Wednesday Reads

Good Day!!

Boston Sunrise this morning, 12-27-2023

I’m going to try to be upbeat today, although I will still have to include Trump-related stories. I can’t handle the war news today, though.

I’ll begin with a post by Simon Rosenberg, who is a very optimistic political commentator. He was one of the few poll-watchers who predicted the Democratic sweep in the 2022 midterms.

According to Wikipedia, Rosenberg is “founder of New Democrat Network and the New Policy Institute, a liberal think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.” He publishes at his website, Hopium Chronicles. You may have seen him on MSNBC last night.

Rosenberg’s latest post is at MSNBC.com: Biden’s 2024 chances are much stronger than people realize.

As we head into 2024, the conventional wisdom is that Democrats are on the back foot for next year’s elections. But there are three reasons I am optimistic that 2024 is going to be a good year for Democrats:

First, PresidentJoe Biden has kept his central promise in the 2020 election: that he would lead the nation to the other side of Covid, successfully. The pandemic has receded. Our economic recovery has been better than any other G7 nation. GDP grew at an annual rate of 4.9% last quarter, and more than 3% for the Biden presidency. We have the best job market since the 1960s and the lowest uninsured rate in U.S. history. The Dow Jones broke 37,000 this month for the first time. Wage growth, new business formation and prime-age labor participation rates are all at historically elevated levels. Prices fell — yes, fell — last month. Rents are softening, and gas prices and crime rates are falling. Domestic oil and renewable production are at record levels. The annual deficit, which exploded under Trump, is trillions less today.

Consumer sentiment has risen sharply in recent weeks, and measures of life, job and income satisfaction are remarkably high. There is no doubt that recent years have been hard — Covid, an insurrection at the Capitol, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, repeated OPEC price hikes, global and domestic inflation — but it is increasingly clear that America is getting to the other side of this challenging period, and are in a far better place than when President Biden took office.

And the Democratic party is historically strong.

Second, the strength of the president’s record is only matched by the strength of his party. I don’t think it is widely understood how strong the Democratic Party is right now. The party has won more votes in seven of the past eight presidential elections, something no party has done in modern American history. Over the last four presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the popular vote, their best showing over four national elections since the 1930s.

In both 2022 and 2023, Democrats prevented the historical down ballot struggle of the party in power and had two remarkably successful elections. In the 2022 midterms, Democrats’ statewide margins were greater than the 2020 presidential margins in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — all recent battleground states. That showing led the party to pick up a Senate seat, four state legislative chambers and two governorships, and helped keep the House of Representatives close, making it far more likely Republicans lose it in 2024.

What was visible of fog-bound Boston from the air yesterday, 12-26-2023

This year, Democrats flipped a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin; defeated a six-week abortion ban in Ohio; kept the Virginia state house, debunking the idea that Republicans could hide behind a 15-week abortion ban; and took state legislative seats, municipalities and school board seats across the country. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, grew his margin of victory from 2019, and Republicans lost mayoral elections in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Jacksonville, Florida, two of the largest GOP-controlled cities in the country. And in over three dozen state legislative special elections around the country, Democrats outperformed 2020– an election we won by 4.5 percentage points — by an average of 5 percentage points.

While in 2022, Republicans could point to gains in New York and California to offset their losses in the battleground states, there were no places in 2023 where they outperformed expectations. A blue wave washed across the U.S. in 2023, and this ongoing strong performance of the Democratic Party in election after election, in all parts of the country, should fill Biden’s supporters with confidence.

Finally, while Democrats keep winning, conventional wisdom continues to overly discount Trump’s historic baggage and MAGA’s repeated electoral failures. Despite these repeated failures, Republicans are on the cusp of nominating Trump again, who this time is an even more degraded and dangerous version of MAGA than he was in 2020.

I hope you’ll read the rest at the MSNBC link. It’s well worth your time.

Next, a couple of stories about House elections:

Sahil Kapur at NBC News: Democratic group makes a $5.9 million bet on flipping George Santos’ House seat.

The Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC is putting down $5.2 million in initial reservations for TV and digital ads to try to win the House special election to replace the expelled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., the group told NBC News.

The group said it will spend $3.7 million on TV and $1.5 million on digital platforms, along with $700,000 on mail ads, in the weeks ahead of the Feb. 13 contest in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. The election pits Democrat Tom Suozzi, a former congressman eying a comeback, against Republican nominee Mazi Melesa Pilip, a Nassau County legislator.

The competitive district, which includes parts of Long Island and Queens, voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 before it elected Santos in 2022. But his subsequently unearthed biographical fabrications and sweeping federal indictment prompted the House to expel him on Dec. 1. It is the type of district that will be heavily contested next November, and it could determine which party wins the chamber, which Republicans now narrowly control.

The contest “represents the first step to Democrats taking back the House in 2024,” House Majority PAC President Mike Smith said in response to written questions. “A resurgence in New York represents House Democrats’ best path to the majority.”

