Trump Finally Realized His Attack on Mail Voting Was Costing Him

I wrote a piece on June 24, 2020, called “Trump Has Destroyed the GOP’s Vote-by-Mail Advantage in Florida.” On Wednesday, August 5, 2020, you got the opportunity to read the same thing in the Washington Post. At some point between these two articles, someone finally got through to Trump and made him understand his error:

As Greg Sargent notes, the campaign’s goal here is “to delegitimize vote-by-mail in states where they think it will hurt Trump, while legitimizing it in places where they think it will help him.” This is a fallback position–an effort at mitigation. As I predicted, Republican voters were not able to make fine distinctions about where mail voting is good and desirable and where it is bad and corrupt. When Trump attacked expanded mail voting in states like Michigan, it made his base reluctant to trust mail voting in states like Florida where the practice has been long established.

Rather than admit a strategic blunder or completely change course, the attempt at a solution involves promoting mail voting wheel there is a “great infrastructure” and “great Republican Governors” and dissuading it where it is being newly introduced by Democratic governors.

To be clear, this really was a blunder:

As of Wednesday, more than 600,000 more Democrats had requested mail ballots than Republicans, according to the University of Florida’s Michael McDonald. For comparison: in the 2018 governor’s race, Republican Ron DeSantis beat Democrat Andrew Gillum by fewer than 50,000 votes.

Similarly, a recent CNN/SSRS poll found that 59% of voters who “lean Democratic” said they would prefer to vote via mail ballot compared to just 21% of Republican-leaning voters.

When I wrote my piece in June, the Democrats’ advantage was only 302,000 voters, and I already considered that catastrophic for the president. Fortunately, he doesn’t listen to me, but he did eventually get the message after losing in every survey of Florida taken in July.

There’s a secondary play here, too, that we must consider. A lot of votes will be uncounted on Election Night, and as a result some states may not be called for either candidate. Trump may want to argue that the counting should stop, especially if he has a narrow lead that is likely to evaporate once all the mail votes are included. He’s preparing the ground for that argument, so this is more serious than just a laughable effort at mitigation. Biden needs to prep the battlefield in response.

Running Mates Won’t Determine the Winner of this Election

Well, I am comforted to learn that Professor Alan Lichtman has predicted that Joe Biden will win the presidency. He’s picked the winner (including Gore in 2000) in every election since 1984, and I see little reason to doubt him now. Watching him go through his 13 keys to winning a presidential election, I can see why it’s difficult for challengers to beat incumbents. Biden barely passed the test, seven to six, in spite of everything.

Lichtman doesn’t look at surveys at all, but Trump’s net disapprovals are currently in the high teens. Even Rasmussen has Biden winning by three points, and the general consensus is considerably higher, sometimes ranging into double figures. Key states are looking uniformly bad for the president and, according to the FiveThirtyEight average of polls, Biden is even ahead by one tenth of one percent in Texas. The Economist says Biden has a 97 percent chance of winning the popular vote and an 88 percent chance of winning the election.

There are certainly things that can still go wrong, but it’s hard to project Trump doing anything to improve his standing with the electorate. Voter suppression, tabulation tampering, foreign meddling, or major missteps by the Biden campaign could make this a close election, but everything points to a Trump loss.

Interestingly, two of Lichtman’s keys focus on the respective charisma of the candidates. He gives both Trump and Biden a failing grade: Biden because he’s too vanilla and Trump because his appeal is too narrow. But Lichtman never mentions running mates. For him, vice-presidential candidates do not have even the slightest significance in his projection.

I can’t say that I’m that indifferent to who Biden chooses, but I agree that his decision is unlikely to change the ultimate outcome of the election. Maybe there’s more negative potential than positive, but I see little reason to fight or obsess over the issue. People tend to cast their vote for or against the person in the top position, and this election more than any other in my lifetime seems to be a pure referendum on the incumbent.

The only reason to care much about Biden’s running mate is that they might become president some day. I doubt they will prevent Biden from becoming president, so I have trouble getting too worked up about it.

