Category Archives: 2024 presidential election

Fact-Checkers in the Trump Era

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I’m a fanboy of journalist fact-checkers. With all of the myths floating around politics and social media, that service has never been more necessary.

But in many ways, Trump has fact-checking journalists unable to make sense of his dizzying manipulations. Tom Tomorrow’s “This Modern World” explains in this insightful ‘toon.

At least two things are in play with fact-finding in the Trump era. First, journalists are confronted with a steady stream of tens of thousands of Trump’s lies — over 30,000 lies in Trump’s first four years alone. Because there are so many Trump lies to run down, journalists seem to feel obliged to scold Harris in roughly equal measure.

Trump era reporters want to appear balanced, even if the amount of lying and misleading between the two major party candidates is clearly out of balance. For this reason, some of the Harris scolds sometimes get to be a stretch, as the Tom Tomorrow cartoon satirizes.

The other Trump tendency that ties fact-checkers into knots is this: Trump famously takes multiple conflicting positions on many issues. His policy positions are consistently inconsistent.

Therefore, a Trump opponent attempting to characterize Trump’s record and positions perfectly accurately would require them to articulate lengthy explanations of Trump’s dizzying number of contradictions. That simply isn’t practical for a Trump opponent trying to be clear and concise on the campaign trail.

Abortion is a recent example. Trump has repeatedly boasted about overturning Roe abortion rights. But now that this “achievement” is clearly unpopular with impacted women, two-thirds of whom want abortion to be legal in all or most cases, Trump is claiming he will oppose policies that continue to limit or block abortions on a national level.

Forget that Trump’s record of overturning Roe says more about his position than any spin he subsequently uses. Forget that the Project 2025 playbook written by 28 of Trump’s top aides clearly lays out new ways for Trump to ban more types of abortions in more states, and that Trump has never specifically said he wouldn’t implement those things.

No, now when Harris points out that Trump wants to take away reproductive freedom, the ever-earnest fact-checkers have declared that she must point out that Trump has also taken a different position recently. They say that Harris’s failure to note Trump’s walkback spin makes her less than truthful.

That kind of fact-checking inadvertently misleads readers, many of whom only read the fact-checkers’ headlines and labels (e.g. “Kamala Harris’s Attack of Trump on Abortion Is Misleading”). The headline fails to note that Trump’s frequent lies are at the heart of Harris’s struggle to concisely characterize Trump’s ever-changing positions.

The New York Times’ David Leonhardt explains the strategy behind Trump’s walkbacks that aren’t walkbacks.

It’s become a pattern: President Trump says something outrageous. He later grudgingly retracts his statement, or members of his administration retract it on his behalf. And then he quickly undermines the retraction.

So what explains it? What could Trump possibly be accomplishing with this blatant dissembling?

Something important and devious, actually. He is sending two different messages, each intended for a different audience.

With the initial statement, he’s talking to his primary audience. Often, that audience is his political base, and Trump is signaling that he’s with them…

And then, in short order, come Trump’s walkbacks. But I think it’s crucial to understand the value that these walkbacks have to Trump. Almost no matter how silly they are, much of the media coverage tends to treat the walkbacks as serious. The walkbacks — and the credulous repetition of them — allow Trump’s fellow Republicans to pretend that he never really meant the initial statements.

Leonhardt is focusing on how Trump manipulates Republicans, but Trump similarly manipulates fact-checking journalists.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a different kind of example. In his first term, Trump promised he would eliminate the ACA and replace it with a secret plan that he promised would be better than the ACA. After getting elected on this promise, Trump tried and failed over 70 times to kill the ACA, and never produced a replacement health reform plan that would be better for Americans.

(Only very late in the debate did Trump share a detailed “TrumpCare” plan. It would have caused more than 20 million Americans to lose their health protections. It was so destructive that only 17% of Americans supported it.)

Now, after that very telling history from Trump’s first term, in the 2023-24 campaign, Trump is again saying he would eliminate the ACA and replace it with a plan to make things even better. Sound familiar?

When Harris uses shorthand and explains to voters that Trump again wants to take away ACA protections, she gets scolded by fact-checkers who want her to give Trump credit for his latest promise to produce his latest secret plan. Given Trump’s long history of deception on this issue, it’s perfectly reasonable for Harris to assume that Trump has no viable ACA replacement plan. If he did, he would surely be happy to share it with Americans.

Again, I loves me some fact-checkers. They’re vitally important. We need more of them. But they do need to do a better job of understanding and explaining Trump’s manipulative games.

Stop the “Lock Him Up” Chants Now

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I’m a big supporter of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I admire the job they’re doing on the campaign trail. But I have one beef.

