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Statement of Facts in the Indictment – 4/4/23

What do you guys think about President Trump? Or is it still too early to form an opinion?

It goes way beyond ‘interesting’, it enters the territory of morally imperative. There is a plain contradiction in Oliver’s position. The media (NYT) bears a responsibility for turning this personal discussion into a propaganda event, it then has carries that responsibility to defend the oppressed in the present case. (*Crickets*). Of course, that presumes that the purpose of the media is to objectively report facts rather than advocate a particular ideology. Occasionally, a rational commentator will notice one of these contradictions and will write about it, as Schwartz did. What should be said is that the NYT has a responsibility to put this very question to Oliver – unsympathetically, in the same manner that they address others whom they deem to be politically incorrect. Attention needs to be put on the media for its reporting bias. However, to be effective such attention would need to be itself objective. This then reminds me of a recent Gus blog where Gus interjects a comment that “Trump’s Supreme Court appointments eventually overturned Roe vs. Wade”, which is misleading (he appointed only 3 of the majority justices, and that statement carries the false and unsupported implication that this was Trump’s reason for those appointments). It’s fine to pick on Trump, but let’s see some actual facts, not just mystical divination about the mental state of voters and guilt-by-association reasoning. Now, hitting rather close to home, there has been a chorus of crickets over the fact that the Trump faction in the House at least temporarily limited some of the right-trampling power of the FISA courts. This action was taken with the full approval of Trump, and yet where is the laudatory commentary? So yeah, we can understand this in terms of a hierarchy of values. Truth is a value; but Trump is a greater disvalue; ignoring a relevant truth is less evil than making an false assertion or implication. Some media elevate the ‘Trump is evil’ axiom to the point that they will make literally-false statements, but that is not so common because of defamation law (though certain media are statutorily immunized against such actions). A safer bet is to rely on false implications (which can still be a cause of legal action, just easier to summarily dismiss). When silence is available, that is a completely un-actionable method of promulgating the viewpoint that Trump is evil. To be clear, Trump is evil, my point is that the philosopher’s job is focus on the logical infrastructure of political discourse, and to point out these contradictions. We cannot in all honesty demand adherence to logic if we also repudiate logic. The laughing-face emoticon is an exemplar of an intellectually dishonest tool, which should be obliterated from this forum.

But the pipe dude’s are business records , they are subject to federal scrutiny for ten years. How is it Bragg has cause to scrutinize Trump Org documents , aren’t they just as private as the fittings guy’s?

As you describe it, the pipe dude has nothing to worry about. The law requires that the false entry be made with intent to defraud. A person cannot be convicted for making a mistake. The prosecution would not only have to prove that defendant actually entered false information (respondeat superior does not make the boss guilty of crimes committed by employees), but also that his intent was to defraud. Furthermore, since you stipulate that the records are private records, they are not covered by the law – only business records are covered. In Trump's case, the prosecution has to prove specific intent, though the jury might accept the flimsiest of evidence on that point.

Indictment, updated, of this case, with jury selection currently underway: People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump

Over at Reason, John Stossel notes that "The Labor Department just imposed 300 pages of new regulations to reclassify many individual contractors as payroll employees." Great. I guess that's why our tax preparer had all sorts of questions about gig work for us this year. Naturally, news media uncritically parrot the administration's alleged justifications for the changes, despite the fact that, as Stossel reminds us, this terrible idea has already been tried and failed in California:Four years ago, unions got then-Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D -- San Diego) to push through a new law that reclassified gig workers. They were told they'd get higher wages, overtime, and other benefits. Clueless media liked that. Vox called the law "a victory for workers everywhere." Ha! A few months later, Vox media laid off hundreds of freelancers. "They expected that all these companies were going to reclassify independent contractors as employees," freelance musician Ari Herstand told me. "In reality, they're just letting them go!" Herstand was dismayed to learn that when he wants other musicians to join him, he could no longer just write them a check. "I have to put that drummer on payroll, W2 him, get workers' comp insurance, unemployment insurance, payroll taxes!" he complains. "I have to hire a payroll company." [links omitted]Stossel also notes correctly that (a) some professions managed to get exemptions in California, and (b) Biden wants to make that law nationwide and without exemptions. Never mind that it was so unpopular that even Californians partially clawed it back at the ballot box. It's too bad that the best we can hope for in the next election is divided government. The Democrats would ram this down our throats if left unchecked. The cash value of Trump "owning the libs" through easily-overturned means is zero. Case in point: Keystone XL never got built. (Image by Office of the President of the United States, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)And the Republicans? I seriously doubt that the current iteration of the Republican Party will do anything positive to protect gig work, much less roll back the regulatory state that makes moves like this possible: They'll be too busy infighting, or pursuing a theocratic and xenophobic agenda to worry about such unfashionable things as a free economy. Maybe -- if he wins and he feels like it, and as he did for some things during his term -- Trump will roll back the new regulations, as if the Democrats will never come back into power again. Spoiler alert: When they do, a future Democrat can reintroduce these regulations or worse. (For an example from the world of Executive Orders, see also: The Keystone XL Pipeline.) And that last, Trump supporters, is what is known as "owning" the libs without defeating them. -- CAVLink to Original

