(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).

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) 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 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) April 22, 2024; *UPDATED April 30 discussing Trone’s misrepresentation of polling; see related Twitter thread and 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—The state of the Maryland Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat about to be vacated by Ben Cardin is dismal (as I have warned before), with Larry Hogan beating (sometimes crushing) either frontrunner in all credible independent recent polls.  While both U.S. Representative David Trone and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks are both good people and fine Democratic politicians with solid records, their campaigns are failing Democrats and others who want to ensure that the U.S. Senate seat held by the retiring Ben Cardin for over seventeen years and by Barbara Mikulski before him for thirty—two Democratic Party legends—stays occupied by a Democrat.  With its candidate consistently polling far behind her primary rival, the campaign of Country Executive Alsobrooks has become desperately dishonest (sadly, more on this just below), and while Trone’s campaign should feel good about his lead over his primary rival, that he is still not beating Hogan in a blue state after spending nearly $42 million of his own money is downright humiliatingly embarrassing and bodes ill for Democratic efforts to keep Cardin’s seat blue as he is the candidate the keeps performing better against Hogan in polling between himself and Alsobrooks.

A dismal state for the Democratic primary, indeed.

Desperation and Dishonesty from the Alsobrooks Campaign (and Internal Polls 101)

(*Update April 30: to be fair, the Trone campaign has also been blatantly dishonest about Trone’s polling. In Trone’s latest ad, he says: “The polls say I’m the only candidate who can beat Larry Hogan.” This is false, as I will explain below, because that is nowhere near what “the polls” suggest. To be fair to him, the only poll that had him tied—the one from back in February discussed below—has him technically at 42.3% to Hogan’s 41.7% in the crosstabs, but the unofficial rules of how polling is reported and disseminated to the public involve the common practice of reporting the rounded numbers with no decimal digits, so in this case, tied at 42% and well within the margin of error; there have been only three major credible independent polls since then and all three have had Trone behind, the latest by 13 points. Yes, all these polls had him doing better than Alsobrooks against Hogan, but Trone clearly said “the polls” as in more than one, and even citing the one where he was reported as tied, would be misleading, and doing better than Alsobrooks is not the same as beating Hogan, so this was blatantly misleading (if he had said “the most competitive candidate,” that would have been honest). And Trone’s campaign has not released any internal polls for the general election matchup in all of 2024. Neither has Alsobrooks, suggesting both their internal polling against Hogan is brutal (more on how/why/when internal polls are released below). There was one internal partisan poll that is funded by a Democratic group from mid-November all the way back in 2023 giving Trone a 49%-34% lead over Hogan months before Hogan entered the race, but none of Trone’s numbers against Hogan have looked anywhere near that since then and that is ancient history as far as polling goes. So, again, there are not even any recent internal polls to suggest he “can beat Hogan,” let alone independent polls, which are much more credible and accurate than internal polls, as the discussion below will explain.)

I want to preface this section by noting I don’t believe County Executive Alsobrooks was personally involved in any of what I am about to describe: she has always been cordial and respectful in person to me and she only gives the impression that she is an honest, sincere, kind person working hard for the people.  But it must be noted that the campaign of Angela Alsobrooks yesterday sent out a deceitful, dishonest e-mail to its supporters, misrepresenting one of the campaign’s own internal polls—that is, a poll that is paid for by the campaign itself and often (as in this case) not released with the usually full data or crosstabs—as a poll from national news outlet Axios.  The e-mail innocuously opens by noting “A new poll just dropped,” and the graphic of the poll has the Axios logo on it.  No further description or link as to the source of the poll is provided, so most readers would simply assume the poll was an Axios poll, given the logo (full screenshot of the email below):

Except if you go to the Axios article that discussed the poll, within the article itself, its bylined author Stephen Neukam writes “Alsobrooks is within the margin of error against Trone, according to internal Alsobrooks campaign polling obtained by Axios.”  Thus, compounding the misleading logo, the use of a ”a new poll” when the people writing this email were well aware that it was their own campaign’s commissioned poll is absolutely also a deliberate obfuscation, and, to make matters worse, the use of Axios’s logo on the graphic to mislead readers to clearly make them think the poll is by Axios when the campaign itself was the party responsible for providing its own poll directly to Axios even further compounds the sinning.

This trifecta of dishonesty is simply disgraceful and goes beyond anything near relatively acceptable so-called “spin;” rather, we have two examples if information being deliberately withheld from readers—that the poll was an internal Alsobrooks campaign poll and that the Alsobrooks campaign gave the results to Axios—and a full-on misrepresentation by putting the Axios logo on the poll graphic, giving the clear impression this misleading labeled “a new poll” is an Axios poll, all in order to confer fake legitimacy on the poll by making it appear it is not an internal poll and allowing the impression to be clearly conveyed to the reader that the poll is from the independent news outlet Axios.

The partisan internal poll as described by Axios highlights that Alsobrooks is at 40%, just 3 points behind Trone at 43% (with 17% undecided) and within the margin of error.  There is also a third omission falling within the realm of normal spin: another poll—this one a far more credible, independent poll put together by The Baltimore Sun, Fox 45 Baltimore, and the University of Baltimore at just about the same time as the Alsobrooks campaign’s internal poll—had Alsbrooks 19 points behind Trone, 29% to 48%.  Now, it’s normal for a campaign to highlight a more favorable poll even if also perhaps misleading in that that the poll the campaign chooses to highlight may be unrepresentative, but it is downright dishonest to tout your own internal campaign poll as “a new poll,” suggest visually that it is a poll from a major news outlet, and then omit that your own campaign fed the poll data to that news outlet: this is far from normal and should be called out as simply wrong.

Why is it important do sharply distinguish between internal polls and other polls?  Let me explain if you’re not familiar with internal polls.  Internal polls released by a campaign are self-selected datapoints and usually not the full or transparent set of data: the parts that are shared are deemed by the campaign to be favorable and are chosen to be shared with the public because the campaign thinks it will benefit in some way from the information being released.  Most internal polls are not released and what is released tends to be the best possible tidbits among other tidbits and other internal polls that are not to selected to be released.

Furthermore, partisan internal polls average out to be significantly more favorable in their results towards their preferred candidate than independent polls not paid for by such a campaign and should, therefore, be taken with a full salt-shaker, not just a grain of salt even if they are not useless.  Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight for some time banned the listing of internal polls on its site and later would actually show that it had adjusted internal polls by changing the results to account for that bias in favor of the candidate by reversing the bias away from the campaign’s preferred candidate.  Simply put, internal partisan polls are generally less accurate and far less transparently disseminated to the public and generally should, as a result, be trusted far, far less than non-partisan independent polls.  Thus, it is truly a sign of the desperation of the Alsobrooks campaign at this stage, about a month before the primary and about two weeks before early voting, that it released an internal poll still showing her down three points to Trone (accounting for the bias, this poll actually does not suggest she is close to Trone or really closing in, but those who don’t know about the bias of internal polls can be fooled by this presentation). 

Considering all this, this play by the Alsobrooks campaign breaks major principles of honesty and attribution in attempting to pass off one of its own polls to readers as a “normal” “from” Axios poll in order to give the false impression that polling data has Alsobrooks in a close race with Trone.  For the data absolutely does not show this: in four credible independent non-partisan polls beginning in February, Alsobrooks was down 15 (17% to 32%), then 7 (27% to 34%), then 9 (33% to 42%), and, most recently, 19 points (29% to 48%) to Trone.  In this context, passing off an internal poll as having Alsobrooks down just 3 points (40% to 43%) as indicative is the overall state of the race is highly misleading.

As noted, it falls within the normal realm of political spin and campaign advocacy to cherry-pick the best polling for your candidate and present that to voters while not stressing other less favorable polls.  But this is not what the Alsobrooks campaign did with this e-mail to all of its followers: it presented its own internal poll as “a new poll”—not as its own internal poll—and presented it as an Axios poll and, on top of that, did that when the campaign itself had provided that data to Axios.  This is a form of lying to voters and is disinformation: deliberate misrepresentation, misattribution, and omission to dupe voters into thinking its candidate is far more competitive than any of the credible data indicates.

But now we must also talk about journalistic integrity: the reporter, Stephen Neukam (I tried to contact him directly but received no response), and/or his editors at Axios were either engaging in blatant advocacy designed to unfairly boost (from a journalistic perspective) the Alsobrooks campaign or were not discerning or careful enough with their work to realize they were being coopted by the Alsobrooks campaign to push a misleading agenda about the state of the race, with Neukam’s article’s title being “Hot Dem primary in Maryland tightens a month before election;” to be fair, as a journalist myself I know that often we reporters are not the ones who craft the title and that editors often do that in ways me might not choose to for our own work, but the point is, Neukam or his editors or both did present a clearly misleading picture with that headline but also some of the text within the article by putting out an Alsobrooks campaign internal poll as evidence of a tightening Democratic U.S. Senate primary race between Trone and Alsobrooks when only that less credible internal poll deliberately provided to Axios by the Alsobrooks campaign presented such a picture and the other more credible independent, non-internal, non-partisan polls had shown Trone with a much larger lead: the latest poll with Trone leading Alsobrooks by 19 was just days away from coming out on April 16 when the Axios article was published on April 12, but the latest independent poll before that had come out on April 2 and gave Trone a 9-point lead, and, as noted, the other two previous polls had also given Trone a far larger lead than the 3-point lead of the Alsobrooks campaign internal poll.

Are we getting into the weeds here?  Sure.  But we reporters are like mechanics who are responsible for fine-tuning and checking out what’s under the hood for the customer.  And what has happened here is that a used car salesman has lied about what he sold his customer or was not professional enough to know what he as a salesman picked up was not in good working order before selling it, either knowing the car was messed up or getting hoodwinked by the seller he got it from before selling to the customer.  In this case, I am the mechanic, pointing out what is not working under the hood to the voters, raising questions about Axios and Neukam and clearly finding wrongdoing by the Alsobrooks campaign.

There have to be consequences and learning here.  Both Neukam and Axios should review what happened and be careful in the future not to present any internal polls as game-changers or indicative or the real state of any race, especially one provided directly by that poll’s campaign to them; at best, such an internal poll should be an aside detail in a larger article, it should not drive a headline claiming to portray the state of a major high-stakes primary race: this is just good journalist practice to avoid overstating internal polls (and a single poll in general) and Axios needs to do better.  And the Alsobrooks campaign should reprimand or perhaps even fire the staff responsible for framing that e-mail’s contents the way it was framed.

