… I would counter by pointing to Biden’s appointments, equally radical in the opposite direction.
Elections do indeed have consequences.
New Hampshire displays its split personality once again
Some people would call New Hampshire a purple state. But I think that’s misleading. New Hampshire is blue at the national level and red at the state level. In recent years, its senators and House members are all Democrats. But its governors and legislature are Republican, and not just by a small margin.
Now, with Tuesday’s election providing stronger majorities in the State House and Republican Kelly Ayotte’s victory in the race for governor, Republican lawmakers have the opportunity to pass bolder legislation.
Barring any changes from recounts, the House is expected to have 222 Republicans and 178 Democrats, according to the House Clerk’s Office; the Senate is projected to have 16 Republicans and eight Democrats.
The article has a list of legislative goals for the state Republicans, such as banning sanctuary cities in the state and having a parental rights bill. And of course there is New Hampshire’s well-known tax conservatism.
A person could be forgiven for thinking that New Hampshire is a red state. But at the national level, the state went for Harris – granted, by a narrow margin of 50.7 to 47.9, but in line with the fact that Clinton won there in 2016 and Biden in 2020. This year, there were no senators in New Hampshire up for election, but New Hampshire’s two current members of the US House are both Democrats. One was incumbent Pappas, who won easily: by eight points. The other seat was open but the Democrat won by six points.
So, what gives in New Hampshire? I think the state’s tax tradition is one of the reasons it remains Republican at the local level. It is also commonly thought that the trend at the national level has to do with new residents from Massachusetts, but I’ve read several analyses that say the new arrivals haven’t tended to vote consistently for Democrats. So the mystery remains.
“Under Biden, the Democrats should have been more radical”
[Hat tip: commenter “AesopFan”]
From this article by Park MacDougald [my remarks in brackets]:
And in other dodged-bullet news, Jonathan Last of “The Bulwark,” the never-Trump Republican webzine dedicated to “defending democracy” and bilking large checks out of gullible liberal donors, expressed regret, as the results came on Tuesday night, that the Biden administration hadn’t been more “radical” in rigging the system against Trump. Here’s Last, as transcribed by Tom Elliott on X [I watched the video of Last and others, and was struck by the sentence MacDougald excerpts here]:
[The Biden Admin] should have been quite radical. They should have made D.C. a state, they should have actually expanded the Supreme Court, they should have done a whole bunch of stuff that would have been deeply unpopular, but … would have restructured the framework in such a way as to make it harder for the next authoritarian attempt.
To me, this encapsulates a lot of things about the present-day left. There’s the complete lack of realization that it was actually the administration’s radicalism that turned so many voters off. There is the embrace of actions that would be extremely authoritarian in a transparent drive for more power under the guise of stopping the right from being authoritarian. And there’s also the air of expertise coupled with what appears to be a complete lack of knowledge about what actually happened during the Biden administration regarding the very things that Last seems to think they didn’t attempt to do.
“They should have made DC a state,” says Last. Why does he think that didn’t happen? Is he even aware of how hard they tried to do exactly that? I bring you, Mr. Last, history in the form of HR51, a bill introduced on January 4, 2021 – the day after the new Congress resulting from the 2020 election took office. Sounds like it was a top priority, doesn’t it? The bill passed in the House on April 22, 2021, by a vote of 216 to 208. At the time, the Democrats had 221 seats and the Republicans 211, with some not present for the vote, which was on strict party lines. Here’s an excerpt from the bill’s summary:
This bill provides for admission into the United States of the state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, composed of most of the territory of the District of Columbia. The commonwealth shall be admitted to the Union on an equal footing with the other states.
The Mayor of the District of Columbia shall issue a proclamation for the first elections to Congress of two Senators and one Representative of the commonwealth.
The bill applies current District laws to the commonwealth and continues pending judicial proceedings.
The commonwealth (1) shall consist of all District territory, with specified exclusions for federal buildings and monuments, including the principal federal monuments, the White House, the Capitol Building, the U.S. Supreme Court Building, and the federal executive, legislative, and judicial office buildings located adjacent to the Mall and the Capitol Building; and (2) may not impose taxes on federal property except as Congress permits.
