Trump Snares A Big DeSantis Donor and More

Now that the primaries are de facto over—after all, two very unrepresentative states have voted, with the total vote count so far about 0.14% of the 2020 general-election electorate—the 2024 general election is revving up. Consequently, Donald Trump is going after the donors who backed other candidates, and making some progress getting them. After all, they know that the early bird gets the government contract or the investigation quashed or some other desirable goodie, so they are interested in talking turkey, even though the candidate looks more like a pumpkin.

Today is the kickoff. Trump will dine tonight at the Palm Beach mansion of billionaire investor John Paulson. Also invited are about two dozen Republican megadonors, who want to inspect the merchandise before buying in. What they expect to learn that they do not already know, we cannot imagine.

On Saturday, Trump met in Las Vegas with billionaire hotel owner Don Ahern, billionaire casino owners Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, and billionaire aerospace tycoon Robert Bigelow. The latter, a former fan of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), promised Trump $1 million for starters. There might be more later, but that might be contingent on Trump adopting positions Bigelow likes. In particular, he is something of a moderate and does not approve of extreme positions on abortion. In fact, when DeSantis signed a ban on abortions after 6 weeks, Bigelow closed his checkbook and bade DeSantis farewell.

Another big donor Trump has nabbed is Texas oil billionaire Tim Dunn, who just tossed $5 million in for MAGA Inc. Oklahoma oil man Harold Hamm recently had lunch at Mar-a-Lago. Trump is also working to get billionaire Robert Mercer and his activist daughter, Rebekah Mercer, back in line. The Mercers were onboard in 2016 but have cut back on giving since then. Ditto casino billionaire Steve Wynn, but he seems to be warming up to Trump again.

Cozying up to the moneymen is a huge change for Trump. In his previous two runs, he depended almost entirely on small donors. Now he realizes that the big ones have nowhere else to go if they want favors, or if they just want big tax cuts without some specific quid pro quo for their generosity.

Still, Trump does not have a monopoly on the whales. Charles Koch is still backing Nikki Haley, though if she loses South Carolina big time, he's probably going to throw in the towel. It is very unlikely that he will support Trump, he could just keep his money to himself.

While both Trump and Biden are furiously raising money, in the end it probably doesn't matter that much. By now, everyone 18 and older in the country surely has a pretty good idea of who Trump and Biden are and what they stand for. Watching 500 more TV commercials is unlikely to change much. The PR associated with having the bigger fundraising quarter might actually be more important than the money, though, so they are both focusing on collecting as much as they can, just to beat the other team. There's also value in spending on ground game—getting people registered and to the polls—which Biden certainly knows. There are people in Trump's orbit who know, as well, but can they convince Trump? It's a good question. (V)

Biden Is Finally Campaigning Seriously

Speaking of campaigning, Joe Biden is finally seriously hitting the stump. On Tuesday he went into the lion's den: Donald Trump's home state of Florida. He doesn't seriously think he can win the state, as his former ticket-mate, Barack Obama, twice did. But he knows there are Democratic millionaires and billionaires in the Sunshine State, so he went there to raise money, just as Republicans sometimes go to California to raise money. You go where the filthy lucre is. Biden held two fundraisers. Interestingly enough, when Air Force One landed, it was on the same tarmac as Trump Force One, Trump's elderly 757 private jet. The last 757 rolled off the Boeing assembly line in 2004. Trump's was built in 1991 and he bought it fourth-hand, after it served two airlines and as a corporate jet for a while.

Biden spoke to donors in Jupiter and Miami, both of which have plenty of big fish for both parties. He didn't hold any public events, just the fundraisers. This is evidence that he is not going to seriously contest Florida, a large and expensive state that used to be a swing state. If Floridians want to see Biden in person, they are going to have to drive to Georgia, where Biden is sure to campaign vigorously. The Florida Turnpike and then I-75 goes from Miami to Atlanta, but it is 660 miles and a 10-hour drive.

Today Biden will be in Michigan. He received the endorsement of the UAW last week and now wants to address the members at a big rally to thank them and ask for their votes.

Michigan might be a problem for Biden because it has a large Arab-American community (2.1% of the population) and they are not too happy with his support for Israel. The ones who are aware of Trump's Middle East policy ("What Bibi wants, Bibi gets") might decide that Biden is the lesser of two evils and still (very grudgingly) vote for him. The ones who have no idea what Trump wants might vote for Trump. Biden might just bring this up during his speech.

Then there is the complicating factor that Young Jared is in bed with the Saudis, not that the Saudis with their billions have ever done anything whatsoever to help their brother Arabs, the Palestinians. In any event, Biden figures that getting the union vote will compensate for his problems with Arab Americans. And, of course, some Arab Americans are union members, which puts them on the spot.