In the end, any political campaign must establish and preserve trust with its supporters (current or prospective), and a breach of that trust by deliberately feeding them disinformation about polling, the nature of the polling, and who produced the polling to paint an unrepresentative picture of the level its candidate’s competitiveness in order to paint a far more favorable picture for the candidate than the reality in order to, in turn, raise money from people reading that disinformation is a serious affair that is a test for the campaign and its integrity, its very ability to be honest even when the going gets tough.

As I stated in the beginning, I very much do not believe County Executive Alsobrooks herself was personally involved in generating the disinformation in this e-mail, but the campaign does bear her name and she is responsible for the staff she and her senior staff select as well as all of the content put out by their campaign.  So while I do not believe she would do anything like this, if nothing is done to correct this serious breach of trust exhibited by that email, if steps are not taken to prevent any reoccurrence of anything similar, it would call into question her ability to lead, to run a major political office, and to put people in place who will properly react to such breaches of trust when discovered.  While I can understand the pressure in a race to raise money against a very wealthy opponent who has heavily outspent you when the real polling has you down significantly and the primary is just weeks away, there is no excuse for this behavior exhibited in this e-mail, nor for ignoring such behavior or letting it slide.  Still, this is an opportunity for her and her campaign to show leadership by doing the right things, by issuing an apology and a correction and disciplining those responsible for the disinformation email discussed herein.

Alsobrooks Also Has Other Issues

Apart from the disinformation email, the Alsobrooks campaign can fairly be accused of being less than stellar in its approach.  The e-mails you get from her campaign nearly all come off as if they are written by AI, lacking substance and pizazz, and nearly all asking for money and centering on asking for money, many of those complaining about how much money Trone has spent (and boy, we will get to that!).

Yes, Trone has spent a lot of money, but Alsobrooks has raised a lot, too: not that far from $7.2 million through the end of March, including $2.1 million for 2024’s first quarter.  But you’d be hard-pressed to understand how that money has been spent.  Is it on quality e-mail communications?  Certainly not.  It is on television ads?  Nope: Alsobrooks has only just started putting out TV ads in mid-February (and not that many since then until the past few weeks).  Which begs the question: why?  Because she has significant amounts of money she is not spending.  History tells us that striking first helps: you frame the race that way and put your opponent on the defensive, forcing him to react, while also raising your own profile earlier and generating more attention and thus drawing more money earlier: spending more early means you can raise even more later in a reinforcing feedback loop.  And the March Washington Post/UMD poll had 58% of respondents saying they had “no opinion” when it came to Alsobrooks to 46% saying the same for Trone while Hogan had a 64% favorable rating.

But even with her massive challenge with a clear majority of voters not knowing who she is or much about her, for Alsobrooks, of the more than $4.9 million she had raised by the end of 2023, over $3.1 million had remained unspent at that time (“cash on hand”).  After the end of first quarter of 2024 just a few weeks ago, Alsobrooks had nearly $3.2 million cash on hand unspent and for the entire campaign, had spent less than $4 million; in contrast, Trone had spent nearly everything he had, with just under $1 million left unspent at the end of March and spending over $41.6 million by then.

Folks, this represents two very different strategies.  Trone’s is to leave it all on the field and to be the one who shapes the race and garners notice and recognition (much) sooner rather than later, but it is not clear what Alsobrooks’s own strategy is: people are already voting by mail and early voting starts May 2, in ten days.  What is she waiting for??

If Alsobrooks loses, her people will claim it is because she was so heavily outspent.  But that will not necessarily be the reason why as more money doesn’t always mean victory.  In U.S. Senate general election races, the bigger spender has lost in about one-fifth of the races in the past two decades.  And at the presidential level, Bernie Sanders outspent Hillary Clinton in 2016 and lost while she outspent future insurrectionist Donald Trump in the general election and lost; Biden was outspent in 2020 by Bernie and some other rival Democrats, too, all who lost; and Trump was outspent by some of his rivals in the 2016 primaries (remember Jeb! and his $100 million?) who lost and has been outspent by some of his 2024 primary opponents.

Again, I don’t know what Alsobrooks is spending her campaign’s money on, but her TV ads starting so late in the primary may have doomed her campaign, especially seeing how many ads with which Trone was flooding the market.  She should have been advertising on TV towards the end of 2023 and she had the money then to have done so, which would almost certainly have garnered her more name recognition and then more money and more support.  We will never know if it would have been enough, but the Alsobrooks campaign has hardly been running an A-game campaign that looks capable of upsetting a higher-spending rival: a much-better-run campaign can beat and has beaten a less-well-run campaign even if that less-well-run campaign outspends it, but if you aren’t even running a particularly good campaign, money is hardly the beginning or the end of your woes or the clear reason for a loss, for which it looks as if Alsobrooks is heading.

Alsobrooks has also had a harder time explaining how her experience as a county executive and state’s attorney translates well into the work of the Senate, while Trone’s efforts in the House translate perfectly to Senate work as they are both concerning federal legislative positions.  As I have discussed before, this is in part because voters have long-deemed county executive work to be less relevant and less transferable when it comes to the U.S. Senate, only exceedingly rarely sending someone in that position directly to the U.S. Senate.  Additionally, while Alsobrooks has touted specific accomplishments as a county executive, it is unclear what distinguishes her from other country executives in terms of her record: sharing a debate stage with her four times, I have not heard rank her accomplishments relative to other county executives in the state or make an evidence-based case that sets her apart from other county executives in general, whereas Trone is quick to tout that he is one of the most objectively bipartisan members of Congress and the most effective of the entire Maryland delegation.  Thus, Trone sounds more like a senator that she does talking about what he does as a leader and has been more effective in explaining what makes him unique and stand out among his peers.

Additionally, Trone has also garnered an impressive number of endorsements from prominent Democrats in Alsobrooks’s own Prince George’s County as well as U.S. House Minority Leader (and hopefully soon-to-be-Speaker) Hakeem Jeffries, an African-American and one of the country’s most prominent and powerful black politicians in a race where Alsobrooks is definitely highlighting the historic nature of her candidacy as an African-American woman.

Furthermore, while I have seen Trone generate a more dynamic response from audiences with a somewhat more energetic and dynamic style, Alsobrooks is more reserved and careful with her approach.  I experienced this most keenly observing the two at a NAACP forum last month in front of a mostly-African-American church audience in Fort Washington.  I was a bit surprised that Trone seemed to connect more viscerally with that audience than Alsobrooks, who by no means did poorly but was not having the same dynamic effect as Trone was.  So cautious and reserved can be a good strategy if you have a large lead, but reserved and careful is not a good strategy when you are down significantly and consistently in the polls.  In particular, the Alsobrooks campaign keeps projecting an “everything is fine” vibe even as she has consistently polled significantly behind Trone and has always polled worse against Hogan than Trone (her best number against Hogan—40% to Hogan’s 44%–came from the March Goucher College poll, which had a significantly smaller sample size than the other independent polls and is likely less accurate as a result), continuing as they have without making any major adjustments since he entered the race.  Echoing my sentiment, the main Baltimore Sun reporter covering this race, Jeff Barker, yesterday came out with an article titled “Alsobrooks isn’t running as if she’s behind in Maryland’s US Senate primary.”  So others are also perplexed by this approach besides me…

And while I am certainly aware of gender and race dynamics—it is easier for a white man than a black women to speak more openly and worry less about consequences—the difference is still there and everything can matter and come under scrutiny for any candidate in a high-profile contest like this one.  Also, in general, her staff members at these events have seem more protective and hovering than those of Trone.  I admit these are anecdotal observations, but Alsobrooks seems great as a person and shouldn’t be seen as needing protection in a race like this by her staff but even more exposure.

To conclude, I am not sure who is helping Alsobrooks make these calls, but it sure does not seem as if her senior staff have served her well.  As a significant underdog to Trone as far as polling and money, waiting to spend millions and adopting a more reserved and careful approach is not a path to victory.  Getting the twin powerhouse endorsements of rockstar Maryland U.S. House Representative Jamie Raskin and The Washington Post—Trone would certainly have liked to have received either or both and they should persuade some undecideds—perhaps they think those endorsements will be enough to close the gap along with increased spending on ads late in the game, but that may very well be overly optimistic and is likely downright risky, given the size of the gap between her and Trone indicated in credible polling (that latest Sun/Fox/UB disastrous-for-Alsobrooks poll with her down 19 came weeks after Raskin’s endorsement but before the Post’s), and Trone is sure to surge more of his own money into advertising these last few weeks, too.

Trone’s Mortifying Polling vs. Hogan in the Context of Record Spending

In case you thought I was going to let Trone off easy or was even endorsing him here, this section will make it clear I am not.  Trone has put a staggering amount of his own family fortune into this race: some $41.7 million.  If this sounds like a lot, it is: it’s the largest amount a self-funder has ever poured into a U.S. Senate primary in American history, with the next highest person and amount not even reaching $30 million.  And while he seems to have a comfortable lead over Alsobrooks and would be the favorite to win the primary at this point, his numbers for a possible matchup against Hogan, while better than Alsobrooks’s, have ranged from troublesome to dismal: the first independent credible poll in February had him tied (42%-42% vs. an 8-point deficit for Alsobrooks), then he was down 12 (49%-37% vs. a 14-point deficit for Alsobrooks), then down one in that likely-less-accurate Goucher poll with the smaller sample size (42%-43% vs. a 4-poit deficit for Alsobrooks), then down 13 points (40%-53% vs. an 18-point deficit for Alsobrooks).  For both candidates, these are terrible numbers in a very blue state against a Republican in the era of Trump, and while Alsobrooks has spent far less and is a county executive as opposed to a member of Congress, meaning lower name recognition is more of an excuse for her, for Trone and the nearly $42 million spent through up through the first quarter, this is a terrible result: even flooding the airwaves in the most recent polls has him either trailing in heavily-Democratic Maryland or losing by double digits, the latest poll having him down 13 points.  With all the money spent, I worry this suggests Trone has more of a ceiling relative to Alsobrooks, but that may not be the case.  But I do worry that after so many commercials (if you watch non-streaming-service TV, you must have seen his ads and likely a lot), there could be a sizable chunk of voters that are more than a little hesitant to back him in the general election.

