Congrats to Michigan on their first football title since 1997, and to readers who are fans/alumni of the school!

In honor of the occasion, here's a trivia question: Even before last night, Michigan was one of four schools to have won national championships in football, basketball AND baseball. Can you name the other three? The answer is at the bottom.

Trump Legal News: Shot in the Dark

Yesterday was the deadline for pre-trial motions in the Georgia election fraud case, and there was a flurry of them, including three different ones from Donald Trump asking that the case be dismissed. Here's a rundown:

• A motion asserting that Trump was acting in his official capacity, and that he's therefore covered by presidential immunity. This is the lengthiest of the three motions, and must have cost five (or even six) figures' worth in billable hours. But all the verbiage and legal citations in the world can't overcome the fact that mucking around in state elections isn't the responsibility of federal officials (even the president) and that, in any case, some of his mucking around came after he was out of office.
  
  
• A motion declaring that Trump has already been tried, and cleared, on these charges. Consequently, double jeopardy has attached, and he cannot be tried again.
  
  If you just can't remember when he was tried for his Georgia shenanigans, you are to be forgiven. Team Trump is claiming that his second impeachment was the "trial" and that is why he can't be tried again. The first problem here is that the second impeachment was for his actions on 1/6, not his actions in Georgia. The second problem is that there is plenty of jurisprudence making clear that impeachment is not a criminal prosecution, and so there is no double jeopardy.
  
  
• A motion asserting that Trump cannot be prosecuted because... wait for it... he didn't realize that what he was doing was against the law. Really. Here's the key portion:

  Our country has a longstanding tradition of forceful political advocacy regarding widespread allegations of fraud and irregularities in a long list of Presidential elections throughout our history, therefore, President Trump lacked fair notice that his advocacy in the instance of the 2020 Presidential Election could be criminalized. President Trump, like all citizens, is entitled to have fair warning as to where the line is drawn which separates permissible activity from that which is allegedly criminal.

  Good luck to Team Trump as they try to convince a judge that the former president was unclear on the difference between "forceful political advocacy" and racketeering. Perhaps John Gotti thought he was just participating in "vigorous capitalist discourse" when he had his henchmen shake people down for protection money.

Remarkably, the three Trump filings might not be the most outlandish to be submitted on Monday. No, that honor may well go to low-level co-defendant Michael Roman. In his motion, he asks for the case against him to be dismissed, because Fulton County DA Fani Willis is in a romantic relationship with one of the freelance attorneys her office hired to assist with the case, and therefore "the entire prosecution is invalid and unconstitutional because the Fulton County district attorney never had legal authority to appoint the special prosecutor, who assisted in obtaining both grand jury indictments."

There is no proof in the 127-page document, just a lot of assertions that "we've looked into this," along with a lot of insinuations and vague claims. So, this is nothing but gossip, and we do not see how the Court can possibly take notice of it. And even if it's true, it may be a little icky, PR-wise, but the argument that it nullifies the entire prosecution seems dubious, at best.

In short, it was a day full of Hail Mary passes. Sometimes a Hail Mary works, of course, but not very often. Well, unless it's (Z) playing Madden '94 with Stan Humphries throwing to Vance Johnson. Then it works every time.

In addition to all the Georgia dealings, there is also a potentially interesting note related to the Washington case. The Washington-based firm Arnold & Porter, which is clearly not MAGA-friendly, has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the D.C. Court of Appeals. The brief points out that in Midland Asphalt Corp. vs. United States (1989), with Antonin Scalia writing for the majority, the Supreme Court decreed that interlocutory appeals are only allowed in a small number of circumstances: motions to reduce bail, questions of double jeopardy, and issues related to the speech or debate clause (whether or not legislators can be questioned about their work in the halls of Congress). Since bail is not an issue here, double jeopardy does not apply, and Trump was not a member of Congress, the folks at Arnold & Porter argue that the Court of Appeals has no jurisdiction here, and that they cannot weigh in on the question of presidential immunity until after Chutkan has conducted a trial and a verdict has been rendered.