Photo credit: The Independent

When Harris supporters chant “lock him up” at rallies, Harris and Walz need to stop staying silent, as they did during yesterday’s rally in Philadelphia. From the podium, they need to interrupt the chant, and gently but firmly redirect the energy in the room. Something along the lines of this:

“No, let’s not go there, friends. Sentencing is for the courts to decide, not us. Unlike Trump and the MAGA Republicans, we respect the courts’ role.

Let’s not chant “lock him up” like the Trumpers. Let’s respect the role of our American courts instead cheer about the role we will play as we vote…him…out. (Lead the crowd: “Vote him out..vote him out…”)

This may seem like micromanagement. It may be a bit of a wet blanket tossed on the organic enthusiasm in the room. But it’s vitally important.

As Trump has the country teetering on the edge of retribution-fueled authoritarianism, where he is openly promising he will use a newly politicized and weaponized Department of Justice to settle old scores with critics, this is an important teachable moment.

For years, Republicans have inflamed America’s anti-democratic tendencies by allowing and leading such lynch mob-like chants aimed at Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, who have been found guilty of nothing by the courts. That is leading the nation in a dangerous direction. Democratic leaders should show the way forward by redirecting their supporters in a full-throated pro-democracy direction.

This is the right thing to do for our endangered democracy and much-vilified judicial system.

At the same time, it is the right thing to do politically. It will be music to the ears of many persuadable swing voters — soft Democrats, soft Republicans, and independents — who will decide the outcome of this election. It will show them that Harris and Walz, in stark contrast to the vindictive authoritarian Trump, are the moderate adults in the room who can be trusted to lead American democracy out of this dangerous moment.

No, Don’t “Lock Him Up”

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You may be aware that a convicted felon is now the presumptive 2024 presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Twelve ordinary citizens, chosen by mutual consent of both sides’ attorneys agreed that Trump was guilty of election interference involving the payment and coverup of hush money for a porn star with whom he was committing adultery while his wife was pregnant. Their guilty verdict was unanimous on all 34 felony counts.

By the way, this election interference jury verdict extends Trump’s impressive losing streak with jurors to 42. In four criminal and civil trials, 42 jurors have weighed the evidence, and all 42 jururls have found Trump and his company to be guilty. 0-42!

Winning so much, he’s sick of winning?

From a political standpoint, the problem with this guilty verdict is what the problem always is with Trump: The swing voters who will decide this election have repeatedly shown that they have the attention spans of gnats. Their memory of the felony conviction will significantly fade, unless they’re frequently reminded.  

Those swing voters are already chasing distracting new “shiny objects” that are regularly tossed out by Trump —  the shark/electric boats lunacy, the Hunter Biden conviction, the veepstakes humiliation derby, etc. Those kinds of issues will continue to distract swing voters from the potential of having a felonious president.

The next stage in the election interference hush money trial is sentencing, which happens on July 11.  On that very important day, the judge will announce his sentence for Trump.

From a political standpoint, I don’t like the idea of giving Trump jail time, house arrest, or anything like that. Polls show that swing voters feel incarceration would be over the top. Given that, I don’t want a jail sentence to inadvertently help Trump’s electability. 

If I were the judge, the sentence I hand down to Trump would sound reasonable to most swing voters, to disarm his attempts at achieving martyrdom. At the same time, my sentence would serve to regularly remind voters that Donald J. Trump is a criminal, and not an ordinary presidential candidate.

This would be my sentence: For two days per week for the next six months, Trump would do something many criminals are forced to do, community service in the form of picking up garbage.

Imagine the campaign news: “As Biden released his plans to improve pharmaceutical prices, Trump was once again picking up garbage in fulfillment of his felony conviction sentence.”

A community service sentence will strike Trump haters as outrageously lenient. I get that. After all, covering up the porn star affair in the wake of the Access Hollywood scandal may have swung an election that Trump only won by an estimated 80,000 votes in three key states, though we can never know for sure. In addition, Trump repeatedly violated his gag order during the trial, which endangered the jury and court employees. He continues to collaborate with convicted criminals, is wholly unrepentant, and has several prior convictions on his record related to business fraud, sexual abuse, defamation, and tax fraud.

Still, hear me out. A 30-day community service sentence would seem reasonable to many moderate swing voters, so it would be more difficult for Trump to use the sentence to politically empower himself through martyrdom. That’s very important.

Moreover, imagine how this garbage pick-up sentence would look through a campaign lens. Twice every week for the remainder of the campaign, the news coverage of the presidential campaign would show images of a humiliated and seething Trump picking up rubbish in brightly colored safety gear with a supervisor watching him closely.  The 30 times that millions of American voters would see this image of Trump on the news serving alongside other disgraced, unrepentant common criminals would repeatedly hammer home what Trump truly is: A disgraced, unrepentant common criminal.