And while Alsobrooks has incessantly criticized his level of self-funding in a rather classist manner I have criticized before (in contrast to his hollow attacks on her as a “career politician”), strategically-minded Democrats like myself and some party leaders welcome the idea that during a general election, national Democratic Party efforts and the efforts of liberal allies and big leftist donors can count on Trone self-funding and turn their money and attention to other competitive races across the country.  But many other voters will not be thinking about that, and while I have mentioned that Alsobrooks is not the most dynamic or energetic speaker, I do worry that Trone being easily stereotyped as an old rich white guy will not help generate enough enthusiasm, especially compared to the idea of the much younger African-American female candidate in Alsobrooks.  Then again, enthusiasm isn’t everything, lots of less-enthusiastic people still vote and Trone so far has consistently been ahead of Alsobrook while also doing better against Hogan, even if he still loses to him.  In this case, time will tell and I am honestly torn at this point as to who is the better candidate against Hogan, as is much of the rest of the Maryland electorate.

Speaking of Trone having a more dynamic, freewheeling, colorful style than Alsobrooks, while often an asset, this also can lead to him making gaffes that Alsobrooks would not make.  One example of this was at the aforementioned NAACP forum, when he said he we need to “beat Larry Hogan like a rented mule” (this drew laughs but also groans and a mild, playful rebuke from the moderator; if there were PETA or vegetarian/vegan folks in the audience, that sure did not help Trone with them).  Another gaffe was at a House hearing last month in which Trone quite seemingly inadvertently substituted an old racial slur for the word “bugaboo,” a mishap that generated negative coverage nationwide and outrage on Twitter but might not have done too much damage.

Interestingly, of the six Maryland U.S. House Democrats who are not David Trone, five have endorsed Alsobrooks to just one of Trone’s Maryland Democratic U.S. House colleagues endorsing him, while Maryland’s Governor Wes Moore and Maryland’s  other U.S. Senator besides Cardin, Chris Van Hollen, have also endorsed Alsobrooks.

Conclusion: It’s Late in the Game but We Need These Candidates Need to Do Better or We Need Someone Else (ME!)

Even after my first debate with Trone and Alsobrooks (and the only one on which I shared the stage with Trone as he did not attend the next three while Alsobrooks did), it was clear that the performances I saw from both, while ok, were not stellar and not anything that would make me feel particularly confident in either debating Hogan (not that that they were bad, but when you are down a lot to an opponent, you have to be able to clearly beat them in several areas and debates are one of those key areas).  I am just worried that neither are particularly strong against Hogan and the polling we have thus far with neither beating him in a very Democratic state suggests my worries and those of others are justified.

Sure, polls can change over time.  It’s possible for Alsobrooks to overcome her deficit with Trone, and it’s possible for either to overcome their deficits against Hogan.  But that is not guaranteed, they do not seem to be on the path to a general election victory now, and it’s going to be too close for comfort in a state where a Democrat should easily win.  And that is, simply put, because we do not have better candidates.  The frontrunners’ current approach—that they are projecting confidence against Hogan without making any serious adjustments since he entered the race even after polling consistently shows them not beating him—is not reassuring.

Because of these campaigns’ complacency and the lack of journalists trying to push them on why they are polling so badly against Hogan in a blue state, I think it is necessary for someone else to be a third person in the weeks we have left in this race to draw attention to these issues and their shortcomings and to perhaps present a third alternative voters can rally behind.  I think I am the only Democratic candidate who can do this: the other candidates I shared space with on four debate stages so far totally avoided these issues, could not provide answers of any depth on a number of pressing topics (in contrast see me answering in the debates here and I even outshone the only frontrunner who attended in one of the debates!), and did not garner anywhere near the media coverage I have: I am the only candidate besides Trone or Alsobrooks still in the race to be quoted by any major news outlets, including The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun (see details of my coverage here).  I am likely third in the sense that I have a far greater presence on social media than any of the candidates (close to more than the Trone and Alsobrooks campaigns combined on Twitter) and more news media mentions than any other second-tier candidate, so I will come up far more easily and quickly for voters searching for information about other candidates, and once they get to my site, they will see I have by far the most detailed policy proposals of any candidate.  So for all those reasons, I believe I am likely to come in third but I need your help to really make a statement and make sure the frontrunners get the message that they need to do better!!

Look, I am not going to mislead any of you by inflating my chances of outright winning this race: I have not polled above 1% yet (technically 1.2% *but see April 30 update above that discusses rounding in polling), and it is far more likely that I can be that voice that helps hone the candidates and their campaigns and push them to adjust to be in a better position against Hogan than it is likely that I would actually win the nomination (though stranger things and political miracles have happened).  Maybe if I finish third on an upcoming poll, I can leverage that to be on stage with Trone and Alsobrooks in an upcoming debate (there’s only been one televised debate so far and just this past Friday—which only has about 4,200 views on YouTube—pretty ridiculous!) but I need you help for any of this to happen.

If I finish a strong third set firmly apart from all the other candidates after Trone and Alsobrooks, I think I can make that case publicly more effectively and perhaps even garner more influence on the party nominee and his or her campaign during the general election.  If you are concerned about what I have discussed here or are hesitant at all about the frontrunners, vote for me to let them know they need to step up their game and change course to earn your general election vote.

In the Democratic presidential primary, voters voting “uncommitted” to protest the Biden Administrations policies on Israel and Palestine amidst the Gaza war have been heard and acknowledged by Biden and his people in tense and difficult circumstances, and I have long-argued that Biden is already shifting policy in major ways behind the scenes to stand up more for Palestinians that are not yet apparent to most under a horrific geopolitical setting, but the point is that movements aiming to have a symbolic affect in political primaries can affect the conversation and garner attention at the highest levels.

We need better from Trone and Alsobrooks if one will be our standard bearer to keep Cardin’s seat blue for Democrats to better fight Trumpist MAGA insurrectionist fascism and I can play role in making that happen and, though it’s a longshot, maybe a political miracle can happen and I will be your nominee.  Whatever the outcome, whether the nominee is Trone, Alsobrooks or myself—and I will support whomever the nominee is enthusiastically—supporting me will help Democrats’ odds of winning in November because a bubble mentality and complacency is the path to losing in November.  Hogan may not be Trumpist, insurrectionist, or fascist, but he will vote far too much with MAGA so we have to win in November!

Bubbles in politics are nothing new and are quite common, but are not only dangerous in people governing but also with more extremist segments among the population.  They are also dangerous in campaigns, and the lack of self-awareness emanating from the two main frontrunners’ campaigns in the Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic primary should give all Marylanders and Americans united against insurrectionist Trump’s MAGA fascist extremism great cause for concern.  We need these candidates and their senior staff who think everything is going just fine and no major adjustments are needed to get out of their bubbles and I am the only candidate who seems willing to push them in this direction.  Spread the word and donate so we can put Democrats in the best possible chance to keep Cardin’s seat blue and defeat Hogan this fall to fight MAGA in the Senate!

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!

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!

(Russian/Русский перевод; Если вы состоите в российской армии и хотите сдаться Украине, звоните по этим номерам: +38 066 580 34 98 или +38 093 119 29 84; инструкции по сдаче здесь)

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) February 23, 2024; *Update in evening: more downed Russian aircraft; *update August 15, 2024: Earlier in February 2024, Ukraine clarified that its numbers for Russian military casualties included wounded as earlier use of the term liquidated led many to believe the running total given included only killed and not wounded; 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. Also, Brian is running for U.S. Senate for Maryland and you can learn about his campaign here.

SILVER SPRING—Regardless of how well one side is performing or another, the loss of life and destruction in Ukraine during the past two years of Putin’s imperialist war against our ally Ukraine has been horrific for all: tens of thousands of Ukrainian children have been taken as hostages by Russia into Russia and Ukrainian civilians and members of both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries are dying.  Yet far more Russians military personnel have been killed and wounded* by the Ukrainian military than the reverse (according to Ukraine’s numbers, which I have argued should be seen as quite reliable, over 408,000 Russian military and wounded* killed since February 24, 2022 as of February 23, 2024).

Yet even now, despite two years of massive embarrassment for Putin, Russia, and the Russian military, Putin shows no sign of being deterred from using that ever-so-dysfunctional military force to dismember and bend Ukraine to its will.  If anything, the U.S. failure to keep sending aid has given him and Russia a sense of hope that they can outlast the U.S. and the West, especially if insurrectionist Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican allies can keep blocking additional aid to Ukraine or even prevail in the 2024 elections.

The Asinine Politics of Aid

The U.S. aid already given is very tiny part of the overall U.S. budget: total U.S. aid since just before Russia’s late February 2022 scalation so far has been roughly $74.3 billion and the U.S. budget for FY 2023 was $6.13 trillion, so Ukraine aid only represents just over 1.2% of the budget but keep in mind that is aid over the course of two years, so divided in half to represent a one year’s aid that is only about 0.6% of the 2023 budget.  This all costs less than many, many other programs do each year, has paid for itself and then some by far, absolutely serves vital U.S. interests, and is greatly degrading the power and influence of the current largest threat to international stability, order, and Western democracy itself, Vladimir Putin’s Russia.  The current proposed additional aid invests by far most of the money back into the U.S., too.

In contrast, Russia overspent its target on defense for 2023—about an entire third of its budget—and is slated to spend about 40% of its budget on defense and security in 2024!

Abandoning Ukraine and allowing Russia to de facto control and annex parts of Ukraine’s territory, to keep Ukraine bogged down in war and terror, and to threaten the entire security of eastern Europe would undermine and jeopardize three-quarters of a century of U.S. policy in Europe, successfully built upon the ashes of World War II, nation by nation, new NATO member accession by new NATO member accession.  And NATO and other U.S.-led global alliances have, without question, presided over the most peaceful era in world history since the Pax Romana nearly two millennia ago.  Not just for reasons of national interest, though, but for deeper reasons I have articulated before, Ukraine absolutely deserves our aid.

Ukraine doesn’t have to be perfect—no country ever is and no war ever has been perfectly run, from Alexander’s war on Persia to the Allies’ war on Hitler’s Greater Nazi Reich—to merit further aid from the U.S.  Mistakes will be made—goodness knows Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive plans were far too ambitious and overextended Ukraine’s offensive potential against U.S. recommendations—but Ukraine’s track record in the two years since February 24, 2022, has been amazing by any historical standard and would be amazing against any larger, more powerful opponent, let alone Vladimir’s Putin’s Russia today.  And, as an ally, for one-year-and-a-half, America’s track record on aid to Ukraine through the Biden Administration has been amazing by any historical standard: in world history, only America’s own Lend-Lease from World War II stands as comparable.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Hark Hertling—the man with my top account to follow on Ukraine—called it perfectly: for roughly 18 months, we supported Ukraine and thwarted Russia’s objectives in invading Ukraine.  And then, for roughly the past half year, we let our aid run out and failed to authorize new aid, leaving Ukraine in a lurch as it ran out of ammunition and suffered more casualties and reverses as a result, the most significant visible result of this the Ukrainian withdrawal from the small city of Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast.

