“The Party Is Completely Gone”
Also: “Election Integrity” no longer means what it used to mean.
Consolidation continues: Ed McBroom took apart Trump’s “stolen election” lies brick by brick in Michigan. Now he’s endorsed Trump. And billionaire investor Nelson Peltz threw in his lot with Trump yesterday because he thinks Biden is too old. (Peltz and Biden are the same age.) But half of the Haley voters in yesterday’s primaries said they plan on voting for Biden. Meanwhile, Trump is already saying that this election will be rigged and the WSJ is very concerned about this rhetoric—because it might depress Republican turnout.
Happy Wednesday.
In an excellent report on the eve of yesterday’s Ohio Republican Senate primary, Jonathan Martin noted that it represented “the best, and perhaps last, opening for the Republican old guard to sneak one of their own through a contested primary, secure a reliable vote for Ukraine, and hand former President Donald Trump an embarrassing defeat.”
“It is hard,” Martin continued, “to conjure a better set of circumstances for Matt Dolan, the state senator . . . and would-be last gasp of the pre-Trump establishment.”
After all,
Dolan has lingering statewide name identification from his failed 2022 Senate bid and has been up on Ohio television since last fall, using his fortune to outspend his two Republican rivals. He doesn’t have to beat the Trump-backed candidate, Cleveland-area car dealer Bernie Moreno, head to head because there’s a third, fading candidate in the race siphoning votes, Secretary of State Frank LaRose. And with Trump having made quick work of his third consecutive GOP nomination, his working-class devotees don’t have the same urgency to rally to the MAGA flag when polls open here Tuesday.
Oh, and the Associated Press dropped a bombshell story last week reporting that somebody with access to Moreno’s email account in 2008 signed up on Adult Friend Finder in search of “young guys to have fun with while traveling.”
Dolan was also expected to benefit from a late endorsement by the popular governor, Mike DeWine.
Martin concluded his piece with a remark from Steve Stivers, the former Republican congressman who now runs the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, which supported Dolan. Stivers said, “with a gallows laugh”: “If we can’t win under these circumstances, we have to acknowledge the party is completely gone.”
Yesterday, the Trump-backed Moreno crushed Dolan by almost 20 points. Trump-backed candidates also won contested House primaries in Ohio and Illinois. Meaning that we wake up this morning to the latest episode in the longest-running program in contemporary American politics: It’s Trump’s party.
Today’s Republican voters want Trump. And they want Trump-backed candidates.
The party is completely gone.
Will this outcome hurt Republicans’ chances to pick up the Senate seat currently held by Sherrod Brown in the general election? It could. Democrats spent about $2 million to boost Moreno, figuring he’d be a weaker opponent. Still, in a presidential year, with Trump expected to win the state, Moreno probably starts off with a 50-50 chance to win.
In yesterday’s presidential primaries in Ohio, Illinois, Arizona, and Florida, Nikki Haley got somewhere between 14 percent and 19 percent of the vote. Does that suggest there’s some resistance to Trump in the GOP electorate?
It does.
Can those voters be kept from Trump in November, and pushed toward Biden?
Perhaps. They represent Biden’s path to victory.
Can one take hope from Trump’s money troubles, his legal troubles, and his troublesome remarks and statements?
Sure. But it would be folly to count on these accumulated problems to do Trump in.
If we have a “normal” presidential election in November, with Biden as an incumbent with low approval running against a challenger who has a bunch of problems, the challenger would be favored to win—as troubled challengers did in 1980 and 1992, and (acknowledging of course that Hillary Clinton wasn’t an actual incumbent) in 2016.
If, on the other hand, voters come to understand that November’s election is an exceptional one, with the prospect of a truly scary Trump second term before them, and the rule of law, the liberal international order, and the future of American democracy on the ballot, then Trump is, I think, likely to lose.
But the more “natural” outcome at this point is a Trump victory.
The task is to prevent it.
As the priestess Sybil tell Aeneas in book 6 of the Aeneid,
The gates of Hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.
—William Kristol
Cheap Shots
"In yesterday’s presidential primaries in Ohio, Illinois, Arizona, and Florida, Nikki Haley got somewhere between 14 percent and 19 percent of the vote."
I had not heard this stat before (source?), but if true, this represents a major threat to Trump. Perhaps not in Ohio and Illinois, which will vote red and blue respectively, but if there are numbers *even close to this* in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona--I'm talking 5+% here--then that's the Bannon Line being moved under our feat already, and so long as anti-Trump turnout remains strong on the left (it will) then this is "bigly" bad news for Trump. Let us hope the pattern holds/grows over the next 7.5 months.
