Willis Wins a Pyrrhic Victory

As promised, Judge Scott McAfee issued his ruling on the question of whether or not Fulton County DA Fani Willis must recuse herself from the prosecution of Donald Trump and his co-defendants. And while she CAN stay on the case, per the Judge, whether she SHOULD remains an open question.

In other words, McAfee's ruling, while it did not order Willis to remove herself from the case, was scathing. Among the key points:

• Willis and her now-former paramour Nathan Wade could not both remain on the case; one or the other of them were required to go. Yesterday afternoon, Wade fell on his sword and withdrew.
  
  
• McAfee wrote that while a conflict of interest was not proven, the situation carried "the appearance of impropriety" and "an odor of mendacity remains."
  
  
• He also noted that while he was not certain enough for it to be actionable, he remains suspicious as to whether Willis and Wade "testified untruthfully" about when their relationship began.
  
  
• He suggested that while he was not in a position to sanction Willis, other entities, like the state bar and the state ethics commission might look into doing so.
  
  
• He is very unhappy about Willis' "tremendous lapse in judgment" in general, and in particular with "the unprofessional manner" in which she testified in his courtroom last month.

In short, the Judge did not mince words.

At this point, Willis has three options, all of them with downsides. She could remain on the case (and she probably will), but if so, her conduct will most certainly find its way into the trial, with defense lawyers finding ways to remind the jury that even the judge doesn't particularly trust her. On top of that, dealing with a judge who has levied such criticism, and whose obvious message was "I can't remove you, but I'd like to see you remove yourself" is less than ideal.

Alternatively, Willis could hand the prosecution off to some sort of outside entity. She would not only have to get approval for that, she would also have to bring the new prosecutor(s) up to speed on the case. And with a case this big and this complicated, that is no small feat. Should the DA pursue this option, there is no chance that the matter goes to trial this year.

The third option is to split the difference, and to hand the prosecution off, but to someone already in Willis' office. That person (or those people) would still carry some of the taint that Willis carries, just by association, but they would not be in as shaky a position as she is. However, since these hypothetical individuals would be new to the case, they would have to get up to speed, too. This presumably wouldn't take as long as it would if an outsider was chosen, but it wouldn't be quick, either. So, this path would probably also postpones the trial(s) until next year.

Regardless of what happens, at least some amount of time has been added to the timeline, since a replacement for Wade will need to be identified, hired, and brought up to speed on whatever portions of the case he was handling. And, some amount of uncertainty has been added to the proceedings, as Willis is now compromised in various ways. If only Wade were gay, none of this would have happened.

Of course, the underlying fact is that she hired her boyfriend and she should never, ever have done that, so she brought this upon herself. How could she have thought no one would find out about their relationship? (Z)

Saturday Q&A

Nothing to dominate the mailbag, like the SOTU did last week.

And if you're still working through the headline theme from yesterday, we'll tell you we almost had a Clue in one of the headlines.

Current Events

Z.C. in Beverly Hills, CA, asks: What is the Judicial Conference of the United States? Who is making the decisions on the judge-shopping rules, and how easily could they undo or change those guidelines in the future (say, under a slightly more fascist President)?

(V) & (Z) answer: The Judicial Conference of the United States was created by Congress in 1922, at the instigation of then-Chief Justice William Howard Taft, to set policy for the federal judiciary.

There is some dispute as to whether or not the JCOTUS has the authority to put a stop to judge-shopping, as it is attempting to do. So, watch for a follow-up to the item we ran yesterday. And obviously, the JCOTUS could rewrite just about any policy it wants to, but it bears keeping in mind that Donald Trump's recent win on ballot access notwithstanding, the top tiers of the judiciary, who are also the people who make up the JCOTUS, have generally not been especially compliant in granting his wishes.

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S.K. in Bethesda MD, asks: Has anyone in a position to have a major impact politically or historically ever made a more... let's say, thoughtless, unforced and impactful error than Fani Willis? Maybe set aside generals in wars, since that is well-traveled ground. There are obvious candidates like Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky and North Carolina U.S. Senate candidate Cal Cunningham, but although the first led to an impeachment, its ultimate impact was mixed (though it could be argued that it has had significant longer term impacts) and the second may have lost an election but seems like small stakes relative to this.

(V) & (Z) answer: First, you are clearly limiting the scope of the question to sexual dalliances, and not to errors like escalating the Vietnam War or deciding to impose extremely protectionist tariffs during the early phase of the Great Depression. Those errors certainly had a greater impact than the errors made by politicians who could not keep it in their pants.

And within that narrower scope, your two examples illustrate why your question is basically unanswerable. If Clinton had kept it zipped, would he have been able to campaign more aggressively for Al Gore, thus electing Gore and preventing the second Bush presidency? If so, then the Lewinsky scandal takes on rather monumental significance, since Bush blew it on the 9/11 intelligence, commenced two unwinnable wars, and oversaw the politicization of the executive branch (and of the Department of Justice, in particular) that laid the groundwork for Trumpism. Similarly, if Cunningham had been elected, would his presence have made it possible to peel away either Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) or Joe Manchin (D-WV) in an effort to weaken the filibuster and implement much more of the Democratic agenda? Maybe so. But in the cases of both Clinton and Cunningham, we just can't know for sure.

So it is with Willis. If her dalliances mean that Donald Trump does not face trial outside of New York before this year's election, and if the lack of said trials allows him to win reelection, and then if he goes on to be a neo-fascist near-dictator, then yes, what she did would be very consequential. But there are a lot of "ifs" in there, and even once events unfold, it will be hard to sure how things would have been different if Willis had conducted herself differently.

