Josh Marshall

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Josh Marshall is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TPM.

Great Moments in Dead Bounce Ron Studies

This is mainly just a goof on Ron DeSantis’s ridiculous presidential campaign. But it’s weird and funny enough that I thought I’d share it with you. Clearly Ron DeSantis’s campaign is flatlining about to go down in the history books as one of the most ignominious and vertiginous collapses in presidential primary campaign history. But TPM Reader RS just let me know that despite filing in a lot of other state’s he’ll never get to, DeSantis’s campaign somehow forgot to file paperwork to be a candidate in the New York State Republican primary.

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War Cabinet Divisions Break Into The Open Prime Badge
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It’s been clear for some weeks that there is growing division in the Israeli war cabinet. Now it appears to be breaking into the open, with indications that a new election could come sooner than later.

First a bit of stage-setting and context to explain the moving pieces and what this all might or might not mean.

On October 7th, the day of the Hamas massacres in southern Israel, Israel was led by a narrow and very right-wing coalition government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel had been embroiled for most of the previous year in a highly polarized fight over the government’s effort to dramatically curtail the power of the country’s Supreme Court. The massacres shattered the public’s confidence in Netanyahu, which had kept him in power since 2009 with only one intermission in 2021 and 2022. Soon after the outbreak of the current war, Netanyahu was able to bring one of the two main opposition parties, National Union, into his government.

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WTF? Or, The Latest on Fani Willis

A Georgia state judge has scheduled a hearing on allegations that Fulton County DA Fani Willis had an affair with one of the lawyers she appointed to work as a lead prosecutor in her prosecution of Donald Trump and others.

The Post write-up says that the hearing is is about whether Willis “engaged in an improper relationship and mishandled public money.” When I read this I thought it wasn’t clear if the relationship was actually improper aside from the allegations of misuse of public money. But my momentary double take captures the uncanny dualism of this story.

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Is DeSantis’s Crew Getting Whacked? Prime Badge
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Over eight years Donald Trump has made it clear that if you cross him your career in Republican politics will be over. With Ron DeSantis’s campaign flatlining, Donald Trump seems to be moving ahead with settling the family’s outstanding business. What jumped out at me here was that his target is not a Mitt Romney (one of the only exceptions to the rule) or Adam Kinzinger or Liz Cheney. Next up appears to be one of the diehardest members of the rump of the Freedom Caucus, Rep. Bob Good of Virginia.

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Rubber Hitting the Road

I wanted to flag to your attention some new developments in Israel-Palestine. From the beginning of the war there’s been discussion of the “day after,” what comes after the fighting and whether that “day after” plan provides any opening to move beyond the cycle of recurrent war and death. The U.S. has been increasingly insistent on this with its Israeli counterparts. The Biden White House wants a “day after” plan first because it thinks concrete steps toward a Palestinian state is the only viable solution to the conflict but also because in an international diplomatic context it needs something tangible to show for its steadfast support for Israel’s increasingly unpopular war.

Now, however, we’re seeing the first signs that the Netanyahu government’s unwillingness to address “day after” issues is beginning to have concrete operational effects in Gaza. Israel’s Channel 13 reports that IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has told the prime minister, Defense Minister Gallant and others that “we are facing the erosion of gains made thus far in the war because no strategy has been put together for the day after.” The IDF “may need to go back and operate in areas where we have already concluded fighting.”

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Dean Phillips ‘Gimme Some Lovin’ Campaign Hits Silicon Valley

It seems like longshot presidential wannabe and Problem Solver caucus stalwart Rep. Dean Phillips (D) can’t decide whether endorsing Medicare for All or denouncing DEI and other “woke” nostrums is the way to get over three percent in the national polls. I’m sure some disagree with me. But “DEI” is just a label. What matters is a candidate’s record and what policies they pledge to implement or support in the future. What is significant in Phillips’ case is that he appears to have scrubbed his campaign website of “DEI” language right after receiving a $1 million dollar campaign pledge from plagiarism influencer Bill Ackman who has become something of an anti-DEI crusader.

Phillips’ campaign didn’t say directly that it pulled the language based on Ackman’s criticism and cash. But Ackman is saying that. And Phillip’s campaign isn’t disagreeing.

Here’s a paragraph from Politico …

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Another GOP Vote ‘Irregularity’ Freak Out Goes Bust Prime Badge
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From Northern Virginia we have another one of those stories about significant election irregularities that you’ll likely never hear about since they don’t fit into the MAGA storyline that is all most political reporters seem to care about. I didn’t know about it myself until I got a note from longtime TPM Reader LB.

Our story starts in November 2020 in the Northern Virginia county of Prince William. The General Registrar in Prince William was Michele White. She resigned at some point in 2021, possibly because of the feral Trumper harassment that led so many election officials to quit during that period. She was replaced by a new registrar, Eric Olsen. Olsen found irregularities in down-ballot races in the 2020 election — but not ones great enough to affect the outcome of any race. Olsen then reported those irregularities to newly elected Republican state Attorney General Jason Miyares.

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Now Let’s Talk About Turnout

Roughly 110,000 voters turned out for last night’s caucuses. That compares to 187,000 in 2016. (2012 and 2008 were closer to last night’s numbers 122,000 and 120,000, respectively.) But that’s still the lowest turnout in more than a decade and dramatically lower than the last contest in 2016. To me the turnout number is much less significant than the result, which I discussed here.

But it’s not insignificant.

There are a few possible explanations. One is that it was incredibly cold last night. But let’s be honest: winters in Iowa are always cold as fuck. They’re used to it. More significant, Republicans could be pretty confident that the outcome of the caucus and the overall nomination battle are both pretty much settled in Trump’s favor. That is a big disincentive to show up. Those explanations, especially the second, get you pretty close to a good explanation.

But not all the way there.

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Let’s Face It: Trump’s Iowa Result Was Pretty Weak Prime Badge
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For something like a year I’ve been predicting that Donald Trump is absolutely positively going to be the 2024 nominee. I was predicting that back when a lot of people really thought that Ron DeSantis was going to at least give Trump a run for his money. I don’t make confident predictions unless I’m certain there’s little chance of being wrong. But I must tell you that this result simply isn’t the victory most reporting makes it out to be.

The Republican version of the Iowa caucus is simply a vote, carried out by less formal means. Each participant writes down a name and that gets counted — no real caucusing. The final result shows Trump getting 51% of that vote.

That is not just a plurality win, the metric customarily used to judge this contest. It’s actually an absolute majority. Barely. (DeSantis has 21.2% and Haley 19.1%.) But everyone now recognizes that Trump is running as the de facto incumbent. Certainly he’s running as the universally recognized leader of the GOP. And yet he has only barely managed a majority in a state which — unlike, say, New Hampshire — is pretty tailor-made for his politics. To put that characterization into context, while Iowa is today is a fairly red state, it has long had a reputation as a state which has a very liberal Democratic Party and a very conservative GOP. The Iowa GOP caucus electorate especially is made up of a high percentage of conservative evangelical voters. It’s overwhelmingly rural. By any fair measure, 51% of those voters is underwhelming.

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Nota Bene

Keep an eye on how the national press covers this. The White House, as you know, has been under immense pressure to offer concessions to address the continuing large number of migrants coming to the U.S.-Mexico border. Now there’s a bipartisan compromise bill in the Senate. Last night Majority Leader Steve Scalise said that bill is DOA in the House. But Speaker Johnson said something more specific and revealing. He refused to bring up the bill and according to Jake Sherman of Punchbowl said “Congress can’t solve border until Trump is elected or a republican is back in the White House.”

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