israel with apartheid-era South Africa or the like, but it's been a disappointing week.

Next, C.S. in Newport, Wales, UK:

J.C. in Ulaanbaatar commented "no one should be surprised at violence in response to 75 years of apartheid." I presume apartheid refers to the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians. But the comparison is just wrong. Quite apart from the fact that the legal treatment of Palestinians in Israel and Palestine is different in many aspects from the one of Black people in South Africa, all that the ANC asked for was equality for everyone. They did not deny white South Africans their right to live in South Africa. Hamas, on the other hand, denies Israel's right to exist. In fact, the Hamas Foundation Charter repeatedly refers to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which surely means any statement from them must be assumed to be as truthful as any from Trump.

And finally, D.A in Riverdale, NY:

The many anti-Israel comments in your Sunday mailbag left me cold.

While there are many reasons to question Israeli government policy, no one mentioned the long history of murders committed by various Palestinian terrorists: Hamas, Al-Aqsa Brigades, Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization, Abu Nidal organization, Hezbollah. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has neither the desire nor the ability to control these entities and absent that, a peaceful settlement will be nearly impossible.

My greatest hope for peace was when Salam Fayyad was recruited by the PA to install a functioning government, but his actions threatened to break the "Iron Rice Bowl" of corruption that permeates the PA. He was booted from his positions in the government.

Hamas' goals are quite clear. Simply read its charter: If there ever should occur a point in time where a PA would control or eliminate the terrorists in its midst and an Israeli government not beholden to the Israeli right-wing would take office, then and only then will peace develop.

I'm not holding my breath that those conditions will evolve in the foreseeable future.

Thanks to all for your thoughts. And good luck to Joe Biden, because he's gonna need it. (Z)

Trump Legal News: Hate Me Harder

There wasn't much Trump legal news of interest on Tuesday, but Judge Tanya Chutkan did issue the written version of the gag order she imposed on the former president on Monday. You can read it here, if you wish (it's only three pages).

Despite intimating that the order would spell out the penalties for any violations, it does not do so. And so, we will not learn the answer to that question until Trump crosses the line. As he is clearly getting angrier and angrier with Chutkan, we presume it's only a matter of time. And there are many others who agree with us (see here, here, here and here for examples).

Also, as long as we are on the subject, Rolling Stone had an interesting piece yesterday on Trump's legal "strategy" in his ongoing New York fraud case. Truth be told, the subhead pretty much tells the tale, so here it is:

There's no chance of actually winning on the merits. So Trump and his lawyers are hoping to score some PR points, kick up as much dirt as possible, enrage the judge, trash some of the witnesses, and turn the process into a media circus.

In the body of the article, the authors talk about how Trump's lawyers are deliberately asking questions they are not supposed to ask, are dragging things out by being extra verbose and by repeating themselves, and are just generally doing a bunch of things that officers of the court are not supposed to do. Defense counsel has already been fined $7,500, and there's every chance that bigger penalties could be headed down the pike, including much larger fines, time in jail for contempt of court and, according to some experts, potential disbarment. It continues to boggle the mind how good Trump is at finding people willing to risk utter ruin on his behalf. (Z)

Campaign Finance News: This Really Stinks

We've had a number of items this week in response to the Q3 FEC filing deadline. And hopefully you can stand at least one more, about the presidential campaign that has the highest amount of debt. We will tell you whose campaign it is later, in case you want to take your best guess right now.

What we'll tell you, as you ponder it, is that the presidential campaign with the most debt does not involve someone who is currently running for president. Recall the familiar announcement that "[X] is suspending their campaign for [Y]." As long as the campaign is suspended, as opposed to terminated, the campaign organization can continue to take in and spend money. But until their balance sheet is zero, this also means they have to continue keeping the FEC updated, quarter after quarter, even if the campaign is no longer a going concern.

Unless a failed candidate for office plans to run again or to run for some other position, and so decides to try to retain a nest egg, campaigns are generally in the red when they suspend operations. Some of the more decent politicos do what they can to settle all accounts. John Glenn, for example, worked for more than 20 years to settle all accounts from his 1984 presidential bid. However, if it's a less decent politico, there isn't all that much a vendor can do to force payment from a campaign that has no cash left, since the candidate themselves is not personally liable for the debts.

Why would a vendor stick their neck out, knowing how the system works? Well, it's undoubtedly exciting to be involved with such a high-profile client. Further, some vendors enter into the arrangement knowing full well that the debts incurred can turn into leverage. Scholars have confirmed that owing money can have a distinct effect on the officeholder's voting behavior (see this PDF for one example). On the other hand, there are also vendors who had no ulterior motives, who did business with a losing horse, and who got left high and dry. In other words, the current system offers something of a backdoor around campaign finance laws, while also leaving open the possibility that small businesses get the short end of the stick.

There's likely no way to fix the situation, and even if there was, that solution is unlikely to get through Congress as currently constituted, and then to stand up to the inevitable Supreme Court challenge. Still, it's regrettable. Oh, and the presidential campaign with the highest debt load is... Gingrich 2012, which owes nearly $5 million to its creditors. Needless to say, those who are owed money shouldn't hold their collective breath waiting for Newt to do the right thing, especially since he's barely lifted a finger to defray that debt in the last 11 years. (Z)

Who Is Hurt by RFK Jr.? The First Polls Are In

Let us begin here by reiterating that it's really, really difficult right now to measure Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s impact on the presidential race, in part because the election is still over a year away, in part because people who say they will vote third party often change their minds at the last minute, and in part, in this particular case, because it's hard to know how many people are actually familiar with RFK Jr.'s ideas, and how many people are just seeing the name "Kennedy" and making their decisions based on that.

With that said, there have now been four polls that compared Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden to Trump vs. Biden vs. Kennedy, so we might as well do a brief, very preliminary report. Two of the polls were conducted before RFK Jr. officially switched to independent on Oct. 9, though after the writing was on the wall. The third was conducted on both sides of his announcement, while the fourth was done entirely after he jumped ship on the Democratic Party:

Pollster Dates Trump Biden Kennedy Net
Ipsos/Reuters Oct. 3-4 35% 35% - EVEN
Ipsos/Reuters Oct. 3-4 33% 31% 14% Trump +2%
Cygnal Oct. 3-5 45% 45% - EVEN
Cygnal Oct. 3-5 40% 39% 12% Trump +1%
Beacon/Fox Oct. 6-9 48% 49% - Biden +1%
Beacon/Fox Oct. 6-9 41% 41% 16% EVEN
Marist Oct. 11 46% 49% - Biden +3%
Marist Oct. 11 37% 44% 16% Biden +7%

So what do we learn here? That's right, not a damn thing. In the first three polls, the presence of Kennedy helps Trump by 2 points, 1 point and 1 point. In the fourth poll, the presence of Kennedy helps Biden by 4 points. Not only are all of those within the margin of error, but they average out to EVEN.

It is improbable that the impact of Kennedy will be clear anytime soon, and it's possible that it will never be (at least, not until the votes are counted). That said, his "independent" candidacy is being funded primarily by right-wing benefactors. If those benefactors conclude that investing in Junior is a crapshoot at best, they might close the checkbooks, and he might struggle to keep things going. Failing that, he'll be an ongoing wildcard. (Z)


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