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Foreign Affairs, Part I: Iran Mess Gets Messier
During the Civil War, one of the jobs that officers had after a battle was over was to write a report on what had happened with their company/regiment/brigade/division/corps, including casualty figures, and then to submit it to the higher-ups. These reports were, along with a bunch of other official documents, compiled after the war into a 128-volume work generally known as The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion.
At some point during, or maybe slightly after, the compilation process, someone decided to figure out exactly how many soldiers had died in the war. So, they went through all the casualty reports, added them up, and came up with a total: 620,000. That was the number that many generations of historians learned, and then passed on to the next generation.
The problem here, which nobody seemed to notice for over 100 years, is that a post-battle report is not going to provide the most accurate accounting of battle dead, because the disposition of many soldiers is not going to be clear in the immediate aftermath—it's hard to know exactly which men are injured, which are dead, which deserted, etc. Further, and significantly, it behooves a commander to downplay the number of soldiers he led to their deaths. So, as it turns out, most of the post-battle reports gave death totals that were too low. Using other methods of tackling the question, historians today think the total number of dead soldiers was probably between 700,000 and 750,000.
The point is that when a government depends on civilian support for a war—and that has certainly been the case for every American war since 1861, if not earlier—it behooves that government to downplay how bloody the war has been, as much as is possible, for as long as is possible. It happened during the Civil War, and it's happened in every war since. The Trump administration is currently in the midst of a very unpopular war and is also the most dishonest presidential administration in American history. So, the new reporting from The New York Times, that the Pentagon has been withholding information on how bloody the Iran War has really been, comes as no surprise whatsoever.
Over the weekend, at least two additional service members were killed. A third is missing, and unidentified remains have been found in the area where that person was stationed. So, depending on whether one reaches the obvious conclusion, there are now 17 dead and 1 missing, or 18 dead. Well, that the public knows about, at least. There have been at least 420 service members injured, with 100 of those coming since Donald Trump abandoned the Memorandum of Understanding and resumed full-fledged assaults on Iran.
Politically, dead soldiers are about the worst thing possible for a president. Americans hate it when soldiers die, particularly if it's not clear what purpose, if any, those deaths served. So, dying and injured soldiers tend to increase the pressure for a war to end. At the same time, if Trump cuts bait and leaves, then people will ask: "Why did those soldiers have to die, if you were going to give up, anyhow?" So, dead soldiers simultaneously tend to deepen an administration's commitment to a war, and tend to lead to escalation.
Trump, as the world's largest walking id, is governed almost entirely by how he feels in the moment. The dead soldiers make him feel rage, and so that is what is reflected in his "strategy." Shortly after the news of soldiers' deaths #16 and #17 became public, Trump got on his social-media-platform-for-warlords to make this announcement:
Every time Iran kills an American Soldier they will pay for that killing many times over! This directive has been passed on to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Daniel Caine, and every Leader in the Military. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Trump must not have read the part of the Bible—officially, his favorite book!—about turning the other cheek. Or any other part of the Bible, for that matter. He must also have missed Gandhi's (reported) observation that "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."
Certainly, Gandhi (or the person whose words he's getting credit for) was on to something. Escalating a war, and playing a deadly game of tit-for-tat, rarely works. And on those occasions where it does work—think Sherman's March to the Sea, or the process of forcing Japan's surrender during World War II—it means taking off all the shackles and going all-in, including making war on the civilian population. Trump clearly isn't willing to do that—in particular, he's not willing to deploy ground troops. And so, he has no hope of imposing total defeat on Iran and causing their complete submission (as with the defeated South and the defeated Japanese). That means that the President's current bombing campaign (10 days and counting) and his threats of retaliation will serve only to make it that much harder to reach a negotiated peace.
There's one other factor that, if the reporting is accurate, is going to make peace difficult. According to an off-the-record Iranian official, lead negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are much less interested in actual peace than they are in using inside information about the conflict for financial gain (largely through insider trading). In general, it's hard to put too much credence in the words of someone who is anonymous and who has motivation to sow the seeds of dissent. In this case, however, it tracks (and see tomorrow's posting as well). If members of the Trump team, very probably including Trump himself if the claim is true, see the Iran War as the latest gravy train, then they definitely aren't going to try very hard to end the conflict. If this is true, and Trump and his family's desire to profit from dead American soldiers trumps everything, he is playing with fire. If the war is ongoing when early voting starts, the Democrats are certainly going to win the House and the odds of them winning the Senate, too, will go up. That means one or more impeachments and a difficult last two years for Trump. But maybe the lure of money is irresistible to him. (Z)
Foreign Affairs, Part II: Canada Mess Gets Messier, Too
As long as we are on the subject of Trump administration foreign policy, and Donald Trump's id, the President directed another major hissy fit in the direction of Canada yesterday. He says that the folks up north have imposed very protective tariffs on some American goods, including cars, alcohol and dairy. So, he will retaliate by hitting the Canadians with a 50% tariff on "certain" Canadian goods.