Some members of Biden's team want to deemphasize foreign policy in Michigan and play up the historically very low unemployment rate and how he beat inflation. When addressing the union members, talking about his support for their union and other unions and how jobs are plentiful and inflation low, could change the subject from Gaza to the kitchen table, at least for some voters. Michigan is an important state but Biden's approach has to be managed carefully, more so than in, say, neighboring Wisconsin (0.3% Arab American). (V)

Trump Keeps on Winning

Remember, Donald Trump's idea of winning is that he isn't convicted of a felony before the election. His trial for inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, is nominally scheduled for March 4, but is very unlikely to happen then because the judge is waiting for the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. to rule on whether presidents are like kings and thus above the law. It's basically a yes/no question and shouldn't be that hard to decide. Still, it has now been 3 weeks since the court held oral hearings and still no decision. The longer they take, the better it is for Trump.

So what is taking the Appeals Court so long? The senior judge, Karen Henderson, is a George H.W. Bush appointee. She could assign herself the job of writing the opinion, as long as she is in the majority. Since she knows what Trump cares about is delay, not winning at this level (because SCOTUS is going to make the real decision), she could take weeks or even months to write it and the other two judges, who clearly don't believe Trump has immunity, can't force her to speed up.

Once there is a decision, Trump could ask for an en banc hearing, but Special Counsel Jack Smith may appeal directly to the Supreme Court on the grounds that it is the only Court that can really decide this question, so let's cut the Kabuki Theater and have the Supreme Court hear the case expeditiously.

But even if the Appeals Court finally makes up its mind and SCOTUS takes the case quickly, the timing of the decisions is important. Even with all the delays, there is still time for Trump to be stuck in Judge Tanya Chutkan's courtroom on trial before the Republican National Convention. If he is found guilty, this would put the RNC on the spot. Could it somehow block his nomination if he were a convicted felon by July 15? Maybe. But the chances of a conviction before the convention are growing smaller by the day, even if the trial begins in April or May.

Smith says that he will need about 2 months to present the evidence. Trump's defense team could take as long as it wants to argue his case. Of course, the judge doesn't have to allow every D.C. police officer to testify as to what he or she saw on Jan. 6. Chutkan might decide that giving the defense as much time as the prosecution was fair, which would result in a 4-month trial. If it began in mid-May, it would end in mid-September, just as voters were starting to pay attention. A conviction in September, just before early voting started, could be devastating, so Trump is desperately trying to delay the start of the trial at least until mid-summer. On the other hand, he would probably have to be in court every weekday, so no campaigning for him at the height of the campaign except on weekends. But until the courts get their acts together, Trump is safe. (V)

Right-Wing Media Are Going Nuts over Which Candidate Taylor Swift Might Endorse

Conspiracy theories are nothing new in right-wing media, but stories about Taylor Swift and her new squeeze, Travis Kelce, are making a huge splash. From her past actions, righties know she is a Democrat. This has led them to spin some truly wild tales.

The biggest current conspiracy theory is that somehow, the Kansas City Chiefs' victory over the Baltimore Ravens was rigged so that the Chiefs can make it into the Super Bowl, their fourth appearance in the past 5 years. Then at halftime, Swift and the Chiefs' tight end, Kelce, will get on the podium to announce their engagement and endorse Joe Biden at the same time. This will cause millions of Swifties to register to vote the next day and they will all vote for Biden on account of the dual endorsement. Needless to say, this is scary stuff, since 53% of U.S. adults say they are fans of the singer and 16% are "avid fans." Among the avid fans, 55% are Democrats, 23% are independents, and 23% are Republicans.

Of course, this is all nonsense. How did Swift get the Ravens to throw the game to the Chiefs? Did George Soros buy them all off? How come nobody leaked that? A lot of people must have been in on the deal, surely some of them Republicans. And how do you explain the fact that the Chiefs made it to the Super Bowl on their own 3 of the 4 years prior to this? Could it be that they simply have a very strong team? That little detail doesn't fit the model, so it has to be discarded.

