(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish / Arabic الترجمة العربية / Hebrew תרגום לעברית)

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) October 6, 2025; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating as I make my overdue comeback! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

SILVER SPRING—On paper, officially, “legally,” both the West Bank and the United States have clear ways that security forces are to bound to be applied from any central governing authority in particular areas, deferring to local forces and limiting the roles of those coming from outside. But as both Israel and the U.S. implode politically on the eve of the two-year anniversary of the October 7 Hamas terrorist pogrom against Israel and the beginning of the even larger mass-killing of Israel’s Gaza campaign, it is important to understand how far from reality this description actually ends up being under the current crises both nation nations face.

Wrecking Boundaries in the West Bank

But in the West Bank, Israeli leaders have long ignored many of these supposed restrictions at will, none more so from the top than extremist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  The West Bank is by far the largest of the three Palestinian territories forming the State of Palestine and occupied during the Six Day-War in June 1967 by the Israel Defense Forces (or IDF, i.e., the Israeli army) and still illegally occupied after all these years (the other Palestinian areas being the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem).  For decades, Israel has illegally colonized these lands and transferred some of its Jewish population illegally to form illegal Jewish settler communities—often of religious fanatics—on Palestinian land, sometimes ethnically cleansing Palestinian communities in the process.   Netanyahu, a champion of the settler movement often nicknamed “Bibi,” has served more time as prime minister than any Israeli, including Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion; indeed, Netanyahu seems willing to do just about anything to maintain power, including repeatedly prolonging the current horrific “war” (a term loosely applied) in Gaza.  Since the 1993 Oslo peace process began, a three-tiered system is supposed to govern whether Israelis or Palestinians hold civil or security authority in the West Bank: Area A (Palestinian security and civil), Area B (Israeli security, Palestinian civil), and Area C (Israeli security and civil).  In reality, Israel treats all areas as if it can do whatever it pleases whenever it pleases: new illegal Israeli settlements in the middle of Palestinian land, abrupt arrests of Palestinian officials trying to exercise their duties, or raids deep into the heart of the most populous Palestinian cities care not what lines on the map say, and the Israeli political and military leaders have also long since stopped caring (Netanyahu himself bragged repeatedly over the years up through the present about killing the Oslo process that even brought these three Areas about).

Your Posse Is Not Legal, Mr. President

In the United States, possible tensions between the civil and military spheres preoccupied the Founding Fathers so much so that there was no official permanent standing army established by the Constitution and George Washington himself was lionized as a hero in the mold of Cincinnatus for stepping down from supreme military power when his duty was done (and as much for that as anything else he ever did, which says a lot).  There was a bold, idealistic, prescient experiment in Reconstruction (1865-1877)—really the last phase of the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) over slavery—to bring about multiracial democracy that achieved much relying on the deployment and backing of federal troops before succumbing to white supremacist terrorist insurrections throughout the recalcitrant South.  Some dynamics during Reconstruction in the South in key ways resembled the West Bank in that whites in the South eventually used lawless means to establish control over security forces and courts to create a separate-and-unequal system, violating Reconstruction-era constitutional amendments and laws to instead impose a pre-apartheid apartheid system on newly-freed people in the South that would come to be known as the Jim Crow “legal” system and would take most of a century to dismantle.

Simultaneously, while Reconstruction wound down as a failed experiment, Americans were uneasy about the fact that the newly mighty U.S. military after the Civil War had been used so much in civil affairs in formerly rebel southern states, so the Posse Comitatus Act was passed in 1878 to more clearly define the U.S. civil-military divide, already quite strong without it.  The law further codified that the federal military cannot be used for domestic civilian law enforcement purposes with a few exceptions for special, unique, and extreme circumstances often as laid out in very specific laws.  This law was passed in 1878 shortly after Reconstruction ended by both the House and Senate with comfortable margins and signed into law by then-President Rutherford B. Hayes.  The exceptions allow the president to work around or go over the Act in times of severe emergencies.

While there are some issues of “ambiguity” in the Posse Comitatus Act, the long tradition of taking great care with the use of military forces on U.S. soil in non-war settings is clear and Trump’s domestic military deployments in 2025 are not ambiguous in that his premises for deploying them to begin with were flat-out-false or grotesquely unproven, unsubstantiated assertions (“untethered to the facts,” in federal Judge Karin Immergut’s words from her ruling after an emergency hearing in Oregon late yesterday; for this, permanent caricature and White House Deputy Chief Staff Stephen Miller irresponsibly and dangerously called her actions a “legal insurrection” that aids “an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers,” yet another proclamation of open season on the judiciary).  The Trump Administration’s wild claims are contrary to existing publicly available information, with no serious attempts made to counter such information with a proper presentation of demonstrably better or updated information as would be expected under a normal, functioning government.  And though he has far more authority to deploy troops to the District of Columbia, of which I live just outside (so yes, I have seen these illegally deployed forces many times and spoken with them), false premises were still articulated for the DC deployment, so it was still, therefore, illegal before any other considerations are raised (despite raising concerns about the statistics for crime in DC, Trump authorized deployments to the District outside of any federal process to review, challenge, or improve crime statistics reporting in Washington, a common problem many cities confront, and the U.S. Department of Justice only initiated an investigation after Trump’s deployment; any effort to demonstrate any sort of adherence to proper procedure would have seen the investigation happen and conclude far before any military deployment, prove the statistics are clearly false, and demonstrate that officials in Washington were bad-faith and not cooperating or responding to good-faith efforts to obtain cooperation or improve said statistics).

Plenty of scholars have also pointed out that both the intent and context of Posse Comitatus Act and its related laws at the times they were enacted and the spirits with which they have been enforced since are incompatible with Trump’s machinations, not just legally but also constitutionally.  And the main exceptions allowed for and invoked under the 1807 Insurrection Act are for situations totally different than the country finds itself in today: it and precursor legislation saw thirty events in U.S. history result in invocation since 1792, the most recent occurrence for the 1992 L.A. riots. This was notably at the request of California’s governor at the time, the opposite of Trump’s baseless, illegal and unconstitutional deployments there now in 2025.

West Banking America

But the point is, whether in the West Bank of the United States, there are clear restrictions on a.) military forces being deployed in normal circumstances and, even in extraordinary circumstances, b.) when, c.) where, and d.) how they can be deployed.

Yet as noted, for years, Israel and especially Netanyahu have ignored these restrictions whenever they have felt like it and, indeed, have increasingly attacked the idea that these restrictions have any validity whatsoever.  In short, the law is treated as whim, and everyone knows the dirty truth deep down that even some Israelis can admit: the West Bank is an apartheid system, based on religion and ethnicity: ethnic and religious Jews with Israeli citizenship in the West Bank are accorded full Israeli civil rights in the face of Israeli authority, while, in practice, Palestinians (be they Muslim or Christian) have no rights at all and are totally subject to whatever whims and depredations the military rule of the Israeli state and its supporters mete out, up to and including mass vandalism, rampant property destruction, prodigious assaults, orchestrated ethnic cleansing, rarely-punished murders (even of Palestinian-Americans), and indefinite child detention, whether from official government security forces or any number of Jewish settlers engaging increasingly in terrorism with the state’s backing, sometimes far more than tacit.  Even before October 7 in 2023, that year was still the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the Second Intifada that ended in 2005, meaning the deliberate escalation in the West Bank by Israel has little to do with October 7, and settlers have even attacked positions of their own IDF in the West Bank when such settlers feel they are not being given enough impunity, showing their lawlessness knows no bounds.  Essentially, you have rights or not based on who Israeli authorities want to have rights there, and they award them to their side while denying them to the other.  Lines on maps, the law, human rights (for those they deemed unworthy) meant nothing, but rewarding their supporters and punishing their opponents is everything.

What has been the obvious “legal” reality for many years in the West Bank—only intensifying more and more over time both qualitatively and quantitatively and now exploding—is now something Trump wants to recreate for all America, turning the whole country into a Wild West Bank of Lawlessness.

But where for Israel, the divides are relatively simple and easy—Jewish vs. Palestinian—here it’s MAGA against everyone, even sometimes other MAGA (some Trump voters are now seeing friends, coworkers, and family members deported, detained, or arrested, even veterans).  If you are a U.S. citizen supporting what Trump is doing and your family and friends also match this description, you have little to worry about when it comes to this (for now…).  But if you are an immigrant who is undocumented/unauthorized who has no criminal record, a legal non-citizen resident—even one showing up for your own immigration hearing—or a U.S. citizen who is either ready to exercise your constitutional rights to ask questions, protest, and confront what is happening or is just at the wrong place at the wrong time, you are not necessarily protected by the law anymore.  Furthermore, by far the vast majority of the human beings being detained and deported are non-violent and non-criminal, whatever nonsense is claimed to the contrary by whomever in power.  And the masked, large, tattooed, angry individuals newly minted as ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents in paramilitary style and other federal fun folks are here to make sure you do not feel safe.  Are you an elected official, including a sitting U.S. Senator, simply asking questions of federal officials?  It does not matter, you can be handcuffed or bodyslammed with the least-protected among us.

Like Netanyahu and too many Israeli leaders in years before, Trump and his similarly extreme, similarly-minded counterparts are hell-bent on erasing, de facto or de jure, the lines the Posse Comitatus Act solidified in the sand on the limits of the use of federal military in a civilian setting, lines for principles clearly enshrined by U.S. Constitution and over two centuries of precedent, principles the Trump Administration is shredding not just in the streets of American cities but even partly also in the waters off the coast of Venezuela.

In seeking to erase legal rules binding the authorization, deployment, and use of federal military forces on U.S. soil in civilian settings (leaving similar jurisdictional mission creep in Venezuela aside), Trump and his MAGA minions with illegal occupation in America are trying to recreate key aspects of the fascist nightmare of the illegally occupied West Bank.  But here in the U.S., this is not based on two warring and competing nationalities and one of those nationalities’ democratically elected leaders pursuing total subjugation at best or actual genocide of the other nationality at worst, broadcast daily for all the world to see and fueled by insane colonialist, imperialist, expansionist fever-dreams based on ancient fantasies and ancient maps, no.  Here in the U.S., Trump is trying to divide Americans on ideological, political, identity, and legal-status lines, lines he will use to award and protect rights for some, deny them to others, still dangle to yet others as ways of obtaining “obeying in advance” or to even explicitly threaten, say, ABC and Disney over a certain late-night host named Kimmy Kimmel.  As JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois fighting back against Trump’s illegal military deployments to Chicago, noted during that drama: “Tyranny requires constant effort.  It breaks, it leaks.  Authority is brittle.  Oppression is the mask of fear.  Remember that,” quoting the amazing antifascist masterpiece that is the Star Wars show Andor.  Yet, we must also remember that, however much Trump and Netanyahu act out of fear of losing power, they are also clearly in the drivers’ seats, consolidating more and more power for themselves in ways the founder fathers of both the U.S. and Israel never intended.

And while there is hardly the level of violence between the sides as in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even as political violence in the U.S. may be on the rise, dynamics are between the two have been converging somewhat for some time and make no mistake about it, the key principle is the same: longstanding, binding legal distinctions are melting away in the face of determined illegality, such that the law disappears and factional whim reigns supreme so one side can enforce its will upon the other, tyranny replacing law as the very system.  In short, Trump seeks to create a political apartheid here in the U.S., a West Bank of Left and Right, “evil” and “good,” veering Manichaean and not dissimilar in legal nihilism to the separate and unequal system of Jew and Palestinian (or “Arab,” so much less specific…) in the West Bank’s Nablus but bringing it to New York.

Adding New Meaning to “Executing” the Law

To execute their plans, both Trump and Netanyahu have hosts of extremists willing to unquestioningly nakedly embrace the partisanship of their missions, from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, from U.S. Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (all of whom have had their own past issues with illegality or criminal probes well-before 2025: Ben-Gvir and Smotrich being convicted and arrested terrorists, respectively; Bondi in the center of a criminal bribery and obstruction scandal with Trump; and the brotastic Pete Hegseth, well, being brotastic Pete Hegseth…), just to name a few, with far, far too many others alongside.  And these allies have made it clear, sometimes as senior law enforcement officials: if we don’t like you, the law cannot protect you from us and we are coming for you, even for your children.  While in Israel, broadening this behavior to include Israeli Jewish citizens has been far milder than what has been done to Palestinians—even those in Israel with Israeli citizenship but especially those without Israeli citizenship outside of Israel in the actual territories of actual Palestine—Trump and his lawless allies are rapidly casting a far wider dragnet, or at least attempting to do so, advancing on several fronts even as I write this.

Yes, you are witnessing the MAGA Trump Administration’s attempts at illegal jurisdictional jumps dehumanizingly intending to target both directly and indirectly various large swaths of the population in America, illegal deployment by illegal deployment, related measure by related measure, until Trump has created a de facto national federalized police state he can use to prosecute and intimidate his opposition and others deemed undesirable, jurisdictional issues and the law be damned.  They have lost the program when it comes morality, cartoonishly celebrating their roles as oppressors (of certain people) and projecting so publicly for all to see.

Maybe a lot of this should not be surprising, since both men have no problem breaking the law: Trump is an insurrectionist and convicted felon and Netanyahu is currently on trial in three cases in Israel for damning corruption crimes (with Trump, unsurprisingly in true birds-of-a-feather mode, even very publicly pressuring Israel to stop Netanyahu’s trial) in addition to having the International Criminal Court issue a warrant for his arrest in 2024 for war crimes.  Both men are fascists remaking their countries in a fascist image of their former democracies, the actions mentioned herein just some of the examples (I do not use the term “fascist” lightly, but carefully and specifically and with history in mind).

At this point, one really has to wonder if either the U.S. or Israel can still be fairly termed “democracies,” because in key ways, the rule of law is damaged, dying, or dead as both Israel and the U.S.—Bibi and Donnie—continue to feed, rather than restrain, each other’s worst tendencies.

But it is both too easy and too simple to blame just such leaders: voters in both countries could have easily set their countries on different paths—ones that respected the rule of law—and voters in both countries rejected, even if narrowly, the rule of law in favor of Trump, Netanyahu, and the fascism they represent, whether they realize it or not.  And perhaps nothing screams fascist more than violently taking away legal protections for the most vulnerable and defenseless and, in turn, their allies in order to expose the chosen to ever more deprivation and violence at the hands of the same people taking away their rights and protections.

In the current state of Israel’s short history, this could simply mean the end of Israeli democracy.  In the U.S. context, this would be like the success of white supremacist terrorists during Reconstruction in brutally taking away Freedmen’s rights throughout the south, except that Trump is engaging in this massive ripping away of rights not in one region but in the whole country.  2025 may yet be known a watershed year for America, Israel, and Palestine, but only for the most horrific, sad, pathetic, and—perhaps most importantly—most preventable of ways.

See all of Brian’s work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here.

© 2025 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

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(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish) By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) October 31, 2024; UPDATED November 5: I noted below that my Electoral College predictions are rough, but am restating today on Election Day that I believe the most likely outcome will be my “strong” for Harris prediction (3rd map); Updated November 4 to cover Florida Senate race; *UPDATED November 3rd: added discussion of Iowa’s move into the swing state category, courtesy of the peerless Ann Selzer, and Electoral College maps have been updates in turn; also slight update to voter registration modeled partisanship; Update November 1st: fixed section on Florida and Virginia with missing text and fixed NC registration graphic that was GA; see related article on this election from September 6, 2024, and one on the 2022 midterms from November 7, 2022; because of YOU, Real Context News is approaching two million all-time content views, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

SILVER SPRING—We’re at the point in this election where we should able to start making predictions, because it is hard to believe anything dramatically different will emerge in polling in the next week, and I am here making mine (which I may or may not update).  But first, some housekeeping.

Methodology

In general, a good rule of thumb is to go by weighted polling averages.  One of the weaknesses of Real Clear Politics’s averages are that they basically put any poll in there without weighting for quality in an election cycle in which there have been a lot of low-quality polls using less-accurate sampling methods as well as a high number of biased partisan polls, a fair amount of both driving the discussion and most of the latter by far are from Republican-favoring sponsors (I have not been able to find an explanation of its methodology on the RCP site).  But FiveThirtyEight the past several presidential election cycles has had more accurate polling averages than especially RCP but other sites like The New York Times, whose polls this cycle, conducted with Sienna College, seem to be oversampling Republican-leaning voters significantly (meaning disproportionately including Republican representation in their estimation of who will turn out and vote).  Thus, my main source of information for polling is always FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages.  I will be using their national and state polling averages here.

In addition, I will be also combining polling data with modeled partisan voter registration modeled partisanship from Tom Bonier’s excellent outfit TargetSmart, the data presented from which I used during the 2022 midterms to predict, accurately, when very few others would, that there would be no “red wave” and that polls were undercounting Democratic support in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s infamous Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, women especially coming out strongly to support Democrats for a historic overperformance for a party in power of the same party as a sitting president in his first term.  And newly registered voters are not only more likely to vote than previously registered voters in a soon-to-happen election, but they are indicative also that others in the groups they represent are also more likely to vote.  While in many cases, the absolute numbers of voters registering are less than in 2020, the portions overall of all new registrants shifting significantly net towards Democrats is a very telling dataset considering 1-how insanely close the results of the key swing states were in 2020 and 2-how close in polling it is today it is in key states where there is a disproportionate portion of new voters modeled as likely to vote for Democrats.

In a moment of statistical ties in swing state polling, that that is as good a sign as any that Democrats will win in states statically tied—that is, within the margin-of-error range of what usually 95% of outcomes would be expected to fall under—or very close.  For this reason, in these close races in which the polls are a statistical tie, I am going to let modeled partisanship based on voter registration data be one of the decisive factors in how I make my predictions.  So for me, the more of a net shift towards Democrats in modeled partisanship share of new registrations, the more likely Democrats are likely to outperform their polls, i.e., the less polling will capture this shift.  My “net shift” is calculated by the getting difference between the point shifts for each side, so if GOP went down 3 points and Democrats up 2, that’s a 5-point shift in favor of Democrats in my scoring system.

I will also very much be relying on my own analysis from my last article—based on voter registration and early voting data as presented by Bonier’s outfit and its (and my) excellent track record from 2022—that very confidently concluded state and national polls across the board are generally off, missing those hugely disproportionate swings compared to 2020 in the share of new voter registrations towards Democratic leaning populations and the effect of new abortion and reproductive rights restrictions in many states across the country since the fall of Roe.  As I noted in my last piece and will reinforce here, when races are extremely close, polling with its inherent errors is not a sufficient tool in trying to analyze who will win and who will lose and analysis will have to take into account other factors, as I have before and will here.

Finally, based mainly on my discussions of the individual states and national polling data along with early voting data, I will make a range of Electoral College map predictions as well as a win probability prediction for both Kamala Harris-Tim Walz and Donald Trump-JD Vance (rough on the odds part).

Caveats, source, and presentation notes:

• The TargetSmart Voter Registration Dashboard shows you when each state last reported its registrants and they are not uniform.  The dashboard lets you adjust to match the time when voter registration data was last reported to data from the same time in the previous presidential election in 2020 and the 2022 midterms as a frame of reference.  Obviously, when not looking at individual states, there is no way to get a fully accurate national or all-swing-state picture with combined states with different dates, but most are within a few weeks of each other so the combined outputs can give a quite rough but still quite useful general sense of what’s going on.  You can play around yourself with different data and different variables—race, age, gender, rural, urban, etc.—and I recommend that you do, but I found modeled partisanship to be most useful.
• All polling averages are what FiveThirtyEight has posted as of 8:15 PM on October 30; if numbers don’t quite add up (0.1 off or tied) in terms of the FiveThirtyEight numbers given, it might be because they rounded using more precise data from crosstabs.
• In my presentation here and in general, polling data/shifts are generally rounded to nearest tenth of a percent/point.
• Herein, polling figure is given as a percent.  I will use “points” to describe a number-level shift, and a percent increase would be the increase by a factor, as in a 2.5-point increase from 5% to 7.5% would be a 50% increase, by a factor of 1.5 times the original.
• FiveThirtyEight uses likely voter iterations of a poll in its weighted averages whenever possible.
• Numbers given for Puerto Ricans in each state are from 2023 from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, except Alaska’s are from 2022.
• All polling chart images from FiveThirtyEight and all registration chart images from TargetSmart
• Coming up with overall predictions is more an art, not a science, but one using scientific tools that are inherently flawed and yet still pretty-damn good in the aggregate.

On Polling

In my previous article, I really went into the weeds on some polling issues and why I was so confident in 2022 and why I am even more confident now in the polls undercounting Democratic support in 2024 (and remember, I was one of the only people in 2022 making such a prediction, so take that for what it’s worth).  But on average, according to FiveThirtyEight, overall from 2000 to 2020, presidential general election polls three weeks out from Election Day—both state and national—have been off by 4.3% since 2000.  Harry Enten noted in a FiveThirtyEight 2016 classic that the a 2-point error was the average presidential national polling error a week before the election from 1968-2012, which would fall in most cases within the margin of error of each poll, or a  “standard polling error,” noting that Trump was just such a standard polling error away from winning.  Even with 2022 being far more accurate a year for polling that usual, the polls in close House races in the midterm year incorrectly favored Republicans (also known as GOP, for Grand Old Party) in most of those races, with Democrats winning in most of them in part because of women being fired up about their rights being taken away by the Supreme Court and their state legislatures.  Things have only gotten worse for women since then, with new restrictive laws literally killing women across the country.  So do not make the mistake in thinking that this issue has faded for women.

And with amazing new registration proportions for Democratic-leaners compared to Republican-leaners, it is key to note that pollsters often do not incorporate newly registered voters into their models and sampling or find it hard to do so accurately.  So I am very confident that polls are undercounting the level of Democratic vote share for the 2024 election and you can explore my detailed discussion here.  As a result of this gap, I am putting significant weight behind new voter registration share by likely-party vote.  Therefore, you can add a few points to most polls in favor of Harris in most cases, both in state polls and nationally, and you will likely get a better sense of where things stand.

THE NUMBERS AND PREDICTIONS

The Seven States that Most Mainstream Press Agrees Are the “Swing States” (UPDATED: November 3) *AND Iowa

Ratings system: Arrange by worst for Harris to Best for Harris and reflecting likelihood/probability of winning, not necessarily margin of victory: Edge Trump, Edge Harris, Advantage Harris, Strong Harris

All of these states are currently within the aforementioned margin of error and are considered statistically tied, essentially jump balls. *UDPATE November 3: Voter registration modeled partisanship has slightly increased for Democrats and slightly decreased for Republicans in Pennsylvania, North Caroline, and Georgia with new batches of voter registration data released by those states since October 31 and new modeling on that data being released by TargetSmart; therefore, the gaps highlighted below for those three states are now slightly higher in favor of Democrats than the figures given here, having just increased in the final days of the campaign, another data point in favor of a momentum swing for Harris.

*UPDATE: NOVEMBER 3: IOWA!!!—6 Electoral Votes

Polling: Average not given. I am surprised to be including Iowa here, but I have no choice. I know that I always caution not to put too much stock in any one poll, but I must make somewhat of an exception here (and to be fair, it’s not just one poll). To get to the point, Iowa pollster Ann Selzer is one of the best pollsters in politics, perhaps the best. He long track record speaks for itself and her approach is meticulous. She released polls in partnership with The Des Moines Register back in February and June that had Biden losing by 15 and 18 points to Trump, respectively. Then in September, that lead in a another Selzer poll had shrunken to just 4 points against Harris. And now, just before the election, Selzer has Harris overtaking Trump by 3 points, 47%-44%! Yes, it is within her margin of error, but Selzer’s poll if the only poll to show anything like this—all others have Trump up (nearly all significantly) and another poll just released has him up 9 points—but no other pollster conducting these polls is like Ann or has her record. The profound thing about this poll is, that if it is accurate, it surely captures something beyond Iowa, something regional, maybe even national, that the vast majority of polls have simply missed. It is at the heart of what I have gotten into in this article before this update, that the modeled partisanship from voter registration data tells a story that is incompatible with that narrative and narratives we have from the polls, and suggests movements and shifts in the electorate among significant parts of the population, especially with new voters likely to be missed or underrepresented especially if they are registering in historic and abnormal ways. And Nate Silver and The New York Times‘ Nate Cohn both just pointed out how bad pollsters this cycle have been with “herding,” or modifying their results to not stand out too much and not take heat for being “wrong” or an outlier. Now, none of this means that Selzer must be right, and the others wrong. And I am not going to move Iowa into Harris’s column based on just Selzer’s latest poll and the shifts from her previous poll. But Ann is credible in and of herself, I have enough respect for and deference to her, and her previous three polls were well within the realm of being favorable or very favorable to Trump, that I am going to move Iowa into battleground swing-state status, but as all the other polls have Trump winning, even though I think they are not up to the standards of Selzer, I am rating Iowa as slightly favoring Trump. Without Selzer, I wouldn’t even be discussing Iowa, but now we all should be: Harris has a real chance if Selzer’s poll is accurate, and her polls usually are. If I am right, Selzer is capturing what I am onto, what the modeled voter registration partisanship is pointing towards, and what will explain a large Harris win if that is what unfolds over the next few days. If Selzer’s poll is accurate, it might just be the most important poll in the history of American politics. As of now, it is certainly one of the most discussed and highlighted of in American history, I have certainly never before seen a reaction to a single poll as massive as the political world’s reaction to this poll.

Also, there are also over 9.000 Puerto Ricans in Iowa (see the Pennsylvania discussion below) while the Uncommitted movement received over 600 votes, or 4.5% of the vote (see the Michigan discussion below); Trump won Iowa in 2020 by over 138,000 votes, or 8.2%.

IOWA RATING: Edge Trump (but don’t be surprised if Harris wins!)

New registration modeled party share: Last updated October 20

Vs. same weeks before election in 2020: Democrats +3.1 points, GOP +0.3 points, net shift +2.8 points for Democrats

While a slight shift, given Selzer’s poll and Iowa’s small population, this could end up making a big difference…

Pennsylvania—19 Electoral Votes

Polling average: Trump 47.9%, Harris 47.5%, Trump +0.4 points

Polling is razor close, and in most scenarios I have whoever wins Pennsylvania winning it all, finding it hard to imagine a scenario in which that is not the case (though not impossible).  While the polling is within the margin of error, I think in nearly all these states, the polls are undercounting democratic support.  Having said that, even if it is, say, 3% off (putting her at +2.7), that is still a very close race polling-wise and within the margin of error.  So, as stated, I am going to look at new registrants.

New registration modeled party share: Last updated October 20

Vs. same weeks before election in 2020: Democrats +7.6 points, GOP -3.1 points, net shift 10.7 points for Democrats

As far as Pennsylvania’s voter registration data, of the three Rust Belt battleground states, the data is most promising here for Harris and by far.  Also factor in that popular Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is a rockstar in the state and is campaigning heavily for Harris there.  Additionally, factor in that at Trump’s final rally at Madison Square Garden, a speaker prominently trashed Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean” (all Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, in case you did not know that) and that there are over 472,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, the most of any swing state (in each swing state we will now be discussing the Puerto Rican x-factor!  Thanks, Tony Hinchcliffe), which stands up well against the over 61,000 write-ins for 5.6% of the vote in the Democratic primary, most representing Uncommitted protesting Israel’s war in Gaza (see the discussion on Michigan below).  Remember that Trump lost in Pennsylvania by less than 82,000 votes in 2020, and I think the net picture of these factors in Pennsylvania means the state is a pretty good bet for Harris. 

PENNSYLVANIA RATING: Strong Harris

Also, Democratic incumbent Senator Bob Casey is polling better than Harris against Republican challenger Dave McCormick, so I see a strong chance for Casey’s victory.