This kind of community service sentence would strike most swing voters as fair and reasonable. At the same time, though, 30 campaign days with images of Trump in orange or yellow safety gear picking up trash would make it much more difficult for voters to forget that Trump is a convicted felon, and not a normal candidate.

For a candidate whose cover-up of hush money robbed 2016 voters of key information they deserved to have for evaluating Trump’s fitness for office, ensuring that 2024 voters are regularly reminded of Trump’s election interfence conviction is apt restorative justice. So, hand the convicted felon his orange gear, rubber gloves, and Hefty bag, and put him to work, as news cameras capture every delicious minute.

How Trump’s Legal Delaying Tactics Could Hurt Him

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Politics is sometimes shaped by the Law of Unintended Consequences (LUC). The actions that politicians take expecting a particular result can sometimes lead to unanticipated outcomes.

For instance, in 2011 Minnesotans saw the Law of Unintended Consequences come into play when Republican political hacks in the state legislature voted to put a same-sex marriage ban on the ballot. Their thinking was that a majority of Minnesotans, who they assumed were as eager as they were to outlaw marriage equality, would turn out in the 2012 elections to pass the amendment. They then hoped that the voters attracted by the marriage ban would elect anti-LGBTQ Republicans.

It didn’t work out that way. To the surprise of many, the Republican’s same-sex marriage amendment was rejected by 51.9% of Minnesota voters. This made Minnesota the first state to reject such a ban at the ballot box. To make matters worse, Republicans lost control of the Minnesota Legislature. 

This allowed state Democrats to pass a statute legalizing same-sex marriage in 2013. 

In other words, the heated debate over the Republican-generated ballot measure made Minnesotans more accepting of same-sex marriage, not less. In this way, the Republicans’ ban plan led to a legalization law. Go Law of Unintended Consequences!

Similarly, at the national level, the 70 times congressional Republicans tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA)/Obamacare forced previously cowed and muted ACA supporters to finally explain the tremendous value of the ACA.  As a result of their pro-ACA advocacy during those 70 debates, an overwhelming two-thirds of Americans now support the preexisting conditions protections of the ACA.  Support for ACA repeal is now just 17%.

As with same-sex marriage in Minnesota, the once-unpopular ACA became quite popular, thanks to Republicans’ efforts to kill it.

With these LUC examples in mind, I’m hoping that the LUC might come to the rescue when it comes to Team Trump’s relentless efforts to delay his pending criminal trials. Through a series of legal maneuvers, Trump’s army of lawyers has been pushing out the start of trials, presumably so that verdicts and appeals can’t be finalized prior to the November 2024 election. 

U.S. News and World Report, March 15, 2024

The chances are good that Trump’s delay tactics will largely do exactly what they are intended to do, help him once again escape legal and electoral accountability. But maybe, just maybe, they could hurt him. Here’s how:

If Trump’s criminal trials were happening this winter or spring, as originally hoped, the damaging information spotlighted during the heavy coverage of the criminal trials could by November be largely forgotten by lightly engaged, easily distracted swing voters.  On issue after issue, we’ve seen that swing voters have the attention spans of gnats. The news they’re casually focused on today could easily get forgotten by the time they vote seven months from now.

But if Team Trump’s delay tactics cause the insurrection-related testimony to be dominating the news in early fall, that could make those issues much more top-of-mind for voters during the closing days of the campaign.

Imagine a September and/or October dominated by wall-to-wall news of insurrection trial coverage.  This coverage is constantly showing voters alarming images of Trump supporters assaulting police. Imagine swing voters seeing the mountain of evidence showing Trump doing nothing to stop the bloody assault and subsequently praising the rioters.  Imagine them hearing law enforcement officers and Trump’s most loyal supporters and staff giving damaging blockbuster testimony about the bloody chaos that Trump created, relished, and glorified.

Imagine that this is what swing voters are hearing in the immediate lead-up to the election, rather than Trump’s most effective criticisms of Biden about the economy and immigration. And all of this is coming to them via a judicial setting, which feels more weighty and credible to them than the 2022 congressional hearings.

Even though the verdict and appeals wouldn’t be completed by Election Day in this scenario, these are hardly the final images Trump’s campaign strategists want in undecided voters’ minds as they head to the ballot box.  If the trial timing worked out this way, the delay tactics could unwittingly keep the insurrection nightmare fresher in voters’ minds than would have been the case if the trials hadn’t been delayed and were happening now.

