“A few illustrations of the pointless wrongness of most political forecasts, especially those driven by the news of some recent poll:
Four days ago, exactly one year before the 2024 elections, the New York Times gave huge front-page, lead-story play to polls it had commissioned (along with Siena College), showing that Joe Biden was running far behind Donald Trump in five swing states.
Is Biden doomed? Will this story ‘last’? Maybe, and maybe. But remember:
At just this point one year before his 2012 re-election run, Gallup reported that Barack Obama continued to run eight points behind a ‘generic Republican’ opponent.
-A year later, Obama won by 126 Electoral Votes, and a 51%/47% margin in the national vote.” (James Fallows)
“Democrats had a great off-year election night. It was like the inverse of the one they had two years ago, when Glenn Youngkin beat Terry McAuliffe and doomed liberalism through the end of history. In addition to reunifying Democratic control of the Virginia legislature, setting Youngkin’s political ambitions back a long way (if not all the way), Democrats re-elected Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY), wrote reproductive rights into the Ohio constitution, and gave an incumbent Republican governor in the deep south a run for his (probably stolen?) money.” (Off Message)
“To understand what a second Trump administration would look like, consider Johnny McEntee, the cheerful and upbeat young aide who became Trump’s essential man in the waning days of his presidency. In McEntee, Trump had the ultimate loyalist: He never hesitated to carry out the president’s orders, and he made it his mission to find and remove anyone in the executive branch who was not as devoted to the president as he was. If Trump makes it back to the White House, it would likely be McEntee—or someone like him—doing the hiring and enforcing loyalty. I reported extensively on McEntee’s role in my last book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show. But in the years since Betrayal was published, I have come to learn McEntee’s role was even greater than I had realized—especially during the weeks after Trump lost the 2020 election and before he left office. At just thirty years old, McEntee had become such a powerful figure in the West Wing by late 2020 that one senior staffer described him to me as effectively the deputy president. Having finally realized many of his own advisors were thwarting his wishes—often because they considered them dangerous or illegal—Trump enlisted McEntee to do the things his more senior aides would not.” (Jonathan Karl/VF)
“Leonard Leo - the Knight-Errant in Italian loafers on a camel above - is an ideological time traveler from the 11th Century, and he’s proud of it. He likes to include his status as a Knight of Malta in his official bios. The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta is a Roman Catholic organization founded 1048 in Jerusalem as a monastic order that ran a hospital for Christian pilgrims, later tasked by Rome with military duties defending Christians from the local Muslim population. Ejected from Jerusalem when the Turks retook it, the order eventually settled in Malta, ruling it until Napoleon’s army dispersed them in 1798. They did not disband.” (Nina Burleigh/The American Freakshow)
“He spent more than $14 million and failed. Democrats kept their lead in the state Senate. More surprisingly, they took back the House, winning at least 51 seats; final margins for both chambers will come later Wednesday. Youngkin needed a Senate victory to enact his promised 15-week abortion ban and other right-wing measures. Instead, he lost both houses in Virginia’s general assembly. Along with overwhelming pro-choice victories on Ohio’s constitutional Issue 1, as well as Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Andy Beshear’s slam-dunk reelection, abortion rights advocates had a great night. Youngkin’s humiliating defeat is special, though. In 2017, the anti-Trump resistance took an astonishing 15 seats in the House of Delegates. The 2021 Virginia losses were devastating for progressives, and were also viewed as a Joe Biden backlash. This victory is enormous.” (Joan Walsh/The Nation)
“It was in that hotel room that (David) Patrikarakos had the idea for War in 140 Characters: How Social Media is Shaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. Published in 2017, the book is ‘about war, about stories, the narratives of conflict, and the conflict of narratives.’ Following Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel and the latest iteration of war in Gaza, the themes and lessons from the book, and from the conflicts of 2014 generally, are newly relevant. Recently, Patrikarakos has reported again from both Ukraine and Israel. Earlier this week, after returning from the latter country, I spoke with him about his experiences revisiting familiar war zones, the narrative wars being fought around them, and whether social media has the same impact on war reporting as it did ten years ago.” (CJR)
“A diver stumbled across the find of a lifetime off the coast of Sardinia when a stray shiny item loosened itself from the sea grass below. That metallic sheen turned out to herald a bounty of more than 30,000 bronze and copper coins minted in Rome during the fourth century. ‘The treasure found in the waters of Arzachena represents one of the most important discoveries of numismatic finds in recent years,’ Luigi La Rocca, director general of archaeology, fine arts, and landscape for the region, says in a translated statement from the Italian culture ministry. Near the town of Arzachena, divers were trolling an area of sandy clearing near the beach that was also surrounded by seagrass. That one coin soon yielded tens of thousands of others, all in an ‘excellent and rare state of preservation’ and dating back to between 324 and 340 AD. The ministry says that, thanks to the weight of the coins, there could be at least 30,000 of them and as many as 50,000. That would make this one of the largest ancient coin finds in the past few decades.” (Tim Newcom/Popular Mechanics)
