My friend Taegan Goddard and I recorded a podcast yesterday, which he and I will post later today at Political Wire, News Items and Political Items.
We’re going to do podcasts from time to time; depending on news flow and whether we think we have something to add to the “conversation.” Taegan wants to call the podcast “Landslide.” I want to call it “Key Precincts.” If someone has a better title, please email me at j.ellis@news-items.com.
Check your in-box later for the podcast itself. We think it’s a good start.
1. Michael Wolff:
Personally, I’m less sure of Mr. Trump’s legal fate. Prosecutors will soon run up against the epistemological challenges of explaining and convicting a man whose behavior defies and undermines the structures and logic of civic life.
There’s an asymmetric battle here, between the government’s precise and thorough prosecutors and Mr. Trump’s head-smacking gang of woeful lawyers. The absolute ludicrousness and disarray of the legal team defending Mr. Trump after his second impeachment ought to go down in trial history. Similarly, a few months ago, a friend of mine was having a discussion with Mr. Trump about his current legal situation. A philosophical Mr. Trump said that while he probably didn’t have the best legal team, he was certain he had the best looking, displaying pictures of the comely women with law degrees he had hired to help with his cases.
Here liberals see a crushing advantage: As ever, Mr. Trump seems unable to walk a straight line even in his own defense. But his unwillingness or, as likely, inability to play by the rules or even understand them creates a chaos often in his favor. Indeed, the prosecutors’ story of his grand scheming will most likely require them to present a figure of the former president — calculated, methodical, knowing and cunning — that none of his supporters or anyone who has ever met him or reasonable jurors and perhaps even the world at large would recognize.
I can’t imagine what will be produced by this dynamic of strait-laced prosecutors versus a preposterous Mr. Trump, his malfeasance always on the edge of farce. But my gut tells me the anti-Trump world could be in for another confounding disappointment. (Source: nytimes.com)
2. David Von Drehle:
I have serious doubts that Smith can convince a unanimous jury that aggravated Trumpiness is a felony. Unlike the grand jury, Trump’s jury at trial will hear from lawyers for the defense — not just the prosecution. Jurors will probably hear that Trump only did what his lawyers told him to do; that he never acted on the craziest or most dangerous ideas of his advisers; that he urged his supporters to be peaceful and law-abiding. None of this will be any truer than any other Trump story, but it needs to sway only one juror to give Trump a hung jury — which he will call an exoneration…
I don’t think most Trump supporters actually want to live in a world where an elderly sociopath has unfettered power. But they do want to live in a world where those currently in power are cowed and cautious rather than smug. Trump delivers on that. He frightens the insiders, unnerves them, knocks them off-guard. As long as he performs that function, his supporters will stick with him.
I fear that Smith’s latest charges might do less to bring Trump to justice than to make his critics feel better about ourselves. We want to think that the United States would never let a power-mad narcissist get hold of the presidency, then lie and connive to hang on to it — and that, if that somehow happened, we would darn sure make him pay for the offense.
But only a few words of that sentence really matter: make him pay. If these charges don’t stick (just as the impeachments didn’t stick and the Steele dossier didn’t stick), then Trump won’t pay any consequences at all, because such consequences as ignominy, embarrassment, loss of respect and the harsh judgment of history mean absolutely nothing to a man without a conscience. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
3. Politico:
One of the best online fundraising days for Democrats this year was the day of Joe Biden’s campaign launch — but even that day’s haul was meager compared to his campaign kickoff four years ago.
That’s among the findings of an analysis of fundraising for the first half of the year through ActBlue, the party’s primary donation processor. Small-dollar giving at the federal level totaled $312 million in the first half of 2023 — a drop-off of more than $30 million compared to this point in the 2020 cycle. The platform also had 32 percent fewer donors in the second quarter this year compared to four years prior, although its total fundraising increased slightly due to several factors, including more recurring donors and greater giving to non-federal groups.
“Because small donors are a proxy for enthusiasm, if people aren’t concerned about the drop-off in contributions, then they just aren’t paying attention or whistling past the graveyard,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, who served as deputy campaign manager on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. “The impact is from top to bottom. You can see it in the ActBlue number, you can see it from the DNC down through every group. There has to be a quick examination among Democrats about what is creating this enthusiasm gap.”