District territory excluded from the commonwealth shall be known as the Capital and shall be the seat of the federal government.
But guess what? The bill suffered a sad fate in the Senate, much as a previous bill passed by the House in 2020 had:
The House voted Thursday on a bill that would admit Washington, D.C., as the 51st state, although the measure is likely to fail in the evenly divided Senate. The legislation passed along party lines with a vote of 216 to 208, with no Republicans voting in favor. …
The House approved a D.C. statehood measure by a vote of 232 to 180 last year, but it did not get a vote in the Senate, which was then controlled by Republicans. Although Democrats now hold a 50-seat majority, most legislation requires 60 votes to advance, and this bill is unlikely to garner support from 10 Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has committed to bringing the measure to the floor for a vote, but a motion to move forward with the legislation would almost certainly fail.
Ah, but Jonathan Last would no doubt say that they should have canned the filibuster and just passed it in the Senate, if they really meant business. And in fact:
Many D.C. statehood supporters are pushing the Senate to eliminate the filibuster, which would allow measures to advance with a simple majority. But this would require support from all 50 Democrats in the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. Two Democrats say they won’t support it — all but dooming the prospects for H.R. 51.
I bet you can guess who the two were, even if you don’t remember the incident: Sinema and Manchin. If not for them, the filibuster would have been eliminated back in 2021.
The article goes on:
However, it’s unclear whether all Senate Democrats would support D.C. statehood, even if the filibuster was eliminated. The two Democrats who oppose eliminating the filibuster, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have not signed onto the Senate bill as co-sponsors. Democratic Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Mark Kelly, and independent Senator Angus King, who caucuses with Democrats, have also refrained from co-sponsoring the bill.
And then of course in the next Congress, Republicans got control of the House and no such bill was going anywhere.
I wonder what Last thought the Democrats and/or Biden should have done to have “made DC a state.” Just declared it, by royal decree? Threatened Manchin and Sinema with removal from office? Obiously, there was no way to do it democratically or Democratically, although my guess is that Last knows nothing about any of this history – including the makeup of the legislature – and thinks the problem was just lack of trying.
And what of Supreme Court packing? Last says, “they should have actually expanded the Supreme Court.” No doubt any such effort would have run into the very same roadblocks that HR51 encountered. But again, that’s not Last’s gig or his problem. They should have waved a magic wand.
And indeed, Biden tried as recently as this past July:
President Joe Biden on Monday proposed major changes for the U.S. Supreme Court: an enforceable code of ethics, term limits for justices and a constitutional amendment that would limit the justices’ recent decision on presidential immunity.
But alas, no magic wand was provided, and when last I checked, Biden was never made king:
There’s almost no chance of the proposal passing a closely divided Congress with Election Day looming, but the ideas could still spark conversation …
Almost no chance? Zero chance. But guess what? It was actually tried, and only about six weeks ago:
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today announced the introduction of new legislation to restore balance among the three branches of government, increase transparency to improve public trust in America’s courts, and modernize the courts to ensure greater access to justice for more Americans.
In the wake of recent rulings upending decades of precedent and evidence of unethical behavior, Wyden’s Judicial Modernization and Transparency Act would modernize the courts by expanding the Supreme Court to 15 justices over three presidential terms, prevent political inaction from bottling up nominations to the Supreme Court, and restore appropriate deference to the legislative branch by requiring a supermajority to overturn acts of Congress, among other modernizing provisions to improve access to justice.
“To restore balance” – that’s pretty funny. Not only does the bill feature court-packing, but note that it also requires a supermajority to overturn an act of Congress even though to pass such an act requires nothing of the sort.
The bill is still in committee; it obviously was going nowhere, but the intent was there. And a previous House version that had some different details was introduced in May of 2023 and met a similar fate.
You may wonder why I’m spending so much time on this. It’s because I can’t stand the combination of arrogance and ignorance that I see so often in people like Last who have all sorts of credentials. The credentials give them the arrogance; what gives them the ignorance? Laziness, preference bias, personality?
