The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Nate Silver on "Why Biden Failed"

I don't necessarily agree with everything Nate Silver wrote in his analysis from last week, but he makes a some excellent points:

Biden hadn’t delivered the complete repudiation of Trump that polls — showing a massive 8.4-point popular vote lead — had been projecting. That’s why the election took four long days to call. Biden’s popular vote (4.5 points) and Electoral College (306-222) margins had been perfectly solid, and the migration of Georgia and Arizona into the blue column had enhanced its visual appeal on the map. But in the end, the tipping-point state — Wisconsin — voted for Biden by only 0.6 percentage points. Trump made gains in many areas, including South Texas, South Florida, and major cities, that would foreshadow his return to the White House four years later. If Trump’s handling of the pandemic hadn’t been so clumsy — he did get some of the big things right, including Operation Warp Speed and a stimulus package that quickly got the economy back on its feet — he might have been reelected.

Biden, despite a lot of effort — including making it the centerpiece of his aborted 2024 campaign — was never able to persuade Americans that January 6 had been on the same magnitude as a threat to the republic as September 11, for instance. Why not? Well, it’s hard to persuade people based on near-misses: thwarted attacks or narrowly averted disasters. Even actual disasters don’t always spur action when the inertia is high enough: America remains woefully unprepared for the next pandemic.

But I also think you can place some of the blame on the Democrats’ polycrisis framing (often echoed by a liberal establishment that over-selects for negative emotionality, less politely known as “neuroticism.”) If everything is an existential crisis, then nothing is. You’ll begin to suspect people of crying wolf. Or you’ll say, YOLO, if we’re all fucked anyway, let’s blow it all up, have some fun, and vote for Trump.

By July 2022, perceptions that the country was going in the wrong direction were among their highest-ever levels, worse than at any point, even in the annus horribilis of 2020.

In the end, Biden made what was essentially a triple devil’s bargain in exchange for winning the 2020 nomination and the presidency. First, he sold people on a quick return to normalcy from the pandemic when it would instead take until summer 2022 thanks to reinfections, new variants, and sharp divisions over mitigation measures. The extent to which this is his fault isn’t so clear. I have plenty of critiques of the White House’s handling of COVID — and plenty of critiques of Trump’s — but COVID is a uniquely wicked problem. Biden gambled on COVID going away when vaccines became widely available, and it didn’t work out. But he made matters worse by promising not just to solve COVID but also to save democracy and even deliver racial justice.

I suspect this won't be the last critique of Biden's presidency to come out this year. It will take decades, however, to knit all the threads into a coherent tapestry.

Quick links before my 3pm meeting

Just four, plus a bonus:

Finally, in a column from just before the world ended, author Adam-Troy Castro explains, "Why do liberals think all Trump supporters are stupid?":

The serious answer: Here’s what we really think about Trump supporters — the rich, the poor, the malignant and the innocently well-meaning, the ones who think and the ones who don’t ...

That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought “Fine.”

That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, “Okay.”

...

What you don’t get, Trump supporters in 2019, is that succumbing to frustration and thinking of you as stupid may be wrong and unhelpful, but it’s also...hear me...charitable.

Because if you’re NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.

Exactly.

Off to a spectacular start

Oh, FFS. I tried to avoid the inauguration entirely, but since we're dealing with the OAFPOTUS again, I couldn't. Especially because of 3rd grader Elon Musk.

The OAFPOTUS's second inaugural address was the longest in modern history. If you really want to read the text, the New York Times has annotated it, but I wouldn't recommend it. James Fallows read it so you don't have to:

Donald Trump, as 5th-grader. Sometimes Trump’s formal speeches are “written,” in the sense of trying to have “eloquent” or “fine writing” passages. But these “fancy” parts of a speech—related to the parts we remember as the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, or Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall—are clearly tough sledding for Trump. You can tell that he plods his way through these obligatory passages, in the fashion of a fifth-grader called upon to read to the classroom from an assigned text. Halting, not sure of the words, pausing from time to time at a passage he’d never seen before, as if to say, “Hey, that’s interesting!”

The absolutely stupidest part of this speech was this. Any other public official would be embarrassed even to say something of this sort:

We are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

If your second grader gave you this thought, you’d be having a little talk about how history and geography worked.

But second prize for stupidness goes to this, about Panama.

The speech did not get better. Shortly afterward, Elon Musk did this:

Well, that was certainly a departure from the usual nihilism of the incoming administration. Walter wasn't completely wrong, either. But yeah, Musk heiled the crowd:

Back in the first Trump presidency Trump’s critics spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get Trumpers to admit they’d done this or that, to apologize, whatever. This was always a mistake. I don’t need anyone to validate what I saw. I saw it. I don’t care what the explanation is. These are just twisted anti-American degenerates. We know this. Just what level of exuberant disinhibition led Musk to this moment or why this unmistakable gesture came so naturally to him … well, that’s really not my problem. Everyone knows what they saw here.