The Make Way for Ducklings statues in Christmas attire.

Jake Swearingen at Business Insider: An avalanche of money is coming to kick Lauren Boebert out of Congress.

Lauren Boebert is facing a brutal and very expensive reelection fight in 2024.

Adam Frisch, the main Democratic challenger to the lightning-rod Republican congresswoman from Colorado’s 3rd District, has been raking in jaw-dropping amounts of campaign cash.

According to the Federal Election Commission, Frisch’s campaign has raised over $7.7 million so far, making him one of the top fundraisers in the 2024 House races. As spotted by the Time reporter Mini Racker, that’s enough to put him behind Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy and the Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in total funds raised.

Frisch came close to unseating Boebert in 2022, falling short by just 546 votes in what was considered a safe Republican district. That electoral performance was before the litany of controversies that have made Boebert a tabloid favorite, including a scandal this summer when she was booted from a Denver theater after vaping and groping her date during a performance of “Beetlejuice.”

Boebert has raised $2.4 million for her campaign this cycle. The money gap becomes even starker when you compare totals for just the third quarter, July 1 to September 30, the latest reporting period available from the FEC: Frisch pulled in $3.4 million, while Boebert managed just $854,000.

There’s a chance Frisch’s fundraising may not even be used against Boebert. She’s facing a substantial primary challenge from the Republican attorney Jeff Hurd, who raised over $412,000 in the third quarter, though his campaign launched only in August.

In Trump-related stories:

Danny Hakim at The New York Times: A Fake Trump Elector in Michigan Told Prosecutors of Regret, Anger.

One of the Republicans in Michigan who acted as a fake elector for Donald J. Trump expressed deep regret about his participation, according to a recording of his interview with the state attorney general’s office that was obtained by The New York Times.

The elector, James Renner, is thus far the only Trump elector who has reached an agreement with the office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, which brought criminal charges in July against all 16 of the state’s fake Trump electors. In October, Ms. Nessel’s office dropped all charges against Mr. Renner after he agreed to cooperate.

Newbury Street (a downtown shopping district) on Christmas

Mr. Renner, 77, was a late substitution to the roster of electors in December 2020 after two others dropped out. He told the attorney general’s office that he later realized, after reviewing testimony from the House investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, that he and other electors had acted improperly.

“I can’t overemphasize how once I read the information in the J6 transcripts how upset I was that the legitimate process had not been followed,” he said in the interview. “I felt that I had been walked into a situation that I shouldn’t have ever been involved in.”

Charges have now been brought against fake electors in three states — Georgia, Michigan and Nevada — and investigations are underway in other states, including Arizona and New Mexico. In Georgia, prosecutors in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, have looked far beyond the electors themselves and charged Mr. Trump, the former president, and many of his key allies over their efforts to keep him in power despite his loss in 2020. Mr. Trump also faces charges over election interference from Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

In Michigan, Ms. Nessel, a Democrat, has only charged the electors, but has said her investigation is still open. During their interview of Mr. Renner, her investigators asked about a number of other people involved, including Shawn Flynn, a lawyer who worked with the Trump campaign on the ground in Michigan, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer. (Mr. Giuliani is among those charged in Georgia; both he and Mr. Trump have pleaded not guilty.)

Jose Pagliery at The Daily Beast: Trump Is Testing the Bounds of Presidential Immunity—and Losing.

For years, Donald Trump has hid behind the presidential seal—a claim of immunity that he continues to make to this day to avoid legal jeopardy. But as Trump’s cases proceed, he’s increasingly finding that the protections he was afforded as president don’t exist for a former president.

In criminal and civil cases across the country this month, judges have issued critical opinions chipping away at Trump’s attempt to shield himself. Their rulings are leaving him exposed to potential prison time and massive financial penalties, potentially ruining his 2024 re-election campaign and destroying the billionaire’s famed wealth.

And the most definitive answer could be just weeks away.

Boston official Christmas tree, 2023

The legal maelstrom underway in the District of Columbia, Georgia, Florida, New York and elsewhere will be settled at the Supreme Court, which earlier this month agreed to review the immunity issue raised in Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against the former president for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The question is seemingly simple: Can an American president commit crimes while in office without ever facing criminal charges?

“It’s kind of ridiculous,” said Paul Saputo, a Texas defense lawyer. “We’re not even going to have a 5-4 decision. I don’t think it’s going to be a close call. They realize that in order for them to really keep the country together, it’s got to be pretty unanimous.”

The growing consensus by legal scholars is that the Supreme Court will lean conservative—in the traditional American sense, not a political one—starkly setting limits on executive power that will leave Trump in the cold. And that’s despite the liberal public’s concerns that Trump will benefit from the current roster at the nation’s highest court, where a third of the nine justices were appointed by the man himself.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A Guest essay at The New York Times, by Norman Eisen, Celinda Lake and Anat Shenker-Osorio: A Trump Conviction Could Cost Him Enough Voters to Tip the Election.