Clearly Republicans are worried about Swift, though. Fox News' Jeanine Pirro urged Swift not to get involved in politics because it will alienate some of her fans. Sorry, Jeanine, but it is not going to work. Swift, who has two houses in Tennessee, endorsed Democrat Phil Bredesen in 2018 in his attempt to unseat Sen. Marcia Blackburn (R-TN). She also endorsed Biden in 2020 and has advocated for reproductive rights for women. She definitely breaks the mold of celebrities trying to avoid politics (see: Jordan, Michael, on the subject of "Republicans buy sneakers, too"). Many of Swift's biggest fans are young women, some of whom don't pay much attention to politics. Her influence on them is what Republicans are scared of. If she tells them they might need an abortion someday and Republicans want to make sure they won't be able to get one if they ever need it, that could get some of her fans to register and vote (for Democrats). Last September, she urged her fans to register on vote.org, and 35,000 of them did in a single day. Republicans are deathly afraid of what a sustained push could do. (V)

Right-Wing Media Are Also Going Nuts over ... Airlines

As if Taylor Swift isn't causing enough aggravation in the rightosphere, another bête noire is the DEI policy adopted by some airlines (and the FAA). The fear is not so much being handed a small bag of pretzels by a Black flight attendant who ostensibly got her job despite her inability to hand out bags of pretzels properly. It is (the nutty fear) that the pilot was hired due to his race rather than his ability to fly airplanes.

How did this start? On Fox Business, some random FAA employee said that DEI programs could compromise aviation safety. For example, a door plug blew out on a recent Alaska Airlines flight. The former FAA employee suggested that maybe it was installed by an affirmative action employee at Boeing who got hired based on his race and who knew nothing about door plug installation. Of course, maybe it was installed by a churchgoing white Christian nationalist man who was too busy praying to install the door plug properly. Anything is possible. All that the employee knows is that Boeing has a DEI program, and in his (not-so-) humble opinion, that could compromise safety.

Just for the record, neither Boeing nor the FAA has changed their DEI policies recently. The ones in force now are the same ones that were in force during the Trump administration. The big difference between now and then is not the DEI policies of any organization, but who is president. When a wheel fell off a jet in Atlanta last week, Donald Trump Jr. said it must be due to DEI. Anything that goes wrong anywhere in the country now is obviously due to DEI. Truth be told we are surprised that right-wingers have not realized that Taylor Swift isn't the reason the Ravens lost to the Chiefs (see above)—DEI is.

Junior isn't alone. Podcaster Charlie Kirk said he has no choice but to be prejudiced against Black pilots because they benefited from a DEI program. He said: "I'm sorry, if I see a Black pilot, I'm going to be like: 'Boy, I hope he is qualified.'" Of course, other people might think: "The pilot is wearing a small cross on a necklace. Maybe he doesn't know how to fly a plane and is just assuming God will handle it."

The fraction of pilots and flight engineers who are Black grew from 2.7% in 2017 to 3.6% in 2023, Asians fell from 4.2% to 2.7%. Latinos rose from 6.8% to 10.7%. Women went from 9% to 8.3%. These numbers go up and down over time just due to turnover in a high-pressure job.

Jessica Muench, chief DEI officer at United Airlines, said: "We are talking about fishing for talent in new ponds." She also noted that United is putting money into academies that train pilots and mechanics to offer scholarships to applicants who are qualified to be admitted but who can't afford the steep tuition. Students at flight academies are years from being hired by any airline. They first have to graduate. They take the same tests as everyone else. The Air Line Pilots Association, a union for 77,000 pilots in the U.S. and Canada, said "Flying is the safest mode of transportation in the world thanks in large part to airline pilots, professionals that are all held to the highest training and qualification standards." (V)

The House: Everyone Is Angry with Someone, Part I

It's no secret that the Freedom Caucus is always angry with everyone, but now other groups are also angry with someone. Because Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) margin is so small (3 wrong votes can derail a bill), all kinds of small groups suddenly have discovered they have veto power. Case in point: In the 2017 tax cut, Donald Trump stuck it to the high-tax blue states by limiting the tax deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) to $10,000. That hits California and New York much harder than it hits Texas and Florida. Take that, blue states.

But there is an oops! here. Five Republicans in swing districts in New York know the Democrats are going to hang the SALT deduction reduction around their necks and want the House to rescind the reductions. This puts them in opposition to MAGAworld, which wants to stick it to the blue states. The only problem for MAGAworld is that those five votes are the difference between a bill passing and it failing. Just saying "tough luck" could be the difference between speaker Johnson and speaker Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) next January. The blue state Republicans fighting for their lives want the SALT deduction raised from $10,000 to $20,000 for a married couple.

To make their point, four of them voted against a procedural rule Johnson wanted passed. This definitely got Johnson's attention and a promise to negotiate with them. Then they switched their votes. What happens if the Freedom Caucus, which wants to stick it to the blue states, balks if the deduction is raised and the moderates balk if it is not raised?

