All About the Pretext
A few thoughts on Election Day.
First, we’ll have referenda today on both President Donald Trump and on the polling industry. Going into 2024, there were a few outliers, like Iowa’s Selzer poll, that were giving Democrats false hope. Now, nearly everything that is coming out is showing a good night for Democrats. Scarred by a decade of unpleasant surprises, Democrats don’t want to trust that overall impression. They may be right, but, if they are, it’ll be time for the polling industry to take a hard look at how it’s been doing things in a more online, more atomized, more reactionary and more distrustful time.
Second, as David Kurtz writes this morning, the Trump administration has been facing a cascade of defeats in court. Especially notable to me is the Supreme Court’s rejection yesterday, without comment or any noted dissents, of the administration’s appeals in its effort to mess with California’s election, claiming some 20,000 possible noncitizen voters. Here’s what David had to say about that:
The Supreme Court — in a move for which legal experts could not immediately recall a precedent — unceremoniously smacked down a request from Trump Solicitor General D. John Sauer before it even heard from the opposing side. Sauer was seeking a Supreme Court order for California to sequester and not yet count mail-in ballots from a dubious list of 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters. The Trump DOJ had already lost in the same case twice at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and once at the district court.
[…]
Justice Kagan referred the solicitor general’s transparently insufficient application for an injunction pending appeal to the full Supreme Court, which didn’t even ask for a response from the other side before rejecting it, with no dissents. The refusal by the six-justice conservative majority to entertain the latest bad-faith nonsense from the Trump DOJ captured the tone of the day.
(The Supreme Court also sent a clear message in September on Trump’s plan to take over mail-in voting via the Postal Service, continuing to show that, while it will imbue Trump with king-like powers, there are some schemes John Roberts’ conservative majority is not ready to rubber stamp.)
As cheering as the Trump administration’s brutal loss record is amid its assault on democracy, it’s worth remembering that during the 2020 election-theft attempt, Trump’s allies filed 60-some lawsuits challenging the results. They won only once, and that win was overturned by a higher court. Still, they built a movement around their claims of mass fraud.
The court filings were key evidence for Trump-aligned conspiracy theorists. The fact that wild claims were touted by lawyers, before a judge, apparently made it all seem official. That judges soon dismissed these lawsuits — for lack of standing, lack of evidence, or other flaws — was little noticed and, when it was, was evidence of the grand conspiracy against Trump. This whole operation to disseminate disinfo via the courts was not accidental; it was an explicit strategy. Emails among Trump’s lawyers reviewed by TPM showed an effort to get as many states contested in court as possible in order to give legislators something to point to on Jan. 6 when they objected to various swing states’ slates of electors.
My message here is not that even when Trump’s opponents win they lose. The media is rife with this kind of doomerism. I’m saying something different: With this administration, we should expect Trump’s fight to continue after Election Day, using lawsuits — even and perhaps especially the ones the administration just lost — as evidence that something has gone awry, something isn’t right. As Mike Rothschild, who writes about conspiracy theories for TPM, recently observed, the Trump fans that still remain in his movement don’t seem very interested these days in boosting his efforts to create new, conspiratorial mythologies. In defeat, that might change. MAGA loves to be the loser and the victim; it has less idea how to use power when it achieves it. So, for better or worse, it’ll be important for us — journalists, and the rest of us too — to remain vigilant in the months ahead, if the polls are right and Democrats bruise the reactionary ego tonight.
As I wrote yesterday, we can already see a kind of Jan. 6 2.0 taking form in an effort not to seat Alaska’s Mary Peltola if she wins. The stakes are lower than 2020’s presidential election, though they’re still quite high. We’ll follow that closely at TPM, and whatever else Trump’s allies manage to cook up.
A Weird Closing Message
- As you no-doubt saw, President Donald Trump delivered his closing message in front of a small audience of what appeared to be government employees at the reflecting pool. He spoke mostly about the mechanics of how the reflecting pool operates, touching on such topics as pipes and algae.
- A representative quote, from Hunter Walker’s write up of the event: “This is a massive piece of — piece of pool. There’s never been anything like — when you look at the side — it’s the biggest anywhere in the world by far and was treated with a lot of love.”
- JD Vance and Don Jr. hit the campaign trail with a series of interesting remarks. In upstate New York, JD Vance called the Democratic candidate, Blake Gendebien, an “asshole” and a “lunatic.” “It is unbecoming for the office, but he can call me whatever he wants to, because I’m focused on what really matters to families in the North Country,” Gendebien told TPM.
- In Ohio, Don Jr. warned, curiously, that Democrats, if they win, will “make Ohio a state.”
- JD Vance offered a too-on-the-nose caricature of the Trump administration’s cynical racism this election cycle, warning Ohio voters that, “there are illegal communities of illegal immigrant Somalis who are coordinating to flood the polls and drown out your vote.” The only way to stop these marauding hordes was for Ohio Republicans to also vote.
Tabs
- Layla A. Jones scooped for TPM that a group of senators is opposing the recent Census Bureau proposed rule that would dramatically reshape how political power is apportioned in America. Among the group is a Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski.
- Madeline Peltz chronicles a humorous reality for TPM: A group of influencers who want to strip women of the right to vote are backpedaling, somewhat. They want the women in their life to make sure they vote, and to vote Republican, at least in the midterms.
Man of the Hour
President Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg News that if Democrats win control of a chamber of Congress and attempt to investigate Elon Musk, Trump will offer him a pardon. Its a stark turnaround in the relationship between the two men, after Musk, upon his exit from government, relentlessly attacked Trump over Jeffrey Epstein.
In sum, based on recent past history, I take it that we expect MAGA and Republicans to remain wholesale weird.
Within their expansive weirdness, I guess the real question is will they become even more weird, or revert to the mean, and become a little less weird.