Donald Trump, whose Supreme Court appointments eventually overturned Roe vs. Wade, has stuck his finger into the wind and decided his best chance at a second term lies with pretending that abortion isn't really a big issue. The right, which only cares about (a) banning abortion and (b) whether Trump can win (in that order), is mostly in a bubble, taking him "seriously but not literally:" They sense that Trump will say whatever is most likely to get him elected and will roll with whatever progress the fundies can make on banning abortion. He doesn't really care about the issue beyond how it affects his election chances, and they're fighting a long game. The left -- who would rather indulge magical thinking than, say, making abortion actually legal or prosecuting insurrectionists on time -- is already writing his political obituary and and even fantasizing that Florida will "turn blue" during the next election. This isn't to say that a Trump victory is inevitable or that abortion won't cost him Florida, but one must read any political commentary these days with an eye on separating the wishes of the author from reality. I mildly exaggerated on my first commentary link. The Newsweek piece, by Democrat cheerleader David Faris, does in fact attempt a more-or-less cool-headed analysis of how Trump's latest flip-flop on abortion might play out. I think Faris gets it half-right:Image by pjedrzejczyk, via Pixabay, license.You must therefore wonder how this group of high-propensity voters that is absolutely critical to any Republican victory this November is going to take this news. My guess is "not well." While some Republicans might be satisfied with the end of Roe and abortion bans or impossible restrictions in 21 states, the most religious white evangelicals want total victory. And Trump just told them they won't get it. Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, issued a statement almost immediately after Trump's video dropped saying that she was "deeply disappointed," although still committed to defeating President Joe Biden. While we shouldn't expect his position to cause dramatic change in his white evangelical support, even a few points could be determinative it what looks like it is going to be an extremely close election. The other problem here for Trump is that, unlike him, people who care about restoring reproductive rights are not stupid. He did not say whether he would sign an abortion ban if it crossed his desk, a tightrope he will not be able to walk all the way to November without being pressed for a firm up-or-down answer. In private, he has previously said that he would sign a 16-week national abortion ban. And throwing up his hands and saying "let the states decide" still leaves tens of millions of furious women living in states where abortion has been completely banned -- including Electoral College battleground states like North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia and Florida -- or partially banned, like Wisconsin. [bold added]Faris is dead wrong about the evangelical vote: First of all, anti-abortionists have been working for decades to make abortion illegal and know that their gains are safe at worst with Trump in charge. Second, this part of the electorate is firmly within the Orange Echo Chamber. See take seriously but not literally above. And consider its support of Trump despite his serial philandering, sleaziness, and criminality. This is more of the same, and they will overlook it, too. With these people, Trump could get away with murder, as he once boasted. Faris is, however, correct about those of us facing -- or who have daughters facing -- an adulthood in which an accident or a crime might condemn them to the dangers of an unplanned pregnancy and the decision to (a) assume the lifelong responsibility of parenthood at a time not of their choosing or (b) forfeit that responsibility in the hope that a random stranger will properly care for their newborn child. The second piece is also more cool-headed than I let on. Its assessment of Florida is as follows:Tuesday's twin rulings on abortion from the Florida Supreme Court -- one letting a deeply restrictive, DeSantis-backed anti-abortion law go into effect, the other permitting an abortion-access initiative, Amendment 4, on the November ballot -- have upended political certainties in the Sunshine State. Last week, no one was talking about Florida as a swing state; now, with abortion at center stage, it's not beyond the bounds of the possible that, with an overwhelming majority of Floridians -- including a majority of Republicans -- in favor of reestablishing abortion rights protections, the Democrats will be able to use this issue to drive a wave of supporters to the polls in November. ... Yet such is the state of disarray in the Florida Democratic Party that, even with the huge assist the Supreme Court has given them by turning abortion into the central issue of the upcoming vote in Florida, it remains a long shot for President Joe Biden to mount a successful challenge for the state's Electoral College votes. [bold added]The piece then looks at the situation in other states where both parties are competitive and abortion has become a ballot-box issue. Regarding Florida, I think Trump can lose non-Evangelical Republicans on this issue, unless they buy his shtick about being non-committal on the issue or somehow don't pay any more attention to abortion than they have had to in the past. And I agree with Faris that he might not have to lose that many voters for it to matter -- since Democrats now have good reason -- Biden himself sure isn't one -- to show up and vote. My take is that abortion will hurt Trump, but perhaps not enough to keep him out of office; and that it will definitely hurt his party down-ballot. -- CAVLink to Original

I think Trump was hoodwinked into implementing anti-freedom/private property policies and expanding military/government powers as response to Covid. What part of the job of POTUS did Trump perform evilly?

