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Digging deep into the Super Tuesday primary results, I foresee President Biden facing off for a rematch against President Trump. Can you feel the excitement? The two candidates represent juggernauts within their respective parties.
Let’s take the Democrats first, courtesy of RealClearPolitics. What we have here is one full boatload of results. They raise the question: who is Marianne Williamson and what is she doing here? She is the best-selling author of a variety of books including A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course In Miracles, A Woman’s Worth, Illuminata, The Healing of America, and Illuminated Prayers. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Williamson continues to inspire audiences on a global scale as she lectures internationally in the fields of spirituality and new thought.
I infer from the results that Democrats resist the light. They resist new thought. Also, we don’t have a prayer. We need a miracle.
Biden’s presents himself as a throwback to the old-fashioned Democratic Party, yet he has adopted the policies of party’s far left. Most prominent among these policies is the opening of our borders and the implicit rejection of the sovereignty of the United States. Over the past three-plus years these policies have wrought great damage. Biden wants to test the outer limits of Adam Smith’s proposition that “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” One can’t help but wonder if we can put ourselves back on track.
It’s not Joe Biden’s Democratic Party. It’s the woke left’s Democratic Party. It’s the party of those who say the things which are not.
Biden made an appearance during the narrow window of his waking hours yesterday. He appeared to have dropped in from outer space. He sounded like he had not been briefed since he blasted off from his homeworld. J.B., phone home.
FULL VIDEO:
REPORTER: "What's your message to Democrats who are concerned about your poll numbers?"
BIDEN: "My poll numbers? The last five polls you guys don't report. I'm winning — five! Five in a row!" pic.twitter.com/Mz5gWQMRSA
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 5, 2024
On the Republican side of Super Tuesday (also courtesy of RCP), President Trump wrapped up the Republican nomination. Nikki Haley will suspend her campaign later this morning.
This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party. If President Trump were to keel over and leave us with an open convention in Milwaukee next July, I assess the odds that the delegates would turn to Haley at zero. It would be a politician in the mold of Trump — probably Ron DeSantis, or perhaps J.D. Vance or Vivek the Mistake. Trump has transformed the Republican Party. By contrast with Biden and the Democrats, he has stamped the party in his image.
I am surprised by the not insubstantial fraction of votes that Haley pulled yesterday. Some portion of the Haley represents Democrats voting in open primaries. Haley won Vermont, but even if she were the nominee she would lose it in November. Vermont is a socialist state. I’m not talking about Vermont. Assuming Trump can survive the Democrats’ lawfare, he cannot win without a united Republican Party. He has some work to do to put the Republican house together. His choice for vice president could help.
It is difficult to project the state of play in the coming months. My crystal ball is cloudy. Much depends on the course of the Democrats’ lawfare against Trump and, to a lesser extent, the nature of the campaign Trump runs. I think he best serves his own interests at this point when he is out of the news and provides the alternative to Biden. If the election can be reduced to a binary choice, Biden should lose. The Democrats’ lawfare means to preclude that.
Yesterday brought more news of the illegal immigration that Biden has invited, inflicted, facilitated, fostered. Biden’s derelictions in office are historic in nature. The Daily Mail reports, for example, “Biden administration ADMITS flying 320,000 migrants secretly into the U.S. to reduce the number of crossings at the border has national security ‘vulnerabilities.'” The New York Post reports “Elon Musk says Biden flying 320K ‘unvetted’ migrants into the US sets stage ‘for something far worse than 9/11.’” Elon Musk — he’s no dummy.
The true numbers involved in the invasion that Biden invited are staggering, whatever they are, as are the secondary effects. As I say, we need a miracle, or something like it.
Attorney Terrence Bradley testified last week in the hearing on the possible disqualification of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Special Counsel Nathan Wade in the “conspiracy so immense” charges against President Trump et al. pending in Georgia state court. Bradley is Wade’s former law partner and lawyer in his divorce proceeding. He knows when the Willis/Wade romance began because Wade told him.
Indeed, Bradley had previously stated in text messages to Ashleigh Merchant (attorney for defendant Michael Roman) that: (1) the relationship between Willis and Wade started before he was appointed special prosecutor, (2) the relationship started while they were both magistrate judges, and (3) the motion to disqualify Willis, which alleged the start date of the relationship, was accurate.
However, that’s not the way it turned out on the witness stand. After long pauses, Bradley disavowed his previous statements. He couldn’t recall. He was speculating. As in the old Jack Benny joke, he was thinking about it. He knew nothing. It made for painful viewing. Everyone in the room knew that Bradley was lying. Which means that Willis and Wade had lied in their testimony, which was almost as obvious.