Michigan—15 Electoral Votes

Polling average: Harris 48%, Trump 47%, Harris +1 point

Even though Harris is polling better here than anywhere else not only in the Rust Belt but also better than any other swing state, this is deceptive.  And yes, while Michigan has the third-highest African-American population proportionately of any swing state and fifteenth-highest in the nation, there are other factors that are not good for Harris here in Michigan…

New registration modeled party share: Last updated October 20

Vs. same weeks before election in 2020: Republicans +8.4 points, Democrats -2.1 points: net shift 10.5 points for GOP

Of the seven states dubbed by most as swing states, this is one of only two that saw a shift in favor of Republicans (and by far the larger shift) and this bodes quite ill for Democrats in Michigan as it is a significant shift that could very well overcome the fact that Harris’s polling average here is her best in the Rust Belt, given that that it is not her best by much. One x-factor?  In such a close state, there are almost 54,000 Puerto Ricans in Michigan.  And all this in a state a state Trump lost by less than 155,000 votes in 2020.  Also, it should be noted Michigan has a something of a screwy recent history of throwing pollsters curve balls, for what that’s worth.

But the real elephant in the room for Democrats and Michigan are the deaths of many Arabs in the fighting with Israel: the horrific mass violence, mass displacement, and mass destruction in Palestine’s Gaza in the escalation of the conflict between Hamas and Israel that erupted with Hama’s massive terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, as well as increasing violence in Lebanon and Palestine’s illegally-occupied-by-Israel-since-1967 West Bank, are all deeply affecting Michigan’s substantial Arab-American community, which consists of over 208,000 people and in Michigan represents the highest share for an Arab population of the total population in any state.  As a result these events and the Biden-Harris Administration’s support for Israel, many of them are holding Biden and Harris responsible for, in their view, not stopping and even enabling all of this and are now reluctant or refusing to support her.  In fact, out of all the swing states, Michigan had the most proportionately and absolutely Uncommitted National Movement votes protesting the war in Gaza in the Democratic Primary this year: over 101,000 voters for some 13.2% of the presidential primary vote.  The movement includes many non-Arabs and non-Muslims and many young people.

But to be clear, not all these people—maybe even not most—would necessarily not support Harris over Trump, as the movement was meant to send a signal and was not officially a firm anti-Biden or anti-Harris vote, hence the term “uncommitted” (and I am sure plenty of Arabs in Michigan will still vote for her, just less so than if what was happening in the Middle East was not happening), while some of the Puerto Rican population are minors and all the Uncommitteds were able to vote.  Thus, do no look at the Puerto Ricans and Uncommitted one-to-one as easily canceling each other out, but I am just giving all this data an context for.. context (remember the name of my site, cherished readers).

One other thing: despite endorsing Trump, former candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is still on Michigan’s ballot as a separate candidate, having lost multiple legal challenges to remove his name, including just recently at the U.S. Supreme Court.  Along with Wisconsin, Michigan is one of only two swing states in which he remains on the ballot.

This state really is up for grabs, but with the polls so close and statistically tied, and such a meaningful shift towards Republicans in the share of overall new registration vs 2020 and problems Democrats are having with Arab-Americans, I would have to say I see Trump as slightly more likely to win, but it could be extremely close either way.

MICHIGAN RATING: Edge Trump

On a positive note for Democrats, their Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin is polling significantly better than Harris and I give her and an advantage against her Republican opponent Mike Rodgers.

Wisconsin—10 Electoral Votes

Polling average: Harris 48.0%, Trump 47.6%, Harris +0.4 points

Wisconsin had been where Harris was polling the best in the Rust Belt for some time, but things have narrowed for whatever reasons in recent weeks.  Even though the polling now is slightly better in Michigan, there are not the complications in that state has that I just discussed here in Wisconsin.

New registration modeled party share: Last updated October 21

Vs. same weeks before election: Democrats -4.1 points, GOP -6 points, net shift 2.1 points for Democrats

Still, with a statistical tie in effect with such a slight lead, modeled voter registration partisanship does not give her a huge boost: of the five swing states where there has been a shift towards Democrats, Wisconsin has the weakest such shift by far.  The potential Puerto Rican factor involves nearly 65,000 Puerto Ricans.  Conversely, for what it’s worth, the Uncommitted vote in the Democratic primary was over 48,000 votes for 8.3% of the vote (Trump lost by less than 21,000 votes).  Also, like Michigan and as mentioned, Wisconsin is one of only two swing states where RFK Jr. is still on the ballot, most recently being denied removal from both by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Based on this available data and my conclusion that polls are undercounting Democratic support, I’d say Harris is more likely than not to win here in Wisconsin and not just barely, though it will still likely be close.

WISCONSIN RATING: Advantage Harris

Incumbent Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin is in a tight race against Republican Eric Hovde, but has consistently polled ahead of him.  Along with Harris, I see her as having an advantage.

Georgia—16 Electoral Votes

Polling average: Trump 48.7%, Harris 47.0%, Trump +1.8 points

Georgia is Trump’s second-best poll-showing among swing states, but I would argue this is deceptive.  It is still well within the margin of error and there are certainly some other factors that are very much not in his favor when it comes to this state…

New registration modeled party share: Last updated October 8

Vs. same weeks before election in 2020: Democrats +7.1 points, Republicans -12.2 points, net shift +19.3 points for Democrats

Folks, this is a massive shift towards Democrats and I do not think polling has captured this.  And part of that is black women being incredibly enthused for Kamala Harris in a state that has the highest African-American share of the overall population of any swing state and the third-highest of any state.  And let’s not forget Trump’s longstanding feuds with Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (listen to my interview with him six days before Trump’s Capitol Insurrection) acting against Trump’s longstanding election overturning/denial efforts.  There are also over 120,000 Puerto Ricans in Georgia (Trump infamously lost by less than 12,000 votes) and Uncommitted was not on the ballot here in the Democratic primary.  Finally, do not underestimate the political machine that former Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Georgia House of Representatives Minority leader Stacey Abrams has helped put in place.  Especially with the voter registration data, I am very confident Harris wins Georgia.

GEORGIA RATING: Strong Harris

North Carolina—16 Electoral Votes

Polling average: Trump 48.3,% Harris 47.3%, Trump +1.1 point

Once again, there is a statistical tie here.  But with a Republican Governor candidate who is possibly the worst gubernatorial candidate in modern American history—an African-American extremist who called himself a “black NAZI!” on a porn website’s forum, among other disgracefully pathetic and offensive things in his history—likely dragging Trump down among undecideds, independents, and some Republicans, the closeness in the poll might be deceptive.  But then there is the voter registration stuff…

New registration modeled party share: Last updated October 11

Vs. same weeks before election in 2020: Democrats +5.4 points, GOP -5.5 points, net shift +10.9 points for Democrats

North Carolina also has the second-highest portion of African-American voters of any swing state and the eight-most in America, something that is definitely quite favorable for Harris.  Also, there are over 130,000 Puerto Ricans in North Carolina; on the other side, North Carolina had second-highest absolute and proportionate turnout for Uncommitted during the Democratic primary among swing states: almost 89,000 voters for 12.7% of the vote (Trump won the state in 2020 by less than 75,000 votes).  On balance with all of this, and given especially the big shift in modeled partisanship and the state’s large black population, I think Harris has a clear advantage in this state, though not a strong one as Trump won by close to 75,000 votes in 2020, so that margin won’t be easy to overcome.

NORTH CAROLINA RATING: Advantage Harris* (I am putting an asterisk here because an x-factor is the intersection of the damage from Hurricane Helene that may yet lead to many people having difficulties in voting, the rampant and wildly dangerous disinformation spewed by Trump and Russia and many others about FEMA and overall government relief efforts in the state leading to actual armed threats against FEMA staff, and the actual major efforts going on there by the Biden-Harris Administration to help people there; I do not know how and/or if these dynamics will play out and affect the election here so leave some room for North Carolina to surprise).

Nevada—6 Electoral Votes

Polling average: Harris 47.5%, Trump +47.4%, Harris +0.1 points

Polls here in Nevada are really tight, though they have generally been better for Harris here than its southwestern counterpart, Arizona.  As in most other cases, though, I still think polls are undercounting Democratic support.  So what does voter registration data tell us?

New registration modeled party share: Last updated October 25

Vs. same weeks before election in 2020: Democrats -7.1 points, GOP -6.2 points, net shift +1.1 points for GOP

This is the only other swing state besides Michigan that shifted towards the GOP, though only slightly so, and in a state with a smaller population like Nevada, that could amount to a big deal.  There are also approaching 35,000 Puerto Ricans in Nevada, while a “None of these candidates” inspired by Uncommitted received less than 7,500 votes at 5.5% of the Democratic primary vote (Trump only lost this state by in 2020 by less than 24,000 votes).  This has the potential to be the closest state, but with Harris actually leading in the polls if only by the most minute amount, and with only the barest shift so far towards the GOP in registration, this comes down to a gut feeling if I am not going to award a tie, and my gut is going with Harris given how things are breaking overall late in the game and with the wisdom of Jon Ralston, who really knows Nevada politics, also giving me confidence.

NEVADA RATING: (barely) Edge Harris

Incumbent Democratic Senator Jackie Rosen is polling significantly ahead of her Republican opponent Sam Brown as well as Harris, so I would argue she has a strong chance to win.

Arizona—11 Electoral Votes

Polling average: Trump 48.7%, Harris 46.6%, Trump +2.2 points

Arizona is currently by far Trump’s best-polling state, but is still within the margin of error in a climate in which, again, I think most polls are undercounting Democratic support.  So what does the modeled partisanship of new registrations based on registration data tell us?    

New registration modeled party share: Last updated October 21

Vs. same weeks before election in 2020: Democrats +13.3 points, GOP -19.1 points, net shift +32.4 points net shift for Democrats

This is the most significant shift vs. 2020 for any swing state, and that almost speaks for itself, casting serious doubt as to the accuracy of the neck-and-neck polling.  On top of this, the Puerto Rican factor here: almost 54,000 people and Uncommitted was not on the ballot in a state Trump lost by less than 11,000 votes.  While Trump is up a few points in the poll, this massive shift in voter registration makes me think the polls in Arizona are significantly underestimating Democratic votes.  Trump has a real shot to win Arizona, sure, but Harris should be favored and not just barely.

ARIZONA RATING: Advantage Harris

Also, in the race to fill the vacancy left by departing Arizona Senator and former Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, Democratic Candidate Ruben Gallego has been polling very well against his opponent, the failed Republican 2020 gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who refused to concede defeat and supports Trump’s election denialism.  Gallego has a very strong chance of winning.

My Dark Horses

Yes, there can be some shocks!

Alaska—3 Electoral Votes

Polling: Average not given, but all polls since September have been conducted by the same pollster and all were at least +8 Trump except for one poll in mid-September that had Trump only up 5 points.  Based on this, it would seem safe to rule Harris out for winning Alaska, except…

New registration modeled party share: Last updated October 21

Vs. same weeks before election in: Democrats +8.5 points, GOP -17.8 points: net shift +26.3 points for Democrats

That’s a huge deal, dear readers: Trump only won Alaska by some 36,000 votes (10% of the vote in such a low-population state), meaning a shift of a little over 18,000 votes (5%) would have given Biden the state.

And in 2022, Alaskans voted to send to the House as their one representative the amazing Mary Peltola, the state’s first Democrat to fill that seat and first Alaska Native to do so.  I really expect her to help drive a big Alaska Native turnout, and the registration data is also showing this, with Alaska Natives as a share of voter registrations nearly 43% higher than in 2022, meaning they are 43% more of the share of new registrants (Native American/Alaska Native coded as NAAN in TargetSmart in the above).  There was also no Uncommitted on the ballot in the Democratic primary, but there are over 10,000 Puerto Ricans in Alaska.  And finally, in a state with such a small population, the fact that RFK Jr. is still on the ballot here could also make a difference.  So if a state not at all on the radar is a surprise flip, I’m saying that state will be Alaska.

ALASKA RATING: Advantage Trump but Harris could really do this

Ohio—17 Electoral Votes

Polling average: Trump 51.7%, Harris 43.7%, Trump +7.9 points

Yes, Trump has a sizable lead over Harris.  While it is unlikely Harris will win Ohio, incumbent Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown has been generally far ahead of her and generally also ahead of his Republican opponent, Bernie Moreno, but it’s still a close race.  With my analysis telling me polls are undercounting Democrats in general, I find the best way to feel confident in specific races is corroborating those Races to increases in the share of modeled voter registration partisanship for Democrats where the races are taking place.  So, without further ado…

New registration modeled party share: Last updated October 10

Vs. same weeks before election in 2020: Democrats +18.8 points, GOP -17 points; net shift +35.8 points for Democrats

These are remarkable numbers for Ohio and a larger shift than any of the swing states and seem quite dissonant with the polling.  So remarkable, in fact, that they actually give Harris a real shot at an upset even if Trump is favored.  You would think with sitting Ohio Senator JD Vance as Trump’s running mate that these numbers would be different, but they are not.  The numbers also give Brown a strong chance to win.  Maybe the debunked racist smears about legal Haitians migrants eating neighbors’ pets as well as ducks and geese touted by both Trump and Vance and many other Republicans backfired, as Democrats gained almost 0.4 points in the modeled share 9 weeks out from the election—when these vile rumors began to rise—to four weeks out (when the latest Ohio data is available) while in the same period, Republicans lost about 2.3 points…  Back to the racism theme, here there are nearly 134,000 Puerto Ricans in a state where six years ago, Brown won reelection by less than 300,000 votes.

Sure, Trump is favored, but there is something in these numbers telling me you can’t rule out a Harris upset and it’s would not be a miracle to happen.

OHIO RATING: Advantage Trump

Texas—40 Electoral Votes

Polling average: Trump 51.2%, Harris 44.0%, Trump +7.2 points

It sure doesn’t look good for Harris here, but like in Ohio, the Senate is a different story, and also like in Ohio, the registration information is shocking.

New registration modeled party share: Last updated October 11

Vs. same weeks before election in 2020: Democrats +11.1 points, GOP -18.5 points: net shift +29.6 points for Democrats

Yet another massive shift for Democrats in a supposedly safe state for Republicans.  And there are over 269,000 Puerto Ricans here who might make a difference here in a state in which incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz only won his 2018 Senate reelection against Democrat Beto O’Rourke by less than 215,000 votes.  These Puerto Ricans may help the state say “adios” to Cruz, as his Democratic challenger, former NFL player Colin Allred, currently serving in the U.S. House for Texas, is polling much better than Harris, Cruz polling much worse than Trump.  But given these blowout numbers on modeled registration partisanship, Harris has a real if relatively small chance, too.  As for Trump, he won by over 631,000 votes (yes, Texas is a big state).  When it comes to Uncommitted, it was not on the ballot in Texas.

TEXAS RATING: Advantage Trump

And I’d give Allred an edge over Cruz since I already think the polls are undercounting Democratic support and because there is such a huge shift in favor of Democrats.

All Swing States

New registration modeled party share 5 weeks out vs. same in 2020 (rough since not all states reporting on same dates, so October data not included):

Democrats +3.7 points, GOP -5.4 points, net shift +9.1 points for Democrats

Other Notes from Outside the Battleground States

Florida seemed it might be competitive in polling for a bit, but polling has now given Trump an even larger lead and modeled voter registration partisanship based on favorable voter registration partisanship data for Republicans from there as of September 30 seems to rule out a major upset there, though if somehow this changes dramatically with data in October months, maybe there’s a miracle waiting for Harris. Update November 4: Incumbent Republican Senator Rick Scott is underperforming compared to Trump, and while he is in a strong position to be expected win, Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell would have a small chance if there was a shift in new registrations for October and/or polls are way off and Harris is competitive or winning in a place like Iowa, for, while a decent number of polls gave Scott a large lead, a decent number down the stretch did show a closer race, though none had Mucarsel-Powell ahead or closer than 3 points behind.  Virginia had hinted at being competitive in a few polls—though I never bought that this would be the case closer to the election and when the final votes were tallied—but no longer, and with the same type of registration data and modeling current as of October 18 overwhelmingly favoring Democrats, it seems impossible for Trump to win now.  And quirky New Hampshire flirted with Trump in a few polls, but Harris seems to have pulled away there, too (New Hampshire has not provided registration data, as it is wont to quirk).

There is no reason to think Harris can win Montana, but that state’s embattled incumbent Senator Jon Tester is a different story.  Until recently, he was trailing significantly, every poll from August 12 through October 8 having his opponent, Republican Tim Sheehy, ahead 6-8 points (save one that had Tester up 5 points from August 14 and several were GOP partisan polls).  But the last two polls in October have Tester tied or only down three, a decent sign the race may very well be tightening significantly, suggesting Tester has at least a decent chance to hang on.  Yet the voter registration shifts up to October 21 there were massively favoring Republicans, making it less likely than in other states that the polls are significantly underestimating Democratic support.  Thus, without any significant data favoring Democrats here, Tester is easily the most vulnerable incumbent Democrat.  Yet don’t count him out yet—momentum does seem to be in his favor now and recent polling is likely a reflection of multiple serious scandals that have embroiled Sheehy—a relative newcomer to the state—in the final weeks of this race, calling into question his credibility and character.  If future polling before the election comes out showing a tighter race or even tester up again, I would favor Tester in a state where even slight shifts can make a huge difference in state with such a small population.  Still, with the available data, Sheehy has an edge for now, but one he is in danger of losing in these final days.

And finally, polling in congressional districts and voter registration data in the two states, Maine (registration data as of October 15) and Nebraska, that award electoral votes the winners of the districts, do not seem competitive: Maine’s 2nd Congressional District (1 electoral vote) seems to be safely going to Trump and Harris seems a safe bet to win Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District (also 1 electoral vote).  A big shift towards Democrats in the share of new registrants in Nebraska statewide (with data as of September 30) doesn’t just help Harris in the split district favoring her: it bodes ill for incumbent Republican Senator Deb Fischer against the surprisingly very-competitive-in-polling independent candidate, Dan Osborn (+12 points for Democrats, -11.2 for Republicans, a net shift of +32.2 points for Democrats as of September 30!).  My money would definitely be on a strong chance for Osborn here.

NATIONALLY

Popular vote: Harris 48.1%, Trump 46.7%, Harris +1.4 points

I don’t think for a second that Harris only wins the popular vote by 1.4% unless maybe she loses the Electoral College and even then she might beat that polling.  As I have stated throughout, I think polls are generally undercounting Democratic support, whose coalition runs from Republican President George W. Bush’s Vice President, Dick Cheney, and his daughter and former third-highest Republican leader in the House, Liz Cheney, and former Republican Congressmen Joe Walsh and Adam Kinzinger on one side, to Nancy Pelosi and AOC and Bernie Sanders on the other, to include never-Trumper Republicans and pro-lifers who do not want to impose their views on others and still others keeping their vote a secret for various reasons (including many married people from their partners).  But as we have seen in 2016 and 2000, the popular vote winner does not always win.  Yet as far as the popular vote, feel free to add a few points to her total here.

New registration modeled party share vs 2020, 3 weeks out (rough, because of different reporting times and because New Hampshire and North Dakota are not reporting information):

Democrats +3.2 points, Republicans -4 points, net shift +7.2 points for Democrats nationally

It seems almost impossible for Trump to win the popular vote with a shift like that from 2020 to 2024.  So expect Harris to win the popular vote no matter what and to win by more than 1.4% and more than just a little more.

ELECTORAL COLLEGE

The way I see this, and this is a rough probability breakdown, there’s a 20% chance of Trump edging out Harris, a 30% of Harris edging out Trump, and 30% chance of a strong defeat of Trump, and a 20% chance of a huge win for Harris (all maps from 270toWin) *UPDATE NOVEMBER 3: Iowa!

Edge Trump Map: 277-293* Trump, 245-261* Harris (roughly 20% chance)

*I am really bullish on Georgia and Pennsylvania for Harris and think she would win both even if Trump wins, but could see Trump picking off one or the other in theory, though I think this is less likely than what I chose to show in the map.

Edge Harris Map: Harris 272-288*, Trump 250-266* (roughly 30% chance)

*I can see Nevada and Wisconsin going either way, hence the range, but the map is my best guess within these possibilities.

Strong Harris Map: Harris 319-328*, Trump 210-219* (roughly 30% chance^ and this is what my head believes will really happen; UPDATE November 5: ^I am sticking with this as my most likely scenario out of the four maps I have presented herein)

*Even in this scenario, am giving her a shot at Alaska. The range is for Alaska and Hawaii going either way.

Huge Harris Map: Harris 385, Trump 153 (roughly 20% chance but capturing my heart)

Sure, you laugh, but remember that there were net shifts in Texas of +29.6, Ohio of +35.8, and Alaska of +26.3 points in favor of Democrats as a share of voter registrations for this election since 2020!  The polls don’t tell the whole story, and, anyway, I have 80% of outcomes being more favorable for Trump than this.

So basically, a 1 in 5 chance Trump wins, a 1 in 5 chance she blows him out, and a 2 in 3 chance she wins by between a little (1 in 3) and solidly (1 in 3).  This is not meant to be precise, but a rough proclamation.  I thought about tinkering a bit, maybe changing the solid Harris win to 35% at the expense of a Harris blowout, moving that down to 15%, but I want to keep it relatively simple and I was almost blown away by the modeled partisanship registration shares of Texas, Ohio, and Alaska, which I think tell us something big is going on the ground in these places that the polls are just missing.  So I am sticking, officially, with 20-30-30-20 on the odds unless decisive new data pops out in the next few days, which is highly unlikely.

And if I had to pick one and a professional, as noted, it would be the third strong map.

CONCLUSION

There are other factors, such as voters who would normally not vote for Democrats but are increasingly disgusted by Trump’s election denialism and insurrectionism and recent economic developments., that may also prove to be hard-to-measure factors boosting Harris’s final vote tallies and/or margins that I did not discuss in any detail.  What is clear is that the voter registration data shows a lot of drops in GOP-modeled voters’ share of registrations and increases in both Democrats and independents throughout the country, something clearly not being captured by the estimate of likely voter models that are being used to craft the poll samples.

Will Puerto Ricans be a fired-up factor in the swing states and beyond?  I would at least bet on at least somewhat higher turnout from Puerto Ricans for Democrats after the aforementioned disgusting insult was recently blasted live from Madison Square Garden to the nation at a Trump rally which came off like a stylistic homage to a 1939 American Nazi rally that also took place at Madison Square Garden.

One way I could be wrong is if somehow massive amounts of voters who voted for Biden in 2020 will be voting for Trump in 2024, but color me skeptical—highly skeptical—of that being a thing.  As I discussed in my last article one thing is clear: certain groups of voters are registering in highly disproportionate level compared to past elections, and these groups significantly lean Democratic.  And none have surpassed their previous proportional levels of registration as have African-American women and Latinas/Hispanic women.  These historic proportions and the shifts in voter registration during this cycle—the Harris Effect—they have helped lead to fruition tell a story different from the polling, one not captured by polling, and that means we should expect some surprises in the coming days as a nation and the world hold their collective breaths.

In short, the likelihood of Harris winning is definitely significantly higher than the polls would indicate, though of course this does not mean Trump does not have a still real—if significantly less likely—chance, not minuscule one but perhaps a higher chance than of losing Russian Roulette with a six-shooter.

And if she wins, from the information presented here there, it should be clear there is a good chance Democrats can hold the Senate, especially if Tester is able to continue closing the gap in Montana and the independent Osborn defeats incumbent Republican Fischer in Nebraska, helping offset the near-certain loss of the current seat of retiring West Virginia’s Senator Joe Manchin, now formerly a Democrat, to West Virginia Republican Governor Jim Justice in a race against Democrat Glenn Elliot (the Senate is currently a coalition of Democrats and independents that form 51 majority against 49 Republicans (50-50 would be a tenuous majority if Harris wins because Walz as vice president would be the tie breaking vote).

As for the House, there are a number of good polls for Democrats against incumbent Republicans, but House polls are a lot more challenging to conduct and less accurate.  In the end, there is good reason to think there is a good chance that if Harris can ride a rising wave of momentum to victory, so can many House Democratic candidates in competitive races, and Democrats only need a net gain of five seats to take back control.  Especially if Harris wins more than narrowly, expect Democrats to retake the House and hold the Senate, but a more narrow win for her would leave such an outcome in doubt without ruling it out.  Conversely, if Trump wins, with a number of Republican Senate candidates polling well below him, there is more of a chance of divided government.

As with every election, so much is at stake, but so much more is at stake in this particular election: almost everything is up for grabs, including the very nature of our government and the survival of democracy itself.

One favor: when the dust settles, if I turn out to be as accurate as I have been in the past, please do share this profusely so we can improve the level of analysis in our fraught media landscape.

In data, we trust, so trust in a Harris victory as by far the most likely outcome.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

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(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish) By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) September 6, 2024; UPDATE October 8-9: see my Twitter thread with updated voter registration numbers and analysis; see my related July 5 article, Biden at His Worst Is Better than Insurrectionist Trump at His “Best”: 13 Reasons to Keep Calm & Carry On (Biden’s Already Gaining Ground!) ; because of YOU, Real Context News is approaching two million all-time content views, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Note: when decimal percentages are given, averages are rounded to the tenth; when not given, they to rounded to the nearest full number; *correction appended to fix a date.

SILVER SPRING—Just before the 2022 midterm elections in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s half-century precedent protecting reproductive abortion rigths being overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I had been following the excellent analysis of Democratic political expert Tom Bonier.  He was then busy was pointing out both that women were registering in far high numbers than usual for midterms and, later, that the early vote—which had been favoring Democrats in recent election cycles—was also significantly higher than the previous midterms.  Because of the hard voter data Bonier so skillfully presented, I drew the conclusion in detail before the election that Democrats would outperform their polls and had a real chance to hold both the Senate and the House.  Democrats ended up not holding the House (barely, in large part thanks to 4 Republican flips of Democratic seats in New York, including by the now famous George Santos) but my analysis was correct: with turnout high and many more women voting than usual in a midterm, the pollsters were off in many races and underestimated the vote for Democratic candidates.  Back in 2022*, in the run-up to the midterms and commenting on the new registration surges, Tom was making it clear that he’s “never seen anything like it.”

That midterm, Joe Biden tied for the fifth-best midterm performance for his own party for his first midterm among all modern presidents, with the four doing better than him in the House having significant historical advantages when Biden was at disadvantage, and Biden is tied for tenth out of all presidents in the House and seventh in the Senate (excluding the aberrations that were the Reconstruction midterms and John Tyler, who was partyless).

Wonderful New Data for Democrats

Now, Bonier is at it again with even far more encouraging and unprecedented data for Vice President Kamala Harris, her running mate—Governor Tim Walz—and down-ballot Democrats.  In what he is calling the Harris “Effect,” for the week beginning July 21^st—the Sunday of which saw President Joe Biden formally withdraw as the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidency—many constituencies that heavily lean Democratic in 15 states have seen massive surges in voter registration surges compared to the same time-period in the las presidential election in 2020, which Joe Biden won.

• Young black women are up in voter registration by over 175%
• Young Latinas are up almost 160%
• Black women are up over 98%
• Black voters overall are up nearly 85%
• Young women overall are up over 84%
• Latinas overall are up over 78%
• Young voters overall are up nearly 75%
• Hispanic voters overall are up over 68%
• Democrats are up nearly 50%

But male voters—who strongly favor Trump—are just up over 18% and Republicans are just up 8% (not all states released party affiliation, so the Democratic/Republican registration was modeled by Bonier’s firm when that information was not available).  These were the included states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Maryland, Delaware, Vermont, Rhode Island, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Wyoming.  Since then, North Carolina, New York, and Pennsylvania (including 262% increase for young black women!) have been added and new data from Georgia analyzed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, with all confirming and continuing the trend (and even as I am proofing this, new data is in the process of being added from 19 other states that are confirming these overall trends again and again, but have not yet been presented as added to the overall demographic averages across all states analyzed).

