Sorry for the late posting! There were some technical issues that wasted multiple hours.

Putin Says He Is Ready to "Negotiate"

Russian president Vladimir Putin sat for an interview over the weekend that aired yesterday. And in it, he said "We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions" to the war in Ukraine.

At this point, let us climb into the time machine and travel back to February 1865. With the Southern war effort going poorly, Confederate President Jefferson Davis dispatched Confederate VP Alexander Stephens, Confederate Asst. Sec. of War John Campbell and Confederate Sen. Robert M.T. Hunter (D-VA) to meet with the Lincoln administration to discuss potential terms for ending the war. Lincoln was wary, and so kept information about the Hampton Roads Conference under his (stovepipe) hat as best he possibly could. He even held the meeting on a boat, the River Queen, so as to limit the possibility that Stephens, et al. might be spotted by reporters.

Lincoln was wise to be wary. At the meeting, it was clear that the Southerners had not accepted that slavery should be brought to an end. Stephens and his colleagues took the position that the institution might be preserved in some form, or that Southerners might at least be compensated for their loss of property. That was unacceptable to Lincoln, not only because he'd been re-elected on the promise of ending slavery, but also because he wasn't willing to accept that over a million Americans had died (and countless millions more had been maimed) just to maintain the status quo ante bellum.

Stephens was no fool, and was a long-time friend of Lincoln, dating back to their days as fellow Whigs serving in Congress. It is not likely that he expected the President to bend on the slavery issue. However, the VP knew full well that the legislature had just adopted the Thirteenth Amendment, and that it still needed approval from the states in order to become law. He had hope, with some justification, that if conservative Republicans believed that they could secure an immediate end to the war by abandoning the Thirteenth Amendment, they'd make that deal.

The bottom line, then, is that Stephens and his fellows were not really negotiating in good faith. They were "negotiating" with an eye towards salvaging as much of the pre-Civil War South from the jaws of defeat as was possible.

We do not claim to be experts in what is happening in the mind of Vladimir Putin. And, unfortunately, our Russian Affairs Consultant is busy preparing for Christmas on January 7. You know, Russian Orthodox Church and all. Still, we are mindful of Sherlock Holmes' observation that there is little new in the annals of crime, and that the same patterns play out over and over. And, in our experience, the same applies to diplomacy. So, we conclude that Putin is channeling his inner Alexander Stephens (Aleksandr Stivens? Александр Стивенс?) and is just trying to secure a peace agreement where he doesn't have to admit fault, and where he doesn't have to give up anything.

In case there is any doubt on that point, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already announced that if there is to be a peace, Ukraine must accept the Russian annexation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. As with Lincoln and slavery, that's a dealbreaker for Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Putin certainly knows that, so his offer to negotiate is just so much hot air.

When Alexander Stephens showed up at Hampton Roads, he represented a government that was desperate and that was on the verge of a final and complete defeat. Is Putin at that point? We doubt it. Nonetheless, he wouldn't be maneuvering like this if he hadn't concluded that the glorious victory he anticipated isn't happening, and that his best option at this point is to cease hostilities as soon as is practicable. The question now is which leader blinks first on the four occupied Ukrainian territories. (Z)

Santos Explains Himself

Rep.-elect George Santos (R-NY) promised that he was going to "tell [his] story" this week, and to explain the various discrepancies in his record that were uncovered by The New York Times and by other outlets. And, for once, he was as good as his word. He sat for an interview with The New York Post (a.k.a. the most friendly media outlet he was going to find in New York), and explained exactly what happened. It's simple, actually: Santos is a big, fat liar.

That's right; the Rep.-elect conceded that he lied left, right, and center during his election campaign. He now admits that he has no college degree (he says he lied because he is embarrassed about that). He concedes that he never worked for the Goldman Sachs and Citigroup (he says that his family firm included them as clients, briefly, and that was what he was referring to). He also acknowledges that he may have misrepresented his cultural background, as he is "clearly Catholic" (he says that the media misunderstood him, because he didn't claim to be "Jewish," but instead "Jew... ish"). The important thing, Santos said, is that he's "not a criminal."

Clearly, Santos engaged some of the best PR help that money can buy. Now that he's admitted to everything, there isn't much oxygen left in this story, and it will presumably fade from the headlines very quickly (barring new revelations). At the same time, he is clearly not sorry for his lies, and he's given his supporters pat excuses that they can use in his defense. Santos really couldn't have managed things more skillfully, from a politics perspective.

Several prominent Democrats called on Santos to resign his seat, but there is no way that is going to happen. First of all, he's clearly shameless. And if he did have shame, he would have resigned before giving that interview to the Post, not after. Second, if he came from an R+30 district, then maybe the Republican leadership would be leaning on him to step down, so that they might find a less embarrassing replacement. But given that Santos' victory was in a D+3 district, there is no way the GOP muckety-mucks want to roll the dice again.