Open thread 11/16/2024
So articulate for their age:
Roundup
(1) Some theories about what might be behind the Gaetz nomination.
(2) Israel may have struck a secret nuclear research facility in Iran. And now that Trump is waiting in the wings, I’d expect to see more of that in the future.
(3) Chris Wallace says buh-bye to CNN:
CNN anchor Chris Wallace was reportedly told his two poorly rated shows would be canceled and his massive salary slashed before the veteran journalist announced he would leave the network.
Wallace, who was being paid a reported $7 million a year, was informed that he was welcome to stay on as an analyst but at a much lower salary as part of CEO Mark Thompson’s vast cost-cutting initiatives, according to Puck News.
Instead, Wallace announced earlier this week that he was exiting CNN, and portrayed the move in a Daily Beast interview as a pivot to podcasting and streaming — because “that’s where the action seems to be,” he said.
Well, both things can certainly be true. But does Wallace have that kind of a following, or the sort of style to make it in podcasting? I don’t think so.
(4) Rand Paul will be chairing the Homeland Security Committee in the new Senate.
(5) The left is saying Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian tool. I seem to recall that none other than good old Hillary Clinton started that sort of accusation against Gabbard way back in 2019; see this.
The Trump administration: the pursuit of justice or of revenge?
One can hardly blame Trump for wanting to go after the people who used lawfare against him – who invented charges and twisted the intent of statutes in order to end his political career, bankrupt him and his family, and ultimately imprison him if they possibly could manage it. Their actions should have put every American on notice that they were adopting Beria-like strategies and going very far in a dangerous direction.
That danger wasn’t only to Trump and the right. They were further undermining respect for the law itself, which had already been undermined by every miscarriage of justice that ever was, and the more obvious the injustice the more deeply the disrespect. Therefore, every time a political prosecution is mounted, the charges must be ironclad to avoid the inevitable conclusion that the prosecution is merely political and opportunistic. And the cases against Trump were quite the opposite of ironclad.
The left committed very real violations that need redress, as Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) has said:
“Now they’re like, ‘Oh, this is, this is retribution,’ and it’s like, ‘No, no. It’s justice. You really did do these things,” he said, laying out specifics of what the left has done.
“You really did target pro-life Catholics. You really did target parents who went to school board meetings, and weaponized the government. You really have put people in prison for non-violent offenses. You’ve tried to bankrupt people. You’ve completely corrupted and abused the whole purpose of the Department of Justice, and that is going to be remedied, and frankly, the people that have done it are going to be held accountable,” Davidson promised.
But there’s a caveat: it will be seen by the American people as tit-for-tat revenge unless the evidence against such offenders is crystal clear and the charges are not the result of the twisting of statutes to make them fit a situation to which they were never meant to apply. And that’s not just some sort of moral stance; it’s a practical one as well. If one of the reasons the GOP is in power is to right wrongs, the process of doing so must be seen as fair or the Republicans will lose the American people and the worm will turn once again, back to the left.
And then we have RFK for head of Health and Human Services
It’s no surprise at all, although if you’d have said a year ago that it would happen, most people would say you’d lost your mind.
I’m not a big RFK fan (see this, for example), but I can’t say I’ve done a deep deep dive into some of his ideas that I question, and so I’m open to seeing how he performs in this particular job if he’s confirmed. However, I most certainly don’t automatically discount his views because some health “experts” disagree with them:
President Donald Trump’s pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services “is an extraordinarily bad choice for the health of the American people,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, warned Thursday.
“I was worried we could go low but not this low,” Dr. Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean of the Emory School of Medicine & Grady Health System, wrote of the pick.
Although Trump signaled in the runup to the election that he planned to let the vaccine skeptic “go wild” on health, food and medicine, Kennedy’s official selection for the nation’s top health post sent shockwaves through the public health world, concerned about his potential effects on vaccination rates, research on infectious diseases and misrepresentation of established science.
