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Trump's Shrinking Map

Politico talked to a number of top officials in Donald Trump's campaign and got a sobering picture from them. They no longer really have the luxury of pursuing blue states that had hoped to snare, like Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, and New Hampshire. The entire focus now is on holding states that Trump won last time. The insiders concede they will lose a couple of Rust Belt States they won last time. If they lose Michigan and Pennsylvania Trump will be at 270 electoral votes, which is enough, but only if he can hold all of Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Arizona, each of which is currently leaning Democratic. Losing a single one of those five states would hand Joe Biden the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

One insider noted that dreams of a landslide victory are gone. It is all about how to cobble together 270 EVs now, especially if the Rust Belt looks shaky. This strategy starts with 260, Trump's total in 2016 minus Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and tries to figure out where the other 10 EVs might come from. New Hampshire plus Nevada would do it, but there are not a lot of other options if the three Rust Belt states are gone.

The campaign's recent mammoth ad spending gives an idea of its priorities. It is very defensive. It is spending big in the Florida panhandle and Georgia, places any Republican should be able to take for granted. Television time worth $95 million has already been reserved for the fall in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Another batch of ads worth $93 million is about to be launched, and they will also include Iowa, Michigan, and New Mexico. Except for New Mexico, which is basically hopeless, all the states targeted are ones Trump won in 2016, so it is a very defensive posture.

Biden doesn't have as much money as Trump, so he will be more cautious about advertising. Currently he is on the air with a $15 million campaign, but only in six states: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In particular, Biden is advertising in Pensacola, FL and Mobile, AL, to reach Obama-to-Trump voters in the Florida Panhandle. This is an area Trump must win big-time to offset expected huge losses in the populous Miami-Dade and Broward Counties of South Florida. Biden is also on the air in Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville. Florida is going to be a huge and expensive battleground.

The six states that Biden is already contesting are likely to be the key to the election. If Trump wins the three biggest ones, Florida (29 EVs), Pennsylvania (20), and Michigan (16), he gets to exactly to 270, which doesn't leave any margin for error. If he wins those three but loses ME-02 and NE-02, Biden wins 270 to 268. (V)

Republicans Are Nervous about Being the Party of White Grievance

Any Republican politicians who thought Donald Trump might change his tune as the campaign heats up were sorely disappointed by his divisive performance at Mt. Rushmore on Friday. It is obvious that he is listening only to his gut rumble and it is telling him the way to victory is ride the train of white grievance politics. There will be no moderation or movement to the center. And this is making other Republican politicians—who know that their fate is tied to his—very nervous.

They realize that this is not the historical moment to be opposing Black Lives Matter and championing statues of Confederate generals who levied war against the United States. Nor is it the moment to oppose renaming military bases that honor traitors. Even the state of Mississippi, which is hardly a bastion of liberalism, has decided that having the Confederate battle flag emblem on its state flag is not tenable anymore. On Capitol Hill, some Republicans are increasingly fretting—in private, to avoid his wrath—that fixating on white racial grievance and culture war issues is not the way to expand his base. Together with his mismanagement of the economy and coronavirus, they fear he is not only endangering himself, but also the Senate majority and may diminish the Republicans' already weak position in the House. Nevertheless, he persisted. And there is nothing they can do about what they see as an upcoming train wreck.

Scott Reed, a veteran Republican operative, is worried about other Republicans' campaigns, saying: "The problem is this is no longer just Trump's Twitter feed. It's expanded to the podium, and that makes it more and more difficult for these campaigns." An outside adviser said: "It's the 2016 campaign all over again, when we had the Muslim ban and the wall, just add Confederate statues." Former Ohio governor John Kasich is none too happy with the Republican politicians who enabled Trump. He said: "They coddled this guy the whole time and now it's like some rats are jumping off of the sinking ship. It's just a little late." Republican pollster Whit Ayres summed up the problem succinctly: "The president's base is locked in. They love him, they're going to turn out and they're going to vote for him. The problem is that the base is not enough to win."