We tend to suspect that the Court of Appeals (and the Supreme Court) will want to resolve this matter once and for all, and also that "speech and debate clause issues" are close enough to "presidential immunity" that Midland does not prohibit them from hearing the matter right now. But you never know. (Z)

Trump Says He Could Have Prevented the Civil War

Noted Civil War scholar Donald Trump held a rally in Des Moines this weekend, and while he was there he decided to do a little riffing on the War Between the States, asserting that a shooting war was not necessary, and that "there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you. I think you could have negotiated that."

For those who are interested, we will now explain why he is wrong. To start, slavery was already a hot potato by the time the Constitution was written. That is why the fellows who wrote it took great pains to avoid using the word "slavery," instead opting for euphemisms and other indirect language. While you wouldn't want to say that all 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention thought the same way when it came to the future of slavery, the most common viewpoint was that slavery was not the best thing for the future of the nation, and that it would hopefully die a natural death in relatively short order. The mere fact that the Constitution dealt with slavery by counting a slave as three-fifths of a person speaks volumes. Even back in 1787 it was a very hot potato.

But then, just 7 years later, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. That made it plausible for increasingly inefficient and unprofitable tobacco plantations to shift their focus to cotton. This, in turn, revitalized the slave economy, and brought an end to any real possibility of a natural death. It did take a while for the cotton gin, and the cotton industry, to spread. This meant it took a while for the interests of the slave states and the non-slave states to come into direct conflict. But that conflict finally came in 1820, when Missouri applied for admission as the 23rd state and, more importantly, the 12th slave state.

This created a situation that was unacceptable to the non-slave states, which had far more wealth and population than did the slave states. The non-slave states were willing to accept equilibrium in the U.S. Senate, wherein slave and non-slave states had equal membership. They were not willing, however, to accept a situation wherein the slave states had a majority in the upper chamber. There was enough firmness on this fact that Thomas Jefferson, who was still living in 1820, opined that the dispute was unresolvable and that it was "the death knell of union."

Jefferson was in error, of course. The Missouri crisis actually led to two new "solutions" to the slavery problem, one governmental and the other quasi-governmental. The governmental one, and the one that really matters, was the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise solved the immediate crisis by carving Massachusetts into two states, and admitting the newly created state of Maine as a non-slave state, thus maintaining the balance in the Senate.

In order to serve the longer-term crisis, the Missouri Compromise also created two seemingly simple rules that governed the admission of all future states, theoretically forestalling any future disputes of the sort that Missouri's request for admission had triggered. The first of those rules was that states would henceforth be admitted in pairs: one slave, one non-slave. The second of those rules is that the line between slave and non-slave states would be the southern border of Missouri, extended to the Pacific Ocean. Here is a map:

Yes, that means that the newly created slave state of Missouri was above the "slavery" line. That's the way it had to be; the compromise would have been unacceptable to the Northern states if the line was drawn from the state's northern border. Meanwhile, if you look closely at the line, you can perhaps see how the compromise was doomed to fail, eventually. Just in case, here's a hint: Eureka!

We'll get back to the failure of the Missouri Compromise eventually, but for now, the second, quasi-governmental solution that was produced by the crisis. The Whig Party was the second major party in that era (alongside the Democrats), and Whigs were big believers in compromise and also in the power of capital to solve problems. And so, the leading Whigs of the era—with Henry Clay, the Whiggiest Whig of them all, taking the lead—cooked up a capital-driven solution to the slavery issue. Their idea was that the federal government should purchase the enslaved people from their Southern masters and transport those people back to Africa. This scheme, effectively a reverse slave trade, was called "colonization," and was undertaken under the auspices of the American Colonization Society (ACS). The ACS was privately chartered, but got a fair bit of help from the U.S. government, thanks to the fact that the leadership of the ACS (e.g., Clay) was very well connected. In particular, the government used its influence to instigate the creation of the West African nation of Liberia for the repatriation of the freedpeople.

So, problem solved, right? Slave owners get compensated, the enslaved people get to "go home," and everyone's happy. What's not to like? A whole lot, as it turns out. To start, the slave owners were not especially interested in getting rid of slavery. Also, most of the enslaved people did not want to be returned to some random spot on the African continent, where their skills (say, rice cultivation) would not be useful and where tropical diseases were epidemic. And finally, the capital that would have been necessary to bring the project to completion was massive, and far beyond the means of the federal government or of private donors to the ACS. So, in the end, the ACS only managed to relocate several thousand enslaved people. That's a drop in the bucket for a country that already had, as Frederick Douglass put it, more than 3 millions in bondage.

