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The issues that forestalled doing the Q&A Friday night have not abated, and so we're going to just answer some questions about current events. We WILL have a full Q&A again soon.
Sheila Jackson Lee Has Died
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), one of the most prominent members of the House, passed away yesterday from pancreatic cancer, having been diagnosed with the disease earlier this year.
Her career in politics began in 1990, as a member of the Houston City Council. She moved on to the House of Representatives in 1995, and has been there ever since. She ran for the mayoralty of Houston last year, and came up short, with just enough time to refile in the Democratic primary for her D+23 seat.
Jackson Lee was well-known for being a "work" horse, and for personally reading every piece of legislation she was asked to vote on. She was an outspoken advocate for civil rights, even though that advocacy sometimes raised a few eyebrows. For example, in the name of equality, she pushed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to start choosing some distinctly "Black" names for hurricanes. The Congresswoman was also pro-LGBTQ equality well before that became a mainstream positions.
Jackson Lee was also at the center of her fair share of criticism and controversy. Early in her career, her close ties with Enron were a subject of much discussion. Her office had the highest turnover rate in Congress, and she was nearly censured after firing a staffer who filed a sexual harassment complaint. Jackson Lee also, for better or worse (well, let's be honest, for worse), pioneered the practice of objecting to states' electoral votes. The Trumper shenanigans of 2020 are much more famous, for obvious reasons, but Jackson Lee (sometimes with support from some of her colleagues) objected to Florida's EVs in 2001, Ohio's EVs in 2005, and the EVs from the Carolinas and Wyoming in 2017.
The Representative had a shrewd political mind, as you might expect of someone who managed to stay in Congress for close to three decades. Illustrative of this, and well known to colleagues, she made a point each year of securing a prime aisle seat for the State of the Union address, so as to get a little face time with the president du jour. By the last decade of her career, her preferred seat was effectively reserved for her, despite the official policy for SOTU seating being "first come, first served."
Shrewd political mind or no, Jackson Lee also had a reputation for verbal gaffes. She once said that the Constitution is 400 years old and that North and South Vietnam are still separate countries. During a floor speech, she displayed a Confederate battle flag with 17 stars, rather than the correct 13. Earlier this year, during the eclipse, she made headlines after telling a group of students that the moon is mostly gaseous. Several years ago, she asked a NASA expert if the Pathfinder expedition to Mars had captured a picture of the flag raised by Neil Armstrong. Armstrong, of course, raised the flag on the moon, not Mars. In fairness, these kinds of gaps in one's knowledge will happen when a person can't get into a UC, and has to settle for an Ivy League school (Yale, in Jackson Lee's case).
Perhaps the gaffes helped cement the strong alliance between Jackson Lee and Joe Biden. Her passing deprives him of a firm supporter on the Hill, at a time when he's running short in that particular department. The Democrats will also be down a vote in the House until Jackson Lee is replaced. Since there are more than 74 days to the next general election, there should be a special election for the balance of her term, though you never know what Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) will do. It will be up to the state Democratic organ to choose a candidate to replace her on the general election ballot, and also for the special election. (Z)
Saturday Q&A
A short Q&A is better than none, right?
Current Events
D.G. in Fairfax, VA, asks: If you were advising Joe Biden to drop out of the race, and he wanted to support Kamala Harris, would you suggest he also resign the presidency to give her a few months experience and the position of incumbent?
(V) & (Z) answer: No. First, as we discuss a couple of times below, there has to be some sort of process, rather than a coronation. Second, if she IS going to be the candidate, she needs to be able to devote her time 100% to her campaign, and not have to deal with learning and doing the job of president at the same time she's trying to win an election.
P.R. in Arvada, CO, asks: If Joe Biden were to drop out, there are clearly good ways and bad ways the DNC can handle nominating a replacement. What do you think would be one of the better ways to handle this, what would be the worst way, and how do you think they actually would handle this? Given the DNC's unmatched ability to shoot themselves in the foot I would guess it will be closer to the worst way but what do you think is most realistic.
