Forecast for 2024 Elections: Clear As Mud

No Matter Where You Live, Your Vote This Week Could Clear Things Up

At this point in time, the only political future many analysts agree on is the transformation of what has traditionally been called the Republican Party. And even then, which path will be taken is unclear.

Will the GOP shatter like the Whigs of 1856? Or will it become a cheerleading squad for the Dear Leader? I’m certain a return to ye olde days of fiscal conservatism and moderation on social matters is gone forever.

Divisions over the Israeli-Gaza war contain buckets of rage capable of splitting the Democratic party; so does antipathy of the liberalish cash-rich tech bros to the ascension of a muscular labor movement.

At this point nothing said about the Gaza war is immune to rage-fueled commentary. 

Former President Obama’s attempt to explain the complexity of this situation  – “If you want to solve the problem, you have to take in the whole truth, and you have to admit that nobody’s hands are clean.” – triggers rants about US aid to Israel during his administration.

Likewise, Senator Bernie Sanders’ take on CNN  – “Somebody should be talking about how Trump wants to expel Palestinians from this country. So it’s, you know, you can disagree with Joe Biden, but on his worst day, he’ll be 100 times better than Trump and the right-wing Republicans.”-- prompted a cartoon of Palestinian children saying how much better it felt to be bombed by Biden.

On Xitter (the social media platform owned by a notorious antisemite) serious people are taking turns bludgeoning each other. It’s genocide vs. never again in never ending arguments -changing no minds- only Vladimir Putin would love.

As is true with the conflict on the Eastern end of the Mediterranean, there will be no winners in this rage driven rhetorical war, only losers. Democrats who see the millions of pro-Palestinian demonstrators around the world as evidence of antisemitism ignore those sentiments of solidarity at their own peril. 

The government of Israel is not the same as the people who live there; neither are the people living in Gaza aligned with Hamas. 

Israel’s government, by the way, is hoping to expel thousands of Palestinians to the Sinai Peninsula which, if it were to happen, would exacerbate tensions with the Arab-run nations’ who have resentments about the peace treaties Egypt and neighboring Jordan have signed. And then there’s resentments by the states who have been funding the basics in life for Palestinians (but not Arabs from elsewhere) in refugee camps. Finally, there’s no plan for life post-Hamas (if such a thing could be accomplished) in Gaza; Israel doesn’t want the headache, and the Palestinian Alliance is so incompetent it couldn't do the job.  

But…where was I? Oh, yeah, 2024 elections. 

The New York Times has published polling showing former President Trump winning contested states if the election were held today…maybe even piling up 300 electoral votes. Fear, not; some bright eyed analyst somewhere will soon be challenging the methodology involved. None-the-less, polling at this stage is irrelevant. Remember when Mitt Romney was a sure thing to best Obama? I do.

Convictions of the former president on felony charges, the long-awaited (we’re supposed to be in a near-depression by now, according to the business press) economic crash, and/or the current president kicking the bucket could all change the political landscape.

I’ll be looking at this week’s off-year elections; Democrats have been punching above their weight class in recent years, and if things break their way in Ohio and Virginia it will be significant. Dissatisfaction with the GOP agenda could lead to victories that would energize party activists.

Here’s Jay Kuo:

• The fact that the race is Biden’s to lose doesn’t in any way mean that we can stop or rest. As I said earlier, I wouldn’t say I am confident, only buoyed by the data and the current state of the race. We will need all hands available in the coming year, because it is no exaggeration to state that our entire American national experiment—which has experienced a civil war, two world wars, a civil rights awakening and now the rise of American fascism—is squarely on the line. Not one of us can afford to sit this out.

• But for today, a year out, I wish to emphasize the many positive signs so that we aren’t all exhausted by anxiety and stress.

• Things are going our way. If we take this energy to the finish line, we will win. Perhaps even resoundingly

Locally, Republicans have been pitching a doom and gloom scenario, which means talking up terrorists crossing the border to rape and plunder, and the disgust too many people feel upon seeing people with nowhere to live and blaming Democrats. Both scenarios rely on out-of-context facts presented to gin up a fight or flight response.

I’m hoping a significant victory by Monica Montgomery-Steppe will bring encouragement to a local party organization currently weighed down by its past entanglements and some disappointing electeds acting more Republican-lite than being the promised progressive visionaries.

What should be the biggest news of the week are the details revealed in a Washington Post investigation of planning for a second Trump administration. 

While broad strokes like firing civil servants, being cruel to migrants, and catering to the dirty energy industry have all been discussed about Project 2025, the “getting even” part of a Trump administration has been dismissed by some as campaign rally rhetoric.