Maybe it will turn out Santos did something disqualifying—for example, he was apparently convicted of crimes in Brazil, which could mean he committed fraud when he applied for citizenship (since you have to disclose any criminal record). But failing that, he's going to represent NY-03 for 2 years, and then he will enter 2024 as the Democrats' top target. Perhaps Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), who decided to vacate the seat to run an unsuccessful campaign for governor, will be interested in getting his old job back. (Z)

What's Going on with Elise Stefanik?

Last week, The Washington Post published an interesting profile of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). The primary question the paper was interested in was how Stefanik moved so rapidly from a reach-across-the-aisle basically centrist Republican to a fire-breathing die-hard member of the MAGA militia.

In search of answers, the Post not only talked to Stefanik and a couple of high-ranking members of her staff, but also to a number of people who knew Stefanik before and/or during her rise to power. Pretty much all of them said that, beyond being ambitious, the current iteration of Elise Stefanik is basically unrecognizable to them. Several of them also note that, since the Representative's turn to Trumpism, she has destroyed relationships with many people and institutions that she once held close.

Naturally, the main question the paper put to Stefanik is "What happened?" That is to say, how does she explain the change in herself and in her relationships? There is, of course, no chance that she is going to point the finger at herself. And there is no chance that she is going to concede that Trumpism might be the problem. And so, her answer to the question, in a word, is "sexism." Stefanik believes that most people who have turned against her and/or have been critical of her are put off by powerful women. In turn, she says she has consciously grown more prickly and has developed a thick skin as a necessary defensive precaution.

We cannot possibly say how correct Stefanik's assessment is, since we cannot know her experience. That said, there are also men, politicians and otherwise, who have embraced Trumpism and experienced ostracism. So, Stefanik's thesis probably isn't the whole story. The Post somewhat implies that she's bending over backwards to justify the choices she's made, and in particular her embrace of Trump. That sounds about right to us, although let's not also forget that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. From our vantage point, it looks like Stefanik got a taste of real power when she replaced Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) as Chair of the House Republican Conference, and decided she liked it very much, indeed. She was once seen as a temporary fill-in, but now she's laid claim to the job on a non-interim basis. Further, she's gotta be thinking of herself as a potential VP candidate for Donald Trump or for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). All of those things demand a full-throated, unapologetic embrace of the MAGA ethic.

Anyhow, the profile is well worth reading if this sort of thing is your cup of tea. And given the site you're reading right now, it's pretty much by definition your cup of tea. (Z)

Missed It by That Much, Part III: 6,670 Votes

We still have a number of post-election postmortem items we plan to write. It's a little late; in part we were waiting for all the dust to settle, including the Senate runoff in Georgia. And in part, the first couple of weeks in December is grading time. But now, we have plenty of time. And, as they say, "better late than never."

Back in November, the dust had settled enough to take a look at the House of Representatives, and relatively small things that might have made the difference in Republican control vs. Democratic control. Here are the two items we wrote at that time:

• Missed It By That Much?, Part I: New York Democrats Were Too Greedy
• Missed It By That Much?, Part II: House Retirements

In case you don't care to review, our assessment was that the New Yorkers probably cost the Democrats three seats, whereas the folks who retired for fear of a red wave probably cost them one or two. So, neither of these things flipped control by themselves, but taken together, maybe.

Now let's take a look at an item by Jacob Rubashkin of Inside Elections. He put together a list of the five narrowest Republican wins, along with the margin of victory for each:

District	GOP Winner	Margin
CO-03	Lauren Boebert	554
CA-13	John Duarte	584
MI-10	John James	1,600
NY-17	Mike Lawler	1,787
IA-03	Zach Nunn	2,145
Total		6,670

There you have it: If the Democrats could have deployed 6,675 votes (enough to make up the difference, plus one more for the win) in just the right way, they would still have control of the House of Representatives.

That said, this isn't really a "missed it by that much" scenario. That is to say, when you've got 435 elections going on, and each side wins roughly half of them, and you add up the three closest or five closest or seven closest margins of victory, the total is going to be a fairly small number. Oh, and in case you are wondering what the margin was for the five closest Democratic-won districts:

District	Dem Winner	Margin
NM-02	Gabe Vasquez	1,350
CO-08	Yadira Caraveo	1,632
CT-05	Jahana Hayes	2,004
NY-18	Pat Ryan	2,608
WA-03	Marie Gluesenkamp Perez	2,629
Total		10,223

In other words, but for 10,000 or so well-placed Democratic votes, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would likely have a smooth road to the speaker's gavel, instead of the giant headache he has right now.