With all of this said, if you want an example of someone whose inability to control their... passions had a big impact on U.S. history, then how about Alexander Hamilton? The married Hamilton had an affair with the married Maria Reynolds, and part of the reason he had to quit early as Secretary of the Treasury was that he wasn't making enough money to cover the blackmail payments. The dirt eventually leaked anyhow, of course, and Aaron Burr's use of that bit of gossip to goad Hamilton led directly to their duel, to Hamilton's death, and to Burr's de facto disqualification from public life. Burr was a shyster anyhow, but what if the U.S. had the services of the brilliant Hamilton for longer than it actually did? He might well have become president.

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M.R. in Rochester, NY, asks: I've read that Judge Aileen Cannon may have the authority to dismiss the Mar-a-Lago case outright. Legal experts there suggest that she could wait until the jury is impaneled and sworn in, at which point the trial would cross the threshold set by SCOTUS for double jeopardy. Dismissing the case then would effectively end it. Is this assessment accurate? How probable is it that Judge Cannon would take such action?

(V) & (Z) answer: Obviously, only Aileen Cannon knows what is in the head of Aileen Cannon. It is certainly the case that, by neglecting to issue a final ruling on Donald Trump's claim about the Espionage Act, she has forestalled the possibility of an appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. It is also the case that if the issue is brought up after a jury is empaneled, and THEN she rules in Donald Trump's favor, then the charges related to the Espionage Act would likely be dead for good, and the decision un-appealable.

That said, he faces 40 counts in Florida, and not all of them are related to the Espionage Act. So, this question alone is not enough to allow her to make the whole case go away. Further, even if we assume she's angling for a promotion to the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court, she can't overplay her hand. She still would require approval from the U.S. Senate, and if she is obviously corrupt, there will be some GOP Senators not willing to give her their votes.

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R.Y. in Knoxville, TN, asks: It seems as if you and many of other outlets are describing the RNC purge of 60+ staffers as a money-saving measure. Isn't the important angle to this story the fact that a lot of administrative experience and institutional knowledge went out the door with them? Someone has to know where things are, and how the copier works and who fixes the A/C, and who is good to call in each state. Will this not leave the RNC in shambles administratively and less able to do its stated job of raising money and winning elections?

(V) & (Z) answer: We wrote that saving money is the official reason for the ouster, but that the primary reason for it was to eliminate people not sufficiently loyal to Donald Trump. Surely some institutional memory will be lost, but we think the far worse thing for the Republican Party is that there will be even less pushback against Trump's worst impulses. Also, the RNC may focus less on down-ballot races, which could help the Democrats.

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F.I. in Philadelphia, PA, asks: If TikTok is banned, or is in serious risk of getting banned, would Joe Biden lose a lot of low-engagement youth voters? Biden is already struggling with the youth vote, and despite the bipartisan support in Congress, I fear many youth voters will blame the President for banning their favorite social media platform. The cynic in me wonders if this is a big reason why the Republicans in Congress are supporting the bill.

(V) & (Z) answer: The clear purpose of the legislation is not to shut TikTok down, but to force its sale to an entity that is not aligned with the Chinese government. And so, if the bill passes the Senate, that is what will surely happen. ByteDance isn't going to say: "Well, here's this billions-of-dollars asset. Guess we'll throw it in the garbage, rather than trying to extract whatever value we can get out of it by selling it to the highest U.S. bidder."

In short, we do not think this is a problem.

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S.A. in Seattle, WA, asks: Don't have time or inclination to read the transcripts. Thoughts on this? I don't pay attention to the proliferation of public media outlets, but this popped in my Google News feed. Of particular note:

"Zoom in: Over the course of the two-day interview, which took place in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Biden repeatedly asked for help remembering certain important dates—and his lawyers frequently stepped in.

"When did I announce for President [in 2019]?," he asked.

"If it was 2013—when did I stop being vice president?"

"In 2009, am I still vice president?"

"Trump gets elected in November of 2017?," Biden asked, before someone noted it was November 2016.

Twice on the same day, Biden struggled to find the words for "fax machine." "You see where there's a printer and there's a—what do they call it, the machine that—?" he asked until White House counsel Ed Siskel offered up "fax machine" in both instances.

(V) & (Z) answer: We get questions of this sort multiple times per week, and they have a very "gotcha!" feel to them, the seeming subtext being "See? Told you he's got dementia." So, we are going to answer this one as clearly and unambiguously as we can, and then we will observe a moratorium of at least 2 months on "Biden memory" questions.

In short, our thoughts are that this does not mean ANYTHING. And we say that for three reasons, in particular:

1. Anyone can go through a 5-hour transcript and cherry-pick examples like this. If, for example, you took 5 hours of our lectures and went through them, you could generate a very similar list. That is because even if one recalls information with perfect clarity and alacrity 99.5% of the time, there are so many bits of information across 5 hours that 0.5% of the time adds up to multiple processing errors per hour.
   
   
2. Notice that the great majority of the "lapses" listed here involve years. Human beings are not wired to associate events with what year those events took place. Generally speaking, the average person can get the year correct for things that happened in the past 3-4 years, but beyond that, they have to reverse-engineer the information. For example: "Let's see, I started at IBM a few weeks after my second anniversary, so that means my first year there must have been 2012." This is EXACTLY what you see happening with Biden here, although he's dealing with the added complication that the year a president is elected and the year their term begins are always different years. (Z), of course, is a historian, and so has to deal with years ALL THE TIME. And he can assure you that he has to reverse-engineer both historical and personal years on a daily basis.
   