Colonization, then, didn't go anywhere. On the other hand, the Missouri Compromise kept the peace... for a few decades. The "rules" that Congress created were designed for the territory of the U.S. as it existed in 1820. In other words, the question they were largely answering was: "How are we going to handle the states carved from the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase?" They were also counting on the fact that the process for achieving statehood was pretty onerous, and it tended to take a long time to achieve the required population numbers. To take one example, the Dakotas were part of the Louisiana Purchase, and they didn't achieve statehood until 1889—86 years.

In any case, the fellows who hammered out the Missouri Compromise did not foresee two things. The first was the Mexican Cession of 1848, which added another big chunk of territory to the United States (which, incidentally, Southerners expected to be turned into future slave states). The second was the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill on January 24, 1848, which triggered a gold rush by 1849.

Absent the gold, maybe California would have become a slave state. We'll never know. What actually did happen is that people came to the state by the thousands, nearly all of them would-be gold miners. As a result of this, California quickly shot past the population threshold (50,000 people) required for statehood. So, in 1850, the people of California submitted a constitution to Congress and asked for admission as the 31st state. Because the gold miners did not want to compete against slave labor, that constitution prohibited slavery, thus making California a non-slave state.

Congress was very eager to establish proper civil authority in California. After all, the U.S. had just grabbed the land from Mexico, and it did not want some other nation (ahem, the U.K.) to pull the same trick. But there was no slave state ready (or even close to ready) to join with California and, besides, the Missouri Compromise line passes right through the Golden State. On top of that, partisans on both sides had been carping about the Missouri Compromise for at least a decade.

And so, it was time for a new compromise, one that became known as the Compromise of 1850. Primarily the work of Sen. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the Compromise of 1850 had five parts, though only two of those matter for our purposes here. The first of those is that California was admitted as the 31st state, without any "partner." The second of those is that Douglas, observing that Congress had dropped the ball when it came to "solving" the slavery problem, managed to persuade his colleagues to try a new approach. "Popular Sovereignty" is what it was called, and the idea was that, since the U.S. is a democracy, the people of each state should decide for themselves whether to have slavery. More specifically, the plan was that when a territory was ready for statehood, its residents would vote whether or not to have slavery.

Douglas, being a politician, managed to sneak Popular Sovereignty by Congress in 1850 by specifying that it would only be used for the territories of Utah and New Mexico. This was a sleazy politician's trick; since neither of those territories was remotely close to achieving statehood, there was no chance that they would actually put the new approach to the test. What that meant was that, after 4 years, Douglas could claim that Popular Sovereignty was a success because, after all, it had not failed. The other members of Congress bought it, and so decreed in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that Popular Sovereignty would be used to determine the fate of slavery in ALL future territories.

With that move, it did not take long for Popular Sovereignty to get a real test. Kansas was ready for statehood by 1856, and so Kansans gathered to write a state constitution and to decide whether or not that constitution would legalize slavery. If everything had been on the up-and-up, Kansas would have entered as a non-slave state, as 90% of the residents there were anti-slavery. However, Kansas is also next door to... Missouri, and election security was not so great back then. You can see where this is headed.

Ultimately, Kansas ended up with not one, not two, not three, but FOUR state constitutions, one of which legalized slavery, three of which outlawed it. On top of that, partisans on each side decided to implement a bit of their own "election security," and so open warfare erupted in Kansas, with hundreds killed on each side. Under these circumstances, Congress threw up its arms and took no action on Kansas' application for statehood. The two presidents who served during that period, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, were both Northerners with pro-Southern views (a.k.a. "doughfaces"). They supported the pro-slavery Kansas constitution, but they could do nothing without Congress' buy-in.

In short, over the course of 70 years or so, Americans tried four different approaches to the slavery issue: (1) ignore it, (2) let Congress figure it out, (3) spend lots of money to buy a way out and (4) put the question to a democratic plebiscite. All failed. If you are going to presume that you could have done better, you need to come up with something other than these four approaches.