Clearly, this wasn't some sort of unforced error like, say, the New York gerrymander screw-up. With literally dozens of House elections decided by something less than 5% of the vote, there was no way for the Democrats to know which five districts would be the nearest near misses. And even if they had known, there is no guarantee they could have swung all five.

That means that the real lesson here was that the midterms were very, very close. Shockingly close, given the circumstances. In 2020, it would have taken 34,745 votes to flip control. In 2018, it would have taken 105,316. In 2016, it would have taken 607,885. It has been a very long time since control hinged on as few votes as the current House does.

This also means that, as everyone already knows, 2024 is going to be a Battle Royale. If you had to bet, you'd have to bet that control flips back to the Democrats. After all, he Republicans have a larger number of vulnerable seats, presidential years tend to favor the Democrats, and it's very plausible that the House GOP Conference will spend the next 2 years producing vast piles of red meat of the sort that thrills the base but turns everyone else's stomachs. That said, 2 years is a long time in politics, and with so many known unknowns, not to mention unknown unknowns, well, you never know. (Z)

Pennsylvania Legislature Is a (Temporary) Mess

Before the good people of Pennsylvania can think about 2024, they still have work to do figuring out 2022. That's right; we might be a little late on some of our post-election coverage, but we're still way ahead of the curve as compared to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, which is in the midst of a real soap opera right now.

Bear with us here, because you kind of need a scorecard to keep track of things. There are 203 seats in the Pennsylvania House, which means that in November there were 203 elections. Nobody disputes that Democrats won 102 of those while Republicans won 101 of them. So, the Democrats control the chamber, right, even if it's by a margin that makes the one Kevin McCarthy is working with look luxurious?

Maybe, maybe not. To start, two of the Democrats have already resigned their seats because they won election to a higher office (one, Summer Lee, is headed to Congress, while another, Austin Davis, is the new lieutenant governor). On top of that, one of the Democrats who won in November, state Rep. Tony DeLuca, died before the election (but after the deadline for making changes to the ballot).

There is little question that, once Pennsylvania voters are able to choose replacements, the seats will once again be in Democratic hands. All three districts are quite blue. But until that time, two questions linger large. The first is: Who is in the majority right now? The second is: When will the special elections be held? You see, in a delightful quirk of Pennsylvania law, that decision is made by... the state House Majority Leader.

Under these circumstances, both sides have an argument that they are the current majority party. The Democrats say they won 102 seats, and it is the clear will of the voters that the state House be controlled by the blue team. The Republicans say that the Democrats have only 99 seats, and no claim on the majority whatsoever. There is also an argument that there is, or at least was, a tie. The nonpartisan Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau has weighed in with its opinion that to be elected, you not only have to win your election, you have to be alive. So, the Bureau's take is that it was 101-101 until Lee and Davis resigned.

Showing that Democrats can play dirty pool, too, state Rep. Joanna McClinton (D), who was already the leader of her party caucus, arranged to have herself sworn in as majority leader, in secret, before Lee and Davis stepped down. Upon "taking office," McClinton scheduled new elections for the first possible legal date, Feb. 7., 2023. In response, state Rep. Bryan Cutler (R), who is also the leader of his party caucus, also arranged to be sworn in as majority leader. Now, it is up to the courts to decide whose claim is legitimate.

Again, the Democrats will eventually have a clear majority once all the vacant seats are filled. But this dispute is not just academic. First, if Cutler's claim is sustained, he's going to push the special elections as far into the future as is possible. Second, although Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro (D) isn't going to sign anything passed by a Republican-controlled House, there is a possible end-run around him, since the House and the Senate can agree to put initiatives on the ballot without his input. For example, Pennsylvania Republicans are eager to put a Voter ID initiative before the voters. Third, state House Democrats fear that state House Republicans will find a way to re-write the rules so that the red team retains the speakership even once they are not in the majority.

So, the Pennsylvania courts have a potentially momentous decision to make. For what it is worth, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court currently has four seats occupied by Democrats, two by Republicans and one vacancy. The vacancy does not figure to be filled anytime soon, since Shapiro will presumably appoint a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Senate will presumably refuse to confirm. (Z)

A December to Rhymember, Part XV: Nevermore? Try Even More

We've got some song parodies cued up, but this might be the last day where Putin-related verse is apropos. Further, we had requests for more from the pen of J.L. in Walnut Creek, CA, of "The Raven" parody fame. And so, we are going with this epic entry today:

In ancient Rome is where we will begin,
Consuls and praetors and quaestors akin,
Attended by lictors with rods in a bundle,
Magistrates move through the forum a-trundle.
The rods joined with axe are the fasces so-called,
A symbol of Roman imperium auld.
Though Rome wasn't fascist but Republic in form,
At least until Caesar pursued land reform,
Then Augustus made Empire the new Roman norm.