Since the FC and other Republicans oppose increasing the SALT deduction, Johnson will need Democratic votes as well to get the bill passed. Turns out Democrats also have a wish list. Who knew? They want the child tax credit increased from $1,600 to $2,000. Most Republicans don't want this, but the House is so dysfunctional that no one remembers that you often have to make compromises to get bills passed. Everyone has forgotten that, but the Republicans' tiny majority and internal disarray require compromises to get anything done. This is where Johnson's leadership skills get tested.

In the end, Johnson was able to get the tax bill through the House on Wednesday night. It was a truly bipartisan result; 188 Democrats and 169 Republicans voted in favor and 23 Democrats and 47 Republicans voted against. There's an expansion of the child tax credit and of the low-income housing tax credit, as well as some tax cuts for businesses. No change to SALT, however. We shall see what, if anything, Johnson gave away to get most of his conference to play nice. Meanwhile, the real politicking will begin if and when there's a border bill (keep reading). (V)

The House: Everyone Is Angry with Someone, Part II

Disarray isn't only applicable to House Republicans. House Democrats have a sizable amount of it as well. Joe Biden is standing on his head to get the still-unwritten Lankford-Murphy border bill written and passed through the Senate. He is willing to give Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) whatever he wants to get the job done. Lankford is operating in good faith and if he gets what he wants, will move the process along. One of the things he wants is no permanent status for the Dreamers. Biden is willing to accept that to get a bill.

This position has made Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the House Progressive Caucus, furious. She said: "The president would just do very well to remember it has never worked for Democrats to just take up Republican talking points and think that somehow Republicans are going to turn around and thank us for it." Her opposition, and that of the Progressive Caucus, means that even if a miracle happens and Lankford-Murphy passes the Senate and Johnson holds a vote on it, it could fail due to opposition from progressives. This is what Donald Trump wants. Then he can campaign on "Only I can fix the border." If Republicans hold the House and can pick up one seat in the Senate and Trump wins based on his promises about the border, then Jayapal is probably not going to like what happens next. Sometimes in politics you have to accept things you really don't like to avoid things that are even worse. But not everyone has read the memo.

But maybe Jayapal is just posturing, trying to dissuade Biden as best she can, and when push comes to shove, she will cave and support the leader of her party. Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, thinks the progressive left is a paper tiger and is all bark and no bite. Teixeira thinks that a border deal will pick up more marginal Republicans than it loses progressive Democrats and is thus a net win for the Democrats. William Galston, at the Brookings Institution, thinks that those Democrats who look at things from a "how many votes does this get?" perspective will go along with Biden but those who look at it from a moral perspective won't. Joel Kotkin of the Urban Reform Institute thinks that working-class Latino and Black voters have no interest at all in being inundated with undocumented immigrants who are prepared to work for peanuts. He thinks that for Biden, being tough on the border has only upsides and no downsides. This is why Trump wants to block the bill at all costs. (V)

Sinema's Fundraising Is Cratering

We still don't know what Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) was thinking when she decided to leave the Democratic Party and become an independent. Maybe she had a good reason, but Democrats don't think so. Consequently, they have drastically cut back their donations to her reelection campaign. In Q4 2023, she raised only $595,000, while spending $749,000 to raise it. Spending more than you take in is not generally thought to be a good long-term strategy. Her haul is less than 20% of what Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) raised ($3.3 million) and 30% of what Kari Lake raised ($2 million). Gallego has $7 million in the bank but Lake has only $700,000. Sinema's low fundraising isn't a problem financially, since she has $11 million in her campaign account, but it indicates a lack of enthusiasm.

The poor result wasn't for lack of trying. She spent $124,000 on fundraising consulting and related costs. She also spent $141,000 on digital ads. She is also worried about her personal security and spent $100,000 for security services and $77,000 for a secure vehicle. But she spent only $7,700 on staffers, a ridiculously low figure for a Senate candidate.

The lack of enthusiasm could be a problem because, as an independent, she has to petition to get on the ballot. She needs 40,000 signatures and she needs them before the April 8 deadline. She can hire people to try to collect them, but few Democrats are likely to sign (because they despise her) and probably the only Republicans who will sign are those who think she will pull more votes from Gallego than from Lake. Maybe there are enough independents who genuinely don't know what they want, but she can't even start the process until she declares that she is a candidate. There isn't much time left. Heaven only knows what she is up to. (V)

The Special Election to Replace "George Santos" Is a Test Run

On Feb. 13, a special election to replace "George Santos" will be held in NY-03 on Long Island. The district leans slightly Democratic, with a PVI of D+2 (though Joe Biden won it by 8 points in 2020). The Democrat is former representative Tom Suozzi, who sat in that seat until he decided he preferred being governor to being a representative. That didn't work out so well, so now he wants his old job back. The Republican candidate, Ethiopian-born Mazi Pilip, is a veteran—of the Israeli Defense Forces. She is also a member of the Nassau County legislature. Pilip is a mother of seven and a registered Democrat. She doesn't like talking to the media, so nobody has a clue what her motivation is or what she would do in Congress.

