Stop white-knuckling polls Everybody Relax. The Net economy runs on clicks. The polling economy runs on polls. Cable news runs on ratings 24/7/365. All make money promoting a horse race with a photo finish. MSNBC kept flipping back to Steve Kornacki updating returns from the Kentucky governor’s race Tuesday night long after Dave Wasserman of Cook’s Political Report had “seen enough.” The Associated Press called the race for incumbent Democrat Andy Beshear 90 minutes later. So it goes. On Election Night, we don’t count policy positions or polling averages or pundits’ opinions. We count votes. It’s how democracies keep score. And last night? Last night was “nearly a clean sweep” for Democrats. Beshear won another term in “red” Kentucky on an explicit abortion rights campaign against his GOP challenger. Beshear went straight at Daniel Cameron on the abortion issue with this powerful ad featuring rape survivor Hadley Duvall. “Because of her courage, this commonwealth is going to be a better place and people are going to reach out for the help they need,” Beshear told supporters.
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Do the work. Score the points. Noah Berlatsky of Public Notice reflects on Tuesday’s elections (bolding mine): Some 48 hours ago, pundits were rushing to explain how, why, where, and exactly to what extent the Democratic Party is doomed. A New York Times/Sienna poll released last weekend showed President Joe Biden catastrophically trailing indicted orange gasbag of hatred former President Donald Trump in virtually every key swing state. According to the poll, Trump leads Biden by five points in Arizona, four in Pennsylvania, six in Georgia, and 11 in Nevada. Analysts like Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias made panicky noises, condemning Dems for not mounting a serious primary challenge to the incumbent. There was weeping, there was gnashing of teeth. And then, we had an actual election. Tuesday night’s results are difficult to square with the “Biden and Democrats are doomed” narrative. In an off-year election, with the incumbent president’s approval rating mired below 40 percent, you would normally expect the president’s party to be stomped, crushed, spindled, and obliterated.
But it’s easy to see why they are. Our political culture is crazy. After days of panic and hand wringing over presidential polls that show President Biden possibly narrowly losing to Donald Trump a year from now, last night Democrats were given a reprieve from their doleful mood as the off-year elections delivered victories across the country. With the exception of the Mississippi Governorship (which no one seriously thought could be won by a Democrat) they swept all the big bell weather elections, from flipping the Virginia House of Delegates and holding the state Senate (pushing Gov. Glenn Youngkin off the short list of GOP Great Whitebread Hopes), winning the important abortion rights referendum in blood red Ohio and re-electing the Democratic Gov. of Kentucky. There were dozens of others including state Supreme Court victories, and school board seats that were either held or flipped by the Democrats. It was a good night. But, as is their wont, the Democrats will no doubt revert to their bleak frame of mind as soon as they see another presidential poll or two that shows the race is close.
Prosecutors: Trump “stands alone in history” Famous? Infamous? What’s the difference? So long as Donald Trump can wiggle out of accountability yet again, this time for conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. His attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the federal charges brought against him over events leading to the Jan. 6 insurrection. Law & Crime: Urging a federal judge to disregard Donald Trump‘s latest attempt to cast off his indictment in Washington, D.C., for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, prosecutors at the special counsel’s office argue Trump’s criminality “stands alone” in history and that even if he genuinely believed the 2020 election was stolen, he still used “fraud and deceit” as a means to achieve illicit ends. In his 79-page motion filed Monday, Jack Smith challenges Trump’s attempts to rewrite history and recast himself as victim. What he did leading up to Jan.
She says that Attorney General Tish James is “not that bright” I’m sure she’s just repeating what Trump says every day: Habba, in a Newsmax interview Monday, said James doesn’t have a good case. However, Judge Arthur Engoron already ruled that the fraud occurred, and the ongoing trial is set to determine damages. “She’s just not that bright. I’m sorry, I have to say it,” Habba said. “I’ve seen their case; I’ve seen their lawyers. They don’t know what they’re talking about.” She argued that what the judge ruled is fraud is actually industry standard behavior. The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. Sign up for the 12:30 Report newsletterSubscribe “Just because a bank who’s giving you a loan says it’s worth what the loan amount is, which is what happens when anybody takes a loan out, they’re never going to say the real value,” she continued.
