Josh Marshall
Pretty remarkable things emerging in the House. It appears that Speaker Johnson can’t move his own compromise plan with Republican votes. Or actually he can’t pass the rule that governs how to bring up his bill. So now he’ll now go back to relying on Democratic votes to get it done. He’s already back to the McCarthy rules – what is it? a three weeks in? The difference, presumably, is that House hardliners know he can’t and they’ll give him a pass. They won’t make him pay any price for passing something they claim is unacceptable with Democratic votes. Because he’s their guy.
Not clear how this evolving. But a pretty decent chance we’re looking at a new MO: House hardliners remain pure and Democrats take on the responsibility for actually governing.
Netanyahu’s Rule Is Getting More Perilous for Israel and the USA 
Several times I’ve noted this key oddity of the Israel-Hamas war: it is certainly the gravest crisis in Israel in a half century and yet it is being led by an Israeli leader who is now overwhelmingly discredited within his own country. And there is no sign that that public rejection is fading as the war enters its second month. Polls continue to tell the same story. Indeed, last week the right wing daily that was literally founded to support Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel HaYom, called on Netanyahu to resign at the close of the war. The difference is that the costs and dangers of Netanyahu’s continued rule are growing graver and appearing in a starker relief.
One confusion for some in the United States is the belief that the intensity and ferocity of Israel’s response to the events of October 7th is tied to Netanyahu himself. That is not the case. While public opinion is complicated and there are disagreements over strategy, the current war has overwhelming support within Israel. It’s quite unlikely that any head of government who seems at all plausible would be prosecuting it in a different way.
To the extent there are disagreements it’s over what comes afterwards. What happens in Gaza? Who controls Gaza? Is it again governed by some kind of Israeli military occupation? Is it governed by the Palestinian Authority? Is it governed by some kind of international force?
Read MoreI note a bit of speaking in jest there in the headline. But in our recent podcasts Kate Riga and I have been noting that Sherrod Brown must wish his reelection had coincided with the big abortion referendum that just won in Ohio by 13 percentage points. Could he get his wish? Could this end up on the ballot again in 2024? Let me start by saying that I don’t think he’ll get this lucky. But we can’t rule it out.
Ohio Republicans turned around from their Tuesday defeats to announce that they don’t plan on accepting the results of either the abortion or the marijuana legalization votes. With the marijuana legalization vote there’s actually a fair amount they can do since it was an “initiated statute” rather than a constitutional amendment. At least in theorythey can implement it to death, much as Florida did a few years ago when voters backed the felon enfranchisement. The abortion vote was for a constitutional amendment. So it’s locked in. There’s nothing the gerrymandered legislature can do to keep that text out of the state constitution. But Republicans think they’ve found a way around the state constitution.
Read MoreA numbers of TPM Readers have written in today asking what’s up since nothing was published on the site today. Is everything okay, etc? Yes, everything’s fine. Friday was a federal holiday. So the staff was off.
The Polls Or Your Lyin’ Eyes
Tuesday was another example of an election where polls had raised a lot of doubts about the environment for Democrats. But election results told a different story. Democrats ended up doing quite well. Of course “polls” covers a lot of ground. The “polls” that have atmospherically sent shivers down Democrats’ spines and launched a thousand media think pieces tend to be ones not about Democrats or signature Democratic issues but President Biden. Indeed, just as the results were starting to come in Tuesday night CNN published a poll showing Biden down four points to Trump. So are the polls wrong? Or is reality wrong?
With these questions in mind, it was with no little curiosity that I read this piece by Nate Cohn in The New York Times: Tuesday Was Great for Democrats. It Doesn’t Change the Outlook for 2024.
Read MoreThere’s a report out there which claims that reporters from AP, Reuters and stringers for CNN, NYT et al were actually embedded with the Hamas death squads that swept into southern Israel on October 7th. If they were embedded they had some foreknowledge of the operation. They might even have been able to stop it.
I first saw this story posted by a writer for The National Review and I read the report. I was highly skeptical but I was curious to see what the argument or evidence was.
In short, the whole ‘report’ was a crock. I wouldn’t even say it contains false information per se. It’s really just a matter of a pile of leading questions or questions framed as leading inevitably to very dark conclusions when that’s not the case at all. It basically amounts to saying, hey there were photos and video of Hamas fighters with hostages or streaming through the barrier fence. How did the reporters know to be there? How did they get into Israel from the Gaza Strip? Did they go through the fence too?
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Will Republicans Take No For An Answer On Abortion?
A couple pod episodes ago I told Kate Riga that I didn’t quite understand what was going on in the Virginia legislative races. It was being treated as a very close run thing in which Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin stood a very real chance of getting the full control of the state legislature he needed to pass a 15 week abortion ban. Was that really plausible since Virginia is basically a blue state, with maybe a few shades of purple, and abortion bans have been a loser pretty much everywhere? As she rightly explained, that was the consensus. But it was more vibes than data. There wasn’t much polling. (There seldom is for state legislative races since news organization don’t have the incentive or the money to poll multiple key races.) It was mainly based on the continuing perception of Youngkin as an electoral golden boy who managed to win the governorship in what is now a reliably blue state.