It is not clear exactly what goods will be affected, as the White House has not released an updated tariff schedule yet. All the administration spokesperson said was that the affected products range from "wine to hockey sticks to cement." So, they're really hitting the Canadians where it hurts. The tariffs are being imposed under the terms of the Tariff Act of 1930, which means that they will not go into effect for 30 days after the formal order is signed by Trump.
Needless to say, 30 days is plenty of time for Trump to TACO. Heck, it's time for him to TACO something like 50 times. So, you probably don't quite yet need to rush to the store and stock up on hockey sticks while they're still affordable. If such steep tariffs do take effect, then it will certainly help stoke inflation in the United States. It will also lead to retaliation from Canada, and possibly from Mexico, as the new tariffs may be a violation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Anyhow, we're definitely still in wait-and-see territory, for now. (Z)
All Politics Is Local, Part I: South Carolina Senate
Well, things have certainly gotten interesting in South Carolina.
The last time we wrote about the special election to replace Lindsey Graham on the Republican ticket, businessman Mark Lynch was the only person who had filed paperwork to enter the race. Since then, he's been joined by three other men: Reps. Russell Fry and Ralph Norman, and perennial candidate Duke Buckner. Meanwhile, Rep. Nancy Mace, showing more self-awareness than is typical for her, took a pass.
However, the real curveball is this. We presume that Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC) chose Darline Graham Nordone, sister of Lindsey, as a placeholder—nobody can object to her pinch-hitting for her dead brother, and yet she's an amateur who is not going to try to win her own seat, right? Wrong. Over the weekend, for reasons known only to him, Donald Trump endorsed her as his preferred candidate. And shortly thereafter, Graham (who is using her maiden name right now, for obvious reasons) announced that she's in.
We really don't know what the implications of this development will be. On one hand, Graham will have wide name recognition by virtue of her brother, and by virtue of being the sitting U.S. Senator. Further, in Republican primaries in red states, Trump's endorsement is usually pretty impactful. On the other hand, voters tend to dislike appointed officeholders who did not "earn" their position. And Lindsey Graham was not terribly popular by the end of his career; he claimed a pretty pedestrian 56% of the vote in HIS primary.
There's been one poll of the (new) race, from Emerson. The pollster was trying to guess how the field would shake out, and so asked about some candidates who are still deciding (e.g., Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette) and some who are definitely out (e.g., Mace). With that caveat, here's how Emerson has it:
| Candidate | Pct. |
| Ralph Norman | 16% |
| Mark Lynch | 13% |
| Pamela Evette | 10% |
| Nancy Mace | 10% |
| Russell Fry | 9% |
| Henry McMaster | 8% |
| Darline Graham | 6% |
| Mark Sanford | 5% |
| Others | 5% |
Executive summary: It's a complete and total toss-up right now.
The one thing that this poll makes clear is that no candidate is likely to claim 50% of the vote in the first round of voting, which means a runoff. So, if you assume that Graham overcomes her slow start to make the runoff, then the question is whether she can hold on to the 56% of the vote that her brother got. Maybe she doesn't have his baggage, and will do even better than he did. Or maybe she will be dragged down a bit by not having earned the job, or by sexism, or both, and will do worse. We just don't know.
There's one other wrinkle. Federal law, specifically The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, requires ballots to be sent out 45 days before a federal election. That isn't going to happen here, for either the first round of voting or the second, since the entire process is set to unfold over 28 days. That means that, once the Republican candidate is chosen, someone could file a lawsuit declaring their selection to be invalid. Who knows what the courts would do with that, but the language of the statute is very clear. (Z)
All Politics Is Local, Part II: Maine Senate
There's also pretty big Senate news out of Maine over the weekend.