The article leaves out the fact that Dr. Jha was Biden’s COVID czar from April of 2022 to June of 2023. That seems relevant to me, although from a brief look at his policies it seems to me he wasn’t an extremist compared to some of his colleagues. But considering his former position in the Biden administration, I think it’s wrong not to mention it in the article and to lead people to believe he has no horse in this race.
But in general it’s a case of “physicians, heal thyselves.” The health establishment has a great deal to answer for in terms of COVID origins, the COVID vaccine, and COVID lockdowns, and if people have become skeptical of them and their recommendations regarding vaccines or anything else, I think that health authorities should point the finger at themselves.
I’m a middle-of-the-roader on all of this, as most regular readers here know. I was initially calling for a far less panicky approach to all of it, and continued in that vein (please see this post, for example). But I’ve also noticed that many of the most extreme anti-vax positions are also based on very faulty readings of statistics, and I’ve written many posts on that topic, too (see see this for one of them). But it cannot be said enough that if people have lost trust in health authorities, those health authorities are the ones who have undermined that trust.
Here’s Dr. Oz on the RFK appointment, for what it’s worth. Oz’s politics, at least, are well known:
Open thread 11/15/2024
YouTube seems to think I would like watching this sort of thing, and they must be right because I clicked on it. Now I’ve watched a few similar ones, as well, and each time it’s wonderful to see the women’s faces light up:
A few more observations, as Kamala Harris slowly fades into the sunset …
There’s something that’s been puzzling me.
Actually, there are many things that have been puzzling me. But the one I’m referring to right now involves all the post-election analysis on why Kamala lost, as though it’s a Byzantine mystery that needs great minds to figure it out.
To me, it seems glaringly obvious that there is one enormous reason that dwarfs the myriad smaller ones, and here it is: she was incapable of speaking in an even minimally acceptable manner, even for someone running for president of the local PTA. I’m not trying to be mean here, and I have no hatred of Harris. But I don’t see how anyone – even someone wanting desperately to vote for her and to consider her competent – could listen to her circular, meaningless gibberish and consider her qualified to be president.
Add to that Harris’ strange, disjointed, inauthentic affect and grating cackle, and you have a perfect storm to turn voters off. I believe that, even if I were still a Democrat, even if I also hated Trump, I would have had a very difficult time filling out that ballot for Kamala Harris.
A sea change in US policy towards Iran?
I think Trump’s new administration will represent a big change in US policy towards Iran, and that Trump means business. Look, for example, at the primacy he gave to appointments to the UN, Israel, State, and Defense. Hardliners all, and staunch defenders of Israel.
And I think the mullahs know it, as does Netanyahu. And of course, it helps that he and Trump already have a working relationship.
Here’s an article purporting to have the inside scoop on some of the plans. For example:
According to these sources, Iran’s planned operation – dubbed “Operation True Promise 3” – has been put on hold pending potential negotiations with Trump, following diplomatic messages conveyed through Iraqi channels. The operation follows two previous initiatives, “True Promise” and “True Promise 2.”
Representative Mike Waltz, Trump’s selection for national security advisor, has consistently advocated for a more assertive approach toward Iran. Prior to Israel’s military action against Iran last month, Waltz proposed targeting Kharg Island, Tehran’s crucial oil export facility. In a September interview with Jewish Insider, Waltz stated, “The United States needs to pressure Hamas and its allies in Iran. Unilateral pressure on Israel will not lead to a ceasefire.”
Pete Hegseth, the prospective defense secretary, has previously advocated for giving Israel autonomy in addressing Iranian nuclear capabilities. “This is an existential threat to them, let them do what they need to do,” Hegseth remarked in statements to US media outlets.
It’s interesting that both Netanyahu and Trump were out of power for a while and now are back in charge of their respective countries in a time of great crisis. Regarding Iran, the picture is even more clear than before what a danger it is – not just to Israel but to the Western world.
