the 2024 election

 In 2016, every major newspaper in the country said that Donald Trump was not fit for office. With a lot of help from Russia, WikiLeaks, and James Comey, Trump garnered 306 electoral votes to Hillary’s 232 electoral votes, despite the fact that he lost the popular vote by nearly 3,000,000 votes.

Ironically, the electoral college vote in 2020 was identical – except the 306 electoral votes went to Joe Biden instead of Donald Trump. In 2020, he lost the popular vote by 7,000,000 votes.

In 2020, only SIX major newspapers endorsed Trump for re-election.

In 2024, the New York Times was the first newspaper that proclaimed that Donald Trump is not fit for office,  and other papers inevitably will come to the same conclusion.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/11/opinion/editorials/donald-trump-2024-unfit.html

I am not as smart at Nate Silver, but I predict that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance will lose in November.

In no particular order, here are the reasons for my prediction:

1)    158 presidential historians have rated Trump as the worst president in our nation’s history.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/historians-voted-trump-worst-president-ever/

2)   J.D. Vance is the worst vice presential pick since Sarah Palin in 2008. Among other things, he wants a national abortion ban (with no exception for rape or incest), he has less than two years history as an elected official, he feels that people with children should have more votes than people that don’t have children, he does not like childless cat women (which will not be received well by Taylor Swift fans), and he claims to have had sex with a couch.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/07/27/metro/trumps-running-mate-thinks-even-less-women-than-he-does/?p1=HP_Feed_Recommended

 

3)   Project 25 and Agenda 47. I have written about both of them in recent weeks, but both of them would have the effect of literally ending our democracy. Although you can order that 900+ page book about Project 2025 on Amazon, you can save yourself a lot of time by watching Joy Reid’s analysis on MSNBC the week of July 29.

4)   According to a poll by conducted by the New York Times and Siena College in April, and early May, immigration was tied with abortion rights as the second-most important issue to voters, behind the economy and inflation. According to the Pew Research Center, 63% of American voters feel that abortion should be legal in most of all cases.

 

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/

5)   Congressional leaders spent 4 months earlier this year spent 4 months developing a bi-partisan agreement on immigration, but Trump demanded that his parry should vote against it  because it would help Joe Biden. Due to recent execute actions by Biden, the number of migrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has plummeted 40 percent since President Joe Biden clamped down on asylum earlier this month, administration officials said Wednesday.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/26/border-crossings-drop-biden-policy-00165055

Daily crossings have fallen below 2,400. That’s the lowest level since Jan. 17, 2021, right before the president took office. But encounters still remain too high for the president’s newly implemented restrictions to be lifted: Migrants will continue to be barred from seeking asylum in between ports of entry until average border crossings have fallen below 1,500 for seven consecutive days.

6)   Our economy continues to be the strongest in the world.

 

https://www.factcheck.org/2024/01/bidens-numbers-january-2024-update/

 

7)   Kamala Harris’s newly minted campaign for president announced Sunday morning that it had raised $200 million in less than a week, with two-thirds of that coming from new donors, as the vice president seeks to capitalize on what Democrats see as momentum following the sudden exit from the contest of President Biden. Harris campaign aides said they have recruited 170,000 new volunteers since last Sunday and are holding 2,300 events to mobilize grassroots supporters this week

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/28/2024-election-campaign-updates-harris-trump/ 

8)   Young voter registration spiked to record numbers in the 48 hours since Harris become the nominee. The nonpartisan Vote.org website saw its highest level of new voter registrations of the 2024 election cycle in the first two days after Biden dropped out and endorsed vice president Kamala Harris, with 38,500 people signing up – a 700 percent spike, reported Politico Playbook. Vote.org, the largest get-out-the-vote technology platform in the nation, hopes to register 8 million voters before November's election and reports that 500,000 have already registered this cycle, including a record number of 18-year-old new voters.

Nearly 80 percent of Democratic voters favor the 59-year-old Harris taking over the party's nomination from the 81-year-old Biden, according to a new poll conducted by YouGov for CBS News, and found only 21 percent favored nominating someone else.