Again, this is a long shot. The more likely outcome is that Trump’s delay tactics will cause him to largely push his law-breaking out of voters’ minds until after the election.

But who knows, maybe we will have a little LUC.

Five Things That Should Keep Trump Up At Night

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Politically speaking, Trump has a lot going for him. Very early in the primary season, he is the runaway front-runner for the GOP nomination.  Wrapping this up early will save him a lot of money and allow him to aim resources at Biden, instead of at his fellow Republicans.

He is battle-hardened. He has already endured dozens of serious scandals that would have ended most candidacies – two impeachments, 91 criminal indictments, a videotaped incitement of insurrection, the “grab em by the” lady bits tape, dozens of embarrassing gaffes, a porn star hush money conviction, a sexual abuse conviction, popular vote losses in 2016, 2020, 2022, and 2023, etc. 

Despite all of those calamities and more, Trump somehow still has around 35-ish percent of voters consistently enthusiastic about him and another 15-ish percent of voters who currently seem willing to hold their noses and vote for him.

After all of that, it’s difficult to imagine what could cause Trump to lose much electoral ground in the next 10 months.

Moreover, Trump has the good fortune to be running against a politically wounded, gaffe-prone octogenarian who has had to endure post-pandemic economic headwinds throughout his term.

Add to that the very real possibility of a third-party candidate siphoning off anti-Trump voters from Biden, and it can’t be denied that Trump has one hell of a strong political hand. At this stage, he should be considered the favorite to win in November.

But if I were on Team Trump, these are five challenges that especially would concern me.

Surviving a Conviction(s)

A major conviction, especially on the insurrection-related charges, could weaken Trump with a block of undecided voters. The Washington Post recently reported:

“…election-day surveys showed 31 percent of Iowa caucus-goers and 42 percent of New Hampshire GOP primary voters said Trump wouldn’t be fit to serve as president if he’s convicted of a crime.

Those are big scary numbers, but I would add two caveats to them: First, with an army of Trump lawyers trying everything possible to delay proceedings, it’s going to be very challenging for prosecutors to get a conviction and subsequent appeals completed before the November election.

Second, I’d be surprised if even one-quarter of those people who today say a conviction would be a deal breaker for them would actually abandon Trump. After hearing Trump and his supporters endlessly claim how the conviction(s) was the product of a politically motivated witch hunt, I think many cynics will agree with that cynical argument.

Still, if even a relatively small fraction of that large block of conviction-sensitive voters abandon Trump because of a conviction(s), that could be decisive in a close general election.

Moving Beyond “The Base”

Also, Trump is currently weak with swing voters. While much is made of how loyal Trump’s base is, once the primaries are over the MAGA base is not anywhere near large enough to give Trump a general election win.  He needs to win over the non-affiliated independents, soft Democrats, and soft Republicans who will decide this election. Like Biden, Trump has a lot of work to do to win over those voters.

Trump should be very worried about his poor showing with independents so far. MSNBC’s data geek Steve Kornacki noted a remarkable 71-point difference between how New Hampshire independents voted for Haley by 21 points compared to how the state’s Republicans voted for Trump by 50 points.

Fox News exit polls in New Hampshire found that 35% of GOP vote primary participants, many of whom were independents, indicated they would be so dissatisfied if Trump won the Republican nomination that they wouldn’t vote for him.

Again, if even a fraction of that holds in November, that could seriously hurt Trump’s chances in battleground states.

The Economy, Stupid

Then there is the economy. The state of the economy has traditionally been very important to swing voters – independents, soft Republicans, and soft Democrats.  Up until now, that has helped Trump pull ahead in the polls.

But as pandemic-related economic challenges have eased, the economy under Biden has very quietly gotten robust – historically low unemployment, consistent economic growth, much lower inflation than earlier, interest rate decreases likely on the way, a historic boom for the stock market/retirement funds, wage growth outpacing inflation, and, at long last, increasing consumer confidence.  The United States under Biden has the strongest post-pandemic economic recovery in the world.

Even if that good economic news only neutralizes the enormous past advantage Trump enjoyed on this issue, rather than turning it into a strength for Biden, that could help Biden win over persuadable swing voters.

Doh! Roe!

Trump also continues to face tricky political winds related to abortion rights. Surveys show that two-thirds of Americans think the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision that kept abortion legal and safe was a mistake. Meanwhile, Trump is out there telling anyone who will listen that “I’m the one who got rid of Roe v. Wade.”  That’s music to Democrats’ ears.

The 2022 elections showed how much Republicans’ post-Dobbs abortion bans have hurt Republicans, particularly in suburban battlegrounds where battleground state elections are often decided.

Now congressional Republicans are promising a national abortion ban. That just adds fuel to this fire.