Furthermore, Bonier noted that his political data outfit TargetSmart’s research “found that surges in voter registration are predictive of increases in overall turnout from those groups of voters (not just the new registrants in those groups).”  That’s huge, because this means these surges in registration are indicators of much more than just the individuals registering in record rates, individuals representing groups that are heavily pro-Democratic.

This is a dramatic imbalance that, if it holds, means that polling in these 39 states (38 looked at my TargetSmart and Georgia looked at by The Atlanta Journal Constitution)—including most of the swing states—will undercount support for Democratic candidates, perhaps significantly and perhaps more than in 2022.  This would mean if we look at these close averages, the election might end up being not as close as the polls are indicating they are: Kamala Harris might not just win most swing states, but could even do so convincingly, limiting the ability of bad-faith actors to disrupt the transition to a would-be Harris-Walz Administration or challenge election results and vote certifications.

2022 Midterms: Polling Past as Prologue for 2024?

Getting into the Weeds

I am not sure what changes pollsters have made and may yet make to their methodology from the midterms and previous presidential election for this election cycle.  Are they looking at these numbers and making adjustments?

I am inclined to think perhaps not much just by my gut, but beyond that, let’s look at what happened with the polls in 2022.

In 2022, Senate polls in the last three weeks before the midterms were 0.3% biased in favor of Republicans (also known as the GOP, or Grand Old Party), but 0.2% biased in favor of Democrats in the House.  However, this is actually quite misleading: as Nathaniel Rakich notes writing for FiveThirtyEight (a mecca for many things polling weighted whose averages are higher quality than those of Real Clear Politics), two main types of polls were included in the House calculations: polls for specific House district races and generic ballot polls, the latter being polls asking voters which party was preferred to control Congress, not about a specific House race.  Those generic ballot polls are generally far more accurate than the polls for specific House races (from 1998 and on, 3.9% average error vs. the 6.7% error for the district-specific polls).  In 2022, House polls were off overall by 4.0%, but the specific House race district polls were off by an average of 5.0% compared with 3.1% error margin for the generic polls.  And the polls for the House were overall relatively more accurate in part because a far larger portion of House polls in 2022 were the more accurate generic polls: 46% of all House polls when the average from 1998 and on has been only 21%.

As far as degree of error historically overall, since 1998, polls have been relatively close in the last three weeks before voting, averaging 6% error margins overall (9.2% for presidential primaries, 4.3% for presidential general elections, 5.4% for Senate polls, 6.1% for the House, and 5.4% for governors).  In the 2022 election cycle, the polls were even more accurate than usual and the best of all those examined starting in 1998, only being off 4.8% overall (off 4.8% in the Senate, 4.0% in the House, and 5.1% in governors’ races).  In spite of this relative accuracy, the polls were off in congressional House and Senate races, undercounting Democrats’ support as I suspected they would.

Women were 4% to 5% more of the electorate in 2022 than men, according to exit polls and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, respectively (the two main sources of such information).  I tried looking under the hood of some of those final polls, but when I tried to find the details, some did not indicate their breakdown in gender as far as the sample and/or adjustments to the sample were concerned, though some did and seemed to have gotten it very close or right while others definitely underrepresented women (at least in the raw numbers of people interviewed, but even then, because pollsters don’t always get the exact portions they want for a likely voter model in terms of who responds, they adjust and weight their samples—including demographically including by gender—and it is not clear from the main press releases or crosstabs/methodology sections—if available—how these adjustments were made and if their projection for likely voters was the same or different from their raw sample, how accurate they were in modeling and predicting the portion of the electorate that would be female and how they would vote).

Some, perhaps most pollsters, would reveal their methodology upon request through individual channels but I confess I am pressed for time and resources in trying to track down methodology for two-year-old polls where the information is not as easy to track down online at this point in time, if it even is online, which can be difficult and time-consuming.  Under different circumstances in the future, perhaps I can and will.  Yet even the most wonky websites I have seen, including FiveThirtyEight, have not attempted compiling such a database…

Yet all things considered, given then-historic data on female voter registration in 2022 and because the polls were consistently off there, my hypothesis and one I feel good about given the situation with Roe being overturned is that women were either undercounted and/or the women that were counted were underestimated as far as their favoring Democrats (and I am thinking both, especially as new women registering after Dobbs were very likely motivated overwhelmingly by their loss of reproductive rights and would have been a much more Democratic-leaning group than women overall and who had registered prior to Dobbs).

Before getting into this next section, it should be pointed out, as Rakich does, that even some of the most accurate polls might get the race wrong in terms of predicting the actual winner, that the closer a race is the less “right” a often poll is in picking a winner: if a result is super-close, say, 0.5,% 1%, 2%, 3%, or even 4% or so, these results are often within the margin of error: the range above or below the level of estimated voter support for a particular candidate that the final result should fall under (in most cases) 95% of the time.  So, if a race is 47%-45% between two candidates and the margin of error is 3.2%, since the 2% difference is less than 3.2%, the race would be considered statistically tied.  But if the race was 50%-45% with the same margin of error, that lead would be considered more solid and safe.  And a poll can predict a winner who won by 5% but only have predicted a 1% win, while another poll could have been more accurate and have been off by less than 1% but predicted the wrong candidate.  In other words, polling is… complicated, and is really is about understanding about what the aggregate polling data means, not just screaming about one single poll.

And of course, one poll is just one data point, so it is the averages of polls over time and the polls closest to actual voting happening that matter the most, not one or a few polls.  But anyway, the point is, in very close races, pollsters should not be thought of as “off” if they predicted one candidate in their final polls as down 2 points who won by 0.5%, a 2.5-point-swing, if the margin of error was, say, 4%, meaning a 2.5%-swing either way would fall within margin of error, the way polling methodology is supposed to work.  So many polls could be super-accurate in close races and still get the winner wrong.  But what was interesting about 2022 is how many of the close races had polling biased against Democratic levels of support and were “wrong” even while often being relatively accurate.

Looking at predictions in 2022, FiveThirtyEight’s polls-only model had its average predictive outcome as 229 seats for Republicans to 206 for Democrats in the House, with the middle 80% of results landing from 250 to 208 seats for Republicans, and there were substantially more outcomes with Republicans doing much better than their average than Democrats doing better than their average.  For the Senate, the polls-only model predicted an average predictive outcome as a 50-50 Senate, with 80% of outcomes falling from 54 to 46 seats for Republicans.  For the overall popular House vote, the polls-only model had a 2.4% margin win for Republicans as the most likely outcome.  But keep in mind, these House models in a lot of cases included a lot of generic polls that were not a specific measure of the specific House race in question (this is in part because many House district races have little-to-no polling specific to them) and that, as mentioned before, the generic ballots favored Democrats relative to the specific district polls.

So, what actually happened?

What the Results Tell Us

In the end, the election results gave Democrats 213 and Republicans 222 seats in the House, a loss of 9 seats for Democrats compared with the results from the 2022 midterms, yet which, as I have noted, was a performance for the history books for Democrats, who kept 7 seats more than the polls-only model’s average prediction.  And in the Senate, Democrats won 1 more seat than the average of the polls-only model prediction.

The final popular vote outcome for the House was 50.6% Republicans, 47.8% for Democrats, a 2.8% margin for Republicans, the actual final margin being 0.4% higher than the 2.4% the model predicted. 

Yet, that year, the generic Congressional control preference polling—an important factor in the polls-only model—ended with 1.2% advantage for Republicans (smaller than the 2.8% actual margin, but as Rakich notes in footnote 6 here, Republicans had many more seats in House races where their candidates ran with no Democrat even running to oppose them than the reverse, depressing what the final popular vote would end up for being for Democrats by about 1% and suggesting that some of surge of Democratic women was strategically felt more in competitive races give the number of upsets we will get into in the next few paragraphs).  As of September 5 of this year, Democrats have a 2.6% advantage, a notable swing and another indicator Democrats could have an even better year than 2022 (although to be fair, on September 2, 2022, with the same number of days until Election Day that year—three days later than this year—Democrats were up 0.9%, so the generic ballot would be a serious indicator only if Democrats still end up with an edge towards the end and through early voting, beginning over the coming days and weeks in many states, and there is no reason to think generic ballot polls will naturally mirror patterns from 2022 and necessarily have Republicans favored over Democrats).  If this paragraph was a bit confusing, the big takeaways are that the model and especially the generic ballot average estimates underestimated the national House vote margin for the GOP, but the GOP had a lot more races with no Democrats running in them, meaning this is to be expected, and at least now the generic ballot polls are much better for Democrats than they ended up being in the end for Democrats in 2022, something that if it holds could be another good sign for Democrats.

As far as those upsets, specifically, the polls-only model favored Republicans in 13 House races in which Democrats pulled off upset wins compared with only 7 situations where the model predicted Democrats to win in the House and Republicans won instead (including the 4 surprises from New York state).  In the Senate, the model favored Republicans in two races that Democrats won.

If we break down these races by how close they were in polling, including governor races along with congressional ones, in the toss-ups (leader with a 50%-60% chance of winning in the model), those “tilting” Democratic—7 races in which Democrats were favored on average 55% of the time to win—only 3 of those 7 Democrats won (43%).  But in those “tilting” Republican—11 races in which Republicans were favored on average 53% of the time to win—only 3 of those 11 Republicans won (27%).

In the “lean” races (leader with a 60%-75% chance of winning in the model), those “leaning” Democratic—26 races in which Democrats were favored on average 68% of the time to win—23 out of 26 Democrats won (88%).  But in those “tilting” Republican—13 races in which Republicans were favored on average 67% of the time to win—only 8 of those 13 Republicans won (61%).

In the “likely” races (leader with a 75%-95% chance of winning in the model), those “likely” Democratic races—36 races in which Democrats were favored on average 88% of the time to win—all 36 Democrats won (100%).  But in those “likely” for Republicans—44 races in which Republicans were favored on average 86% of the time to win—40 of those 44 Republicans won (91%).

Thus, in key races, polling relatively favored Republicans much more in key races where Republicans were upset than the reverse, showing a significant undercounting of Democratic support.  In the competitive races (combining “toss-ups”” and “leans,” Democrats won 26 of 33 (79%) while Republicans won only 11 out of 24 (46%) and were upset in 4 races they really should not have lost(“likely”) while Democrats held all those seats.  Again, a historic performance for Democrats against very strong headwinds.

Thus, despite the narrative that the polls were historically accurate in 2022 and they certainly were in a relative sense, they were still consistently off in favor of Republicans in 2022 in many key races by underestimating Democratic support.  To get back to my question about whether pollsters will have adjusted much for this, this accuracy narrative might actually be leading pollsters this cycle to adjust less and question what they did in 2022 less, which might very well be setting up a repeat of pollsters undercounting Democratic support among voters, within the composition of the electorate, and level of Democratic support among women and other key groups, especially since the registration surges for strongly-Democratic demographics are even more dramatic and historic now after Harris’s rise than in 2022.  And as these are new registrants, a very high percent of the new registrants voted in the 2020 presidential election (81.3% in Pennsylvania, for example).

Conclusion: Expect Democrats to Overperform this Election

Given what happened in 2022 and the tendency of that cycles’ polls to miss a surge in Democratic turnout in dozens of close races and even a few that were not close in polling that led to key upsets, as well as the fact that polling now is better and that registration numbers are significantly better across a wide variety of states, feel free to add a few points to the numbers you are getting from polls for Democrats in most key races and attribute that the historic rise in voting registration of young voters, women, black voters, and especially Latinas and even more especially African-American women, then look at the relatively paltry numbers among groups that could favor Republicans.  Additionally, there are a number of other dynamics I felt would favor President Biden as a candidate over time before he dropped out, and most of those still apply to Harris now.  Because of all these factors and the hard voter registration data so wonderfully presented by Tom Bonier, now Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and down-ballot Democrats can be quite confident in victory, especially now because people are responding disproportionately well when it counts most and that will count in the close races that will decide the fate of our republic in the face of insurrectionist Trump’s fascist, violent assault on American democracy.

In data we trust, but also in Latinas and African-American women.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish) By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) July 26, 2024, Updated July 27 with more analysis on Kelly; see my related July 5 article, Biden at His Worst Is Better than Insurrectionist Trump at His “Best”: 13 Reasons to Keep Calm & Carry On (Biden’s Already Gaining Ground!) ; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

#1: The Case for Gov. Shapiro

Josh Shapiro is the governor of the swing state that has the most electoral votes (19—tied with Illinois for the 5^th most) going to the Electoral College and is quite popular, beating his opponent in 2022 by 56.5% to 41.7%, a margin of 14.8%, overperforming his FiveThirtyEight weighted polling average by 4.4%.  A selection of polls this year have had him with a 49% approval in late July, 57% approval in May, and 4% approval in March, higher than his predecessors at those stages in their tenure and including significant support from a minority of Republicans.  He was Attorney General of the state since early 2017 before taking office as governor, and before that was a Member, then the Chair, of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners since 2012, before that a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives since 2005, marking over 19 years as a public servant for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  This makes him well-qualified to understand local and state issues as well as both legislative and executive power and politics.  He is Jewish and a strong supporter of Israel, which can shield Harris from false attacks against her and Democrats as being “anti-Israel,” and has been repeatedly described as an incredibly gifted politician.

Per FiveThirtyEight’s weighted polling averages, when President Joe Biden exited the race, between Michigan (15 electoral votes), Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), and Pennsylvania (19), Biden was polling worse in Pennsylvania (behind 4.4%)—where fascist insurrectionist Trump was nearly assassinated recently—than the two Midwest swing states (behind 2.4% in Michigan and 2.3% in Wisconsin), but was polling better in those three states than the other three main battleground states (5.5% behind in Arizona [11 electoral votes]), 5.9% in Georgia [16 electoral votes], and 5.8% in Nevada [6 electoral votes]) as well as North Carolina (6.9%) (16 electoral votes), Biden winning all those states in 2020 except North Carolina (the latter regarded as less competitive, less swingy than the other six states).

Because Pennsylvania is worth the most electoral votes among the swing states, and because the gap in polling there for Democrats is larger there than Michigan but not as large as North Carolina, which may be out of reach, Shapiro is a better pick than other noted contenders, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina.  Additionally, Whitmer is a woman, and two women on the ticket lacks a balance that appeals to broader demographics, while Shapiro is a white man and would be running with a black and South Asian woman, offering broader cross-appeal nationally than Whitmer and likely very likely delivering his state of Pennsylvania for Harris.  That cross-demographic appeal is an important factor when considering Shapiro: the appeal he has to numerous demographics in Pennsylvania as a charismatic white Jewish male is transferrable to both Michigan and Wisconsin as well as the rest of the Midwest because of relatively strong demographic similarities Pennsylvania has with those places.  Thus, what works well in Pennsylvania can be transferrable to the Midwest to some degree, especially Michigan and Wisconsin, crucially.

#2: The Case for Senator Mark Kelly

Mark Kelly brings an impressive resume and is a current U.S. senator serving the swing state of Arizona since 2020, when he won a special election unseating Republican Martha McSally—who had replaced John McCain upon his death through the appointment of the state’s then-Republican governor—51.2% to 48.8% (by a 2.4% margin), then won a full term in 2022, defeating his opponent 51.4% to 46.5% (by a more robust margin of 4.9%).  Before that, he was a NASA astronaut, before that a U.S. Navy aviator, flying many combat missions during the Gulf War.  He is also the husband of former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who became famous after surviving a shot to the head in an assassination attempt in 2011, has become a leading advocate for gun control, and will help to emphasize the issue of gun violence with voters, who overwhelmingly prefer the Democrats’ position that stricter gun laws are needed.  Like Shapiro, Kelly is a white male and helps balance the ticket demographically.  As a veteran, Kelly brings valuable national security experience that Shapiro does not and his wife might partially neutralize some of the sympathy working in fascist insurrectionist Trump’s favor resulting from the recent assassination attempt on him. Update July 27: Additionally, as Kelly is an former combat pilot and astronaut, there are the role-model, positive masculinity and hero factors that will provide an exceptional contrast with fascist insurrectionist Trump’s toxic masculinity and false machismo covering for persistent, pervasive, and extreme insecurity masquerading as strength, his running mate JD Vance and the MAGA cult also displaying these traits constantly and brazenly, so Kelly’s qualities in this regard will form a better contrast in this sphere than Shapiro, who is not a former combat pilot nor a former astronaut (though he is still an amazing male role model and still offers excellent contrast as well).

Why Shapiro Is a Better Choice than Kelly

To start, Arizona has significantly fewer electoral votes than Pennsylvania.  Furthermore, since Kelly is a sitting senator, the current Democratic governor would get to appoint his temporary successor but then a special election would ensue in 2026, forcing Democrats to defend a seat in a highly competitive state when the balance of power in the Senate is crucial: Kelley would not be up for reelection, and Biden’s term as president shows how crucial a single vote in the U.S. Senate can be (as I have noted before).  While there are relatively very strong similarities with demographics in Arizona to the other nearby swing state of Nevada, Nevada is just 6 electoral votes.  Given this risk of losing a Senate seat in 2026 that would otherwise be safe until 2028 if Kelly is not Harris’s choice, given that Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes to Arizona’s 11, and given Pennsylvania’s similarities to the two other swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin each with more electoral votes than Nevada (25 combining the two), the advantages of Shapiro from a Pennsylvania that is far more important clearly make Shapiro the stronger candidate over Kelly, especially give how close the race is in multiple swing states crucial to victory. 

X-Factors Leave Other Options Open, but Shapiro Still the Favorite

An x-factor in any vice presidential selection is personal synergy with the presidential candidate: JD Vance, for example, was selected because he is now willing to defend anything and everything fascist insurrectionist Trump does, even though years ago he referred privately to fascist insurrectionist Trump as a potential American Hitler (I’m proud to noted that’s me applauding the Mitt Romney comment being read as a way of heckling Vance in this video below, and Vance calls me out about three minutes later).  Harris may, then, pick one of these two candidate or perhaps even a different candidate based on personal rapport.  There could also possibly be issues with either of the two above candidates’ backgrounds unbeknownst to the public—think of the skeletons in both John Edwards’s and Andrew Gillum’s closets—that the vetting process could reveal to Harris, altering the calculus and perhaps even pushing her to a third alternative.  Yet both Shapiro and Kelly are longtime public servants that have been well vetted over many years and are charismatic and cooperative team players, so these factors will very likely not count against them, leaving them to very likely be the top two picks, with Shapiro very likely in the lead.  Indeed, the closeness of this race means that electoral considerations will almost certainly play a larger-than-usual role in Harris’s vice presidential selection process and should have played more of a role in fascist insurrectionist Trump’s selection.

I am all in for Shapiro-Harris 2024 to defeat fascist insurrectionist Trump-Vance and their MAGA movement!  And Harris is looking damn strong right now, I really do think we will win and possibly win big! In fact, I think at least ten of the factors I listed in my last article that I wrote would favor Biden over time also work for Harris!

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish) By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) July 4, 2024 UPDATED July 12 2:10 PM EST with new polling in section 7 showing Biden is closing his gaps significantly nationally and in the main swing states; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

SILVER SPRING—On a day in which we just learned President Joe Biden’s economy added a preliminary total of over 200,000 jobs in June—more than expected—and just hours before a crucial, possibly-make-or-break interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos tonight (I think Biden will do really well in it), let me say: dear fellow Democrats and independents, Republicans, and anyone else who has been supporting or are considering supporting Biden: TURN OFF THE NEWS (except for Biden’s interview tonight).  Go do something not related to politics.  Wait until Biden’s public events, watch them live if you can, and see how our man does.  If he does well or even just ok consistently with a few hiccups here and there, we’re fine for now and the frequency and volume of panic will recede.  If he continues to do well after for the bulk of the remaining campaign, we will be competitive until the end.  Give him a few chances and we really should be ok and stop the internal hemorrhaging inside the Democratic Party caused by Biden’s terrible performance at the debate last week and amplified greatly by the absolutely hysterical media coverage of Biden’s performance.

Here are the main reasons why I am not giving up.

1.) Time

It would be one thing if this debate had happened in October or even September, but, people, we have four freakin’ months left in this campaign.  That is A LOT of time for Biden to change the narrative and to get a steady stream of new footage of himself being far more confident, capable, vigorous, and articulate than the disaster that was this first debate.  If there is far more footage that is more recent of Biden out there in the final weeks and days of the election that is much better, it is possible that the concerns spurred by this debate performance will be largely overcome, that performance seen by enough voters as an aberration.  And that is a lot more time for insurrectionist Trump to keep producing daily outrages that will only turn more and more voters off over time and add to his long list of negatives more and more.  Insurrectionist Trump will be insurrectionist Trump and as people pay more and more attention as the race gets closer and closer to ending, he will continue to give plenty of new reasons for voters to turn against him and pick Biden.

2.) Voters Themselves

There are characteristics of voters which can work very much in Biden’s favor.  The first is that many people are like Dory from Finding Nemo: they don’t remember or consider much that isn’t recent and forget a lot of things.  So, playing into the first element, this can really work well for Biden as long as avoids any repeat performances à la this debate or only has a few more such incidents, especially the closer we get to Election Day.

Additionally, voters, even many of the most stupid ones, have levels of complexity: they generally aren’t going to cast their vote based on one thing, the main exceptions being those voters who are single-issue voters (especially on guns and abortion).  For most voters, an array of multiple issues matter; character and truth-telling matter; the candidate not being a convicted-felon matters; the candidate not being an insurrectionist matters; the team the candidate will surround himself with and govern with matters; and preserving democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law matters.  And for many people—including, I am anticipating by the end, most independents by a good margin—insurrectionist Trump is far inferior to Biden on most or all of these.  One debate weighed against all this should not and will l not be what defines this election, nor be what decides people’s votes.

3.) Democracy

Unapologetic insurrectionist and fascist Donald Trump is, simply put, very likely an extinction-level event for our democratic republic and plenty of independent voters know this.  More and more people are learning about the terrifying and far-reaching Project 2025, the Republican Party’s blueprint for a fascist America, and, simply put, many voters will say having an old president who isn’t 100% all of the time and has occasional senior moments is a small price to pay to preserve our democracy, period.

4.) Character and the Truth

While Biden was confused and jumbled his facts during the debate, insurrectionist Trump gaslit the whole time he was on stage, deliberately lying in incredible ways and even taking credit for Obama and Biden programs. Americans know Biden is way more honest than insurrectionist Trump and most voters actually care about character, integrity and telling the truth.  Even though Biden performed worse than his opponent in the debate, he still contrasted well with him on telling the truth and on character (Biden did not cheat on his wife with an adult film actress/producer and—when his wife was pregnant—a Playboy Playmate…).  And throughout his political career, insurrectionist Trump has been known as a serial liar while Biden has always contrasted well with him in this way.  Many voters will prefer an old man who occasionally has serious senior moments to a man who has lied more than any other president in U.S. history by far.

5.) Issues and Substance

Again, while Biden performed more poorly than insurrectionist Trump, most of the time he gave coherent answers that actually addressed the questions he was asked and showed he understood the issues at hand, though the exceptions to that were certainly glaring.  His opponent, in contrast, was still terrible and answered almost nothing he was asked and demonstrated no understanding of policy, presented no substance.  The debate may have gone worse for Biden, but he still scored points on insurrectionist Trump on issues and character even in the worst moment in his political career.  The presidency is far more than public speaking, far more about picking and managing personnel, about behind-the-scenes engagement and policymaking, about forging and utilizing relationship, about crisis management, and about having knowledge and expertise on topics, not primarily performing well in a debate.

6.) People Don’t Just Vote for One Person, but a Team

It’s the Biden-Harris ticket with his solid cabinet with other great officials and the Democratic Party and their all-stars in Congress who are linked together in a common effort, led by Chuck Schumer and first Nancy Pelosi and now Hakeem Jeffries.  As I noted before, empirically they are the most unified political party in Congress in American history and with one of the best-performances of a party for the first midterm for a presidential administration of the same party.  If Joe stumbles or needs some help occasionally, he will never be alone in a quizshow/gameshow format, the country falling apart if Biden doesn’t have a quick quippy answer.  Many voters will know that Biden has plenty of solid people on his team who will be there to support him, who have helped him deliver the most substantive legislative results by far of any president since Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, and will contrast them with the extremist wackos, weirdos, liars, felons, and dangerous fascists surrounding insurrectionist Trump now, who in his first term had some respectable people around him to restrain him and now seems to have mostly just sycophantic full MAGA cultists around him: there will be no adults in the room during a second Trump term.  While Team Biden Democrats governs and governs well, Team MAGA sows chaos and division.

7.) Polling

In the week since the debate, you might have thought there would be a big drop in Biden’s support and a big increase in insurrectionist Trump’s, but there has been no large drop for Biden and no large bump up for insurrectionist Trump.  If things were as bad as the media was claiming, you would think there would be a big change in the polling situation, but so far—as of the publishing of this article—there has only been a 2.2% shift towards insurrectionist Trump and away from Biden in the average aggregate of recent polling, per FiveThirtyEight’s weighted measure weighted measuring.  Of course, this could change, but the current leads are leaks that can be plugged and the ship is not doomed to sink.  If it does get worse, it may in part be because of a negative feedback loop created by the repetitive hysteria from the media.  And even if it does get worse, it can also still get better: historically, the polls tend to shift significantly from this point in a general election to the end and are far, far more accurate in the final few months of the race after both conventions.  We are nowhere near that yet and even after that disaster of a debate Biden is only averaging 2.4% behind insurrectionist Trump nationally (he was 0.2% behind him the day of the debate), with post-debate bumps in polls for a candidate perceived to have won a debate often disappearing not long after. UPDATE 7/12: Biden is now only 1.9% behind nationally, only a 1.7% shift in insurrectionist Trump’s favor post-debate, which was at its height on July 5 at 2.5%, meaning at most insurrectionist Trump gained 2.3% at Biden’s nadir and has lost 0.6% in his edge since then. And in all the key swing states, Biden is also gaining, recovering from post-debate nadirs:

• Arizona: 7/5 5.9%-7/12 4.1% +1.8%
• Georgia: 7/5 7.5%-7/12 4.8%, +2.7%
• Michigan: 7/5 2.7%-7/12 0.2%, +2.5%
• Nevada: 7/5 5.7%-7/12 4.4%, +1.3%
• North Carolina: 7/5 8.3%-7/12 5.8%, +3.5%
• Pennsylvania: 7/8 3.4%-7/12 2.9%, +0.5%
• Wisconsin: 7/5 1.9%-7/12 1.0%, +0.9%
• National: 7/5 2.5%-7/12 1.9%, 0.6%

Voters thus far are rejecting the media’s hysteria, telling them how to vote, distortion, and misframing of this election!

Also, crackpot conspiracy theorist and vaccine denialist Kennedy—unsupported by most in his own family, who mostly support Biden—only saw 1.1% in growth since the debate, but I fully expect his support to shrink a lot as people get more and more exposed to his sheer ignorance, insane ideas, and strange way of communicating and get beyond RFK, Jr.’s name recognition.  Additionally, I expect him to take more votes from insurrectionist Trump than Biden as voters get more exposure to him since they align on some key issues and since I suspect more liberals than those open to Trump are liking him from name recognition while those open to Trump are more likely drawn to him because of his stances (the Kennedys as a political dynasty are not exactly popular with MAGA Republicans); indeed, there is some solid polling showing RFK, Jr. does take more from insurrectionist Trump even if not all the polling shows this.

