As the W-End Looms, our team curated some #RandomThoughts on the month as we look forward to the ongoing "outsider" journey:
The administration has been continuing its push to demonstrate that it is working for ordinary Americans. Last month, President Joe Biden asked all agencies to find ways to cut “junk fees,” the hidden fees, charges, and add-ons that hit consumers on everything from airline and concert tickets, to hotels, to banking services and cable bills. These include the “service fees” on concert tickets, “family seating fees” on airlines, “termination fees,” and so on, and they account for tens of billions of dollars a year of revenue for corporations.
Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) warned banks that surprise overdraft fees and depositor fees for customers who deposit a check that bounces are “likely unfair and unlawful under existing law.” The CFPB is also looking into credit card fees. The Federal Trade Commission has started a rule-making process that addresses surprise fees for event ticketing, hotels, funeral homes, and so on; earlier this year, it brought actions against junk fees in the auto industry that are awaiting finalization.
The White House noted that while there is nothing wrong with a company charging reasonable add-on fees for additional products or services, junk fees designed to confuse consumers or lock in advantageous pricing in favor of the seller hurt businesses by making it hard for consumers to compare real prices or by locking them into contracts so they can’t move to a different provider.
Today, Biden reminded reporters that the price of gasoline is still falling and noted that getting rid of junk fees will save American consumers more than $1 billion a year.
In related news, a panel of three judges, all appointed by Trump, recently declared unconstitutional the system that funds the CFPB.
Also in related news: whitehouse.gov, which is where you go to read White House press releases, has a Halloween bat flying around the White House on the medallion at the top of the page (which was a nice surprise when I finally noticed it as I was reading about the not-necessarily-wildly-
President Biden and Israeli president Isaac Herzog met today, six days before the Israeli election and a day before Israeli and Lebanese officials are scheduled to sign a historic maritime boundary agreement, brokered by Special Presidential Coordinator for the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment Amos Hochstein. This was Herzog’s first private meeting with Biden, and both presidents reiterated their mutual support.
Herzog is widely perceived to be a moderate, while the return to power of right-wing former leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who openly railed against Democrats during his tenure, would be expected to cause friction with U.S. Democrats. On Tuesday, House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) invited Herzog to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress next year to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the modern Israeli state. Pelosi and Schumer said the invitation came as well from House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), should they be in control of their respective houses at that time.
Herzog told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he was “extremely pleased” that Americans had rejected the antisemitism of rapper and clothing designer Ye (formerly known as Kanye West). Multiple outlets reported that today Ye showed up uninvited and unannounced at Skechers Los Angeles headquarters to find a new home for his signature sneakers after being dropped by Adidas, but was escorted from the building.
Today, attorneys for former President Trump accepted service of the subpoena from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. The subpoena requires Trump to provide documents by November 4 and to testify by November 14.
Meanwhile, Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward has asked the Supreme Court to block a subpoena from the January 6 committee for her phone records during the time she served as a fake elector to override the Arizona voters and over the period of January 6, 2021. Justice Elena Kagan has temporarily blocked enforcement of the subpoena so the full court can determine how to proceed.
Trump’s next legal move is unclear, but his political moves seem designed to scuttle the aspirations of his rivals. He announced today that he will be in Miami on November 6, holding a rally with Senator Marco Rubio to boost Rubio’s reelection campaign. Notably absent from the announcement was Florida governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis’s people were angry at DeSantis’s exclusion, not least because Trump’s appearance at a rally in Florida two days before the election will take all the oxygen out of that day for DeSantis.
A Republican consultant told Politico’s Matt Dixon and Gary Fineout: “You’ve got the Sunday before Election Day totally hijacked by Trump parachuting in on Trump Force One taking up the whole day….No Republican could go to a DeSantis event that day. None. And DeSantis won’t be here? This is big.”
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Notes:
https://forward.com/news/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/
https://www.axios.com/2022/10/
https://www.politico.com/news/
https://www.politico.com/news/
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Data released this morning from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that the nation’s gross domestic product—that is, the total value of goods and services produced in the U.S.—was up in the third quarter of 2022, increasing at an annual rate of 2.6%. This increase reflected increases in “exports, consumer spending, nonresidential fixed investment, federal government spending, and state and local government spending,” as well as decreases in imports. That growth was partly offset by lower housing sales.
Disposable personal income and personal savings were also up.
The previous two quarters had shown the economy contracting, and since Republicans have made the notion that the country is in a recession a centerpiece of their campaign messaging, President Joe Biden was quick to celebrate the news, saying in a statement that “today we got further evidence that our economic recovery is continuing to power forward.” He noted that the country has added 10 million jobs since he took office and that employment remains at a 50-year high.
New York Times economic and business reporter Ben Casselman complicated the story a bit. He noted that the data from the past three quarters—two down, one up—shows that the economy is slowing, and he suggested that this quarter’s big swing upward is due to changes in trade and inventories. But, he pointed out, slowing the economy a bit is exactly what the Federal Reserve is trying to do: slow demand to bring down inflation.