But to put it more accurately and specifically, Republicans in Congress under the not so-subtle influence of insurrectionist Donald Trump—blocking wartime aid for Ukraine for political reasons again, the last time rightfully leading to his first impeachment—and his fascist MAGA movement that have overtly aligned with fascist Putin’s Russia (I do not use that term “fascist” lightly) have been blocking aid for months.  And yes, the Trumpist-Putinist bromance is real, has been for years, and is very much ongoing.

Thankfully if very belatedly, though, aid was finally passed in the Senate with 22 Republican Senators—including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—joining nearly every Democrat to pass earlier this month a massive foreign aid package, including some $60 billion for Ukraine, but the MAGA pressure on Republicans in the House is still very real and prevalent as Christian extremist Speaker Mike Johnson has decided to follow Trump’s lead by continuing to refuse to bring the bill up for an up-and-down vote.

Why U.S. Aid Will Put Ukraine Back in the Driver’s Seat

Much of the conventional wisdom is that Ukraine has been in a stalemate for some time, but I argued months ago against this on the basis that Ukraine was continuing to inflict significant casualties on Russia’s Air Force and Navy as well as on the Russian Army even if not a lot of territory was changing hands.  I still feel that is the case and that Ukraine is winning a war of attrition and I still doubt Russia’s ability to take and hold any large new swathes of Ukrainian territory, but Ukraine is currently at its worst position since the Russians were at the gates of Kyiv (to be clear, this is far, far less bad than then, part of the reason why I still think dynamics have been favoring Ukraine and still can over time).  But it does seem that Ukraine is now exhausted to without resupply by the U.S. to the point that is might have to fall back on multiple fronts if something does not change—in the words of Gen. Hertling, an “inflection point.”

So, just to be clear, America has been failing Ukraine for months because of Trump MAGA Republicans in Congress, especially now the House under Mike Johnson.  And the result has been higher Ukrainian casualties, a stalling of Ukraine’s progress on land and even setbacks, such as the fall of Avdiivka, concurrent with a minor resurgence in Russian offensive capabilities (and it is just minor).  But if U.S. aid is still withheld in the coming months, all these trends could increase to the point of reducing Ukraine’s ability to keep inflicting large numbers of casualties and thus create a genuine stalemate, or even to have Ukraine be slightly losing overall.

But even in the current context, Ukraine is not losing!  In most cases, Ukraine is still holding Russia at bay and is still inflicting horrific casualties on Russia.  In just the past week over a five day period, Ukraine has inflicted more combat aircraft losses—seven—on Russia than the U.S. has experienced in decades (*Evening UPDATE: as if to prove my point, just today Russia has apparently lost an incredibly expensive and rare A-50U advanced surveillance aircraft, an Su-34 fighter-bomber, and possibly even an IL-22M command plane, making that 9-10 aircraft losses in little over a week!) and inflicted more combat naval losses in the first half of this month on Russia than the U.S. has experienced in decades (hell, Ukraine barely even has a navy, yet has destroyed a third of the major vessels Russia’s Black Sea Fleet: embarrassingly, Russia cannot defend its navy, something I have called since the early months of this war).  And that does not even touch on the terrible losses on land suffered by the Russians.  That all sure isn’t losing for Ukraine, that’s still winning in what has become a war of attrition, but it doesn’t feel like that, not for the world, and not for Ukrainians, and momentum could swing in Russia’s direction and may be beginning to do so in the absence of further U.S. aid.

Conversely, Ukrainians could be winning so much more with steady U.S. support.  Imagine how well Ukraine can do with a lot more U.S. aid when it has been running on fumes for these recent months and still has mostly held off Russia’s attacks while also still inflicting massive casualties on Russia, which also treats its own troops barbarically.  After all, in the end, Russian troops are in a foreign land where they are simply not wanted and where most of the locals are willing to die and take even more of them per Ukrainian to make that point (according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, seven Russians were killed per Ukrainian killed at Avdiivka, but that was said before apparent executions of captured Ukrainian soldiers after Ukraine’s withdrawal from there; still, Avdiivka was clearly a Pyrrhic Russian victory).  Given Russia’s widely visible deficiencies that I and many others have discussed at length, Russia will not be able to take over all of Ukraine and impose its will through installing a new puppet government.  And yes, while U.S. aid was coming in strong last year, Ukraine opted for an overambitious offensive strategy that spread its offensive capability too thinly and focused on some of Russia’s most heavily fortified positions contrary to U.S. advice—a planning oversight that resulted in just modest, incremental gains on the ground and led in part to the overall stellar Gen. Valery Zaluzhny being removed from overall military command earlier this month by Zelensky, all that does not mean that another, even larger round of U.S. aid will not yield far better results.  In fact, with new leadership running the military led by Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky and Ukraine’s versatility and adaptability, I would expect a new counteroffensive that would start being concocted while new U.S. aid was flowing in robustly would succeed where the last one did not and would likely focus where Russian defenses are weakest, in the south near Kherson, as I have been hoping would happen for some time.  A major thrust on the Kherson front would be able to bypass and threaten from the rear or outflank many of Russia’s most heavily fortified lines in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk, dramatically altering the dynamics from the way the fighting has unfolded for most of 2023.  And Zelensky is already indicating this may very well be the case, or at least that the south is now going to be the main objective in the next offensive; such an offensive could even threaten Russia’s occupation of Crimea. 

And while the lack of territorial gains from Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive did get a lot of attention, the fact that the entire time Ukraine was striking deep behind enemy lines and hollowing and thinning out Russian forces and defenses from Crimea to the Donbas did not get as much attention (even if strikes inside Russia did).  This destruction wreaked on Russian forces, bases, air defenses, equipment, and supply lines still has yet to bear full fruit but will when there is finally another successful Ukrainian counteroffensive and the heaviest frontline defenses of Russia are breached.  Then, the middle and rear Russian positions far from the current fronts will collapse more quickly than many imagine they will because of the cumulative effects described above.

The House Can Pass that Aid and Ukraine Can Still Win

Having suffered from mistakes and now being left in the lurch by MAGA Republicans in Congress, Ukrainian planners will do much better once they start receiving U.S. aid again.  And I am confident that at the least Democrats in the House will get enough House Republicans (I think even more after Putin’s killing, directly or indirectly, of the prime Russian dissident, Alexei Navalny; major new sanctions on Russia in response were just announced today by Biden) to enact a rare discharge petition procedure and force a vote on the floor of the House on the Ukraine aid bill, which should result in the bill passing soon after the House returns from the ill-timed vacation Speaker Johnson sent it on.

Over the course of months of waiting for U.S. aid, Ukraine has still inflicted punishing losses on Russia—including expensive fighter jets and naval vessels—while only losing small amounts of territory and one small city.  Ukraine is more than capable of winning this war, and with a steady resumption of U.S. aid, it will.  Putin’s main audience targets with his farcical interview with Tucker Carlson were voters in America gullible enough to take anything he says at face value: more than missiles from Iran or artillery rounds from North Korea, Putin needs MAGA Republicans to be able to block U.S. aid in Congress to “win” this war, and the reelection of insurrectionist Trump as president would not only weaken American democracy perhaps fatally, it could mean a U.S. exit from NATO, not just an end to support for Ukraine, making Europe even more vulnerable to Russian aggression. 

A win for Biden and enough Democrats in Congress to thwart MAGA Republicans who have an affinity for Putin and Russia, conversely, mean Russia will lose the Ukraine war and lose badly, Putin likely falling from power at some point as a consequence.  But very key now will be getting new U.S. aid to Ukraine so Ukraine can try again and find more success on the offensive.  All this is very possible, even quite likely, should that U.S. aid start flowing and there is every reason to be confident that a Ukraine brimming with $60 billion in a new aid, ammunition, weapons, and equipment can surprise us all again and eventually push Russian forces back into Russia, liberating every square inch of its territory.

Indeed, in many ways, the fates of Biden, Zelensky, Democrats, and Ukraine on one side are tied to each other in the way the fates Putin, insurrectionist Trump, MAGA Republicans, and Russia on another side are tied to each other, but I still believe that democracy will triumph over fascism and that Ukraine, Zelensky, and Biden will triumph together over Russia, Putin, and Trump.

Brian’s Ukraine analysis has been praised by: Mykhailo Podolyak, a top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; the Ukraine Territorial Defense Forces; Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, U.S. Army (Ret.), former commanding general, U.S. Army Europe; Scott Shane, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist formerly of The New York Times & Baltimore Sun (and featured in HBO’s The Wire, playing himself); Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of the only Republicans to stand up to Trump and member of the January 6th Committee; and Orwell Prize-winning journalist Jenni Russell, among others.

See all Brian’s Ukraine coverage here

© 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!

Podcast episode page with extended notes coming soon Eleventh episode on the Trumpist January 6, 2021, attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol, the ongoing Trump insurrection, and their threats to our democracy with Staff Sgt. (U.S. Army Ret.) and former U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell (follow him on Twitter) and buy his new book: American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy (Barnes & Noble and Amazon); Warning: adult language throughout

January 6 was about more than a day: it was a months-long, premediated process before that day and that coup attempt is still ongoing in plain sight with the same ringleaders, one of whom is the leading candidate to be the nominee for President of the United States for the Republican Party. People were dies an many were injured—Staff Sgt. Gonell being one of the latter—and it could have been far worse: our democracy has survived but is damaged and wounded and still under threat, its survival not guaranteed. Gonell was there, that day, risking his life and holding the line against a mob of violent, rabid, supposedly “pro-police” Trump insurrectionists, hell bent on disrupting and stopping the peaceful transfer of power this country had experienced uninterrupted from 1797 until 2021, when that tradition was shattered by Trump and his supporters. Gonnell and I talk about that day, the insurrection overall, and his immigrant experience that brought him to love this country and put his life on the line in Iraq and on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol.

PLEASE like, share, and subscribe if you enjoy this episode!