8.) Debate Was One of Least-Watched in History

This was the least viewed presidential debate since 2004, twenty years ago, and while over 51 million Americans watched the debate, and that may seem like a lot, in 2020, 73 million watched the first Trump-Biden debate and 84 million watched the first Clinton-Trump debate in 2016.   In fact, the only debates with fewer viewers were when Reagan debated an independent candidate—John Anderson, who only would end up receiving 6.6% of the vote—in 1980 before his debate with Jimmy Carter—both Clinton-Dole debates in 1996, all three Gore-Bush debates in 2000, and the second and third Bush-Kerry debates in 2004 (the third just barely so), but that’s it.   This means that it was the ninth-least-viewed presidential debate since all the other general election presidential debates since 1960 had more viewers, all in Americas with fewer, often far fewer people, ninth out of thirty-six total presidential debates.

This is also the earliest debate in U.S. presidential general election debate history, the farthest from the general election, so for this reason and the low viewership, it may be one of the least impactful debates: people simply tuned the debate out and will have four more months of inputs affecting their vote before casting their ballots.  Yet it is possible if the worries about Biden’s fitness grow dramatically, the effect of the debate might seem to grow in hindsight, but a week after, there has not been much movement in the polls, as noted.

9.) Not Many People Watch the News or Subscribe to Newspapers

The fact is that not that many people watch or read the major news outlets for a country of over 335 million people.  Earlier this month pre-debate, ABC’s main primetime news show got over 7.1 million viewers, NBC’s 5.7 million, and CBS’s only about 4.3 million.  As for cable news, earlier this month before the debate, only about 2 million people watch Fox News in primetime, less than 960,000 MSNBC, less than 465,000 CNN.  In all these cases, the vast majority of viewers are 55 or older.  Maybe older people will have more sympathy for Biden being… old?

As for newspapers, more than ten million subscribe to The New York Times, and less than four million to The Wall Street Journal, and about 3.6 million to The Washington Post.  Overall, newspapers around the country have been rapidly declining in readership.

The media may be trying to push Biden out, but how many people are listening?

10.) The Media Overhypes Its Own Debates

While it could be subconscious (but may not be), as presidential debates are televised by corporate media companies and moderated and covered by their journalists, these journalists and media are executives benefit from hyping presidential debates so it is in their interests to make the debates seem like crucial, decisive moments in campaigns.  And while they can be, that is hardly always the case and seems less so in recent years, so the media can very likely be overselling both how important the debate is overall and especially how important it is to voters, which consider them an input but often not the determinative one.  For the news media, selling the debate’s importance is selling their own importance, getting subscriptions from consumers and money from advertisers (this debate had several commercial breaks).  And debates are not something that are anything close to what a president does when he actually carries out his duties, only during election campaigns.  Media executives also likely would wager that that fueling speculation about Biden being unfit or needing to step aside will also draw viewers even if it is a fake, premature crisis fueled largely by the pundit class and its own debate.  Despite the media’s intense coverage of its debates, more often than not they are not game-changers.

11.)  An Unintentional Assist from the Rogue Radical Activist Supreme Court

Between the historically disastrous two Supreme Court decisions—Chevron v. NRDC gutting regulatory agencies and the even somehow-even-worse presidential immunity one—and the debate, this has been a historically bad week for the country, not just Democrats.  With the immunity ruling coming right on the heels of the debate, I think a lot of liberals are snapping, a lot of independents and even some principled Republicans are snapping, and I think, much like when Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade and energized larger turnouts for Democrats and other pro-choice voters across multiple elections and referenda, a backlash and a reckoning Republicans are totally not expecting are on their way and it can only help Democrats and Biden.

12.) More than Inspiration from the UK’s Labour Party

All the way back in 2016, just after Brexit, I warned that that own-goal of Britain might very well portend bad things for we former colonials back here across the ocean in America, that a similar rise in the extreme right here could mean trends that might lead to a Trump victory.  Unfortunately, I was right. 

Now, the historic, roaring, total victory for Labour giving it a supermajority and obliterating the power of the Conservative Tories who blundered into one crisis after another from Brexit until the present can have the opposite effect of Brexit and portend good things for Democrats and Biden.  After all, the UK is more like the U.S. politically than any other European country.  It is the only European country (other than oddball Malta) with essentially a two-party system, both are majority-white countries with very high levels of immigration and immigrants, and both hail from a predominantly Ango/English culture and political tradition.  So it’s not crazy to suggest that the UK election results might be a preview of a strong showings for Democrats in November just as the disaster of Brexit was a preview of the horror show that was the Trump Administration.

Furthermore, voters richly rewarded a Labour Party led by a Sir Keir Starmer (now Prime Minister Starmer), who is largely regarded as boring and uninspiring and was not well-known, reminding voters that elections can be about parties and issues, not just one man.

13.) Joe Biden Has a Strong Record of Overcoming Being Underestimated

Will this be the time that Biden is not able to get back up after being knocked down?  Time will tell.  I was one of the only people who was bullish on Biden from the beginning of the primary back in 2019 and the only to predict basically exactly how the primary would unfold.  People were surprised Obama elevated him to the vice presidency.  People were saying it was naïve for Biden to try for bipartisan legislation as president only for him to get major, historic bipartisan legislation passed.  He has a long career of overcoming adversity, and, in the past, those underestimating him have been proven wrong repeatedly.  Don’t count joe out, not just yet.

Conclusion: Maybe 13 Lucky Reasons to Keep the Faith, Democrats?

Look, I am not going to sugar-coat it: I’m worried.  That debate performance has really set Joe Biden back and given him less room for error.  But we have to give Biden time to see if, as our captain, he can right the ship and get us through these troubled waters.  Things very much can get better and may very well—I believe they will—so, again, stop the hysteria and ignore the hysterical.

But things could get worse, and I can see scenarios after some time passes where it might be the best move for Biden to step aside in favor of his vice president, Kamala Harris (who has better approval ratings that are improving and is polling better than you might have been hearing from the “experts”; she and Biden poll better than the rest against Trump so far, other than Michelle Obama who has repeatedly made it clear she does not want to run).

But we simply are not there yet, the current calls are irresponsible panic and premature, and we have all these solid reasons to be hopeful that Biden can bounce back.  Only time will tell, but people need to give it time, as the Democratic National Convention is in late August and it’s only early July at the moment.  If Biden avoids having multiple major meltdowns like the one he had on debate night, I like the odds for this resilient candidate who hasn’t let us down yet when it comes to beating Donald Trump and overall leadership.  Ultimately, Biden will have to make his own decision and I trust him to make the right call as he has done so many times before.  The media “experts” who have done a terrible job of covering Biden and Democrats for years are certainly not the ones who will make that call, nor should they be.  This process has to play out and until it does, no one know what the outcome will be.

So, take a deep breath, give the old man some time to recover and show us the old Joe, and take heart for the reasons I outlined above.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) May 22, 2024; see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Note: all poll numbers and poll margins are rounded to nearest whole numbers unless otherwise indicated

SILVER SPRING—While votes are still being counted and, after detailed research, I fully expect my current sixth-place tally to shift into at least fifth out of ten overall candidates in the Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate primary (and I will be writing more about why I am proud my bare-bones campaign was able to outperform likely half the other candidates soon, once all votes are counted), there is absolutely no question as to who is the clear, resounding winner in this race: and that is Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.

She “Veni vidi vici”-ed this primary like a black female Julius Caesar.

As in sports and war, there is doubt about who will triumph in political contests.  Whoever is up at halftime or in the middle of battle is not guaranteed to win.  What matters in the end is hanging tough, competing, and how you finish, how many points you put up when the clock has stopped, where you are when the fighting, battle, and war ends. And in this undercovered-by-the-media Democratic primary, with no statewide official or celebrity running, when few people paid much attention until close to the end, it is now clear to me from the admittedly limited polling data and the crystal-clear election results that when people did start paying attention, they went bigtime for Angela and she won over so many undecided voters rapidly towards the end of the race, far more than any other candidate.  And thus, her double-digit victory announced to doubters (including myself,), Maryland, and America that, yes, she can win.

In this race, I always intended to compete seriously, and that I did, standing on stage with Angela and debating her five times.  During the debates (“forums”), in our discussions before and after these events, and at two events in which I was not participating as a candidate, she was always respectful and polite in her personal interactions to me, even when we had a disagreement, even though I never broke out past 1% in the polling.  She even surprised me with an unexpected hug at one point.

I’ve seen this woman up close and in person, sat next to her and even shared a mic that we had to keep passing back-and-forth between us while debating, heard her answers and opinions, witnessed her quiet fierceness exhibiting her composed passion for the issues, for justice, for Maryland, for people.  I’ve seen her improve over time as a candidate as well, and all I can say is, she finished strong, closed out like a pro, and I am proud to have lost to such a worthy competitor.  Now I see much of what her biggest champions—our governor, Wes Moore; our U.S. Senator, Chris Van Hollen; and my U.S. Representative, Jamie Raskin—have seen when they endorsed her well before the race had ended.

Angela is a lifelong Marylander who has been leading where she was and been active politically since her days on the student government in her high school.  By now, she has dedicated nearly three decades to public service in Prince George’s County Maryland, first in 1997 as the first Assistant State’s Attorney tasked specifically with dealing with domestic violence, then as the first woman elected to be Prince Goerge’s County State’s Attorney 2010, then in 2018 as the first woman elected to be Prince George’s County Executive and the first black woman to be elected as a county executive anywhere in Maryland.  And if you are a person with even an ounce of wisdom, you know that black women on average face more discrimination, have less support, are underrepresented in leadership, and have to work far harder than white men, white women, and even black men to get where they are professionally and politically.  And she has the chance to become only the third elected and fourth overall African-American woman U.S. Senator (after Carol Moseley Braun, now-Vice President Kamala Harris—a longtime supporter of Angela’s, whom Angela considers a “quintessential big sister”—and the appointed Laphonza Butler).

At this point, I can say that Angela Alsobrooks has earned our respect and our support, and I say that as a former competitor and as someone with nearly two-and-half decades of experience engaging in national-level and international-level political, public policy, and geopolitical issues. Another thing I am going to say is don’t underestimate black women who organize: Angela is a Delta Sigma Theta Sorority (founded at nearby Howard University in Washington) sister and, as we are talking about the state outside of the South with the largest African-American population, we can expect her sorority sisters in Maryland—and also at Howard, in Washington, and across the nation—to be a potent force working on the ground and online to helping to propel Angela into the U.S. Senate.  She has deep roots in the state’s second-most-populous county and the support of the vast majority of the major statewide Democratic politicians known and loved by the Marylanders they represent and govern.  She has shown she can generate passion, defy expectations, and finish dominatingly yet with grace and dignity in hotly a contested race under a national spotlight.

I had my concerns during the race, but Angela Alsobrooks has shown me and many others in Maryland she is a force of nature to be reckoned with, a formidable candidate able to overcome stiff competition, an even-keeled, thoughtful, deliberative candidate and public servant who is capable yet humble, a fighter yet respectful, compassionate yet a prosecutor, one who can help lead our nation on the U.S. Senate floor as we fight for truth in an age of disinformation and preserving our democracy against the extremism of insurrectionist Trump’s MAGA fascism.

Even though Larry Hogan is a decent man, was a popular two-term governor here in Maryland, and may oppose Trump, insurrectionism, and fascism, he will still be voting far, far too often with Trump’s disgusting cultists who form the core of House and, yes, Senate Republicans, whose ranks Hogan seeks to bolster.  Angela will protect a woman’s right to choose and voting rights, she will vote for more funding for the people of Maryland not to cut the budgets of much needed-programs, and she will encourage economic development while holding crooked CEOs accountable and pushing for profits to be shared with workers not just CEOs.

The choice is clear: to replace Ben Cardin, we need Angela Alsobrooks, not Larry Hogan, not any Republican, but we need Angela Alsbrooks not just because she is a Democrat but because she really is great for all of the reasons I have outlined above.  Don’t just vote against Hogan, vote for Angela Alsobrooks.

I’m all in for Angela.  Are you?  You should be.

Now is the time to get behind Angela!

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Yes, I am using my own news website to promote my candidacy and ideas I am putting forth as a candidate for U.S. Senate for Maryland and I won’t apologize for it!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 26, 2024; *UPDATE April 8: Afro News finally posted coverage of the March 21 eleven days later on April 1; Brian was quoted more than Alsobrooks; see related articles: March 19 Frydenborg Holds His Own Against Alsobrooks in Baltimore Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic Primary Debate, but Will It Matter & Why Won’t Local Media Cover this Race Properly?, March 6 Maryland U.S. Democratic Primary Debate Raises Questions on Frontrunners’ & Party’s Readiness to Take on Hogan. Can Frydenborg Emerge As Third Option?, and March 2 Petty Feuding Between Trone and Alsobrooks Does Not Honor Ben Cardin’s Legacy. Vote for Me Instead! and see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Correction appended: this article earlier misstated the length of Sen. Mikulski’s Senate term.

SILVER SPRING—To paraphrase what I wrote recently after my second Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic primary debate, if a debate happens but is not covered by the media, did it really happen as far as voters are concerned?

I am afraid the answer is no.

A Candidate Failed by this Maryland Primary Process

I write now as a candidate perhaps cheated by history in gross fashion, but in a way we may never know fully or be able to quantify to what degree.  To start, I would like reiterate the facts of the only credible independent poll to come out in 2024 at the time it was released, the mid-February Emerson College/The Hill/DC News Now poll:

For the Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate primary:

• Undecided 37%
• U.S. Representative David Trone 32%
• Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks 17%
• and all other candidates combined (including me) totaling 14%.

For the general election:

• Trone tied with Hogan at 42% with 16% undecided
• Alsobrooks down 37% to Hogan’s 44% and 19% undecided

Those general election numbers are clearly a horrific result for Democrats in a blue state race for a seat held for 17 years by Democrat Ben Cardin and held for by Democrat Barbara Mikulski for the thirty years prior to that.

But since that poll, in the first two debates of 2024 (see my writeups of both and also video here; there was only one exclusionary debate beforehand in early December in which I was not allowed to participate), one other candidate besides the two frontrunners—Trone and Alsobrooks—and only one other candidate was quoted by major press outlets after those debates, by The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun after the first and by The Baltimore Sun after the second (quoted twice, as much as the only other person quoted, Alsobrooks; Trone did not attend): me, Brian Frydenborg.  Quickly setting myself apart from the rest of the second-tier candidates in terms of substance and quotability, and with an online presence with more social media followers for my Twitter account than the campaign accounts of Trone and Alsobrooks combined while I was ramping up my campaign, it would seem I could be considered the third candidate in the Democratic primary.

Now, of course, that is open to debate, but think of it this way: media coverage for unknown candidates and for undecided voters is often the decisive factor, as most voters don’t go to rallies or events but read the news to learn about candidates or go to the candidates’ websites after seeing them covered in the news.

I will herein now present an alternative history as food for thought, and then look at what actually has just happened.

What Could Have Been…

Just a few days after that second debate on March 16 and riding a surge of being the only other candidate given serious attention by the mainstream press after Trone and Alsobrooks, The Washington Post/University of Maryland released a poll on March 20 that showed both Democratic frontrunners losing by 12 points or higher to Hogan.  But it also showed Brian Frydenborg in clear third place in the Democratic primary, significantly ahead of all the other second-tier candidates even as he was not that close to either Alsobrooks or Trone and with still many undecided voters.  Separating himself from that pack, Brian was contacted by several major outlets, including The Washington Post, quoting Brian not just on the state of the race and his concerns with both Democratic frontrunners but also on some of his own positions and experience.

The very next day, the third debate—a bipartisan one—in which Brian participated was held in Baltimore and covered by all the local Baltimore television stations as well as multiple newspapers.  Neither Trone nor Hogan attended, but Brian’s performance not only stood out for his energy and passion, but his specific command of details and history, in contrast to Alsobrooks, whose performance was fine and with good responses, but was far less energetic and detailed.  Brian often got more audibly engaged positive responses from the audience than Angela did, and while some of the rest of the Democratic candidates might have drawn some laughter with humor and antics, none compared to either Frydenborg or Alsobrooks in terms of giving substantive, direct, and knowledgeable answers to the questions asked.  It was the two of them and everyone else far behind, but the relatively unknown candidate Frydenborg not only held his own against the county executive frontrunner, but exceeded her performance.  His passionate framing of the failings of the two-frontrunners’ campaigns, the Democratic Party organizations and allies in Maryland, and the media with its general lack of coverage in producing a situation where Democrats are losing badly Republican opponent in the race to succeed Ben Cardin in the U.S. Senate.  In contrast, Alsobrooks gave relatively normal answers and projected unreassuring confidence for a potential matchup against Hogan for someone who was down 14 points to him in a blue state.

The media writeups and television coverage of the event—all the local Baltimore stations and papers with some of that coverage spreading—all of sudden introduced a new candidate more forcefully to primary voters besides just a few quotes in a few articles, a candidate who was articulate, passionate, and able to discuss the issues in detail while also giving voice to their anxieties about the state of the race and of potentially losing Cardin’s Senate seat to Republicans.  Thus, profiles in papers and television interviews followed, and while the next poll out still showed Brian significantly behind Trone and Alsobrooks, he had still risen even further and was clearly the only other candidate making waves, clearly establishing himself as the third candidate in the Democratic primary, with a snowball effect of more donations and more media coverage reinforcing each other that ensured his voice was heard and having an effect and keeping his trajectory in the polls an upward one in the weeks to follow.

The Sad Reality Failing Democrats, All Maryland Voters, and the Nation

I said that this was an alternate history.  Now for what really happened.

To reiterate—because this is so important—The Emerson/Hill poll had shown that the collective support of all the second-tier candidates (14%) was just 3 points behind Alsobrooks in second place (17%), with more voters than even those supporting first-place Trone (32%) saying they were undecided (37%).

In the fictional history, the next poll included the second-tier candidates: this was the only responsible choice given how much collective support the second-tier candidates had that was so close to the level of support of the number-two candidate in Alsobrooks—the 3-point gap within the 3-point margin of error—and given how the largest bloc of voters in the poll was not supporting any candidate but was undecided.  In such a context, any respectable pollster not including the second-tier candidates would be ridiculously irresponsible, but in the real world, that is what was done: the Post/UMD poll was actually released on March 20, as happened in the alternate history, but it excluded all of us second-tier candidates, including myself—the only candidate from that second tier and besides Alsobrooks or Trone tier to be quoted by the Washington Post or Baltimore Sun from the past two debates, as I have pointed out before.  And given all that, relative to all the other second-tier candidates, for me there was an excellent chance that I would have risen more than any of them and surpassed all of them to legitimately claim third place then and there in this Democratic primary race.  But with not being included at all, it is not possible to know this and not possible for voters to have an accurate, full picture of a potentially volatile contest.  So no bounce recorded and no media exposure as a result of such a poll just before my third debate, which could have even partly framed the debate itself.

To make matters even worse, while in my alternate history there was still ample media coverage of the third debate to allow my forceful and stand-out performance to reach the voting public even if I was inexcusably excluded in that latest poll, there was no media coverage in real life: no local sites, no local TV stations, no newspapers, period, (*April 8 update) until, that is, Afro News finally published coverage on April 1, eleven days after the debate; still, better late then never and I was quoted more than Alsobrooks!

“We’ve got to be real about what is coming at us,” said U.S. Senate Candidate Brian Frydenborg (D), during the forum at New Psalmist Baptist Church. “Hogan 50–Alsobrooks 36,  Hogan 49–Trone 37, that is not where we need to be as Democrats. What that means is that despite the best of intentions and two quality frontrunners, we are failing.”

For a debate less than two months before the primary and less than six weeks before early voting, this is just an absolute collective disgrace on the part of the local media (*April 8 update) apart from Afro News, and it still should have published its account much earlier.

If you’re disappointed by now, here’s another harsh dose of reality: while the event was organized by the League of Women Voters of Baltimore City (LWVBC), the host for the event was Baltimore’s New Psalmist Baptist Church and they were in charge of the recording and streaming of the event.  Before the debate, I asked about the status and quality of the recordings.  I was directed to a Pete French, who assured me that the Church recorded all their services and that they were professional quality (I mentioned that previous “official” recordings had sorely missed the mark in quality).  He made it clear that an audio, not a video, recording would be made (strange, why not record video, what are we hiding from voters here?) and that no decision had yet been made on whether that recording would be released.  I pressed him on this, noting how it would really be a disservice to the public to not share the recording.  He declined to explain why they were going about this in such a secretive way and clearly did not feel he had any obligation to offer any further explanation, making it clear he would not say anything further of substance at this point on this issue.  I must admit I had a bad feeling about whether or not this recording would be released given his polite yet clearly dismissive attitude; also, days earlier, I had asked if the organizers might offer any rides from the main Baltimore-Penn Station connecting to DC since the Church was on the outskirts of the city and I was coming from DC—about an hour away by public transit from Baltimore-Penn Station, and was told no; when I introduced myself to Farmer, he asked me with an amused and perhaps condescending tone if I was the candidate who has asked for a ride (an Uber had been suggested, which would have been prohibitively expensive, but I eventually learned that Baltimore had a subway and was able to take that out).  After this exchange before the debate during the introductions while we were on stage, it was announced that the debate would be live-streamed.  I asked one of the staffers for that link to be provided so I could share with all my followers online, and she said she would get that for me.  It never came.  After repeated inquiries after Thursday’s debate, I learned on Sunday from the Facebook account of LWVBC that the New Psalmist Baptist Church—specifically Pete Farmer—had decided not to release the audio to the public.

Even with the oddness of our exchange I had in-person with Farmer, I was still flabbergasted and deeply offended by this decision, sure for myself, but even more so for the people of Maryland.

They may be a church, but who in the hell did they think they were keeping this debate from the larger voting public?  This furthermore went against what the LVWBC website had stated, that “The event will be recorded and made available online”:

To be honest, though, this triple whammy—a major polling firm making an exclusionary and totally inexcusable decision to not include second-tier candidates despite the results of the previous poll as characterized earlier, literally zero media coverage of the debate (until this piece you are reading now by yours truly *April 8 update: and until Afro News‘s artile eleven days later)), and then the New Psalmist Baptist Church recording the event but then the person in charge of the decision on whether to release the recoding deciding against its release despite my personal entreaties to have them released made directly to him in person—is par for the course for this Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate primary this election cycle.

Fortunately, there is one available unofficial partial video taken by one candidate’s staffer by mobile phone of the debate that is missing most of the opening statements but has the rest (you can hear me speak at 12:36, 28.24, 43:43, 1:01:07, 1:18:11, 1:33:30).  You can clearly see that my alternative history description from above is accurate: the only difference from above is that there was no news media coverage (April 8 update: until Afro News eleven days after the event).  And the debate was well attended, so there is still a chance for it to have some impact, though because of what I outlined above, that impact will surely be minimal unless somehow my coverage here makes a difference and that video gets a lot of views.

Time for Democrats to Panic and Adjust and Why I am the Solution (Even if You Support David or Angela)

The Problems with Candidates Trone and Alsobrooks

It is mistakes and attitudes like the above that, if nothing changes, make Republican Larry Hogan the favorite to win in November.  Yes, here we have two candidate frontrunners and their campaigns running their campaigns in such a problematic way that Hogan is beating them badly and either most or close to most voters don’t even have an opinion on them: 46% when it came to Trone and 58% compared to Alsobrooks, while Hogan had a 64% favorable rating.  And when he left office in Maryland in January 2023 not that long ago as one of the nation’s most popular governors for years, a final poll had him with a 77% approval rating, including 81% with Democrats (even matching their approval of Biden), higher than with Republicans (68%).  And this was a Republican governor in a heavily-Democratic state!  Additionally, his approval was 81% with African-American voters to 76% for white voters.

So here we are heading into a general election with two far-lesser-known frontrunners running far behind the far-more-well-known Larry Hogan: David Trone 12 points behind—49%-37%–and Angela Alsobrooks down 14 points—50%-36%.  “Don’t worry, once voters get to know them in the general election, they’ll be fine, plus, we have the abortion issue!” is not just an extremely naïve, hubristic, non-sequitur response, it is incredibly risky and a losing mentality.  We have no idea if any of that ground will be made up (I would suspect some would be but hardly think it’s a given that enough of it will be, and though I think Alsobrooks just picking up the endorsement of rockstar Rep. Jamie Raskin—our modern Daniel Webster in the House—will big a serious boost in her fight with Trone it may not be enough to get her past Trone, only time will tell), let alone whether the gap will get worse for either candidate.  And abortion rights are not really particularly at stake in Maryland with a 102-39 Maryland House of Delegates Democratic majority, a 34-13 Democratic majority in the Maryland Senate, and with Democratic Governor Wes Moore running the state, not in the way they are at risk in purple swing and Republican-controlled red states with local leaders or extremist right-wing courts trying to impose sweeping restrictions on women’s bodily and reproductive autonomy.  But that or some other version of “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine” is the dangerous mentality I am hearing from the frontrunners and their supporters.

This should be even more worrying when one consider that certain key parts of the base will be less than enthusiastic about supporting an old white guy who was a billionaire retail alcohol mogul for decades before entering Congress just five years ago or a former county prosecutor with what especially some on the left would view as a controversial record in that role.  And neither have the stature or big-time political experience Ben Cardin had in 2006 or Larry Hogan has today.  These and other weaknesses are being ignored or denied, and not testing the candidates on these grounds before Larry Hogan would challenge them on in a contest that would involve many Republicans and independents, not just Democrats, is a plan for failure and losing.  As I noted in my concluding speech, Obama was a much better candidate having faced off against Clinton in 2008 before he went up against McCain.  We need a third person in this race to toughen or hone these Trone and Alsobrooks into being much more competitive against Hogan or consider an alternative.  I can play both roles better than anyone else among the second-tier Democratic candidates in this race.

Trone may have way more money than Alsobrooks, but she had raised just under $5 million before last quarter’s reporting date at the end of 2023, no small amount.  I can promise you that if I had $5 million, this would be a very different race with a very different feel.

The Problems with the Maryland Democratic Party and its Affiliates

As I have noted before, the Maryland Democrats’ plan has failed thus far and needs to change dramatically.  If I was involved in the Maryland State Democratic Party, my plan would have been and for the rest of the primary is now simple:

1. Encourage every organization sponsoring any primary debate or candidate forum to reach out to all other Democratic Party organizations in the state to cross-promote and cross-post about all these event on their pages and social media.
2. I would also ensure all local papers, local news sites, and local television stations would be listing all these events well-ahead of time and prominently as a matter of public interest.
3. I would engage national- level outlets, especially The Washington Post, in addition to C-SPAN to engage in much more coverage.
4. I would have the state party interview each and every Democratic candidate and post video on our site, YouTube, and social media, as well as transcripts.
5. I would have the state party during these final weeks organize two to three more debates in the final less-than-two months of the primary.  The questions would not just be about issues but also the candidates’ possible weaknesses and their strategies to win against Hogan.  I would include all candidates for at least the first one or two debates, pay to commission an independent and respectable non-partisan poll or two from a major pollster, and have some sort of polling cutoff based on non-partisan polling available (right now, just two polls) for the final debate or two.  I would find a way to get these televised live on public access television, perhaps C-SPAN, and definitely streamed online live and posted online after.  They would not be amateur, cell-phone quality, or inaudible or unintelligible as has been the case thus far.
6. I would have the state party provide assistance to any involved or sponsoring organization to further all these ends.

The insanity here is that all six of these are no-brainers and should have been happening on some level partly since late in 2023.  There is no excuse for the lack of coordination, cross-promotion, and not properly recording all these debates/forums and not properly making them publicly available on the internet, period.