   
3. Similarly, it is very common to be unable to recall a specific term or concept, particularly if that term or concept is not used regularly, and particularly if some similar term or concept gets stuck in one's head. Just this week, (Z) could not summon the term "timetable" during a lecture on World War I because the word "armistice" got stuck in his head. Fax machines have not been a key office tool for what, 20 years? There are a few exceptions to that, like real estate transactions, but we doubt politics is among those.

If someone has a broken arm, their arm is not broken for 5 minutes, then OK for 10, then broken again for 5. No, it's just broken. Similarly, if someone has dementia, it does not fade in and out, minute by minute. There may be some daily variance, but an hour of dementia-impacted conversation is going to show constant indications of that dementia, not a two-second flare-up, here and there.

If we may be blunt, the only people really able to judge Biden (or Trump) in a meaningful way are people who have actual experience with cognitive impairment, and what it actually looks like. Failing that, people with extensive experience in public speaking/giving depositions/giving extemporaneous speeches may have some insight. We are both in the latter category, and we have also spoken to people in the former category, and so we are on pretty firm ground in saying that Biden is OK.

And if we may be even more blunt, barring something that destroys him physically (heart attack, stroke), Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic presidential nominee. He is not going to "discover" that he's not mentally up to it and step aside, nor are the delegates to the DNC going to make that decision. Biden-skeptical Democrats would be well advised to reconcile themselves to this, and to stop chasing shadows.

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T.H. in Oakland, CA, asks: Why does Joe Biden seem hesitant to say Donald Trump's name? For instance, sometimes Biden will refer to Trump as "my predecessor." As some view Biden as too milquetoast, maybe it would help him to be more direct and call out Trump by name.

(V) & (Z) answer: There is an old bit of political wisdom, dating back at least as far as Franklin D. Roosevelt, that saying your opponent's name just gives them oxygen. Richard Nixon was also a big fan of this way of thinking.

So, if Biden says Trump's name less often that might be normally expected, this is probably what is going on. That said, Biden most certainly does call out Trump by name on regular occasions. The reason Trump's name wasn't used in the State of the Union is that it's a solemn occasion steeped in history, and attacking people by name is considered gauche.

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H.B. in State College, PA, asks: My understanding is that it is the tradition for the Speaker of the House to introduce the President at the State of the Union, saying "Members of Congress, I have the high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you the President of the United States." But this wasn't done at Biden's State of the Union Address. Is there some reason?

I thought maybe Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was preparing to do this but Biden just started in on his speech before he could... or was it a deliberate snub on Johnson's part? In any case, Johnson sat there like a sourpuss throughout the speech, seemingly glued to his seat.

(V) & (Z) answer: We are not sure exactly what you are asking. If you are asking whether or not Biden was introduced, he was. However, the introduction always comes when the president enters the gallery, and not right before he starts speaking. Because Biden shook hands, etc. for 10-15 minutes, there was thus a 10-15 minute gap between the introduction and the commencement of the speech. You can see the introduction, by the House's Sergeant-at-Arms, here (at the 30:55 mark).

If you are asking whether Biden was announced with those particular, effusive words, then no, he was not. However, we think you might have a false memory of what is actually said, very possibly thanks to fictional depictions like those in The West Wing and the movie Dave. Generally, the introduction is just: "Mister/Madame Speaker, the President of the United States." Here is the last Biden SOTU under then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); Biden was announced in the exact same manner as he was this year (at the 27:13 mark). So, there's no reason to think that Johnson snubbed Biden.

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M.B. in New Orleans, LA, asks: Why would Mike Johnson invite the parents of a journalist jailed in Russia to the State of the Union Address? Doesn't that run afoul of TFG and current Republican party message that Putin is our friend?

(V) & (Z) answer: It may run afoul of that message, but it comports very nicely with the message that the Biden administration is incompetent and is willing to allow American citizens to rot in foreign prisons rather than do something to get them freed.

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E.W. in Skaneateles, NY, asks: What do we know about the preparation for the response to the State of the Union address? Who actually writes the response? Is it primarily the person giving it, someone on their staff, political operatives from the national committee, or someone else I haven't thought of? Who was in charge of the staging and the setting? Does the person giving the response get coaching on delivery, and if so by whom?

(V) & (Z) answer: Details about this year's response are scarce, and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. That said, when a member of Congress gives a speech, they usually lean on their communications director to do most of the writing, albeit with significant input from the member. In this case, that's Sean Ross, whose Twitter feed is composed almost entirely of retweets of GOP talking points written by other people. It's almost like Ross isn't capable of independent thought.

Undoubtedly, the decision to stage the speech in Britt's kitchen was not hers alone; it probably came from Senate leadership and/or the RNC. As to her performance, it was very obvious that she had gotten a lot of advice from a lot of people and she was trying to make use of all of it, without having the necessary experience to know what works for her and what doesn't. Effective public speaking is no easy thing, and doing it on TV before a national audience just increases the level of difficulty.

Politics

P.D.C. in New Salem, MA, asks: Traditional conservatives—those who believe in pro-business policies, limited regulations, a small government and a strict view of laws and the constitution—don't have any place in the MAGA-dominated Republican Party. So what should they do? I see four paths.

1. Stay with the party and hope MAGAism burns itself out before democracy ends.
   
   
2. Stay with the party but quietly, through votes and donations, support Democrats in the hope that it the Republican party loses enough MAGA Republicans will eventually lose interest and go away.
   
   
3. Join the Democrats and try to recreate a conservative wing within the Democratic party. They might have some success in red states where Democrats aren't very numerous to begin with and usually don't win anyway.
   