9)   Joe Biden is the only president in history to walk on a picket line. He was in Detroit at the same as Donald Trump – but Trump went to a non-union plant. Labor groups have largely united behind Kamala Harris, even though a few are still considering their options.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/kamala-harris-labor-unions-support-presidential-election-2024-rcna163194

 

10) The next presidential debate is still scheduled for September 10, and will be broadcast on ABC.. After Vice President Kamala Harris accused former President Donald Trump of “backpedaling” on a debate, the Trump campaign said Thursday it would not commit to any future debates until the Democratic Party formally chooses a nominee.

President Joe Biden’s decision to step down from the Democratic ticket on Sunday threw previous debate plans into doubt. While the Biden and Trump campaigns had agreed to a debate hosted by ABC on September 10, it is unclear if it will go on as planned.

“I have agreed to the previously agreed upon September 10th debate, he agreed to that previously,” Harris told reporters after landing at Joint Base Andrews Thursday. “Now it appears he’s backpedaling. But I’m ready. And I think that the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage and so, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

If all goes according to plan, the debate will pit a former prosecutor against a convicted felon, and will be a lot more fun to watch than the June 27 debate was.

 

9)   11) Some of the most crucial and largest groups among the Black voter base have cemented their support for Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee this week, mobilizing swiftly through virtual calls and social media to get behind what could be America’s first Black woman president.

On Wednesday, Harris addressed the historically Black Zeta Phi Beta sorority, making her case to thousands of Black women who share an almost 40-year connection with her.

"Our nation needs your leadership once again," Harris, who joined the historically Black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority in 1986, said during her speech. "In this moment, we face a choice between two different visions for our nation. One focused on the future, and the other focused on the past. With your support, I am fighting for our nation's future."

12)  In the eight years since Hillary Clinton failed to win the American presidency, the work force for the first time grew to include more college-educated women than college-educated men. The #MeToo movement exposed sexual harassment and toppled powerful men. The Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion.

Will any — or all — of it make a difference for Vice President Kamala Harris?

A presidential contest pitting Ms. Harris against former President Donald J. Trump would represent a rematch of sorts: Mr. Trump would again have to run against a woman who held a top administration position and served in the Senate. He defeated Mrs. Clinton in 2016 in spite of her winning the popular vote by a wide margin.

But the dynamics would be unquestionably different. Ms. Harris has neither the political legacy nor the baggage of Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Trump, having served a turbulent term in office, is now a known quantity. Ms. Harris is Black and of South Asian descent. And the country is not the same as it was eight long years ago.

“Women are angrier, and that could be motivating,” said Karen Crowley, 64, an independent voter and retired nurse in Concord, N.H., who would not vote for Mr. Trump, did not feel like she could support Mr. Biden and now planned to back Ms. Harris.

Among the motivations Ms. Crowley cited were the demise of Roe v. Wade and comments and actions by Mr. Trump that many women see as sexist and misogynistic. “A woman president might be more possible now,” she said.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/22/us/kamala-harris-women-voters.html

In July, Nate Silver said that Trump would beat Biden by 4 points.  Now that Biden has dropped out, Kamala Harris is virtually tied with Trump, but the Democratic convention in August will more than likely give her the edge. As a  result, my prediction is that Trump will lose  the popular vote for the third time, but will NOT get enough votes in the electoral college to win the election – and that is good news for all of us.

 

Agenda 47

 

 

Few of the attendees at the Republican convention in Milwaukee have any idea what Project 2025 is, but the link below provides more information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

The entire document is roughly 900 pages, but the paragraphs below provide at least a basic summary:

The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, also known as Project 2025, is an initiative organized by the Heritage Foundation with the aim of promoting a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should Donald Trump win the 2024 presidential election. The Project asserts that the entire executive branch is under the direct control of the president under Article II of the U.S. Constitution and unitary executive theory 

It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to replace them with loyalists more willing to enable Trump's policies. In doing so, proponents argue that the change would dismantle what they view as a vast, unaccountable, and mostly liberal government bureaucracy The Project seeks to infuse the government and society with Christian values Critics have characterized Project 2025 as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to steer the U.S. toward autocracy. Many legal experts have said it would undermine the rule of law, the separation of powers, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties.

Although Trump claims to know nothing about it, his name is mentioned over 100 times, and it was written by at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration and  had a hand in Project 2025, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors.

Although it was written by the Heritage Foundation, it meshes well with Agenda 47, which was produced by Trump’s campaign – and even fewer people have ever heard of it.