The Problems with the Media

And as a journalist, I for damn sure wouldn’t depend on outreach to know about these events and cover them.  I would prioritize coverage of these events, make sure they are listed in an “upcoming events” section within the politics section with links to the event pages, and sure as hell not let a situation occur like what happened with the last debate when it was not covered at all.  Lost pets, fraternity hazing, and traffic accidents are not more important.  If outlets are short-staffed, bring on some interns if necessary to cover, but have someone there covering no matter what for every single primary debate (plenty of college kids can at least sit and take notes).  There should be alerts in the days before on the news organizations’ homepage, and this should be especially prominently featured on the homepage up top on the day of the event.

All this is so absolutely basic that it shouldn’t need to be said, anything less is gross negligence.  But this is not happening and so it very much needs to be said, and this is just damn pathetic.  This needs to go for all the main local papers and The Washington Post, all the local-interest sites, and all the local television stations.  There is no excuse for anything less.  And, as I noted before, if you’re a newspaper associated with a poll, you sure don’t exclude second tier-candidates under current conditions for the reasons outlined earlier.

Conclusion: Candidates, the Party, and Media: Help Me Help You Do Your Jobs

In the end, the top candidates’ jobs are to put themselves in a position that make it the most likely they will defeat their opponents.  In the end, the Democratic Party and its allied organizations’ jobs are to promote events as much as possible so as to generate real public and media interest and ensure voters can make informed decisions over months of a competitive primary process that for much of its duration is open and gives all comers a real chance to connect and get their message out to voters and the press, along with making sure the process forges candidates into stronger versions of themselves better equipped to take on a formidable general election candidate if there is such a candidate and, boy, there sure is this time around, clearly much more than was anticipated.  Andin the end, the press’s job is to cover all this in substantive ways and to also raise awareness and so that voters can stay informed and not just take candidates’ and the Party’s words without scrutiny and context.

With the polling where it is and factoring all of the above into the equation, it is obvious none of this is happening now.  And I don’t see signs of any adjustments or self-awareness that adjustments need to be made.   And either they change what they are doing and how they are doing it or Larry Hogan’s odds of winning Ben Cardin’s seat for Republicans will be high, far too high for my liking at a time when having more Democrats to stand up to Trump’s MAGA insurrectionist fascism is essential because the survival of democracy in America itself and the whole post-World War II U.S.-led international order are at stake, under assault from an unholy alliance between Trump and Putin.  So no, we cannot afford to have even one of the best possible Republicans in Larry Hogan—in votes, the GOP equivalent of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), breaking often with his party on key issues—to replace Ben Cardin, we need a Democrat.

At the last three debates, I was the only candidate who talked about the frontrunners’ (increasingly) poor polling against Hogan and the major crisis for Democrats in both Maryland and the U.S. Senate this represents.  None of the moderators so much as asked anything even remotely related to clear and present dangers this reality presents for Democrats’ prospects in a deep blue state.  So I see only one solution to correct course: make me the third person in this Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate primary race so I can light a fire under the ass of all the major actors involved to either forge the frontrunners into being more Hogan-ready than their current 12-14 point disastrous deficits or to present a third alternative if they are unable or unwilling to adjust.

Whichever role I end up playing, me being that clear third person in this Democratic U.S. Senate race in Maryland seems to be the only way to maximize our changes to keep Ben Cardin’s seat blue.  The current course and status quo of the press coverage along with the Democratic candidates and Democratic establishment here in Maryland are failing and making it far too likely that Hogan and Republicans will win.  I am the only Democratic candidate willing to admit this, let alone call for action to address it and be a leader by acting accordingly.  I therefore deserve to at least be the third candidate in this race and be part of the discussion from now until May 14, not for my sake, but for all our sakes and for the sake of a Democratic victory in November.

But I need your help to make this happen.  Even if you support Rep. David Trone or County Executive Alsobrooks, they are not currently on a path to beating Hogan or even close, they need help and need someone to push them to be better.  And like it or not, there is no other candidate that can do that in this race at this time besides me.  So please support me, spread the word, and donate to my campaign for the sake of the party and keeping Ben Cardin’s seat blue to better fight against Trumpist MAGA insurrectionist fascism in Washington, the most important fight that must take precedence before all others.  Hogan is a nice guy, not a fascist nor an insurrectionist, but he will still vote too many times with those who are, and that is why we must defeat him, and that is why I’ve got to be the third person in this race.

See related articles Frydenborg Holds His Own Against Alsobrooks in Baltimore Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic Primary Debate, but Will It Matter & Why Won’t Local Media Cover this Race Properly?, Maryland U.S. Democratic Primary Debate Raises Questions on Frontrunners’ & Party’s Readiness to Take on Hogan. Can Frydenborg Emerge As Third Option? and Petty Feuding Between Trone and Alsobrooks Does Not Honor Ben Cardin’s Legacy. Vote for Me Instead! And see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here as well as Brian’s official campaign website.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 1, 2024; Traduce en español/translate to Spanish; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

SILVER SPRING—Many of the problems the problems facing our country today stem in part from a wildly unrepresentative U.S. Senate blocking so much progress and necessary reform (see pages 48-50 in one of my graduate school papers for some examples and context), from the imbalance in the Supreme Court to aid for Ukraine to sensible gun regulation.  Because of the Senate’s innate bias towards far less-populated, far more rural, far whiter state populations, the Republican senators who have engaged in creating this imbalance have represented roughly 39 million to, most recently, 54 million fewer Americans in recent years than Senate Democrats.  This is clearly a tyranny of an unrepresentative minority.

But we can fight back, in numerous ways.

I have three recent policy positions that, combined, can really do a lot to restore some balance to our politics:

My proposal to reduce the threshold of the filibuster from 60 votes to 55 (original proposal on my campaign website here)

My joining the effort expand the U.S. Supreme Court by four more seats to 13 total (original proposal on my campaign website here)

My joining the effort to grant statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia (original proposal on my campaign website here)

A More Reasonable Filibuster

Ideally, the 60-vote filibuster protects a strong minority from being oppressed by a slim majority.  But Republicans have blatantly abused this tradition and this rule for years now allowing a much smaller minority as outlined above to thwart the will of much larger majorities.

At the same time, a narrow factional majority should not be able to impose its will on the nation by just one vote, and the Senate’s tradition of forcing some consensus should not be abandoned: sweeping legislation should be able to be passed with more than just a narrow tiny majority, ideally bipartisan.  The filibuster in concept will also protect us as Democrats, protect others not aligned with Republicans when electoral fortunes shift.  And it also in concept means less back and forth with the country seeing legislation undone and redone with just a one-vote majority or a tie with a vice presidential vote in the Senate, too.

Therefore, instead of needing 60 votes and having a 20-vote majority required on non-budget reconciliation measures in the Senate, I propose to reduce the filibuster to 55 votes, reducing a 20-vote margin to a 10-vote margin for these changes.  This will dramatically reduce the abuse, increase the chances for bipartisanship, and allow America to move forward more often while still doing so with some care and respect for the minority.  Democrats can change the rule now and I would be a strong vote and advocate for this change once I would be a member of the Senate.

Expanding the Supreme Court to Reflect Americans, Not Right-Wing Extremists

Brian Frydenborg respects fairness.  The American people deserve a Supreme Court that represents them and something approximating their views.  Instead, because of Senate Republicans cheating and blatant hypocrisy in blocking Merrick Garland’s nomination for most of a year and then Trump got the benefit of the stubbornness of the late and legendary Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg combined with even more blatant Republican hypocrisy to make the balance in the Supreme Court 6-3 in favor of conservatives instead of 5-4 in favor of liberals.  This is absolutely out of step with American values and has led to the loss of rights for all women in America in the notorious Dobbs case that overturned Roe v. Wade.

But we do not have to take this lying down.  We do not have to accept a right-wing 6-3 Supreme Court for decades.

In line with precedent and the U.S. Constitution, we can and should expand the number of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court by four, from nine to fourteen.  Senators Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tina Smith of Minnesota have already introduced legislation to do this, and as a U.S. Senator, it would be my intention to fully and vigorously support their legislation and to push for its adoption as soon as Democrats would have the numbers in Congress to make this a reality.

The Supreme Court is broken.  This 6-3 imbalance does not represent the views of the vast majority of Americans and we do not deserve to be held back by a reactionary judiciary.  Because of the Senate’s innate bias towards far less-populated, far more rural, far whiter state populations, the Republican senators who have engaged in creating this imbalance have represented roughly 39 million to, most recently, 54 million fewer Americans in recent years than Senate Democrats.  This is clearly a tyranny of a minority.

Accidents of history and blatant political gamesmanship should not define the makeup the Supreme Court, and such a grave, radical imbalance requires a bold solution, one that refuses to accept the status quo imposed by a group of senators representing a minority of the U.S. population.  We definitely have to win more seats in the Senate, but my proposal to reduce the filibuster threshold from 60 to 55 seats will make this much easier and a near-term realistic goal if we turn out and vote just a few more Democrats into the Senate (including me!)!

Statehood for Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico

Statehood for both of these places would help adjust the unrepresentative bias against nonwhite, non-rural voters in the Senate, making passing the legislations we need to much more likely.

Puerto Rico was acquired by the U.S. during the Spanish-American War in 1898 and has had an odd history or being autonomous to varying degrees but today is in a no-man’s land of not being an actual state; its 3.2 million people are U.S. citizens but reside in what is now classified as a U.S. Territory: that means it has no representatives with binding, counting votes in either the U.S. House or the U.S. Senate even though the island territory has more people than roughly twenty of the U.S. states that collectively account for roughly 40 out of 100 Senate votes.  And this has had consequences that have harmed Puerto Rico, one glaring example being the inability of its people to hold the U.S. government accountable for the gross disparity in hurricane rescue, relief, and aid efforts from the federal government after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico compared with federal efforts to assist states hurt by hurricanes around the same time, such as Florida after Hurricane Irma and Texas after Hurricane Harvey.  Were this Puerto Rico’s status to change and it to be admitted as a state into the Union, the territory turned state would be given House seats and, like every other state, two U.S. Senate seats.  While Puerto Ricans’ views and votes on statehood have evolved over time, the three latest votes—in 2012, 2017, and 2020—all had a majority of Puerto Rican voters in favor of statehood.  We also have close to six million Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. mainland who can be approached and engaged in this effort, too, and we should be honest: the wonderful, hardworking Puerto Rican people are Americans, adding their wonderful culture to our tapestry of many cultures.

We can approach Puerto Ricans not acting like we are doing them a favor in granting statehood (though statehood could help Puerto Rico in important ways), but be clear we are asking them for their help.  We can make it clear that we want them to join us as fully equal political citizens and that we could really use their help rectifying the gross imbalances in our political system, fighting for justice and policies that benefit all Americans.

A bipartisan bill to move forward with a new binding vote on statehood in Puerto Rice passed the House late in 2022, but was never taken up in the Senate.  As that bipartisan coalition wants to continue its effort, I mean to be a vocal leader in the Senate on this effort: we should put Puerto Rico on the official path to statehood as soon as possible.

The same goes for the city of Washington as the District of Columbia.  There are many reasons why Washington, DC should have statehood, most famous being the simple principle that the Americans whose primary residence is DC suffer from what the Colonial-era American patriots complained of: “taxation without representation,” for many years now part of the phrasing on local DC license plates. 

DC has more people than two states—Vermont and Wyoming—that each have their own representatives in the House and two senators each in the Senate, too. 

Furthermore, many of the Washingtonians whose primary residence is the District are those who serve and work for our federal government and enable it to operate on a day-to-day basis while many others are descendants of freedman, the former slaves who settled in Washington often as refugees before, during, and after the Civil War: it seems terribly wrong to deny so many public servants and their families and so many who are the descendants of those who suffered from America’s Original Sin of slavery the representation in Congress that all Americans living primarily in the fifty states have.

While there may (or may not) be some potential constitutional issues with making a federal district a state, we still must press forward with the campaign to give the U.S. citizens of Washington, District of Columbia equal rights as U.S. citizens in the form of full representation in the Congress, in both the House and with two Senators in the Senate.  I will be a leading voice on this effort and try to tie it to the effort to give the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico full representation, too.

Not only will making Puerto Rico and Washington full states with full delegations in Congress help address the unfair, unjustifiable bias against non-rural and non-white Americans in the Senate, it will also help bring balance to a House that has been gerrymandered for years to disproportionately benefit Republicans.  I will help lead the fight to do to justice not only for Marylanders in Maryland, but for Washingtonians in the District of Colombia, Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico, and Americans in the nation as a whole in the U.S. Senate.

Conclusion: Win a Few Seats, Make History with My Trifecta, and I Will Help Lead the Way in the Senate!

If we preserve our 51-seat majority, we can change the filibuster in the way I have outlined without completely getting rid it, and with just a few Republicans or by expanding our current Democratic Senate majority by just four seats, we can then expand the Supreme Court.  Then both those reforms will help make it easier for the Congress at admit DC and Puerto Rico as states while avoiding potential blocks from both the Republicans in the Senate and the extremists on the Supreme Court.  As a new U.S. Senator for Maryland, I will help lead the fight on all three fronts and the combined effect will go a long way to restoring some balance and sanity in our Legislative and Judicial Branches of the Republic we must fight hard to preserve against Donald Trump’s fascist insurrectionist assault on our nation.  These changes taken together will make both Congress and the Supreme Court far more representative of actual and mainstream Americans instead of letting extremists direct two of the three branches of government as often as they do.

Come see Brian debate other candidates, including the two frontrunners, this Saturday in Silver Spring, moderated by Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin. I wrote about why this debate is so important for me. Register here now as space is filling up! You can also sign up to watch via Zoom here! And see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here as well as Brian’s official campaign website.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Thirteenth episode on the on the train wreck of insanity and depravity that is the 2024 Republican presidential nomination contest: focusing on the Iowa caucuses and the other early contests: the New Hampshire primary, the Nevada caucuses, and the South Carolina primary as well as how the rest of the race will unfold and why incumbent President Joe Biden will beat Trump.

Notes (more to come):

Title Screen photo credits: ABC/The Hill

The Republican 2024 presidential nomination primary/caucus calendar, per New York Times

All 2024 Republican presidential race polling, national and state, per FiveThirtyEight

On the details of Ron DeSantis’s catastrophic failure on COVID-19, with Florida having the 10^th highest per capita death rate after some very early advantages, see this Guardian article, this BMJ article about the DeSantis Administration lying about COVID statistics, this Washington Post article covering DeSantis’s debate with Gov. Gavin Newson of California

On Ramaswamy’s extremism: See this New Yorker article

On Haley’s history of problems with the Civil War and slavery, see this Washington Post article and this from WHYY/PBS/NPR

All the numbers behind the Selzer poll

On Ann Selzer’s legendary status as a pollster, see FiveThirtyEight

Des Moines Register writeup of the Selzer poll with Selzer’s commentary

On the weather in Iowa for this caucus, see the New York Times

Myself and the late legend Christopher Hitchens savaging the caucuses

When I said Jewish community, I was referring the one in then-Palestine, known as the Yishuv

A primary without a competing caucus in Nevada would be more representative, but since Trump is the leader of a cult there, Republicans might boycott the primary en masse, so it might not be more representative under these conditions, it will depend on If there is decent turnout.

My discussion with Rula Jebreal

On Biden’s frustrations with Netanyahu, see Barak Ravid in Axios and oh so many others and my discussion with Noga Tarnopolsky

My article on Trump, insurrection, and Gen. U.S. Grant

© 2023-2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Consider donating if you appreciate this content. Also see Brian’s deep-dive on the 2014 Israel-Hamas war.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook) April 13, 2023

SILVER SPRING—After disgraced former President Donald Trump’s first (and hardly rushed) indictment, this one at the hands of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (I posted the full indictment here, read for yourself), there have been and are many—oh, so many—takes being offered on television, in print, and on social media.

A few are pretty solid.

But many takes—oh, so many—are hyperbolically dramatic, breathlessly stupid, and/or wildly inaccurate.  Most of the worst takes are coming from the right: wild, irresponsible, and nonsensical accusations of political persecution and miscarriages of justice (some are comparing to the tale of the persecution of, wait for it… Jesus) or literally painting the picture with the exact opposite of what is true.

But there is some criticism that is more measured and nuanced, even partly coming from figures or outlets on the mainstream left or conservatives who have consistently opposed Trump, that “the Democrats” are bungling the timing and/or order of Trump’s prosecutions and this indictment may undermine the other cases arrayed against him, that this case is problematic and “the least significant” and “weakest” of the potential charges and prosecutions should not even be pursued (from The Washington Post Editorial Board!), that prosecutions should be withheld because of how Trump’s cultists might react (Bill Maher), that if this indictment is successful it will fool the left into prematurely thinking Trumpism has been defeated, that this opens a Pandora’s box and sets bad precedents as to how other former presidents and officials could be treated down the road.

Yet many these criticisms are incredibly dangerous and seriously undermine the rule of law and democracy in general, empowering illiberal fascist tendencies in our country that are already out of control and that mean that any major election could be our last free and fair election.

Unreasonable from the Right

The first type of commentary, coming from the right, is exceedingly easy to toss aside.

Firstly, pretty much that entire crowd was saying the same stuff before the indictment was unsealed; they had no ability before that to definitively assess the quality of evidence and charges and most are clearly making their mind up (or lying) based on personal partisan political allegiances, not the law or the facts of the case of which they are in large part ignorant, but there are already indications the evidence will be strong:  two people very close to Trump at the time of his crimes  in question—Trump personal “fixer” lawyer Michael Cohen (who blocked me years ago on Twitter when he was still on Trump’s side in response to my investigative pieces on his shady history operating in Trump’s orbit) and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg—have already been convicted in directly related successful prosecutions, with Cohen even robustly cooperating with Bragg’s office in its current case against Trump.  Furthermore, key figures deep inside Trumpworld besides Cohen, including Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks, have been providing the testimony on which the Manhattan grand jury proceeded with its recommendations and Bragg decided to prosecute.

Secondly, events in question were late in the game in the 2016 presidential campaign but with extramarital affairs that happened years before the 2016 election (all the way back in 2006 and 2007!): that means there is a an overwhelming logical burden that would take extraordinary evidence to overcome to prove that paying off pornstar Stormy Daniels and with whom Donald Trump had an extramarital affair and taking other methods to quash another story about Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal with whom Trump also had an extramarital affair was not in large part done to prevent new stories of negative media coverage of Trump circulating in the months, days, and weeks before the incredibly close 2016 presidential election, one which Trump only narrowly won and with decisive outside interference from Putin’s Kremlin (which I have explained in detail before), so any idea that keeping these stories secret and using illegal accounting methods to keep this from having to be reported to federal election oversight authorities is patently absurd, full stop: there is no rational way to view any payments or efforts to bury these stories in 2016 a decade or nearly a decade after their occurrence not in large part as substantive efforts to aid the Trump presidential campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton.  Keeping such truthful scandalous stories about a candidate from appearing while voters are making up their minds and actually voting during early and absentee voting—regardless of any other reasons involved—is a massive boost to any campaign in any similar position, including Trump’s, and thus it is impossible to argue that the crimes of misreporting and concealing these financial moves are not directly related to clear violations of federal election law.

Think of it this way: imagine any candidate running for office engaging in illegal financial reporting to hide paying someone with whom that candidate has had an extramarital affair a decade ago and that this payment came at the height of that candidate’s political campaign, then consider the idea that the candidate would have done so at that time only for either or some combination of personal financial gain or to prevent personal damage to the candidate’s family to the exclusion of any political considerations… that second thought is simply nonsensical.  An attempt to argue it was not designed at least in part to benefit the candidate politically is an impossible sell, then, given that even the most inexperienced consultants or students of politics would be well-aware of the political benefits of such an act and would have to know engaging in such behavior would bring about considerable political benefits to any American political campaign.  Unlike other cases, here the intent-as-a-basis-for-arguing-innocence argument falls short in the realm of believability (as oppose to, say, considering Hillary Clinton’s e-mail/server woes under the Espionage Act).  And, all things being equal, again, the 2016 election was so razor-thin-close that any significant alteration of its equation against Trump would have seen Clinton triumphant; thus, it is far from unreasonable to argue that one or more of these stories about Trump’s extramarital affairs breaking late in the 2016 election cycle could have swung the election to his opponent and thus spared the nation the insanity of Trump’s four years as president.

Less Hysterical, Still Wrong

The other type of commentary generally critiques the strategy or risks of the indictment, but these arguments are also logically well into absurdist territory.

We have one case now unfolding from the Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, and another that has yet to drop an indictment from Fulton County, Georgia, from its elected Democratic District Attorney Fani Willis, one concerning efforts to overturn Georgia’s election results.  A third investigation into Trump personally for his crimes related to Trump’s (ongoing!) insurrection campaign, his willful theft of classified materials, and his obstruction of justice in relation to returning them and to the relevant investigations is being handled by an apolitical Department of Justice appointee, Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has experience prosecuting war criminals at The Hague.  A fourth $250 million civil case is targeting the Trump Organization, Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump, one conducted by elected Democratic New York State Attorney General Laetitia James (and for which even just today, Trump had to sit for some seven hours of deposition).  There is also a civil rape case in New York involving Trump that is set to go to trial and a related defamation case, both brought by his accuser E. Jean Carroll.

While three of the four government officials leading the government cases are elected as Democrats and the fourth is appointed by the Democratic Biden Administration’s appointed and U.S.-Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, it is horribly misleading to portray their investigations somehow as being carried out by or at the behest of Democratic Party, including the Democratic National Committee (DNC), elected Democratic legislators in Congress, or any political wing of the Democratic Party, let alone liberal media or political organizations.  These are four separate investigations being carried out by two top local law enforcement officials (from Manhattan, a borough of New York City, and Fulton County in Georgia), one top state official for New York State, and one federal Special Counsel appointed by the U.S. Attorney General, and they are making their own separate decisions.  While there may be some areas where there is overlap between the Manhattan and New York State probes into Trump Organization finances and between the Fulton County and Special Counsel probes as far as Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, the idea that they are coordinating between themselves or with Democratic Party organizations for political framing or advantage as to what, how, when, and if they will prosecute is not only entirely speculative and wholly without evidence, it goes contrary to how these things have worked over recent decades in the American justice system.  While, as noted, there are certain overlapping areas of focus where different government prosecutorial offices might exchange notes or potential conflicts, anything beyond that, especially the idea that these prosecutors are working with Democratic Party leaders in Congress, with the White House, with state legislatures, with left-leaning or leftist media outlets and figures, or with national, state, or local Democratic Party organizations at all, let alone in concert for some sort of political strategy for the coming elections, goes contrary to how these investigations have operated by and large for decades.

(As an aside, let’s contrast this against zealous Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s 1990s investigations of the Clintons when they were in the White House.  It is because of Starr the that special counsel regulations were crafted to replace the independent counsel statute to avoid overreaching politicized witch-hunts like Starr’s, which proved none of the original alleged crimes for which it had begun but did uncover a salacious extramarital affair between then-President Bill Clinton and then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky, catching Clinton perjuring himself to cover up the affair, for which Clinton was impeached, a far lesser matter than the two Trump impeachments, in which some Republicans who were in office for Clinton’s impeachment had voted as representatives to impeach in 1998 or as senators to remove Clinton in 1999 but, tellingly, declined to vote to remove Trump from office as senators during his two far more serious Senate impeachment trials in 2020 and 2021; to add to the extreme irony, Starr himself was part of Trump’s defense team during his first Senate trial in 2020, further cementing who he really was to the public before he died in late 2022).

As opposed to Starr, we have nothing at all to suggest anything other than that Alvin Bragg simply finished his investigation and preparation first and, therefore, filed his indictment first: anyone suggesting otherwise, the burden of proof is on them and no proof has emerged.

So when people suggest that “the Democrats” are not putting their best foot forward by going with these charges first, they are grossly mischaracterizing how these things work in this country.  This is not some coordinated political campaign, and language suggesting that is deeply corrosive to the public’s trust in our institutions of justice, indeed, this destruction of faith in institutions is a lesser side of the coin that Republicans are explicitly screaming and that is one of the key hallmarks of its Trumpism as well as being a disturbing rising trend on the Bernie Sanders-left.  Just assuming bad faith and corruption without strong evidence to support that supposition—in such an unwarranted manner from the beginning before the processes even plays out—is dangerous, and can culminate in even far worse than what we saw on January 6 with the failed insurrection-coup attempt.

What people on the left and other principled Trump critics need to understand, then, is that when they criticize “the Democrats” for supposedly overplaying a political hand in reference to these separate investigations, they are adding fuel to the same fire of cynicism about our institutions that fuels Trumpism’s fascist populism.  The other officials will file their indictments if and when they are ready, but each case will rise of fall based on its own evidence and its own merits, regardless to what any of the other cases lead.  One or more cases may ultimately inform one or more of the others, but they are still their own cases and suggesting otherwise is detrimental to “the rule of law and not of men.”

And the issues surrounding Trump’s first indictment are “serious.”  Especially considering that all this is related to essentially cheating in the 2016 election, no one should view these charges as “weak” or “minor;” as I argued above, the political dimension is not “alleged” or a supposition: it is central to the financial crimes committed just before the 2016 election to suppress decade-old infidelities with a pornstar and a Playmate in a way that substantially politically benefitted the campaign of a candidate in Trump whose most loyal voters were Evangelical Christians (even more so than for George W. Bush, who was himself an Evangelical).

Republicans know this, so does Trump, and they are worried regardless of their gaslighting claiming the opposite.  Why else would drama-queen (this is objective, as he seems to have as his default tone “yell”) Trump devotee and powerful Republican Jim Jordan, preposterously the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, be trying to run unconstitutional interference from Congress already on Bragg’s case, for which Bragg has just sued Jordan, making it clear his Manhattan District Attorney’s office will not tolerate such brazen challenges to the rule of law (see the detailed 50-page filing submitted by Bragg: he brought receipts!)?  If it is no big deal, why not let a free airing of the evidence in the case prove Trump’s innocence, as a failure to convict would surely help Trump?  The answer is fear that the case may actually turn out to be strong.

As to the order of the charges, why not begin with the earliest of Trump’s crimes?  Yale professor, lawyer, and former FBI counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa adroitly points out that Trump’s crimes for which he has been indicted by the Manhattan DA are the first in a series of major crimes all related to skewing or overturning the outcomes of his elections, followed by accepting Russian malign assistance during the campaign, by his attempts to get Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to damage Joe Biden politically with a false pretense of an “investigation” in exchange for military aid that had already been approved by Congress (including the Javelin anti-tank missiles that have been so crucial for Ukraine in defeating Russia’s current military onslaught), and the whole series of efforts to overturn the 2020 election through actions such as attempting to pressure Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” Trump votes (see my interview with Sec. Raffensperger conducted just a few days before that “perfect phone call”) and fostering a violent coup-insurrection attempt against Congress, the peaceful transfer of power, and our constitutional order.  In pointing out the linked nature of these offenses and cases, Professor Rangappa obliterates both the argument against the timing of Bragg’s indictment and the idea that the crimes laid out by the indictment are minor, exaggerated, or not worth pursuing.

Rangappa also did an excellent job putting out the structure and merit of Bragg’s case in visual form, whether involving federal election violations or not:

In terms of thinking we should not pursue justice and uphold the law against a man who is wholly unrepentant, still pursuing his crimes, and is obviously still a clear and present danger to our democracy (as in, not behaving at all the way Richard Nixon did after he resigned), well, there is a word for using the threat of violence to affect a political outcome in this way, and that word is terrorism.

