Trump Tries to Blackmail Raffensperger

On Saturday, Donald Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) and spoke with him for an hour. Somehow, The Washington Post obtained a recording of the call, which it promptly posted on its website. It is our best guess that it wasn't Trump who recorded the call and then gave it to the Post. It was thus either Raffensperger (or someone close to him), or maybe the Phone Fairy.

During the call, Trump alternately pleaded with and threatened Raffensperger that he better find another 11,780 votes for him, or else. Trump told the Secretary that not doing so was taking a big risk. He also told Raffensperger that there was nothing wrong with saying that he made a new calculation with new totals. Actually, there is a lot wrong with that, since Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) has already certified Georgia's electoral votes and sent the results to the Archivist of the United States, as required by federal law.

Raffensperger didn't budge. Among other things, he said: "Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong." Actually, he should have said: "the data you have are wrong," but when the President of the United States is busy trying to blackmail you, you can sometimes make small grammatical errors. Presumably Raffensperger knew the call was being recorded and may have known that the media would soon get it, so he refused to concede anything to Trump. He stood his ground completely.

Trump also told Raffensperger that failure to act by tomorrow would jeopardize the political fortunes of Sens. David Perdue (R-GA) and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA). Actually, it is Trump's insistence that he won that is giving them headaches. If he were to say: "We need a Republican Senate to prevent President-elect Biden from turning America into Venezuela," he would have made it much easier for them.

The call does give some insight into Trump's state of mind. He is desperate and grasping at straws to try to yet win the election. Up until now, we thought that he realized that he had lost and his main focus was to squeeze the rubes for all they are worth in order to build up a giant multimillion-dollar slush fund for use in 2022 and 2024. But maybe he really is living in an alternative reality.

Yesterday, Trump tweeted that he had spoken to Raffensperger and that the Secretary was unwilling or unable to answer questions about ballots under the table, ballot destruction, out-of-state voters, dead voters, and more. Raffensperger responded with his own tweet: "Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true."

Whether making the call could be considered blackmail (and thus a crime) would be a matter of prosecutorial discretion. There is also the matter that solicitation of election fraud is both a federal and a state crime. Trump was careful enough with his phrasing to make prosecution difficult, much in the manner of a mobster saying to someone: "Nice house you have here." If that remark were to come up at a trial, the mobster could say he just wanted to compliment the owner on his beautiful house. In other words, plausible deniability. So, prosecution of Trump seems unlikely.

However, criticism is not unlikely. It is already pouring in. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) called it "absolutely appalling." Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) described the call as "among the most despicable abuses of power of his long list, possibly criminal, morally repugnant, virulently undemocratic and dangerous to our democracy."

And the call to Raffensperger wasn't the only one in Trump's campaign to reverse the election. He also made a conference call to 300 state legislators from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on Saturday, urging them to demand a vote decertifying the election results in their states. (V)

2020 Is not 1876

As we pointed out yesterday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and his band of merry men (and women) are planning to challenge the electoral votes when they are counted on Wednesday because, well, they don't like the results. Apparently he found a little-noted clause in the Constitution that says members of Congress can challenge the election results if they don't like the person who won. It's so little-noted, in fact, that we can't find it, try as we may. We'll have to put the research staff on it.

In particular, what Cruz wants is to create an electoral commission to study the alleged problem and report back to Congress. There is even a prototype: the disputed 1876 election between Rutherford B. Hayes (R) and Samuel Tilden (D). That election was a mess. Tilden won the popular vote by 3 points but the electoral votes of four states were disputed. Among other irregularities were Democrats (then the party of the former slave owners) terrorizing Black voters (who were then all Republicans because Lincoln freed the slaves) in three states in the South, along with one ineligible elector in Oregon. The story has more twists and turns than any political potboiler and ended up with Hayes being elected president 185 EVs to 184.

The Washington Post has a piece comparing the 2020 election to the 1876 election, one that points out that they are completely different and that a commission makes no sense this time. Here are the main points:

• The analogy isn't even close: There really was a legitimate dispute in 1876. Democrats in the South really did illegally disenfranchise thousands of Black voters. If this hadn't happened, Hayes clearly would have won. Nothing like this happened in 2020. The courts have reviewed all of Trump's claims over and over and rejected them all.
  
  
• Congress was deadlocked then: In 1876, the Senate backed Hayes and the House backed Tilden. When it comes to a vote this time, both chambers will back Biden. The Democrats have a majority in the House. They only have 48 seats in the Senate, but there are already more than three Republican senators who have said that Biden won, so when a vote is taken in the Senate, the Senate will back Biden. With both chambers backing the same candidate, no commission is needed to break the deadlock.
  