Producing things of objective value is unconditionally a virtue. Not everything created is an objective value (example: Das Kapital; Mein Kampf). Keeping with the context of Trump as our Supreme Leader, it is irrelevant whether he produces value in real estate, since the job of POTUS is to execute the laws of the United States, not to manipulate the economy or make a profit off of real estate deals. Applying the relevant criteria, Trump is an anti-virtue, as president.

Not that Trump, I’m referring to the once and future president. Trump in office, as wielder of the executive power. I could care less about his real estate operation.

Trump the producer and creator of value, is evil on an O'ist forum ?

An attorney, annoyed at the cacophony of clueless babbling about the court deliberations over Donald Trump's dubious immunity claim, explains (original thread) the "slow" timetable and identifies who is really to blame for the proximity of these proceedings to the election....Judge Chutkan deserves no criticism for this. Two months from filing to decision on a motion to dismiss in federal court is VERY FAST. Usually you are looking at six months or more. This case was expedited. Donald Trump had a right, under law, to appeal this ruling to the Court of Appeals and to stay the trial court proceedings while he did it. You may not like this rule, but it applies to ANYONE raising an immunity defense, not just Donald Trump. President Trump took his appeal and the court concluded briefing in JUST ONE MONTH, and then held oral argument on January 9 and decided the case February 6. This is LIGHTNING FAST. Most CoA cases take about a year to a year and half between commencement and conclusion. Further, the DC Circuit itself broke a norm to speed up the case further, and NOBODY criticized it for breaking this norm. It's a technical issue, but the "mandate" is the date on which a court of appeals judgment goes into effect.Dilan Esper's commentary on these "delays" that actually aren't goes on in some detail, and make for educational reading. (And it was good to see that I wasn't imagining things when I recalled the glacial pace of other court proceedings and thought this seemed fast by comparison.) What I really appreciate, though, is Esper, whom I take to lean left, lays the blame for the real delay exactly where it belongs:f you want to argue that a 5/24 decision is still too late, well, SCOTUS only controls the last 3 months of that delay. The rest of it? Blame the liberal Judge Chutkan and DC Circuit and ESPECIALLY the DOJ, who DIDN'T BRING THIS CASE FOR 2 1/2 YEARS!Or, as I put it the other day:If your're serious, pull it now. If you're not, leave it alone. (Image by jstark7, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)In my uninformed opinion, I think if the Democrats were serious about their constitutional obligations, they would have been much quicker to establish that Trump was an insurrectionist (or not) on legal grounds, and found a way to hasten legal proceedings in that matter and the election tampering in Georgia. As it stands, they appear to be trying to time things to spoil Trump's election attempt. They are playing into his hands. [bold added]There is plenty of commentary from both political tribes in America to the effect that Trump and Biden need each other to run in order to have a chance to win. It bad enough that the Democrats, forgetting that Trump knows how to play the victim, decided it would help their figurehead win an election by saddling Trump with lawsuits during the campaign. It's much worse that they would play around with such serious charges in the process. If they believe the charges, they should have prosecuted earlier. If not, they shouldn't have leveled them at all. -- CAVLink to Original

What do I think of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: But I don't think of him... -- Ayn Rand *** Recalling the "Shy Trump hypothesis" -- a 2016 attempt to explain how Donald Trump was elected against the run of polling predictions, Slate considers polling data about the question of whether Donald Trump would lose votes in the event he is convicted at one of his trials. The article notes that while this hypothesis didn't hold up, it nevertheless raises the implicit question Will the voters who say they'd desert Trump if he were convicted really do so? The piece follows on by nitpicking in many words: how Clinton's impeachment affected whether people thought he should resign, whether voters are paying any attention to Trump's legal problems, and whether they might have forgotten what they dislike about him. I don't think much of or support either candidate, and this all looked like so much hand-wringing on the part of a partisan hack who'd have to find something else to write about if the Democrats had only chosen someone less ancient and unpopular to run against such an ancient and unpopular opponent. I'm guessing the author isn't a big-picture guy. (Image by Alan Diaz, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)For about 1300 words, this piece myopically speculates from polling data and yet misses three huge factors with much greater and direct bearing on the question of whether Trump's legal troubles will affect the election. First, since both parties have set things up to eliminate any deliberation in the process of choosing a candidate, there is already a binary choice between two terrible options. Is the left's partisan media so blinded by hatred for Trump that they don't see how awful Biden is, and can't conceive of others being equally blinded by hatred for Biden? Second, while Biden's foibles don't excuse Trump's, there is zero mention of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal or Biden's classified document incident. Many people are aware of both, and might understandably conclude that they have a "choice" between two felons/national security risks. Third, while I think Trump should stand trial for election tampering in Georgia and his role in the events of January 6, I think the civil trial in New York is a gross abuse of government on top of being politically motivated. I doubt I am alone in this, and I am concerned that if this perception doesn't already mar public confidence in the propriety of trying the two serious matters I just named, Trump will find a way to make sure it does. (In my uninformed opinion, I think if the Democrats were serious about their constitutional obligations, they would have been much quicker to establish that Trump was an insurrectionist (or not) on legal grounds, and found a way to hasten legal proceedings in that matter and the election tampering in Georgia. As it stands, they appear to be trying to time things to spoil Trump's election attempt. They are playing into his hands.) The article disclaims many circumstances of the election are unprecedented on its way to throwing the bone of hope to Democrats and others opposed to Trump. That is wishful thinking at best, and I see too many circumstances that are ripe to make Trump's unfitness for office look irrelevant to many voters. -- CAVLink to Original