There is also something of a postscript. When Abraham Lincoln was elected and Southern states began to secede, there were many last-ditch efforts to negotiate a compromise. The one that gained the most traction was the Crittenden Compromise. There are some nuances and subtleties, but what that compromise would have basically done is guarantee slavery in the states in which it already existed, along with resurrecting and updating the Missouri Compromise, so that new slave states would have once again been a possibility. The President-elect, and his fellow Republicans, having been elected specifically on a pledge to limit slavery to those places it already existed, said: "No way."

You may be familiar with a quote from Lincoln: "If I could save the Union without freeing a single slave, I would do it. If I could save the Union while freeing all the slaves, I would do it. If I could save the Union by freeing some and leaving others enslaved, I would do that, too." He really did say that, but he clearly was not being 100% truthful. If all he cared about was saving the Union, he could have accepted, and lent his support to, the Crittenden Compromise. But he did not. And that, in the end, is the rub. The Southern states were determined that slavery must keep spreading, and elected leadership on that basis. The Northern states were determined that slavery must be limited to where it already existed, and elected leadership on that basis. Slavery cannot both "spread" and "be contained," and so there was no middle ground left to negotiate, even for the guy who "wrote" The Art of the Deal. The extent to which both sides were committed to their respective points of view is underscored by the fact that, within 6 months of the failure of the Crittenden Compromise, they were shooting each other.

Back to modern politics. The main point here is not that Trump is an ignorant man who doesn't even know enough to know what he doesn't know. That is certainly true, particularly when it comes to history, and even more particularly when it comes to the history of the Civil War. However, we are going to suggest that his remarks are revelatory in a different way, one that he certainly did not intend.

You see, it's not novel to suggest that the Civil War could have been avoided if the politicians of that era had just done a better job of negotiating and compromising. That thesis even has a name. It is called the "blundering generation" hypothesis, with that name coming from the title of the essay by American historian J. G. Randall, in which it was first proposed.

No modern-day Civil War historian takes the "blundering generation" hypothesis seriously. For our purposes, what matters is that this essay, this assertion that a bloody war could have been avoided if the politicians and other muckety-mucks had tried just a LITTLE bit harder, was written in... 1940. In other words, Randall was a man who lived to see the failures of the post-World-War-I "peace," and whose nation was on the brink of doing it all over again. When he was talking about the Civil War, he was also clearly projecting, consciously or not, and lamenting the failures of his own generation.

And that is what we think is going on with Trump, too. When he talks about the failed negotiations of generations past, and implies that he could have done better, what he's really saying is: "I don't have very many successful negotiations of my own, so I'll insinuate myself into negotiations I had nothing to do with, and create 'successes' that way." In other words, he's projecting, presumably subconsciously, just like Randall was. Perhaps that impresses Trump's base, but from where we sit it's really... kind of sad. (Z)

Biden SOTU Set for March 7

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), apparently as part of the kumbaya spirit of the budget negotiations (though see below), will not engage in any gamesmanship around the State of the Union Address. He (with the assent of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY) has invited Joe Biden to deliver the speech on Thursday, March 7, and Biden has accepted.

This is a little bit late on the calendar, as SOTUs usually happen in January or February. More interesting, however, is that the speech will happen just two days after Super Tuesday. If things go according to form, then Super Tuesday is when Donald Trump's renomination will become inevitable, and the other wannabe Republican presidents will have reached the end of the road. Normally, a sitting president does not comment directly on the ongoing presidential campaign in a SOTU. But these are not normal times, and Biden is already aiming body blows at Trump. So, there could be some fireworks.

The Republicans have not yet chosen the person who will respond to Biden. Usually, that "honor" falls to an up-and-coming member of the party who needs some exposure, or to a respected elder of the party. If the GOP goes with the former, well... we don't know who they might choose. None of the hotly contested U.S. Senate races are going to have a clear-cut GOP nominee or frontrunner by March 7, except for Arizona. And we doubt that the Party wants to give Kari Lake a national platform and 20 minutes to say whatever comes into her mind. As to the latter, we can't think of a respected Republican elder who wouldn't get booed off the screen by the MAGA crowd, except Donald Trump. Could he be the pick? Maybe...

The designated survivor has not been picked yet, either, and usually isn't revealed until the speech is over. That said, we're pretty sure it won't be Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. (Z)

FY 2023-24 Budget Is Not Out of the Woods Yet

The first lesson in Government 101 is that each side gets some of what they want in a negotiation, and no side is ever left entirely happy. The Freedom Caucusers don't seem to have taken that course, however—perhaps not a surprise, since some of them struggled to graduate high school. Predictably, they are hopping mad about the budget deal that Mike Johnson struck over the weekend. Yesterday, they held a press conference and vowed to do whatever they can to torpedo it.

