President Biden's Championship Season
On Tuesday, there were counties in fire engine red Mississippi that ran out of ballots —- multiple times!
Tuesdays election results have all but eclipsed that ridiculous Sienna College/New York Times poll that got everyone’s panties in a twist over the weekend. Because, yes, Biden’s age — though it shouldn’t be — is a mitigating factor in the minds of many voters. That Halloween SNL cold-open was quietly devastating in its parody of the perceived frailty of the President. But in the end, the fear of the loss of our common freedoms and, ancillary to that, the rise of authoritarianism, is enough to keep voters in the fold of the Democrat party of President Joe Biden. A Democrat who argued for exceptions to the state’s abortion law, was even re-elected by a comfortable margin in deep-red Kentucky. And it should be added that exit polling last night suggests that voters of color, Latino voters, Black voters — all mentioned in the Times poll as softening on Biden — are the key base of support for abortion rights. So, there’s that.
Further, the Virginia statehouse election results appear to argue that the zeitgeist of Republican culture wars might be behind us. In the rear-view window. Virginia, trending blue for some time, veered red at the height of COVID, largely because Democrats did not fully realize the havoc that lockdowns would wreak upon the lives of working-class parents without childcare. If urban Democrats, many of whom work in Zoom-enabled fields, enraged rural and suburban voters with those lockdowns and school closures, voting patterns look to be returning to pre-COVID trends. What was once violet is now more periwinkle with the new legislative majority.
Thus the fall of Youngkin, who rose on the back of “wokeness,” is not an entirely insignificant political phenomenon. Upwards of $5 million was spend just on education issues, book bans and “parents rights” solicitations in this election cycle for the Virginia statehouses. It all came to naught. But now, it appears that Old Dominion is once again, after a blizzard of “woke,” back to a more moderate way of politics. Think of suburban Loudon County, where Youngkin overperformed in 2021, as a metaphor for the new, blue normal in 2023.
Regarding the reproductive rights overreach by Republicans, one need look no further than the state of Pennsylvania. Purple Bucks County, incidentally, also pushed back against curriculum overreach by the Republican party and their cult of wokeness. Further, Pennsylvania, which was once a complicated state on the subject of abortion, is now regarded as “remarkably stable” as per Ron Brownstein. Democrats, among other electoral accomplishments, expanded their majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Add Ohio — a fire engine red state — which voted by more than 13 points to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitution. However one falls on the subject of abortion rights, very few people are absolutist — barring even cases of rape and incest — as many conservatives are.
One setback of the night for the Democrats was Mississippi, where the gubernatorial candidate lost by five points. I should add “mere” here, because Mississippi is about as red a state as there is in these United States. That having been said, there were counties in Mississippi last Tuesday that actually ran out of ballots — multiple times! In crimson-red Mississippi!! And, further, metro areas across the country — even usually red Columbus, Ohio — continue to trend blue, at least on issues like this present Republican reproductive rights overreach. And what about even more conservative rural areas? “Efforts are underway in Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Nevada and South Dakota to get onto the ballot abortion rights constitutional amendments that could meaningfully expand abortion access in large swaths of the country,” Grace Panetta and Mel Leonor Barclay write in 19thnews. “In some cases, organizers are already navigating similarly hostile political territory. “
Reproductive rights overreach has, for several election cycles now, been a winner for the Democrat party. Trump — who supplied the Supreme Court with the 6-3 majority needed to overrule Roe v Wade — is front and center with this politically unpopular issue. There is no way he can extricate himself from this issue that is his signature judicial achievement. Abortion hardened Trump’s support among evangelicals — to the detriment of Mike Pence’s career — but distanced him substantially with suburban women, which is not a good look moving into a general election.
Further, the clawing back of a democratic right that Americans have regarded as settled law for five decades strengthens the argument that the Republican brand is associated with right-wing authoritarianism. And, interestingly, Nikki Haley, who is surging with “Nik-mentum,” was the most rhetorically nuanced on the subject of at this week’s debate (which, I know, isn’t saying much, but hey). One wonders if this, along with her neoconservatism on Israel and Ukraine, is the beginning of real, substantive differences with Donald Trump. Could this — coming at a point in which Haley is breaking away from the pack — be the beginning of a real race between Nikki Haley and Donald Trump? We won’t entertain the possibility that Haley might play up her differences with trump on the subject of abortion, and that too will not be a good look for Trump, arguing with a woman over her sovereignty over her own body.