This past weekend was the one set aside for the 16 county-level meetings to choose delegates to the impromptu Senate "convention" that will be held next weekend. There were 500 delegates at stake, to go with the 100 members of the state committee. Those 600 will choose the nominee. And although this was not entirely clear last week, the county-level meetings were apparently done caucus-style, such that each county was sending slates of delegates. In other words, Androscoggin County Democrats were deciding whether to award all their delegates to former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, or to Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, or to Dr. Nirav Shah, or to former congressional aide Jordan Wood. They were NOT going to be able to give some number of delegates to each candidate.
This process resulted in a very clear winner; Jackson claimed 456 of the 500 available delegates. That means that, barring a wave of defections, the votes of the 100 state-level Democrats were irrelevant. And so, Bellows promptly dropped out, and then Shah dropped out, and then Wood dropped out. With all the serious challengers gone, CNN canceled the debate it had planned for later this week, a debate that would have been Jackson's only real shot to blow it (if he said something overtly racist, or something like that). So, barring some sort of shocking development, Jackson is the candidate. Of course, there's already been more than one of those in this race, so you never know.
Now that Jackson is the candidate-elect, as it were, it's time for him to get the microscope treatment. Thus far, the biggest and only skeleton that seems to have emerged from his closet is that Jackson has lost his temper in the past, and he once threw a water bottle in a meeting after becoming angry with one of his female colleagues in the state Senate. She says she felt intimidated, because she felt that he was aiming for her. Others who were in the room say the bottle landed nowhere near her, and that there was no intent to strike her. Everyone agrees that Jackson apologized to the colleague at the very next meeting.
So, is this enough to potentially derail Jackson's candidacy? We doubt it. In part, because he's going to be compared to Graham Platner, who clearly had far more serious black marks on his record. In part, because it's "he said, she said," and it's hard to know where the truth lies. And in part, because the incident is well known enough to Maine voters that it even has a name (the not-very-original "water bottle incident"), meaning that knowledge of this was baked in when the delegates were chosen this weekend. Clearly, the activist class, at least, does not feel it's a dealbreaker.
Also, it wouldn't be an election without at least a few "Democrats in disarray" stories. Politico appears to have won this particular derby; that outlet got a story posted early Monday morning about how some Democrats are very nervous, because Jackson is not a "slick" candidate, the way Platner was.
Based on our limited knowledge of Jackson, we would say this is true. In our debate writeup, we noted that he was prone to mumbling and to word salads. On the other hand, Bellows was even worse on that front, Shah has serious baggage leftover from the various stops in his career in appointed office, and Wood is a bit of a dilettante without much in the way of relevant experience. Every candidate for office has their weaknesses, and things are particularly tough on that front in "picking up the pieces" situations, like the ones in Maine and South Carolina right now.
We don't know how many nervous Democrats there really are but, from where we sit, we think that the Democratic Party should be thrilled with the result. Jackson has a long and legitimate résumé, full of relevant experience. He does not appear to have much baggage. And you can be a pretty effective senator without being much of a public speaker (see Schumer, Chuck). Meanwhile, the process developed by the Maine Democratic Party allowed all sides to feel heard, while nonetheless quickly identifying a clear winner with a minimum of friction. All of this is about the best possible outcome the Party could hope for after the Platner implosion.
There has been a (very) little polling of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) vs. Jackson. Z to A Research had Collins up by 1 point, 48% to 47%. PPP and Wedgewood Polls both had Jackson up by 5; 49%-44% and 48%-43% respectively. So, it should be a close race, and one that the blue team once again has a real shot at winning. (Z)
All Politics Is Local, Part III: Texas Senate
We should also check in with the Texas U.S. Senate race, even if the news there isn't quite as big as the news in Maine and South Carolina.
To start, nearly everything is coming up roses these days for the Democratic nominee, state Rep. James Talarico. We noted it briefly last week, but his fundraising remains brisk. He took in more than $30 million in Q2, which is more than triple the $9 million brought in by the Republican nominee, Texas AG Ken Paxton. And, for sake of comparison, the last two Democratic nominees for Texas U.S. Senate seats, Colin Allred and Beto O'Rourke, took in a little over $10 million each in Q2 of their campaign years. So, Talarico really is setting the (fundraising) world on fire.
The only reason we write that "nearly" everything is going well for the candidate is that there was an incident this weekend, during a town hall, where Talarico was confronted by one of the attendees, who was both a woman and Black. You can click that link to see the footage; there is little context for what triggered the woman's response, and it looks to us like he handled the matter with as much grace as is possible. However, quite a few outlets (e.g., The Hill) reported that he was "shouted down." We would say he was shouted at, and that being shouted at is quite different from being shouted down. Of course, readers may see things differently, and it's at least possible the incident will hurt Talarico with the Black voters he badly needs.