   
4. Start an new party or hijack an existing third party such as the Libertarians. They would need financing by some big donor conservatives. This would probably mean that neither they nor the MAGA Republicans would do very well for awhile but if they can outlast the MAGA Republicans they could become the alternative to the Democrats.

Which of these approaches do you think they should take or do you have another alternative.

(V) & (Z) answer: We would say the answer is some combination of #2 and #3. Support the sanest Republican in the primaries, to make clear your vote is available to a candidate like that. Then, in the general, support the Democrat, so as to make clear that if the Republicans nominate bad candidates, they will pay a price.

Voting third-party/independent in the general election is exactly the same as staying home. It doesn't affect the final result, and we can promise you that neither party takes note if the Libertarians got 2.2% as opposed to 1.9%, or the Greens got 2.4% as opposed to 1.6%. Remember, the choice of nominee is made by... the voting public. And when was the last time ANY member of the voting public (much less a majority) said: "Well, I better support [Candidate X] because I really want to make sure we win back the 1.5% of voters who voted [Green/Libertarian/independent] in the last election."? The answer is "never" because it just does not work that way.

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B.D. in San Mateo, CA, asks: If Trump selects Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as his running mate, would that make her ineligible to run for the House seat she occupies? When would she have to give that up? And would the seat then be in play for the New York Democrats?

(V) & (Z) answer: Only a handful of states have resign-to-run laws, and New York is not one of them. So, Stefanik can legally run for reelection to the House and for the vice presidency at the same time. If she chooses to step down from the House to focus on a VP bid, her seat will remain in Republican hands, however, as her district is pretty red under both the old and new maps.

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C.S. in Newport, Wales, UK, asks: You have repeatedly stated that polls this far out from November should not be relied on that much. But wouldn't it at least be fair to state that someone ahead in the polls at the moment is better off than a different candidate elsewhere that isn't?

For example, looking at FiveThirtyEight, the latest polls show Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) up 44%-42%, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) up 44%-41%, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) up 52%-48%, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DFL-MN) up 49%-33%, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) up 53%-39%, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in a draw at 41%-41%. Wouldn't it fair to state that Klobuchar and Hawley are equally safe, Tester and Scott equally endangered, and Cruz in the biggest trouble of all of them?

(V) & (Z) answer: Sure, it's better to be up right now than behind, but this far out, and particularly in the polls with so many undecideds, it just doesn't mean much. It's like being up 3-0 halfway through the first quarter of a football game. Better than being down by 3, but there's still an awful lot of football to play, such that the team with a lead like that is only going to end up the winner about 55% of the time.

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J.E. in San Jose, CA, asks: I ask this quietly, but is there a chance pollsters are intentionally skewing the polls to scare Democrats into voting for Joe Biden?

(V) & (Z) answer: No. If 15-25 polling houses made that decision collectively, then surely someone would blow the whistle. And there's no way that 15-25 polling houses reached that decision independently, all at the same time.

Also, many polling houses are run by Republicans who have no interest in helping elect Biden.

We intend to go live with general-election polling in the not-too-distant future, so we have been looking at many polls already. It is clear that Trump is ahead now, but remember, in politics, a week is a long time.

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B.M. in Chico, CA, asks: You write that Donald Trump may be inclined to work around the Twenty-Second Amendment in 2028 if he has a friendly Supreme Court on his side. If so, what do you think are the odds that the Democrats would run Barack Obama as a countermeasure?

(V) & (Z) answer: We put that out there as an extreme possibility. But it's not a very likely possibility. In order to contest the presidency in 2028, assuming he won in 2024, Trump would have to run in the primaries. And a bunch of states would refuse to put him on the ballot, citing the Twenty-Second. The case might well go to the Supreme Court, and it is very, very unlikely that SCOTUS would allow Trump to stay on the ballot. Remember that the Insurrection Clause is problematic in multiple ways, not the least of which is that it requires some amount of judgment, and so could be abused by partisan actors. This is not true of the Twenty-Second Amendment; either someone has served two terms as president or they have not. If the Supreme Court declared "No, Trump can run again," then they would effectively be setting aside the entire Constitution.

That said, if this situation does arise, then the Democrats certainly would try to coax Obama out of retirement.

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D.Y. in Windsor, England, UK, asks: You wrote that the 2026 Senate map is "just as bad for the Democrats as the 2024 map." Could you elaborate on that? At first glance, with 20 Republican seats and 13 Democratic seats up for re-election, 2026 looks more promising for Democrats. Yes, some seats will be close, e.g. Georgia, but other current seats like Michigan and Minnesota look more firmly Democratic than Montana or Ohio in this cycle. Also, some Republican-held seats, like those in North Carolina and Maine, could be vulnerable in 2026. It seems to me that if Democrats manage to hold onto the Senate this year—despite the near-certain loss of West Virginia—that they'd be in a pretty good position to hold it in 2026 (barring a Republican wave). I'm obviously missing something, so could you explain why you think the 2026 map could be as bad for Democrats?

(V) & (Z) answer: In 2026, the Democrats are going to have to defend seats in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia. The Republicans are going to have to defend seats in Texas, North Carolina, and Maine. The Texas seat is probably about as safe for the Republicans as the Minnesota seat is for the Democrats, so those cancel out. The Maine seat is probably about as safe for the Republicans as the New Hampshire seat is for the Democrats, so those cancel out. Georgia is certainly in more danger for the Democrats than North Carolina is for the Republicans, and then add Michigan and Virginia on top of that. From where we sit, it's another tough map for the blue team.

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D.T. in Columbus, OH, asks: Are there any campaign finance laws that prohibit a candidate from charging for admission to their rallies? If Donald Trump needs to raise money to pay for the cost of his political rallies, couldn't he just charge the attendees?