Over at The Bulwark is an instructive article titled "From Intellectual Dark Web to Crank Central" that follows the inevitable downward arc of a group of dissident intellectuals whose only unifying characteristic was that they had been ostracized from or chose not to participate in the leftist intellectual establishment. The article credits Bari Weiss's 2018 reservations about the group with being "prescient." Cathy Young quotes Weiss: "Could the intellectual wildness that made this alliance of heretics worth paying attention to become its undoing?" This is so prescient that it is practically a rhetorical question: As with atheism or any other mere rejection of an orthodoxy, being against something leaves wide open what one stands for. There is nothing inherently wrong with stating opposition to an orthodoxy. Sometimes, all one has the time or energy or public visibility to do is to make it known that one does not support some horrible idea or trend. But since this leaves open the question of why one opposes something, doing so as part of a group makes it look like one might agree with what other members of the group do believe. Doing so beyond a very specific issue is a big mistake, as the better members of this group learned over time:Sam Harris found himself having to distance himself from anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. (Image by Cmichel67, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)Not all of the IDW-associated figures featured in Weiss's article have veered crankward. American Enterprise Institute senior fellow emeritus Christina Hoff Sommers remains eminently sensible (and an anti-Trump centrist). Two others, Sam Harris and Claire Lehmann, have openly broken with and criticized the IDW. Harris -- a philosopher, neuroscientist, prominent atheist, and author -- said in November 2020 that he was disassociating himself from the IDW label over other IDW figures' embrace of Trump's election-fraud claims and other conspiracy theories, noting that some of them were "sounding fairly bonkers." Harris has made even sharper criticisms since then, especially over the anti-vaccine rhetoric. Lehmann, who founded the online magazine Quillette as a hub for heterodoxy in 2015 and was featured as the "voice" of the IDW in Politico in late 2018, first clashed with some fellow Dark Webbers over her willingness to publish articles, including one by me, criticizing certain aspects of the IDW -- such as a tendency toward its own brand of groupthink and tribalism -- as well as some of its members, such as Dave Rubin. (It turned out Lehmann meant it when she told Politico she didn't want Quillette to be an echo chamber.) More recently, Lehmann has talked about the IDW's fracturing over COVID-19, conspiracy theories, the war in Ukraine, and other issues. [bold added, links removed]The piece reads like an up-to-date What Not to Do companion to Ayn Rand's 1972 Essay, "What Can One Do?", in which she cautioned against forming alliances with people whose stand on an issue might cause them to pass as fellow travelers, but who really aren't allies:... Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to "do something." By "ideological" (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the "libertarian" hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies. (For a discussion of the reasons, see "The Anatomy of Compromise" in my book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.) The only groups one may properly join today are ad hoc committees, i.e., groups organized to achieve a single, specific, clearly defined goal, on which men of differing views can agree. In such cases, no one may attempt to ascribe his views to the entire membership, or to use the group to serve some hidden ideological purpose (and this has to be watched very, very vigilantly). [bold and link on "compromise" added]When discussing compromise, Rand warned:The three rules listed below are by no means exhaustive; they are merely the first leads to the understanding of a vast subject. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins. In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins. When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side. The essay illustrates this in spades, and on multiple levels, from Sam Harris's having to distance himself from anti-vaxxers to individuals being tempted, often successfully, to sell out to keep the large audiences of kooks they ended up with by associating with this group. Young calls this last "audience capture." It is not enough to oppose an evil like "wokeness." One must do so for the right reasons, articulate those reasons, and offer a positive alternative. Joining forces with anyone who does not also do those things will ultimately backfire. -- CAVLink to Original