The primary tool the Fed uses to do that is interest rates, but those adjustments are very blunt instruments, and those people interested in continuing growth are always worried the Fed will raise interest rates too much, too fast, throwing the economy into reverse. Trying to figure out exactly how to adjust the economy so inflation slows but employment doesn’t, seems to me to be rather like trying to catch an egg on a plate, as the saying goes.
Biden observed today that inflation remains a problem—“we need to make more progress on our top economic challenge: bringing down high prices for American families”—but noted that gas prices continue to fall (the average price of a gallon of gas today was $3.76 a gallon). He also pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act’s reduction of drug prices and health care premiums, which will go into effect next year. In addition, the administration yesterday announced plans to stop so-called junk fees on consumers, as well.
Yesterday, Jim Tankersley and Emily Cochrane of the New York Times noted that Republicans are emphasizing inflation as a reason to vote Democrats out of office. Republicans say they will reduce government spending and pass more tax cuts, including a repeal of the tax increases on corporations that the Democrats passed this summer. They promise to cut funding for the IRS, which Congress funded to enable it to go after corporations and the very wealthy who cheat on their taxes.
But, Tankersley and Cochrane point out, “few economists on either end of the ideological spectrum expect the party’s proposals to meaningfully reduce inflation in the short term.” Indeed, economists say tax cuts could make inflation worse by freeing up more money.
What would take money out of the economy, though, is Republicans’ promise to get rid of the IRA’s new health care tax credits and caps on drug prices. They also promise to stop Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, which would put loan burdens back on about 40 million Americans, thus cutting down their disposable income.
Meanwhile, London-based oil company Shell today reported its third-quarter adjusted earnings. They were the second highest on record for Shell: $9.45 billion. (Shell’s top earnings period was the second quarter of this year, when it reported $11.5 billion.) Profits for Paris-based TotalEnergies were $9.9 billion. That’s more than double what their profits were in the same period last year. Shell says it will use the windfall to buy back about $4 billion of its shares, making this year’s total buybacks $18.5 billion. It will also increase dividends to shareholders.
According to Stanley Reed of the New York Times, Shell’s chief financial officer told reporters that the company had not paid Britain’s new windfall tax on oil and gas profits because the company’s spending on projects in the North Sea had reduced profits, but that they expected to see the tax kick in next year.
If Biden is focusing on the economy before the midterms, the Republicans seem to be doubling down on their ties to the right-wing movements around the world. In a speech today, Russian president Vladimir Putin appeared to be reaching out to right-wing Americans when he divided “the West,” into two groups: one of “traditional, mainly Christian values” that aligns with Russia, and one of “aggressive, cosmopolitan, neocolonial” values “acting as the weapon of the neoliberal elite” and trying to impose its “strange” values on the world.
Antisemitism is also on the rise on the American right in what looks like outreach to those embracing European-style fascism. Former president Trump recently warned American Jews to “get their act together” and show more support for Israel “before it is too late,” while the recent outbursts from artist Ye (also known as Kanye West) have led Adidas to cancel its contract with him and upended his other projects. In Pennsylvania the Republican candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, a right-wing Christian who opposes the separation of church and state, has made attacking the Jewish faith of his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a big part of his campaign.
“Empirically, something is different,” Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer of the Anti-Defamation League, told Michelle Boorstein and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post. “The level of public animosity towards Jews is higher than it’s been in recent memory.” My own guess is that increasing antisemitism on the part of Republicans is not simply the encouragement of hate such as that exhibited four years ago today when a gunman murdered eleven people and wounded six more at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, but is rather an attempt to signal directly to neo-Nazis before the election that the party wants their support.
The danger posed by the current-day Republican Party’s embrace of authoritarianism is not going unchallenged. Indeed, it is remaking American politics as defenders of democracy band together. Today, Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) endorsed Representative Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) for reelection, her first endorsement of a Democrat since the Republican Party turned on her over her insistence on holding Trump to account for the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Both women sit on the House Armed Services Committee. Cheney called Slotkin “a good and honorable public servant who works hard for the people she represents, wants what's best for the country, and is in this for the right reasons.” Cheney continued: “While Elissa and I have our policy disagreements, at a time when our nation is facing threats at home and abroad, we need serious, responsible, substantive members like Elissa in Congress. I encourage all voters in the 7th district—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—to support her in this election.” The two will appear together at an “evening for patriotism and bipartisanship” on November 1.
And in Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, and Representative Mary Peltola, a Democrat, have just endorsed each other in the upcoming election. The Alaska Federation of Natives has endorsed them both.
—
Notes:
https://www.bea.gov/news/2022/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/
https://www.washingtonpost.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/
https://gasprices.aaa.com/
https://www.washingtonpost.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/
October 20, 2022
British prime minister Liz Truss resigned today after just 44 days in office. Modeling herself on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who pushed the same sorts of supply-side economic policies U.S. president Ronald Reagan did, Truss had taken office on September 6 promising to fix the country’s rising cost of living by slashing taxes on the country’s corporations and highest earners and thereby, she argued, spurring growth.