What the politicos are not quite saying out loud, even though they surely know it, is that Trump has to run against something, since that is his bread and butter. Immigrants and Muslims have grown stale as targets after four years, especially since most immigration to the United States is now shut down. That has left Trump to run against...his own countrymen and women. That was really what the Mt. Rushmore speech was about; the president was just subbing in "Black Lives Matter" for "immigrants" and "progressives" for "Muslims." That is a nasty bit of messaging, and is very unlikely to work. (V)

Was the Faustian Bargain the Republicans Made Worth It?

Many Republicans are secretly disgusted by Donald Trump but think it was worth supporting him to get two conservative Supreme Court justices and almost 200 judges on the lower courts. This is the ultimate Faustian bargain: They sold out all their principles on free markets, rule of law, immigration, international cooperation, and more to stack the federal courts for decades to come. But was it worth it?

Maybe not. Of the Trump judges, 143 are district judges, 53 are appellate judges, and 2 are international trade judges. Another 44 judges are in pipeline, but not all are certain of confirmation this year. Suppose Trump gets all of them. Then he would have filled 242 judge positions of the 851 in the federal judiciary. That is 28%. That may be impressive for a single term, but if all Trump gets is a single term, it is not so impressive. Barack Obama got 327 judges confirmed. George W. Bush got 326 confirmed. Bill Clinton got 376 confirmed.

If Joe Biden wins and the Democrats control the Senate, they are likely to expand the federal judiciary quickly and move to get more judges confirmed than Trump. Judges can't be filibustered. Further, by the end of this year, 77 appellate court judges will be 65 or older. At that point they can take senior status and get a reduced workload while creating a full-time vacancy for a new young judge. Judges appointed by a Democratic president who are eligible for senior status are very likely to take it as soon as there is a Democratic president. Some Republican judges may take it, too, for the lower workload at full pay. So, in one term, Biden may be able to neutralize Trump's impact on the federal courts, in which case some Republicans may be sorry they sold out their principles for nothing.

Here is another factor to consider: It is tough for any party to win three consecutive presidential terms. Since World War II, only Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush pulled this off. But it is widely expected that if Biden wins, he will serve only one term. If his veep (or another Democrat) is elected in 2024, there will be an incumbent running in 2028, greatly increasing the likelihood of the Democrats getting three consecutive terms, with all the judicial nominations that might entail.

If Biden is really concerned about the courts, it is even conceivable that in Jan. 2024 he announces that he is no longer up to the job due to his advanced age and resigns as president. This would not only make his veep president, but it would make it very hard for a Democratic challenger to mount a campaign fast enough, with filing deadlines rapidly approaching. It would also allow his veep to run as an incumbent in 2024 and potentially serve two full terms in addition to his final year. So in 10 years, a lot of Republicans could be wondering whether the Faustian bargain they made was worth it. (V)

Biden Has Put Together a Large Legal Team to Deal with Election Trickery

A couple of weeks ago, Joe Biden said that his greatest fear was Donald Trump trying to steal the election. But Biden isn't just waiting around like a sitting duck for the theft to happen. He has assembled a team of 600 lawyers and 10,000 others to try to prevent it. They are being trained now to go to polling places to observe and take action if required.

A key issue is absentee voting. Trump says that it is prone to fraud, but has never produced a shred of evidence showing that to be true. He said that foreign nations could print millions of ballots and send them in. But he conveniently forgets (if he ever knew) that in most mail-in elections, the outer envelope has the voter's registration number and signature, so any such attempt would be easily detected and stopped. In fact, there is a mountain of evidence showing that absentee voting is very safe. Nevertheless, Trump will do everything he can to stop it. This is where the lawyers come in. When Trump and the RNC sue to make voting more difficult, Biden's legal team will be there to defend it. The 10,000 poll watchers will be at key precincts in swing states to make sure local officials follow the law and don't disenfranchise any eligible voter. Among other things, they can inform voters about their legal right to a provisional ballot under certain circumstances and make sure one is offered when needed.