That would also worry me a lot if I was a Trump supporter.

Trump Being Trump

Getting voted out of the White House and kicked off Twitter has made Trump’s outrageous behavior a bit less visible than it was when he had the presidential bully pulpit. To the extent that Trump has been visible, a lot of the news coverage has been focused on how resilient he remains with the relatively narrow band of Americans who make up his political base. That success appealing to Republicans has made Trump look, up until now, relatively strong and normal.

But in a general election campaign, Trump’s steady stream of outrageous comments and actions will once again be more visible. Trump can’t keep himself from sounding childish, bigoted, incoherent, unstable, and dictatorial. That persona led Trump to lose the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 and 7 million in 2020.

Highly visible “Trump being Trump” news coverage is great for Trump when the task at hand is appealing to the Republican base. But a constant stream of Trump outrageousness doesn’t always help him with more moderate swing voters. Moreover, his undisciplined stream-of-conscious blathering keeps him from repeating the most persuasive anti-Biden messages and pro-Republican messages.

Again, Trump is far from politically weak. He is rightfully favored to win in November. But if I were a Trump operative, these are five things that would certainly keep me up at night.

Why, Dean, Why?

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What to do when you spend millions of your own money, get less than 20% of the votes, and get creamed by a guy whose name didn’t even appear on the ballot?

Photo by Glen Stubbe, Star Tribune

Declare that you won and the actual winner is hopelessly weak!

“We just earned 20% tonight and no one knew who we were!”

Enough said. The absurdity of it all speaks for itself.

Dean Phillips isn’t Close to Being MN’s Strongest Presidential Candidate

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U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips (DFL-Edina) seems to be relishing the national attention that comes with his months of hemming and hawing about a long-shot potential challenge of Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination. To be clear, Phillips is far from the best Democrat in the nation to serve as an alternative to Joe Biden. In fact, Phillips is not even close to being the best presidential candidate in little old Minnesota.

Phillips is fine. The former CEO of Phillips Distributing, his step-father’s inherited business, is thoughtful and decent, if also sometimes dull and self-righteous, as centrist politicicans tend to be. His bipartisan instincts have made him a good fit to represent the purple-ish 3rd congressional district, which is anchored by Minnesota’s most affluent western suburbs.

However, it’s time for Phillips to come out of the TV studios and return to representing his district. As Rep. Annie Kuster (D-NH) said in today’s Star Tribune:


There’s no path. There’s no outcry. Personally, I think it’s a vanity project by Mr. Phillips, and I think it could do serious damage by emboldening the Trump Republicans.”

To be clear, the most talented politician in Minnesota isn’t Phillips. It’s DFL Senator Amy Klobuchar, and it’s not even close.  Reports about Klobuchar’s erratic behind-the-scenes behavior are concerning when it comes to the world’s most pressure-packed job. Still, no Minnesota politician is better than Klobuchar at doing what presidential candidates must do well – sell progressive ideas and positions in both wholesale and retail settings to a wide variety of audiences. Whether on big or small stages, Klobuchar consistently comes across as warm, sincere, tough, bright, thoughtful, prepared, nimble, and persuasive. As such, Minnesota’s senior senator would be a much more compelling presidential candidate than Phillips.

While Klobuchar is Minnesota’s most skilled politician, DFL Governor Tim Walz ranks second. At the same time, Walz has more marketable policy accomplishments than Kloubachar or any other Minnesota pol. 

In a purple state with a slim one-vote DFL advantage in the state Senate, Walz can boast on national stages that he signed many state laws that national Democrats want to see on a national level, such as legislation creating a family and medical leave system, securing abortion rights, legalizing marijuana, expanding child care access, creating new gun violence protections, making voting more accessible, providing free school lunches for all, investing much more in public education, building a public option for health insurance, and requiring disclosure for dark money donors. 

All the while, the Minnesota economy has outpaced a relatively strong national economy, with a lower rate of inflation and unemployment than the nation as a whole.

Walz’s long list of significant policy accomplishments would be popular among the national Democrats he would need to win over in a primary challenge against Biden. Importantly, it also would be popular among the swing voters a Democratic nominee will need to win over in a 2024 presidential general election.  Politically speaking, Walz is well poised to make a “we will do for America what we did for Minnesota” pitch to Democrats clutching their pearls about Biden’s electoral viability.

State Capitol insiders are quick to point out that Walz’s myriad policy wins had more to do with House Speaker Melissa Hortman, Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic, and a number of very capable DFLers chairing key committees. But that kind of inside baseball would largely be ignored by national pundits and reporters if Walz ran for President. Walz vocally supported those progressive changes and signed them into law. Therefore, it would be fair for him to tout them in early Democratic primary states.