(V) & (Z) answer: If there is going to be a ticket switch, the Democrats have to walk a fine line. While they want to make sure that various constituencies feel heard as part of the selection process, the Party does not want Democratic voters to become TOO enamored of their favored candidates, as there is not time to heal from a Hillary vs. Bernie situation.
If we were to design a process, we might divide the country up into six or eight regions, each with roughly the same number of Democratic voters. Then, the Party could hold a virtual roll-call vote by which each region gets to put forward one candidate. After that, a couple of weeks' events—debates, round tables, one-on-one interviews, etc.—where the six or eight regional candidates introduce themselves to the American people, as best as possible. Then, an old-fashioned brokered convention.
The worst course of action would be to break too far in either direction, either allowing rivalries to develop, or else communicating that the opinions of the hoi polloi don't matter, and that the party pooh-bahs will be deciding, thank you very much. It does not appear that the Party is going to make either of these errors, based on early scuttlebutt.
E.W. in Skaneateles, NY, asks: Suppose President Biden either: (1) turns over the presidency to VP Kamala Harris, making her president before the election, or (2) declines to run for re-election and Harris gets the nomination. Who would be the best VP picks in each case to offset Harris' weaknesses? Do you think any of them would accept?
(V) & (Z) answer: Undoubtedly we will write about this at length if Biden does step down. However, beginning with the understanding that Barack Obama represented "change" that many voters found frightening, Harris would presumably need to be balanced with a "safe" running mate, which means a moderate, inoffensive white guy. That sounds like a description of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) or Govs. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) or Andy Beshear (D-KY) to us.
C.C. in Los Angeles, CA, asks: I'm curious about your thoughts as to why progressive members of Congress like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have become Joe Biden's biggest cheerleaders.
My own hunch is that they figure if Biden hangs on and manages to win, he'll be more indebted to them than ever. And if Trump wins, beating whomever is the Democratic nominee, they'll be in a great position to lead the opposition and discredit the moderate, "establishment" wing of the party.(V) & (Z) answer: We must disagree with your two theses. First, Biden is limited by what is possible, not by what he's willing to do. So, additional leverage over him wouldn't do much for the lefties. Second, if Biden loses this election, progressives are going to get the blame, with the notion being that they did not get to the polls or that they voted for protest candidates like Cornel West. This will not give the lefties more leverage.
Our explanation would be that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are both very savvy, and recognize that the kind of president who can do the most for them is a president who looks and feels like a moderate, but basically governs like a progressive. That's Joe Biden.
S.B. in Winslow, ME, asks: I have a couple of questions regarding the possibility that Joe Biden steps aside and Kamala Harris becomes the Democratic presidential candidate. First, would her pluses of age and diversity appealing to younger and "not these two guys again" voters overcome any sexist and misogynistic negatives? Second, what do you think she'd have to do to make her campaign effective in the time between now and the election? Okay, three questions—has anyone else had to campaign for president this late in the game?
(V) & (Z) answer: As to your first question, we have no good answer for you, and we may never have a good answer for you. On the whole, Harris is slightly outperforming Biden in the polls right now. If she improves on that as a hypothetical nominee, then it's tough to say whether that is because she brings her own positives to the table, or she lacks Biden's negatives, or (most probably) some of both. That said, and as we've written before, we think that whether it's Harris or any other alternative, they have both a higher ceiling than Biden and a lower floor. If Biden is the candidate, he's going to get between 220 and 310 electoral votes. A replacement might get 340, but might also drop to 200.
If Harris wants to run an effective campaign, she has to keep it simple. Our advice would be to pick concrete things A, B, and C that she wants to work on, and then to hammer on those three things for the entire campaign. Given her background and gender, Supreme Court reform, abortion protections and combating global warming would seem to be a pretty good list.
And finally, there is no modern precedent for someone launching a major-party presidential campaign this late. However, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the candidates were chosen by the conventions, and so campaigns could not plausibly begin until after the convention was over. So, a 3-month presidential campaign is not impossible, particularly if the nominee already had national stature.