  
• Powers of the commission: Cruz said that the commission should have full power to investigate the state returns, as in 1876. But then the commission had no such power because Congress itself didn't have such a power and it did not want to create a commission that had powers it itself did not have. The commission ultimately did not investigate how the states conducted their elections.
  
  
• The law is different now: One of the byproducts of the 1876 battle was that Congress eventually passed a law dealing with future disputes. That law rejected the use of commissions to resolve disputes and stated that Congress itself must resolve them. If Congress wants to repeal that law and pass a new one, good luck on getting it done by Wednesday, especially since there is zero chance the House and Senate will agree on a new law until after Jan. 20, and probably not then unless the Democrats win both Georgia runoffs.
  
  
• No new electors: Cruz proposed that after the commission issues its report, states could change their electoral votes. This is ironic, because the 1876 commission ruled that since the Constitution specifically requires all the electors to vote on the same day, no state could change its electoral vote after the initial vote. In the present case, all the electors voted on Dec. 14 and that's final. There are no mulligans in the Electoral College.

Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton with a degree in public policy. Then he went to Harvard Law School and got his J.D. magna cum laude. After graduation, he clerked for then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist. He is not stupid. He knows perfectly well that what he is doing is a complete violation of the Constitution. But when you are running for president, as he is, who cares about the Constitution? It's old and musty. Winning favor with the base clearly trumps everything else.

Cruz's plan took another hit yesterday when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of Trump's strongest supporters, described it by saying: "Proposing a commission at this late date—which has zero chance of becoming reality—is not effectively fighting for President Trump. It appears to be more of a political dodge than an effective remedy." It sounds like even Graham is not going to vote to support Cruz's plan when it comes up for a vote. Republican Sens. Mitt Romney (UT), Pat Toomey (PA), Ben Sasse (NE) were already on record against it. Yesterday Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) joined them, so along with the 48 Democrats, there is a clear majority to shoot down the plan.

Over on the other side of the Capitol, there wasn't much pushback to ending democracy. Most of the House Republican caucus seems fine with upending an election that didn't go their way. Former speaker Paul Ryan excoriated House Republicans for their anti-democratic and anti-conservative plan, but he's history. The current Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) egged the rebels on. (V)

Former Secretaries of Defense: The Election Is Over

The United States has never seen anything quite like this before, presumably because it's never been necessary. On Sunday, The Washington Post published a letter signed by every single living Secretary of Defense. It says:

Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted. The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived.

The signatories also express their serious concerns with talk of invoking martial law, or otherwise using military force to overturn the result.

The living secretaries are Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Mark Esper, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld. With the exception of Panetta and Carter, all are either themselves Republicans, or else served under Republican presidents, or both. So, it gets harder every day to argue that Joe Biden's win is just a lie perpetrated by the Democrats and their allies in the media. (Z)

Congress Convenes

The 117th Congress convened yesterday at noon with plenty of drama. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has the barest of majorities and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has completely lost control of his caucus. Oh, and with COVID-19 running rampant, neither chamber could assemble in full and conduct business normally. Even the traditional swearing-in ceremony took place in the shadow of the virus, with House members allowed to bring only one guest each, and three members quarantined in a plastic cage in the visitors gallery. Most members obeyed House rules requiring them to wear a mask on the floor of the House, but Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a QAnon supporter, refused to wear one, citing her personal freedom to violate any House rule she doesn't like.

Pelosi was elected speaker by a vote of 216 to 209 over Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), with five Democrats not voting for her. The latter group included Reps. Jared Golden (ME, who voted for Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-IL); Conor Lamb (PA, who voted for Hakeem Jeffries); and Reps. Abigail Spanberger (VA), Elissa Slotkin (MI), and Mikie Sherrill (NJ), who voted "present." Golden's vote was actually valid since the speaker need not be a member of the House, or even an American.

Once Joe Biden is sworn in just over 2 weeks from now, it will be Pelosi's job to shepherd his legislative program through the House. She will have the barest majority in 20 years, with only 222 members. If five members defect on any bill, it will go down should every Republican oppose it, which is likely, since Republicans have taken to heart Winston Churchill's famous (alleged) remark that "the job of the opposition is to oppose." Also important is that three House Democrats—Reps. Cedric Richmond (LA), Marcia Fudge (OH), and Deb Haaland (NM)—will be leaving the House for positions in the Biden administration. They are all likely to be replaced by other Democrats in special elections, but that won't be for months, leaving Pelosi virtually no margin for error until the late spring.