“Wu’s visit signals to both Russia and China the Baltics’ vehement opposition to authoritarianism and expansionism. Speaking to reporters, Wu compared Moscow’s imperialist rhetoric to Beijing’s increasingly aggressive cross-strait tactics. ‘In this part of the world, there is Russia, which started a war against Ukraine and talks about the Baltic countries as part of Russia,’ Wu said, adding that both Taiwan and the Baltics are united through shared values of freedom and democracy. Baltic lawmakers meanwhile emphasized the need to collaborate with Taiwan on strategies to resist autocracies. ‘We must pool experience and strength against the axis of evil,’ said one Lithuanian MP. The Baltics could be the precursor for Europe to ‘de-couple’ from China, according to the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Thomas J. Shattuck. ‘It is now clear that Beijing failed to bully Vilnius into getting its way,’ Shattuck writes, referring to the failure of China’s economic deterrents to stop Lithuania from pursuing closer ties to Taipei. Instead, Taipei stepped in to support tech projects that aim to transform Lithuania into the European center for Taiwanese semiconductor investment. Any further retaliation from China, like cutting all diplomatic ties, would ‘open up a Pandora’s box’ that would force it to take a similar approach across Europe and the U.S., in a move that would be economically catastrophic for Beijing.” (Diego Mendoza/semafor)
“The Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, ordered a ‘complete siege’ of Gaza. ‘There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel,’ he declared. ‘We are fighting human animals and are acting accordingly.’ Nearly nine hundred scholars warned that such dehumanizing rhetoric (‘human animals’) has, in the past, been a precursor to genocide. When the air strikes started, killing thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children—and then again, when Isaac Herzog, the President of Israel, reiterated, ‘It is an entire nation out there that is responsible’—many observers argued that Israel was carrying out a policy of collective punishment, making the civilian population of Gaza pay for Hamas’s crimes, which, international experts noted, is a war crime. House members held a candlelight vigil for Israeli victims of Hamas, and (Ro) Khanna attended. (A Muslim staffer who works in another progressive Democrat’s office told me that she and a few other Hill staffers, both Muslim and Jewish, tried to organize a separate vigil, honoring both the slain Israelis and the innocent Palestinians who had been killed, but that several colleagues advised her against it, saying that it would be too harmful to her career.) More than four hundred representatives co-sponsored a bipartisan House resolution whose official title was ‘Standing with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists.’ The resolution rightly mourned Israeli and American deaths, yet it referred to Palestinian civilian casualties only in passing, and with little sympathy; it pledged ‘support’ for Israel with no stated preconditions, and made no mention of international humanitarian law.” (Andrew Marantz/The New Yorker)
“The reality of life in Pakistan proved to be significantly grimmer than she had initially anticipated. In Lahore, she became a part of a resilient Afghan community that often undertook the most low-paying and arduous jobs. They labored in brick factories, constructed buildings under the blazing sun, operated street stalls, and served as domestic helpers in affluent Pakistani households. Since many of them lacked legal status, they were forced to work in the informal black market labor sector and lead an undocumented life, devoid of human rights or refugee rights, including the right to obtain documentation and be permitted to work legally. Even if they become the victims of crimes, Afghan families fear approaching the police. Doing so usually results in years of dealing with various police stations where people are coerced into paying bribes or thrown in jail. Jamil’s apprehension is evident in her every choice. She prefers Signal over WhatsApp, for example, because she believes Pakistani officials are monitoring WhatsApp during this humanitarian crisis, despite the lack of specific evidence.” ( Freshta Jalalzai/The Diplomat)
“Interestingly enough, the prominent Republican we haven’t heard from on the implications of the 2023 elections for abortion messaging is Donald Trump (though he did take credit for Mississippi governor Tate Reeves’s reelection while blaming Cameron’s loss on ‘the stench of Mitch McConnell’). He may have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, his warnings that the abortion issue is an electoral loser for Republicans were certainly borne out by the bad voter reaction to Youngkin’s aggressive efforts to ‘go on the offensive on the topic. On the other, Republicans (including Youngkin) have mostly accepted his advice to embrace rape and incest exceptions for any abortion-ban proposal, so any ‘Told ya so’ dance he might perform could embarrass his own troops.