D.K. in Iowa City, IA, asks: People used to talk about the rise of a dark horse candidate for President. Can you see any possible ones now for the Democrats?
(V) & (Z) answer: Throughout this campaign, as talk of Joe Biden stepping aside went from less serious to more serious, there has been a pretty standard list of "usual suspects" to replace him: Kamala Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. We think it's fair to say that anyone who is not on that list, and who gets the nomination, would be a dark horse. And the people who are not on that list, but seem at least vaguely plausible, are Mark Kelly, Andy Beshear, Josh Shapiro, Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD), and... maybe... Hillary Clinton.
E.C. in Miami, FL, asks: If someone else were to run for president, with Kamala Harris as their VP, would they have access to Biden's campaign funds?
(V) & (Z) answer: The answer is... maybe. Since Biden stepping down became a real possibility, many campaign finance experts have been consulted, and their opinions are all over the place. The money probably goes with Harris, as long as she's somewhere on the ticket, but it's not a slam dunk.
What the Democrats could do is go to the Federal Elections Commission and ask them for a ruling, so that there is no ambiguity. The downside here is that the FEC is three Republicans and three Democrats, and the three Republicans have thus far been very Trump-friendly. As in, their names might as well be Aileen Cannon, Aileen Cannon and Aileen Cannon. So, there might well be a 3-3 vote, which resolves nothing.
The other option would be for the Biden campaign to give the money to the DNC and/or a PAC. There are two downsides here, namely limits on coordination between the campaign and the entity spending the money, along with the fact that campaigns get TV advertising at a much cheaper price than PACs and committees. However, if this happened, then theoretically donors' donation limits would be reset to zero. So, the new Democratic ticket could hit up the people who already hit the cap for another $7,000 each (or so).
P.D.C. in New Salem, MA, asks: I'm interested in the continuing efforts of many Democratic leaders to remove Joe Biden from the ticket. The usual reason given for this is that Biden can't win. However, he's polling very close to Donald Trump and ahead of most of the other possible Democratic candidates. I can think of only two reasons for the attitude of party leaders. Either they have access to additional information that the general public doesn't have and it shows a much worse campaign situation than it looks like on the surface, or they think Biden's cognitive condition has actually reached the point that having him as president would be very bad for the country but are afraid to say this in public in case they can't get him to drop out. Which of these explanations would you favor (or is there another possibility that I've missed)?
It should be noted that people undergoing cognitive decline are generally very poor at recognizing their own condition.(V) & (Z) answer: We think there's probably some merit in each of those explanations.
Keep in mind that reading polling data—even if that data has been compiled by stone-cold pros, and even if the person reading the data has been doing this for 40 years—is still, at least partly, an exercise in "gut feel." Similarly, the people who have been interacting with Biden face-to-face, whether they are politicians like Barack Obama, or celebrities like George Clooney, are not neurologists. So, their sense of Biden's mental capabilities is also a "gut feel" type thing. In short, they don't "know" he's not a viable candidate going forward, because nobody can know that. But their guts are speaking loudly.
We suspect there's also one other thought that is haunting the Democratic pooh-bahs right now. What if they stay the course, and then Biden has a really bad incident in, say, October? For example, what if he has another disastrous debate performance? At that point, there would be nothing for the Party to do, except watch the ship sink.
Put another way, Biden is the only candidate who is sitting on a (metaphorical) keg of dynamite. Given that politicians are famously risk-averse, it's not surprising they want to remove that particular, giant risk from the equation.
K.T. in Columbus, OH, asks: How much of Donald Trump's lead in the polls can be explained by the uncertainty surrounding the identity of the eventual Democratic nominee? Is there any reason to think that Democratic prospects will improve once they (get off the pot and) settle on a nominee? I don't expect Trump's numbers to change much, but perhaps a significant number of undecided voters will come home once the matter is resolved.