Then, shortly after that, the OAFPOTUS pardoned or commuted the sentences of 1,500 insurrectionists who invaded the US Capitol and killed cops:

At the time Trump issued the pardons, there were about 700 defendants who either never received prison sentences or had already completed their sentences, meaning pardons or commutations would have little practical impact on them, beyond restoring voting rights and gun rights for those who were convicted of felonies.

More than 600 people were sentenced to incarceration, but only a small fraction of them are still behind bars. Many of those who are in the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons were convicted of violent attacks on police officers protecting the Capitol during an assault in which Jan. 6 defendants were armed with firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a massive “Trump” billboard, “Trump” flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches and even an explosive device.

More than 140 police officers were injured and several Trump supporters died during the attack, including one who was shot trying to breach the House Speaker's Lobby and another who died in the middle of a brutal battle at the lower west tunnel, where some of the worst violence of the day took place.

Like I said, I don't really care about the OAFPOTUS's lies and bullshitting. I do care what he does, and what his toadies do when they have actual power. The first few hours of this presidency did not instill confidence.

Corruption, corruption, corruption

For once, Chicago's legendary corruption isn't the biggest news story of the day.

Let's start with New York, where the Adams administration seems determined to set new standards for public corruption, going so far as to float the "we're only a little bit criminal" defense:

The indictment alleged that, for years, starting during his tenure as Brooklyn borough president, Adams had cultivated a relationship with a representative of the Turkish government who arranged for him to receive some $123,000 worth of illegal gifts, such as discounted business-class tickets on Turkish Airlines and a stay in the Bentley Suite at the St. Regis in Istanbul. When Adams ran for mayor, his Turkish supporters allegedly channeled illegal donations to his campaign through straw donors with the connivance of Adams himself. In return, prosecutors say, Adams performed a number of favors as a public official, most notably pressuring FDNY inspectors to certify that the new Turkish Consulate near the U.N. was safe without conducting the necessary inspections.

The mayor’s defenders described all this as a whole lot of nothing. His defense attorney, Alex Spiro, ridiculed the indictment, calling it the “airline-upgrade corruption case,” and filed an immediate motion to dismiss the bribery charge, citing a recent Supreme Court decision that enlarged the bounds of acceptable gift taking. (He had less to say about the foreign donations.)

At the other end of the Acela, retired US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner and Georgetown law professor Stephen Vladeck warn the US Supreme Court that they are losing credibility, and thus, farther down the road, the power to do their jobs:

We have both been critical of the current justices for how their behavior, both on and off the bench, has undermined public faith in the court. Too many of its most important rulings can be chalked up to nothing more than the fact that Republican presidents appointed six of the justices, and Democrats appointed only three. And then there are the alarming ethical lapses of two of the six justices in the majority — lapses that have close connections to their relationships with right-wing megadonors.

A court that loses its institutional credibility is a court that will be powerless when it matters most.

A court without legitimacy is a court unable to curb abuses of political power that its rulings may well have enabled. It is a court that will be powerless when the next Chip Roy calls for disobedience because it will have long since alienated those who would otherwise have defended it. It would become a court powerless to push back against the tyrannies of the majority that led the founders to create an independent judiciary in the first place.

Will Republican Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch heed the warnings? Probably not. At least Special Counsel Jack Smith seems to have figured out how to get around some of their illegitimacy:

Smith’s filing tries to slice through the Court’s security shield regarding the insurrection. Skillfully quoting from or alluding to language in the Court majority’s own opinion, the filing demolishes the notion that Trump’s activities, culminating on January 6, deserve immunity. Outwardly, Smith’s filing respects the Court’s dubious ruling about the immunity of official presidential acts. Legally, Smith had no choice but to operate within that ruling, a fact that sharply limited how far his filing could go. But even though it never challenges the conservative majority directly, the filing makes a case, incontrovertible in its logic and factual detail, that the core of Trump’s subversion involved no official actions whatsoever. It persuasively argues, with fact after fact, that Trump was the head of an entirely private criminal plot as a candidate to overthrow the election, hatched months before the election itself.

The crucial point to which the filing unfailingly returns is that none of Trump’s actions listed in the revised indictment, even those that the Court cited as “official,” deserves immunity. As Smith makes clear, the Framers of the Constitution deliberately precluded the executive branch from having official involvement in the conduct of presidential elections. The reason was obvious: Any involvement by a president would be an open invitation to corruption. To make the case that any such involvement falls within a president’s official duties would seem, at best, extremely difficult.

It is here that Smith turns the Court’s Trump v. United States ruling to his own advantage.

Only 28 more days until what I think we can comfortably predict will be the XPOTUS's last election—one way or another. But I think we'll be stuck with corruption for a very long time, until people get fed up with it enough to demand and enforce real anti-corruption laws.

Thanks for wasting my time, ADT

I spent 56 minutes trying to get ADT to change a single setting at my house, and it turned out, they changed the wrong setting. I will try again Friday, when I have time.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world:

Finally, Slow Horses season 4 came out today, so at some point this evening I'll visit Slough House and get a dose of Jackson Lamb's sarcasm.