At the Daily Beast, Matt Lewis argues in a vein similar to others that Trump's primary victories are weak showings for someone who is effectively an incumbent, and claims that they portend problems in the general election:It's even worse for Trump than that. A Fox News voter analysis showed that 59 percent of Haley voters in South Carolina "say they would not support Trump in the general election if he were the nominee." And if you think this is unique to South Carolina, consider the fact that nearly half of Nikki's Iowa backers also said they wouldn't support Trump come November. [links omitted]Won't support doesn't have to mean will vote for Biden. The margins in the election are thin enough that sufficient numbers of a candidate's potential voters staying home in a few swing states can affect the outcome. When two fifths of a party's voters reject its incumbent and half of those won't support him in the general election, that's a problem, whether that party admits it or not. Lewis has a point, but it is worth considering what such dynamics might mean beyond the election. A thought experiment might help. Sure. It's easy for anyone not under Trump's spell to see Republicans and conservative-leaning independents staying home, but what if Haley were winning? What if she wrapped up the nomination? Consider the kind of invective Trump and his stooges have been hurling at members of their own party who dare have an opinion about anything that doesn't match Trump's: "Crybaby RINO NeverTrumper," "NeoCon," "the left's favorite Republican." Although there's a good case to be made that it is, in fact Trump who might as well be a Democrat, what do you think voters who equate anyone who isn't Trump (or blessed off by Trump) with a Democrat would do in a Haley-Biden contest? They'll stay home, and arguably be more likely to do so than Haley voters would -- whether or not they bought the inevitable claim that the election was "rigged." I don't recall where I first heard this, but I agree that American political parties are best understood as coalitions. Trump appreciates part of this and doesn't care much about another part. The part he gets is that it is possible to achieve a majority within a party and run away with its nomination. Since Republicans are about a third of the electorate, he needs fanatical support from only about a fifth of the total electorate to become the party's nominee and pretty much run things. To Modernize: Replace An Available Candidate with Trump Likes Me, then hire an artist to caricature a charletan, a has-been, or a crackpot. (Anti-Whig Cartoon from 1848, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)The part he doesn't care about -- assuming he is (as he seems) motivated more by a desire to put his feet on the desk in the Oval Office and screw with his opponents than by any positive, coherent agenda -- is that for a coalition to last, it pays not to alienate members of that coalition. Indeed, if members of that coalition get nothing from being in that coalition, they will eventually disappear or go elsewhere. This seems a great way to run the GOP with an iron first ... and into the ground. See also: the last few election cycles, and, perhaps, the Whigs. -- CAVLink to Original

Indictment

Ed Driscoll, one of the bloggers at Instapundit, is fond enough of pointing out times when the left is at cross-purposes that he frequently starts off such posts with "Annals of Leftist Autophagy." There are now dozens of these, and it is conventional wisdom on the right that the left is a mess. The American right, having fallen under Donald Trump's sway, has -- from praising Trump as an Alinskyite and blaming "society" for bad behavior, all the way to embracing central planning -- increasingly been aping the left. And, like progressives were doing for a time to centrist Democrats, MAGA Republicans have been primarying traditional Republicans. This last has reached the point that even some MAGA Republicans can see a problem: The Speaker of the House is asking members of his party to stop primarying each other:The more they purge or alienate normal people, the more trouble the GOP is going to have winning elections. (Image by odder, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)"I've asked them all to cool it," Johnson told CNN at the House GOP retreat in West Virginia last week. "I am vehemently opposed to member-on-member action in primaries because it's not productive. And it causes division for obvious reasons, and we should not be engaging in that." "So I'm telling everyone who's doing that to knock it off," Johnson added. "And both sides, they'll say, 'Well, we didn't start it, they started it.'" This is rich, coming as it does from someone selected for his blind loyalty to Trump, because the behavior is motivated by blind loyalty to Trump:"I would love nothing more than to just go after Democrats," [Matt] Gaetz, who led the charge to oust McCarthy, told CNN. "But if Republicans are going to dress up like Democrats in drag, I'm going to go after them too. Because at the end of the day, we're not judged by how many Republicans we have in Congress. We're judged on whether or not we save the country." Gaetz is one of the most slavishly loyal Trumpists there is, and remember that, in the minds of his faction of the Republican Trump Organization Party, if you aren't one of them, you're a RINO or worse -- a Democrat in drag. Thanks, Matt. An election is supposed to be how the people select the best among a variety of choices, and if Republicans weren't numbskulls, they would (a) define a positive agenda to run on besides whatever Donald Trump wants at the moment, and (b) welcome competitive races, even if it means someone who doesn't completely toe the party line gets elected. But appreciating that point would mean understanding that American political parties are actually coalitions, and that alienating people who might agree with part of what you want to accomplish might impair your ability to do anything you want to accomplish. One wonders if pointing this out, however indirectly, as Johnson has, will bode ill or well for his future in whatever the Republican Party has become. If the Democrats were not so awful, it would be easier to cheer on the inevitable result of this kind of attitude -- non-MAGA Republicans and independents who want a decent alternative to Democrats getting fed up and staying home, or voting for the Democrats in disgust. Perhaps Americans should send the following message to the GOP: If you're going to call me a Democrat for the sin of not worshipping Donald Trump, I guess I'll play the part. But then again, perhaps that won't be necessary, per the last several election cycles. -- CAVLink to Original