(V) & (Z) answer: Truth be told, we think that a significant number of undecided voters will come home to the Democrats, regardless of who the Party's candidate might be. They might come home sooner with a non-Biden candidate, and they might come home later if Biden stays the course, but they will probably come home, given the alternative.
Until there is proof to the contrary, one must assume that Trump has the same ceiling he's shown in his two previous elections (roughly 47% of the popular vote). That said, and as we have written many times, this election will be decided on the margins. And if Biden's alleged mental infirmity drives just 1% of swing-state voters into the Trump camp, thus allowing the former president to max out his potential, that could be fatal.
R.M.S. in Lebanon, CT, asks: Back in January, (V) wrote about Donald Trump's disgraceful and degrading comments on immigrants. Trump used Nazi-like verbiage, calling them vermin who are "poisoning the blood of the country." This made me uncomfortable because there really is no such thing as American blood. Unless you are a full Native American, all Americans have roots from somewhere else. (V) said Trump is trying to send a message to extreme-right elements in his voter base so they would coalesce around his campaign, and I agree.
However, what I don't understand is why the extreme-right seems to like Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and his relatives. I watched Vance's convention speech, and read about his extended family. I was surprised to learn his wife, Usha Chilukuri, was born in California to immigrants from Andhra Pradesh, India. Why don't they consider the Chilukuri family to be poisoning the blood of the country?(V) & (Z) answer: Forgive the Godwin's Law-adjacent response, but allow us to introduce you to Eduard Bloch, who was a physician and a Jew. He treated the Hitler family when Adolf was young, and often did so at a reduced fee or no fee when the Hitlers did not have the money to pay him. Once Adolf rose to power, and began persecuting Jews, he took steps to protect Bloch, ultimately allowing the good doctor to immigrate to the United States.
The point here is that every group that engages in wholesale bigotry—racism, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, etc.—makes allowance for "the good ones." In the U.S., embracing right-wing politics is an excellent path for a person of color to be embraced by Trumpers as one of "the good ones." It also helps to be Asian, as most bigots regard Asians to be less inferior than Black people or Latinos.
E.S. in Cincinnati, OH, asks: I am eager to hear your views on how the choice of J.D. Vance for the VP slot will affect the Senate race—I strongly suspect this will make it even harder for Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to retain his seat, but my husband disagrees.
(V) & (Z) answer: We side with your husband. It is only very rarely that a VP makes a difference in the presidential race (with Lyndon Johnson in Texas in 1960 being the notable example of one who probably did make a difference). This being the case, it would be even less likely for the VP to have coattails in a Senate race. And note that, for someone who won their election, Vance is actually an unusually unpopular politician. When he was elected in 2022, he ran 5+ points behind all the other Republicans on the ballot.
S.R.G. in Grecia, Costa Rica, asks: DJ and J.D. are a match made in heaven, clearly. How do you rate the chances of TFG deciding to dump Vance before the election?
If J.D. makes a misstep that hurts the campaign badly, it seems possible that he could be moved to the outhouse (with DJT Jr. and Eric already occupying the doghouse). It is also possible that God will call an audible during the end-game, right? Whispering in the left ear?(V) & (Z) answer: We think the chances are close to zero. To toss aside Vance would be an admission that Trump made a mistake. And Trump doesn't make mistakes.
B.C. in Walpole, ME, asks: You wrote: "Vance is, to use a technical term, a jerk. His 'hillbilly' shtick is as phony as the day is long."
Vance spent his formative years outside of the boundaries of Appalachia (as it has been defined), though I will grant that being of Scots-Irish background and having grandparents from Kentucky gives him some cred. But as I remember it, when his book came out, media talking heads and columnists fell all over themselves to interview him, talk about his book, and promote him as the Person Who Can Explain Trump Supporters to the World. He was a media darling, all anyone could talk about. Now, the guy who said "Trump is the American Hitler" is happy to be his running mate and all the talking heads are mystified: Who could have foreseen this? Is my memory/perception wrong?(V) & (Z) answer: Your memory is not wrong, and EVERYONE could have foreseen this.