Queen Elizabeth II died just two days later, putting the country into a period of mourning, but on September 23, Kwasi Kwarteng, Truss’s chancellor of the exchequer—Britain’s finance minister—announced the promised tax cuts without suggesting any way to pay for them. The value of the British pound plummeted, and on October 14, Truss forced Kwarteng to resign and walked back the tax cuts.
Truss’s own power became so precarious that on October 14, the Daily Star tabloid set up a live feed featuring a head of iceberg lettuce next to a portrait of Truss, asking, “Which wet lettuce will last longer?”
Resignations from the government continued, and then a badly botched vote in Parliament yesterday created such chaos and anger that it appeared Truss could not recover. She resigned today. The Conservative Party will pick a new leader by October 28.
The lettuce celebrated its victory with disco lights. “After an unbeleafable campaign I am thrilled to have been crowned victorious in these chard times,” it said tonight on a voice-over. “However we must romaine cautious. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Although the sentiment came from a leafy green vegetable, it’s not wrong that Truss’s resignation is the tip of the iceberg. On September 23, Larry Kudlow of Fox Business on the Fox News Channel said: “The new British prime minister, Liz Truss, has laid out a terrific supply-side economic growth plan which looks a lot like the basic thrust of Kevin McCarthy's Commitment to America plan.”
Today’s MAGA Republicans are indeed doubling down on dramatic tax cuts, and we now have an illustration of just how that might pan out.
Moreover, many observers see in the Truss debacle a condemnation of the isolationist nationalism of the past decade. This crisis, they say, has been sparked by the 2016 decision of voters in the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union, to which it had belonged since 1973, a move dubbed “Brexit,” for “Britain” and “exit.” That decision reflected, in part, the economic doldrums in the country after the 2008 crash, and the emphasis of politicians on anti-immigrant sentiment and promises to return England to a past greatness by cutting it off from the bureaucrats of Europe.
But the reality of Brexit, accomplished only in January 2020, was an economic hit worse than that from the coronavirus pandemic. Britain’s instability has also weakened the European Union, making it harder for Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to stand against Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Today, foreign observers blamed Brexit for the instability in the U.K., although many recognized that economic issues after 2008—and, some argued, even before then—had been behind the Brexit vote itself. Writing in France’s newspaper Le Monde, Sylvain Kahn said, “Since the referendum, British governments have demonstrated, with ever greater talent, that Brexit only takes the UK further away from the promised land of recovered sovereignty and untrammelled freedom. ‘Take back control!’ they all said. But the British are a very long way from doing that. No other EU member is in such a state…. Since Brexit, Britain’s Conservative leaders have worked tirelessly to prove that EU membership was very far from the problem.”
This same anti-immigrant, nationalist isolationism fed the rise of the MAGA Republicans. They joined with the supply-siders to create today’s Republican Party, and today’s illustration that their ideology cannot survive contact with reality sparked an astonishing leap to the right.
In The Federalist, senior editor John Daniel Davidson announced, “We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives.” “The conservative project has failed,” he wrote, “and conservatives need to forge a new political identity that reflects our revolutionary moment.” Western civilization is dying, he wrote, and to revive it, those on the right should “start thinking of themselves as radicals, restorationists, and counterrevolutionaries. Indeed, that is what they are, whether they embrace those labels or not.”
They should, he said, stop focusing on the free-market economics and supply-side principles of the Reagan years and instead embrace the idea of wielding government power as “an instrument of renewal in American life… a blunt instrument indeed.”
Davidson embraces using the power of the government to enforce the principles of the right wing, bending corporations to their will, starving universities that spread “poisonous ideologies,” getting rid of no-fault divorce, and subsidizing families with children. “Wielding government power,” he writes, “will mean a dramatic expansion of the criminal code.” Abortion is murder and should be treated as such, parents who take their children to drag shows “should be arrested and charged with child abuse,” doctors who engage in gender-affirming interventions “should be thrown in prison and have their medical licenses revoked,” “teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.”
“The necessary task is nothing less than radical and revolutionary,” he writes. And for those worrying that the assumption of such power might be dangerous, “we should attend to it with care after we have won the war.”
What Davidson is suggesting, of course, is indeed radical: it has most of the hallmarks of fascism. Other Republican lawmakers are also embracing that ideology lately: today, Florida state representative Anthony Sabatini approvingly quoted Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco, saying, “I answer only to God and to History.”
But more and more, Americans seem to be moving back toward the principles of Abraham Lincoln, who stood firm on the idea that true conservatism was defending the idea, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that all people are created equal and have a right to consent to the government under which they live.