 

Undermining Faith in Our Elections Raises Constitutional Concerns

Despite torture memo author John Yoo’s reassurances, Trump’s threat to delay the election is corrosive to our system.

Those of us who blogged right through to the end of George W. Bush’s presidency had already heard enough from John Yoo, thank you, before he decided to become a volunteer legal defender of President Trump. If you aren’t familiar with Yoo, his Wikipedia page is accurate and gets straight to the point.

Yoo is upset that some conservative intellectuals have been harshly critical of Trump’s suggestion that perhaps the presidential election should be delayed.

Donald Trump’s tweet last week that the possibility of mail-in voter fraud might justify postponing the November elections renewed claims that his presidency is a threat to the Constitution. Conservative commentator Henry Olsen, often a stout defender of the administration, wrote in his Washington Post column that the tweet “is the single most anti-democratic statement any sitting president has ever made.” Steven Calabresi, a conservative Northwestern law professor and co-founder of the Federalist Society, declared in the New York Times that “this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again.”

But Yoo assures us that threatening to do something unconstitutional is not problematic if you lack the constitutional power to justify the threat. This is like saying that robbing a bank is not possible because robbing banks is against the law, The Constitution is there to deter and punish, but it cannot prevent unconstitutional acts.

Kevin Williamson, most recently canned by The Atlantic for recommending hanging as a punishment for abortion, takes Yoo to task in the National Review.

With that in mind, Yoo’s insistence that in toying with the idea of delaying the election Trump “does not implicate any constitutional concerns,” seems to me to be far from self-evidently true. Yoo assures us that things will happen “automatically” in January, but in a democratic republic nothing happens automatically — we rely on republican norms, civic duty, democratic cooperation, and patriotism for the orderly operation of government and the peaceful transfer of power. In raising the possibility of delaying the election, Trump implicitly asserts an extraconstitutional power.

What emerges is a debate about Trump’s essential nature. On one side is an alarmist group who sees Trump as a nascent Mussolini on the cusp of seizing permanent power for himself. On the other is a ridiculous group of sycophants who argue that Trump is really a stout defender of constitutional limits on government power. Williamson seeks to puncture this debate by reminding us that Trump is a thoughtless creature who is incapable of acting on principle or with any significant forethought. For Williamson, he’s a simple-minded narcissistic sociopath whose actions are best compared to an avaricious gangster.

It is possible to undermine constitutional and democratic norms without having grand Napoleonic ambitions. For example, President Trump’s bizarre demand for a Treasury kickback payment from Microsoft is typical of the Trump style. It is gross and corrosive, but it is not the kind of thing a would-be dictator does — it is the kind of thing a would-be gangster does.

The “kickback payment” Williamson refers to is Trump’s demand that “the Treasury… of the United States get a lot of money” in return for approving Microsoft’s potential acquisition of TikTok. That’s not how our government works, but Trump doesn’t know that. For Williamson, this isn’t a some grand tragedic theme but more of a nonsensical farce.

We know from the Roman example (of which the Founding Fathers were acutely aware) that ordinary venality can be as dangerous to a republic as grandiose political ambition; and, as it turns out, in our own case that kind of thing is sufficiently destructive without our having to imagine Trump as an aspiring Caesar. This isn’t an opera, and it does not have to be operatic.

Williamson doesn’t envy Yoo’s effort “to reverse-engineer a plausible constitutional rationale around President Trump’s pinball antics.” He seems to think Trump’s threat is probably more corrosive than immediate, but he notes that “in a democratic republic nothing happens automatically.” 

I think F. Scott Fitzgerald put it well in The Great Gatsby when he talked about the impact careless people can have on those around them.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

This may be the best characterization of Donald Trump’s adult behavior. We wouldn’t let Tom and Daisy Buchanan run the country, but we wouldn’t compare them to Mussolini either. Trump doesn’t know what is and isn’t constitutional or who has the power to delay an election and who doesn’t. But simply through his own carelessness, he will do great damage to the integrity of our electoral process. He will undermine faith in the result and prevent the country from uniting, however briefly, around his replacement. He could even inspire violence, especially if it takes a week or more to declare a winner or he gets it in his head that no one can force him to leave office.