"If we have a “normal” presidential election in November, with Biden as an incumbent with low approval running against a challenger who has a bunch of problems, the challenger would be favored to win—as troubled challengers did in 1980 and 1992, and (acknowledging of course that Hillary Clinton wasn’t an actual incumbent) in 2016."
Here's where my opinion differs: Trump is no longer an outsider running as a fresh challenger. He is the present head of the GOP, a recent former president--"and with a record!" as Walter Sobchek would say, and his "bunch of problems" would make the Gipper and Slick Willy blush by comparison. So no, I don't think he is a "challenger" comparable to Reagan or Clinton (the presidential one) because he is closer to incumbent than challenger. That means he has his own record to defend, and Biden has Trump's record to attack. Shall we take a stroll down memory lane?:
- The Muslim Ban that saw Americans & green card holders detained at airports upon implementation
- Tried to repeal the ACA (again) that saw an additional 40M+ Americans gain medical coverage
- Kids in cages as policy at the border
- Kissing up to MBS after Jamaal Khashoggi
- "Very fine people" "On both sides" when remarking on Charlottesville in 2017
- More tax cuts for the rich in 2017
- Siding with Putin over America's intelligence agencies multiple times in public
- Using arms transfers to Ukraine as leverage to try to blackmail Zelenski into manufacturing dirt against Biden (election interference, blackmail of an anti-Russia ally, corrupt intent)
- Appointing the SCOTUS justices who enabled to overturning of Roe v Wade
- Sacking the CDC's advance team in Wuhan prior to 2020, allowing the virus to get a head start here in the US without any advanced warnings from China while China lied and downplayed the virus
- Refusing to invoke the DPA to get tests mass-produced prior to viral ramp up that led to unnecessary spread of CV-19 and unnecessary loss of life (DPA eventually invoked to make vents)
- Delayed releasing the federal government's supply of ventilators, leading to unnecessary deaths
- Promoting and believing debunked misinformation from the WH about things like Ivermectin, colloidal silver, UV light, and bleach injections like some IRL version of Jude Law's character in Contagion
- Praised Xi's response to CV-19 in China
- Multiple public/private instances of desecrating veterans, fallen troops, and the families of fallen troops--up to and including the late and great senator John McCain
- Freezer trucks full of American corpses adjacent to major hospitals in cities around the country and the first mass graves seen in this country for decades (Hart Island, NYC)
- Tried to start a war with Iran by assassinating their equivalent of Jim Mattis
- Use of unmarked federal police to round up and detain protestors without due process, warrants, or any kind of adhesion to the 6th amendment
- Use of military helicopters, national guard personnel, and federal police to violently break up peaceful protests at LaFayette Square
- Creation of the Big Lie that threatened American democracy via losers of elections refusing to accept genuine losses
- Incited insurrection that disrupted the peaceful transfer of power and nearly averted the transfer of power altogether, leading to over 140+ police injuries and at least 7 deaths (officer suicides included)
- Got over 1,000 of his supporters arrested and convicted of crimes for believing his Big Lie and storming the capitol on his behalf in support of the Big Lie
- Tried to steal the 2020 election with *activated* slates of "alternate electors" on Jan 6th--many of whom are now facing federal and state criminal charges for doing so, including Trump
- Was impeached twice for corrupt blackmailing of Zelenski and inciting the J6th Insurrection
- Signed the surrender agreement with the Taliban that cut out the Afghan government and released 5,000 Taliban fighters
- Cut the SIV program in 2018 that resulted in Afghan allies not being able to be processed for domestic asylum when the Afghan evacuation took place (a problem to this day, just ask Will Selber)
- Stole Top Secret documents from the US government and then hid them from the government when given multiple opportunities to turn them over
- Was found liable for sexual assault by violating a woman's body with his fingers
- Was found liable for massive loan fraud with banks
- Has paid zero taxes year after year
- Cheated on his wife with a porn star and then hid it from the American people via tax fraud
- Routinely engages in nativist "blood and soil" fascistic rhetoric when rallying supporters
- Likes extra-judicial violence and the use of armed militias in politics
The list goes on folks. The question is, can Biden and dems effectively remind Americans with short memories just how fucked America was under Trump's leadership?
What the last eight years have shown us is that the number of actual conservatives in the Republican Party was actually quite small. Today's GOP is largely a replica of its 1930s self: isolationist, nativist, and with a soft spot for authoritarians.