And of course, if Trump challenges the counting process in any state, the lawyers will be there to fight back in court. This could be especially important with absentee ballots that arrive after Election Day. In many states, if they are postmarked by Election Day and arrive within about a week after it, they must be counted. If the race ends up being closer in November than it is now, these legal battles could determine the winner and Biden wants to be ready for them. (V)

Biden Voters Are Afraid

Not afraid of Donald Trump winning (although maybe that, too). They are afraid of getting sick if they vote in person. If they are unable to vote by absentee ballot for any reason, some of them may skip voting, which helps Trump, as his supporters are willing to risk death to vote for him. A recent poll of battleground states showed that 40% of Biden voters would feel uncomfortable voting in person vs. only 6% of Trump voters. Trump undoubtedly knows this, which is why he and his team are making an enormous effort to suppress absentee voting, especially in Texas, which has some of the most restrictive laws in the country.

The voters who are most afraid of voting in person are the groups that have already been hit the hardest by COVID-19: senior, Black, Latino, and/or urban voters. The latter three groups skew strongly Democratic, and seniors seem to be close to 50-50 at the moment, but are trending Democratic.

Most of the Biden voters said that if they really had to, they would go to the polls, but there remained 8% who would refuse (vs. just 2% of Trump voters). A net loss of 6% could be fatal to Biden in many of the swing states.

But push may not come to shove. In most of the swing states, there is no-excuse absentee voting. Any voter who fills out the absentee ballot request form correctly and sends it in on time will get an absentee ballot, with no questions asked. However, many of Biden's supporters have a weak voting record and may not go to the trouble of requesting an absentee ballot, or may not even be aware that they exist and don't require an excuse. Normally, the parties have people in the field knocking on doors on Election Day asking people known to be supporters if they have voted yet. This year the entire GOTV (Get Out The Vote) operation may be turned on its head and may happen weeks before the election.

For pollsters, this asymmetric situation, with Biden voters scared to go to the polls and Trump voters willing to risk life and limb for their man, is going to be a horror. Starting in the fall, they begin trying to figure out who is a likely voter. People may tell them that yes, absolutely, they will vote, but come Nov. 3 after they have heard about possible long lines and lack of social distancing at polling places, they may decide not to do it after all. This could have devastating effects on the accuracy of the polls.

Nevertheless, there is also an upside for pollsters. Since pollsters expect many voters, possibly half or more in some states, to vote absentee, the pollsters' first question is going to be: "Have you already voted?" If the answer is yes, the percentage of undecided voters will abruptly drop to zero for that segment of the electorate. How these two factors (fear of voting vs. already voted) balance out, will be the subject of many studies—after the election. (V)

President West in the West Wing?

To celebrate the release of his new album, Kanye West has decided to run for president. This definitely sets him apart from most musicians. West previously visited Donald Trump in the Oval office in Oct. 2018 and apparently liked the setup, so he wants to move in. West and Trump are good buddies and West supports Trump. Here is a photo from their Oct. 2018 visit together:

Kanye West + Donald Trump

West has threatened to run for president before, but this is the first time he has actually done it. However, before he can start thinking of how he wants to decorate the Oval Office, there are a couple of minor details he has to deal with. Like, for example, getting on the ballot. The deadline for an independent to file has passed in a number of states already and will pass in all the others in September. Getting on the ballot requires collecting thousands of signatures of registered voters, something not so easy with people hesitant to talk to strangers on the street close up. To do that, West would quickly have to hire hundreds of staffers to collect the signatures. With millions of people unemployed, he could probably find people to do the work if he paid them by the hour. If he paid them by the signature, most likely the staffers would just write in fake names and they would all be disqualified later. But to do this he would need an organization that he doesn't have.

Another possible strategy would be to find a minor party that already has a ballot slot and become its nominee. The Libertarian Party and Green Party are the biggest small parties, but they already have nominees, Jo Jorgensen and Howie Hawkins, respectively. The Constitution Party is running Don Blankenship, a former coal baron. It's on the ballot in a handful of states and got 0.1% of the popular vote in 2016. There might be a really small party that is on the ballot in a couple of states. However, many of the other small parties are fairly ideological and might not be interested in running a Trump supporter because they have their own agenda. The only other option for West is to run as a write-in candidate. One has to admit, "West" is easier to spell than "Murkowski," so it might work.