The race is already a test case for November. Democrats are attacking Pilip on abortion and tying her to MAGAworld. This is a practice run for November when they are planning to do the same thing if it works in NY-03. But Suozzi has also spent $250,000 on ads where he touts his support for greater border security. This is a recognition that in the 2022 House races in New York, Republicans ran on their plans to stop immigration and deal harshly with criminals.

This race is important not only because the Republicans' majority in the House now is so precarious, but NY-03 is the prototype of the suburban swing district Democrats must win in November to capture the House. If Suozzi loses, Democrats will cry enough tears in their wine to turn it into grape juice. It will also emphasize Biden's overall weakness and give hope to the five Republicans who flipped Democratic seats in 2022. On the other hand, a Suozzi win, especially if big, would show the (House) Democrats that Biden's low approval ratings won't drag them down and that abortion beats immigration as a top issue in suburban districts.

In any event, the results will be analyzed precinct by precinct for clues about how to campaign with every possible audience for the rest of the year. (V)

One Judge Could Upend the Georgia Elections

In 2019, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg (kid sister of NPR reporter Nina Totenberg) ruled that the Georgia voting machines, which didn't have a paper trail, were untrustworthy and couldn't be used anymore. This forced the state to scrap them all and spend millions of dollars to buy new ones. This wasn't as lucrative for Dominion Voting Systems as suing Fox News, but they did manage to sell Georgia thousands of machines.

As usual, someone sued and the case got handed to Totenberg. The new machines are much better than the old ones because they print a piece of paper with the voter's choices on it. They are then scanned and saved for a possible hand recount if needed. This is far better than the old machines, which were hackable and didn't have a paper trail.

So what's the problem? The new machines print bar codes on them and it is the bar codes that are actually scanned. There isn't any way for the voter to know that the information encoded in the bar codes corresponds to how they voted. The manufacturer (or a hacker) could potentially take a ballot in which the voter voted a straight Democratic ticket but encode a straight Republican ticket in the bar codes. The people suing don't like the bar codes at all. They want printed ballots with no bar code so the scanning machines have to scan the human-readable votes. Even better would be paper ballots marked by hand and hand counted, with no machines involved at all. However, previous elections have shown that when voters mark their ballots by hand, they sometimes make a real mess of it.

The situation is not terrible because it can be tested. After an election, officials could randomly select, say, 200 ballots and run them through the scanner and see the results. Then they could manually count all 200 ballots. If the results agreed, then even if the voting machines are cheating (unlikely) they are probably not doing it more than 0.5% of the time. If the officials made the test with 1,000 random ballots and no errors turned up, then the machines are probably not changing even 0.1% of the ballots.

The problem is that even if Totenberg believes the people who don't like the bar codes, it would force Georgia to put out a tender for new machines, make a choice, buy them, test them, and train workers on them this close to an election. Even if the state could pull it off, it will surely undermine voter confidence in the election. Just imagine the headlines the day after a decision to dump the machines. They will probably be something like: "Judge doesn't trust the voting machines; orders them thrown out." How will that affect voter confidence in the election? What would Donald Trump say?

One compromise ruling the judge could make is to allow the machines but state that the electronic total the scanners give is just preliminary. It could be given to the media on Election Night with the footnote that the count is not official. The next day, the state would have to hand count every ballot. That would be the official result. If the difference with the mechanical count exceeded a certain threshold, there would have to be a second count, this time with observers from each party examining each ballot. If the second hand count agreed with the first hand count but disagreed with the machine count, then the state would have to instruct Dominion to change the software to stop printing bar codes altogether and requiring all future elections to hand-count the ballots.

The ironic thing is that hand counts also have errors. One way to minimize that is to have the hand counters put all the Trump ballots in one pile as they count and the Biden ballots in another pile. Then Republican observers could be allowed to inspect the Biden pile and pull out any ballots they believe are actually for Trump (or invalid) and vice versa. Then a committee of partisan observers and election officials would rule on every challenged ballot.

Of course, there are races other than for president on the ballot. If a race for a state Senate seat was close, then the above process could be repeated for that Senate district. The law could even be changed saying that for any race where the winner's margin was under 1%, this method would be applied with the state paying for it. But if any candidate who lost by more than 1% wanted the "separate pile method" used, the candidate would have to pay for it. Something like this would probably be workable. (V)

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