Speaking of dangers and the Western world, anti-Jewish riots have spread from Amsterdam to Paris:
Demonstrators on Wednesday night went on a rampage in Paris over a pro-Israel event in the city. “Protests erupted in Paris on Wednesday against a gala … in support of Israel,” The Times of Israel reported. “The demonstrations came on the eve of a high-stakes soccer match at France’s national stadium against the Israeli national team.”
I think one of many goals is to further isolate Israel from the rest of the world and make it too costly for other countries to even host sports events with them. I remember the shock of the Munich Olympics massacre over fifty years ago, when the intrusion of murderous politics into sporting events was new. What did Arafat learn from that? He learned that such barbarism was a way to gain world sympathy and fame.
On Gaetz as potential AG
Never a dull moment with Trump, although one might wish for a few.
So, what about Gaetz? Is Trump’s decision to put him up for Attorney General the ultimate troll? Is it even meant to be serious, or some sort of complicated move that is a test of loyalty, or a way to get Gaetz out of the House, or what? I don’t even pretend to know, but I note the furor it has engendered even on the right.
Gaetz is an unconventional choice, to say the least. Most people think he won’t be confirmed in the Senate, and that’s certainly a good possibility, considering the thin GOP majority there and the presence of people like Collins and Murkowski.
Gaetz is nothing if not aggressive; he was one of the main drivers of the ouster of Speaker McCarthy, for example. McCarthy has said this about the nomination:
Asked for his response to Trump’s Cabinet picks so far, McCarthy told Bloomberg Television in an interview, “I think the choices are very good, except one.”
“Look, Gaetz won’t get confirmed,” he continued. “Everybody knows that.”
McCarthy, a loyal Trump ally while serving in the House, was asked why the former president would bother tapping Gaetz if he knew the Florida Republican couldn’t get confirmed.
“You can talk to [the] president, but it’s a good deflection from others, but it also gives …” McCarthy responded, cutting himself off. “I’ll let it stand at that.”
Pressed again for some insight into Trump’s thought process, McCarthy said, “You’d have to ask the president, but Gaetz couldn’t win in a Republican conference, so it doesn’t matter.”
And then there’s Fetterman, who called it a “God-tier kind of trolling just to trigger a meltdown.”
The DOJ had previously subjected Gaetz to a 2-years-long investigation, which was finally closed in 2023 because of witness unreliability [emphasis mine]:
The investigation stemmed from allegations that the congressman had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, with the DOJ looking into if Gaetz violated sex trafficking laws in paying for her to travel with him, including across state lines.
The probe was part of a larger investigation into Gaetz’s ally and former Florida tax collector Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to six federal crimes, including sex trafficking of a minor, identity theft and wire fraud.
Greenberg was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December. He agreed to cooperate with the DOJ’s investigation as part of his plea agreement.
But the investigation into Gaetz hit a roadblock over concerns about the credibility of two witnesses, one of whom was Greenberg. Career attorneys reportedly recommended to the DOJ in September that the department not charge Gaetz based on those witness credibility issues.
Prosecutors were also worried that testimony from the girl with whom Gaetz allegedly had the relationship would not stand up in front of a jury.
In other words, they offered something to Greenberg if he’d implicate Gaetz, and his testimony (and the girl’s) ended up being too shaky to hold up in court. You can draw your own conclusions about Gaetz’s guilt, but I say it’s most likely they tried to frame him. I doubt there’s much love lost between Gaetz and the DOJ which, as AG, he would be in the position of running.
There’s also a House investigation:
The House Ethics Committee was investigating whether he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other allegations. With Gaetz’s resignation from the lower chamber, the panel no longer has jurisdiction but could still vote to release the report.
Yes, Gaetz resigned from the House yesterday, ostensibly to start the ball rolling on DeSantis appointing his replacement so that the House majority is protected. This may or may not have been the reason.
My gut feeling is that this is certainly not a simple matter, and that both Trump and Gaetz may be playing a more complicated game. I think it presents Senate GOP members with a real dilemma, as well.
But let’s for a moment say that Gaetz is confirmed as AG. I think it would be a scorched earth policy at the DOJ, which is richly deserved for the agency’s behavior under Garland. It’s not as though the DOJ has any reputation to defend.