Judge Scott McAfee heard oral argument on the disqualification motion this past Friday. He announced that he would render a decision within two weeks. I think he left the bench knowing what he would do.
Now comes counsel for defendant David J. Shafer to add to the lyin’ record on the matter of disqualification. According to counsel in a three-page filing setting forth Notice of Proposed Testimony, Cobb County prosecutor Cindi Lee Yeager had “numerous, in-person and other conversations” with Bradley in which they discussed information about Willis and Wade. Bradley told Yeager that the two met during a 2019 judicial conference and that Wade “began his romantic relationship” with the future DA “at or around this time.”
The filing also describes a meeting around September 2023 when Bradley was visiting Yeager in her office and got a phone call. “Ms. Yeager could hear that the caller was District Attorney Willis. District Attorney Willis was calling Mr. Bradley in response to an article that was published about how much money Mr. Wade and his law partners had been paid in this case,” according to the filing. “Ms. Yeager heard District Attorney Willis tell Mr. Bradley: “They are coming after us. You don’t need to talk to them about anything about us.”
The Daily Mail runs it all down along with exhibits and videos in “Fani Willis warned Nathan Wade’s divorce lawyer to stay quiet about their affair, bombshell new court filing claims: Trump prosecutor case gets another twist with NEW witness that could deliver devastating testimony.” Jonathan Turley provides a link to the new filing in the tweet below.
My guess is that Judge McAfee has heard enough. He knows how he wants to decide the disqualification motion. Anyone with half a brain could see that Bradley was lying. Bradley could not have made it more obvious if he had wanted to, although (with apologies to the great Jeremiah Denton) he might have blinked out “I-M-L-Y-I-N-G” in Morse Code if he knew it.
There is a new filing in the Fani Willis case that contradicts the much maligned testimony of Nathan Wade’s former partner Terrence Bradley. A prosecutor has come forward to say that Bradley told him with clarity of the personal relationship began earlier. https://t.co/HWtlWhdmyK
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 4, 2024
Today’s third NY Times installment about their most recent poll piles on the bad news for Biden: not only are you losing to Trump head-to-head, and are unpopular, but today we learn that more voters like Trump’s policies and record better than Biden’s.
Here’s the graphic depiction:
Some excerpts from the Times:
And despite holding intensely and similarly critical opinions both of President Biden and of his predecessor, Americans have much more positive views of Donald J. Trump’s policies than they do of Mr. Biden’s, according to New York Times/Siena College polls.
Overall, 40 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had helped them personally, compared with just 18 percent who say the same about Mr. Biden’s policies. . .
Women are 20 percentage points more likely to say that Mr. Trump’s policies have helped them than Mr. Biden’s have, despite the fact that Mr. Trump installed Supreme Court justices who ultimately overturned the right to an abortion and that about two-thirds of women in America think that abortion should be legal in all or most instances.
In a separate Times story, the Biden message to doubting Democrats is—drop dead. Well that’s the headline the NY Daily News would have used. Instead the Times headline is:
“For Democrats Pining for an Alternative, Biden Team Has a Message: Get Over It.”
. . . The Biden team views the very question as absurd. The president in their view has an impressive record of accomplishment to run on. There is no obvious alternative. It is far too late in the cycle to bow out without considerable disruption. . . Members of Mr. Biden’s team insist they feel little sense of concern.
The Supreme Court has held 9-0 that the Colorado Supreme Court erred in blessing the disqualification of Donald Trump from the state’s primary election ballot under section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court’s opinion is per curiam. Justice Barrett concurs in part and concurs in the judgment. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson concur in the judgment (i.e., the result). The Court’s opinions are posted online here.
The Court’s per curiam opinion commanded a majority and its reasoning represents the law. It rests substantially on the exclusive power of Congress to enforce section 3 against candidates for federal office, “especially the presidency.”
Does the opinion leave open the possibility that Congress might refuse to certify Trump as president if he were to be elected president on the ground that he is guilty of insurrection? If Congress has not prescribed any means other than conviction of the crime of insurrection to make the determination underlying application of section 3, I doubt it. See opinion at 10. However, I may be mistaken. Perhaps the opinion cannot be read that broadly.