Kevin Williamson is wrong about a lot of things, but he’s right when he mocks Yoo’s insistence that Trump’s threat to delay the election “does not implicate any constitutional concerns.” Our Republic depends on the consent of the governed, and a president who works overtime to prevent that consent is tearing at the fabric of our constitutional system. We’ll be lucky if all Trump leaves us is a mess to be cleaned up.

Midweek Cafe and Lounge, Vol. 173

We’ll start off with John Oliver:

A Closer Look with Seth Meyers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVp14rIUKFk

Sarah Cooper (who is the best thing to ever happen to TikTok – or Twitter or YouTube), captures Trump’s pathos yet again:

After watching that Axios interview with Jonathan Swan, let’s just say that Sarah Cooper has tons of material to work with. By the way, Swan’s facial expressions as he reacted to the various inanities Trump spewed really do reflect the way so many of us react on a daily basis. It’s necessary to see a journalist maintain his focus, react nonverbally with the sort of exasperation many experience, and show Trump for what he is in a way most journalists have failed to do. If you get HBO, take a look if you haven’t already. If you don’t get HBO, there are clips all over Twitter. Just the clips will be enough for many.

Okay. Drinks are on the house. Stay safe and well, everyone.

A Dude on Twitter Who Got Elected President

The president isn’t a magician and he’s not losing because his act is stale. His election was a fluke that won’t be repeated.

Looking through Ryan Lizza and Daniel Lippman’s piece on Donald Trump’s campaign in Politico, I was struck by how widespread the impression is that the president employed “a bag of tricks” to get elected in 2016. There are a lot of people who seem to believe that Trump’s sagging polls indicate that he’s like a children’s birthday party magician who is now being asked to work a college fraternity.

I suppose there’s something to this comparison. In serious times, some jokes seem frivolous or insensitive. And every performer needs fresh material if they want to avoid boring the audience.  But my favorite characterization of Trump’s 2016 success comes “a senior GOP congressional aide.”

“It used to be that he would do five rallies a day and say whatever came off the top of his head and he thinks that won him the election,” said a senior GOP congressional aide, echoing the sentiments of a still-intact class of Republicans appalled by Trump and how he is turning vast swaths of Republican-leaning suburbs into Democratic territory. “It’s like when a 25-year old gets drunk and shows up at a family engagement. That can be cute. But if you’re a 50-year-old and you show up at the gathering drunk and embarrassing, that just hits a little differently. It’s not cute anymore.”

A similar analysis was offered by Trump mega-donor Dan Eberhart:

Trump’s misunderstanding of what got him elected in 2016 is at the heart of the problem, Eberhart argued.

“Trump’s general ability to just feed the base three times over and that will carry you to victory is not really a recipe for success,” he said. “The base is high 30s and that won Trump the primary but he largely won the general election because Hillary was so unpopular. And Biden’s negatives are not as high as Hillary’s so there’s a big problem.”

These explanations attempt to explain why Trump doesn’t pivot or try something different. But it’s probably fair to say he didn’t really try to win the first time. He just discovered that if he got himself on television everyday talking shit about people, he’d soar in Republican polls. He didn’t change anything once he realized it was working. He didn’t change his primary “strategy” for the general election. His victory was a fluke, and he thought it reflected his brilliance.

Setting aside the COVID-19 pandemic and the economy and the fact that Trump was impeached, everything that worked for his 2016 campaign was premised on him being an outsider. He wasn’t a Bush Republican. He wasn’t an incumbent. He hadn’t cast a million votes over decades while middle America was getting hollowed out.