As someone who has gone to see (other) Presidential candidates speak, I can tell you that attending these events is already super inconvenient. You have to arrive hours early, park a mile away, and wait in a long line for security checks. Anyone who is willing to endure all of that, is clearly invested. I doubt that asking for $20-$30 would drive many of these folks away.

Trump's base is fanatical enough, that they would probably be happy to pay for the "privilege" of seeing him in person. But would this actually be legal? Or are there rules concerning what sort of fundraising is permitted?

(V) & (Z) answer: It's certainly not illegal to sell tickets to rallies, any more than it's illegal to sell $200-a-plate tickets to fundraising dinners. However, the ticket purchase would likely be considered a campaign contribution, and so: (1) people would have to give their SSNs and other information when buying tickets, (2) non-citizens would not be able to attend, and (3) people who have already reached campaign limits would not be able to attend. The cost of keeping track of all of this would be substantial, while at the same time the whole thing would anger many supporters (not only having to pay, but also being turned away, or being forced to give up identifying information). We suspect Team Trump has already entertained this idea, and dismissed it as not being worth it.

Civics

D.S.R. in Tempe, AZ, asks: People say the U.S. is a democracy. But then others say no, it's a republic.

So is the most correct term for the American form of government "democracy," "republic," "democratic republic," or something else entirely?

(V) & (Z) answer: In a democracy, the people make the decisions directly. In a republic, the people elect representatives to make decisions. In the U.S., some decisions are made directly (e.g., ballot initiatives), other decisions are made by elected representatives (e.g., laws passed by Congress). So, the U.S. is definitely a democratic republic.

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D.S. in Longwood, FL, asks: Now that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are the presumptive nominees, and continued stories about how people are not thrilled with the choices they have come November, I started to wonder if there wouldn't be a better way to select presidential candidates.

I have been a registered voter for almost 40 years, and I continue to feel disenfranchised by the presidential nominating process. In 1988, I was for Gary Hart (before... well, you know), then Jesse Jackson, then Al Gore and got Mike Dukakis. In 1992, I was for Paul Tsongas, then Jerry Brown and got Bill Clinton. In 2000, I was for Gore, but didn't have much of a choice. In 2004, I was for Howard Dean, then John Edwards and got John Kerry. In 2008, I was for Bill Richardson, then Hillary Clinton and got Barack Obama. In 2016, I was for Clinton; also didn't have much choice since I didn't feel the Bern. In 2020, I was for Julián Castro, then Pete Buttigieg and got Joe Biden. In almost every case, the candidate had either dropped out, or the nominee had all but clinched the nomination before my states primary came around.

What do you think the chances are for a national nominating primary, using ranked-choice voting? This would give a majority of Americans the opportunity to select candidates, not just a small minority in a handful of states. It would force candidates to have national appeal. I know states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina wouldn't want to give up their status, but I am sure many people in those states are glad when the contest is over and the candidates move on.

(V) & (Z) answer: It isn't going to happen. Americans are leery of change, particularly BIG changes like this.

If it did happen, it might not have the results you are expecting. Well-known, well-established politicians with serious establishment backing would have an enormous advantage. A Joe Biden or a Hillary Clinton would land the nomination every time, and there would be no path for lesser-known insurgents.

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C.K. in Rochester, NY, asks: I've often wondered how reliable caucus votes are due to peer pressure. Doesn't it seem likely that the results might vary considerably from what is selected in the privacy of the poll booth?

(V) & (Z) answer: The votes of caucusgoers are not very predictive, but the main problem isn't peer pressure. It's that caucuses tend to attract a disproportionate number of hardcore partisans, and not a random selection of voters.

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D.C. in Atenas, Costa Rica, asks: Why wouldn't Peter Navarro challenge his sentence for selective prosecution, since Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and others are not being prosecuted?

(V) & (Z) answer: Proving selective prosecution is very difficult, and requires the defendant to demonstrate that the only reason they were charged and others were not is because of [DIFFERENCE X], where [DIFFERENCE X] is usually some protected demographic characteristic (e.g., race, religion, gender, etc.).

Navarro, Jordan, et al. are all white guys, so arguing discrimination based on some protected (or even non-protected) characteristic is not very plausible. Beyond that, the feds have a perfectly legitimate non-discriminatory explanation for their choices: Jordan, et al. are members of Congress, and that introduces complicated legal issues that make conviction difficult, if not impossible.

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M.B. in Montreal, QC, Canuckistan, asks: I would be very much interested in (V)'s take on this article on open source voting software.

(V) & (Z) answer: Among academic cryptographers, there is a veritable cottage industry of producing schemes for, and papers about, electronic voting. There have been hundreds of papers on the subject, each with different properties (e.g., can the voter prove that his or her vote was counted, can the voter be prevented from selling his or her vote, etc.). (V) used to be in this world and has produced his share of such papers, like this one.

Without getting into the details of all the systems, every system must meet at least these criteria:

1. The voting machine produces a paper ballot that is the actual vote; the machine tally is just a hint.
2. The voters have to have understand the system; all Condorcet systems fail this test.
3. The voter needs a way of verifying that the code actually running in the voting machine is the published code.

Many authors have additional criteria as well.

The third point is actually crucial and most researchers haven't addressed it, although (V) and one of his postdocs have. If the source code is published on a website somewhere but malicious election officials have modified it and installed malicious software in the machines, making the code public doesn't help.