This threat has some... interesting implications. By themselves, the FCers can really only drag their feet, and slow down the process by mucking up various procedural motions. There isn't time for that, without shutting the country down. The workaround is to put the bills up under suspension of House rules. That eliminates procedural votes and amendments, but... it requires a 2/3 majority.

What that means is that even if Johnson gets every one of the 213 Democratic votes, he still needs 73 Republicans to get the bills passed. Does he have them? We're soon going to find out, presumably. If he can't find them, then the government will shut down, and the Republican Party will be left holding the bag. If he can find them, the FCers are going to be even more angry, and may make a motion to vacate. Why does ANYONE want to be speaker in a Republican-controlled House, again? (Z)

New Louisiana Governor Has Big Plans

Gov. Jeff Landry (R-LA) has been officially sworn in as the replacement for Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA). And just hours after taking office, he issued an executive order calling for a special session of the Louisiana legislature, to run from Jan. 15 to Jan. 23.

Landry has a whole list of projects he wants the legislature to work on during those 8 days, two of them of interest to a national audience. To start, Louisiana is under court order to draw new House district maps, and Landry wants to get that taken care of. The state's six-person delegation is currently 5R, 1D, with the D being Troy Carter. Carter is Black and represents a D+25 district centered on the majority-Black (53.6%) city of New Orleans. In theory, it should be 2 D in a state that is 32.8% Black. One suspects that Landry has taken a gander at the maneuvering in Georgia and other places, and has some ideas as to how to keep that 2 D from coming to pass. We'll learn in a week or so.

Landry's other major project is to get rid of Louisiana's jungle-style primary, and to replace it with a system more akin to other Southern states (primary, then runoff if nobody gets 50%, then general, then runoff again if nobody gets 50%). The Governor's proclamation does not explain why he wants to switch, though the general consensus is that the jungle primary combats extremism. So, perhaps he wants to make it easier for far-right looney birds to get elected. Many Louisianans like the current system just fine, thank you very much, so changing it might not be so easy. Again, we'll learn in a week or so. (Z)

Today's House News

There were a couple of bits of the news yesterday when it comes to the game of musical chairs that is the United States House of Representatives. First, Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN) announced that he would join the parade of colleagues headed for the doors. He said that he reflected on his future during the Christmas holiday, and that the time has come. He also quoted the Bible in his announcement: "For everything there is a season." So, it would seem that it was a tag-team effort by Santa Claus and Jesus. His current, and final, term is his seventh.

IN-08, the district that Bucshon is vacating, is R+19. So, this one's not changing hands. There are no declared Republicans yet, but soon there will be. And while the general election will presumably be a walk for whichever of them survives, the primary figures to be ugly. In fact, elections in this particular neck of the woods have such a reputation for nastiness and dirty tricks that the district is known as the "Bloody Eighth." IN-08 is in the southwest corner of Indiana, and its biggest city is Evansville. We don't know if that explains the district's political culture, but we do know it's fairly close to St. Louis, and that St. Louis was founded by the French, who also founded Canada. So...

The other House news comes out of California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announced that the primary election to fill the former seat of Kevin McCarthy would be scheduled for March 19, with the runoff, if necessary, to be held on May 21. Newsom could have kept the seat open for considerably longer, had he wanted to; either he felt that was not fair to the people of Bakersfield, or he didn't want to be attacked for being anti-democratic. In any case, the R+16 district, CA-20, will return to the Republican fold as soon as the elections are held. If everything goes right for Mike Johnson, he could have a margin of error of four or even five votes by June. Assuming he's still speaker, that is. (Z)

Florida GOP Gets Its House in Order

The Michigan GOP is an absolute mess right now, as they have saddled themselves with a leader who is godawful, and who refuses to relinquish power. The Florida GOP had a similar problem, at least until yesterday.

Kristina Karamo, the GOP leader in Michigan, is a nutty Trumper, not unlike Kari Lake or Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Christian Ziegler, the GOP leader in Florida, has liabilities that are ultimately much more serious: He is an accused rapist. Ziegler does not deny the sexual encounter, and he and his wife do not deny that they had a three-way thing going with the alleged victim. But of course—as is the situation roughly 100% of the time in these cases—Ziegler says the encounter was consensual.