Today, in Oklahoma, for the first time in decades, the Tulsa World endorsed a Democrat, U.S. Representative Kendra Horn, rather than extremist Republican Markwayne Mullin, for the U.S. Senate. The paper applauded Horn’s bipartisanship and willingness to meet with her constituents. “Her congressional stint gives Oklahomans a glimpse of what Oklahoma lawmakers of the past looked like,” the paper wrote. “They were pragmatic legislators who looked after their state and found ways to get things done rather than cater to the fringes of their own parties…. In this moment, this is the type of senator we need.”
—
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.
https://www.washingtonpost.
Brian Klaas @brianklaasThe lettuce now has disco lights on the live stream and is celebrating. 12:44 PM ∙ Oct 20, 2022
18,495Likes2,429Retweets
The Independent @Independent'Tip of the iceberg': Lettuce that outlived Truss premiership makes victory speech 10:20 PM ∙ Oct 20, 2022
566Likes138Retweets
MeidasTouch @MeidasTouchLarry Kudlow on Fox Business 9/23/22: "The new British prime minister, Liz Truss, has laid out a terrific supply-side economic growth plan which looks a lot like the basic thrust of Kevin McCarthy's Commitment to America plan.” 5:59 PM ∙ Oct 20, 2022
27,414Likes10,198Retweetshttps://www.investmentmonitor.
John Daniel Davidson, “We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives,” The Federalist, October 20, 2022.
https://www.washingtonpost.
British prime minister Liz Truss resigned today after just 44 days in office. Modeling herself on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who pushed the same sorts of supply-side economic policies U.S. president Ronald Reagan did, Truss had taken office on September 6 promising to fix the country’s rising cost of living by slashing taxes on the country’s corporations and highest earners and thereby, she argued, spurring growth.
Queen Elizabeth II died just two days later, putting the country into a period of mourning, but on September 23, Kwasi Kwarteng, Truss’s chancellor of the exchequer—Britain’s finance minister—announced the promised tax cuts without suggesting any way to pay for them. The value of the British pound plummeted, and on October 14, Truss forced Kwarteng to resign and walked back the tax cuts.
Truss’s own power became so precarious that on October 14, the Daily Star tabloid set up a live feed featuring a head of iceberg lettuce next to a portrait of Truss, asking, “Which wet lettuce will last longer?”
Resignations from the government continued, and then a badly botched vote in Parliament yesterday created such chaos and anger that it appeared Truss could not recover. She resigned today. The Conservative Party will pick a new leader by October 28.
The lettuce celebrated its victory with disco lights. “After an unbeleafable campaign I am thrilled to have been crowned victorious in these chard times,” it said tonight on a voice-over. “However we must romaine cautious. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Although the sentiment came from a leafy green vegetable, it’s not wrong that Truss’s resignation is the tip of the iceberg. On September 23, Larry Kudlow of Fox Business on the Fox News Channel said: “The new British prime minister, Liz Truss, has laid out a terrific supply-side economic growth plan which looks a lot like the basic thrust of Kevin McCarthy's Commitment to America plan.”
Today’s MAGA Republicans are indeed doubling down on dramatic tax cuts, and we now have an illustration of just how that might pan out.
Moreover, many observers see in the Truss debacle a condemnation of the isolationist nationalism of the past decade. This crisis, they say, has been sparked by the 2016 decision of voters in the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union, to which it had belonged since 1973, a move dubbed “Brexit,” for “Britain” and “exit.” That decision reflected, in part, the economic doldrums in the country after the 2008 crash, and the emphasis of politicians on anti-immigrant sentiment and promises to return England to a past greatness by cutting it off from the bureaucrats of Europe.
But the reality of Brexit, accomplished only in January 2020, was an economic hit worse than that from the coronavirus pandemic. Britain’s instability has also weakened the European Union, making it harder for Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to stand against Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Today, foreign observers blamed Brexit for the instability in the U.K., although many recognized that economic issues after 2008—and, some argued, even before then—had been behind the Brexit vote itself. Writing in France’s newspaper Le Monde, Sylvain Kahn said, “Since the referendum, British governments have demonstrated, with ever greater talent, that Brexit only takes the UK further away from the promised land of recovered sovereignty and untrammelled freedom. ‘Take back control!’ they all said. But the British are a very long way from doing that. No other EU member is in such a state…. Since Brexit, Britain’s Conservative leaders have worked tirelessly to prove that EU membership was very far from the problem.”
This same anti-immigrant, nationalist isolationism fed the rise of the MAGA Republicans. They joined with the supply-siders to create today’s Republican Party, and today’s illustration that their ideology cannot survive contact with reality sparked an astonishing leap to the right.
In The Federalist, senior editor John Daniel Davidson announced, “We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives.” “The conservative project has failed,” he wrote, “and conservatives need to forge a new political identity that reflects our revolutionary moment.” Western civilization is dying, he wrote, and to revive it, those on the right should “start thinking of themselves as radicals, restorationists, and counterrevolutionaries. Indeed, that is what they are, whether they embrace those labels or not.”