Fortunately, many computers have what is called a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) built in. This module can compute a (secure cryptographic) sum of the bytes actually in memory in a way that cannot be tampered with. If there is a way for a voter to have a special app on a smartphone ask the TPM chip for the current contents of memory and then compare it to value it is supposed to be, the app can verify that the correct software is actually running. But suppose the voter doesn't trust the app or there are fake apps in the App Store? The technical problems can be solved and paper ballots solve the recount problem. But if voters believe the whole system is rigged from top to bottom (because some politicians spout this), then no technical solution can completely solve the problem. Still, if every ballot has a unique number and the voter can check afterwards to see if the ballot was actually counted, that could be a step in the right direction.

History

C.C. in Hancock, NH, asks: There have been many justified complaints about TFG breaking with tradition and not participating in the peaceful transfer of power, and indeed actively trying to thwart it. I have two questions: First, how many times has the peaceful transfer actually happened? That is, how many times has a president of one party cordially participated in the handoff to a president of the other party? Second, in the opinion of the resident historian, how many past presidents, if any, might have balked at the transfer as TFG did, but never had the opportunity due to dying in office, or his own party winning?

(V) & (Z) answer: There are 22 unambiguous cases of a president of one party handing off power to a president of a different party. In addition, there are the cases of John Tyler, who was elected on the Whig ticket, but was basically a Democrat handing off power to another Democrat in James K. Polk; Andrew Johnson, who was elected on the National Union ticket, but was basically a Democrat handing off power to a Republican in Ulysses S. Grant; and Donald Trump, who most certainly handed off power to a president of a different party in Joe Biden, but who did not do so very peacefully.

Anyhow, the total number is somewhere between 22 and 25; we'd probably pick 23 as the correct answer, adding the 22 unambiguous cases to the case of Andrew Johnson/U.S. Grant.

There is no president in U.S. history, other than Trump, who would have balked at the transfer of power. Some of them sulked on their way out (e.g., both of the Adamses), some of them abused their high office (e.g., Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon), but they all accepted that part of the deal is that if you lose, you leave.

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S.B. in Granby, MA, asks: At what point in history would you say the U.S. became a superpower? Would you say there was a defining moment or precipitating event that shifted the scales?

(V) & (Z) answer: The U.S. announced itself as a world power with its victory over the Spanish Empire in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the subsequent elevation of Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency in 1901, heavy involvement in Latin America and the Pacific Rim in the 1900s and 1910s, and the world cruise of the Great White Fleet from 1907-09. Few would have called the U.S. a world power in 1895, few would have disputed it by 1910.

The U.S. became one of two world superpowers, along with the U.S.S.R., during and after World War II. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990-91, the U.S. became the world's only superpower. China is trying to catch up, but hasn't done so yet.

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R.B. in Cleveland, OH, asks: I'm curious about the absence of Hillary Rodham Clinton on your list of the top 5 FLOTUSes. It feels like a glaring omission. Is it simply because it's so difficult to narrow it down to just 5?

(V) & (Z) answer: Because gender roles have evolved so radically over the last 200 years, we were trying to make sure to cover a broad spectrum of different kinds of contributions. HRC's time as First Lady was pretty similar to Michelle Obama's. However, Obama was largely successful with her endeavors, while Clinton had the high-profile healthcare failure, which dragged her husband down some. So, we decided Obama had a stronger claim than Clinton, and we thought Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter rounded out the list better. Had the list extended to #6, Clinton would have made the cut.

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M.C. in Fresno, CA, asks: I have to ask. I've read the Wikipedia page and googled for answers but just don't know. What did Abigail Fillmore do to warrant her inclusion on the list of bad First Ladies? Was the ankle injury fake and is that enough?

(V) & (Z) answer: She didn't do anything. We were carrying over a joke from the previous day's posting, about Millard Fillmore being the horrible president Joe Biden kept referring to in the State of the Union Address.

Gallimaufry

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T.M. in Downers Grove, IL, asks: In Friday's Freudenfreude, (Z) referred to Aaron Rodgers as a "selfish and wreckless meathead quarterback." I believe (Z) previously referred to Rodgers as an a**hole, but I can't seem to find the post. My question is, as a Packers fan, was (Z) able to put aside Rodgers' personal shortcomings during his long tenure in Green Bay which included a Super Bowl championship, or did Rodgers' views only become public recently? Had (Z) known that Rodgers was a selfish, wreckless meathead a**hole quarterback, would he have cheered for him anyway or would he have abandoned the Packers to cheer for the Bears?

(V) & (Z) answer: To start, the original reference to Rodgers is here. (Z) was comparing him to Tucker Carlson, which is pretty apt.

And (Z) has watched sports long enough to know that they are athletes and not role models (or even decent human beings). Remember, he not only witnessed the entire career of Brett Favre (who is a world-class a**hole), he is also a Lakers fan who was witness to the career of Kobe Bryant (alleged rapist). That said, Rodgers' constant dithering about whether he was going to retire, added to the general impression that he didn't even start trying hard until game six of the season, really made him hard to tolerate. And after Rodgers pulled that stunt where his misled reporters and teammates into thinking he was vaccinated when he was not, (Z) was done. It is one thing to be unvaxxed. It is another thing to deny people the right to choose whether or not they associate with an unvaxxed person. After that incident, (Z) gave zero time and zero money to the Packers until the glorious day when Rodgers was finally sent packing.

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M.M. in San Diego, CA, asks: Okay, tell me how you lost teeth playing baseball.

(V) & (Z) answer: When he played Little League, (Z) played catcher and outfield. And one year, around the age of 12, he had a teammate who threw hard enough that the teammate eventually played professionally. Nobody else on the team EVER caught for this teammate because they were too afraid. An 80 MPH pitch at 50 feet is roughly the equivalent of a 100 MPH pitch at major league distance (60 feet, 6 inches). Plus, this teammate was wild. So, (Z) was the only one willing or able to don the tools of ignorance and to try to catch this fellow's pitching. Although (Z) did a pretty decent job, there were quite a few wild pitches he could not corral.