Maybe that is true, and maybe it isn't. However, defending oneself against a rape charge is incongruous with being the head of, and the face of, the Florida GOP during an election cycle (especially when the party's presidential nominee is from Florida). There's the PR angle, of course, and there's also the fact that this is not the time to be splitting one's time between politics and being in court. Well, unless you're the aforementioned presidential nominee, that is.

In any event, Ziegler refused to do the decent (and prudent) thing and resign, so his fellow Republicans voted to fire him. The primary concern was the PR; the folks who voted to expel Ziegler said that extramarital sexual dalliances and rape charges are simply not compatible with the Republicans' "family values" message. Again, this would appear to be a standard that does not apply to Republican presidential candidates.

The new leader of the Florida GOP is Evan Power, who was vice chair (i.e., #2) until Ziegler was tossed overboard. Ziegler's baggage was apparently having a very negative effect on fundraising, and now the party pooh-bahs hope that Power will be able to get the money flowing again. Could be tough, given the GOP money vacuum down south at Mar-a-Lago. (Z)

Looking Back at 2023, Part II: Most Deplorable Person

Last week, we asked readers to let us know which person they regard as the most deplorable of 2023. The only person we declared to be off-limits is Donald Trump, since he's a deplorable immortal.

We are going to give a top five (bottom five?), but first some runners-up, with reader comments:

Joe Biden

D.A. in Brooklyn, NY: Joe Biden. I could have said Bibi Netanyahu or Vladimir Putin, but they are from an unholy trinity of "Immortal Deplorables." Joe Biden. Joe, Joe, Joe. How could you allow the slaughter in Gaza? You may be a "nowhere man," but you're better than that. How could you?

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)

D.E. in Lancaster, PA: Since Trump is off limits—I prefer the term "Uber Deplorable"—the field is really wide open. But on some small amount of contemplation, I have to go with Matt Gaetz. First, there were all the tawdry accusations concerning sex trafficking with underage girls and rumors of drug fueled orgies—funny how that whole thing just petered out. Second, Gaetz' role as chaos agent and showboater for the entire speakership debacle. Lucky for the country that no enemy or terrorist attack, when we would have needed a functioning House of Representatives, happened during his little spite-induced theater. Lastly, you have to admit that if you had to pick a face that just begs to be punched, that Gaetz would top that list as well. Here's wishing he slithers back under that rock someday real soon!

R.L. in Easton, CT: While I am pleased for anything that demonstrates to the country exactly how and why our current Republican party is unfit to lead, Matt Gaetz hurt the country by forcing out the speaker. It was a silly vanity exercise that hurt his party, the Congress and the country by wasting valuable time, forcing out of power one of the few grown-ups in the room among Republicans in Congress, and making getting things done even harder.

Joe Lieberman

M.U. in Seattle, WA: Joe Lieberman is hands down the most deplorable and despicable person of the year. A man so self-serving and smug he makes Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) seem demure. The mere mention of his name makes me want to throw up a little bit. (Barf!)

If we go back in time we have a man who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000 (why, Al Gore, why?) and then only 8 years(!) later was speaking at the Republican National Convention—that's after he said to the Democrats in his state of Connecticut that he didn't give a damn about their preference in the primary and "became" and ran as an independent. Then we have him to thank for single-handedly killing the public option under Obamacare. Thanks, Joe! (Gag!)

OK, none of that happened in 2023, so how did Lieberman (retch!) deserve the title of most deplorable? Simple: He is responsible for, and is the leading voice of, No Labels—the vacuous, inane, stupid, ridiculous, delusional and dangerous campaign to elect a "common sense" centrist to the White House, which may help to elect DJT to a second term and begin a rise of barbaric fascism in this country. I'm sure Lieberman thinks the word "centrist" is sexy. (Vomit!) Joe (Ack!) can do this whole country a favor and go the hell away and let the rest of us who are serious about politics (and loyal to our party) sort sh... stuff out.

Texas AG Ken Paxton (R)

M.S. in Washington, DC: For filing the emergency petition to stop Katie Cox from being able to have an abortion that I would think even most pro-lifers would support.