And yet, he put it all on the line and got … well, smoked. He didn’t capture the Senate and Democrats have also taken back the House of Delegates. In electoral terms, abortion remains a way that Republicans abort themselves. And a lot of them keep doing it. Moths to a flame, really. And here we are.
Read More10:15 PM: I think we’re about set for the night. A pretty solid night for the Democrats. Looks like they hold the Virginia Senate and retake the House of Delegates. Bad night for Youngkin. Abortion referendum and pot legalization referendum both win in Ohio. Huge D wins in New Jersey. Gov Beshear wins and wins big in Kentucky. There are other races but that really tells the story. Solid Dem night. In general tonight seems to be continuing what had been a trend of special elections with Democratic over-performance. But there’s different kinds of over-performance. There’s over-performance against 2020, against current polls, against expectations. So we’ll have to sort all that out in the coming days.
9:48 PM: It seems like rather than Youngkin getting unified control Democrats are on track to reclaim the state assembly.
9:42 PM: The abortion referendum in Ohio is definitely going to win. It’s been called. It’s currently at about a 10 point spread and I’ve seen some saying this is a slight underperformance against expectations. But just looking at the big urban counties it seems like there are a lot pro-abortion votes still out there. This is me eyeballing the counties myself rather than cribbing from some smarter person. But it seems like that percentage should go higher.
9:36 PM: Check out this little update at 538 about Democratic turnout advantage in Ohio.
9:25 PM: Just to make this official: The Ohio state constitution will now guarantee abortion rights and other reproductive rights.
9:19 PM: Also, doing my best to avoid typos tonight. But I’m flying solo tonight and eyeballs deep in numbers. So more difficult than usual. Appreciate the congrats.
9:18 PM: Definitely seems possible that Democrats recapture the Virginia Assembly, thus sending the battleship of Youngkinism to a watery grave.
9:12 PM: I’ll restate the point I made below. You’ve got this pretty bad poll out tonight for Biden. Trump four points ahead of him according to CNN. But Democrats are having somewhere between a decent and strong night. That’s not what you’d expect if that poll is accurate. I’m not saying the poll is wrong, as in technically flawed. But is it predictive? Or is it that we’re in a strong Democratic environment but Joe Biden himself is just wildly unpopular and so is losing to Trump? I’ll try to discuss this tomorrow. But there are decent arguments for both interpretations. And for the first interpretation the argument would be that a lot of Democratic voters are expressing dissatisfaction with Biden in these polls but when it actually comes time to vote will tend to come home for him.
8:58 PM: Another key question. There’s been this idea out there that Democrats have only been over-performing in special elections because they’re super low turnout contests. But tonight’s numbers really put that in doubt. The trend seems to be continuing. Some of that is relative to Joe Biden in 2020. But some of it is relative to expectations. And “expectations” requires some explanation. Democrats are generally having a pretty good night tonight. But it’s hard to get a handle on the battle for a state legislature since there’s so little race by race polling. A lot of it is conventional wisdom and vibes. Those seem to have at least slightly overstated Republican chances. We still need more results and I still need to look at more races. My sense is largely impressionistic so far. But at least so far it really seems like we continue to be in a post-Dobbs electoral environment in which Dems tend to out-perform recent benchmarks. Just keep it in mind.
8:46 PM: Just to connect the dots, with these results there will no be an abortion ban in Virginia. Youngkin needed a trifecta. He’s not going to get it.
8:40 PM: Things are looking pretty good for Dems in the Virginia Senate. Having a hard time keeping track of all the different races. But the ones that are showing are good for Dems.
8:15 PM: Early but the abortion rights referendum in Ohio certainly looks like it’s on its way to victory. We’ve expected this to win. So that’s not a surprise. And we still need to see more. But looks like it’s going to win.
8:09 PM: There’s another poll out tonight to send Democrats swooning. CNN has Trump 49% to Biden 45%. Yet Democrats seem to be doing at least fairly well tonight. So polls vs. results. What’s also interesting is that that pattern of Dems overperforming polls seems to be continuing. So the idea that it’s just extremely low turnout elections where Dems do well with voters who also turn out doesn’t seem right. That CNN poll … yikes! But again, we need to look at the overall picture.
8:05 PM: Earlier I said that Kentucky was “widely called” for Andy Beshear. I should have been more clear that it’s the more niche watchers I follow, people like Dave Wasserman, Split Ticket etc. But it seems like many networks haven’t called it yet. I’m quite confident of those calls. But just to be clear the networks may be holding off.
7:46 PM: As we’re waiting for more results, here’s something to keep an eye on tonight and going forward. As we know, Donald Trump heavily partisanized early voting. True Republicans voted on election day. But over the last three years Republicans have increasingly decided (correctly) that this is incredibly stupid when it comes to anything but sustaining the myth of the rigged 2020 election. So they’ve started telling Republican partisans to forget all that and start voting early. While early and same day voting will likely continue to have a clear partisan split it will be getting smaller over time.
7:37 PM: Race widely called for Andy Beshear now. Not close.