When it comes to the idea that choosing to prosecute Trump is opening a Pandora’s Box, I do not take this lightly at all and I have done my own detailed research on how political witch-hunt prosecutions in the ancient Roman Republic (including threatened against Julius Caesar himself) helped to launch a spiral of extreme partisanship that destroyed the Republic’s democracy and brought about the autocratic Roman Empire.  But it is not the choosing to prosecute Trump that is the problem: it is that Trump, unlike any predecessor, has committed such criminal activity outside the bounds of misguided policy and very much about his own personal self-centered conduct, that he is so unrepentant and continues to advertise he will further his crimes, that he makes not prosecuting him worse than prosecuting him as far as the consequences for our nation.

And the idea that Republicans might politically persecute Democrats mainly because of what Bragg and other prosecutors do now is farcical: since Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, Republicans have been abusing their power in pursuit of political witch-hunts for decades regardless of what investigations or prosecutions are being pursued now against Trump and are obviously already ready to abuse their power with enough numbers on their side in the way people strangely consider hypothetical or dependent on the Trump prosecutions…

Republicans Are the Actual Witch-Hunters

And let’s be honest and more detailed about the track record here:

• Republicans tried going after Bill Clinton for nearly purely partisan political reasons while he was in office and, again, found nothing related to the serious allegations against him.
• They “investigated” Hillary Clinton more intensely than Watergate for “Benghazi” (but really about her e-mails and server), but the nine Republican-driven/led investigations concerning her role in Benghazi were unable to uncover any serious wrongdoing by or fault with Clinton on Benghazi, while James Comey’s FBI correctly determined that Clinton’s issues around her e-mails and server did not warrant a criminal prosecution, however much Comey erred in other ways.
• Trump’s partisan attorney general, Bill Barr—as part of his interference and smearing of the Mueller probe and other legitimate probes into Trump—authorized another partisan in eventual Special Counsel John Durham to investigate the investigators of Trump, an investigation endlessly hyped by right-wing Trumpist media but that failed miserably: of three cases Durham brought, two went to trail with indictments accusing the defendants of lying to the FBI—one filed against Igor Danchenko, a source for the Steele dossier, and another filed against Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer who had been working for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign—both embarrassingly ending in unanimous acquittals by the juries and not convictions.  A third case resulted in a plea deal for an FBI lawyer at the time of the matters in question in which the lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty to altering a single email related to the FISA court actions towards the Trump campaign staffer Carter Page (whose incredible sketchiness I have previously outlined); the federal judge overseeing the plea deal agreed with an earlier Justice Department Inspector General conclusion there was no political bias behind the actions of Clinesmith and believed Clinesmith’s assertion that he believed at the time that the information he inserted into the email was accurate and that he did not know it was erroneous, with the judge only sentencing Clinesmith to probation and no prison time.  Thus, over three cases involving one judge sentencing and two juries, the claims of a “deep state” bias against Trump and Republicans turned out to be nonexistent, yet Durham’s whimper of a probe lasted for close to four years and cost taxpayers $6.5 million by at least late December 2022; if there was such a conspiracy, Durham would have found it with that much time and effort and he most certainly did not.
• In contrast, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found a lot of damning evidence of collusion and achieved successful convictions or plea deals against thirty-four individuals and three companies with sentences including prison time for multiple targets of these cases; a referred case ended in an additional guilty plea deal for a thirty-fifth individual.
• Trump eventually pardoned three of the more high-profile individuals against whom Mueller earned convictions—Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort—as well as two less- prominent individuals Mueller had convicted—George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwaan—a clear assault on the rule of law in encouraging others to commit crimes on Trump’s behalf in exchange for presidential pardons.
• It needs to also be noted here also that throughout his time as would-be president, candidate, and would-be president again, Trump has repeatedly threatened or tried to use the government to persecute his political enemies beyond his and his people’s efforts to pressure Zelensky to “investigate” Biden, leading to Trump’s first impeachment.  Even now, he is atrociously calling for Alvin Bragg to be prosecuted for daring to indict him and is calling to “defund” the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice alongside other Republican allies of his.

Conclusion: Do Better, Media

One recent New York Times article proclaimed in its headline “Biden Has the Oval Office. But Trump Has Center Stage,” seemingly blithely unaware of its own leading role in creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of any kind of news coverage environment resembling its own proclamation.  Much of the mainstream press seems blithely unaware of the damage these narratives they are parroting may inflict (as it is wont to do), while Trump and his allies know how damaging these narratives can be and seek to inflict that damage to further their ends, regardless of the costs to our democracy.

The simple facts are these: before the indictment was unsealed, there was far too much mindless speculation about what would or would not be in it when we would clearly eventually know once it was unsealed and, before that, time could have been far-better spent on other topics; now, with the indictment released, there is far too much mindless speculation about the quality of the case and the evidence that has yet to be presented to the jury.  No one would sanely ask the jury to make a decision before seeing the full presentation of the prosecution and the defense, so no one should ask audiences to that now, just as they should not have speculated ad nauseum about an indictment before it became unsealed.  The press can and must do better, and it can start by not giving any more than just a little bit of airtime to these ludicrous and dangerous “hot takes,” if only to swat them down rather than to give them credence.  Then again, the press is already back to covering Trump’s plane on tarmacs and his motorcade, and, for much of 2022, the press was speculating about the 2024 presidential race, so expectations should not be high.

In the end, Bragg’s case may not be the strongest of all the cases arrayed against Trump, but that is not terribly important and Bragg has yet to fully play his hand.  When it does finally get presented, the evidence may very well still be damning and more than enough to erase any “reasonable doubt” as to the illegality of Trump’s financial shenanigans surrounding his hush money payments and their clear link to Trump’s political efforts to attain the presidency in 2016, and commentary that is prematurely dismissive of these realities or of the case’s potential should not be aired or taken seriously by anyone.  If somehow the case fails, that will not because of anything Trump partisans can know yet before the trial and presentation of evidence takes place, and that should be noted any time such partisan blind utterances are spewed.  Ultimately, given what we know so far and the arguments and context I have endorsed herein, when the wheels of justice are finally done turning in this case, it will likely not be a good result for Trump.

What is certain besides the premature nature of the bad arguments criticized herein is that interfering with and attacking valid legal proceedings undermine our democracy, the rule of law, and the principle of equality before the law, all consequences Trump and his Republican Party overall sadly find more than acceptable as part of their pursuit of power and furthering of their illiberal, fascist agenda.

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook) January 6, 2023; see related articles from July 11, 2021, Media Keeps Portraying Democrats and Biden as a Mess, Ignoring Data Proving that Could Not Be Further from Truth and November 15, 2021, A BIG F**KING DEAL: Biden’s Infrastructure Bill in Historical Perspective. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request.

SILVER SPRING—It is time to acknowledge the historic greatness of the Biden Administration for what it is, and the performance the Democrats under Biden in the 2022 midterm elections is one of several strong examples of this greatness.

With the final seat of Congress decided by the Great State of Georgia after the December runoff victory of Rev. Raphael Warnock, who beat a walking public service announcement for football-related traumatic brain injury in the form of Herschel Walker (and far more emphatically than in November, by a percentage margin over three times greater), we can truly take stock of the historic overperformance of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party under his leadership.

Of course, a lot of this was about individual candidates.  And Biden has had an excellent partner in Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in the Senate (he doesn’t get enough credit) and has had an incredible ally in the House with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, certainly one of the best—one of the most effective and accomplished—speakers in U.S. history, perhaps the best.

Still, in our presidential system, midterm election performance has always been one of the major measures of how presidents are judged during their term and throughout American history: no matter what happens, it is always to a large extent a metric tied to the president’s performance and leadership as leader of his party (with only the exception of John Tyler simply not having a party by his only midterm in 1842-1843 after he inherited the presidency upon the death of Whig President William Henry Harrison, whose people did not vet Tyler enough to realize he was, well, not really a Whig).  Of course, the degree to which a midterm should reflect and does in the popular consciousness and amongst pundits and scholars can and does wax and wane due to a variety of factors and circumstances at the time, but it is there, an inescapable part of the equation of evaluating presidents.

I have already discussed in detail how legislatively and in terms of party unity in Congress, the Biden Administration in its first two years and the Democratic Party under Biden in the 117^th Congress are the most impressive since LBJ in the 1960s and, well, ever in U.S. history, respectively (in terms of party unity with the possible only exception of one Federalist Senate at the dawn of our republic).  And I have further explained how these very accomplishments are even more impressive in that they came in an era of far more division (the most divided in modern American history and with the smallest governing majorities), but here, after these midterms, we have even more hard data that places Biden’s and his party’s midterm election performance in proper historical perspective, confirming this performance is among the highest in American history, especially in the modern era.

How do I know this?  I have literally (to use a Bidenism) put together data on every president’s first midterm since the dawn of the republic, available in a full set of Excel spreadsheets I created, but I will cut and paste images of some of that data here, images you can zoom in on by clicking on them.  You can see the full data in a close-up image by clicking on images or on the link in this paragraph for the Excel version.  And if I may toot my own horn, I am pretty sure this is by far the most comprehensive presentation of data in table form of American presidents’ first midterm performances you can find anywhere (if you find a more detailed presentation do please let me know; it took me way longer that I had hoped to put this together).

Here, first, are all the first midterms for presidents from 1914 onward, as the House had the same number of seats—435—since then and also as 1914 was first midterm when every regular U.S. Senate election was determined by popular vote (as opposed to being selected by the state legislatures) with the implementation of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution; we shall call these midterms the midterm elections of the “modern era.”  Elections from this era, then, will be the most useful for comparison as the losses and gain are all from a House of the same size and the Senate’s size did not change very much, with all its races actually decided by popular elections.

This dataset includes presidents who came to power after a death (Truman in 1945 after FDR died), assassination (Teddy Roosevelt, or TR, in 1901 after McKinley was killed), or resignation (Ford after Nixon’s 1974 resignation) and had their first midterm without being elected; if applicable, in addition to the midterms for their first partial terms, I have also included when applicable their first midterms after being actually elected president as well as after their inherited midterms (Roosevelt in 1906 after 1902, Truman in 1950 after 1946; Ford never won a presidential election as he was defeated by Carter in 1976), as comparisons can be difficult and a midterm after inheriting the presidency and a midterm after actually being elected are not exactly apples and oranges (inherited term data is in italics in the tables).

This data is even more telling if we arrange these modern-era presidents in a ranking based on seats won or lost in Congress, starting with the House.

Among modern presidencies spanning more than a century, Joe Biden is tied for 5^th in terms of the best absolute performance for his party in the House of Representatives (a loss of 9 seats): only 4 modern presidents over 4 midterms—FDR and his Democrats gaining 9 seats in 1934, George W. Bush and his Republicans gaining 8 seats in 2002, JFK and his Democrats losing 4 in 1962, and George H. W. Bush and his Republicans losing 8 in 1990—did better.

It is also quite telling that in the entirety of the modern era, only 2 presidents have actually gained seats at all in the House during their first midterms: presidents almost always have their party lose seats.

Biden ties with Calvin Coolidge’s and his Republicans’ performance from 1926, only losing 9 seats (though in Biden’s case, this meant Democrats lost control of the House, while Coolidge kept control of the House for his Republicans, so I put ol’ Calvin above Joe on the tie order).  This puts Biden over 13 other presidents and 14 first midterms (per my explanation above, Truman gets 2 in our accounting) in terms their first post-elected and/or post-inherited midterms.

But not all elections are equal, and I account for some extraordinary circumstances in the notes section.  In this spirit, if we consider the conditions of each election, Biden’s specific ranking is unique and far more impressive: FDR got to have his first midterm not far from the nadir of the Great Depression; George W. Bush was riding a high-level of unity and support after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and during the early phase of the war in Afghanistan; Kennedy had literally just days earlier resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis, averting nuclear war and ending a major standoff with the Soviet Union, saving the world (partnering with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev) from destruction; and George H. W. Bush had his midterm while he was presiding over a Cold War victory (Germany was reunified just a month before the election) and during the Gulf War, Bush’s handling of which enjoyed widespread support.

But while each of those four presidents enjoyed considerable winds at their backs, Biden in 2022 had been dealing with decades-high inflation, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the worst levels of partisanship since the Civil War and Reconstruction that are tied to an ongoing Trumpist insurrection seeking to destroy American democracy.

In other words, while those “scoring” “better” by having their parties fare better in the House than Biden saw massive levels of broad, historic support in the face of various domestic and geopolitical consensus moments—with history on their side in historic ways—Biden had the wind blowing in his face and was able still to perform as well as he did and close enough to those with far better circumstances.  In that light, Biden and his Democrats’ performance is perhaps the most remarkable performance considering the difficulties they faced and those other four presidents and their parties did not.

The biggest winner in the modern era was FDR in 1934 with a gain of 9 seats and the biggest loser Warren Harding in 1922 losing a massive 77 seats!

Biden’s modern House first midterm ranking: 5^th (4 presidents and midterms ahead, 13 presidents and 14 midterms behind, tied with 1) out of 19 presidents and 20 first midterms

Let’s also look at the Senate-side of things.

In the Senate, too, Biden is also 5^th in the modern era, tied with Richard Nixon with a gain of 1 seat each, ahead of 12 other presidents over 13 relevant midterms (Truman, again, is counted twice).  With the exception of Reagan, who oversaw Senate Republicans hold steady, the rest of those presidents all had their parties lose seats.  Only 5 other presidents also gained seats:  FDR and his Democrats (+9), JFK and his Democrats (+4), Woodrow Wilson and his Democrats (+3), and George W. Bush and Donald Trump each with their Republicans (+2; not in line with House results for Trump as he and his Republicans lost 42 House seats that same year in 2018, as the Senate can easily be out of sync with the House, especially considering all 435 House seats are up for election every two years while only a third of Senate seats are at stake in any given election).  Keeping in mind the challenging circumstances in which Biden is governing, remember also that 3 of the 5 “scoring” ahead of Biden faced very favorable circumstances, as discussed, also leading to relatively quite strong House results for them, as discussed.  Thus, Biden and Democrats’ performance Senate-side is also quite remarkable.  In fact, their performance in 2022 is the first time since 1934 a president’s party successfully defended every Senate seat up for election that they held before the election, a real history-making series of victories, indeed.

The champ is FDR with +9 seats in 1934, the biggest loser Truman with -11 in 1946 (sorry, Harry).

Biden’s modern Senate first midterm ranking: 5^th (5 presidents ahead, 12 presidents and 13 midterms behind, tied with 1) out of 19 presidents and 20 first midterms

If you want to get really meta, you can go all the way back to George Washington’s first midterm.

Which I did.

Here we are using “premodern” to refer to all midterms from Washington’s first in 1790/1791 and up through the last elections in the early twentieth century (1910) before all Senate midterm elections were conducted as popular votes, à la the Seventeenth Amendment.

And if we rank everyone from 1790 to 2022, first with the House?

Here, Biden still stands out, tied for 10^th with premodern John Quincy Adams in addition to the modern Coolidge.  Included among those surpassing him are some of greats from a much earlier period in American history where there was, relatively speaking, a lot more unity during particular midterm years: Jefferson comes in 1^st well into his “Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800”, with James Monroe and James Madison tied for 2^nd (all with their Democratic-Republican Party and the era of the latter two ending up being so unified their time in part was referred to as the “Era of Good Feelings” and was essentially one-party ruling with an overwhelming majority).  You also have giants like Teddy Roosevelt and his Republicans in 1902 after his first midterm (5^th place) after he took over after the assassination of William McKinley, and you have our first two presidents—George Washington in 1790 and John Adams in 1798 with their Federalists—tied for 6^th.

Only 12 presidents and 12 first midterms rank higher than Biden out of 45 individuals to hold the office (yes, Biden is the 46^th president, but Grover Cleveland was both the 22^nd and 24^th president since he singularly won non-consecutive terms—and let’s hope Trump does not repeat this feat—so there are only 45 people in question, and less because of exclusions and deaths, which I will discuss below), but of those 12, 1 is Teddy Roosevelt and he ranks above Biden with his non-elected, inherited midterm after McKinley’s assassination but below him with his first midterm after he was actually elected to the presidency, so take that that for what you will.  Biden ranks ahead of 25 other presidents and 26 midterms.  Except, since we have Teddy Roosevelt as 2 “others” here, 1 election ahead and 1 election behind, I suppose we could say Biden is loosely-tied as a president with Teddy and more closely tied with Coolidge and Quincy Adams—tied with 3 presidents and 2 two midterms—with only 11 presidents ahead of Biden (subtracting TR) and 12 midterms ahead of Biden’s (keeping 1 of TR’s) and 24 presidents and 26 midterms behind Biden (since he beat both of Truman’s midterms and we are including the other TR midterm).

And for some real perspective?  Even Lincoln, our greatest president, lost 23 seats (and his party’s majority in the House, but it would govern through a plurality coalition) in his first midterm in 1862-1863 during the Civil War.

The all-time winner is Thomas Jefferson gaining 35 House seats for his Democratic-Republicans in 1802 and Benjamin Harrison losing the most—a whopping 93 Republican seats—in 1890.

Biden’s all-time House first midterm ranking: 10^th (11 presidents and 12 midterms ahead, 24 presidents and 26 midterms below, 2-way tie with 1 more “tie”: tied with 3 presidents and 2 midterms) out of 39 eligible presidents and 41 eligible first midterms (see the discussion of which 6 presidents were removed from consideration in the final section)

Now, for the full Senate history:

These should not be weighted as heavily as House results because most of the premodern Senators were chosen by state legislatures and not the people directly, but, still, as the state legislators were mostly chosen by the people, it still involves some degree of (indirect) popular selection and is something of a representative choice.  The Senate also has much smaller margins and swings, so the results are all a lot closer and therefore harder to differentiate and chance plays a much wider role in variations.  So, out of our four major measures, we can confidently say that this one has the least value. 

In any case, Biden still comes out pretty well, with some of the same crowd that has outperformed him—along with some others—coming in ahead, and some surprising ties, while still being ahead of most of the competition in the end.

Biden comes in at 7^th but in a five-way tie; they all come in with a gain of 1 Senate seat (behind a five-way tie for 6^th with 2+ Senate-seat gains).  His fellow 7^th-placers are George Washington from 1790, Andrew Jackson in 1830, Abraham Lincoln in 1862, and Richard Nixon in 1970 (wow to all of that).  12 midterms from 11 presidents are ahead of Biden (including both of Teddy Roosevelt’s) and 24 midterms behind him from 23 presidents (including both of Truman’s terms).

Same champ and biggest loser from the modern era, but factoring out the modern era, among the premoderns McKinley fares the best at +8 in 1898 (but then he was assassinated, so, small consolation for his fans) and William Taft the worst in 1910 at -9 (trimming a lot of fat, relatively; sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Biden’s all-time Senate first midterm ranking: 10^th (11 presidents and 12 midterms ahead, 23 presidents and 24 midterms below, 5-way tie with 5) out of 39 eligible presidents and 41 eligible midterms

There you have all the data (remember, available in a full Excel file), with quirks and nuances explained by a key and accompanying notes in the file and the images.

I’d say that the House results are much more meaningful because, again, they reflect the mood of the whole nation and have always been chosen directly by the people, while Senate elections only reflect one-third of the country and were not always popularly elected.  And, again, perhaps the most important context to consider is that most of the people doing better than Biden in these rankings had history and some big unifying advantages on their side right at the time of the elections or at the very least did not usually have terribly divisive issues plaguing the country, while Biden had some major issues dividing the nation much more intensely during his first midterm as a time, again, of historic division.  That does not mean there were not crises those other leaders faced, but some crises—the Great Depression and WWII, for example, or 9/11 and the early days in Afghanistan, or the Gulf War or the Cuban Missile Crisis—unify the nation while others—slavery in the mid-1800s or inflation and COVID-19 for Biden—divide the nation.  This, for the most part, places Biden in his own special category, objectively speaking, especially in the modern era.

This historic 2022 midterms performance is, of course, tied to the historic legislative accomplishments of the Biden Administration, the historic and (near-?)unprecedented party discipline of the Democrats of the 117^th Congress, and the historic and unprecedented support Biden and that Congress offered Ukraine on the front line of the war for democracy and freedom against fascism and tyranny.

Contrast Biden and his Democrats with the current House Republicans, who are more than flirting with fascism (I do not use that term lightly and took some pains to define it) and showing the most dysfunction of an incoming House majority or plurality party since the 1850s, still unable to elect a House Speaker after an incredible fourteen ballots (last few of these ballots happening on the second anniversary of Trump’s Capitol insurrection in the very chamber assaulted by Trump’s insurrectionists!), much to the embarrassment of invertebrate Kevin McCarthy.

Yes, this whole first midterm thing is just one metric of several major metrics by which a president can be evaluated, some of which are qualitative and hard to measure, and, yes, even this one can be tricky to really properly measure, but the data is still clear: Biden and his Democrats stood out in league with some very good company ahead of most presidents and most of their parties, and were able to do so facing national divisions those outperforming him did not.  History has already been written here, and credit is due where credit is due.

The media should more and more be explaining all this to voters, avoiding false equivalence, and properly contrasting the options for voters, which it is, simply put, not very good at (as I have noted repeatedly before).  Yet voters need to realize these stark truths as they consider their choices in the crucial elections ahead, as the survival of both our very democracy and Western democracy itself may depend on that realization.

On My Imperfect Ranking System, Its Methodology and Data

Compared to just the modern presidents’ midterms, ranking the comprehensive set is trickier.  Again, quick summary of the combined House data: 11 ahead of Biden + 1 Biden himself + 2 tied +1 “tied” (TR) +24 behind Biden + 3 excluded + 3 who died before any midterms and you account for all 45 presidents (11+1+2+1+24+3+3=45) with 44 midterms, 2 midterms being considered each for TR and Truman, just so you see from where I got my numbers.  Depending on what you want to count, you have options your own options.

Out of 45 presidents, 3 were dead before their first midterm would have happened.  In terms of the number of midterms, there were 44 first midterms (including 2 each by my parameters for Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman, as they are the only 2 presidents to inherit a presidency, have a first midterm not after being elected, and then actually win a presidential election and have another midterm, the first after being elected), but 3 of these midterms and presidents were excluded from the rankings to make a total 6 ineligible presidents, all in the premodern era: William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor died (in 1841 and 1850, respectively) before any midterm could happen and James Garfield was assassinated in 1881 before any midterm for him; as for the 1842-3 midterms of William Harrison’s successor John Tyler, Tyler had no party affiliation and this cannot be evaluated; during Reconstruction (1863-1877), Andrew Johnson and his Democrats in 1866-7 and Ulysses Grant and his Republicans in 1870-1 are excluded from rankings for very specific reason, explained in the next paragraph.

During the Civil War and after (an era known as Reconstruction), most of the Southern proslavery states that had attempted to secede were not seated for some time in the Congress, but were readmitted during a period of varying degrees of U.S. military government operating in those states in the face of white supremacist terrorist insurgencies that would eventually succeed and establish Jim Crow apartheid (let’s just be honest here) until the Civil Rights reforms of the 1960s.  Therefore, the Reconstruction results of Johnson and Grant’s first midterms are not included in the rankings due to the complications of military government during major insurgencies and states being readmitted under such conditions.

Even pulling three midterm results out, there are other complications. When you include the premodern data, these rankings are a lot more complicated considering both the House and the Senate grew dramatically in size in the premodern period.  Some examples from the House of this and how tough it is to properly rank in this era and rank against presidents in much later periods within the premodern era and after it: Washington gained three House seats in 1790/1 at a time when the entire House was just 67 seats and is ranked below both FDR in 1934 (3^rd, +9) and George W. Bush in 2002 (4^th, +8) at a time when the House had 435 members to Washington’s 67 or Adams’s 106 (who with his 1798/9 +3 is tied with Washington even with significantly more House seats).

So, in the end, that means 39 of 45 different individuals who were president are considered across 41 ranked out of 44 first midterms, allowing for the flukes and deviations.  No system would be perfect and, without getting into advanced weighting and statistics (for example, calculating what a 3-seat gain for Washington in a House with 67 seats would be proportionally adjusted for a modern 435-seat House), I challenge anyone to come up with a better yet-relatively-simple system and welcome anyone who will answer that challenge.

A lot of the data initially came from Wikipedia gateways but with easily verifiable official records from Congress just a link away and with often easy-(but sometimes not-so-easy)to-access data confirming and/or clarifying what was presented in Wikipedia.  You can check my numbers against whatever you are able to find, but I did spend a lot of time reviewing and confirming the data and am highly confident in the numbers I posted, which you are free to double-check for yourselves.

And, since a lot of this involved rankings, I used numerals for single and double-digits and for rankings to stay consistent for your eyes.

Finally, if you would like the premodern data separately, well, here’s that too:

And don’t forget: all that data is available in my multiple-spreadsheet Excel file! See related articles from July 11, 2021, Media Keeps Portraying Democrats and Biden as a Mess, Ignoring Data Proving that Could Not Be Further from Truth and November 15, 2021 A BIG F**KING DEAL: Biden’s Infrastructure Bill in Historical Perspective

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook) November 7, 2022 (with some minor grammatical/typographical/clarity fixes made November 9; would have been earlier, dear readers, but I am having my WORST case of the flu ever… get your shots!! *correction appended: this article originally misstated the year the last time midterm turnout was this high, 1912 instead of 1914)

SILVER SPRING—If polls were all we had to go by, I’d be far more worried about the current midterms culminating (more or less) tomorrow, Tuesday, Election Day.  But, my weary and worried Democrats and other defenders of constitutional freedom: I come with tidings of great joy!

Let’s Talk Polls

Over the summer, polls were trending in Democrats’ favor.  More recently, they have been trending in Republicans’ favor.  Given the fact that by multiple measures most Republican candidates at the national- and top-statewide-levels (or almost most) are now questioning or denying the outcome of the 2020 presidential election (or quietly accepting those who do) and are thus supporting Trump’s Big Lie fascist insurrection coup effort to destroy the Constitution, free-and-fair elections, and the rule of law as the transition from political party to personality cult continues—and that most of those so-called “election deniers” are expected to win—this understandably creates anxiety among not only Democrats, but also Republicans and independents who want America to continue as a true democracy that respects process and minority rights.  Collectively, the polls have gone down for Democrats in key races and have significantly lowered their chances of holding onto the House and Senate in the eyes of analysts and the predictive models they follow.  With democracy itself at stake—should Republicans be able to block most of Biden’s agenda while in charge of even just the House for the next two years and then, voters blaming Biden put Trump back in White House, we may see an end to free and fair federal elections in elections after—you could say it’s time for Democrats and others willing to defend the Constitution to panic.

To those who prioritize democracy over demagoguery, though, I bear the following message: take heart, and have hope, because polling data—while the most prominently utilized data in predictive election analysis—is not the only data, and it’s possible some of that other data in certain circumstances may actually trump (sorry, couldn’t resist) the polls, and specifically in the 2022 midterms.

How?  Polls are complicated: complicated to construct and complicated to interpret and judge, and even understanding what makes the best pollsters the best can be challenging.  Pollsters basically base what portions of their sample—you are not going to interview everyone, literally, but a far smaller group that you hope to draw conclusions from—and/or how they will weight/adjust them towards being more appropriately male, female, rural, urban, suburban, black, white, Hispanic, younger, older, educated, less educated, etc. on a number of factors, often involving a level of guesswork and highlighting balances that pollsters think will reflect turnout considered alongside the general demographics of the country or state (especially registered or likely voters) and/or the portions of groups present in previous electorates.  If they are not weighting on previous elections or the latest demographics and along census results from the American Community Survey, they may base on their own models or look at a range of models for the current election.

Furthermore, one would not include a large sample of Asian or Jewish voters in Idaho or Montana, but would include such in California or Florida, respectively.  Pollsters will often try to have the proportions approach similar types of recent elections and/or other recent election cycles.  For examples, midterm elections, presidential-year elections, primaries, special elections, and referenda all tend to have different demographic balances overall and there are also differences state to state, although turnout in this election is thus far breaking midterm records and thus calling into question how much previous midterms would be accurate predictors.