The situation over in the Senate is even more precarious. Mitch McConnell has lost control of his caucus and may lose his job as majority leader, depending on what happens in Georgia. In any event, his caucus is now in open warfare and the path forward is anything but clear. Will his party follow Donald Trump wherever he leads or will it follow the ghost of Ronald Reagan? The Trumpsters who would like to get the Republican nomination are going to follow Dear Leader, but more traditional Republicans will oppose them mightily. Pat Toomey said that Cruz's effort to change the election results "directly undermines Americans' right to choose their leaders and would disenfranchise millions of voters in my state and others." Not real friendly. Mitt Romney called Cruz's plan "an egregious ploy that dangerously threatens our Democratic Republic." Are those folks going to get together after Jan. 20, hold hands, and sing "Kumbaya"? We have our doubts. (V)

Trump Calls the Georgia Senate Races "Illegal and Invalid"

We're not psychologists, but our guess is that telling people an election is illegal and invalid is probably not in the top three ways to motivate them to vote in it. Yet in a series of tweets Friday evening, that is precisely what Donald Trump did. Go figure.

Trump will get a chance to explain himself to Georgia voters today as he will hold a rally in Dalton, GA (pop. 32,000), in the rural northwest part of the state, a heavily Republican area. It is 32 miles southeast of Chattanooga, TN, which is far enough away that it isn't really suburban Chattanooga. The city calls itself the "carpet capital of the world," with 150 factories churning out the floor coverings. Here is where it is located:

Trump's goal is undoubtedly to whip the crowd into a frenzy. But it also matters how he whips them into a frenzy. If he whips them into a frenzy by telling him that if the Democrats win the two Georgia runoffs, they will take away your guns, force your wife to have an abortion, and turn the country into a socialist sh*thole, that is one thing. But if he claims the November election was crooked, this week's election will be crooked, and voting is pointless, that is something else. With Trump, you never know how long he can stay on message. What is needed is to have him use a Teleprompter and have Stephen Miller put a shock collar around his neck and give him a shock whenever he veers from the prepared text.

For what it is worth, here are the polling data for both Senate elections:

As we have said for weeks, everything depends on turnout. Early voting has now ended. A record 3 million Georgians voted early including both absentee votes and in-person votes. This smashes the previous record of 2.1 million total votes in a runoff. The total vote in November in Georgia was 4,999,960, so over 60% of that number of votes have already been cast in the runoffs. A study by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows that voting has been heavy in areas that lean Democratic. It has been sluggish in northwest Georgia, which is undoubtedly why Trump's advisers told him to hold his rally there. Black voters so far have made up a higher percentage of the electorate in the early runoff voting (31%) than in November (27%). White voters are also turning out, with 56% of the early votes from whites, even though they are only 53% of registered voters.

There is one big clue about how the early vote went. Although Georgia does not register voters by party, it does require them to choose a Democratic or Republican ballot for primaries, like the one the state held in June. A bit of cross-matching between the two lists allows us to figure out that 44% of the people who already cast a ballot in the runoffs did not vote in June at all, 32% requested a Democratic ballot in June, and only 23% requested a Republican ballot in June.

That means that if the 44% of voters who skipped the primary break evenly, the Democrats are ahead so far, roughly 54% (1.62 million votes) to 45% (1.35 million), giving them a cushion of about 270,000 votes. However, given that there has been a big push to sign up young voters and Black voters in the past few months, it's very probable that the 44% who skipped the primary actually broke Democratic. Indeed, it would not be outlandish to guess that the early vote actually went for the Democrats by a margin of roughly 60% to 40%. If so, then the blue team would have 1.8 million votes to the Republicans' 1.2 million, for a cushion of 600,000. In any case, the Democrats are undoubtedly ahead thus far, and we will see another blue shift on Wednesday or Thursday because counting the early votes doesn't even start until the polls close at 7 p.m.

The key, then, will be how many Republicans show up to vote in person. It is difficult to predict what will happen. We will go out on a limb though and predict that win or lose, Raphael Warnock will do better than Jon Ossoff. With so much riding on these two races, we would logically expect high turnout from both parties, but if one of them does slightly better than the other, it is possible that Republicans could end up with control of the Senate by the narrowest of margins, 51-49. (V & Z)

Warnock Is Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The race between David Perdue and Jon Ossoff is regular, in more ways than one. And the race between Kelly Loeffler and Raphael Warnock is special in more ways than one. Loeffler has been running vicious ads demonizing Warnock as being anti-white, opposing cops and the military, obstructing child-abuse investigations, and being a phony denounced by his ex-wife. Has he hit back? Nope. Not a word. He just says that he likes policy and puppies. How come Ossoff is openly calling Perdue a crook to his face and on the air, and all Warnock can come up with is "I love puppies!"?