Jump forward in time to a new Roman nation,
Where redshirts turn blackshirts on economic privation.
Il Duce and fascism proceed hand in hand,
Imposed upon Libya and Somaliland.
The Marcia su Roma was the start of an era,
But it ended up poorly for Benito and Clara.
These two met a fate that was far worse than most.
At Milan they received a guerilla's riposte,
Then were strung upside down from a gas station post.

In Deutschland the fascists start on the attack.
Lying that Jews gave a stab in the back.
At Kristallnacht and the Night of Long Knives,
And beyond to the costing of millions of lives.
In brownshirts (more colors?) they cried lugenpresse,
As claiming "fake news" was a key to success.
Eventually the odious Nazis all died.
Hitler and Himmler committed suicide.
While Goring and others were brought to the dock,
In Nuremberg city at a courtroom ad hoc,
And Simon caught Eichmann who dropped like a rock.

The Nazis had pursued the fascistic dream,
And they ran it on out to its monstrous extreme.
The Germans pushed fascism's doctrine so twisted
That Auschwitz, Treblinka and Belzec existed.
They murdered six million Jews during the war,
But the Allies who liberated camps said "No more.
We will not forget." Declared: "Never again."
And the downtrodden peoples of Earth cheered, "Amen!"
But governments are made up of women and men...

Next up is Espana in Spring '39,
Where republicans' defeat firms Madrid's new hardline.
They stayed out of the war, and that part is good,
But memorials still stand where once Guernica stood.
El Caudillo's in charge: first name Francisco,
And Franco rules Spain 'til the music turns disco.
But it's not happy dancing; no, thousands were killed,
Because nationalist fascists were so very thrilled,
To oppress and arrest countrymen who were sick,
Of their Falangist dictator and his lickspittles' tricks,
Which suppress civil rights of the body politic.

The South American continent is not immune,
Where Argentina once sung to a Peronist tune.
Was it fascist? Debated. But mostly right-wing.
And that can't be ignored just 'cause Eva could sing.
'Cross the Andes in Chile is a much clearer threat,
For after Allende we get Pinochet.
Augusto looks 'round and all he sees are foes,
Thus torture and those we name "desaparecidos,"
The legacy for both of our Latin pharaohs.

Fast forward again and we arrive at the Kremlin,
Inhabited by Russia's own sad little gremlin.
For Putin sure fits with that cynical verse:
All Russian history's summed up as: "And then it got worse."
He came into full power after false flag attacks,
In Volgodonsk, Moscow and out in Buynaksk.
He suppresses his people with outcomes funereal,
Slays enemies with tea steeped in nuclear material,
And now invades Ukraine for desires imperial.

"So why foreign history?" the reader might say.
"On a politics site for the U.S. of A?"
And the answer, of course, is that if you squint,
You just might make out an immoral blueprint.
For if you pay heed to historical clues,
You'll see a model or template the right wing will use,
To sow fear and sow strife so to stride into power,
Employ sophistic ruses to cause us to cower,
And fortify their minority rule in a tower.

Is it only the rightists who engage in barbarity?
Of course not, and leftists can act with similarity.
There's Stalin and Mao and in Vietnam Ho,
The Derg in East Africa; Cuba had Castro.
But Ay! there's the rub for our day and our age,
The American left didn't put migrants a-cage.
The left doesn't excuse Charlottesville's chant against Jews,
The left doesn't ad nauseam yell out "fake news!"
And the left didn't strip women of their right to choose.

And while the American left sometimes dwells in a bubble,
In the U.S. today it's the right that's the trouble.
They double down on white grievance and scream out "Beware!"
But don't even pretend to Promote General Welfare,
Nor Establish Justice, nor Secure Blessings of Liberty,
Nor seek to Ensure our Domestic Tranquility.
It isn't just policy; there's the Capitol plot,
Launched at behest of the orange traitor tot,
And all his enablers and the falsehoods they've wrought.

So if you're able to vote in these United States,
Cast your vote each election and participate.
It's imperative we keep the people's right to elect,
Those elected officials that we choose to select.
Those strong and those bold with the gift of foresight,
To protect all of us from extremes of the right,
To stop country from falling to the right's kakistocracy,
To keep secularism instead of theocracy,
To prevent the entrenchment of a new aristocracy,
To raise social mobility in place of plutocracy,
To resist those bootlickers who would prop up autocracy,
And to ensure we enshrine our Republic's DEMOCRACY.

All we can say is: "Wow."

Barring the unexpected, it's song parodies tomorrow. Here is the address for submissions. (Z)

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