None of that works when you’re the president and the leader of your party. Newt Gingrich sent a dispatch from Rome to gently point out to Trump that he’s running Nixon’s 1968 campaign when he should be modeling his 1972 reelection. That’s absolutely true, except Nixon had a good economy, was winding down the Vietnam War, had opened the door to China, and had a list of domestic accomplishment to tout. Under Trump, Americans aren’t even allowed to travel because we’re too infectious.

It doesn’t really matter. Everything could be going great and Trump’s strategy would be the same. He’d “say whatever came off the top of his head” and expect it to win him the election.  It’s not a magic trick. It’s not even a trick at all. He’s just a dude on Twitter who got elected president of the United States once.

It won’t happen a second time.

A Big Biden Win Will Make the Country Less Polarized and More Governable

White voters are abandoning Trump, which will create an opportunity for Congress to tackle big problems again.

When I wrote How to Win Rural Voters Without Losing Liberal Values for the June/July/August issue of the Washington Monthly, I was seeking a way for the Democrats to win back the White House, the House of Representatives, and control of state legislatures. The title of the piece carried more meaning than you might think, because it wasn’t solely about the moral quandary of courting the votes of so-called “deplorables.” It was part of my thesis that a party dependent primarily on affluent, well-educated suburbanites would do a poor job of being an advocate for working class men and women, irrespective of their race. For a host of reasons, I wanted the Democrats to pursue a broad front strategy, and I absolutely believed that Trump’s complete dominance of white working class voters was reversible.

I might have argued that Trump was certain to be such a colossal screw up that he’d lose a significant chunk of his support, but that would have hardly created a blueprint for action. I wasn’t content to act on faith, which is why I emphasized the importance of Democrats taking antitrust enforcement seriously, in an effort to revitalize small business ownership and opportunity throughout small town America. As it turns out, the Democrats didn’t have to do much of anything but sit back and let Trump alienate first the suburbs and now the remainder of the country.

That’s not entirely accurate, actually, because while suburban seats formed the basis for the new Democratic House majority after the 2018 midterms, the Republicans actually lost a higher percentage of their support in safely red districts. The “deplorable” defection was significant two years ago, it just didn’t have much of an effect.  It’s a process that has sped up and now threatens to have a huge effect.

Harry Enten explains for CNN that white working class voters have turned on Trump to a significant degree.

Biden has clear leads in an average of the last three CNN approved polls in the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. On average, Biden is up by 9 points in Michigan, 11 points in Pennsylvania and 10 points in Wisconsin.

Biden’s upward trajectory is because of vast improvements among White voters in a comparison of Biden’s standing in each poll to how Clinton did with them…

…Still, the size of Biden’s rise over Clinton in these states is clear enough that it’s well outside the range of any statistical anomaly.

  • Michigan: Trump leads by an average of 3 points among White voters. Four years ago, Trump won amongst these voters by 15 points.
  • Pennsylvania: Biden is ahead by 3 points with White voters. In 2016, Trump won them by 15 points.
  • Wisconsin: Biden’s up by 6 points with White voters. Last election, Trump took them by 7 points.

These are three important states, but the collapse of Trump’s advantage with white voters is having an impact on races in every state, including Republican strongholds like Texas, Georgia, Arizona, and Kansas. It was never true that white working class voters were inseparably wed to Donald Trump. They still form his strongest group of support, but they were a bedrock part of the New Deal Democratic coalition for a reason. They knew the Republicans were the party for their factory bosses and distant plutocrats. They belonged to a working man’s party until the economy stopped delivering them a decent lifestyle, and then they became susceptible to highly targeted media-driven efforts to appeal to their basest instincts and cultural alienation.

They’re still susceptible to those messages, but they’re turning on Trump because he’s manifestly terrible at his job. It won’t take too much of a defection for “safe” red districts and states to begin to fall in the Democrats’ column. And that will have one big consequence. For the first time in a long time, the country will get less polarized. It will be less polarized geographically, and also less polarized by race and culture. As a result, the country will become more governable.