But Klobuchar and Walz aren’t going to be in those states, not as candidates anyway. They have enough political sense to understand that they’re never going to defeat an accomplished, albeit ancient, incumbent, and that trying to do so at this late hour would irreparably ruin their reputation with the leaders and activists they need in order to be effective.

Phillips, for all his strengths, appears incapable of understanding that part.

An Ad to Save American Democracy

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If I were a billionaire who loved American democracy, I would pay for a TV ad something like the following to run steadily in the coming year in places where the data tell me swing voters are viewing.

“America was founded on this principle: No one should be above the law.

That’s why all of these powerful Democratic politicians were convicted.

So when you hear Republican politicians whining, remember this long list of convicted Democrats.

Is former President Trump guilty? We’ll see. We’ll see what a jury of ordinary Americans decides based on the facts and the law.

That’s how we do it in America. Because no one in either party, no matter how powerful they are, should ever be above the laws that apply to the rest of us.”

—

The image on the screen throughout this voiceover would be the following names, among others, scrolling steadily:

Dan Rostenkowski (Democrat-IL) – Convicted.

Harrison A. Williams (Democrat-NJ) – Convicted.

Mario Biaggi (Democrat-NY). Convicted.

Edwin Edwards (Democrat-LA). Convicted.

Don Siegelman (Democrat-AL). Convicted.

Nicholas Mavroules (Democrat-MA). Convicted.

Albert Bustamante (Democrat-TX). Convicted.

Joe Kolter (Democrat-PA). Convicted.

Austin Murphy (Democrat-PA). Convicted.

Mel Reynolds (Democrat-IL). Convicted.

Jim Traficant (Democrat-OH). Convicted.

Frank Ballance (Democrat-NC). Convicted.

Bob Ney (Democrat-OH). Convicted.

William J. Jefferson (Democrat-LA). Convicted.

Laura Richardson (Democrat-CA). Convicted.

Jesse Jackson Jr. (Democrat-IL). Convicted.

Chaka Fattah (D-PA). Convicted.

Corrine Brown (D-FL). Convicted.

Rod Blagojevich (D-IL). Convicted.

Anthony Weiner (D-NY). Convicted.

Why that ad? It’s not the least bit clever, cutting, or captivating. It’s in no danger of winning any awards.

But we need ads something like this because they inject information that is missing from the current debate. We need them to set the context for the upcoming Trump trials, a context that too many voters with short memories lack.

Former Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL), who was impeached by his own party, forced out of office, convicted, and jailed for eight years on federal charges of public corruption

We need that messaging to bust the “only Republicans get prosecuted by the DOJ” myth being promoted non-stop by Fox News and other conservative propaganda outlets.

We need that message informing discussions on this topic at family, friend, and work gatherings.

We need messaging like that to prevent Trump, if he is convicted, from achieving martyr status amongst the swing voters who will decide if Trump ultimately regains the presidency in 2024, which would empower him to pardon himself and his co-conspirators and inflict punishment on prosecutors, political opponents, critics, and America’s most important democratic institutions.

Finally, we need paid advertising like that because we can’t rely on news reporters to repeatedly provide this important context, out of fear that it will somehow appear biased.

For billionaires, paying for this kind of messaging campaign would not diminish their lavish lifestyle. And it might just save American democracy.

So, what say you, Buffet? Soros? Bloomberg? Steyer? Sussman? Simons? Anyone?

Is Minnesota Really A “Big Spending” State?

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This past winter and spring, the DFL-controlled state House, Senate, and Executive branch produced much more for ordinary families than Republicans ever did when they were in power.  It’s not close.

As a result, things are getting heady for Walz and DFL legislators. To cite just one example of the national acclaim they’re getting, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne recently lavished praise on the Minnesota DFL’s 2023 legislative tour de force with a sloppy wet kiss of a column.

“The avalanche of progressive legislation that the state’s two-vote Democratic majority in the Minnesota House and one-vote advantage in the state Senate have enacted this year is a wonder to behold.

It’s no wonder former president Barack Obama tweeted recently: ‘If you need a reminder that elections have consequences, check out what’s happening in Minnesota.’

Democrats in the state are known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party from their merger with a third party in the 1940s. True to the name, the party’s agenda combined social concerns such as abortion rights with what Long called “bread-and-butter, populist things that sell everywhere in the state.”

Well, E.J., thanks to the rural-urban division that the Minnesota Republican Party relentlessly promotes on the campaign trail, the DFL achievements don’t actually sell well “everywhere” in the state.  According to an early May 2023 KSTP-TV/Survey USA poll, Walz still has much lower approval ratings in rural parts of the state (51% in the southern region, 42% in the western region, and 46% in the northeastern region) than he has in the Twin Cities seven-county metropolitan area (60% approval).