The opinion concludes (emphasis in original, citations omitted):
All nine Members of the Court agree with that result. Our colleagues writing separately further agree with many of the reasons this opinion provides for reaching it. So far as we can tell, they object only to our taking into account the distinctive way Section 3 works and the fact that Section 5 vests in Congress the power to enforce it. These are not the only reasons the States lack power to enforce this particular constitutional provision with respect to federal offices. But they are important ones, and it is the combination of all the reasons set forth in this opinion—not, as some of our colleagues would have it, just one particular rationale—that resolves this case. In our view, each of these reasons is necessary to provide a complete explanation for the judgment the Court unanimously reaches.
Read the whole thing here.
UPDATE: Although he characterizes it as a 5-4 decision, Andrew McCarthy supports my reading of the per curiam opinion: “What that means is that if Donald Trump were to win the presidential election, congressional Democrats would not be able — in the next January 6 joint session of Congress — to refuse to ratify his victory on the grounds that he is an insurrectionist. Under the Court’s holding, it is now a prerequisite to enforcement of the Section 3 disqualification that a person must have been convicted under the insurrection statute.”
The New York Times is out with its latest poll today, and they can’t sugar coat the bad news for Biden (and good news for Trump) that it contains. The headline says it all:
The poll has Trump with a five-point lead.
Some internals from the article are even more devastating than these headline numbers:
The poll offers an array of warning signs for the president about weaknesses within the Democratic coalition, including among women, Black and Latino voters. So far, it is Mr. Trump who has better unified his party, even amid an ongoing primary contest. . .
Mr. Trump is winning 97 percent of those who say they voted for him four years ago, and virtually none of his past supporters said they are casting a ballot for Mr. Biden. In contrast, Mr. Biden is winning only 83 percent of his 2020 voters, with 10 percent saying they now back Mr. Trump. . .
One of the more ominous findings for Mr. Biden in the new poll is that the historical edge Democrats have held with working-class voters of color who did not attend college continues to erode.
Mr. Biden won 72 percent of those voters in 2020, according to exit polling, providing him with a nearly 50-point edge over Mr. Trump. Today, the Times/Siena poll showed Mr. Biden only narrowly leading among nonwhite voters who did not graduate from college: 47 percent to 41 percent. . .
Mr. Trump’s policies were generally viewed far more favorably by voters than Mr. Biden’s. A full 40 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had helped them personally, compared to only 18 percent who said the same of Mr. Biden’s.
The gender gap, for instance, is no longer benefiting Democrats. Women, who strongly favored Mr. Biden four years ago, are now equally split, while men gave Mr. Trump a nine-point edge. The poll showed Mr. Trump edging out Mr. Biden among Latinos, and Mr. Biden’s share of the Black vote is shrinking, too.
Memo to Trump: Don’t blow it.
Atlanta attorney Harry MacDougald is our old Rathergate friend. He helped us get the ball rolling in “The 61st minute” on the morning of September 9, 2004. Writing under the screen name Buckhead, Harry observed in comment number 47 of Free Republic’s Rathergate thread: “I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively.” Life has never been quite the same since we took his cue and followed up.
Harry is the managing partner of Atlanta’s Caldwell, Carlson, Elliott & DeLoach law firm. He represents defendant Jeffrey Clark in the “conspiracy so immense” case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. We have followed defendants’ motion to disqualify Willis from prosecuting the case. It turns out that Willis appointed her boyfriend Nathan Wade as special prosecutor in the case. Willis, Wade, and others have testified under oath on the facts underlying the conflict issues raised by defendants. I commented, most recently, in “Whole lotta lyin’ goin’ on.”
Yesterday Judge Scott McAfee held a three-hour hearing for oral argument by the attorneys on the disqualification motion. Harry was the star of the show. His thirteen-minute argument begins at 01:12:40 of the video of the hearing at the bottom. Students of ancient history may recall the role of CBS News in Rathergate. It has posted a decent account of the hearing.
I have my doubts that Judge McAfee will grant the disqualification motion, but I have no doubt that he should or that Harry accurately captured the essence of the evidence before the court. Referring to the Office of the Fulton County District Attorney and the Willis/Wade matter, Harry concluded: “This office is a global laughingstock because of their conduct.”
I reached out to Harry for a comment after the hearing yesterday. He declined to comment one way or the other on the hearing, although he did comment favorably on Power Line. My comment is that Harry was right about Rathergate and he is right about the disgrace to be resolved by the court on the pending motion.
I keep seeing Trump skeptics and their media svengalis say that while Nikki Haley is not coming close to beating Trump in any primary battle, she is getting sufficient support to conclude that there is a critical mass of Republicans who don’t like Trump and may not turn out for him in November, and boy is he in big trouble because of this.
Don’t buy it.