There will be Democrats who don’t want these voters in their coalition, just as there are Democrats who don’t welcome the #NeverTrumpers who brought us Dick and George’s Excellent Adventure in Iraq. They won’t be reliable  allies or stalwart members of the base. But, on many economic issues, they can be crucial supporters. If you want a higher minimum wage, a more comprehensive health care system, and the breakup of super-monopolies that are stifling economic opportunity, these folks are going to be very helpful.

Large, durable political majorities have always included some “deplorables.” Lincoln’s Republican Party took in the Know-Nothings. FDR’s majority was anchored in the segregated South. Big majorities make it possible to do big things, and that’s what the country needs right now.

Opposition to Trump is Now at Volcanic Levels

His failure to contain the virus is creating a level of fear and frustration that is ready to explode.

I learned from a friend in Massachusetts on Saturday that I’m not welcome in Cape Cod because my home state of Pennsylvania is on a list of unacceptably risky states. I found that depressing, especially because I monitor the rate of infection in my county very closely, and it’s currently at a very low level. We had approximately 15 deaths in the whole month of July, and my local community averaged about one new case every six days. Things have improved enough that we’ve allowed my son to resume some outdoor sporting activities. I’m concerned that I may have to pull the plug on that soon, however, because our president is a monster.

The coronavirus is spreading at dangerous levels across much of the United States, and public health experts are demanding a dramatic reset in the national response, one that recognizes that the crisis is intensifying and that current piecemeal strategies aren’t working.

This is a new phase of the pandemic, one no longer built around local or regional clusters and hot spots. It comes at an unnerving moment in which the economy suffered its worst collapse since the Great Depression, schools are rapidly canceling plans for in-person instruction and Congress has failed to pass a new emergency relief package. President Trump continues to promote fringe science, the daily death toll keeps climbing and the human cost of the virus in America has just passed 150,000 lives.

“Unlike many countries in the world, the United States is not currently on course to get control of this epidemic. It’s time to reset,” declared a report released this week by Johns Hopkins University.

Another thing I learned on Saturday is how my son’s travel soccer team is preparing to operate in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was very impressed with the protocols they developed, which are much stronger than those used by my son’s baseball league. I have to take my son’s temperature before every practice, and the team will train in pods so that any infection is perhaps contained to four people rather than taking out the whole squad. If I ravel out of state to a list of at-risk states, my son has to quarantine for 14 days even if he didn’t join me. I’m not allowed to be on the sidelines at practice, but must remain in my car. The precautions took me ten minutes to read, and they make a lot of sense. But none of this will help if the federal government continues to do nothing. We all have to be prepared to just shut everything down, because no community can keep this virus out by itself.You all know that I hate this president with the heat of a thousand suns and called for the Electoral College to exercise its discretion to refuse to seat him because he is so manifestly unfit for office. The Supreme Court has since taken that discretion away from our Electors, but we have an election coming up where we will select new Electors. I know there are countless people in this country who are trying to navigate sports and school for their children and are just as frustrated and fearful as I am, and we’re all eager to take it out on Trump. I think places where the virus was contained are then came back are going to the worst for the president, because there’s a sense of loss and an obvious source of blame.

I’m already banned from Massachusetts. I’ve visited my friends in Cape Cod for several years in a row every August, and now I cannot go. I can blame other parts of my state for that, but I also blame the leaders of other states who followed Trump’s wishes and did none of the things my governor did to get the virus under control.

On Monday, I’ll find out what my son’s school district has decided for the upcoming year. I am 99 percent sure I won’t be sending him back to the campus even though he really needs to be with his friends. Sports has been great for him because he’s finally with people his own age, but I am not optimistic that our infection rate will remain where it is, and we’ll probably lose that too.

The fury I feel is volcanic, and that’s just based on how this has impacted my family. When I consider the unnecessary loss of life, the sickness and bodily harm of millions, the broken dreams of shuttered businesses, the people losing jobs and access to health care, I am ready to form a frickin’ militia.

I think Trump’s polls are about to take another huge dip. The energy he has built against him is comparable to Vesuvius.

Trump Wants Brazil to Help Him Win Iowa

The U.S. Ambassador to Brazil has been explicitly asking the government there to lower tariffs on ethanol in time for the 2020 election.

