Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT) has posted a new ad pointedly suggesting that with Donald Trump’s history he could not even get hired at your local mall. “Would you buy a used car from this man” entered popular culture in the 1960 election. This RVAT ad is another version of that famous attack. It may work against Donald Trump. And it may not. The popular vote spread in 1960 was less than one percentage point (just over 100k votes), even though Sen. John F. Kennedy won in the Electoral College by 303-219 votes. (Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia won 15.) So, how effective was it even in the pre-internet stone age? Donald Trump lost the popular vote in both 2016 and 2020, but the electoral vote spread was nearly the same as 1960 in each. It’s just that the count fell Trump’s way in 2016 (and against the country’s international standing). Who knows? Maybe the the approach will work this time. Trump’s support has nowhere to go but down. It’s just that as the late Paul Weyrich observed, Republican chances in elections go up as the voting population goes down. There’s no rooom for Democrats slacking off. Too much is on the line.
Uncategorized
David Pecker to take the stand Opening arguments in Donald Trump’s criminal trial are scheduled to begin today and Trump isn’t taking it well. He was posting late into the night on Sunday railing against well, everything, clearly feeling the stress of what he’s about to face. And he may know more about what he could be facing than we do at this point. The NY Times reports that the prosecution’s first witness is going to be David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer and owner of its parent company AMI — and former close confidante of Donald Trump. Evidently, the two men, who’ve known each other since the 1980s, have not spoken since Pecker was given immunity by federal prosecutors in the Michael Cohen case back in 2018 and testified that Trump was involved up to his neck. And yet, while Trump has crudely insulted everyone involved in that case, and his current one, he’s never said a word against Pecker. That’s curious, don’t you think?
Just for fun… it’s still early There are a lot of people who will walk over hot coals to vote for Trump. But there are just as many, if not more, who will do the same thing to vote against him.
… because he’s an idiot:
There’s a ton of legal analysis coming about today’s opening arguments in Trump hush money trial and I’ll try to recap some of it for you later. But in the meantime I found that I enjoyed Olivia Nuzzi’s colorful twitter observations about the atmosphere in the courtroom and I suspect you will too: Hello from Manhattan criminal court where Donald Trump’s hush money trial officially starts this morning It is another freezing day inside this courthouse Donald Trump just arrived, railed against Letitia James, and then walked into the courtroom.
Following up on my earlier post today, I see that Philip Bump has some nice charts to illustrate the point that Biden has an advantage among likely voters: On Sunday, the network published the results of a national poll that asked respondents, among other things, to evaluate how interested they were in the election on a scale from 1 to 10. Fewer than 2 in 3 selected 9 or 10 — lower than any similar measurement by NBC’s pollsters this late in a presidential election year since at least 2008. Among Republicans, 70 percent indicated they were very interested in the election. Among Democrats, only 65 percent. Among independents? Fewer than half. This isn’t terribly surprising. It is consistently the case that independents — generally meaning independents who tend to vote for one party or the other and independents who don’t — are less politically engaged and less likely to vote. Comparisons of national polling conducted by the Pew Research Center with Census Bureau estimates of the electorate show how much of the nonvoter pool in each recent election has been made up of independents.
Axios on the GOP civil war: A growing number of House Republicans are accusing their conservative colleagues of enabling Democratic wins, especially after this weekend’s foreign aid votes. Multiple members believe they could have gotten concessions from Democrats on border policy in exchange for Ukraine funding, only to be blown up by backlash from conservatives.GOP leadership brought up border security provisions alongside their foreign aid package — but the package was blocked by Republicans from reaching the House floor under normal rules. It ultimately failed to get the two-thirds majority needed to pass the House under suspension of the rules. “If you were a true conservative, you would actually advance border security, but what they want to do is they want to blow up border security,” Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) told Axios. “[T]he members who scream the loudest about border security were actively and knowingly preventing us from getting it done,” another member said. “They’re making us the most bipartisan Congress ever,” a third member told Axios.
From the Department of Duh Have you checked your wallet? Are your dollars quantum? I quit carrying cash during the pandemic and didn’t look back, so my dollars are electronic. Donald Trump told reporters in Manhattan that he would testify in his trial. This RSBN dude actually believed him. There was no joy in Mudville. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
It looks like Rupert and company have had it with her. Au contraire Marjorie: Of course it’s partisan. Propaganda is a hell of a drug.
But he isn’t entirely stupid either This lede from The New York Times could be defined as an understatement but I’m not inclined to slam it. At least they aren’t sayihng Mike Johnson is the new Winston Churchill like some people are fatuously contending: The accolades directed at Speaker Mike Johnson in recent days for finally defying the right wing of his party and allowing an aid bill for Ukraine to move through the House might have seemed a tad excessive. After all, a speaker’s entire job is to move legislation through the House, and as Saturday’s vote to pass the bill demonstrated, the Ukraine measure had overwhelming support. But Mr. Johnson’s feat was not so different from that of another embattled Republican who faced a difficult choice under immense pressure from hard-right Republicans and was saluted as a hero for simply doing his job: former Vice President Mike Pence. When Mr. Pence refused former President Donald J. Trump’s demands that he overturn the 2020 election results as he presided over the electoral vote count by Congress on Jan.