I told you the smear ads were coming, but Georgians will see Sen. @Kloeffler's ads for what they are. pic.twitter.com/0sgU8ndC63

— Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) November 24, 2020

Can't figure it out? You're clearly not from the South. What happens when an "uppity" Black man who is too big for his britches goes after a rich blonde white woman? Not pretty. Everyone in the state—especially Warnock—is well aware that being seen as an angry Black man who is acting aggressively to a white woman is absolutely not where he wants to be. Warnock also knows that no Black Democrat from the South has ever been elected to the Senate, not even Jaime Harrison, who raised well over $100 million in his campaign in South Carolina (Blanche K. Bruce, Hiram Revels, and Tim Scott were/are all Republicans). So Warnock feels he can't fight back the way Ossoff can.

However, Warnock is not in it alone. Ossoff recently hit Loeffler for running with a Klansman, based on a photo of her together with a former KKK leader. He can get away with that because white men are allowed to attack white women in a way Black men are not. That's just how the South is. A letter penned by Atlanta-based Rev. Darryl Winston telling Loeffler to cut it out was signed by 100 religious leaders. So Warnock has to depend on his friends for help.

But Loeffler took a gamble when she started calling Warnock "anti-white." That might resonate in rural parts of the state with Republican voters, but it is not going to go over nearly as well with those much-desired suburban housewives. It's not quite yelling "N***** N***** N*****" but it comes close and that won't go over well in the suburbs.

Basically, Warnock's whole pitch is that he is not dangerous. Black voters are already overwhelmingly in the bag for him. Now his job is to convince whites that he is a safe choice and not controversial. Hence the emphasis on "I love puppies." (V)

The Homes of McConnell and Pelosi Have Been Vandalized

Someone scrawled: "Were's [sic] my money?" on the front door of Mitch McConnell's house in Louisville, KY. That is apparently a reference to the $2,000 stimulus payment that Donald Trump called for and McConnell killed. Louisville police said that they don't have a suspect, since "person who doesn't like Mitch McConnell" doesn't really narrow it down too much. Here's what it looked like:

Something similar happened in San Francisco. Vandals scrawled graffiti on the garage door of Nancy Pelosi. They also left a pig's head in front of her house. Clearly it wasn't the Mafia, since they generally prefer horses' heads as their communication medium. It is not known if the same team perpetrated both acts. While McConnell definitely deserves the blame for killing the $2,000 stimulus, since it would have passed had it come to a vote, Pelosi supported it and got the House to approve it.

Maybe these were isolated (and potentially independent) acts by people who are just angry and blame "Washington," without any recognition of who is responsible for what. That said, it is a sign that the divide in the country is moving from words to actions. Violent confrontation could be the next step. (V)

Mississippi Has the Largest Percentage of Black Voters, But Is One of the Worst States for Democrats

There is the Old South and the New South. Some southern states are changing rapidly, especially Georgia and North Carolina, and to a lesser extent Texas. They are growing through in-migration, and the new residents tend to be well educated and are moving to big cities. They are bringing their liberal political views with them. This is making those states more Democratic. Joe Biden won Georgia, and he lost North Carolina by only 1.4%. Another cycle or two and Georgia and North Carolina will definitely be purple, maybe even a bluish purple, and Texas will be getting close. They are part of the new South, which is dynamic, forwarding looking, and growing economically.

On the other hand, the epitome of the Old South is Mississippi. Geographically, it is only 210 miles from Columbus, GA, to Columbus, MS, as the crow flies, but it is a million miles away politically. Although Mississippi has the largest percentage of Black residents of any state in the country (38%), and virtually every one of them is a Democrat, it is just about impossible for a Democrat to win statewide election there, and it is not getting any better over time. All it would take is for 20% of the white voters to vote for the Democrat for him or her to win, but in the recent Senate election, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (W) beat Mike Espy (B) by 10 points. Espy got only 44% of the vote, which suggests that he got about 10% of the white vote. Contrast that with the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race, in which Stacey Abrams got 49% of the vote, even though Black voters make up only 30% of the electorate in Georgia. In other words, Mississippi basically has two parties: the White Party (sometimes called Republicans) and the Black Party (sometimes called Democrats). That isn't likely to change any time soon.

