“To many voters, the topic of abortion is so important, so we have been completely straightforward and clear. I will back a bill to protect life,” That was yesterday. Youngkin made a bet that the GOP establishment-backed approach to the abortion issue — a 15 week ban — would be enough to neutralize it at the ballot box and he went all-in. How’d it work out for him? Not well. He was banking on the abortion issue to win yesterday and he lost the Virginia House and the Democrats held on to the Senate. So it’s back to the drawing board for the GOP. They have a hardcore base for whom abortion is fundamental. They have shown that they’re “flexible” with wink-wink rhetoric like what Youngkin has been selling but they won’t go beyond that. And after Trump made sure Roe V Wade was overturned, pro-choice voters no longer trust any of their assurances. This issue is killing the Republicans and it should. They spent 50 years building up their base by calling abortion murder and claiming it’s a holocaust knowing that Roe protected them from the consequences.
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Daddy’s little girl on the stand MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin covered the testimony on twitter this morning: Good morning, I’m back at New York Supreme Court, and I’ll be posting both here and through MSNBC’s live blog of Ivanka Trump’s testimony. I’ll give you the good color and analysis there & will pop in here with quicker bits of the play-by-play: Let’s set the stage with 7 minutes left before the trial day starts. The courtroom is almost full, but not nearly as crowded as it has been on days past and is a relative ghost town compared with Monday’s packed-within-inches scenario. The Attorney General is here in her usual front-row seat, surrounded by staff, and her team has been at their table for at least a half hour.
Nobody can stand her Marjorie Taylor Greene finds that she’s standing alone: With her claims about Jewish laser beams, attacks of school-shooting survivors, promotion of QAnon, and overall “I’ll tell YOU when I’ve had enough wine coolers” vibes, Marjorie Taylor Greene has never been a universally beloved figure in Washington. Still, for a time, she had a number of friends on the far-right side of Congress who were willing to put up with her. Now? Not so much! The Daily Beast reports that while the GOP’s three-week train wreck electing a House Speaker was an embarrassing stain on the entire party, one individual in particular “emerged from the drama with few friends and plenty of enemies”: the congresswoman from Georgia. She’s now persona non grata among a significant amount of Republicans thanks to the fact that: 1-She was kicked out of the House Freedom Caucus this summer.2-Kevin McCarthy, whom she aligned herself with earlier this year, is out of power.3-“GOP rank and file…already disliked her.” Really, it’s just math.
Trump on his great achievement in taking away a woman’s right to choose: During the 202) campaign he tried to hedge: The Democrats cannot let him do that again. His bragging about being personally responsible for taking away women’s constitutional rights must be pounded into every voter’s brain before the 2024 election. It must be conventional wisdom made clear by those quotes of him taking credit for what he did (and there are more) and he cannot be allowed to hedge about it and pretend he didn’t say it. Not this time.
Bolts has a nice overview of what’s at stake in tonight’s elections. This is the intro, you just need to click over to see the cheat sheet: The 2024 presidential election is already in full swing, but first voters are settling a swath of critical races this fall. The balance of power in state and local governments is on the line in myriad ways, from the five states where trifectas are at stake to the fall’s sole race for supreme court. Bolts has identified more than 170 items—and counting—to watch across 31 states, and why they matter, including key races for governors, DAs, mayors, and lawmakers, plus dozens of referendums. We’ll add more races to this page through Election Day: Thousands of additional offices, boards, and ballot measures are all on the ballot all around the nation; this page is Bolts’ selection of important races to monitor. We will also update the page with results once they are known. Most elections on this page are scheduled for Nov. 7, but there are some exceptions: Louisiana holds primaries on Oct. 14 and Nov. 18. Utah holds a special congressional election and mayoral races on Nov.
And nobody seems to be able to rein him in. It’s obvious most Republicans don’t want to. Here’s a good analysis of where we are with Trump and his legal problems from Stephen Collinson at CNN: The judge in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial despairingly pressed the ex-president’s lawyer: “I beseech you to control him if you can.” Judge Arthur Engoron’s plea reflected his frustration at an incorrigible witness who boasted Monday about his piles of cash, aimed scathing political attacks and spouted uniquely illogical logic. But Engoron, who is presiding over the New York trial, also put his finger on a deeper question that will define a singular political figure’s place in history. And the answer, as always, was no, Trump cannot be controlled. No mere lawyer could impose the kind of discipline that two-and-a-half centuries of constitutional checks and balances could not provide during Trump’s time in office or since.
Maybe… That case about whether domestic abusers should be allowed to carry guns was argued today: About 40 minutes into Tuesday’s Supreme Court argument asking whether a federal law prohibiting domestic abusers from owning guns is unconstitutional, Chief Justice John Roberts asked J. Matthew Wright, the lawyer arguing against the law, a question that no attorney ever wants to hear. “You don’t have any doubt that your client is a dangerous person, do you?” the Chief asked Wright. There is, indeed, very little doubt that Wright’s client, Zackey Rahimi, is a very dangerous man. A Texas court determined that Rahimi “has committed family violence” and that he “represents a credible threat to the physical safety” of his ex-girlfriend or other members of her family. If anything, that’s a massive understatement. Rahimi allegedly hit his ex-girlfriend in a parking lot, and then fired a gun at a bystander who witnessed the fight. He then allegedly called the ex-girlfriend and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone that he’d assaulted her.
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.
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.