At Politico, Charlie Mahtesian and Steven Shepard game out what it would take for the Democrats to replace Joe Biden, whose age and unpopularity would make him a non-starter in just about any election, except for the fact that he's almost certainly running against Donald Trump in this one. Suffice it to say, it would be very difficult to do this, even if President Biden willingly stepped down, which is what this would take, so long as he remains President. Mahtesian and Shepard also consider how the Democrats would cope with a dead or disabled candidate, assuming they don't replace him:Image by Aubrey Odom, via Unsplash, license.Alternatively, what if Biden pushed through the doubts and was nominated at the convention in late August, but was then unable to compete in the November election? Convention rules say, in the event of the "death, resignation or disability" of the nominee, Jaime Harrison, the party chair, "shall confer with the Democratic leadership of the ... Congress and the Democratic Governors Association and shall report" to the roughly 450 members of the Democratic National Committee, who would choose a new nominee. They'd also pick a new running mate if they elevated Harris to the top of the ticket.Before you think something like At least they have a process in place to deal with that, think again. The logistics would be ... challenging:A late Biden departure from the ticket would pose a logistical nightmare for the states. Overseas military ballots are set to go out in some places just a couple of weeks after the convention ends, and in-person early voting begins as soon as Sept. 20 in Minnesota and South Dakota. Yes, Americans technically vote for electors, not presidential candidates -- but any post-convention effort to replace Biden would likely end up in court if votes have already been cast with the name "Joseph R. Biden Jr." on the ballot.Great. The duo briefly consider the analogous scenario for the Republicans and point out that it would be even harder for them to change candidates:n one way, Trump's grasp on the GOP nomination may be stronger than Biden's on the Democratic side: Delegates to the Republican convention are actually bound, not just pledged, to their candidate on the first ballot. So there'd be no way to deny Trump if he had the majority of delegates going into the Milwaukee convention -- even if he was convicted of one or more crimes before the proceedings begin in July -- as long as he insisted on continuing his campaign. [bold added]I have a low-enough opinion of politicians that I hold out little hope that the authors have missed a codicil somewhere that un-binds delegates in the event of a felony conviction. This makes Nikki Haley's long-shot/"insurance policy" candidacy seem much more the former and much less the latter. That's too bad: Haley is by no means perfect, but she would be far better in office than Trump and has consistently polled better than Trump against Biden. I also suspect that she would also at least be competitive if Biden did step aside and the Democrats picked someone who could pass as sane/moderate to enough independents. -- CAVLink to Original

John Stossel has a column that correctly calls out Joe Biden and Donald Trump as both being wrong about free trade, which both parties smear as "globalization" when it's convenient. The piece briefly debunks five common myths, and I was glad to see Imports take jobs from Americans addressed as Myth No. 2:This is the evil face of world-wide central planning, not of world-wide free trade. (Image by World Economic Forum, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)I say to [the Cato Institute's Scott] Lincicome, "Some people do lose jobs." "True," he replies, "We lose about 5 million jobs every month." But trade isn't the main reason. "Jobs are lost due to ... changing consumer tastes and from innovation. We make more stuff with fewer workers. That's productivity." Productivity increases are good. Trade and productivity improvements are reasons why the number of Americans who do have jobs has risen. "We're at historically high manufacturing job openings," says Lincicome, "Manufacturers in the United States say they can't find enough workers."The piece avoids putting off readers with detailed descriptions of the economic laws that make free trade a good thing, opting for more colloquial descriptions. For example, the Law of Comparative Advantage, which explains how free trade permits a sort of international division of labor, isn't stated explicitly. Instead the piece relies on an analogy of our national "trade deficit" to the "deficit" we all have, as individuals, with our grocery stores. There are, of course multiple ways the smear "globalization" could be addressed. For example, central planning via "free trade agreements" is not actually the same thing as free trade. And international agreements that damage the economy, such as the Paris Climate Accords, often get lumped together with misconceptions about free trade when populists attack "globalization." Those go beyond the scope of the piece, but that's fine: There is an incredible amount of ignorance about basic economics out there: One has to start somewhere... -- CAV Link to Original