Meanwhile, Paxton just can't seem to stay out of his own way. Earlier this month, it was reported that the AG celebrated America's 250th birthday in a curious way: He took his mistress on a vacation... to London. Perhaps he did not study U.S. history, and so is unaware of which nation the Declaration of Independence was directed at.
And then, this weekend, yet another skeleton emerged from Paxton's closet. Or, at least, a potential skeleton. The Texas Tribune and ProPublica took a look at Paxton's voting record, and discovered that, for several years, he's been voting at an address where he no longer resides. That is a violation of state law. There IS a provision in the law that allows you to keep voting at an address you've left, if you intend to return (a provision undoubtedly meant to accommodate service members and other folks who might be temporarily domiciled at some place other than their home). However, Paxton appears to have established a different, permanent residence. Further, it is improbable he was planning to return to his old residence, since that remains the house of the soon-to-be-ex-wife that he is divorcing and has cheated on repeatedly.
In short, you have a fellow who professes to be Christian, and yet is a serial adulterer. A fellow who professes to be a patriot, but spends the most significant Fourth of July in many years in the United Kingdom. A fellow who has used his office to crack down on alleged voter fraud, while at the same time casting (probably) fraudulent ballots. If Paxton is not careful, Texas voters just might conclude he's a hypocrite.
There hasn't been any polling of the race this month, but the three polls released late last month support the conclusion that it's close. SoCal Strategies, a Republican house, had Paxton up 2 points, 49% to 47%. The New York Times/Siena had it tied at 47%. And A2 Insights had Talarico up 2 points, 48% to 46%.
But the best indication that Paxton knows he's got a tough fight on his hands might be this: The AG has agreed to debate Talarico. The number of debates is undetermined, as are the time, location, and circumstances of the debate or debates. However, Paxton is a somewhat odd-looking, low-energy fellow who has never once participated in a political debate. Talarico is much more debonair, and is a better and more polished public speaker. So, Paxton would start a debate (or debates) at a disadvantage. He obviously knows this, and wouldn't agree to debate unless he felt it absolutely necessary. (Z)
All Politics Is Local, Part IV: Minnesota Governor
And now, we head north to the great state of Minnesota. Uff da!
It took a while for Donald Trump to make his pick in the Minnesota GOP gubernatorial primary, but he's finally done it, and bestowed his endorsement on the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell. On one hand, Lindell is fanatically loyal to Trump, to the point that he (Lindell) has basically bankrupted his pillow empire in service of his fealty to The Donald. On the other hand, Lindell may lose the primary, and will certainly lose the general if he makes it that far, and Trump hates to bet on a loser. So, it's no surprise that the President dragged his feet here.
Meanwhile, like Ken Paxton in Texas, Lindell had a voter registration scandal emerge over the weekend. In Lindell's case, the issue is not that he voted from the wrong address in Minnesota, it's that he never voted at all in Minnesota, as he's not even registered there. He's registered in Texas, where he moved to for several years, before moving back to run in the Minnesota gubernatorial election. Given that Lindell's entire political program is the sacred privilege of voting, and the importance of protecting the sanctity thereof, his blasé attitude about his own registration makes him look like a hypocrite. It also reminds Minnesotans that he's kind of a carpetbagger these days.
The only quality, or semi-quality polls of the GOP primary taken in the last month are from Big Data Poll (a Republican House) and SurveyUSA, which both gave Lindell a 5-point lead (25% to 20%, and 27% to 22%, respectively) over his nearest competitor, Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives Lisa DeMuth. That said, both polls had at least a quarter of the GOP primary electorate undecided, and both polls were taken before Trump waded in. So, they're not all that instructive.
On the DFL side of the gubernatorial election, it's Sen. Amy Klobuchar and a bunch of unknowns. She has the formal endorsement of the DFL, she has all the money, and she has vast name recognition. So, she's going to be the nominee. If Lindell is her general-election opponent, she will tear him to shreds. The one semi-recent poll (mid-June) of a hypothetical Klobuchar-Lindell matchup put her up by 17 points, 53% to 36%. If it's DeMuth, that improves things for the GOP, though Klobuchar is still up 8 on her, 48% to 40%. Democrats should definitely be rooting for Lindell, because not only is he the weaker opponent, but he's also likely to say kooky things that embarrass the GOP nationally. (Z)
All Politics Is Local, Part V: Wisconsin Governor
Finally (for today), there's been some recent drama in Wisconsin. We had a report from a local, E.M. in Milwaukee, WI, who is more dialed in than we are, so we thought we would lean on that:
The Wisconsin governor's race just got interesting.
Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez (D) might have had the inside track on the Democratic nomination as the most establishment candidate, which one would expect to work well in a very swingy state. But then it was learned that her campaign manager was either incompetent or corrupt and had overstated campaign income by double counting some donations. The campaign was left with little cash and may be in the red overall. So, Rodriguez dropped out of the governor's race, given this evidence that she is not a great manager.
I'm not tuned into Wisconsin politics enough to be sure where this is going yet. Like the majority of Electoral-Vote.com fans, I lean (strongly) Democratic. It seems to me that there are four viable candidates on the Democratic side:On the Republican side, the path seems to have been cleared for Rep. Tom Tiffany. Tiffany currently represents WI-07 and is a member of the House Freedom Caucus. Not surprisingly, Tiffany is pretty MAGA and has Donald Trump's endorsement. Tiffany's website is interesting for its almost complete lack of policy specifics. It lists four "solutions": "Lower Costs for Every Wisconsinite," "Restore Order and Create Opportunity," "Prepare Kids for Success," and "Protect What Makes Wisconsin Great." The text expanding on those goals does not link to anything, so it is naturally a bit hard to know what particular policy solutions Tiffany favors.
- Mandela Barnes is a former Lieutenant Governor, state legislator, and (unsuccessful) U.S. Senate candidate. I've seen him in person, when he interviewed Stacey Abrams at an event in Milwaukee. He is quite impressive: sharp, articulate, thoughtful, relaxed. You might be surprised (not) to learn that someone with the first name "Mandela" is Black. He is progressive without being strikingly so.
- David Crowley is the current Milwaukee County Administrator and is also Black. He is essentially a standard center-left Democrat and for my money has successfully navigated the tricky urban-vs-rural politics divide in Wisconsin, by helping negotiate a higher sales tax in the county and city with the rather hostile Republican-dominated state legislature. He had dropped out of the governor's race because he didn't have enough traction prior to Rodriguez's troubles. But now he has announced that he is returning to the race. This seems to have been done at the behest of parts of the Democratic establishment.
- Francesca Hong is the progressive choice. She calls herself a Democratic Socialist and hails from the Madison area, which is by far the most left-wing metro area in the state. She explicitly supports universal childcare, paid family leave, higher public school funding, and Medicaid expansion.
- Joel Brennan is a former head of the state's Department of Administration. This is an appointed position and he served under and was appointed by Gov. Tony Evers (D). I've reviewed his campaign website and I think his positions are actually quite sound. But he does come across as a wonk. His ideas are the kinds of things that are actually hard to attack for being radical. They are mostly incremental, but are likely to be effective while being difficult to sell as transformational. The little that I've read suggests that he is not an inspiring orator.
Wisconsin is actually a bit like North Carolina, though it has fewer media markets. The Milwaukee metro area is about 1.5 million people, with an urban core of 1 million that is blue without being leftist and a suburban ring that leans red. The Madison area has about 500K people and is quite left-wing. Green Bay's metro area has about 350K folks who lean purple because they are blue-collar, but socially conservative. Then there are a number of medium-sized cities (50-75K) that lean blue but are surrounded by red-leaning rural areas: Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Stevens Point, La Crosse, Eau Claire, Racine, Kenosha, Superior.
I'm not smart enough to know where this is all going. I hate to say it, but being either Black or explicitly "socialist" is a real reach in purple Wisconsin. Still, the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court elections in Wisconsin show that arch-conservatism is not selling well these days in the Badger State. And Tiffany is not likely to get out the vote among more traditional Republicans because he's really pretty extreme.
Thanks, E.M.!
We will add that polling had given Hong a small lead over Barnes, with the other candidates trailing. But with Rodriguez out and Crowley in, and more than a third of the voters undecided, we'll have to wait for new polls. It is not impossible that the progressive vote splits two ways, while the more moderate vote coalesces around Crowley, giving him the nod. For what it's worth, hypothetical polling of the general election matchups between each of these three candidates and Tiffany says that Barnes is 2-4 points ahead of the Republican, Crowley is 1-2 points ahead, and Hong is 2-3 points behind. (Z)
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