Step one, according to those involved and emails reviewed by the Post, is for the President to invoke the 1871 Insurrection Act, authorizing the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement. They’ll be charged with putting down any demonstrations that displease Trump.

• The discussions underway reflect Trump’s determination to harness the power of the presidency to exact revenge on those who have challenged or criticized him if he returns to the White House. The former president has frequently threatened to take punitive steps against his perceived enemies, arguing that doing so would be justified by the current prosecutions against him. 

• Trump has claimed without evidence that the criminal charges he is facing — a total of 91 across four state and federal indictments — were made up to damage him politically.

Damon Linker at The New York Times delved into the Trumpian intellectuals (an oxymoron?) who are laying out the path forward for a supposed next administration:

• In a second term, Mr. Trump’s ambition is to fire tens of thousands of career civil servants throughout the federal bureaucracy and replace them with loyalists. He also reportedly plans to staff the executive branch with more aggressive right-wing lawyers. These would surely be people unwaveringly devoted to the president and his agenda as well as the danger the Democratic Party supposedly poses to the survival of the United States.

• These writers also exercise a powerful influence on media personalities with large audiences. Tucker Carlson has interviewed Curtis Yarvin and declared that with regard to the 2024 election, “everything is at stake. What wouldn’t they do? What haven’t they done? How will you prepare yourself?” Other right-wing influencers with large followings assert more bluntly that if conservatives lose in 2024, they will be hunted down and murdered by the regime.

• It’s important that we respond to such statements by pointing out there is literally no evidence to support them. Other intellectual catastrophists are likewise wrong to suggest the country is ruled by a progressive tyranny, and we can know this because people on the right increasingly say such things while facing no legal consequences at all.

Finally, Breaking News from the New York trial of Donald J Trump, who is obviously trying to provoke the judge into doing something he can work into an appeal:

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Monday’s Other News

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Maybe This Explains Why Intelligent People on the Right Can Believe the Unbelievable By Andy Schmookler at Daily Kos

• I can’t understand how Good People would throw their support to something they’d have called “Evil” a generation ago.

• But I also can’t understand how Intelligent People would fail to know what mountains of evidence makes perfectly obvious. Like that the Big Steal was a Lie told by a leader willing to attack the Constitutional Order -- a one-man crime wave -- for his own selfish purposes? Not know what couldn’t be clearer?

• Neither makes sense.

• But maybe that notion of more-than-one-mind – both knowing and not knowing – offers a solution.

• Maybe both are true.

Having an Intelligent Mind that can see and understand a stark reality one can hardly miss.

But also having a mind that is inspired to provide fervent support for Something that continually traffics in blatantly unreality.

• The issue is, which mind will govern?

• And so the two-minds theory leads to a new puzzle: what mind is inspired to cling enthusiastically to a political power that tells them to believe things that are obviously false? And why is that mind that embraces the lies so powerful that it can silence the intelligent mind that knows what’s what?

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Domestic violence calls about ‘reproductive coercion’ doubled after the overturn of Roe By Jennifer Gerson at The 19th News

• With increased limitations on access to reproductive health care – and especially abortion care — in the 18 months since the Dobbs ruling, those experiencing domestic violence are facing a reality where an inability to receive this care is also further endangering their lives and safety. 

• That increase is especially alarming, experts say, because being pregnant increases a person’s risk of being hurt — or killed — by an intimate partner. 

• Homicide is the leading cause of death of people who are pregnant or have given birth within a year in the United States, surpassing dangerous complications such as eclampsia and hemorrhage. There were 189 known pregnancy-associated homicides in 2020. Among those deaths, 81 percent involved firearms, 55 percent of victims were Black women, and 45 percent of victims were under the age of 24. Furthermore, 54 percent of these homicides occurred when the victim was pregnant, and the remaining 46 percent occurred during the first year after a woman had given birth. 

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Moms for Liberty members call the cops on Florida librarians

• Two members of Moms for Liberty, a right-wing activist group, have reported several Florida school librarians to law enforcement. They claimed they had evidence that librarians were distributing "pornography" to minors and requested that law enforcement officers be dispatched. This represents a serious escalation of the tactics deployed by members of Moms for Liberty against school librarians. 

• On October 25, Jennifer Tapley, a member of the Santa Rosa County chapter of Moms for Liberty and a candidate for school board, contacted the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office. "I've got some evidence a crime was committed," Tapley said in an audio recording of the call obtained by Popular Information through a public records request. "Pornography given to a minor in a school. And I would like to make a report with somebody and turn over the evidence." Tapley made the call from the lobby of the main office of the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office in Milton, Florida.