They should, he said, stop focusing on the free-market economics and supply-side principles of the Reagan years and instead embrace the idea of wielding government power as “an instrument of renewal in American life… a blunt instrument indeed.”
Davidson embraces using the power of the government to enforce the principles of the right wing, bending corporations to their will, starving universities that spread “poisonous ideologies,” getting rid of no-fault divorce, and subsidizing families with children. “Wielding government power,” he writes, “will mean a dramatic expansion of the criminal code.” Abortion is murder and should be treated as such, parents who take their children to drag shows “should be arrested and charged with child abuse,” doctors who engage in gender-affirming interventions “should be thrown in prison and have their medical licenses revoked,” “teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.”
“The necessary task is nothing less than radical and revolutionary,” he writes. And for those worrying that the assumption of such power might be dangerous, “we should attend to it with care after we have won the war.”
What Davidson is suggesting, of course, is indeed radical: it has most of the hallmarks of fascism. Other Republican lawmakers are also embracing that ideology lately: today, Florida state representative Anthony Sabatini approvingly quoted Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco, saying, “I answer only to God and to History.”
But more and more, Americans seem to be moving back toward the principles of Abraham Lincoln, who stood firm on the idea that true conservatism was defending the idea, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that all people are created equal and have a right to consent to the government under which they live.
Today, in Oklahoma, for the first time in decades, the Tulsa World endorsed a Democrat, U.S. Representative Kendra Horn, rather than extremist Republican Markwayne Mullin, for the U.S. Senate. The paper applauded Horn’s bipartisanship and willingness to meet with her constituents. “Her congressional stint gives Oklahomans a glimpse of what Oklahoma lawmakers of the past looked like,” the paper wrote. “They were pragmatic legislators who looked after their state and found ways to get things done rather than cater to the fringes of their own parties…. In this moment, this is the type of senator we need.”
—
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.
https://www.washingtonpost.
https://www.investmentmonitor.
John Daniel Davidson, “We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives,” The Federalist, October 20, 2022.
https://www.washingtonpost.
Ohio
Republican Senate Candidate JD Vance speaks to supporters in Youngstown, Ohio on September 17, 2022. (Jeff Swensen / Getty) |
Ohio’s U.S. Senate candidates, Tim Ryan and J. D. Vance, held their first debate last night in Cleveland. I wrote last year about why I find Vance so execrable, but my friend Jim Swift, a native Ohioan, argued today that while “Ryan gave a serviceable performance,” he “didn’t beat Vance into the ground, and given how far Ohio has gone in a MAGA direction, that’s what he needed to do.”
One moment, however, struck me. At a rally in Ohio last month, Donald Trump declared, “J. D. is kissing my ass, he wants my support so bad”—while Vance was standing right by the stage. Last night, Ryan slammed Vance for selling his dignity:
I don’t know anybody I grew up with—I don’t know anybody I went to high school with—that would allow somebody to take their dignity like that and then get back up onstage. We need leaders who have courage to take on their own party. And I’ve proven that. And he was called an “ass kisser” by the former president.
I understood Ryan’s exasperation. I’m not from Ohio, but I was raised in a working-class neighborhood. Where I grew up, if you sneered that a man was kissing your ass—and said it to his face—that other fellow might react by knocking you on that particular part of your anatomy. But Vance’s reaction to Trump calling him out as a spineless loser at his own rally was to run up to Trump like a puppy that just got a treat, wagging his tail for another tasty biscuit.
It is possible, even likely, that Vance will gain a Senate seat. But he can never regain his dignity. He doesn’t seem to care—and neither, apparently, do voters.
Americans once expected politicians to carry themselves with a seriousness that indicated their ability and willingness to tackle problems, whether poverty or war, that were too difficult for the rest of us. We elected such people not because we wanted them to be like us but because we hoped that they were better than us: smarter, tougher, and capable of being leaders and role models.
We often failed, and sometimes we even enjoyed electing scoundrels, such as James Traficant and James Michael Curley. Democracies always welcome a certain amount of playacting and mischief as reassurance that our leaders are not too far removed from our own experiences as citizens. And yes, many politicians have used that as cover for their misdeeds. But even some of the most flawed people we elevated to high office at least pretended to be better people, and thus were capable of inspiring us to be a better nation.
Today, we no longer expect or even want our politicians to be better than we are. The new American right, however, has blown past the relatively innocuous populism of the past 40 years and added a fetid cynicism about almost everything related to public life. Not only are the MAGA Republicans seemingly repelled by the idea of voting for someone better than they are; they support candidates who are often manifestly worse people than the average citizen, so that they may slather their fears about their own shortcomings and prejudices under a sludgy and undifferentiated hatred about almost everyone in public office.