Vance has much in common with people like Candace Owens and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC): They rose to positions of influence by telling people (particularly white Republican voters) what they want to hear. The message of Owens/Scott is, in short "Racial inequality is not the fault of your (white people's) race." The message of Vance is, in short, "Class inequality is not the fault of your (white, middle-class/rich people's) class."
If Vance had any real affinity for "his people," he wouldn't have thrown them under the bus like that. And given his willingness to peddle whatever message his audience wants to hear, it's no surprise that he would change messages as soon as he perceived a change in what his audience wanted to hear.
Note, incidentally, that (Z) is also Scots-Irish and his maternal forebears come from Johnstown, PA, which is a few hundred miles from where Vance grew up. (Z) does not claim to be a hillbilly, but he does feel he's in a position to know what a phony hillbilly looks like. His blue-collar maternal grandparents, from a steel-making town, would have loathed Vance. He would have made their skin crawl.
S.K. in Sunnyvale, CA, asks: I've been seeing references to "colored wristbands" lately in Republican messaging related to immigration/human trafficking, such as in the quotation you had from Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-TX) RNC speech. Do you know the context behind this latest right wing bugaboo?
(V) & (Z) answer: Yes. The various cartels may be wicked, but they are very well organized. When people try to sneak across the southern border, they pay the cartels to help them (or, to leave them alone), and they receive a wristband in exchange. The colors of the wristband, in various combinations, indicate: (1) what cartel they are working with and (2) how many attempts the person has made. For their fee, a person gets three attempts, and then they have to pay up again. In general, purple wristbands indicate that a person is on their third and final attempt, which means they are more desperate and are going to behave more aggressively/recklessly. This is why you will often hear Cruz, et al. make specific reference to purple wristbands.
A.M. in Eagle Creek, OR, asks: Interesting speech from Sean O'Brien at the RNC. What are the odds that the Teamsters President is invited to speak at the DNC? How rare would that be?
(V) & (Z) answer: O'Brien has said that he's willing to speak at the DNC, if invited. However, we very seriously doubt he'll be invited. His speech ceased to be non-partisan when he called Donald Trump "a tough S.O.B." and said that Republicans are the pro-union party. Democratic voters would not be pleased to see him be given a platform at their convention.
We do not know of, and cannot find, any examples of someone who spoke at both conventions in the same year. There are certainly people who spoke at both conventions in different years, like Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman. If there is someone who has pulled off the double in the same year, it's probably a religious leader who delivered some sort of non-partisan benediction. We would not be surprised to learn that, for example, Billy Graham had done it.
D.N. in Waltham, MA, asks: I've been back where I grew up in Scotland for two weeks not thinking about any of America's problems and it's been amazing... and now the latest madness drags me back in. I can't help but feel we were a couple of inches away from a lot of problems being solved.
I know it's a very open question, but with your expertise, do you think we would currently be better or worse off if that bullet hadn't missed? What possibilities can you imagine playing out?
P.S. I might just stay in Scotland(V) & (Z) answer: Maybe we will get in trouble for accepting and answering this question, but we think it is a question that many people have wondered about.
Anyhow, if you oppose Trumpism, then a successful assassination attempt would have been a disaster. To start, it would have produced a rally 'round the flag effect, and would almost certainly have swept his replacement (J.D. Vance? Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-FL? Donald Jr.?) into office. And that person would almost certainly be more successful at implementing Trump's agenda than Trump himself, first because they could lean on his martyrdom (as LBJ did with JFK in 1964 and 1965) and second because they would be more skilled at politics than he is.
Meanwhile, we've got a piece on the backburner about who will be the Dear Leader once Trump bows out. And our general belief is that Trump is sui generis, and cannot be replaced. But if he was cut down in the middle of a presidential campaign, then it might just be plausible for his replacement to take the baton, and keep Trumpism going for, very possibly, generations.
B.P. in Milwaukee, WI, asks: How many people were actually at this rally on July 13th? The aerial views seem to be of a very small event.