Notes:

See Staff Sgt. Gonell’s moving testimony to the January 6 Committee:

His answering a key question from then Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) during the hearing: “‘I’m Still Recovering From Those Hugs And Kisses”:

See him on MSNBC slamming Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) for minimizing January 6

And see him on CNN condemning those who are insurrectionists deniers:

Also see most of my work on the insurrection here

Specifically, see my Podcast with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Voting Implementation Manager Gabriel Sterling, and Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs talk of the Trumpian threat to democracy and life less than a week before the January 6, 2021 coup attempt

Also see my take on how the worst strains in U.S. history united to spawn January 6 (Jerusalem Post)

And also these three articles: explaining how obvious it is Trump is guilty of insurrection even before the impeachment trial

how the impeachment trial made it even more obvious

how all four of Trump’s criminal cases are deeply related and reinforce each other

and how our politics must be defined by pro-Constitution/rule of law,/democracy and anti-insurrection/Trump on one hand and traitors and treason on the other, à la Gen. U.S. Grant.

Also see my presentations of the two most relevant indictments against Trump from federal Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton Country, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis.

On the 140 officers who were injured by the insurrectionists (Washington Post)

Donate here to help injured capitol police & their families affected by January 6

BONUS: the Trump/eagle incident Gonell referenced…

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).

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

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!

A Special Commissioned Report of Real Context News Intelligence (PDF version here)

by Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content, my Linktree with all his public links/profiles); contact Brian with your own requests about any topic to have your own custom reports produced

August 29, 2023

1. Some Context of the U.S. Relationships with Taiwan and China

Unlike arms sales to all other foreign “entities” (a term used in large part because Taiwan receives much in U.S. arms sales but is not formally recognized as a an independent country by the U.S.), arms sales to Taiwan are uniquely not covered by The Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) of 1961 and The Arms Export Control Act (AECA) of 1976, most of those handled through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program—in which the U.S. acts as an intermediary between vendors and foreign recipients and handles the sale and delivery of entire weapons systems and full support packages—and Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) licenses—in which U.S. vendors sell directly to  foreign recipients.  There are some other less common options, such as coming from existing Department of Defense stockpiles through Excess Defense Articles (EDA) provisions and Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), the latter increasingly common in the current emergency climate and available to FMS-eligible entities.  But all Taiwan arms sales are regulated by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which explicitly states that “the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability” and restricts the factors that can play into the decision-making process of what to send Taiwan and when: “The President and the Congress shall determine the nature and quantity of such defense articles and services based solely upon their judgment of the needs of Taiwan, in accordance with procedures established by law” (emphasis added).[1]

All this means that Taiwan is a special case when it comes to U.S. arms sales.

And the reasons for this are easy to understand: China is essentially the second most powerful nation on earth, thus overtly recognizing Taiwan as a fully independent, separate legal state from China could carry severe consequences.[2]  As the last bastion of World War II-U.S.-ally Nationalist China, Taiwan held onto China’s seat on the United Nations Security Council even after it lost the Chinese Civil War in 1949, as the U.S. did not recognize the Chinese Communist Party-led People’s Republic of China’s government in Beijing, but the Nationalist government in Taipei, Taiwan, as the legitimate Chinese government.  But in the wake of The United Nations General Assembly installing the People’s Republic of China in China’s United Nations seats in the General Assembly and the Security Council in 1971 and around the time of Nixon’s breakthrough visit to Mao’s China in 1972, what would become known as the “one China” policy would emerge and come to be official U.S. policy of the Nixon Administration and every administration since.[3]  Following the emergence of that policy, the Carter Administration began to lay the groundwork in 1978 for formal U.S. diplomatic recognition of the Communist People’s Republic of China as “China” in place of Taiwan on January 1, 1979.[4]  In response, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) later in 1979 to assure Taiwan that while it was recognizing the communist mainland Chinese government, it was not abandoning Taiwan and would empower the government in Taipei to defend itself from a military takeover at the hands of the government in Beijing with “defense articles and defense services” (e.g., arms).  After a bit of wrangling, during the summer of 1982, the Reagan Administration would broaden and deepen the general “one-China” framework to include six general “assurances”:

1. In relation to specific language from an earlier Reagan Administration communique the same year stating a vague plan to eventually reduce and end arms sales to Taiwan with the culmination of a “peaceful,” “final resolution” between Beijing and Taipei, it was stated that the U.S. had not agreed to set any specific date for ending arms sales to Taiwan.
2. The U.S. had not agreed to consult the government in Beijing on any of these arms sales to the government in Taipei.
3. The U.S. would not attempt to play any mediating role between Beijing and Taipei.
4. The U.S. had not agreed to revise the TRA.
5. The deliberately ambiguous assertion that U.S. had not changed its stance on sovereignty over Taiwan.
6. The U.S. would not pressure the government in Taipei to negotiate with the government in Beijing.

These six assurances, the TRA, and three sets of communiques—two the circumstances of which were touched on above in 1972 (Nixon Administration) and 1978 (Carter Administration) and a third in 1982 (Reagan Administration) stating U.S. policy was to support a “peaceful reunification” between Beijing and Taipei—are what the Biden Administration regards as its and America’s main guidance for the “one China” policy, with the text of the “Six Assurances” clarified by Congress during the Obama Administration in 2016.[5]

Short of formally legally recognizing Taiwan as a fully independent country, Washington has had considerable freedom of action for decades, though as China has risen considerably in power and stature in recent years and seeks to be more assertive on the world stage, there is growing concern that, above all other issues, Taiwan may propel the U.S. and China onto a collision course resulting in war between the two most powerful countries on earth.  Among the most prominent individuals who share this concern is noted scholar Graham Allison, renown for decades for his now textbook analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis; Graham’s famous analysis first appears in 1968 as a RAND Corporation paper, then in 1969 in The American Political Science Review, then in 1971 in a much-expanded book version, Essence of Decision, itself reworked in a new edition in 1999 once significant amounts of information on the event were declassified.[6]

Graham popularized what is now known as the Thucydides trap.  The name of this trap refers to the fifth-century BCE ancient Greek historian Thucydides, considered the founder of the so-called “realist” international relations theory framework and who has become one of the great historians in human history for his chronicling of the great war between rising power Athens and established power Sparta (“The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable” [1.23]).[7]  In this vein, a “Thucydides trap” refers to a situation where the rise of one power is confronted by a more established power and results in a direct war between the two powers, which Allison very much sees will be the case with China and the U.S.[8]

Not everyone is on board with the degree of concern broadcast by Allison, who is convinced war will happen unless there are “more radical changes in attitudes and actions, by leaders and publics alike, than anyone has yet imagined.”[9]  While I would hardly dismiss his concerns, I find the likelihood far less: for me, it is hard to see or the U.S. or China gaining much from such a conflict but it is easy to see both losing much and their economies and, indeed, societies, are terribly intertwined even if their militaries and political systems are not.

Still, while the latest caches of arms going to Taiwan from the U.S. will hardly improve, and, indeed, will at least ostensibly harm Sino-American relations, even if there will hardly be a diplomatic break or a halting of trade, this latest arms transfers between Taiwan and the U.S. are worth looking into in some detail.  But it can be confusing where to start.  If a sale is announced, it may literally be years before it arrives.  What about gifts that are not sales that will arrive in Taiwan far earlier than sales that happened earlier?  Or financial grants for Taiwan to purchase weapons?  What about training and support services?  I was confused by all this myself, hence my longer-than-anticipated report on the variety of military support the U.S. is offering Taiwan, any of which could be counted among the “latest” arms or intended/future U.S. arms transfer to Taiwan.

To understand the latest transfers, it is important to understand that there are both sales and other types of assistance going to Taiwan.  To start, we will begin with the sales.

2. U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan and Their Implications

The Biden Administration announced it intended to seek $1.1 billion in Foreign Military Sales of U.S. arms and support services in early September 2022.  The packages announcement came at a time of heightened tension with China shortly after then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan a month earlier, which resulted in angry denunciations from Beijing and aggressive military training exercises violating Taiwanese waters and airspace, the largest military exercises in China’s history.[10]  While a number or public figures condemned Pelosi’s act as irresponsibly provocative, I felt China’s reaction was more kabuki performance-theater (or xiqu, if you will) than anything else: was much ado about very little, but Chinese President Xi Jinping felt compelled to make a very public, “strong” reaction.  Still, the fact that China reacted so theatrically and so symbolically (but not in any substantive, far-reaching ways) to the peaceful visit of a senior civilian legislator who was then an eighty-two-year-old woman to me hardly projected strength, but, rather, insecurity.  In any event, over a year later there still have not been any far-reaching consequences from Pelosi’s visit.[11]

The more than $1.1 billion in arms was the largest yet proposed by the Biden Administration and included up to 60 anti-ship Harpoon missiles for $355 million, up to 100 Sidewinder AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles for $85 million, and $655 million in logistical support for Taiwan’s early-warning air-defense radar surveillance systems.[12]

As Taiwan is an island China can only attack from air and sea, such a package would greatly increase the cost of any assault against Taiwan for Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Air Force (PLAAF), to say the least.  With the Japan-and-South-Korea-allied U.S. Navy protecting the waters nearby and with China having only three aircraft carriers and only several dozens or the larger types of ships (cruisers, frigates, corvettes, destroyers., and amphibious landing ships) so essential for any major amphibious assault given those U.S and its allies’ navies nearby, even after a rapid buildup, the untested navy of China’s that has not seen any combat in decades (over forty-four years ago it had a border war in 1979 that was a loss to Vietnam, besides that there was just a small skirmish since then in 1988) remains vulnerable.  This is especially the case after seeing the damage that Ukraine—which barely has a navy of its own—has been able to do to the Russian Navy with relatively inexpensive anti-ship missiles (the same type as or similar to the ones the West is supplying to Taiwan) and drones, Russian vulnerability I was keen and early to point out in April, 2022.[13]  That is not to say PLAN is just like the Russian Navy: the Chinese ships are far newer than Russia’s, yet have not been tested in combat.  In any situation, though, the overall U.S. capabilities are far ahead of China’s, factoring the interrelated systems each can deploy (China’s larger number of ships is hardly the be all and end all), and that does not even get into how much some of the major U.S. allies in the region—especially Japan, South Korea, and to a degree France and even Australia—are also considerable naval powers in the region; even the U.K. plans to send a carrier strike group to the region soon, in 2025.[14]  And do not not forget all these sales and transfer are for Taiwan itself, which is also engaging in a rapid, impressive military buildup of its own, punching far above its weight in key areas, with rough ratios of 1 to 4 in fighter aircraft (set to increase), 1 to 2 in trainer aircraft (particularly important for producing high quality pilots), and 1 to 3 in attack helicopters against a China that is just shy of sixty times more populous and with a GDP nearly 24.5 times larger![15]

After this the package announcement in September, in early December the State Department announced that it intended to allow another package with the FMS sale of $428 million in U.S. military aircraft spare parts—especially for F-16s and C-130 transports—and equipment especially as Taiwan’s military aircraft have seen heavy use with in patrolling all the aggressive Chinese military exercises nearby.[16]  To me, this sends a clear signal that the China cannot expect to wear out Taiwan’s aircraft through its aggressive exercises.