One day, this teammate was playing catch with another person, and made an errant throw that hit (Z) in the face so hard it left imprints of the seams. Maybe it was an accident, maybe it wasn't. This teammate had a well-established reputation for lashing out in various ways, and he was certainly angry about the wild pitches. In any event, it did not knock the teeth out, but it did do damage that, over the years, eventually led to bridges and then implants.

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A.W. in Brooklyn, NY, asks: Why isn't "Attorneys General" abbreviated to "AsG"?

(V) & (Z) answer: The same reason RsBI never supplanted RBIs as shorthand for "Runs Batted In": It may be more correct, but it looks strange.

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A.G. in Scranton, PA, asks: I know this really runs against the spirit of the intellectually honest nature of your site but... is there question you are just dying to answer that no one is asking but have too much integrity to make up a set of initials and a city to put next to a question you are asking yourselves?

(V) & (Z) answer: The Saturday mailbag was inspired by Roger Ebert's "Ask the Movie Answer Man" column. He reserved the right to post his own questions, using Illinois cities, and the initials of characters from the movie Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, for which he wrote the screenplay. We have similarly noted, in the past, that we reserve the right to post our own questions, using the biographical details of 19th century presidents (e.g., U.S.G. in Galena, IL).

We get more than enough questions that we do not need to exercise this right. If there's something we simply must get out there, we can work it into an answer, or a comment on a letter, or an item written during the regular week. So, the only time we've ever done this is the first time we noted that we MIGHT do it. Just to pay it off, we deliberately included a question a few weeks later from a nineteenth-century president. We'll probably do it again in the next few weeks, as an easter egg for people who read to the end of the Q&A.

Reader Question of the Week: Conservative, Eh

Here is the question we put before readers last week:

B.L. in Hudson, NY, asks: What is "Canadian conservative"? How does this differ from American conservatism?

And here some of the answers we got in response:

M.V.E. in Kitchener, ON, Canada: I've been watching Canadian politics since I was a teen. At this point I may have more insight into American politics because there's so much more info out there: coverage, polls, pundits, attention... There's nothing I could find that really compares to this site for Canada, and the last blogger I did find long ago gave up his blog and joined one of the networks here and I never saw as much material from them again.

In a nutshell, many conservatives in Canada have been drinking Kool-Aid colored with red dye #45, so we lost one of our two largest functional policy center choices. I'm still bitter about the Liberal Party's (think Canadian Democrats) corruption having taken so long to clean up, and still saddened by the loss of Jack Layton (former leader of the NDP, our third choice, roundly leftist party). I liked a lot of things about most liberal prime ministers during my lifetime (though some were total duds), and I've liked the Conservatives ones very little.

All that said, I mourn the lack of decent balance on the right for policy positions that used to make their home there. Some left wing positions at the provincial level on education seem downright British-style nanny-state-ish in their extremism and probably need some opposition to find the best long-term compromise for the electorate. How that plays out at the federal level is usually a bunch of shouting at the wind (where the federal government usually has no business poking their nose), but foreign policy, pandemic benefits, climate change and many other things have been handled admirably in my estimation by the current government because the conservative alternative was nothing more than a gaggle of rage merchants with little real direction, just blind, mouth-foaming opposition.

Just like D.C. has seen in the last 10 or so years, we really need a return to normal business where everyone is pitching and committing to solutions, not just shouting at the wind.

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D.J.M. in Salmon Arm, BC, Canada: A few years ago I was listening to an American speaker who declared his political views were "left of center," but not so far left that he was "woke." A member of the audience, who hailed from Europe, stood up and replied, "I do not think you understand what left of center means." Where he had placed himself on the political spectrum and how he defined "woke" was quite different than the people from away. In my view, conservatism in general falls across a spectrum that includes elements of adherence to tradition, fiscal frugality, and religious dogma. In Canada, this spectrum is the same as in the United States. The fundamental difference is in numbers and where they lie on the spectrum. We have far fewer people at the radical end of the spectrum. For example, while you have enough "right wingers" to ban reproductive choice or declare embryos are children, our "right wingers" of a similar persuasion occasionally gather to wave a flag or post a billboard.

I believe much of this shift is due to our forms of government. In the U.S., the election of the president by the Electoral College, the equal state representation and notion of seniority in the Senate, and the life appointments of Supreme Court justices favor the more radical end of the conservative spectrum. In Canada, the prime minister is chosen by the party, the Senate is appointed as a house of "sober second thought" and age limits (75) are placed on the members of the Senate and the Supreme Court. The system is not perfect and we still experience our own brand of scandal, incompetence (see the ArriveCan app fiasco), and provincial/federal disputes. However, in the absence of a filibuster or radical impediments such as the Freedom Caucus, progressive legislation such as universal healthcare, reproductive choice, pharmacare, etc., gets passed. As it turns out, conservatives like liberal policies, they just don't like liberals.

The elements of conservatism do not change, but the numbers do. Canadians are a bit more chill and it's not just the weather. Heck, we have no problem with homo milk or hosers, and we'd always welcome Vee and Zed for a double double, or my preference, some back bacon and a two four. Good day, eh!

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M.F. in Burlington, ON, Canada: The answer isn't that straightforward, and has changed significantly over the past 50 years or so.

Like a lot of Canadian culture, Canadian conservatism is significantly affected by interaction with dominant American culture. Particularly in Atlantic Canada and Ontario (and to some extent Quebec), the bedrock of Canadian conservatism was the United Empire Loyalists, descended from refugees who fled (or were expelled) from the United States after independence.