Recent general-election polling has generally shown Donald Trump maintaining a slight lead over President Biden. Yet many of those polls also reveal an Achilles’ heel for Mr. Trump that has the potential to change the shape of the race.

It relates to Mr. Trump’s legal troubles: If he is criminally convicted by a jury of his peers, voters say they are likely to punish him for it.

A trial on criminal charges is not guaranteed, and if there is a trial, neither is a conviction. But if Mr. Trump is tried and convicted, a mountain of public opinion data suggests voters would turn away from the former president.

Still likely to be completed before Election Day remains the special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution of Mr. Trump for allegedly scheming to overturn the 2020 election. That trial had been set to start on March 4, 2024, but that date has been put on hold, pending appellate review of the trial court’s rejection of Mr. Trump‘s presidential immunity. On Friday the Supreme Court declined Mr. Smith’s request for immediate review of the question, but the appeal is still headed to the high court on a rocket docket. That is because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear oral argument on Jan. 9 and will probably issue a decision within days of that, setting up a prompt return to the Supreme Court. Moreover, with three other criminal cases also set for trial in 2024, it is entirely possible that Mr. Trump will have at least one criminal conviction before November 2024.

“Jingle Bells Composed Here”

The authors look at the polls:

The negative impact of conviction has emerged in polling as a consistent through line over the past six months nationally and in key states. We are not aware of a poll that offers evidence to the contrary. The swing in this data away from Mr. Trump varies — but in a close election, as 2024 promises to be, any movement can be decisive.

To be clear, we should always be cautious of polls this early in the race posing hypothetical questions, about conviction or anything else. Voters can know only what they think they will think about something that has yet to happen.

Yet we have seen the effect in several national surveys, like a recent Wall Street Journal poll. In a hypothetical matchup between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump leads by four percentage points. But if Mr. Trump is convicted, there is a five-point swing, putting Mr. Biden ahead, 47 percent to 46 percent.

In another new poll by Yahoo News and YouGov, the swing is seven points. In a December New York Times/Siena College poll, almost a third of Republican primary voters believe that Mr. Trump shouldn’t be the party’s nominee if he is convicted even after winning the primary.

The damage to Mr. Trump is even more pronounced when we look at an important subgroup: swing-state voters. In recent CNN polls from Michigan and Georgia, Mr. Trump holds solid leads. The polls don’t report head-to-head numbers if Mr. Trump is convicted, but if he is, 46 percent of voters in Michigan and 47 percent in Georgia agree that he should be disqualified from the presidency.

Those are often places where a greater number of conflicted — and therefore persuadable — voters reside. An October Times/Siena poll shows that voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania favored Mr. Trump, with Mr. Biden narrowly winning Wisconsin. But if Mr. Trump is convicted and sentenced, Mr. Biden would win each of these states, according to the poll. In fact, the poll found the race in these six states would seismically shift in the aggregate: a 14-point swing, with Mr. Biden winning by 10 rather than losing by four percentage points.

There’s more interesting number crunching at the NYT link.

I’ll end with one more positive story about a man in a desperate situation, rescued by good Samaritans. Fox News: Indiana man found by good Samaritans rescued from car wreck after 6 days trapped in vehicle: ‘A miracle.’

An Indiana man who crashed his truck and had been trapped inside it for nearly a week was found alive on Tuesday by two fishermen who happened to spot the wrecked vehicle.

The fishermen – Nivardo Delatorre and his father-in-law Mario Garcia – noticed the crashed truck under an overpass on Interstate 94 as they were walking along Salt Creek in Portage, Indiana, looking for fishing holes. They initially believed they had seen a dead person inside the vehicle until one of them touched the body and the man turned his head and spoke to them.

Christmas in Boston

“I went to touch it, and he turned around,” Garcia said at a press conference. “And it almost killed me there because it was kind of shocking.”

“He was alive, and he was very happy to see us — I’ve never seen a relief like that,” he added. “He says that he tried yelling and screaming, but nobody would hear him. It just was quiet, just the sound of the water.”

The two good Samaritans called 911 and first responders rushed to the scene at about 3:45 p.m. Tuesday. The driver told the fisherman he had been stranded and paralyzed in place since Dec. 20.

The driver, identified as 27-year-old Matthew Reum, was heading westbound on Interstate 94 when his truck left the roadway for unknown reasons, Indiana State Police said in a news release.

The vehicle was driven into a ditch before making it into a creek and stopping under the bridge. Reum was pinned inside the vehicle and was unable to reach his cellphone to call for help.

The Portage Fire Department and Burns Harbor Fire Department were able to cut Reum from the vehicle using heavy machinery. He was then flown to a hospital in critical condition for treatment of severe, life-threatening injuries.

I hope he recovers.

That’s all I have for you today. What stories are you following?