That announcement was followed upon at the end of the month by another of a $180 million FMS sales package of Volcano anti-tank mine-laying systems and training, ammunition, and services for those systems.^[17]  I feel this is a way of reminding China that even if it were to land troops on Taiwan, the fight would definitely continue on land at a cost to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

2023 saw the Biden Administration begin by announcing in early March that it intended to sell 200 medium air-to-air AMRAAM missiles and 100 AGM-88B HARM ground-radar-targeting missiles in a $619 million FMS package.[18]  This would bolster both offense and defense for Taiwan’s combat jets.

Another FMS sales package for over $440 million was announced late in June, including $332 million in Bushmaster autocannon 30mm ammunition for some of Taiwan’s CM-34 wheeled infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) as well as $108 million in spare parts for vehicles, small arms, and support systems and services.[19]  The way I see this package, if the Volcano package was a reminder that Chinese armor may pay a price, this is a reminder that the Taiwanese infantry and their support vehicles would be well-equipped and well-supplied.

Finally, just last week, yet another FMS arms package was announced by the Biden Administration, this one $500 million to equip Taiwan F-16s with infrared search tracking systems and related spare parts and equipment.[20]  This is an added reminder that Chinese aircraft may pay a dear price in any attack on Taiwan.  Just days after this sales package was announced and just days ago, China responded by sending dozens of combat jets towards Taiwan, with many violating Taiwan’s airspace and causing Taiwan to scramble its own fighter jets to intercept.[21]

This year-long-period’s worth of packages worth well over $3.2 billion demonstrates to China that its forces at sea, in the air, and on land will potentially face a steep price as all three vectors are receiving substantial boosts from U.S. military arms and equipment sales to Taiwan.

3. Delays in Delivery of Sales to Taiwan

Unfortunately for Taiwan, supply-chain and manufacturing issues have led to a backlog for some $19 billion in weapons deliveries of previous U.S. arms sales packages for Taiwan—including 66 F-16s, a proportionally major increase (see above graphic), HIMARS, and some 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles and 100 Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems—and that was before all but one arms sales packages discussed above.  Ukraine is also playing a role in somewhat competing for attention with Taiwan, but it is not playing the role that some like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) are claiming (see note 30 and discussion in IV).  For the most part, the idea that FMS weapons sales to Taiwan are being affected by PDA transfers to Ukraine is a red herring: they are coming from two entirely different sources—U.S. private sector manufacturers producing orders for Taiwan and existing U.S. defense stockpiles for Ukraine, respectively, with only one recent existing stockpile PDA having been authorized for Taiwan, the first of this type for Taiwan—so they are not coming from the same pot and are therefore not in immediate competition with each other.  That is why Ukraine has been able to quickly receive various weapons systems and Taiwan is facing a $19 billion backlog, as the manufacturers are suffering from a number of production and supply-chain issues but the U.S. already has its stockpiles.  Indeed, before Russia’s February 2022 escalatory further invasion of Ukraine, the Taiwan arms sales delivery backlog was still a whopping $14 billion, and most of the delayed items were purchased from 2015 to 2019.  As Jennifer Kavanagh and Jordan Cohen noted in War on the Rocks:

Across U.S. arms deliveries to all clients completed between 2012 and 2021, the average time between sale and delivery was about four years for air defense systems, 3.5 years for aircraft, and 2.5 years for missiles.  Sometimes these delays stretch up to almost 10 years. Taiwan’s delays are in line with these figures.  Notably, while clients of major U.S. adversaries like Russia and China often receive faster arms deliveries in general, they face similarly lengthy backlogs when it comes to more high-end systems.

The same authors outline a number of major reasons for this:

1. The U.S. industrial base has been unable to keep up with increasing demand
2. Defense business sector consolidation has meant a smaller number of production lines and suppliers
3. The supply chains are long and production methods are complex, vulnerable to geopolitical, weather, and economic disruptions
4. The political instability in the U.S., particularly the budgeting shenanigans that have increasingly become a reckless norm, means contract authorizations are delayed and defense-contractors are becoming more averse to long-term investment (I will add my own thoughts to this later and name the perpetrators)
5. We are still recovering from the issues in supply chain upheavals and production halts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic
6. Inefficiencies in the long process from sale to delivery are increasing because of increasing U.S. global arms sales, leading to the prioritization of bigger, more expensive systems being moved faster than some of Taiwan’s more “asymmetric” items
7. An outdated Department of Defense process for allocating funds for FMS is also slowing things down
8. Delays from export controls can even occur after the deal is done, a result of byzantine legal rules that can slow things down
9. (The authors also note a ninth general reason that has not that been the case with Taiwan: congressional committees can further put informal yet indefinite holds on delivery until the sitting administration addresses their concerns) 

Numbers 6.) and 7.) are also affecting PDA transfers that until recently Ukraine benefited from and Taiwan did not (and number 9.) while not affecting Taiwan, is definitely affecting Turkey as Sen. Bob Mendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has put a hold on the Biden Administration’s sale of F-16s there).  As more and more PDA packages are considered for both Ukraine and Taiwan, there will be an issue of direct competition for resources from the same pot, but those have yet to truly present themselves in any significant way and that simply is not the case with the $19 billion backlog for Taiwan.  There are some other bandwidth issues related to Ukraine, and those will be discussed in section IV, but those are also unrelated to Taiwan’s arms sales delivery delays.  Thankfully, the Biden Administration and Congress are moving to mitigate some of these issues, including throwing substantial funding into shoring up and further developing and expanding many aspects of the industrial defense sector.  Additionally, both the Department of State and Department of Defense are well aware of the problems and have announced specific plans to combat them in May and June of this year, respectively.  While results generally remain to be seen, the Biden Administration has already opened and recently used the Presidential Drawdown Authority to speed up new transfers of weapons to Taiwan, and those betting against this administration when it puts its mind to something have often been objectively and severely guilty of underestimating it.[22]

4. U.S. Arms Grants, Loans, Other Military Aid for Taiwan in an Era of Political Dysfunction

There are instances when Congress authorizes acts and appropriates money for them separately.  Overall, there are three types of spending in Congress: mandatory, discretionary, and interest.  That last one involves interest payments on the national debt, and mandatory spending involves programs that are budgeted for in their laws establishing them (healthcare costs and social security together account for 77% of mandatory spending in 2023).  But discretionary spending involves programs established by law that are not funded for in their enacting legislation and that must be funded by one of twelve separate appropriations bills put together by House and Senate Appropriations Committees and Subcommittees, but some or all of those bills are often combined into omnibus bills (defense spending accounts for nearly half of discretionary spending this year).[23] What makes this year’s non-sales Taiwan arms package interesting is that it is part of discretionary spending and there has thus far been more authorized in its enacting legislation than has been appropriated in the appropriations legislation due to a complicated debate and set of circumstances.

The Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act (TERA), sponsored by the aforementioned Sen. Menendez, was approved by Congress as part of the the $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022 and signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden at the end of 2022.[24]  TERA included up to $10 billion in grants for military purchases—up to $2 billion per year for fiscal years 2024-2027—and $2 billion per year in loans for the same over the same period.  It represents the first time Title 22 Foreign Military Financing (FMF) run by the State Department is being authorized for Taiwan.  The bill also authorized deeper military training and collaboration between the U.S. and Taiwan, created a regional weapons stockpile, and fast-tracks weapons disbursement to Taiwan—allowing the same type of methods being used to deliver much of the U.S. weaponry going to Ukraine that permits disbursement from existing U.S. stockpiles, in this case, up to an additional $1 billion in arms per year for Taiwan.  The bill goes further to authorize the setup of a fast-track FMS method to get Taiwan arms it has purchased more rapidly than it currently receives them.[25]

As this was all discretionary spending, though, the funding was appropriated separately from the authorization in the $1.7 trillion omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023.  And that bill did not include the $10 billion in grants that would come from the State Department’s FMF program.  During the negotiations, the Senate leaders on the appropriations committee handling the State Department, Chairman Chris Coons (D-DE) and Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-SC), agreed that this large amount of $10 billion might end up coming from other duly authorized military grants and humanitarian aid programs, as the State Department’s entire funding level for FY 2023 was only set at $59.7 billion.  The $2 billion per-year is no small amount, then, and other top FMF program recipients—Israel ($3.3 billion) and especially Egypt ($1.3 billion) and Jordan ($425 million) all have much lower GDPs than Israel, with Taiwan has increasing its defense spending 13.9% in 2023 to $18.3 billion.  The two senators formed a strange bipartisan combination and faced other strange bedfellow sharing bipartisan concern for their bipartisan opposition to the grants, but especially with serious a serious global hunger crisis and the war in Ukraine, Coons, Graham, and others wanted to make sure other urgently needed aid is not impacted.  The bill did include the $2-billion-a-year in loan offers, but Taiwan has since stated is it not interested in taking out U.S.-offered loans.[26]

But the bill with TERA has since resulted in the first of the Presidential Drawdown Authority disbursements, one worth $345 million out of the $1 billion authorized by the late December 2022 legislation.  This drawdown from existing U.S. stocks was announced at the end of July, is expected to arrive in Taiwan fart faster than the previous FMS purchases, and is supposed to include missiles, firearms, MANPADS portable air defense systems, intelligence and surveillance equipment, training, and education.[27]  And, according to Politico quoting one unnamed official, it is to include MQ-9 Reaper drones, though the details are being kept quiet from official, public channels for now because of “sensitivities” involving China.[28] If those drones are actually included, Col. Cedric Leighton, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)—who is one of CNN’s go-to military analysts—wrote that this would be “noteworthy” in a Twitter direct message to me.  He continued: “So far, only the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the Dominican Republic fly this…so if Taiwan were to receive this system as part of this package it would immeasurably enhance its aerial surveillance capabilities.”  He further explained that “the system Taiwan would receive is the unarmed reconnaissance and surveillance version.”  When it comes to the reaction from the other side, the former Air Force colonel commented that “China would undoubtedly find the addition of the MQ-9 to the Taiwan battlespace highly provocative, but it would serve to better integrate Taiwan’s intelligence capabilities with those of the U.S.”  For Col. Leighton: “These systems would greatly enhance Taiwan’s ability to defend itself.  There’s been no confirmation that Taiwan will actually receive four MQ-9As, but it’s difficult to fight today’s battles without such capabilities.”