In addition, there is the margin of error: each poll has a +/- margin-of-error range, say, 3.5%, meaning that if, say, the numbers the polls give one candidate leading another are 51 to 48, both the 51% and the 48% could easily be 3.5% higher or lower; the margin of error says that, generally, with 95% confidence, the results will fall within that range.  For polls to be “off,” the final results would have to fall outside of that +/- range.  It is important to note that, given this, polls that show candidates are closer than the margin of error range should essentially be considered ties.

So what could throw polling off in an election?  If, for some reason, a certain demographic group or groups was or were either significantly overrepresented or underrepresented, something that would either significantly drive up turnout or lower turnout among one group or another.  Say, rural voters, or black voters, or… women.

See what I am getting at?

An Idea…

What I am saying for these 2022 midterms is that I am expecting there is a very good chance of a polling error missing democratic women voters’ surge inspired by the overturning of Roe v. Wade in a way that will mean victory for Democrats, who should overperform their polling predictions by at least several percentage points and therefore win most close races, that a new group of women who would otherwise not vote in a midterm will now vote (32% of eligible female voters did not vote in 2020, compared to 35% of male ones, though it should be noted that 2020 had the highest overall turnout since 1900).

Simple logic would dictate that, after the Supreme Court’s radical decision to overthrow a half-century of precedent (despite assurances hints from certain conservative justices that they would not) in the Dobbs case (and its ruling’s draft’s leak) that destroyed the constitutional protections afforded by the Roe v. Wade decision, you would see a lot more women turn out to vote than in a typical election.  And this thought gave me much hope, but it was basically on a wing and a prayer along with some solid logic, and that was all I had.

Until I found more data—hard­ data—that suggested the polls here are off and off because they are undercounting female votes.

…Consecrated into Form

Enough with the abstract, then; let’s get into the hard data that has since given concrete form to my abstract hopes and hunches!

When I was thinking about all this, I asked myself: when was one of the last times pollsters underestimated turnout among a particular demographic group that turned out in significantly higher portions and that this caused an upset-win for the side not favored in the polls?  In 2016, to name one example, with rural white voters turning out in very high numbers for Trump and their participation at that level was not anticipated by most pollsters, giving him his wins in three key swing states that were heavily favored for Clinton.

In related votes after Dobbs this year, there are multiple serious data points in actual electoral contests backing up my main thesis.   First, with the Kansas referendum on allowing a lift on current protections in the state constitution for abortion rights, there had been just one poll beforehand, predicting the vote to allow tampering with abortion rights would win by four points; it was voted down by 18 points, a 22-point swing against expectations and a triumph for abortion rights.

And there have been multiple special congressional elections since, with Democrats overperforming their expectations by an average of nine percentage-points across four special elections from June-August (in the one that resulted in a Democratic victory, in New York’s 19^th District, Democratic victor Pat Ryan focused on protecting abortion right as a top issue; and this leaves out a fifth special election, Alaska’s ranked-choice election, which a Democrat won and will be be discussed later).

Ok, but an abortion rights referenda and five congressional special elections are not the same as the midterms.  What could indicate more specifically that female turnout would be significantly higher in this midterm election than others and that pollsters would miss this, overrepresenting Republican voters in poll tallies and underrepresenting Democratic votes, particularly women?

As I noted, polling is generally based on tinkering around with normal turnouts or models for the current year.  In this case, looking at women in recent elections according to exit polls, they already generally turn out in slightly-higher numbers than men (across all major racial categories) and thus form more of the electorate, with pollsters already taking this into account.

Let’s look at a competitive swing state for this year’s midterms, Arizona.  In the 2018 midterms, women in Arizona were 53% of the electorate for the U.S. Senate race to 47% for men, and 52% to 48% for men in the 2020 presidential election.  One recent poll I saw in Arizona for this year’s midterms has the same portions as the last midterm there.  Other midterm polls in Arizona have proportional female-male sample-population breakdowns closer to the more recent presidential election, but all the Arizona polls I saw in which I could see the breakdowns reflected some sort of preexisting gender imbalance in favor of more women voting and close to the gender breakdowns of recent elections.

To pick another state, for midterms in Ohio in 2018, it was 51% women as voters in the U.S. Senate race there to 49% men and, for president there in 2020, it was 53% women as a share of voters to 47% men (here’s two polls I checked that are close to matching the latter and one that’s in between).  Try the same for more Arizona or Ohio polls, or especially other 2022 battleground states (I have), and you will mostly (perhaps always?) see the same.

Nationally, for both the presidency and the U.S. House in 2020, it was 52% women to 48% men as a share of the vote, the same for midterm House results nationally in 2018, the same for the presidential election in 2016 (current generic ballot national polls also show the same or a close gender gap in favor of women).

In general, even if there seems like there might be a slightly larger-than-average gender gap, I have seen these presented as unweighted (sometimes you just get more of respondents in a certain category randomly) and it isn’t clear that this gap was not mitigated by weighting.

Thus, most polls in the U.S. are now reflect something of that 53-51-percent-female to 47-49-percent-male breakdown in their samples and/or are adjusted by weighting to reflect this.  In other words, there is already a built-in “women vote in most elections more than men” factor with most polls and has been for some time.

This means that any new surge in women voting in this midterm—particularly women registering who are far more prone to be Democrats and/or young, which would far more predispose them to prefer laws/policies that allow women to decide their own bodily and reproductive autonomy without (or just minimal) government regulation—would be missed by the current crop of polls.

The next question I am pretty sure you have on your mind is—“Well, whatever Mr. Smarty-Pants Blah-Blah, do you have any actual data that there are far more women—specifically women who would lean pro-choice—registering to vote than men for this midterm now?”

The answer is “YES! Yes I DO!”

The Current Hard Data on Voters in the Current 2022 Midterms

For the following I must thank—of all outlets—Teen Vogue, specifically an article by Fortesa Latifi (if you doubt her awesomeness, just know that her Twitter background image is of Tony Soprano in his pool with his beloved ducks), who introduced me to the unique work of political data professional Tom Bonier (CEO of TargetSmart, a political data operation) and his New York Times op-ed.  Tom has been providing some invaluable takes on the current midterms and they bear much weight in supporting my thesis of a big polling miss.

Notably, he has been detecting huge rises in the portion of female voters registering to vote in the period since the Dobbs decision has been an issue.

Tom also compares this to 2020 election data, hardly a year where women were weak in turning out (they outvoted men by four points, 52% to 48%) and finds that in 2022, differences over the same period of time in 2020 were drastic, with far higher portions of women registering than in 2020 and with a significant portion of states in 2020 even having men outregister women.

Specifically, Bonier notes that for our current year they looked at 45 states and that in 41 of those 45 states, women increased their share of voter registration after Dobbs (and the four states that did not had automatic registration).  With its unique ballot measure on abortion, Kansas led the way, but also among the highest states were Alaska (which had just elected its first Democrat in a half-century—and first Native Alaskan—Mary Peltola, to the U.S. House and even over Sarah Palin, but just to finish the recently-deceased Republican representative’s term for a few months; she is up for reelection on Tuesday and looks to win again), and the three key swing states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Ohio.

You can see the breakdown from this recent September here:

If many of those look like huge gaps, it is because they are.

And for a relative sense of how big these are, here Tom provides the data at the same time from 2020:

Not only is the gender gap far larger in favor of females compared to 2020, but about one-third of states had a gap that favored men at the time.  Those gaps in favor of men have disappeared in 2020 except for literally three states, two of which (Georgia and Oregon) have automatic registration (and in Georgia, women were requesting more of a share of mail-in ballots than they did in 2020).

Bonier helpfully takes updated numbers (with even larger gaps) from October 2022 imposed on October 2020 numbers, and the differences are all the more striking:

And these gaps are not fading over time:

And if there is any doubt that the women forming the gap are overwhelming registering to preserve their rights to choose, to bodily autonomy, and to reproductive freedom, the same period shows not only major increases in Democratic share of registrations and major drops in share of registrations for Republicans but also a big bump in the portion of under-age-25 voters registering compared to the same period in 2020: in other words, young women are flocking to register to vote and to vote as Democrats relative to other elections.

In fact, in 31 out of the 45 states analyzed by Bonier in September, under-25s were increasing their vote share after Dobbs. And these are not polls that are estimates.  These are sets of hard voter registration data.

To quote Tom Bonier, “Women Are So Fired Up to Vote, I’ve Never Seen Anything Like It.”   

Reinforcing Current Voter Data

There are other key sets of related statistics that only reinforce my thesis.

Early and absentee voter turnout overall and in many states are up significantly since the 2018 midterms: as of the tally for the end of Sunday (and this will update today), up over 8.2% and over three million votes in absolute terms (Republicans’ share of early voting is down from 2018), with nearly 3.1 million more Democrats having voted early in this midterm than in 2018 by the tally the Sunday before that midterm (you can find roughly similar differences in many other states, including key swing states like: Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—but North Carolina, for example, bucks that trend—just to name a few).

In the past few election cycles, the early game has heavily favored Democrats, most famously in 2020, so it is interesting to note that Democrats are improving on their best area.  But, you might ask, could that signify a weakening of their weakest spot: in-person voting on election day, an offset that might negate or surpass whatever proportional gains they are making in early/absentee voting?

Here’s where things get interesting: Pew, one of the most consistently reliable sources of polling research, notes that, compared to 2020, 14% more—34% vs 20% back in October 2020—Democrats polled in October indicated they would vote in person on Election Day, almost one-and-a-half times greater, compared to only a four-percent intended-increase on Election Day participation by Republicans (they were already high, at 50% in 2020).  It would be one thing if Democrats’ margins over early/mail voting Republicans were offset significantly by some sort of matching inverse behavior from Republicans, but this is not happening.

Instead, while Democrats are increasing nationally and in many key Senate-race states their already larger portion of early/mail-in/absentee voting despite a major decrease in their overall portion of their votes cast this way, they are also increasing majorly their presence where they were weakest: at polling stations on Election Day; Republicans, meanwhile are also decreasing their vote share of their overall votes with early/absentee/mail-in votes, though less so, but are also far less so increasing their Election Day turnout, only by four percent to the Democrats’ 14%.

Provided the Pew data is accurate (and it usually is), this means Democrats are pretty much set to gain ground on Republicans’ in both early/mail-in and in-person Election Day voting.

Additionally, consider what was just discussed in terms of overall turnout: early voter turnout is setting recent records in many states and for the U.S. as a whole in 2022 for a midterm election and the overall vote is expected to surpass 2018, which was the biggest proportional midterm turnout of voters since 1914. If the voting margins in favor of Democrats over Republicans for early voting are higher now than they were in recent elections, and, on top of that, a much higher portion of Democrats are set to vote in-person on election day in 2022, a higher turnout seems capable of reinforcing both Democrats’ advantage with the first and its mitigation of the gap regarding the second.  

This may seem a bit confusing so I will try phrasing this another way: in what are currently polling as very close elections (within those margins of error!) and knowing there is already an absolute increase in early/absentee votes for Democrats by 3.1 million votes compared to the last midterm (compared to an decease of about 0.95 million Republicans) as of tallies from closing on Sunday-two-days-before-the-midterms, and with Democrats set to increase their overall portion of their vote on Election Day by 14% (compared, again, to just 4% for Republicans), combined, this more than “suggests” a greater anticipated turnout for Democrats than polls do.

And this effect goes for those polls asking people to rank issues: abortion is also being underrepresented there because the women who prioritize it are also being undersampled and/or underweighted.

Does All This Really Mean Democrats Should be Favored?

Let’s unpack all of this: early voting and mail-in voting overwhelmingly favors Democrats; if they are outperforming their portions relative to Republicans in early voting compared to 2020 and 2018, that’s a good sign for Democrats.  But with COVID not as much of a problem, Democrats voting early and mail-in are down as a proportion of total Democratic votes cast.  You might be thinking: “Wait, even if the margin of Democrats voting early or absentee is higher relative to Republicans, if a lower portion of Democrats are voting early, would that not hurt Democrats, since Republicans are much stronger on Election Day?”  No, again, because Democrats are making up for it by voting in-person a lot more on Election Day this year.  So, again, this means that Democrats are outperforming both their margins in terms of the share of overall early voting and their share of the overall in-person Election Day voting, improving their margin where they are weakest and weakening the GOP’s advantage where it is strongest.  And with more women, Democrats, and young people overall registering, and with Pew’s October survey only having a four-percent-higher share of Republicans’ total votes coming from Election Day in-person voting compared to 2020, will Republicans have enough to overcome these other powerful trends in favor of Democrats that I have highlighted?

I think not.

Taken together, all this suggests Democrats will represent a higher share of the overall votes this election cycle than in previous ones, and, alongside the far higher post-Dobbs portions of women vs. men registering to vote, the also higher portion of Democrats registering, and the higher-than-usual under-25 crowd registering, well, this adds up to some serious math in favor of the Democrats.

Polling is a lot of guesswork, but early voting data and voter registration numbers are hard numbers that are not projections based on samples: in other words, that data is based on actual behavior and factual in a way polling is not; a poll could put together a weighted sample that does not actually reflect the election turnout, as discussed earlier, but the voter registration and early voting data are simply what they are.

So this means that there are multiple data points of compelling, hard evidence based on real-world numbers and not estimates, that the current set of polls—in particular failing to account for a mass mobilization of women that should have women forming a significantly higher portion of the overall electorate than elections in the past—are significantly underrepresenting the female vote as a portion of the overall turnout and, thus, are favoring Republicans by at least several percentage points across the board.

By significantly, I mean enough to swing most key races in most key swing states, as those races are neck-and-neck and are basically polling ties within the margins of error.  This means you can expect the portion of votes not only to be, in this sense, significantly higher for Democrats than the polls are indicating, but that, in those close elections, most of those races should break in the Democrats’ favor, with the gender gap making a serious—and the—difference for the Democrats in most of these marquee races, for, even though the level of the gender gap varies, in almost every state, it still favors women (and pro-choice-type women) and far more than it did in 2020, when Democrats won the presidency, Senate, and House.

All this, in the end, is heartening to me.  In many past elections, people were not fired up or fired up enough.  They didn’t vote because they didn’t feel enough “enthusiasm” or were sore losers that preferred another candidate did not win their party’s nomination: they were asleep at the wheel of their own democracy.  Well, after 2016, by the 2018 midterms, they woke up, and by 2020, they drove the car out of the ditch they had crashed it into back in 2016, so it would be a damn shame for them to go right back into that ditch by rewarding the people who sought to overthrow the government in a coup, resulting in the first non-peaceful presidential transfer of power in U.S. history, going back all the way to 1797 overall and 1801 between parties, to hand the people supporting and excusing that ongoing insurrection attempt the very keys to the halls of power after they literally smashed those halls’ windows and smeared feces on their walls as they sought out our elected leaders with deadly intent.  The initial results of this midterm election are evidence that we will not reward the traitors.

What Would It Take for Me to Be Wrong?

In an ideal world, people not of a particular group could lead proportionately in supporting a different group.  In the real world, members of any group better be prepared to stick up for their own rights more intensely than anyone else.  In an ideal world, we could count on men to dismantle patriarchy as much as women, even more so since they have a larger part in its construction and implementation.  In the real world, more women than men are going to have to try and try harder than men in order for patriarchy to be dismantled.

To be clear: I have faith in women.  I think they have been awakened in the way Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto apparently feared America would be awakened after Pearl Harbor.

I generally find Bill Burr to be funny but also sometimes crass and offensive, and you can determine for yourselves what you think of him in this clip but his point within about the WNBA’s issues with selling tickets—that not as many women and feminists attend WNBA games as men and macho-types attend NBA games—stands.

I hope I didn’t lose any of you with the tough love from Bill Burr, but the point I am making here, ladies, is that we still have a free and fair election system (they may make it harder on purpose for some of you specifically to vote, but they still can’t stop you or your vote if properly cast from being counted) and that, if I am wrong and this data somehow doesn’t mean a big surge in women voting to protect the rights of women to bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom, it’s not going be because of patriarchy, it’s going to be because, when faced with a threat from patriarchy, far, far too many women simply shrugged, didn’t mobilize to vote, or just prioritized other “issues” they foolishly perceived Republicans to be “better” on; as I noted, these elections are close, and it won’t take an insane number of you to make that difference between victory and defeat for Democrats: the vast majority of those 32% of women who did not vote in 2020 don’t even have to vote, just enough, and your rights are preserved.  If women fail to do so when it is so easily in their power, too many of them will have surrendered their rights without a real fight.

To be clear, some women are the enemies of women’s rights: about a third to 40% of women think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases; (Pew and Gallup, respectively).  There are more men that think this (though not dramatically), but those are hardly insignificant minorities of women.  And enough men support you that only a modest increase in pro-choice women voting in this election could have a real impact.

So, again, I have faith in women and that they are going to embarrass the pollsters, but if I am wrong, well, that’s basically the only explanation, sadly, all things being equal (other than the polls somehow being skewed significantly and wrongly in favor of Democrats across the board): that not enough additional women voted, that too many thought it was another “normal” election and did not take their own destinies into their own hands when they could, that only a minor surge resulted that did not have enough impact.  I wish with all my heart that all men supported a women’s right to choose, but please do not rely on us to protect your rights for you, ladies, you vote for your rights!

That may sound harsh, but if my analysis is accurate and Dobbs overturning Roe does not mobilize a significant number of new female midterm voters determined to protect abortion rights, and if Democrats come out on the short end along with abortion rights for all American women, then that would be a crushing disappointment (and I can say the same for everyone equally of all genders when it comes to protecting democracy from fascism).

Having said that, any men on the fence or who didn’t vote but can, please join those of us already doing our part…

Conclusion: Democrats Should Outperform Their Polls and Hold Congress! BUT VOTE ANYWAY!!

Having expressed my reservations and covered my ass, I really am confident the Democrats will hold onto Congress after all the votes are counted and at least increase their position in the Senate, and that a surge in women voters unanticipated by the polls will be the main reason why. 

Because folks, the normal 53-51 female vs 47-49 male breakdown just isn’t going capture what is happening this year.  That’s what most polls, even in the states where there have been huge increases in the portion of women registering over men, are sticking to (in fact, every poll I have looked at where they display this information clearly is within or very close to these pre-Dobbs margins).  So you can safely take many of the polls you are looking at and add at least a few points to Democrats, take a few percent away from Republicans—that’s if these polls are generally accurate apart from this glaring issue—and you will have your actual outcome.  And polls are estimates, but the voter registration data is actual registration data.

Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight recently noted that if there was a significant across-the-board polling error, it could mean either a blowout by Republicans or actual gains by Democrats, depending in which direction.  Well, given what we know from what I’ve told you here, we can safely assume the latter is more likely, and that is what my premise has been: an across-the-board if varying polling error that is inflating what GOP performance will be and deflating what Democratic turnout will be.

Which sounds great if you’re not ignorant or a fascist.  As I noted a while ago, we’re past normal right-left “issues,” for the survival of our democracy is stake (and I’m sorry, but poo-poo to anyone saying it was stupid for Democrats to campaign in part on saving freaking’ democracy!): to quote Gen. Ulysses. S. Grant: “There are but two parties now, traitors and patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter, and I trust, the stronger party.”

I think preserving women’s rights to bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom and standing up to fascism and authoritarianism are deeply allied fights.  And, again, I think the hard voter data I outline here favors Democrats in these midterms.  If we do win, THANK YOU LADIES!

In the end, though, just make sure you vote!

*correction appended: this article originally misstated the year the last time midterm turnout was this high, 1912 instead of 1914

© 2022 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023.

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981; LinkedIn, Facebook), July 11, 2022 (**updated July 13 with an excellent exposure on the part of The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin on how the mainstream press distorts their narratives on Biden; *updated July 12 with new polling data proving my point)

SILVER SPRING—I’m a big Star Wars fan (spoilers for Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in this paragraph), and this past month was a big one for Star Wars fans with the (somewhat, but not entirely, disappointing) Obi-Wan Kenobi series, with key scenes bringing us back to Order 66, when clones with chips implanted in their brains were forced against their will by the chips to turn on their Jedi leaders.

I feel that the members of the “respectable” (as opposed to fascist propaganda/disinformation) media might even have some sort of chip in their brains when they cover Democrats: from the New York Times to the Washington Post, from CNN to MSNBC and many, many other outlets, it seems there is a near-constant need to push a “Democrats in DISARRAY!” narrative regardless of the facts.  These hot takes or seemingly analytical pieces almost invariably take one of a few approaches:

• “I, Smarty McSmart-Pants, awesome journalist that I am, am going to call out Democrats/President Joe Biden for not accomplishing X, Y, and/or Z!”—but with little to no regard for the actual balance of power or even proper procedure, let alone historical precedent, how Congress or the presidency actually work and what each can and cannot do or what it would actually take to actually do said thing(s).
• Interviewing and quoting a selective selection of activists, voters, or party folks (“some” or “dozens” out of WAY, WAY MORE—literally out of hundreds, thousands or, when it comes to voters, millions), nearly all of whom are obscure and folks 99% of readers have never heard of before and who will all complain (“whispers”!?) about Democrats’ leadership/direction; this will be presented without noting that their collective complaining is not representative but while offering some token pushback from a couple of people who are far more representative without noting they are, in fact, more representative; aggregate polling data (as opposed to citing one or two polls, if any) showing how most relevant people feel is usually ignored because of either laziness or “the narrative.”
• This or that outlier or outliers within the Democratic Party or its caucus (usually the Squad, Bernie Sanders, or other far lefties—wonderful clickbait for click-hungry websites—but sometimes the defiant two-headed albatross of relatively conservative Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) complain/tweet and/or their criticisms of the Party as a whole are presented as major stories in and of themselves and as examples of overall Party “dysfunction.”
• Sensationalizing the clickbaity thoughts of anonymous staffers, usually in the White House (and the White House has a lot of staff) or a campaign but sometimes in Congress, griping about this or that, which upon review are usually just the result of banal office politics, generational conflict also typical in today’s newsrooms, devoted acolytes wanting “MORE” for their masters or stans wanting “MORE” for the object of their stanning, and personal egos blown way out of proportion; even if you read between the lines, it’s more about individual staff clashes/competition or their projected desires for this thing or that person than anything originating from the big-name figures with whom they are associated.  Typical red-flag sentence emblematic of these articles: “This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former administration officials, lawmakers, congressional aides and other Democrats close to the White House who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the president’s private conversations.”

Sometimes, yes, these types of articles are on to something.  Most of the time, it’s just hot air, unrepresentative whining, or simply “whispers,” as in, articles that resemble more tabloid gossip columns than news articles that should actually be written.

In Data We Trust: The Current Congress in Historical Context

The problem is, almost none of this—and I mean absolutely none except for the best-of-the-best of such takes—is based on any serious data-oriented research.  The data is there, it just isn’t properly engaged with, but let’s set the record straight with some mind-blowing facts for those of you being inundated by the “Dems in Disarray” narrative:

1. No party has ever been as unified in its Congressional voting (“party unity vote” average) in both the House and Senate as today’s Democratic Party, with the possible exception in the Senate of just one year of Federalist Party Senate voting in the first few years of the 1800s
2. Specifically, the Democratic Party has never been more unified in terms of its Congressional voting records than it has in recent years, including a record high for all of-American history in 2021 in both the House (98% average) and Senate (97% average)
3. In recent years (last decade), party unity has been close between the two parties in the House, but in the most recent years the Democrats have been more unified, while the parties have alternated in recent years in the Senate, Republicans beating Democrats for all of Trump’s term but Democrats winning for all of Obama’s two terms and with Democrats setting a new record for unity in 2021

Reread that if you need to, but let’s be clear: this current Democratic Party in recent years overall and especially in 2021 was the most unified major party in history where it counts the most: in its votes in Congress.

It’s even more impressive when you realize that the Democrats have only a narrow edge in the House and are essentially tied in the Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker.

I came across a telling, wonderfully-data-driven article by that guided me to this understanding by Niels Lesniewski and Ryan Kelly for Roll Call from March 1 of this year, covering the years of the half-century from 1972 to 2021, and have used its chart above and table below:

Being the data- and history-oriented researcher that I am, I wanted to know the full record, and while I plan to continue finding more presentations of this data, so far the below chart from this other study is the best (and only) full account I have come across thus far in chart, table, or graph form (plenty for recent decades but not going all the way back the Founding of our republic):

In that all-encompassing chart, “Democrats” and “Republicans” include their antecedent parties from early American history, thus, the Federalists would account for that “Republican” spike in the Senate that comes close to 100% in the very early 1800s; the graphs are small and it’s hard to tell the exact year or numerical value, so I laid that out as the only possible exception to the numbers the 2021 Democrats put up the in Senate and clearly no one has beaten them in the House (where average party unity has only increased since the end of the chart).

The other chart below the comprehensive one shows the level of majority strength in each Congress since Republicans were first seated there in 1855.  As anyone can see, a tie “majority” in terms of party balance in the Senate is exceedingly rare, and since the Senate seated Alaska’s and Hawaii’s first senators in 1959, bringing the Senate’s total to 100 senators when fully seated, the only other time there was a 50-50 Senate at all was during the 107^th Congress, from January 20, 2001, until May 24 of that year, when Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party to caucus as an independent with the Democrats, giving the Democrats an effective 51-49 majority for the remainder of that Congress until January, 2003.  For those few months before Jeffords’ defection, the situation was the same as now just in reverse in that the Republicans had a 50-seat “majority” with a tie-breaker vote able to come from their Vice President, then Dick Cheney, as Democrats have with Harris today.

Other than that, there are the odd the exceptions during the 83^rd Congress, from early 1953 to early 1955, when throughout its term the deaths of nine senators and resignation of one caused a number of leadership changes in a close Senate, some of which led to shorter-term ties but with one situation leaving a tie for more than two-thirds of a year.

Before that, you have to go all the way back to a crazy situation from the 47^th Congress in 1881, which began with a tied Senate that lost its tie-breaking ability when President James Garfield was assassinated late that year and replaced by Vice President Chester Arthur, as there was no constitutional provision for replacing a vice president and, therefore, no person to cast a tie-breaking vote after Arthur was sworn in, a situation that thus lasted until the beginning of the next Congress in 1883; before that, a Senate balance-of-power tie had never happened in all the years of the Senate’s existence going back to 1789.

Biden’s and Democrats’ Accomplishments in Context: A Bipartisan Past vs. Our Partisan Present

In all these instances, like the situation today, there was only a small lead for the same party with the tie-breaking vice president in the other half of Congress, the House of Representatives.  But as the graphics I have provided above show, partisanship was significantly less intense, bipartisanship significantly more common, in these other eras than today.  This allowed some major accomplishments to actually happen easily even in 50-50 Senates.

In 1883, President Arthur was able to get the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, which formed the basis of the modern civil service.  The next time there was a split Senate in the 1950s, there was also a spirit of bipartisanship on a broad variety of issues, leading to legislation passing that established both the Small Business Administration and what would eventually become the Department of Health and Human Services; President Dwight Eisenhower’s major legislation concerning tax reform, along with major bills regarding nuclear regulation and expansion of both unemployment and Social Seucrity benefits, were all enacted with overwhelming bipartisan support, among other bills passed in a similar spirit.

In the next period when there was an effective tie in the Senate, no major legislation was passed, but just days after Jeffords’ late May defection, President George W. Bush saw his massive tax cut bill’s final Senate passage by a significant bipartisan margin.  Yet the massive reorganization of the government’s security apparatuses (including the Patriot Act and the bill creating of the Department of Homeland Security) and major reforms to education and prescription drug benefits for Medicare during the 107^th Congress all occurred only after the 9/11 attacks of September 11, 2001, when there was a period of historic bipartisanship, if only temporarily (these big wins came from Republicans even when the Democrats had a 51-49 Senate majority with Jeffords).