CNN got this new information on this 'unnamed co-conspirator' in the case that is the topic of this thread using the Wayback machine to retrieve posts of Chesebro when his twitter account had been a public one. Chesebro had not used his real name for that account, but has now admitted that it was he Chesebro posting. "Kenneth Chesebro, the . . . attorney who helped devise the Trump campaign’s fake electors plot in 2020, concealed a secret Twitter account from Michigan prosecutors, hiding dozens of damning posts that undercut his statements to investigators about his role in the election subversion scheme, a CNN KFile investigation has found. "Chesebro claimed to investigators he saw the alternate slates of Republican electors only as a contingency plan to have ready in case the Trump campaign won any of its more than 60 lawsuits challenging the election results — which it didn’t. He also told Michigan investigators that in his conversations with the Trump campaign, he made clear that “state legislatures have no power to override the courts.” "But just days after the 2020 election, BadgerPundit tweeted that the court battles didn’t matter and that Republican-controlled legislatures should send in their own GOP electors, predicting even then that then-Vice President Mike Pence could use them to throw the election to Trump. “You don’t get the big picture. Trump doesn’t have to get courts to declare him the winner of the vote. He just needs to convince Republican legislatures that the election was systematically rigged, but it’s impossible to run it again, so they should appoint electors instead,” wrote BadgerPundit on November 7, 2020, the day multiple media outlets, including CNN, called the election for Joe Biden. "Yet in his interview with Michigan investigators, Chesebro said the very opposite, claiming that the entire electors plan was contingent on the courts. "'I saw no scenario where Pence could count any vote for any state because there hadn’t been a court or a legislature in any state backing any of the alternate electors,' Chesebro said. "Pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro told Michigan investigators that he told the Trump 2020 campaign that the “alternate electors” should only be used in conjunction with ongoing litigation. But CNN found tweets from 2020 where Chesebro dismissed the role of the courts and said the electors alone could overturn the election. "The fake electors plot features prominently in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election subversion indictment against Trump, who has pleaded not guilty. Chesebro has been identified by CNN as an unindicted co-conspirator in that case. "Chesebro was indicted alongside Trump in a separate 2020 election interference case in Georgia. He struck a plea deal there in October, agreeing to plead guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents. He gave proffer interviews to Georgia prosecutors as part of the cooperation agreement, though it’s unclear if he was asked about his social media accounts. "Michigan investigators secured Chesebro’s cooperation in December, after previously charging the 16 fake electors in that state with multiple felonies. Chesebro has additionally met with investigators in Wisconsin and Arizona who are probing their fake electors, and he avoided charges in Nevada after cooperating with prosecutors there."

Trump urging election fraud in Georgia I know people who supported Trump in 2016, but after such public displays of his illegal attempts to change vote counts (under a subjective faith, or at least a sales-front, "I won by a landslide"), they were not supporting him again. (That is not to say they are going to vote Democratic!) They told me that even before his indictment for illegal acts attempting to invert the results of the election. Naturally, I couldn't help but wonder why such a voter did not perceive salesman Trump back in 2016 as I thought obvious (and posted): a blowhard and con man. But there were other supporters, some parading themselves as Objectivists, who proved to be not such innocent supporters of Mr. Trump for President in 2016 and subsequently. These are the ones who relish his subjectivism and bold lies, which they repeat. Not simply falsehoods, but repeat as lies. I've not known them in person, but One of them I thought I knew a fair bit from online talk. As the Trump term in office unfolded, it turned out that there was nothing against the free market that Trump might do which One would not rationalize away. Then, it turned out (I learned from a long-time in-person friend) that One was in fact himself, of himself, the most deceitful online companion I'd happened into. Not that those depraved Trump ones are 100% in agreement with everything Trump says in public. They have some independent judgment on when an old lie should have been retold instead of Trump giving his honest commonsense take on something involving elections. When Trump gave a sensible look as to why Republicans did not pick up more seats in the Congress than they did in the 2022 election, these cohorts in viciousness and subjectivism would have none of it; rather, if their side lost some, it should be proclaimed as due to election fraud. Still, there is no indication yet of a bloc of voters willing to support candidates of such proclaimed autocratic ambitions as Trump's, but are candidates who are not connecting themselves personally to Trump. Because there are not fast principles or public-affairs policies distinctive to Mr. Trump (i.e., not just Republican principles and policies had without Trump), a lot of that depravity-faction will crawl back under the rocks as the personal Madoff-sunset is repeated for Mr. Trump. Should he win re-election this year, I remain confident that the judiciary upholding the continuance of our constitutional democratic republic and the substantial continued public support for that will block the maneuvers from Trump proto-fascism to fascism. (And between you and me and the fence post, I'd expect his first interest in winning presidential power this time is to try trumping any possible criminal convictions of him in judicial process.)

New Hampshire holds its presidential primaries today. Ron DeSantis has suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump. (I'd wager, given his earlier pledge to save the GOP from Trump and his over-the-top pandering to the Trump base, he's hoping Trump's legal problems represent a reentry path later.) We thus have an early primary in a state that allows independent voters to participate in party primaries, and a two-person contest between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. This represents as good a chance as there is for a sane candidate to begin to break the stranglehold of Trump's personality cult on the Republican Party, and give Americans a real choice in the next election. According to a headline from the Boston Globe, it is unlikely that Haley will win, but buried at the end of the story is what I think will be the decisive factor:Most Americans are tired of this... (Morph via FaceShape from pubic domain official portraits of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.)[T]here is one wild card that is hard to figure out: turnout. Despite the primary week being low energy overall, the New Hampshire Secretary of State is predicting there could be a record turnout. Traditionally, there is higher turnout when voters are motivated to send a message against the status quo, in which case that could be against Trump. Given that the contest in New Hampshire is largely a binary one between Trump and Haley, Haley could be the biggest beneficiary of a higher turnout. Then again, she isn't turning out people in big numbers to her own events in the final weekend. [bold added]Haley isn't drawing big crowds -- and doesn't have me raving about her here -- because she keeps committing unforced errors. So she doesn't have people excited about her candidacy so far. (I think the excitement -- or at least noticeable support -- might come if she does well, and offers real hope of keeping Trump out of office.) The real question then, is How sick are independent voters of Donald Trump and Joe Biden? If they're annoyed enough, they don't have to like Haley to want to vote for her, and they will. I'd show up and vote for Haley if I lived there, but I don't know the answer to that question. Today, we will find out. -- CAVLink to Original