(V) & (Z) answer: Members of Trump's campaign said it was 20,000 or so. Local officials point out that the record for that venue is 15,000, and that they estimate attendance was about 10,000. Readers can decide for themselves who they trust.
A.D. in Gaithersburg, MD, asks: I'm at a loss as to why the hero who died at Trump's rally on Saturday has been referred to as "Corey Comperatore" in so many news articles, including on Electoral-Vote.com, when this photo from The Washington Post shows a different spelling of his last name on his fireman's jacket:
Oddly enough, The Washington Post has also been spelling the name "Comperatore," including in the article accompanying this photo. Can you shed any light on this weird situation?
(V) & (Z) answer: If you ever work at a newspaper, and (Z) has, one of the cardinal rules is that you do not misspell the names of dead people. That is doubly true with people who died in tragic or heroic fashion.
So, you can bet that all of the newspapers, etc. double- and triple-checked on the correct spelling, and it's definitely "Comperatore." A few reporters have tracked down the reason for the misspelled jacket and the explanation is that Comperatore chose not to ask for a correction when the jacket was issued with his name wrong. Who knows why, but it probably wasn't worth the hassle, especially since the full name wouldn't have fit properly.
S.K. in Sunnyvale, CA, asks: Alright, I'll bite. What's the difference between a golf pro and a pro golfer?
(V) & (Z) answer: Sorry, that was not a joke, it was a clarification we probably should have explained. A pro golfer is someone who makes their living competing in golf tournaments. Most readers will be familiar with the names of at least a few pro golfers: Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, etc.
A golf pro is an employee of a golf club who coaches the amateur golfers who are members of that club. The golf pro might watch a person swing, and then tell them to stop dropping their shoulder or shuffling their feet. Or they might tell them to switch to a 6-iron instead of using a 3-wood.
The two speakers on Thursday were golf pros from Mar-a-Lago. In other words, Trump wasn't looking for star power (most golfers are Trumpers, and he surely could have gotten Nicklaus or Bryson DeChambeau or Brooks Koepka), he was looking for people who would kiss his a** in front of a national audience.
E.O. in Medford, MA, asks: I admit, I clicked on the video of paint drying. But then it made me wonder... Which got more clicks, the video of the Republican Convention, or the paint drying one?
I have my guess.(V) & (Z) answer: We don't have a way to measure clickthroughs, but we have our guess, too, and it's the same as yours.
Today's Presidential Polls
Two respected pollsters have Joe Biden behind in two must-win states, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Three points is within the margin of error, but it is less probable for both of them to be that far off in Michigan than it is for them both to have the right of it. Pennsylvania, the swing state with the most EVs, is even worse. Biden is in Delaware recovering from COVID, but he has some hard choices to make, and probably this weekend. Choice 1: Do I stay in or get out? Choice 2: If I get out do I endorse anyone?
Note that Politico is reporting that Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wants an open convention so folks like us have something exciting to write about. She is not against Harris as the nominee, but she feels if it is Harris, she has to earn it by beating the other POTUS wannabees. If Biden just crowns her, that will not sit well with many voters who are lukewarm about her. If she has to compete with Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) and others, and beats them, then she is clearly who the Democrats want and has earned the nomination on her own. (V)
| State | Joe Biden | Donald Trump | Start | End | Pollster |
| Massachusetts | 47% | 29% | Jul 16 | Jul 18 | Suffolk U. |
| Michigan | 43% | 46% | Jul 13 | Jul 16 | Civiqs |
| Michigan | 46% | 49% | Jul 17 | Jul 18 | PPP |
| New York | 52% | 41% | Jul 18 | Jul 19 | SoCal Research |
| Pennsylvania | 42% | 46% | Jul 13 | Jul 16 | Civiqs |
| Pennsylvania | 44% | 49% | Jul 17 | Jul 18 | PPP |
| Wisconsin | 47% | 47% | Jul 13 | Jul 16 | Civiqs |
Click on a state name for a graph of its polling history.
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