Still, Governor Walz’s 2023 performance is selling relatively well statewide. He has the approval of 54% of Minnesotans, compared to the disapproval of 41%. In a purple state that Trump only lost by 1.5 points in 2016, Walz’s 13-point net positive approval rating is impressive. Progressivism is selling pretty well in this purple state.

However, the political debate is just heating up. We can expect Republicans campaigning in 2026 to focus on the unpopular, vague notion of “government spending increases,” rather than the DFL’s specific policy changes.  After all, polls show that individual DFL-enacted achievements are popular. For instance, 80% of Americans support paid family and medical leave, 80% of Americans support more child care assistance for families, 76% of Minnesotans support universal background checks for gun purchases, and 69% of Americans support more school funding, to name just a few of the many popular policies that DFLers passed during the 2023 session. Therefore, Republicans will focus on how much more the DFL-controlled state government is spending, not the DFL’s signature policy achievements.

It is true that the state budget is increasing under DFLers in 2024. But is state government spending really that high?

According to usgovernmentspending.com, state spending in Minnesota in 2024 will be 10.15% of the state’s GDP, making it a middling 25th among the 50 states. Yawn.

So, sure, our Republican-controlled “race-to-the-bottom” neighbors in Iowa (9.87% of GDP), Wisconsin (9.64% of GDP), North Dakota (9.08% of GDP), and South Dakota (8.12% of GDP) are spending less than in Minnesota. No surprise there.

But state spending in Minnesota is nothing like what is happening annually in the top ten states of New Mexico (17.64%), Alaska (16.96%), West Virginia (16.42%), Vermont (16.12%), Hawaii (15.88%), Kentucky (15.18), Oregon (15.14%), Mississippi (14.94%), Louisiana (13.78%), and Maine (13.51%).

Despite Minnesota Republicans’ red-faced hyperbole about the DFL’s “out of control spending,” in a national context Minnesota is, meh, just average. 

DeSantis “Anti-Woke” Agenda Falling Flat With Voters

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In 1910, writer Jack Johnson nicknamed white boxer James Jeffries the “Great white hope” as Jeffries prepared to fight the black fighter Jack Johnson.  Apparently, Mr. Jeffries represented something that many fans found discomforting about Mr. Johnson. 

Similarly in 2023, Republican elites are desperately searching for a Great Non-Trump Hope, sometimes quietly referred to as “Trump with a brain, “Trump without the crazy,” or “Trump without the chaos.”  Most Republicans have settled on the charismatically challenged Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, fresh off his landslide reelection win over Democrat Charlie Crist.

At this point, a lot of Republican voters outside of Florida don’t know much about DeSantis. They know he’s not as undisciplined as Trump, and that he has handily won recent elections at a time when Trump has been regularly rejected by general election voters. 

But beyond presenting himself as a stable winner, DeSantis is pushing a set of extremist policies that appeal to anti-“woke” Republicans.  That may make sense as a primary election strategy, but how about as a general election strategy?  How popular will DeSantis’s Republican-friendly platform be with the all-important swing voters in battleground states?

Here DeSantis faces stiff headwinds, according to a recent University of North Florida survey. Remember, these toxic findings are from DeSantis’s home state, where he just won reelection by 19 points.

These numbers are jaw-dropping. If DeSantis wants to run ads promoting his stands on these issues, Democrats should offer to pay for them.

An overwhelmingly unpopular policy agenda isn’t even DeSantis’s biggest challenge. His more limiting political leg iron is that he can’t begin to match the Trump bombast and charisma that seems to be the primary driver of Trump’s enduring popularity with Republicans. That will become much more apparent as the primary campaign season heats up, once DeSantis and Trump start appearing on the same stage together. The man the former President belittles as “Tiny D” will shrink in that setting.

In other words, the problem with the pursuit of “Trump without the crazy” is that a majority of Republican primary voters adore “the crazy.”

DeSantis’s other problem is that even if he somehow finds a way to defeat Trump in the primary, and I don’t think he can, Trump’s brutal and relentless attacks will drive DeSantis’s unfavorability ratings sky-high, including on issues important to general election swing voters, such as DeSantis’s past efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare.  Also, the possibility of a Trump third-party candidacy looms large.

DeSantis won’t look nearly as attractive facing general election voters in the spring of 2024 as he looked to Republican primary voters in the winter of 2023. And if Trump somehow loses the Republican endorsement, he will continue attacking DeSantis long after the primaries are over.  All the while, DeSantis’s “anti-woke” policy agenda will further sully him with general election swing voters, particularly suburban women, people of color, and young people.