Alceu Moreira is a Brazilian congressman who specializes in agricultural issues. He told the New York Times that U.S. Ambassador Todd Chapman made repeated reference to the American political calendar in recent meetings in which tariffs on ethanol were discussed.

“He said, ‘You know, we have elections in the United States, and that this is very important,’” Mr. Moreira said, recounting their conversation. “He said this four or five times.”

Separately, the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, published an article on Thursday alleging that Chapman has been emphasizing “the importance to the Brazilian government of keeping Donald Trump” in office. On Friday, the Brazilian newspaper Estadão confirmed that “the ambassador framed his argument against tariffs in partisan terms.” Overall, the New York Times reports “Chapman has made it clear to Brazilian officials they could bolster Mr. Trump’s electoral chances in Iowa if Brazil lifted its ethanol tariffs.”

Considering that President Trump was impeached earlier this year for soliciting and trying to coerce foreign aid from Ukraine to help him in the upcoming election, it’s obviously a touchy issue for members of the State Department to be explicitly seeking assistance from Brazil in winning Iowa.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is already involved:

In a letter sent Friday afternoon, Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel demanded that the ambassador, Todd Chapman, produce “any and all documents referring or related to any discussions” he has held with Brazilian officials in recent weeks about their nation’s tariffs on ethanol, an important agricultural export for Iowa, a potential swing state in the American presidential election.

Rep. Engel noted that this is inappropriate behavior and that diplomats are trained to avoid the appearance of partisanship. But this is not a Ukrainian-type scandal. Lowering ethanol tariffs is a bipartisan goal of the American government. It would be perfectly fine for Ambassador Chapman to argue that the policy change would please President Trump and lead to reciprocal benefits. This is more a case where a “wink and  a nod” is required for good taste than an example of some abuse of power.

It’s a problem when the president, for the sole purpose of benefiting politically or financially, seeks concessions that run counter to American interests and the policy of his own National Security Council and State Department. That’s what occurred in Ukraine, and it also explicitly involved his presumed (and now confirmed) opponent in 2020.

Ambassador Chapman was acting in a crass manner, and by asking in such partisan terms, Brazilian officials couldn’t comply without risking damage to relations with a possible Biden administration and Democrats in Congress. He absolutely should not do that, and he deserves a strong reprimand. No one should ask him to do this either, although I don’t see a problem with trying to complete a deal in time for the administration to see some benefit in the election.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that none of this would have happened if Trump hadn’t welshed on a deal with Brazil.

Currently, American ethanol companies can sell up to 750 million liters of ethanol to Brazil per year without paying tariffs. Any sales beyond that are subject to a 20 percent tax. The Brazilian government raised the tariff-free cap last September from 600 million liters — a gesture intended to give Brazilian sugar producers greater access to the American market.

Mr. Trump hailed that move, calling it “great progress for our Farmers.”

But Washington did not make good on the sugar access, which left the Brazilians feeling embittered.

The current ethanol tariff framework is set to expire in August. If the two countries don’t reach a deal, Brazil will apply a 20 percent tax to all ethanol imports, a blow to an industry that is pleading for government bailouts.

Ethanol producers in Brazil want the tariff to remain or be strengthened, and sugar producers are livid that that America reneged on the deal. That puts Brazilian lawmakers in a bind because helping Trump doesn’t make political sense of them, but their president, Jair Bolsonaro, is a huge supporter of our president.

So, this is less a matter of Trump trying to please Iowa farmers than it is of him trying to avoid their wrath. It’s another example of his bungling presidency, but it doesn’t by itself rise to the level of a serious scandal.

Saturday Painting Palooza Vol.781

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be starting a new painting. It is Wilderstein, the Hudson Valley home of FDR cousin Daisy Suckley. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.


I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 9×9 inch canvas panel.

I started my sketch using my usual grind, duplicating the grid I made over a copy of the photo itself. Next week some actual paint.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.


I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.