These populists not only look past the sins of their candidates but also defend and even celebrate them. Let us leave aside the cult around Trump, which has now reached such levels of weirdness that the specter of Jim Jones is probably pacing about the netherworld in awe. Instead, consider how many people cheer on unhinged cranks such as Marjorie Taylor Greene or allow themselves to be courted by smarmy opportunists such as Vance and Ted Cruz.
This new populism, centered in the modern Republican Party, has no recognizable policy content beyond the thrill of cruelty and a juvenile boorishness meant largely to enrage others. The GOP’s goals now boil down to power for its elected royalty and cheap coliseum pleasures for its rank and file. Republicans, therefore, are forced to lower their—and our—standards for admission to public office, because the destruction of dignity is the only way they can find the candidates who will do what decent men and women will not, including abasing themselves to Donald Trump.
The same Republicans who claim to venerate the Founders and the Constitution have intentionally turned our politics into a scuzzy burlesque. Last night, Fox News—home to some of the loudest carny barkers on the freak-show midway—played a snippet of a 2018 phone call from Joe Biden to his son Hunter. The message revealed a father’s love and worry; the Fox host Sean Hannity tried to make it seem scandalous. Meanwhile, GOP leaders continue to defend the Georgia candidate Herschel Walker, whose callousness to his own children (and their mothers) is on full display. They ridicule Biden—a decent and good man who was worried that his son was going to die from addiction—and make excuses for Walker, who seemingly forgot about multiple children he’s fathered and has made incoherent responses to charges from the mother of one of those children that he financed an abortion for her. She has also said that he later asked her to undergo a second abortion; Walker continues to deny all of these claims.
I’m an adult. I get it. Our elected officials aren’t saints, and only rarely are they heroes. But must they now be a cavalcade of clowns and charlatans, joyously parading their embrace of vice and their rejection of virtue? The Republican Party seems to think so.
Related:
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WorldThe mild-mannered professor who split American conservativesAdrian Vermeule’s far-reaching ideas illuminate a growing rift on the right about how to wield power OCTOBER 14, 2022 by Brooke Masters |
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KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE-- We’re now less than 4 weeks from 2022’s Election Day. We have several rating changes this week in House and gubernatorial races, and we also wanted to update our thinking on the Senate. Table 1: Crystal Ball House rating changesTable 2: Crystal Ball gubernatorial rating changesThe SenateProbably the biggest recent news in the Senate has come in Georgia, where the campaign of former NFL star Herschel Walker (R) was rocked by reporting that the anti-abortion candidate had paid for an abortion for a girlfriend. The report fits in with broader questions that Walker has faced about his personal and professional background. But it’s unclear whether the story has changed the race in any enduring way. Walker’s travails illustrate a larger question about 2022: Senate Republicans are running a weak crop of candidates in an era where candidate quality may very well be declining in importance, with partisans likelier to stick with their candidate and downplay other factors, such as personal behavior or incumbency. In other words, Walker may have an easier time getting by with his baggage now than in a previous era. The likeliest outcome may still be a runoff in this race. In other races, polling has indicated Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) may be trailing former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt (R), although Nevada is one state where polling may be likelier to understate Democrats: For instance, former Rep. Joe Heck (R, NV-3) led in 8 straight polls against Cortez Masto in their 2016 race from early September to early October, according to RealClearPolitics. Two years later, the RCP average was even at the end of the race between then-Sen. Dean Heller (R) and now-Sen. Jacky Rosen (D), but Rosen won by 5. We continue to think Cortez Masto is the most vulnerable Democratic senator, but we did want to offer this caveat. Nevada is one of the few places where early voting patterns, as deciphered by the great Nevada analyst Jon Ralston of the Nevada Independent, can tell us a lot about what to expect in the results. We’ll be watching those trends closely when early voting begins later this month. Meanwhile, polling in Pennsylvania may be likelier to overstate Democrats. While Toomey’s 2016 challenger, Katie McGinty (D), almost always led in the last couple weeks of that cycle, Toomey ended up prevailing by about 1.5 points. Presidential polling in 2016 and 2020 also overstated the Democrats, although the averages closed in the final days of the campaign. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) has never trailed television doctor Mehmet Oz (R) in public polling, although his lead has been shrinking as of late (there also hasn’t really been anything fresh in the state in a couple of weeks). Fetterman’s favorability has clearly weakened under the weight of GOP attacks that are often focused on crime -- as we discussed in our ad roundup last week -- and he has also faced questions about his health following a stroke earlier this year. But Oz’s favorability is still worse -- here is another case where Oz, like Walker, is reliant to some degree on a Republican-leaning electorate both showing up on Election Day and choosing to vote against the Democrats despite reservations (which is certainly something that could happen). State Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D), meanwhile, has appeared to create some distance between himself and state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) in the gubernatorial race. Maybe Shapiro helps Fetterman