All of which is to say, it ain’t easy being DeSanctimonius.

A More Consequential Assignment for the Lincoln Project

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I have a suggestion for the Lincoln Project, the much-celebrated organization formed by a collection of Never Trumper GOP and former GOP political consultants and activists who banded together in the 2020 presidential election cycle to help defeat Trump.

The Lincoln Project

If you haven’t heard of the Lincoln Project, starting in the 2020 election it raised money to air brutally pointed ads criticizing Trump. Liberals like me loved watching their ads, but I wasn’t convinced how effective they were.

While always cathartic for committed Trump opponents, the ads too often seemed to pick topics and a tone that they thought would get under Trump’s skin or raise money from Trump opponents, rather than topics and a tone that would prove most persuasive to the decisive right-leaning swing voters. 

But overall, I don’t mean to criticize the Lincoln Project. Co-founded by recovering Republicans Rick Wilson and Reed Galen, it was well-intentioned and helpful. It produced a huge volume of ads and social media videos that were widely aired and shared. Those ads served as a primal scream for Republicans who had watched in horror as their party got hijacked by the most corrupt, inept, and bigoted president of our times. It “fired up the base,” which is one important need in any campaign. In the process, it developed a huge database of Trump opponents from across the ideological spectrum, which helped it raise over $80 million in the 2020 cycle. 

A New Focus for Lincoln Project Money

But in 2024, more of this “singing to the choir” advertising isn’t the best way for the Lincoln Project to keep Donald Trump or his Mini Me Ron DeSantis out of power. Instead, the Lincoln Project should back a strong Republican running as a third-party candidate.

Such a right-leaning third-party candidate could serve as an Election Day safe haven for people who hate Trump or DeSantis, but will never be able to stomach voting for Biden, who has been a committed and effective champion for liberal causes. 

If such a right-leaning third-party candidate could even draw 1 percent of the vote in 2024, that could be enough to keep Trump or DeSantis out of power.  If the candidate could draw something like 10 percent, it could lead to the kind of landslide loss that could perhaps finally cause the party to jettison its Trumpian fetish, which is the Lincoln Project’s long-term goal.

Also, a conservative third-party candidate could completely or partially offset any otherwise-Biden votes that might be peeled away if a more left-leaning third-party candidate is on 2024 ballots, such as Andrew Yang. Yang is the businessman and 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate who left the Democratic Party to form the Forward Party. A third-party candidacy from the left without a counter-balancing third-party candidacy from the right could easily help Trump or DeSantis gain power.

Even a modestly successful conservative third-party candidate could swing the 2024 election.  Keep in mind, Trump could have escaped defeat in 2020 if he had only gotten about 44,000 more votes in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona. That is only about 0.08 percent of the 154.6 million people who voted for president in 2020. Those 44,000 votes wouldn’t have been enough for Trump to have overcome his 7 million popular vote loss, but because the United States is stuck with the profoundly undemocratic Electoral College system, it could have given Trump an Electoral College tie.

Source: National Public Radio

Third-Pary Liz Could Prove Decisive

The ideal choice for a Lincoln Project-based third-party run is Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.  The Cheney surname is well known, and she gained a great deal of national visibility and respect during the congressional January 6 insurrection investigation and hearings.  She is the most well-known and politically talented of the Never Trumper elected officials. 

Photo credit: Politico magazine

Perhaps most importantly, Cheney has the background, knowledge, demeanor, and inclination to make an aggressive case against Trump that will connect with some right-leaning swing voters. When it comes to Trump, she clearly is not inclined to pull punches, and the news media covers what she has to say.

While Cheney is vehemently anti-Trump, with a voting record that aligned with Trump 91% of the time, she is not so moderate that she would tempt many liberals or left-leaning independents to vote for her instead of Biden.

One of the primary reasons running as a third-party candidate is so daunting is that it’s very challenging to raise enough money when not affiliated with one of the two major political parties. The Lincoln Project is the only Never Trump-oriented organization that can raise anything close to the amount of money it would take to help a Republican third-party candidate get onto state ballots and make sufficient amounts of noise.  Again, the Lincoln Project raised $80 million in 2020, so it already has the donor database to raise a substantial sum in a hurry.

The Lincoln Project leadership should go all-in supporting a Cheney candidacy, whether as the Lincoln Project as currently constituted, or as Lincoln Project leaders disbanding and formally joining the Cheney campaign. Doing so would be a more effective way to keep Trump out of power than pumping more snarky Lincoln Project ads in an environment that will already be plenty thick with tough anti-Trump ads.