Of course, today’s situation is quite different from these: not only are most congressional Republicans in a long–extremist and increasingly-fascist Republican Party openly shielding former president Trump and other plotters of his 2020-2021 attempted coup (a term I used at the time) and perpetuating the lies that the 2020 election was stolen by phantom “fraud” while preparing to be able to carry out another coup attempt if Republicans lose the 2024 presidential election, on legislative issues, they are engaging in extreme obstructionism and partisanship.  Their primary method for this is in utilizing the 60-out-of-100-vote-threshold filibuster for just about everything they can to block about as much as they can of the Democrats’ agenda from passing.  As both parties have 50 votes, in most cases, Democrats need 10 Republicans senators to advance legislation and overcome a filibuster, so even when there is bipartisan support, inaction can reign unless at least a full one-fifth of Republican senators are on board.  In recent decades, filibuster use (and abuse) has become unprecedented, particularly so by the Republican Party and especially—even exponentially—so since Mitch McConnell became the leader of Senate Republicans in 2007, a role he still holds today.

In the face of these key differences, looking at all that Biden and Democrats in Congress have been able to accomplish so far—including numerous large votes through one of the only ways to circumvent a filibuster in what is known as budget reconciliation (among them a massive COVID relief bill) as well as a once-in-a-generation historic infrastructure bill, historic aid for Ukraine in the face of rampant Russian imperialism, and the first federal gun legislation in roughly three decades (the last being hammered out by Biden himself in 1994, when he was still a senator), and with time still left in this Congress for passing further major legislation—this much is clear: no majority has accomplished more with such low margins in the Senate in American history in the face of such extreme partisanship and organized obstructionism from the opposition party.  The few major accomplishments of the Biden Administration and the Democratic-led Congress that were bipartisan were the exception, not the norm, a departure from the entire modern era and the last few times there was a Senate evenly divided as today’s is.

I am not suggesting there are not other factors or that this tells 100% of the picture: falling just short of enough votes on Biden’s would-be-signature Build Back Better legislation surely counts more than most typical legislation, and there are things that are sometimes not brought up for votes because of awareness of existing problems within a caucus or opposition from Republicans wielding a filibuster.

Yet the main point made above still stands: of all the different individual metrics out there, the average party unity not only counts a lot, but it is hard to think of a metric that counts more.  In this current record heights of party unity on display from Democrats with Speaker Nancy Pelosi leading Democrats in the House, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer leading Democrats in the Senate, and Joe Biden leading the Party overall from the White House, the Democratic Party in 2021 and in recent years collectively, then, has been the most disciplined and unified major national political party in U.S. history when it comes to actual legislative votes.

Another Inexcusable Media Fail

Churchill once famously remarked: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”  With Joe Biden, we can honestly say: “Never in the field of American presidential politics was so much expected by one man with a narrower political ‘majority’” (really a 50-50 tie with a tie-breaker in one-half of Congress and a very slim majority in the other.  And despite major, entrenched opposition to most of the Democrats’ efforts, they have still accomplished much and improved the situation where they are actually capable of effective change quite dramatically compared to the situation they inherited: an America reeling from COVID and its accompanying economic meltdown as well as reeling from Trump’s treasonous coup attempt.  Obviously, the elephant in the room today is inflation, which presidents and congresses generally have little ability to mitigate well in the short-term even if people don’t want to acknowledge this simple Economics-101 truth (with their record profits, why are we not questioning oil companies more??).  And apart from inflation, the metrics for the economy for Biden for most of his presidency thus far have been strong (admittedly less so the past few months).

Yet there is a huge gap in the public perception of Biden and Democrats and their actual popular accomplishments.

The relentlessly negative coverage of Biden and the Democrats—the media’s pursuit of the whole “Democrats in Disarray” narrative in the face of historic data that thoroughly discredits this narrative—is a big part of the reason for this.  Just as was the case during the Democratic primaries, the media is also relentlessly portraying Biden as just-about-to-collapse in terms of his Democratic support, based on no serious larger empirical analysis, with near-mindless, pointless speculation about who might be the Democratic nominee in 2024 other than Biden more than two years out from that year’s presidential election (and even before this year’s midterms!) despite Biden’s and his vice president’s repeated, clear statements on running together again in 2024 as a ticket.

**Update July 13: Perhaps the most exemplary recent example of the mainstream press’s gross distortions has been adroitly addressed by Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, a Never Trump conservative who is one of the most incisive of the major newspaper columnists on the media’s failures in the current era. She notes that in a recent New York Times article trumpeting its latest poll with Siena College, the framing is almost entirely anti-Biden, beginning with the headline (and, again, this is just one poll): “Most Democrats Don’t Want Biden in 2024, New Poll Shows” and how key findings from the poll that Biden would still beat Trump and that 92% of Democrats would stick with Biden vs. Trump in 2024 are buried after 15 paragraphs of negativity and after multiple graphics. In this Biden hit-job, Times clearly chooses to emphasize what will damage Biden (CNN and others discussed the headline all day) while making the reader really put in effort to find the positives mentioned so deep into its story. Behold, the Times, exposed and noted. And this is the default tone most reporters and editors in the mainstream media resort to when it comes to Biden and Democrats in general, because… “narrative.” Their preferred narrative.**

But just as much to blame is the childishness of the American people, who clearly expected Biden to fix, well, pretty much everything within a year and now blame him for the country not being back to a total normal after a once-in-century pandemic, after four years of fascist-leaning insanity under Trump, and now during a twice-in-a-century large-scale European war.  Americans currently clearly do not understand the unique gravity of historic problems faced—and well-mitigated—by Biden and that none have easy solutions, especially with a country and a Congress as divided as they are.

No president could have righted all the wrongs plaguing the U.S. on January 20, 2021 in one, let alone two, years—certainly not the criminal coup plotter Trump or his Republican Party focused more on overthrowing the constitutional order and preventing the legitimate peaceful transfer of power than on actually governing or dealing with real problems affecting actual Americans—so for the media and the public to hold Biden to such a standard is not just down-right myopic, but threatens to undo so much of the progress that has been made by returning incompetent would-be-fascist demagogues to power.

Yet even with one of the worst polls for Biden from a major, respectable pollster to date (the June 25-28, 2022 Economist/YouGov poll), he still has the approval of over three-quarters of Democrats (76%: 34% strong, 42% somewhat) while only 18% expressed disapproval (only 9% strongly).  On top of that, the Democratic Party was still seen in that poll as more favorable (if just slightly and within the margin of error) than the Republican Party.  And, again, I abhor highlighting single polls to discuss a president’s approval rating—all too common an article headline or framing in the press these days (a general weighted average should always be included in those, but rarely is)—but I did this just to show how high his approval rating is among Democrats in, again, one of his worst polls among respectable polls begun no earlier than June 22 up through the first respectable poll conducted and released in July (since I wrote most of this, polling from early July is not much different, but Democrats’ approval of Biden went slightly up in a newer Economist/YouGov poll [77%] poll while being significantly lower in a different pollster’s most recent data [69%, from Reuters/Ipsos from July 5–6, their lowest yet, down from 72% in their previous poll]; new polls are coming out even as I am about to post this, too, but, to quote the great Jedi Master Yoda: “Difficult to see.  Always in motion is the future;” they may be up or down in a week or a month, and we will only see what happens in time; *update July 12: as if to make my point for me, the next Reuters/Ipsos poll, from July 11-12, has Biden’s overall approval up up 3 points, his overall approval down 4 points, and his approval among Democrats up 5 points, to 74%*).

Those numbers would still mean crushing defeats for anyone challenging Biden in a primary (although, again, that hypothetical would be happening a year-and-a-half from now, a different world).  Still, the overall numbers with voters are not good, though it should be noted that, especially in today’s overcharged media cycles, the overcoverage both of such polling data and especially inflation (relative to other major aspects of the economy like low unemployment and growth in both jobs and wages) creates something of a negative feedback loop for Biden, helping to drag or keep those polling numbers down.  In contrast, polling for Democrats has just improved in the wake of the radical judicial activism of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, with now just under four months to go before the midterm elections.  And if Democrats surprise many and hold on to Congress or even gain seats in the midterms (and, at least in the Senate, polling is indicating they may very well increase their number of seats there), there is a good chance Biden’s approval will increase, too.  And all of this in the context of the myopic coverage that inexcusably misses the data proving the Democrats’ historic discipline and organization, which will be key in they succeed in the midterms, even if the media does not acknowledge this reality.

Conclusion: A Need for Professional Journalism

So, to recap, 1.) not only is Biden’s job performance as president still eliciting approval from an overwhelming majority of Democrats, who are still overall united behind Biden—making all the “who will replace Biden?” news stories irresponsible, premature speculation—but 2.) Democrats’ performance in Congress is the empirically provably best of not only any major political party in the modern era, but in all of American history (with one possible exception of the Federalist Party in the early 1800s in just one half of Congress), higher now than the supposedly better organized Republicans 3.) and Biden and Democrats’ accomplishments are the greatest of any party with such a narrow “lead” (tie) in the Senate when facing such intense partisan opposition and obstruction.

These are not my opinions: these are simply the facts, fully supported by data, history, and context, as I have proven here.  It’s far, far overdue for coverage in the media to reflect these empirical realities, for journalists, editors, and producers to stop ignoring this irrefutable empirical data in favor of their own biased, selective, and inaccurate “narratives.”

© 2022 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see my eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg, January 6, 2022 (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981)

SILVER SPRING—In part before (especially in the run-up to and weeks after the 2020 U.S. presidential election) but undeniably now, American politics is divided between two major factions: pro-democracy, pro-Constitution led by Democrats and anti-Democracy, anti-Constitution led by Republicans; it has been this way since the January 6, 2021 insurrection.  It is a divide between the first faction that stands for preserving democracy and the rule of law while acting to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” and the second that is against democracy and the rule of law and seeks to destroy our longstanding constitutional order.

There are many other differences—just to name one more recent development, Trump mainstreamed white supremacy: some people will hate this term applied here but even in its most genially presented forms, Trumpism most definitely stands for exclusivist white ethno-nationalism, i.e., the primacy of Americans embodying “traditional” (code: white, suburban, and rural) American values while working to avoid the “diluting” and “replacement” of those people and values with hordes (“caravans”) of (brown) migrants while also working to minimize the political representation through voter suppression of “urban” “non-traditional” communities (code: black and other non-white minorities)—but the January 6^th fault line transcends, should in weight and principle and occasionally does in practice, the more typical right-left divides between liberal and conservative, statist and libertarian, mandates and choice, vaccines and pseudoscience, diversity and homogeneity, social justice and racism, welcoming and nativist, young and old, urban and rural, religious and atheist, gun-controllers and gun-owners.

The historically and morally horrific Trump Capitol January 6 terrorist insurrection should actually be something that unites nearly all Americans in disgust, a clear understanding of who is to blame, and the need to purge them from public political life and see them prosecuted, yet instead, is sadly in many ways a political Rorschach test.  Rather than the insurrection responsible for the first non-peaceful transfer of power in U.S. history since 1797 (Washington to Adams), and the first non-peaceful one between different parties since 1801 (Adams’s Federalists to Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans), for far too many millions of radicalized Americans, it has become just another partisan political issue in which fidelity and fealty to their adopted faction trump reality and morality, muddling what should be crystal clear beyond any doubt for any rational person.  But clarity is what is needed, not this partisan delusion and gaslighting. 

Patriots and Traitors à la General U.S. Grant

One of the primary defenders of the country and the Constitution during the worst domestic crisis in the history of the United States—Ulysses S. Grant, Lincoln’s right-hand man in winning the Civil War against traitorous insurrectionists rebels in another era—wrote just after the beginning of that Civil War on April 21, 1861:

We are now in the midst of trying times when every one must be for or against his country, and show his colors too, by his every act…

Whatever may have been my political opinions before, I have but one sentiment now.  That is, we have a Government, and laws and a flag, and they must all be sustained.  There are but two parties now, traitors and patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter, and I trust, the stronger party….I would never stultify my opinion for the sake of a little security.

I have argued in detail how exceedingly simple what happened on January 6 was and the role of Donald Trump in it, on how his culpability and how close his coup attempt came to being far worse was revealed especially by his second impeachment trial.  Now, it is clear that former President and General Grant’s dichotomy is the fundamental, basic divide that matters before any other and has been so since January 6, 2021: Patriots—regardless of their “normal” politics (thank you, Never Trump Republicans!)—and Traitors redefining our current understanding of putting party over country.

On the Patriot side against Trump and his insurrection are people like Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), stripped of her leadership role in the Republican party for standing up to Trump’s insurrection, and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who stood at her side in Congress today as the terrible assault on our democracy was commemorated; Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), a veteran now disowned by some in his family for standing up to Trump’s insurrection, sadly retiring; Georgia’s Secretary of State, Republican Brad Raffensperger, who spurned Trump’s mafia-like pressure to overturn Georgia’s election results and faces death threats and a formidable primary challenger as a result; former Republican President George W. Bush; former Republican Speakers of the House John Boehner and Paul Ryan; the recently departed Colin Powell, a former top general and secretary of state; former Republican Governor of California, none other than the Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who likened the January 6 insurrection to the Nazi’s deadly 1938 Kristallnacht, when anti-Jewish violence erupted throughout the Nazi Reich, including Schwarzenegger’s Austria; the entire body of Democrats in Congress and top Biden-Harris Administration officials; all Americans who know and are unafraid to acknowledge that Trump tried to overturn a legitimate election and destroy the Constitutional order through intimidation and violence; and, certainly not least among these, those security officers who died or were injured or traumatized defending the U.S. Capitol from the first organized mass attack since 1814, when the British military burned the Capitol, the White House, and other targets in Washington.

On the Traitor side: Donald Trump and his top advisors who stood by him during and after January 6; the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, especially those (on the Senate-side, especially Texan Ted Cruz and Missourian Josh Hawley; in the House, 139 out of 211 Republicans, virtually two-thirds) who, even in the hours immediately after the insurrection, voted to overturn a legitimate presidential election based on lies and lust for power or, at best, out of fear for what the mob and/or other pitchforker types would do to them and their families; new candidates seeking to replace state and local election officials; the extremist activists and protesters siding with the insurrectionists; and their domestic allies in the right-wing media—including most of Fox News and talk radio—and social media worlds (Russians aiding and abetting are not traitors, they are the anti-Americans we know and expect).

Insurrection Not Over, Just in a Different Phase

Among the most dangerous of the classes outlined above are the Congressional Republicans and the state and local Republican lawmakers, officials, and candidates who, based on the totally false ideas that the election was stolen from Trump, are seeking new powers to empower partisan election officials that could steal the election for Trump or to replace those who, even as Republicans, put country before Party and acted to respect the legitimate votes checked and audited repeatedly.  Simply put, next time around, Brad Raffensperger may be gone and partisan state legislatures may disregard the will of the voters and certify sets of electors based not on actual votes but partisan lies and machinations.

As James Madison—who, as president in 1814, had to flee the British troops who would end up burning his White House and the Capitol—wrote in 1788 in Federalist “No. 51,” arguing for the then-newly proposed Constitution, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”  Here, he was arguing particularly of the virtues of the divided, separated-of-power natures of the proposed government.

And it was these checks and balances—secretaries of state over state legislatures, election auditors over partisan advocates, courts over campaign lawyers, Democrats over Republicans, the Constitution over election-loser Trump, good-faith presentation of facts and context over propaganda and disinformation, police against insurrectionists, Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) over Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (then the number-three Republican in the GOP House leadership) over McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) (then-and-still the number-one-and-two House Republicans, respectively), the Legislative Branch over the sitting President, elements of Trump’s own executive branch over himself and his own White House, and (at least at the final moments of the final hours) then-Vice President Pence over then-President Trump—that saved the nation and the Constitution throughout the term of Trump and from insurrection incited by that renegade outgoing president.

Yet, as many have correctly sounded the alarm, the majority of sitting Republican officeholders are working to change rules and to combine with enough victorious candidates or appointee replacements of their ilk to negate that ambition counteracting ambition within their own party that saved our republic in 2020-2021, to demolish the checks and balances that held the line against lies and insurrection and for the Constitution and the rule of law.  The Cheneys and Raffenspergers within the GOP are being put on notice or pushed out—most of the Republican senators who stood up regularly to Trump retired or, in the case of John McCain, died; in the House, of the measly ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for the insurrection, two have already announced retirement, four are already facing serious Trump-endorsed primary challengers, and four others are laying as low as they can.

As a result, the terrifying reality is that we may very well (perhaps even likely??) not have enough Patriots to stop one or more crucial swing states from being stolen by partisan state and local election officials in 2024, even in the House and Senate races in 2022.  As opposed to the hastily assembled forces of the January 6 coup attempt (and apart from the related-but-more-general “slow-moving coup” Trump and the Republican Party have tried enacting against the rule of law I have warned about for years), we are now, then, seeing another blatant “slow moving coup” attempt moving forward years before it might come to completion.  Upon closer look, one could even argue Trump’s original insurrection is still ongoing.

Benjamin Franklin, exiting the hall of the 1787 Constitutional Convention after it voted in favor of our Constitution, is supposed to have replied to an inquirer as to what we were getting: “A republic, if you can keep it.”  More than any time since the Civil War, today, we have reason to worry we may not.  This is not idle speculation: most Republican/Republican-leaning citizens believe Donald Trump’s Big Lies about the election and the Republican Party and its base are still in Trump’s pocket, the Big Lies becoming clear litmus tests for most of those who want to win Republican primaries or want to have a future in what is still even now, clearly, Trump’s party.  “While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principle of that party,” noted President Biden today, “too many others are transforming that party into something else. They seem no longer to want to be the party, the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes.”  “Some” is, pathetically, generous, and we must recognize the dire, immediate, and growing threat the Traitor faction presents to us and our republic and how it has hijacked the Republican Party as an overall whole beyond any ability or effort to restore sanity to that Party anytime soon.

Necessary First Steps to Save the Republic

One of the best ways to maximize our chances of keeping this republic is to firmly remember and vehemently proclaim our current Patriot and Traitor divide, framing everything in our politics first and foremost through this prism, with anyone hemming and hawing and not firmly in the pro-democracy, pro-Constitution Patriot side correctly identified as de facto aiding and abetting and giving cover and comfort to the anti-democracy, anti-Constitution Traitor side.  The other key ingredients are to fight gaslighting lies about what really happened on January 6 and to hold those responsible—including, obviously, President Trump, his top advisors, and members of both the House and Senate who worked with them to put in motion the terrible events of one year ago to this day—accountable.  As President Biden himself said today in his most forceful remarks on the continuing efforts related to Trump’s January 6 Capitol insurrection, “This isn’t about being bogged down in the past.  This is about making sure the past isn’t buried.  That’s the only way forward.  That’s what great nations do.  They don’t bury the truth.  They face up to it. It sounds like hyperbole, but that’s the truth.  They face up to it.”

Echoing Grant’s sentiment, there can be no middle ground here (as with, say, Republican Virginia Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin); we either stand with the Patriots against the Traitors and keep our republic, or we do not and we do not deserve it.  But one thing is certain: in terms of politics, since January 6, 2021, all Americans and all candidates for political office being evaluated up-and-down all ballots from president to county dog catcher are, first and foremost, either Patriots or Traitors; this is the defining shift in American politics post-insurrection and the most important frame for anything political in this current dangerous era.

© 2021 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see my eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) Novermber 15, 2021

SILVER SPRING—He was mocked, again and again, for believing bipartisanship was possible, on the campaign trail and since becoming president.  Even more so for believing he could achieve this as a supposedly out-of-touch old white male.  Many pundits on CNN joined the young, woke reporters and columnists on the political beat for the New York Times and Washington Post throughout the primaries, general election, and into the Biden presidency, much in line with their editorial boards and the same folks at many other mainstream publications.  For the far-left media and writers, Joe Biden was like a Republican and a relic from a bygone area that “just didn’t get it;” for the far-right, Biden has been some sort of combination of senile and socialist.

And yet, here he is despite the media thinking he was old news in early 2020: his infrastructure bill—formally titled the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA)—passed the U.S. Senate with nineteen Republicans votes (and all fifty Democrats) and, more recently, the U.S. House with thirteen Republican votes and is moments away from being signed by now-President Biden into law.

To quote the current president when he was vice president to Barack Obama from the signing of Obamacare/ACA (Affordable Care Act) into law: “This is a big fucking deal!” (BFD)

Some of the Republican House votes were necessary because the six most far-left members of the House, together known as the “The Squad,” just had to stand out and not be team players even on such a historic bill: the original four of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ilhan Omar (MN), Rashida Tlaib (MI), and Ayanna Pressley (MA), with the two newcomers Jamaal Bowman (NY) and Cori Bush (MO), some of the loudest, harshest, and most consistent critics of Biden from the left.  Having fought in good faith to get more in the bill after a months-long campaign and/or get a vote on Biden’s social spending Build Back Better bill first, in the end, they preferred signaling the lack of dissatisfaction with the scale of the historic $1.2-trillion bill and/or the process than being part of a massive leap forward for their party, the Biden Administration, and all Americans regardless of their party affiliation or ideology (as a result, they are hearing complaints from plenty of their constituents).  They voted contrary to 89 of 95 members in their own House Progressive Caucus, including their leader, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA).

As much as we should be dissatisfied with those six renegade Democrats, we should be far more upset that most Republicans in the Senate and the vast majority of House Republicans voted against it.  Along with the six House Democrats, they were, in the end, spectators to History with a capital “H,” and the overall differences between the two parties could not be clearer when looking at the details of what is the bill, what the vast majority of Republicans in Congress opposed and the vast majority of Democrats supported…

And that is the biggest investment in national infrastructure in more than a generation.

Out of $1.2 trillion in the bill, almost half—$550 billion—is new spending over the next five years that would be above what we would be spending on infrastructure in an “all things being equal,” or what policy wonks would call a “baseline,” sense (the spending under the currently enacted budget and laws, essentially what we would spend if the exact same budget and spending levels were authorized again but adjusted for inflation, an estimate provided by the non-partisan Legislative Branch agency called the Congressional Budget Office, your fine government professional bureaucrats at work and I mean that in a non-facetious way!).  Of course, that is never guaranteed—cuts can always be made, so not only does Biden’s infrastructure bill keep the current baseline, it nearly doubles it, adding an average of $110 billion more in spending each year for the next five years.  But the Democrats’ agenda will almost certainly do even more than that: the House reconciliation budget bill, a big part of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, is going to include a lot more infrastructure spending, too, and those parts are not likely the parts that conservative Democratic Senators Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) might force out or pare down, meaning there could (and likely will be) be an additional $500 billion in new non-baseline infrastructure spending over ten years, or an average of an additional $50 billion a year; that would mean that, for the next five years, we would be seeing an average of $160 billion above baseline per year.

Ok, so there are some relative numbers for you, but what does that mean?  Well, to answer that, we need history.

In a historical sense, this truly is a once-in-a-generation investment in America’s future.  You have to go back more than four decades, to the 1970s, when anything like this kind of infrastructure spending was happening at the same or higher a percentage of our GDP (adjusted for inflation), and it would exceed the levels of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal-era infrastructure spending from 1933-1937.  In the past century, only during World War II and the 1970s have we spent more on infrastructure over a period of several years, then, than we would be going forward under president Joe Biden (and we really don’t have the same quality of analysis for earlier investments, such as the effort begun under Abraham Lincoln—even in the midst of the Civil War—to forge a transcontinental railroad, so this really could be among the biggest relative investments in infrastructure in American history; even without the extra $50 billion a year from the reconciliation Build Back Better bill, it would still be by far the largest infrastructure spending over several years in roughly the last half-century, even if it would be at lower GDP levels than the New Deal).

We know what a huge impact these spending sprees had: under FDR, we brought America into the modern world, and in the Nixon/Carter era, well, there’s a good chance that road or bridge you are driving on today was shored up to much of its present state or built in that era, or that rehabilitating your water utilities and making polluted water safe for use again also happened then.  Those eras cover most of the highways we use and much of the electric grid we have, especially if you live in rural America (Tennessee Valley Authority, anyone?).  

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been abroad repeatedly in the past two decades, and I can tell you our infrastructure is mostly either creaking and/or outdated compared to much of the rest of the world.  The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) even rated our overall infrastructure as a C- in its latest report.

Some facts to consider: about one-fifth of students did not have high-speed internet for their classes during last year’s COVID-19 lockdowns; we lose six billion gallons of treated water every day from water main ruptures; some 42% of our bridges are at least 50 years old; some 43% of our roads are in a middling or bad state.  This bill’s investments are not only necessary, but long overdue.  And, after roughly a half-century of nothing comparable, help is finally coming.

Specifically, there is:

We are still living in an America creaking forward some forty-to-ninety-years after these massive investments of the past; just imagine what people will be saying decades in the future because of the legacy these Biden bills will have left for a generation not even yet born.  This is one of the only non-defense long-term investments I’ve seen our government make in my lifetime.  And these are not esoteric, special-interest investments that will not reach most Americans or sit unused because of confusion or bureaucracy: every single person in the country that will be alive in a few years and every single person that will be born for decades to come will literally live, breathe, drink, web-browse, and/or traverse the effects of this bill.  Even if you, say, already have broadband internet or clean drinking water, you will still see the improvements in roads and airports.  Not a driver?  Public transportation and pollution alleviation will hit you instead.  Even the more “specialized” projects, like Western state water infrastructure development and Amtrak—will still affect tens of millions of Americans.  And all of these benefits will greatly enhance our economy and quality of life: faster transit of people, goods, and services; less loss of work and life due to preventable diseases caused by pollution and improvement in transportation safety; students in rural America learning better with better internet connections and becoming more productive members of society; enormous savings in not having to maintain dilapidated power grids and bridges that will free up funds for all manner of programs benefitting millions in ways not yet considered.  

And yet, even as I write this, CNN led with the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and spent more or as much time talking about supposed friction between Biden’s and Harris’s staff (staff, not the President and VP themselves) and Adele’s interview with Oprah.  In the hours after the bill finally passed the House last week, the trampling tragedy at a Houston concert was the lead story for days.  The New York Times, Washington Post, and L.A. Times this morning lacked any large-font, prominently-placed stories on their homepages on this bill.

As I have lamented repeatedly, the mainstream media has been myopic when it comes to prioritizing and weighting some of the biggest stories (and non-stories) of the past half-decade, from Hillary’s much-ado-about-little e-mails and then-FBI Director James Comey’s ill-timed “reopening” of that to the massive Trump-Russia saga as well as coverage of hunter Biden and Trump-Ukraine (really, as I noted in depth, another phase of Trump-Russia). 

Now, in 20201, this lack of extended, deep, and lasting coverage of this infrastructure bill—the bill itself, not the he-said, she-said negotiations of the abysmal horse-race process coverage—and the lack of attention and weight given to it once its form was final, makes this bill the most miscovered, underreported story of 2021.  The media has done an admirable job of covering the momentousness and weight of the Trump Capitol insurrection, of keeping attention focused on it when it should be.  But to the degree it has done an excellent job of that, it has done a terrible job of covering and weighting Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.  I get that there is a tendency to focus on the negative and personalities, but here is something grand, substantive, and institutional, and all the media can do it whiff.  So if the major media outlets think it is too boring to focus on the details of this once-in-generation investment in infrastructure and the impact it will have on all of us and our nation for decades to come, I am happy to do so in their stead.

© 2021 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

See related article The Kabul Airlift in Light of the Berlin Airlift: Surprising Parallels and Important Lessons

Also see my eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!