My own analysis is that this is a big deal more symbolically than anything else, in that this represents a new way to get Taiwan military support in a way that bypasses the deeply backlogged FMS system.  The $345 million package is not game-changing as to the substance, but it does get Taiwan its first Reapers in its hands soon, and the point is that this new PDA method is important because the U.S. will keep sending smaller amounts of military weapons, ammunition, hardware, and training programs that will slowly but surely add up over time and amount to quite a lot over the course of the next several years.  As Taiwan is not expected to be invaded in the next few years, the priority will be Ukraine in its current hot war, but even drops will eventually fill a bucket and make a large difference over a longer timespan.  So few details of this package are known so far, and that will likely be the case with the next several that will very likely be announced for Taiwan.  Breaking them up is also sound strategy: China is almost certainly not invading next year or the year after, and keeping the packages small traps China into looking ridiculous if it overreacts.

Going back to the gaps in the two late-2022 bills, to make matters a bit confusing, a top Pentagon official—Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner—reiterated the Department of Defense’s position that all NDAA authorizations should be appropriated for after Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman had demurred to committing to requesting funding for those FMF grants, her State Department being the body overseeing FMF and not the Department of Defense; those grants were not requested in the State Department’s budget request for 2023 and have not been included in 2014 but were added by the TERA legislation for 2023 within the NDAA for 2023.  So there are dueling committees in Congress, one inserting authorization for grant funding and the other declining to include appropriations for that grant funding, which the Department of State oversees but has not explicitly asked for and seems not inclined to push for but which the Department of Defense supports as a result of its authorization.[29]

But now it is time to talk about the Republican Party.  In my own view (though I am hardly alone), there is something of an issue in the Republican Party, with many in the extreme right even being pro-Russia or anti-Ukrainian and anti-foreign humanitarian aid, some of those folks contrasting that with their staunchly anti-communist, anti-Chinese views; there is an effort on the part of some of these Republicans (Sen. Hawley just being one example) to divert money from Ukraine to Taiwan, as opposed to Democrats in general or Republicans like Sen. Graham who want to forcefully support both Ukraine and Taiwan, just the latter more once the Ukraine situation is much improved or even after Ukraine wins.[30]  With recent budget brinksmanship flirting with a shutdown, there is almost certainly concern that there could be a faction of Republicans who would push for funding for Taiwan now and then not ensure the U.S. had enough funding to meet obligations for Ukraine or humanitarian aid elsewhere.  The language of both Sens. Graham and Coon from the first few months of the year suggests that it is not so much that they oppose grants to Taiwan but want to seek additional funding to ensure those grants would not impact other programs and would be properly appropriated in concurrent legislation.  Ukraine faces a far more immediate threat in a hot war at the moment, China’s attack (if it comes) is not expected in the immediate future, and the U.S. has demonstrated an ability to move air defense systems and other equipment relatively quickly once it decides to do so.  So Ukraine for now will remain a more immediate priority and in later 2022, those grants for Taiwan were set aside to give funding to more pressing needs elsewhere.  Yet Taiwan still is getting a substantial boost in aid, especially for a wealthy country.  There is also the simple fact that the different sections within the State Department that are coming up with their own policies and priorities that are not currently exactly the same as the committee that drafted all the details of TERA, and then you have the Department of Defense commenting on FMF funding that is not its responsibility.  Some of this just seems to be bureaucratic complications, as the State Department staff working on FMF and the Defense Department Indo-Pacific Security Affairs staff are, by design and the natural bureaucratic way of things, not generally working together but with others in their own departments, with policy being approved up the chain to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin up at the top, respectively, and then with senior national security staff in the White House.  There was the whole political mess in which the legislation was also, simply, rushed at “the eleventh-hour to avoid a government shutdown, very much increasing the likelihood of disconnect and incidents like this one.  If anything, then, this issue really would seem to be the product of the political brinksmanship on the part of Republicans departing from normal procedural and political practice, manufacturing crises and leaving officials and lawmakers without enough time to smooth over details that take time, meetings, and long negotiations to review and finalize (this is me naming names as to who is responsible item 4. from the earlier War on the Rocks list; Republicans are far more to blame for the climate of current delays than Ukraine aid has had any affect by far).  Normal procedure was not the case of the process at all with the bills passed at the end of 2022, and we are seeing here its implications for national security policy and why Fitch downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+ first and foremost because of an “erosion of governance.”[31]

But the situation geopolitically and politically is, nevertheless, complex.  Ukraine is not only a situation competing with Taiwan for U.S officials’ and lawmakers’ attention as well as weapons, but it is also competing for attention among U.S. media outlets and analysts.  Very little discussion of some aspects of this legislation and weapons transfers situation has appeared until the past few months even though the bills were signed into law in December 2022.  Between the war in Ukraine, the 2024 election cycle, extreme weather events, and, perhaps most of all, the first federal and state indictments—four thus far–of a former president of the United States for crimes related to cheating or overturning an election, obstruction of constitutional procedure and justice, and trying to maintain presidential authority over classified documents after leaving office, all on top of the declining business environment for many media outlets, there is just not much bandwidth left to cover many stories in their proper context and giving them their proper depth.  The author of this very report found it challenging to put all this information together and had to find bits and pieces spread out over a great many months of coverage just to ascertain the exact provisions and ramifications of two major bills passed at the end of 2022.[32]

5. The Current Pending Legislation Enmeshed in an Epic Culture War Showdown

The House and the Senate each passed their National Defense Authorization Acts for Fiscal Year 2024 this July, both for $886 trillion.  And yet, there is perhaps an even more absurd form of brinksmanship (hard to imagine in other times but not these) than that of last year occurring in the context of the differences between the two chambers’ bills that will have to be resolved in conference committee—a committee of members from both the House and Senate that will have to agree on a single version to be presented back for approval to both chambers (last year, the House and Senate approved their versions in July and June, respectively, and issues were forebodingly not resolved until December). [33]

When it came to Taiwan, there are yet again some differences.  Senate appropriators are pushing for much more funding for Taiwan than House appropriators, meaning “the Senate’s move…again puts Republican defense hawks at odds with deficit hawks in their own party.”  The Senate appropriators want $1.1 billion for FY 2024 to replenish stockpiles that would be transferred to Taiwan under PDA, but as to the previously authorized $2 billion in FMF grants (the late December 2022 NDAA did this for 2023-2027), Sens. Graham and Coons only relented from no FMF funding for Taiwan to just $113 million in the current appropriations framework, incidentally or perhaps purposefully, the same amount the State Department has requested for all FMF grants worldwide.  Those opposing larger FMF grants to Taiwan in the Senate are doing so in the context of House Republicans on the appropriations side, who ironically are seeking to appropriate $500 million for Taiwan from the FMF grants but are trying to overall drastically cut the State Department budget from where that FMF funding would come from by 24% from what the Biden Administration requested on top of cutting the foreign aid budget and domestic spending, so any and all funding shifts or cuts will carry risk and drama.[34]  The NDAA committees in both chambers have also been working on steps to address a number of factors crippling the speed of arms delivery, but it will remain to be seen what makes into the final bill that goes to conference.[35]

Yet in the end, all the NDAA and appropriations bills are in doubt because of deeper divisions in the never-ending all-out culture war consuming American politics these days: the House FDAA only narrowly passed as extremist Republican elements succeeded in removing abortion access, transgender care, and diversity training for military personnel, utter brinksmanship conflating deeply controversial issues with defense and international security authorizations.[36]  Sadly, while more extreme than any time in my life, the politicization of national security by Republicans is not a new trend, but, as I have noted before, one that began just after the end of Cold War.[37]

Then there is the issue of the first PDA transfer from the Biden Administration to Taiwan.  As discussed, TERA as passed with the NDAA for 2023 opened this drawdown as an option for Ukraine.  This is the first drawdown from stocks that would also be available for Ukraine, the first time where there is hard, direct competition in immediately available stockpiles.[38]

At the same time, the drawdown is not that large and the priority is currently Ukraine, so it seems likely Ukraine will keep getting more and larger drawdown transfers than Taiwan, with a minimal loss or perhaps none at all to Taiwan if more funding is appropriated, whereas given the Ukraine situation, Taiwan’s wealthier status compared to Ukraine, and that Taiwan has now a well-over-$19-billion-in-sales-delivery backlog that will eventually make its way to Taiwan, Taiwan will not be “losing” much if anything in the end to Ukraine, since the PDA arms going to Taiwan are primarily being rationalized as a temporary stopgap (at least for now) to address the FMS delays and speed up delivery of weapons for Taiwan in this massive backlog context.  As noted, some have misleadingly attempted to portray things in a zero-sum way, but the less dramatic reality is what I have outlined herein.  And the numbers being talked about are not terribly large when it comes to PDA numbers for Taiwan—$1 billion authorized for FY 2023, $1.1 billion in reimbursement to replenish stockpiles related to potential Taiwan PDA transfers for FY 2024—that it is more so the unwillingness of many House Republicans to further fund Ukraine or the State Department—the budget of the latter from which FMF money comes—that is the real issue.  But if there is one thing the House Republicans under Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in the era of Trump excel at, it is creating hurricanes of drama out trivial matters or manufactured issues.