I note that back in 1980, the Michigan primary was held May 20, and even though Ronald Reagan was well on his way to securing the Republican nomination, George H.W. Bush still pulled off an upset in that primary, beating Reagan by 150,000 votes. (Bush also beat Reagan in the Pennsylvania primary in April.) Michigan looks to be the kind of state that favors moderate Republicans.
When all the primaries were over, Reagan had received a cumulative 7.6 million votes, while Bush had received 3.1 million, with John Anderson a distant third with 1.5 million. But add Bush and Anderson’s totals together with the also-rans (Dole, Baker, Connally, Phil Crane, etc) and you conclude that Reagan’s majority was less than a landslide (7.6 million to 4.6 million for the rest of the field—certainly a much smaller margin than Trump’s margin in the current contest. Despite the massive doubts about Reagan—his age, his “controversial” opinions, etc—he walked away with a landslide.
But, you hear, Trump is essentially running as an incumbent, and should have incumbent-level margins. This is an unimpressive argument, especially when you allow for the circumstance, not seen since 1912, of a former president coming back to challenge for the nomination. To the contrary, Trump is running far ahead of his totals from the 2016 contest. He’s gotten stronger, not weaker, since 2016.
P.S. For trivia buffs, Harold Stassen got 25,000 votes in the 1980 GOP primaries.
Attorney Terrence Bradley testified yesterday in the hearing on the possible disqualification of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Special Counsel Nathan Wade in the “conspiracy so immense” charges against President Trump et al. pending in Georgia state court. Bradley is Wade’s former law partner and lawyer in his divorce proceeding. He knows when the Willis/Wade romance began because Wade told him.
Indeed, as Techno Fog notes, Bradley has previously stated in text messages to Ashleigh Merchant (attorney for defendant Michael Roman) that: (1) the relationship between Willis and Wade started before he was appointed special prosecutor, (2) the relationship started while they were both magistrate judges, and (3) the motion to disqualify Willis, which alleged the start date of the relationship, was accurate.
However, that’s not the way it turned out on the witness stand. After long pauses, Bradley disavowed his previous statements. He couldn’t recall. He was speculating. As in the old Jack Benny joke, he was thinking about it. He knew nothing.
Mr. Fog offers pierces the fog with this clear summary of Bradley’s testimony: “[Bradley] speculated about the start of the relationship, only had one meeting with Wade about the relationship, and has no personal knowledge as to when the relationship started. All of that, of course, was contradicted by his prior representations to Ms. Merchant.”
It made for painful viewing. Everyone in the room knew that Bradley was lying. Which means that Willis and Wade had lied in their testimony, which was almost as obvious. Below is an excerpt of Bradley’s testimony that ran in full over two hours. As I say, it makes for painful viewing.
The Michigan primary was held yesterday. President Biden defeated Uncommitted, Marianne Willison, and my cousin Dean Phillips on the Democrat side. Dean commented on Twitter for the benefit of his former friends in the party: “If you resent me for the audacity to challenge Joe Biden, at least you’ll appreciate how relatively strong I’m making him look among primary voters!”
President Trump handily defeated Nikki Haley on the Republican side. Here are the current results posted by RealClearPolitics. Note the differential in turnout.
One can infer that Biden and Trump will be their respective party’s presidential nominees, but the results seem slightly more surprising than expected. Axios managing editor/politics David Lindsey offers a brief take on the results that I found helpful:
There wasn’t much doubt that President Biden and former President Trump would romp to victories in the Michigan primaries Tuesday. But Biden’s win in particular revealed his vulnerability in a crucial swing state that could decide the presidency in November….Arab American and young voters — key to Biden winning Michigan in 2020 — turned out by the tens of thousands on Tuesday to vote … not for Biden, but for “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary.
• The protest vote, driven by anger over Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, had drawn more than 77,000 supporters with 70% of the ballots counted — several times more than organizers expected.
• That took some of the glow from a victory in which Biden got more than 80% of the vote, and confirmed that Biden has some serious persuading to do between now and November.
• “We need more than just nice words and hope. We need a permanent ceasefire” in Gaza, Layla Elabed, campaign manager for Listen to Michigan, told CNN. The group was behind the “uncommitted” vote effort.
Other takeaways from Michigan:
1, Biden has other problems, too.
• Another jolt for the president’s campaign Tuesday: A jarring enthusiasm gap between the Democratic and Republican primaries.
• Nearly 40% more people voted in the Republican primary than in the Democratic contest — despite the protest campaign that aided turnout on the Democratic side.
• Trump, who once again defeated former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, got more votes on the GOP side than the total number of votes cast in the Democratic primary between Biden, “uncommitted” and two other candidates.