Thus a great deal of Canadian conservatism was expressed in terms of loyalty to institutions, and in particular the Crown. But abiding suspicion of the United States was never far from the surface. Our first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was adamantly opposed to reciprocity (or free trade in more modern parlance) and ran his final campaign (1896) claiming, "a British subject I was born and a British subject I shall die."

Through most of Canadian history, the Liberal Party was the party of warm American relations, reciprocity, and economic integration.

Unlike American liberal individualism, Canadian conservatism had a significant collectivist flavor, often described as Red Toryism. Thus the government of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker (1957-63) was willing to provide federal funding to support a hospital insurance scheme in Saskatchewan that became one of the building blocks of universal health care, and showed significant leadership in having South Africa suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations over Apartheid.

The shift towards a more right-populist conservatism in Canada actually predates the party shift in the U.S. (due to Nixon's Southern Strategy) by about five years, but took significantly longer. It really wasn't until the 1980s, under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (who passed away last month) that the then-Progressive Conservative Party embraced free trade. Mulroney assiduously aligned himself with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher on economic issues. Even so, he led possibly the greenest government in Canadian history before or since, and like Diefenbaker, Mulroney showed significant leadership in the Commonwealth's opposition to Apartheid.

(I'll note here that the fact the Party was called Progressive Conservative was less a commentary on its ideology than the fallout of an amalgamation between the Conservatives and the former Progressive Party. The Progressives were a populist party with little consistent ideology. By the time of the merger, most left-leaning Progressives had already decamped either to the centrist Liberals or to the leftist Cooperative Commonwealth Federation which subsequently became the modern New Democratic Party.)

From the 1930s until the 1970s, there had been a right populist party based in western Canada called Social Credit. (There was a sister party in Quebec called Ralliement Créditiste, but they are largely irrelevant to this topic.) Despite having governed Alberta as recently as 1971 and British Columbia until 1991, Social Credit was essentially a dead letter federally and in every province except BC, and even there it was less a political party than a flag of convenience for voters from all the center-right parties to oppose the leftist New Democrats.

In the late 1980s, various western remnants of Social Credit along with disgruntled right-leaning Progressive Conservatives formed the Reform Party. Prime Minister Mulroney had become unpopular among western conservatives for his supposed favoritism towards Quebec, where Mulroney had ensured his majority by appealing to nationalist Québecois and Québecoise.

The former Progressive Conservative Party experienced a complete electoral collapse in 1993, winning just two seats in the House of Commons. They lost Quebec because the soft nationalists had abandoned them for the new Bloc Québecois. They lost western Canada principally to the Reform Party, and they lost everywhere else because Reform and Progressive Conservative vote splitting allowed the Liberals to come up the middle.

For the next decade, various attempts to Unite the Right failed, in large part because of the cultural disconnect between the traditional and institutional conservatism of the Progressive Conservative Party and the right-wing populism of the Reform Party and its successor the Canadian Alliance. When the two were finally brought together under Stephen Harper in 2004, and when the party formed a government in 2006, it was now largely a right populist party. While some former Progressive Conservatives remained, many others left for the Liberal Party, or to create minor vanity parties, or departed from active politics entirely. The two living former Progressive Conservative Prime Ministers, Joe Clark and Kim Campbell, have been openly hostile to the new party.

There are many parallels between the evolution of Canadian conservative parties over the past 50 years and the evolution of the Republican Party in the U.S. over the same period, but the starting points are significantly different and the process far more incremental.

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R.K. in Cambridge, MN: I am not sure if this is directly applicable or not, but I'm thinking it is more true than false. In the fall of 1968, I was a freshman at the University of Minnesota. One of my classes was an introductory political science course. The instructor was a visiting professor from England. One day in discussing American political parties, he said, "In England we have a Conservative Party much like your Democrats. We just don't have a Nazi Party." I am thinking my Canadian neighbors are more like the British than us in this regard. (That same professor walked into the lecture hall with probably 200 hundred students the morning after the November 1968 election, stopped and looked up at the auditorium, shook his finger at us, and said, "All of you who couldn't bring yourselves to vote for Humphrey, you are going to learn a hard lesson...")

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G.M. in Laurence Harbor, NJ: A Canadian Conservative is one of the group that demand that poutine never be exported to the U.S.

An American Conservative has no idea what poutine is.

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T.C. in Stone Mountain, GA: The main difference between Canadian conservatives and American conservatives is their status on the endangered species list. Canadian conservatives are classified as "vulnerable" but in some areas they are thriving. American conservatives are currently classified as "critically endangered" and some political ecologists think they are now "extinct in the wild." The main problem attacking the American conservatives has been the invasive species "Trumpists." Trumpists may have their own problem due to their lack of genetic variation. That may cause a collapse of the Trumpist population and let Canadian conservatives invade the suddenly available genetic niche in the U.S.

That, of course, would be unacceptable and it is believed that experts at UCLA are working to prevent this catastrophe.

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R.L.D. in Sundance, WY: Canadian Conservatism differs from its American counterpart in that it comes with a subtle whiff of maple syrup.

Here is the question for next week:

S.B. in Winslow, ME, asks: In your item "Biden Will Kick Off His Campaign Tonight," you listed several things he could speak about in the SOTU and on the campaign trail. Undoubtedly, what he does say will be parsed six ways to Sunday, but I wondered what the E-Verse would LIKE to hear discussed and debated this campaign season.

Submit your answers to comments@electoral-vote.com, preferably with subject line "Something to Talk About"!

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