Oh, I don’t doubt that in the end Donald Trump will win the nomination. It is, after all, his party; created in his own image. But it is increasingly looking as if this primary race is going to go beyond five or six contested states. It is, right now, more marathon and less sprint. It might even go beyond Super Tuesday. And, if it goes further than that, it conceivably “wounds” the Trump campaign. I mean, imagine how much mileage Haley could get attacking Trump on the abortion issue, if she chose to do so? A contentious, everlasting primary depletes TrumpWorld of focus on POTUS, on campaign funds and on an important rest period going in to the convention. The stronger Nik-mentum, the more energy the 77-year old Trump expends to defeat her. Biden, by contrast, does not have any serious competition on his own nomination.
Abortion is a millstone around the neck of the Republican Party. Women, particularly suburban women, are fired up and coming to the polls on this issue. And so, quite frankly, are Libertarian(ish) voters, who generally vote with Republicans. “Since the Supreme Court tossed out the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, Republicans have suffered a series of electoral setbacks in direct votes on the future of abortion rights, even in solidly conservative states like Kansas,” writes John King of CNN.
And when Kansas — candy apple-red Kansas — rebukes the party by a resounding 60-40 vote, it would behoove the bigwigs to stop muscling forward, sharp-elbowed and listen to what their own people are telling them. To fail to do so in any meaningful way can only be properly construed under the category of right-wing authoritarianism. And there is no leader in the Western world better prepared to take on that fight — Democracy-versus-Authoritarianism — that President Biden.
“In July, Meta debuted Threads—a social networking app whose launch appeared motivated by the travails of X, the platform then still known as Twitter—by giving users of Instagram, Meta’s photo and video-sharing platform, the ability to set up an account. The following week, my colleague Jon Allsop and I discussed whether Threads would be able to compete with X and how useful it might be for journalists. Four months on, Threads has arguably become a significant competitor for X, and has done so a lot faster than many people expected: the app hit thirty million sign-ups within twenty-four hours of its launch; in a conference call on October 25, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s co-founder and CEO, said that it now has almost a hundred million monthly users, making it one of the fastest-growing apps in history, even beyond the initial sugar rush. And there are signs of growing usefulness for journalists, too—though that’s a more complicated story.” (Mathew Ingram/CJR)
A wedding gift for RFK, Jr. (Christina Oxenberg)
“Israel has declared war on Hamas. Legally, there are two questions that arise: the legality of the war, and the legality of how it is fought. As regards the former, Hamas’s incursion on to Israeli territory, the deliberate massacre of over 1,300 and the kidnapping of hundreds of Israeli civilians undoubtedly counts as an armed attack in response to which Israel has the right of self-defence. Given that Hamas has a stated objective of destroying the Israeli state, took the hostages on to the territory it controls, and is launching rockets and conducting command and control from that territory, it is also legal for Israel to operate against Hamas on the territory of Gaza in response. There is therefore no question as to the legality of the Israeli action, which aims to eliminate the capacity of Hamas to conduct further attacks. The difficulties arise as to how such a mission is to be carried out, given that the area of operations comprises densely populated urban terrain with a large proportion of children and non-combatants and very weak critical infrastructure. Under the Laws of Armed Conflict and International Humanitarian Law, Israeli forces are obligated to discriminate military from civilian targets, to restrict their activities to those that are of military necessity, and to exercise proportionality. It is not illegal for civilians to be killed as a result of operations. It is illegal for operations to target civilians or for there to be a lack of proportionality in striking military targets relative to assessed collateral damage.” (Jack Watling/RUSI)
“The tentative agreement, which officially ends the strike at midnight, concludes one of the most painful and disruptive chapters in Hollywood's history, one defined by work stoppages that shut down production across the industry for months and raised existential questions over the future of the entertainment business. Suffice to say, there is a lot of relief in Tinseltown. Relief among the big four studio chiefs, made up of Disney's Bob Iger, Warner Bros. Discovery's David Zaslav, Netflix's Ted Sarandos, and NBCU's Donna Langley. Relief among the actors, who will finally get back to work. And relief among the other unions and workers who rely on the hum of the Hollywood machine to make ends meet. The deal couldn't have come soon enough. As one person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, told me on Wednesday, prolonging a deal ‘would have been like crossing another rubicon that would have been a huge financial blow to everybody.’ That is because the studios need to quickly get production up and running to ensure television shows can return in January for a salvaged half-season and summer blockbusters can be cranked out in time for next year.” (Oliver Darcy/Reliable Sources)