Last work day of the summer

A few weeks ago I planned a PTO day to take a 25 km walk tomorrow along the North Branch Trail with pizza at the end. (I'll do my annual marathon walk in October.) Sadly, the weather forecast bodes against it, with scattered thunderstorms and dewpoints over 22°C. But, since I've already got tomorrow off, and I have a solid PTO bank right now, I'll still take the day away from the office. And autumn begins Sunday.

Good thing, too, because the articles piled up this morning, and I haven't had time to finish yesterday's:

Finally, Washington Post reporter Christine Mi spent 80 hours crossing the US on Amtrak this summer. I am envious. Also sad, because the equivalent trip in Europe would have taken less than half the time on newer rolling stock, and not burned a quarter of the Diesel.

Not even attempting to conceal the corruption

US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon (R-SDFL) has dismissed the classified-documents case against the convicted felon rapist XPOTUS on the clearly erroneous grounds that Special Counsel Jack Smith's appointment violated the constitution:

[T]he judge...found that because Mr. Smith had not been named to the post of special counsel by the president or confirmed by the Senate, his appointment was in violation of the appointments clause of the Constitution.

The ruling by Judge Cannon, who was put on the bench by Mr. Trump, flew in the face of previous court decisions reaching back to the Watergate era that upheld the legality of the ways in which independent prosecutors have been named. And in a single swoop, it removed a major legal threat against Mr. Trump on the first day of the Republican National Convention, where he is set to formally become the party’s nominee for president.

I can scarcely imagine the 11th Circuit not rapping Cannon on the knuckles for this one, and possibly removing her from the case. But that wasn't the point; with only 112 days left until the election, this pushes the trial date well past it. Cannon doesn't care if the 11th removes her. She did her job, and she'll get promoted to the Court of Appeals or even SCOTUS should her patron return to power in January.

I wouldn't mind the Republican Party so much if they cared about anything other than power. We need a right-of-center party in this country. Instead we've got this band of thieves hiding behind white-male grievance. And like any organized criminal organization, they protect their own. It's exhausting.

Right-wing power grab

Well, the Republicans sure did pack the court well, didn't they? The Supreme Court's term finally ended today with another apparent success for the convicted-felon XPOTUS. All three Justices he appointed plus Thomas (R) and Alito (R) agreed with the Chief Justice (R) that, despite the actual words of the Constitution and everything that the Federalist Papers warned us about, some actions by a president during his or her time in office cannot be prosecuted:

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision along [partisan] lines, ruled that a former president has absolute immunity for his core constitutional powers — and is entitled to a presumption of immunity for his official acts, but lacks immunity for unofficial acts. But at the same time, the court sent the case back to the trial judge to determine which, if any of Trump’s actions, were part of his official duties and thus were protected from prosecution.

That part of the court’s decision likely ensures that the case against Trump won’t be tried before the election, and then only if he is not reelected. If he is reelected, Trump could order the Justice Department to drop the charges against him, or he might try to pardon himself in the two pending federal cases.

Monday’s decision to send the case back to trial Judge Tanya Chutkan all but guarantees that there will be no Trump trial on the election interference charges for months. Even before the immunity case, Judge Chutkan indicated that trial preparations would likely take three months. Now, she will also have to decide which of the charges in the Trump indictment should remain and which involve official acts that under the Supreme Court ruling are protected from prosecution.

All of this stands in stark contrast to the way the court has handled other presidential power cases. In 1974 the justices ruled against President Nixon just 16 days after hearing oral arguments. The vote was 8-0, with Justice William Rehnquist recusing himself because of his close ties to some of the officials accused of wrongdoing in the case. And this year the court took less than a month to rule unanimously that states could not bar Trump from the ballot.

That's right, in 50 years the Republican Party has managed to crater the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, which in turn has saddled us with a seemingly never-ending stream of bad decisions that will take two generations to fix.

And they will get fixed, eventually. We fixed Dred Scott by amending the Constitution—after a bloody civil war that killed 600,000 Americans, and we remedied Plessy by passing the Civil Rights Act—80 years later.

So it's not that I have lost hope in the United States, it's just that I'm old enough that I don't believe I'm going to see the right-wing grinding down of the country reversed before I'm too old to enjoy it.

Finally get to breathe

But only for a moment. I've spent most of today trying to fix things, or at least trying to figure out what problems need fixing. One of the problems has generated a comment thread on a vendor website, now at 44 comments, and I think after all that work I found the problem in an interaction between my code and Microsoft Azure Functions. If I'm right, the confirmation will come around 3pm.

Naturally, I haven't had time to read any of these:

I wrote the intro to this post around 2:45 and had to pause for a while. It's now 3:25, and I appear to have solved the problem. I will now document the solution and apologize to the vendor. Fun times, fun times.

Windy spring day

A cold front passed this morning right after I got to the office, sparing me the 60 km/h winds and pouring rain that made the 9am arrivals miserable. The rain has passed, but the temperature has slowly descended to 17°C after hanging out around 19°C all night. I might have to close my windows tonight.

I also completed a mini-project for work a few minutes ago, so I now have time to read a couple of stories:

And now, back to the next phase of the mini-project...