2. It wasn’t all good news for Trump.
• That surge in GOP voters was driven in part by about 27% of Republicans voting for Haley, whose support continues to be not nearly enough to win the Republican nomination — but enough to show that a sizable chunk of the GOP may never be on board with Trump.
• Haley’s campaign might not last beyond Super Tuesday next week, when Trump is expected to score hundreds of delegates and put a virtual lock on the GOP nomination as 16 states hold contests.
• But Haley’s level of support suggests that many of her backers may stay home in November — or even vote for Biden, if Trump is on the ballot.
Whole thing here.
We seek to read the tea leaves in the results. As some sage has famously observed, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” George Eliot’s narrator in Middlemarch puts it this way: “Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.” To read the tea leaves we have to project ahead to next November. How will the candidates look at that time? Our crystal ball is cloudy. Both Biden and Trump are hobbled by weaknesses that will be magnified over the next eight months.
For Democrats this is the Weekend At Bernie’s election. It has become increasingly difficult to keep Biden upright during business hours. His brain is fried. His managers have to keep him under wraps. He is an embarrassment. Playing to his party’s activist base, he has left undone what should have been done and he has done that which should not have been done.
For Republicans this is the “In the Jailhouse Now” election. The electoral impact of the Democrat lawfare on Trump are particularly difficult to predict, but they can’t be good for him. They impose their own limitations on Trump in terms of time, money, and who knows what else. That’s what it’s all about. Anyone can see storm clouds ahead.
I absolutely hate the clichéd last resort of scoundrel pundits as the election approaches. You know, “it depends on turnout.” With respect to what should be the insuperable problems each candidate confronts, let’s just say “it depends on how it turns out.” They can’t both lose. One of them is going to prevail.
My pal Henry Olsen explains in his recent Telegraph column that Trump is underperforming his polls in recent contests, and appears to be stuck between a very solid floor and a rigid ceiling. Perhaps, but the Telegraph included this graphic, taken from recent Pew polls, that suggests a different picture:
To be fair, a generic Republican ought to be polling about 60 percent of the white vote, and that’s just where Trump is stuck. It would be a delicious irony if Trump wins in November through an increased share of minority votes. It will plunge Democrats into a crisis.
In 2001, 2005 and 2017, some Democrat House members objected to the certification of electoral votes for the winning Republican presidential candidate. Those objections, while “denialist,” were only symbolic. But Democrat leaders in the House are now suggesting that if they control that body following November’s election–as they well might–they may refuse to allow a victorious Donald Trump to take office.
The Atlantic did the original reporting, behind a paywall. This is from the Election Law Blog:
Murray and other legal scholars say that, absent clear guidance from the Supreme Court, a Trump win could lead to a constitutional crisis in Congress. Democrats would have to choose between confirming a winner many of them believe is ineligible and defying the will of voters who elected him. …
In interviews, senior House Democrats would not commit to certifying a Trump win, saying they would do so only if the Supreme Court affirms his eligibility. But during oral arguments, liberal and conservative justices alike seemed inclined to dodge the question of his eligibility altogether and throw the decision to Congress.
“That would be a colossal disaster,” Representative Adam Schiff of California told me. “We already had one horrendous January 6. We don’t need another.” …
The choice that Democrats would face if Trump won without a definitive ruling on his eligibility was almost too fraught for Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland to contemplate. He told me he didn’t know how he’d vote in that scenario. As we spoke about what might happen, he recalled the brutality of January 6. “There was blood all over the Capitol in the hypothetical you posit,” Raskin, who served on the January 6 committee with Schiff, told me….
The Democrats have become so insane on the subject of Donald Trump that it is hard to know which of their mutterings to take seriously. But if Trump wins the election and a Democrat-controlled House refuses to certify his election on the ground that he is an “insurrectionist” under the 14th Amendment, we will be past the point of a constitutional crisis. If that happens, the only realistic path forward will be disunion, possibly accompanied by civil war, but preferably not.
This is one reason why the Supreme Court should put the 14th Amendment theory out of its misery, once and for all. It is obvious that the drafters of that amendment meant the just-concluded Civil War, in which 600,000 Americans lost their lives, when they referred to “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States. In contrast, the January 6 protest was not one of the 50 most destructive riots of the last few years, and the only person killed was Ashli Babbitt. Not a single participant in the protest was arrested in possession of a firearm. Some insurrection!
In the interest of preserving the Republic, the Supreme Court should rule definitively that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not apply to Donald Trump.
Vaunce News 