Why he is doing this is anyone's guess. How about: "Getting some PR for his new album?" Alternatively, it is possible that he thinks he can help Trump by getting some of his fans to vote for him because he is so cool, thus depriving Joe Biden of their votes. But doing that would require actually running an actual campaign so that this weekend's news bump isn't forgotten by November. West has plenty of money, but does he really want to spend millions of dollars and maybe get 0.3% of the vote? It's not obvious that he would actually do much damage to Biden, either. In an April poll, just 9% of Black adults and 13% of Democrats had a favorable opinion of West. In contrast, 20% of white adults and 34% of Republicans had a positive view of him, so he might draw equally from both parties. But unless he gets on the ballot, Kanyemania will be all over by November and he won't get more than a smattering of write-in votes. (V)

Bookies Are Betting on Biden

Political betting is legal in the U.K. and Ireland, and bookies are taking bets on the presidential race. Until fairly recently, bettors thought Trump would win, but that has turned around. At PaddyPower, an Irish bookie, the odds give an implied probability of 0.65 that Biden will win and 0.44 that Trump will win. The numbers don't add up to 1.00 due to the bookie's take (the vig).

At William Hill, a British bookie, Biden doesn't do so well, with an implied probability of 0.58 of winning. Trump is at 0.44 there.

Both companies are taking bets on Kanye West as well. PaddyPower puts him at 200/1 odds and William Hill has West at 50/1 if you want to throw your money away. (V)

What Is the Next Big Threat?

While the exact nature of the pandemic wasn't known in advance, experts have known for decades that a pandemic could happen. In fact, every year the intelligence community normally issues a public Worldwide Threat Assessment report detailing some bad stuff that could happen. This year the report was canceled because intelligence officials were afraid it would displease Donald Trump. After all, if they predicted in public that X could happen, and then X indeed happened, Trump couldn't say: "Nobody could have seen this coming."

Canceling the report doesn't eliminate the threats, though. Furthermore, these are all long-term threats, so the current threats largely overlap with ones cited in the 2019 report, which was published on schedule by then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. Based on previous reports, but updated for recent developments, Politico has put together a list of eight global threats that could test the U.S. president and other world leaders severely in the coming years and decades. One can even imagine a campaign ad featuring each disaster, with the tag line: "If this were to happen, who would you want sitting in the Oval Office to deal with it?" Here is Politico's list:

  1. The globalization of white supremacy: You may possibly think "terrorism" means ISIS fighters and suicide bombers, but national security officials see white nationalist violence is the big threat here. The State Dept. has even labeled one white supremacist group, the Russian Imperial Movement, as a terrorist group, because it is training people to carry out terrorist attacks, like the bombings it did in Gothenberg in 2016 and 2017. Racially motivated mass shootings are on the rise in many countries. Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil was Timothy McVeigh's bombing in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people. It used to be that potential mass murderers hunkered down in their mom's basement, alone, but the Internet allows potential terrorists to exchange tips on explosives, weapons, and tactics. Donald Trump's egging on people with racial grievances only makes the situation worse.

  2. Attacks on trust and truth: The Russian interference in the 2016 election could become the new normal, with foreign governments routinely sowing distrust and disinformation everywhere so that people simply don't trust anything they watch, hear or see. This makes it easier for them to manipulate elections and more, then deny it, and have people not believe even hard facts about what happened. All of this could result in chaos in society, which is the desired goal of the perpetrators. And it could be much broader than elections. Imagine a foreign government penetrating a major bank and moving money around randomly but keeping the total the same so the books balance. Some people would discover thousands of dollars suddenly appearing in their accounts and others would find those amounts missing. No one would trust the banks anymore and we might suddenly be back to a barter economy. The stock market would certainly crash if records of who owned which stocks couldn't be trusted. Distrust could go exponential as AI makes it easier to produce deepfakes. Not sure what that is? Watch this short video. It's going to get far worse.