The reason Georgia and North Carolina are so different from Mississippi is that the two New South states have booming and growing metropolitan areas that are attracting new businesses and new people. Georgia has Atlanta, and to a lesser extent, Savannah. North Carolina has the fast-growing cities of Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham.

In contrast, Mississippi has nothing. The biggest city there (and the state capital) is Jackson (pop. 166,000), which would rank as the eighth biggest city in North Carolina. Mississippi's #2, Gulfport (pop. 72,000), would rank 15th in North Carolina. It is an extremely rural state and rural voters are heavily Republican. Mississippi is not only not growing, it is shrinking. It has lost population in the past 2 years. In contrast, Georgia is one of the fastest growing states in the country, which is why it is trending purple.

It is also true that the Democrats have become an urban party, so much so that they have almost no chance of winning statewide in states like Mississippi that have no substantial cities. Democrats are also doing well in suburbs, but without any cities, there aren't a lot of suburbs. Actually, Mississippi has one suburban county, DeSoto, in the northwestern part of the state. It is a suburb of Memphis, which, of course, is in Tennessee, a different state. It is also the most affluent county in the state, with a median family income of $66,000, just a tad above the national median. But even there, Espy lost, because the county is 70% white. Until Democrats start to do better with white voters, they don't have a prayer, even in a state where 38% of the population would never even think of voting for a Republican. (V)

Another Big 2021 Election: Mayor of New York City

Political junkies looking for an election high may be disappointed in 2021. Yes, there are gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, but Democrats are overwhelming favorites to win both, so not much excitement there (although the Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary could be fun). However, there is a local race that is both important and will be full of fireworks: The race to succeed term-limited New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The city is in a crisis. Over 25,000 New Yorkers have died from COVID-19. The unemployment rate is 12%. There will be mass evictions starting in April. The budget gap is in the billions. Gun violence is surging. Over 300,000 residents have left the city. Over 80,000 small businesses have failed. Who would want to run such a city? Well, 32 candidates have already filed the paperwork to run in the June Democratic primary. The winner is virtually certain to inherit all of these problems on Jan. 1, 2022, when De Blasio leaves Gracie Mansion. No Republican has been elected mayor of New York since Rudy Giuliani's second election, in 1997. At least, not one who stayed Republican. Michael Bloomberg was a member of the GOP at the start of his term, but reregistered as an independent prior to his second re-election campaign.

Among the frontrunners is Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams, who is Black. He was a NYPD officer for 22 years before entering politics. He decided to join the police because he was beaten by a policeman when he was 15, and wanted to change the department from within. He does not want to defund the police, but he does want it to become more proactive and focus on preventing crime rather than simply waiting for it to happen and then springing into action. He also will have a zero tolerance approach to abusive officers. He opposes the city's new ranked-choice voting system. He has connections, will appeal to law enforcement, and will get votes in the outer boroughs.

Another top candidate is Comptroller Scott Stringer. As such, he is responsible for making sure all reports on the city's finances are correct. His focus is the economy and dealing with the budget gap.

Also running is Shaun Donovan, who was Secretary of HUD in the Obama administration. His strength is that he knows Joe Biden well from his time in the cabinet. He would focus on equity and appoint a chief equity officer, whatever that may be. He also knows housing backwards and forwards, an important issue in a very cramped city.

Maya Wiley, a top counsel to De Blasio, is also running. If she wins, she would be the first woman and second Black person to hold the job. Her focus is on diversity.

Ray McGuire is vice chair of Citigroup and figures the people who elected Michael Bloomberg three times will gravitate to him. Of course, after Bloomberg's disastrous presidential run, some people may be less enamored of the idea of putting rich guys with finance backgrounds in charge of anything.

Kathryn Garcia, the sanitation commissioner, knows all about garbage, and New York has plenty of it.

Andrew Yang ran for president and made a bit of a name for himself, so he figures winning in New York should be easy. It won't be since he is a one-trick pony (universal basic income), and that is not something the mayor can pull off.

And then there are a couple of dozen dark horses in the race as well. With so many candidates, the ones with greater name recognition clearly have an edge. (V)

Today's Senate Polls

It is better for Ossoff and Warnock to be ahead than behind in the polls, but again, what matters is who actually votes, so take these with a seasoned amount of salt. (V)

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Georgia	Jon Ossoff	51%	David Perdue*	47%	Dec 25	Jan 01	AtlasIntel
Georgia-special	Raphael Warnock	51%	Kelly Loeffler*	47%	Dec 25	Jan 01	AtlasIntel

* Denotes incumbent

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