Many of its ideas are contained below:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/07/16/what-is-agenda47-heres-what-to-know-about-trumps-policy-agenda-if-elected/?utm_medium=browser_notifications&utm_source=pushly&utm_campaign=5066788

 

Former President Donald Trump clinched the GOP nomination on Monday—and a years-old platform dating back to the Republican primaries lays out a range of priorities if he’s elected, including stricter rules for schools, more hardline immigration policies, scrapping climate regulations and creating entirely new “freedom cities.”

 

Trump’s “Agenda47” consists of a series of proposals his campaign issued on its website during the primary election season, from December 2022 to December 2023, many of which may require congressional action but some of which could be enacted through executive orders—separate from the Project 2025 proposals developed by third-party organizations.

 

Education: Trump’s proposals for K-12 schools include having parents elect school principals, cutting federal funding to any school teaching “critical race theory,” ending teacher tenure, creating a new credentialing body to only certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values,” encouraging prayer in schools, making it easier to kick “out-of-control troublemakers” out of school, supporting school districts that allow teachers to carry concealed firearms and pushing “school choice” policies.

 

Universities: Trump has proposed getting rid of existing accreditors for colleges and universities and creating new ones who impose his party’s values on institutions, along with levying significant fines on colleges and universities that he believes “discriminate” against students—with a plan to use those fines to create a free online “American Academy” that “cover[s] the full spectrum of human knowledge and skills.”

 

Climate Change: The U.S. would again leave the Paris Climate Accord, and the ex-president has proposed getting rid of President Joe Biden’s policies restricting emissions and targeting 67% of new vehicles to be electric by 2032 and massively scaling up oil and gas production.

 

Justice Department: Trump has pledged to appoint 100 U.S. attorneys who would be aligned with his policies and investigate some left-leaning local district attorneys, also pledging to establish a DOJ task force on “protecting the right to self-defense” and fight purported anti-conservative bias at law schools and law firms.

 

Crime: Trump has vowed to invest in hiring and retaining police officers (and increase their protections from legal liability), push policies like “stop and frisk,” direct the DOJ “to dismantle every gang, street crew, and drug network in America,” deploy federal troops including the National Guard “to restore law and order” when local officers “refuse to act” and impose the death penalty for drug dealers, drug cartels and human traffickers.

 

Immigration: Trump plans to prohibit undocumented immigrants from receiving any benefits, end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, reinstitute a “travel ban” from certain countries, pause refugee admissions, mandate “extreme vetting of foreign nationals,” block federal grants to sanctuary cities, end the “catch-and-release” practice of releasing migrants while they await immigration hearings, close the southern border to asylum seekers and suspend visa programs including the visa lottery and family visas.

 

Economy: Trump proposes cutting taxes and slashing federal regulations, also proposing baseline tariffs on foreign goods in hopes of spurring American manufacturing, which will go up for countries who have “unfair trade practices.”

Healthcare: Trump has proposed requiring federal agencies to buy medicines and medical devices manufactured in the U.S. and barring federal agencies from other countries from purchasing “essential” drugs; he also has plans for an executive order saying the government will only pay pharmaceutical companies the “best price they offer to foreign nations.”

Foreign Policy and Defense: Trump wants European allies to pay back the U.S. for depleting its military stockpiles sending weapons to Ukraine; he has also taken a hardline stance on China, calling for new restrictions on Chinese-owned infrastructure in the U.S., and wants to build a missile defense shield.

Social Security: In a shift from some pre-Trump GOP politicians’ views, Trump has said there should be no cuts to Social Security or Medicare “under any circumstances.”

Homelessness: Trump plans to work with states to ban “public camping” by homeless people and instead give them the choice of receiving treatment or being arrested, and calls for creating large “tent cities” where homeless people would be relocated, which would have doctors and social workers on site, along with expanding mental institutions.

Transgender Rights: Trump takes a hard stance against transgender rights, calling for any healthcare provider providing gender-affirming care for youth to be terminated from Medicare and Medicaid, stripping federal funding from any school where an official or teacher suggests a child could be “trapped in the wrong body,” and encouraging Congress to pass legislation saying “the only genders recognized by the U.S. government are male and female—and they are

Big Tech: In line with conservatives’ claims that social media platforms are biased against them, Trump said he’ll pass an executive order barring any federal department from working with other entities to “censor” Americans and prohibit federal money being used to combat misinformation, also announcing steps like altering Section 230 to open up social media platforms to more legal liability.