GOP candidates and strategists will need to get their act together soon, and not just because they are under renewed pressure from their partners in a bad marriage with the anti-abortion movement to keep up a losing fight. Democrats from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on down will try to exploit their abortion advantage in 2024 contests all over the country; even in safe blue states, abortion-rights ballot measures could appear in order to goose turnout for downballot races.” ( Ed Kilgore /NYMAG)
“Three seemingly unrelated events became news. Conservative West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announced he won’t seek re-election, and hinted he was looking at a 2024 presidential run. The Green Party’s Jill Stein announced that she was looking to reprise her 2016 spoiler role by running again next year. And socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, was revealed to be working for wealthy conservative Democrat Dean Phillips, who is running a vain—in both senses of the word—primary race against President Joe Biden. What links these stories? I’d say: Grifters, all the way down. Manchin’s declaration was the biggest news, though many expected it. The state’s GOP Governor Jim Justice, already running, was almost certainly going to beat him. But in his statement Thursday, Manchin also told his admirers – fossil fuel barons, mainstream reporters who’ve enjoyed dinners on his ‘Almost Heaven’ houseboat, plus West Virginians who admire the wealthy Manchin dynasty – that ‘what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.’ Asked by reporters whether he’d rule out running for president, one source close to Manchin replied, ‘Nothing is off the table.’” (Joan Walsh/The Nation)
“In the book, (Brian) Stelter reports that Murdoch recalled Trump once told him, "You’re 90 percent good. That’s not enough. I need you 100 percent." Murdoch claimed he replied, ‘Well, you can’t have it.’ Stelter writes extensively on how Murdoch harbored feelings of strong disdain for the disgraced former president. One Murdoch family friend told Stelter, the billionaire media mogul ‘hates Trump’ and ‘can’t believe we’re going to end up back with Trump’ … Stelter writes that Murdoch's transition to chairman emeritus means ‘that the loudest Trump critic inside Fox had shifted into a lower, less influential gear.’ And, Stelter continues, ‘Lachlan, his chosen successor, cared more about campaign ad spending at his stations than antidemocratic conduct by his favorite candidate. Maybe Fox would now be '100 percent good' as Trump faced four criminal cases.’” (Oliver Darcy/Reliable Sources)
“Last Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden hosted leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean at the White House for a follow-up event to the June 2022 Summit of the Americas. The atmosphere at the two events was markedly different, reflecting how U.S. economic statecraft toward the region has evolved over the past year. As the host of the rotating summit, the Biden administration used the 2022 meeting—held in Los Angeles—as a big moment to showcase its Latin America policy. But it was overshadowed by boycotts. The presidents of Mexico, Bolivia, and Honduras stayed home to protest the fact that Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua had not been invited—an omission that Washington claimed adhered to the pro-democracy theme of the event. Little progress was made on the key regional issue of economic development; migration policy fared slightly better, yielding a declaration on joint principles. The elephant in the room was China: Beijing has drawn closer to Latin American countries over the past two decades, thanks to bilateral trade and loans for infrastructure projects. The United States has pressured countries in the region not to make deals with Chinese firms but has been slow to offer alternatives.” (Catherine Osbourne/Foreign Policy)