over the finish line. The general consensus, with which we agree, has these as the 3 likeliest Senate seats to flip in some order. We continue to give a small edge to Fetterman in Pennsylvania while rating the other 2 as Toss-ups. We don’t feel particularly tempted to push any of our other Leans-rated states -- Arizona and New Hampshire on the Democratic side, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin on the Republican side -- to Toss-up, even though they all remain hotly contested. A late Republican break could also endanger Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), but as of now he appears to be fine. Our ratings show 49 states either not on the ballot or at least leaning to the Democrats and 49 to the Republicans, with Toss-ups in the Democratic-held seats of Georgia and Nevada. The HouseThe overall House playing field continues to be large and made up predominantly of currently Democratic-held seats. The battlefield does not really seem to be expanding, in the sense that there does not appear to be a lot of seats that seemed uncompetitive before that are now moving into more competitive categories. For instance, we haven’t seen the need to push a bunch of Leans Democratic races to Toss-up or to move a lot of Likely or Safe races into more competitive categories. But Republicans also remain within reach of flipping seats where Joe Biden did considerably better than he did nationally -- we reference one of those, RI-2, below -- even as they have not clearly put away many of what appear to be their easier targets. For instance, even a couple of Democratic members that we have listed in our Leans Republican category, Reps. Cindy Axne (D, IA-3) and Tom Malinowski (D, NJ-7) are still in the game, as best as we can gather. Democrats also have some opportunities to play offense: One seat to really watch is CA-22, where Rep. David Valadao (R) is seeking reelection against state Assemblyman Rudy Salas (D). The district got a little worse for Valadao in redistricting, moving a couple of points to the left (Biden +13), and we have heard that Valadao is struggling to consolidate Republican support following his vote to impeach Donald Trump at the start of last year (this weakness showed up in the state’s top-2 primary). A sometimes-overlooked silver lining for Republicans as they continue to hold an advantage in the overall race for the majority is the greater number of challenging open seats that the Democrats are defending. Of the races rated in the most competitive categories -- Toss-up or Leans -- there are 20 districts with no incumbent on the general election ballot. Democrats are effectively defending 13 of these seats, while Republicans are defending only 5 (a couple of others, CO-8 and OR-6, are entirely new seats created after the states each gained a seat in redistricting, so they aren’t counted in either side’s tally). That also does not count a handful of open Democratic seats that we rate as Likely or Safe Republican takeovers; redistricting was a major factor in many of these. Even in an era where incumbency is probably not worth what it once was, open seats are often just harder to defend, leaving Democrats a little more overextended than they might have been had fewer of their incumbents headed for the exits. This also has some bearing on the rating changes we’re making this week. A retirement looms large in RI-2, an open seat that state Treasurer Seth Magaziner (D) is trying to defend against former gubernatorial nominee Allan Fung (R). Had Rep. Jim Langevin (D, RI-2) run for another term, we doubt the district would be in play; indeed, Fung, a strong challenger, didn’t announce his run until Langevin retired. A couple of recent independent polls have shown Fung leading by mid-to-high single digits, although he is several points short of 50% himself. Magaziner may still be trying to consolidate Democrats after a late primary, and the district is still fundamentally Democratic: Joe Biden won it 56%-42%. But we find it increasingly difficult to justify a Leans Democratic rating in a district where Fung has now led a couple of recent polls and where both sides are spending money. So this is now a Toss-up. Meanwhile, we may have been a bit too bullish on Republicans in CO-8, the newly-drawn district that Biden won by about 4.5 points. This is the kind of swing seat that an opposition party should be able to flip in a midterm, but it remains close and competitive with heavy and bipartisan outside spending. Moving this seat to Toss-up also helps to balance out the Leans Republican group a little bit, as the GOP grip on a number of these is tenuous (we mentioned a couple above -- open seats in AZ-6 and NC-13 are others). Our final change is a seat where there was another damaging Democratic retirement, early in the cycle: WI-3, an Obama-to-Trump southwestern Wisconsin seat. Rep. Ron Kind (D, WI-3) decided not to run again after a close call in 2020, giving retired Navy SEAL Derrick Van Orden (R) a good shot at winning the seat on his second try. According to reporting over the weekend by Axios’s Josh Kraushaar, it does not appear that the Democratic candidate, state Sen. Brad Pfaff, will be getting outside spending help in this Trump +5 district. Pfaff is going against history: 1990 was the most recent midterm where the White House party held an open seat in a district that the sitting president lost 2 years earlier. We’re moving this race from Leans Republican to Likely Republican. This week’s changes add a couple of races to our Toss-up column -- there are now 26. Splitting them down the middle would still result in a 227-208 Republican House, or a net gain of 14 for Republicans. This is the same basic arithmetic from last week. The GovernorsIn terms of the overall net change in governor’s mansions this year, our outlook has been the same for months: Democrats are heavy favorites to flip open-seat contests in deep blue Maryland and Massachusetts. But, aside from those 2 cases, we don’t peg either side as a clear favorite to flip any additional states. As September closed out, we made Democrats more prohibitive favorites in a pair of marginal Biden-won states: Michigan and