Both Project 2025 and Agenda would have the effect of virtually ending the democracy that we have had for 248 years.

The media has spent far too much time in focusing on Joe Biden’s missteps, and not enough on the fact that Trump is a convicted felon, who is the worst president in our nation’s history.

The November election has become more precarious for a couple of reasons:

1)    The Democrats still cannot fully agree about who their nominee should be

 2)   Last weekend’s assassination attempt actually helped Trump politically, since it gave him the status of a “wounded warrior:

 

 Although what all of us can really do to save our democracy is to vote in November, it's also important to remind people about Project 2025 and Agenda 47, since educated voters are our best defense.

 

 

the Saturday night massacre

 

It has been almost exactly 50 years since Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency. In spite of the fact that the Watergate case was a long time ago, I thought of it this morning while I was on the treadmill at the gym.

The breaking news on CNN this morning was that judge Aileen Cannon had dismissed charges against Trump because she said that prosecutor Jack Smith had been improperly appointed – which is utter nonsense.

Former President Donald Trump’s confidential documents case was tossed out by a federal judge in a stunning move in Florida on Monday — eliminating one of his biggest legal liabilities just 113 days before the Nov. 5 election.

Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case against Trump — a move considered especially significant because the charges were widely viewed as the most likely to score a conviction in any of the four cases against him — on the grounds that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith to the prosecution violated the Constitution.

“I am thrilled that a judge had the courage and wisdom to do this,” Trump told Fox News in an interview moments after the ruling. “This has big, big implications, not just for this case but for other cases.

“The special counsel worked with everybody to try to take me down. This is a big, big deal. It only makes the convention more positive — this will be an amazing week.”

The GOP presidential candidate, 78, faced up to 450 years in prison if convicted on all counts in the case.

Cannon seemed to indicate that the Department of Justice is free to appeal her ruling by saying she was leaving her decision up “for any applicable future review.” It was not immediately clear whether Smith and his team will do so.

The ruling also may affect the second federal case against Trump involving the Jan. 6 riots and his challenging of the results of the 2020 election. Trump’s lawyers could seek to have the DC case tossed while pointing to Cannon’s decision.

“The Florida documents case was considered the strongest legal case against Trump because it did not involve novel theories of law,” said Cornell University Law Professor William Jacobson to The Post. “For the Florida case to be dismissed is a grave blow to the government.”

The ex-president was accused of hoarding troves of confidential documents at his Mar-a-Lago home after he left office and then attempting to cover it up.

Cannon ruled that Congress was required to appoint “constitutional officers” and the legislature was also needed to approve spending for such a prosecution.

“That role cannot be usurped by the executive branch or diffused elsewhere — whether in this case or in another case, whether in times of heightened national need or not,” Cannon wrote.

The judge wrote that “Special Counsel Smith’s investigation has unlawfully drawn funds from the Indefinite Appropriation.”

“The Special Counsel’s office has spent tens of millions of dollars since November 2022, all drawn unconstitutionally from the Indefinite Appropriation,” Cannon wrote.

“For more than 18 months, Special Counsel Smith’s investigation and prosecution has been financed by substantial funds drawn from the Treasury without statutory authorization, and to try to rewrite history at this point seems near impossible. The Court has difficulty seeing how a remedy short of dismissal would cure this substantial separation-of-powers violation, but the answers are not entirely self-evident, and the caselaw is not well developed.”

https://nypost.com/2024/07/15/us-news/trumps-florida-case-stunningly-dismissed-after-judge-finds-appointment-of-special-counsel-jack-smith-violated-the-constitution/?utm_medium=browser_notifications&utm_source=pushly&utm_content=All%20Push%20Subscribers&utm_campaign=5059253

A review of the Watergate case will illustrate why her ruling is dead wrong.

On October 20, 1973, President Richard Nixon ordered his Attorney General, Elliott Richardson, to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox because he (Cox) was getting too close to the truth about the Watergate scandal.

Rather than comply with the order, Richardson resigned. Nixon then ordered Richardson’s second-in-command (William Ruckelshaus) to fire Cox. He, too, resigned rather than carry out the order.