P.P. in Denver, CO: For his forced birtherism.

The Entire Republican Party

S.A. in Clinton, WA: There is no way to choose just one. I have binders full of deplorable people. If forced to choose, I would pick the entire Republican party. There is not a single one of them I would want to have a beer with.

B.H. in Southborough, MA: Damn, you took my low hanging orange fruit. Beyond that douchebag, it would have to be every GOP member who currently supports Trump.

And now, the top/bottom five, from least to most deplorable:

5. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX)

S.K. in Jackson Heights, NY: His willingness to use human beings as political pawns is vile.

R.L. in Los Angeles, CA: Why? Because he is more under the radar than Ron DeSantis (also deplorable), and is consistently playing with people's lives by busing asylum seekers around the country.

P.W. in Tulalip, WA: Due to his hardline stances and his actions against personal autonomy and against immigrants (illegal border "security" and his bussing fiascos).

4. Rudy Giuliani

A.G. in Scranton, PA: Mr. Noun-Verb-9/11 himself, Rudy Giuliani, for having ruined the lives of two decent Black women who only wanted to help their fellow Americans be able to vote, simply so he could score some points with Orange Jes-s.

A.H. in Atlanta, GA: After losing the civil defamation suit, he continued to defame Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, two innocent women who just wanted to exercise their voting rights and help out with the election in the time of a pandemic.

P.K. in Marceline, MO: He is the face of sleaze in 2023.

3. Elon Musk

M.M. in Alexandria, MN: He has the ability and resources to improve the human condition like no one else in the history of the world. Instead, he decided to become the wealthiest TROLL in the history of the world. The Galaxy Weeps...

A.R. in Los Angeles, CA: Between turning Twitter into a festering cesspool and threatening to shut down satellites Ukraine needs for survival, this man needs to be stopped.

P.L. in Denver, CO: Here is a man who is clearly bright and visionary who has done some very good things. He takes his billions and spends it on a stupid app that can be used for good and instead he uses it as a playground for his demented views. He is rude and obnoxious and can be hateful. Some years ago I was a fan and thought at some point I would buy a Tesla. Now I don't want to give that man a penny.

2. Benjamin Netanyahu

S.W. in New York City. NY: Killing thousands of innocent civilians, and more than half of them children, is unforgivable.

S.A.K. in Karnataka, India: That name was synonymous with untold misery, pain and destruction in 2023.

R.M. in Baltimore, MD: We knew he was personally corrupt, would do anything to keep in power, that he abuses his power as a leader and is cruel to the non-voters (i.e. Palestinians), but he has taken that abuse to whole new heights with outright slaughter of Palestinians by bombs and not allowing foreign aid to be fully received. Genocide is a powerful word but he is moving Israel in that direction.

1. Vladimir Putin

D.N. in Hyattsville, MD: I'll vote for Vladimir Putin.

During 2023, you discussed most of the reasons here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

E.K. in Portland, OR: The most deplorable person on the Earth has been, and continues to be, Vladimir Putin, for the continuing attempted genocide in Ukraine and for the continuing damage he does to democracies around the world. He also has his hand in helping and encouraging many bad actors, from Africa to Iran and the Middle East.

It will be a great day when he is no longer a threat to the world. The best thing for humanity would be for him to face justice at The Hague, but him "accidentally" falling out of a Moscow high-rise would also be a positive development for the human race.

Here's hoping.

J.M. in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Canada: His continued attempts to conquer the State of Ukraine, his denying of statehood to Ukraine as a concept, his (arguable) genocide, his intentional targeting of civilians, rape, torture, forced abductions, forced population transfer, Bucha, his nonsensical reasons to justify the war, and all other manner of war crimes.

His propping up his fellow dictators Bashar al-Assad and Ali Khamenei, his murdering his own citizens, his treatment of Alexei Navalny especially, his support for North Korea, his support for the PRC and their genocide against the Uyghurs.

Not even getting into everything he has done to Russia internally and the Russian people.

The next entry will be a bit more uplifting, as it will cover the most admirable people of 2023. There's still time to weigh in; send messages to comments@electoral-vote.com with subject line "Most Admirable." Don't forget to include your initials and city! (V & Z)

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The other three schools are Ohio State, UCLA and Florida.

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---The Votemaster and Zenger