Writing at The Hill, Juan Williams contends that voters hoping to legalize abortion are a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming election:Nativist Republicans hope to cash in on this gang leader's recent rise to power in Haiti at election time. (Image by Voice of America, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)It was the biggest issue in the 2022 midterms, halting a promised "Red Wave," of Republican victories. Last year voters in Virginia gave Democrats the majority of the state legislature after Republicans backed a 15-week ban on abortions. And this year, abortion rights are likely to be on the ballot in several states where activists are pushing to make abortion access a right in the state constitution. Some of those states are critical to the outcome of the race for the White House, including Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. States with lots of Republican voters, including Kansas and Ohio, are among the six states that have already voted to approve state constitutional protection for abortion. In fact, so far, voters have backed abortion rights every time it has been on the ballot. [links omitted, bold added]Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump, who helped cause Roe vs. Wade to be overturned with his Supreme Court appointments, is hoping nativism and xenophobia will come to his rescue:Trump is trying to cloud over the abortion fight by loudly demonizing immigrants. The only way that can work is if most of the country joins in the immigration hype.This, Williams suggests, is due to the economy not being a clear win for him in this election. I don't think Williams is completely right. Although Trump certainly doesn't deserve more trust on the economy, I think he probably still has that to a degree. That said, I think Trump is definitely working to make the non-crisis that is immigration into the centerpiece of his campaign, at least in part to distract from abortion and his general unfitness for office. It will be interesting to see how this strategy pans out. People concerned about abortion are unlikly to forget the issue. Maybe some who are concerned about abortion (and believe "Honest Don" when he claims to want abortion legal up until 16 weeks) and worry about importing Haitian gangs might vote for Trump -- but also Democrats for Congress. -- CAVLink to Original

Snatches of two bits of political commentary pretty well encapsulate my assessment of the "landslide" outcome in the GOP's Iowa caucuses the other day. First, Iowa hasn't exactly been predictive lately:In 2008, holy roller Mike Huckabee won the caucuses in the red-shaded Iowan counties shown above. (Image by Kroisaurus, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)[Nikki] Haley caught some flak from DeSantis when she told a group of New Hampshire voters that they "correct" Iowa's results, but her statement is supported by recent history. Remember Presidents Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum or Ted Cruz, the last three winners of the Iowa caucuses? Neither do the history books. One must travel back nearly a quarter-century to the year 2000 to find the last winner of the GOP Iowa caucuses who went on to secure the nomination. [bold added]Caucuses aren't polls of the general public, and whoever it is -- strong partisans, I presume -- who participate in the Iowa caucuses have been out of touch in the theocratic/social conservative direction lately. Trump is the man for that anti-freedom lot in this election. Second: 51%. That's all? I agree with Phil Boas, who argues in USA Today that this result is a weak showing, because Trump is, for all practical purposes, running as an incumbent. (And that would be true despite polling showing that 65% (!) of the caucus participants there are brain-dead enough to believe Trump actually won the 2020 election.) Taken together, the "not Trump" coalition of candidates won nearly half the vote in a state that ABC News calls "overwhelmingly white and rural." In other words, these were ideal conditions for a Trump landslide. But Iowa is not the national electorate. And Trump's Iowa triumph can hardly serve as a bellwether for the fall. [bold added]Boas notes a big incentive for independents who want a choice other than Trump or Biden to vote in New Hampshire's Republican primary at a time when polling shows Haley smoking Biden by 17% in a head-to-head matchup. Overall, while it was disappointing to see Trump run away with Iowa, his winning there was predictable. But his margin there -- under ideal conditions for him -- wasn't the catastrophe Democrats and Trump supporters were hoping for, albeit for different, co-dependent reasons. New Hampshire will give a better picture of whether Nikki Haley can topple Donald Trump. -- CAV P.S. One bit of good news out of the caucuses: DeSantis, who has come to represent a more competent (and therefore dangerous) version of everything bad about Donald Trump, may have fatally wounded his future political aspirations:The DeSantis campaign was fundamentally a product of a certain class of the GOP's elite: people who admired Donald Trump's willingness to break the traditional norms of American politics but saw him as basically déclassé or ineffectual. These are the sorts of conservatives who look admiringly at Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán, seeing his use of legalistic arcana to crush liberal opposition as a model for how to fight a culture war and win. [links omitted]This is the direction a significant part of the conservative movement has been headed for some time, and unless we get a "more competent DeSantis" in the near future, the Iowa caucuses may well have bought some time to fight for freedom.Link to Original