The next highest-ranking member of the Justice Department after Ruckelshaus was Solicitor General Robert Bork. Although Bork also felt that Nixon’s decision was unwise, he felt that SOMEBODY had to comply with Nixon’s order, so he fired Cox.

The morning after “the Saturday Night Massacre”, the headlines in my local newspaper read “Impeach the Cox-sacker”, and bumper stickers with the same line appeared soon after. As we all know, Nixon’s attempt to circumvent justice was not successful, and he was forced to resign on August 8, 1974.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2011/11/impeach-cox-sacker.html

After Cox was fired, he was replaced by Leon Jaworski, who was nominated by Robert Bork.

On November 1, 1973, Bork announced he selected, and Nixon approved, Jaworski to replace Cox. Jaworski subsequently subpoenaed sixty-four taped conversations. Nixon appealed on two grounds: first, that the office of Special Prosecutor did not have the right to sue the office of President; and second, that the requested materials were privileged presidential conversations. Aware that an important constitutional issue was at stake, and unwilling to wait any longer, Jaworski asked the Supreme Court to take the case directly, bypassing the Court of Appeals.

(You will notice, of course, that Jaworski’s appointment did not require any involvement from Congress, which is precisely what judge Cannon is now suggesting.)

Duration: 7 minutes and 45 seconds.7:

On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that the Special Prosecutor did have the right to sue the President; and that the "generalized assertion of [executive] privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial". Nixon was forced to give the unedited tapes to Jaworski, including the so-called Smoking Gun Tape which included a compromising discussion of June 23, 1972. The President's remaining support waned, and he resigned on August 9, 1974.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Jaworski

Even if the document case had been decided before the election, it likely would not have changed the votes of many in the Republican party, since Trump is ALREADY a convicted felon, but he will more than likely still be the Republican nominee. Few of the people at the convention, naturally, have any idea what Project 2025 is – and how it would end our democracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

The irony of that nomination is that people who have been convicted of a felon cannot serve in the military, so it is entirely logical to draw the conclusion that a convicted felon should not be the commander in chief.

At this point, Merrick Garland really has no choice but to appeal judge Cannon’s decision, regardless of hos long it takes. If should be obvious that Trump should NOT be granted immunity in the documents case since moving the documents was NOT an official act.

None of us has a clue about how the election will turn out, but Trump is already fundraising based on the recent assassination attempt. If he DOES manage to win in November, there are a LOT of people 9 (including me) who would consider moving to Canada.

 

 Heather Cox Richardson had numerous comments about this case last night. 

Here are some highlights:

This morning, after a day of Republicans insisting that it is political polarization to suggest that Trump is a danger to our democracy, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in the last days of his presidency, dismissed the classified documents case against the former president. She wrote that “Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.” 

Other federal courts have tested this argument and dismissed it, but Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni was part of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, suggested earlier this month that it could be the basis for getting rid of Jack Smith. Cannon cited Thomas repeatedly in her decision. 

In November 2022, after Trump announced his presidential candidacy—an early announcement that many thought was an attempt to avoid criminal prosecution—Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the two federal investigations that touched on the former president, thus deliberately moving those investigations outside the department so they could not be seen as part of the presidential race.

In June 2023 a federal grand jury indicted Trump on 37 criminal counts under the Espionage Act, i

The case fell randomly to Cannon, who has appeared to be trying to delay the case since it came into her hands. Today, she threw it out altogether.

Former attorney general Eric Holder called Cannon’s dismissal “so bereft of legal reasoning as to be utterly absurd.” Legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern called it “an extreme outlier view with no basis in precedent” and noted that “Cannon’s indefensible opinion will still serve its purpose of delaying this trial indefinitely.” 

Global politics scholar Brian Klaas wrote “Trump appoints judge. Trump does something that virtually all legal experts—including Trump’s own former Attorney General—see as a clear-cut felony. Judge that Trump appointed dismisses case.” Washington Post global affairs columnist Ishaan Tharoor wrote: “if this happened in another country, the DC establishment would immediately point to the erosion of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.” 

Special Counsel Jack Smith has said he will appeal Cannon’s ruling.

Trump responded to the news exactly as yesterday’s Republican demands that Trump’s opponents stop calling out his lawlessness suggested he would. He posted: “As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts—the January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia “Perfect” Phone Call charges. The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to 

END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!”

 https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-15-2024