  3. Biosecurity: This covers mass biological events, including natural events (like COVID-19), lab accidents, bioterrorism, and full-blown state-sponsored biological warfare. The first one has been around ever since the occupants of the Garden of Eden left it, but the second one is more recent. For example, in 1979 anthrax leaked from a research lab in Sverdlovsk, Russia, killing 100 people. Advancing technology makes the third one more of a threat than it used to be. In 1995, for example, a Japanese cult released sarin gas into the Tokyo subway, killing 12 and injuring a thousand. If it weren't for a small mistake they made, it would have been much worse. In 2016, two virologists synthesized an extinct strain of horsepox, which is 99% the same as smallpox, on a budget of $100,000. That's the destructive power of a hydrogen bomb for $100K. So far, we haven't seen biological warfare, but a number of countries are capable of it.

  4. Massive technological disruption: State actors or terrorists could knock out power grids, GPS satellites, stock trading systems, national and international banking systems and much more, wreaking havoc on everyday life. Just imagine electricity going out for a month in midwinter. To some extent, governments and power companies can prepare for some of this by having spare transformers around and redundant infrastructure, but that costs money and the people with the power to make decisions about it have to think it is a good use of resources.

  5. Nukes: The possibility of nuclear war is still a real threat and the possibility that a terrorist group gets a hold of a loose nuke in North Korea or Pakistan can't be discounted. What would Donald Trump do it if the CIA told him a terrorist group had acquired a nuclear weapon and was planning to drive it to Mar-a-Lago in a truck and set it off, obliterating all of South Florida? A country is much less likely to try something like that because it has a return address, but a terrorist group doesn't have that constraint. That said, a madman running a starving country might get desperate. If North Korea nuked South Korea or Japan, would the U.S. nuke North Korea, knowing that China would treat the resulting radioactive fallout as an attack on China?

  6. Climate change: Hurricanes, uncontrollable wildfires, and droughts could wreak havoc all over the world. Rising sea levels could threaten 600 million people who live at sea level. What if they couldn't grow enough food to feed their populations? Might they not be inclined to try to grab their neighbors' food? There could be wars over natural resources and hundreds of millions of refugees all desperate to find dry land. You think we have an immigration problem now? Just wait.

  7. The ripple effects of COVID-19: There could be a years-long depression as a result of COVID-19. China and Russia might adopt draconian measures to get the virus under control (ordering the police to shoot on sight anyone not wearing a mask outside, for example, might improve compliance) and people in the U.S. might come to regard those systems as better than democracy, where people can refuse to wear masks because they "have the right not to." What if the net result is that China becomes the next superpower and most innovation occurs in Shanghai and Beijing for decades. As a simple current example, suppose that ultimately the world's 5G infrastructure is provided by Huawei, which then captures all the phone calls, text messages, emails, and Internet activity from the entire world and sends them off to a massive Chinese datacenter that makes the NSA drool with envy? Can democracy even survive in a world with China as the leading superpower?

  8. Catastrophic earthquakes: Suppose the "big one" finally happens along the San Andreas fault and this sets off an equally big earthquake along in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, wiping out much of the roads, electricity, water, sewers, and more along the entire Pacific Coast. Or undersea earthquakes could lead to a devastating tsunami a thousand miles wide with 15 minutes warning. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was probably 8 miles wide. What if a bigger one hits?

And these are just the known unknowns. There may be unknown unknowns as well. Have a nice day. (V)

Tommy Tuberville Isn't Quite in the Senate Yet

Polls have shown former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville leading Jeff Sessions for the Republican senatorial nomination in Alabama. Most pundits think that if he wins, he will obliterate Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) in football-crazy Alabama. Maybe so, but they also thought that Roy Moore would do likewise in the 2017 special election that Jones won. And now, The New York Times has dug up a few nuggets that could give Tuberville a few problems.