If you’re ineligible to run for president…. If Donald Trump wants admission to the dictators’ club with Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán and Kim Jong Un, he’ll have to prove himself worthy. That’s his plan. You laugh? Just you wait. Right now he’s busy being prosecuted. The former and would-be president’s antics on the witness stand Monday in his Manhattan financial fraud trial were as Michael Cohen predicted. Question his net worth and he’ll lose it. Trump was so fixated on maintaining his Richie Rich image that according to press accounts he never once mentioned the 2020 election being stolen from him. It’s that important to him. Trump rambled. He blustered. He bragged. He insulted the judge and New York Attorney General Letitia James. New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron multiple times urged Trump’s attorneys to get their client under control. It was as useless as expecting a fussy two-year-old to behave in a fancy restaurant. Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks said of Trump’s courtroom misbehavior, “This is why we need cameras in the courtroom.
G. Elliott Morris of 538 (the man who took Nate Silver’s place) has thoughts on the polls. I think you will find it reassuring: Where does the 2024 election stand one year out? We modeled six scenarios for the presidential race. American voters cast 158 million ballots in the 2020 presidential election. Yet the winner was ultimately decided by about 43,000 voters across Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin — the states that carried President Joe Biden over the 270 Electoral College votes he needed to win the presidency. The 2016 election, also closely contested, was similarly settled by about 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And if the 2024 election were held tomorrow, it would likely be very close too. At least, that’s what the polls say. According to an average of national 2024 general election polls I’ve run using 538’s current polling average methodology, Biden and former President Donald Trump are currently neck-and-neck among likely voters, with Trump at 42.9 percent and Biden at 42.4 percent. Support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In contrast to its attitude to private debt, which it ignores, mainstream economics obsesses about government debt. But this volte-face doesn’t besmirch its record of being 100% wrong. This is the first half of chapter nine of my draft book Rebuilding Economics from the Top Down, which will be published later this year by the … Continue reading "It’s a Mixed Credit-Fiat World"
What would a second Trump term mean for the climate? Ok, kids, pay attention. This is for real. Back in the home stretch of the 2020 presidential election, I stated that a second Trump term would be “game over for the climate.” That hasn’t changed in the years since. In fact, it’s become even more true. We are three years further down the carbon emissions highway, and the devastating consequences of the 1C (1.8F) warming we have already caused are now apparent in the form of unprecedented dangerous, damaging and deadly extreme weather events. As yet, we have not taken the exit ramp needed to avoid a far worse planetary warming of 1.5C (3F). Yes, real progress has been made during the Biden era, with “staggering” green energy growth nearly on track to reach the needed reductions in carbon emissions in the power generation sector. But power generation is only a slice of the carbon emissions pie, responsible for about one-fifth of total carbon emissions. The rest comes from transportation, industry, agriculture and buildings.
If only there were cameras The head of the Trump Organization takes the stand this morning in its Manhattan civil fraud trial. You can say a lot that will roll of this odd duck’s back, but questioning Trump’s net worth cuts to the core of his pathologically insecure self-image. He’s prone to lash out at those who do. We know that here from experience. The 2019 post that drew a threat letter from one of Trump’s lawyers commented on MSNBC reporting that Trump’s real estate empire was in such shaky financial shape that he had hostile foreign powers backstopping his loans. Hullabaloo got caught in the backlash. Former Trump personal attorney, Michael Cohen, thinks Trump will respond just as poorly to having his financial condition questioned to his face on the witness stand. He won’t be able to keep his cool, Cohen told CNN anchor Phil Mattingly (Raw Story): “At the beginning, he’s going to try.