Pennsylvania. In both states, well-known and electorally-proven Democrats, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, respectively, are running against underfunded and polarizing Republicans. To us, the contest in Minnesota, which we had in the Leans Democratic category, is increasingly shaping up like the ones in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) won his first term in 2018 by a 54%-42% margin, and has kept generally positive approval ratings throughout his term. The most recent survey of the race, from SurveyUSA, gives him a 50%-40% lead against former state Sen. Scott Jensen (R) -- in most polls, Walz has been at or near 50%. Jensen isn’t as polarizing as some other Republican gubernatorial challengers in blue states this year, but is at a significant financial disadvantage. Presidential partisanship isn’t everything when it comes to gubernatorial races (more on that later), but Biden did several points better in Minnesota than he did in either Michigan or Pennsylvania, which may give Walz more of a partisan cushion. We are moving Minnesota to Likely Democratic. None of these 3 races look like they’ll be decided by landslide margins, but we do like the Democrats’ chances in all of them. In Colorado, we are confident enough in Gov. Jared Polis’s prospects that we are upgrading his contest from Likely Democratic to Safe Democratic. Republicans fielded University of Colorado Board of Regents member Heidi Ganahl -- who is the sole remaining GOP statewide official left there -- but the race hasn’t emerged as a top contest. In public polling, Polis usually fares at least a few points better than his Senate counterpart, Michael Bennet: in an early October poll from Marist, the former was up 54%-36% while the latter led by a smaller 48%-41%. We are keeping the Senate race as Likely Democratic, but adjusting our gubernatorial rating to reflect that dynamic. Our final rating change for this week comes in one of the reddest states: Oklahoma. According to an internal poll that Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt’s campaign released last week, the governor has a 15-point lead, 48%-33%, over his opponent, current state Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister. Stitt’s numbers show that while Oklahomans give Biden a dismal 29/67 approval spread, Hofmeister, who was elected to her current job as a Republican but switched parties to run against Stitt in this election, is less defined. On Friday, the Sooner Poll released a survey that showed Hofmeister leading 47%-43%. Earlier this week, Hofmeister got a boost, as the leaders of the state’s 5 largest tribes, which often eschew formally endorsing candidates, put out a statement backing her. That decision is especially notable given that Stitt himself is a member of the Cherokee Nation, although the governor and tribal leaders have butted heads over several issues. Democrats have enjoyed a huge advantage in the race in terms of number of commercials run recently, according to Wesleyan Media Project tracking, as outside groups who dislike the governor have flooded the airwaves. While it may be hard to envision a Democrat actually winning in Oklahoma, all this suggests that the election isn’t as clear cut as a Safe Republican rating would imply. With these recent developments in mind, we are moving Oklahoma from Safe Republican to Likely Republican. While all our gubernatorial ratings changes today have been in favor of Democrats, some better news for Republicans may be coming down the line. Currently, our gubernatorial map features 5 Toss-up contests: Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, Oregon, and Wisconsin. With the exception of Arizona, those are all states where Democrats are playing defense. We will eventually push those races to one side or the other, but we can see potential for Republicans to do well with this group of races -- on a good enough night, they could possibly even run the table. Even though all of these races remain exceedingly close, they could break in an unpredictable way. Oddly, considering its presidential lean, the Toss-up state where Democrats may be best positioned is Kansas, a state that Biden lost by 15 points. Public polling there has been rare, but according to numbers from Emerson College, Gov. Laura Kelly (D-KS) has a +11 favorability rating and narrowly leads state Attorney General Derek Schmidt. As in her 2018 campaign, Kelly has earned several prominent cross-party endorsements, including from former Republican Gov. Bill Graves, who Schmidt worked for earlier in his career. In some ways, Oregon seems to be the opposite of Kansas: in a state that Biden carried by a little more than 15 points, Democrats have increasing cause for concern. In every poll that has been released since August, former state House Minority Leader Christine Drazan (R) has posted a slight lead over former state House Speaker Tina Kotek (D). Some Democrats may blame the third-party candidacy of former Democratic state Sen. Betsy Johnson, but a late September poll from Clout Research put Drazan up 53%-47% over Kotek in a 2-way matchup (though it is worth noting that Clout is a Republican pollster). Beaver State Democrats may also be weighed down by current Gov. Kate Brown’s (D) subpar standing: Morning Consult published fresh numbers this week, and Brown continues to be the most unpopular governor in the country. Ultimately, core partisanship could eventually push Oregon and Kansas back to their respective majority parties, but the overall dynamic has been fascinating. So, while our current ratings (setting aside the Toss-ups) show Democrats netting 2 governorships, Republicans still have a path to coming out of this election with more governorships than they hold now if they do very well in the Toss-ups -- which is a real possibility. |
Last Thursday, October 6, the Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee tweeted: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” — Notes: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/ https://www.washingtonpost. https://www.vice.com/en/ https://www.washingtonpost. https://www.motherjones.com/ https://www.washingtonpost. |