Per the Times, after he left Auburn Tuberville entered into a 50-50 financial partnership with a former Lehman Brothers stockbroker named John David Stroud. Together they set up a hedge fund, TS Capital Management. It was a fraud and Stroud was sentenced to 10 years in prison for it. Tuberville escaped but was sued by investors for fraud and violating his fiduciary duty. He settled (privately) with them in 2013. Given a choice between a child molester and a Democrat in 2017, the good people of Alabama (barely) chose the Democrat. Suppose the choice this time is between a crook and a Democrat?

Tuberville met Stroud in 2008 and was impressed by him, but never checked him out. He didn't even do a Google search on him. Still, they formed a partnership. It went fine until 2011, when Tuberville got a call from the fund's COO, Baron Lowe, telling him that Stroud wasn't paying his bills. That was the first sign of trouble. It got worse fast. It appears Stroud was running a Ponzi scheme. In March 2012, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a complaint against Stroud saying that he had defrauded nearly $5 million from investors in his own fund and the joint one with Tuberville. Also, he stole $2.3 million from them for personal use. He covered it up with false accounting statements. Stroud pleaded guilty to felony fraud a year later and went to prison. Stroud's former lawyer told the Times that Stroud was the mastermind but Tuberville knew what was going on. Tuberville's lawyer said: "It was bad judgment in that he got in bed with a guy who was a crook. Being naive is not a crime." According to one insider, Tuberville's losses, all in, were in the neighborhood of $2.5 million, including legal fees.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the resulting lawsuit against Tuberville said it was ironic that one of the escorts Stroud frequented did more due diligence on Stroud than Tuberville, refusing to provide services to him until she got the information she wanted.

It is entirely possible that Tuberville is simply really stupid and not crooked, but if Jones wants to play hardball, he could run ads saying that Tuberville was cofounder of a firm that duped investors out of millions of dollars. That is beyond a doubt. The question is thus: "Is he too crooked to be a senator or too stupid to be a senator?" If people start seeing Tuberville as someone who took part in a Ponzi scheme, that could certainly tar his image. Also, Tuberville lives and votes in Florida now. Jones' problem is that he not likely to have any money to advertise because the DSCC is going to say to him: "Doug, you did a good job and we feel for you, but we have a very real chance of picking up Senate seats in Iowa, Montana, and North Carolina if we put lots of money in those races, so you are on your own. Good luck." (V)

Crystal Ball: 14 House Races Are Toss-ups

While the races for the White House and Senate get most of the publicity, 435 House seats are also up in November, as usual. Democrats are favored to retain control of the lower chamber, but in a blue wave they could even pick up some seats. Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball has changed its ratings on 11 House races, with 10 of them moving toward the Democrats and one moving toward the Republicans. The oracle there has 14 House races as toss-ups. Republicans are defending five of them and Democrats are defending nine of them. The toss-ups are:

District Incumbent Party PVI
CA-25 Mike Garcia Republican Even
GA-07 Open Republican R+9
IA-01 Abby Finkenauer Democratic D+1
IA-02 Open Democratic D+1
IN-05 Open Republican R+9
ME-02 Jared Golden Democratic R+2
MN-07 Collin Peterson Democratic R+12
NM-02 Xochitl Torres Small Democratic R+6
NY-11 Max Rose Democratic R+3
NY-22 Anthony Brindisi Democratic R+6
OK-05 Kendra Horn Democratic R+10
SC-01 Joe Cunningham Democratic R+10
TX-22 Open Republican R+10
TX-24 Open Republican R+9

What's interesting here is that 11 (deep) red districts are in play. That's not a great sign for the GOP. In addition, 20 other districts only lean Republican, which means that in a blue wave, some of them could flip too, especially the four open seats. One other district is of note: TX-23. That is the R+1 district Will Hurd (R) is vacating. The Crystal Ball rates it "lean Democratic." The Democrats have 17 districts with a Democratic incumbent that are also rated "lean Democratic," but in a blue wave they are all safe. So between the five Republican toss-ups and the four open seats in "lean Republican" districts, in a good year, the Democrats could hang onto to all their own seats and pick up another nine. Things would have to change fairly radically to give the Republicans much of a chance to take over the House. (V)


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