The lack of grassroots engagement is a warning sign for Biden ahead of a tough election cycle, raising questions about whether the 80-year-old incumbent is exciting the Democratic base the way he will need to win a second term. The new data also suggests that the threat of Donald Trump, once a huge driver of Democratic fundraising, is not motivating donors like it used to. (Source: politico.com)
4. More on the Ohio ballot initiative, Issue 1, via Amy Wang of The Washington Post. Election Day is next Tuesday, 8 August. Issue 1 is the only item on the ballot.
What would Issue 1 do?
Issue 1 is a ballot measure that seeks to make it more difficult to amend the state’s constitution through — yes — future ballot initiatives.
Currently, a ballot initiative in Ohio needs a simple majority to pass. If Issue 1 passes, that threshold would be raised to 60 percent of the vote.
The proposal also would impose more stringent requirements on how signatures are gathered for ballot initiative campaigns. Campaigns must gather enough signatures to equal 5 percent of the votes cast for governor from 44 of the 88 counties in Ohio. Issue 1’s passing would mean campaigns would have to gather that same percentage of signatures from all 88 counties to get a citizen-led initiative on the ballot.
What do the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ votes mean for Issue 1?
Voting “Yes” on Issue 1 means you support making it more difficult to amend Ohio’s constitution through ballot initiatives, principally by raising the threshold for a ballot measure to pass from a simple majority to 60 percent of the vote.
Voting “No” on Issue 1 means you support the status quo, in which a ballot initiative can pass with a simple majority of the vote.
If Issue 1 passes, it would take effect immediately, meaning future ballot initiatives in Ohio — including the one on abortion this fall — would require 60 percent of the vote to pass, rather than just a simple majority.
How is Issue 1 related to abortion?
In recent weeks, a ballot measure that would codify abortion rights into Ohio’s state constitution was certified to appear on the November general election ballot. If Issue 1 passes on Tuesday, that would make it more difficult for the abortion rights ballot measure to pass in November.
Ohio is among several states where lawmakers have sought to make it more difficult to pass citizen-led initiatives after liberal policies — from protecting abortion rights to expanding Medicaid to raising the minimum wage — won at the ballot box. Efforts to raise the bar to amend state constitutions have cropped up during legislative sessions in recent years.
If such efforts prevail, they could throw a wrench into one of abortion rights groups’ key strategies for restoring access to the procedure in states where it is banned. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, advocates have been exploring ballot measures to enshrine the procedure’s legality into state constitutions in at least a dozen states.
Ohio Republican lawmakers, who overwhelmingly support Issue 1, have insisted it is not related to abortion. But in June, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R), who is running for U.S. Senate, told GOP supporters that Issue 1 “is 100 percent about keeping a radical, pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.” Proponents of Issue 1 have also used antiabortion messaging and imagery to campaign for the ballot measure. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
5. Here’s a piece I wrote about last year’s referendum in Kansas; an up or down vote on a constitutional amendment that would have stripped out protections for abortion rights. The amendment was defeated by a huge margin (59%-41%) by one of the most conservative (statewide) electorates in America.
What we’ll find out next Tuesday is whether Ohio confirms or contradicts the Kansas results. If Ohio confirms the Kansas results that is good news for the Democrats and bad news for the Republicans. If Ohio contradicts Kansas, Republicans will be relieved and Democrats will be thinking a lot harder about what is going on in Item #3 (above). An “enthusiasm gap” is the Democratic Party’s worst nightmare. (Source: newsitems.substack.com, npr.org)
6. Sabato’s Crystal Ball on how the nation is really divided:
Just about 150 of the nation’s more than 3,100 counties cast half of the nation’s presidential vote in 2020.
As we typically see at the state level, the more vote-rich counties are more Democratic, while the thousands of smaller counties that make up the bottom half are more Republican.
This political gulf has widened. Despite similar overall national presidential margins in 2012 and 2020, the difference between the top and bottom halves expanded about 10 points from 2012 to 2020.
Joe Biden won 126 of the 151 top half counties, while Donald Trump won 2,548 of the remaining 2,960 counties in the bottom half.
Trump’s wins among the top half counties were concentrated among the smaller pieces of that group — Biden won all but one of the nearly 50 counties that cast 500,000 votes or more. (Source: centerforpolitics.org)