6. Concluding Analysis

As we have seen with the war between Ukraine and Russia, single shots from modern Western anti-air/air defense (e.g., Stingers and NASAMS), anti-ship (e.g., Harpoons), anti-tank weapons (e.g., Javelins), and rocket artillery (e.g., HIMARS) paired with modern effective targeting systems can effectively destroy or severely limit the use far more expensive and larger planes, ships, and ground vehicles of all types, even the most advanced Russian surface warships and jet aircraft.  Compared to the Russians, Ukraine makes every shell count far more, and a similar edge may end up with Taiwan against Chinese weapons untested in any heavy-use, sustained combat operations.  That is not to say I am an expert or up to speed on the military hardware of China, but at least against Russia, we have seen the huge edge Western weapons have over their Russian counterparts, and their ability to perform well under heavy use and with proper maintenance is not in dispute.  If anything, Taiwan will be able to benefit from lessons learned from similar weapons or even the same as being used in Russia’s imperialist war against Ukraine.  As Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, U.S Army (Ret.) noted about a year ago, “Make no mistake, China is watching” Russia’s performance in Ukraine with consideration for Taiwan.[39]  And it is not just the battlefield there that should worry China: Russia’s performance on the battlefield has left Putin’s position at home not just weak, but in a state of near-certain doom over time, if not sooner, no matter who Putin shoots down in a plane flying on the outskirts of Moscow.[40]

A concern for Taiwan and Ukraine has to be the political brinksmanship and dysfunction of the American political system, much as it been for the Fitch credit rating agency.  At least the ridiculous backlog Taiwan has been going through has received enough attention that wheels are in motion undertake some serious reform aimed at speeding up its related processes.  China, to be sure, is a threat, but it seems almost certain China will not invade this year or next and there is time to get not just the $19 billion of arms sales that is backlogged to Taiwan, but the several billion offered since then and some stocks that PDA would access in the meantime, in addition to billions more that will be authorized in the future.  By the time all this equipment arrives, Taiwan will be substantially better equipped with substantially more arms of the very types that have proven so effective in Ukraine in essentially destroy the Russian Military 1.0 that was arrayed against Ukraine in February 2022.  Very little of that force still exists, with Russia dragging half-century old tanks and century-old rifles out of storage and handing them to raw recruits that are getting slaughtered on the battlefield.

China will be better equipped that Russia, to be sure, but they have less combat experience now than the Russian military did in February 2022 and far less than that losing Russian military has now.  A military fighting on the offensive against a well-equipped, well-trained enemy fighting for his home on his home turf is a nightmare for any invading army.  To do so across the sea or by air against an island nation with a significant mountain chain tunning down the length of its island through the middle, where artillery can easily be entrenched in mountain bunker positions that can have the whole coast facing China easily covered is one thing.  But to do so while the U.S. arming that county with anti-ship missiles that can make any amphibious landing a nightmare, with anti-air missiles and air defenses that can make airstrikes and air support a nightmare, and with mines and anti-tank missiles that will make it difficult for any troops that survive the crossing or the jump out of the plane to advance further inland or even survive on a beachhead, well, that is, to paraphrase the U.S. Civil War Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, “hell.”  China would need to spend a lot of time trying to soften up positions before landing or its troops would get slaughtered (and they may even after).  And that time buys time for the U.S. and others, maybe even the powerful militaries of Japan and South Korea, to come Taiwan’s aid and for world diplomatic pressure to come down hard on China and severely damage its economy and other interests.  And that does not even account for the small Taiwanese-controlled Islands between the main Island of Formosa and the Chinese mainland—the Penghu islands near Formosa and the Kinmen islands near the Chinese coast—also being major obstacles to any invasion and serving as early warning stations.  China would likely need to neutralize them first and that only prolongs the time between the beginning of hostilities and getting large numbers of troops to land on Formosa.  There is a reason why Mao and China after the end of the Chinese Civil War neve tried to outright take Taiwan by force.

The large number relatively inexpensive, proven-effective weapons that the U.S. and other Western partners have flooded into Ukraine partnered with some smaller numbers of more expensive systems have dashed Russia’s hopes of imperial revanchism for all the world to see, and, at a smaller pace and over time, the U.S. is doing the same flooding, if at a smaller scale or at least a slower pace, in Taiwan (indeed, has been doing this for many years before Russia’s escalatory 2022 further invasion).  The costs for China could be incredibly severe should they opt for an invasion and there is hardly any guarantee of victory.  Just ask Russia.

Thus, the arms the arms packages—sales and the first of the Presidential Drawdown Authority releases—laid out here may just be a bit over $3.6 billion in military aid in the span of a year, but they include incredibly effective weapons with significant amounts of ammunition, support equipment, servicing, and training to ensure they can remain operable over time, and this is not an end, but just another drop in a bucket of years of support from the past and years to come in the future, with more than $19 billion in backlogged equipment on its way.  To use just one example, if we go back to that Deutsche Welle infographic, currently, China outnumbers Taiwan in fighter jets about 4.2 to 1—1199 to 285.  But Taiwan has 66 F-16s on order, already paid for: once they arrive, that ratio drops to about 3.4 to 1, an advantage for China that decreases by about 19% with that one order and that increases the number of Taiwan’s fighter jets by 23%.  And, again, this is just the effect of one delivery of one weapons system.  There are so many more that came before and will yet come.  China is not the only one building up, and the U.S. has been careful to offer full-spectrum support: air, land, sea, ammunition, surveillance, support equipment, training, and logistics.  Thus, the $3.6 billion in specific packages are a microcosm of the steady support of the U.S. in augmenting Taiwan’s ability to defend itself, and other U.S. efforts to fix its own supply chain, delivery, and manufacturing issues represent a desire and ability to do better.  That the U.S. still keeps trying to find more and better ways to stand by Taiwan even amidst serious dysfunction at home and while supporting Ukraine with a major active war in Europe that is the largest on that continent since World War II speaks to the strength, rather than the weakness, of the American commitment to Taiwan’s defense.

[1] Christina L. Arabia, Michael J. Vassalotti, and Nathan J. Lucas, Transfer of Defense Articles: U.S. Sale and Export of U.S.-Made Arms to Foreign Entities (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2023); “The U.S. arms sale mode of ‘Direct Commercial Sale’ influence on Taiwan Military Industry development (paper presented at International Studies Association Global South Caucus [GSCIS] Singapore, January 2015); Foreign Military Sales FAQ (Defense Security Cooperation Agency, n.d.).

[2] For a discussion of Russia’s power relative to China and the U.S., see my article: Brian E. Frydenborg, “The Post-Putin World Will Be So Much Better than This One,” Real Context News, February 28, 2023.  

[3] The Learning Network, “Oct. 25, 1971 | People’s Republic of China In, Taiwan Out, at U.N,” The New York Times, October 25, 2011;  Name redacted, China/Taiwan: Evolution of the “One China” Policy—Key Statements from Washington, Beijing, and Taipei (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2015); Winston Lord, Oriana Skylar Mastro, Timothy Naftali, and Douglas G. Brinkley, President Nixon’s Trip to China: Fifty Years Later (Council on Foreign Relations, 2022); David Shambaugh and Robert Sutter, “50 Years Later: Richard Nixon’s Historic Visit to China,” GW Today, March 22, 2022.

[4] Stephen Orlins, “Lessons We Can Learn Today From President Carter’s Legacy on China,” The Diplomat, March 11, 2023.

[5] Susan V. Lawrence, President Reagan’s Six Assurances to Taiwan (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2023); Caitlin Campbell, Taiwan: Defense and Military Issues (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2023).

[6] For his Cuban Missile Crisis analyses, see Graham T. Allison: Conceptual Models of the Cuban Missile Crisis: Rational Policy, Organization Process, and Bureaucratic Politics (RAND Corporation, 1968);  “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 63, no. 3 (September 1969): 689-718; Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971); and Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2^nd ed. (Reading: Longman, 1999).

[7] Probably the best edition of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to The Peloponnesian War, ed. Robert B. Strassler, trans. Richard Crawley (New York: Free Press, 1996).  For Thucydides as the father of realist international relations theory, see Gregory Crane “Truest Causes and Thucydidean Realisms,” in his Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity: The Limits of Political Realism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

[8] See Graham Allison, “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?,” The Atlantic, September 24, 2015 and his much expanded argument in his book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) along with Harvard University’s Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs companion website, including case studies throughout history of other Thucydides traps (12 of 16 examples in the last 500 years have led to war) and many additional insights from Allison and various collaborators.

[9] While a whole separate briefing could be written on this subject, for larger discussions of Graham’s views on this and the U.S.-China Thucydides trap in general, see Alan Greeley Misenheimer, Thucydides’ Other “Traps” The United States, China, and the Prospect of “Inevitable” War, National War College (Washington: National Defense University Press, 2019); Richard Hanania, “Graham Allison and the Thucydides Trap Myth,” Strategic Studies Quarterly, 15, no. 4 (Winter 2021): 13-24; Michael Desch, War Is a Choice, Not a Trap: The Right Lessons from Thucydides (Defense Priorities, 2022); Michael A. Peters, Benjamin Green, Chunxiao Mou, Stephanie Hollings, Moses Oladele Ogunniran, and Fazal Rizvi, “US–China Rivalry and ‘Thucydides’ Trap’: Why this is a misleading account,” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54, no. 10 (2022): 1501-1512; Yanzhong Huang, “The Four Traps China May Fall Into,” Council on Foreign Relations, October 30, 2017; Jonathan Marcus, “Could an ancient Greek have predicted a US-China conflict?,” BBC, March 25, 2019; Win McCormack, “The Thucydides Trap: Can the United States and China avoid military conflict?,” The New Republic, March 17, 2023.  The quote is from Allison’s Atlantic article, cited earlier.

[10] Oriana Skylar Mastro, “China’s huge exercises around Taiwan were a rehearsal, not a signal, says Oriana Skylar Mastro,” The Economist, August 10, 2022; Lily Kuo, “China’s military extends drills near Taiwan after Pelosi trip,” Lily Kuo,” The Washington Post, August 8, 2022.

[11] Jennifer Hansler, “Biden administration approves more than $1.1B in arms sales to Taiwan,” CNN, September 2, 2022; U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan (Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023); For more views of Pelosi’s visit, see Thomas L. Friedman, “Why Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan Is Utterly Reckless,” The New York Times, August 1, 202;, Jonathan Guyer, “The drama over Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan travel plans, briefly explained,” Vox, August 4, 2022; and Isaac Chotiner, “The Provocative Politics of Nancy Pelosi’s Trip to Taiwan What is the House Speaker’s high-profile visit really about?,” The New Yorker, August 4, 2022.

[12]Matthew Lee, “US OKs $1B arms sale to Taiwan as tensions rise with China,” Associated Press (AP), September 2, 2022; and Hansler.

[13] On China’s last non-minor battle in 1979 and skirmish in 1988, see Derek Grossman, “Vietnam Is the Chinese Military’s Preferred Warm-Up Fight,” The Rand Blog, May 15, 2019.  On the numbers behind China’s naval buildup, see China Power Project: How Is Chona Modernizing Its Navy? (Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS], 2022) for a very useful graphical representation of China’s and all major global naval powers’ fleets and recent histories.  On my own prescient take on anti-ship missiles being a huge threat to a very vulnerable Russian Navy, in particular the Black Sea Fleet flagship and Slava-class cruiser Moskva, which now sits at the bottom of the Black Sea, see Brian E. Frydenborg, “Ukraine Will Easily Destroy or Sideline Russia’s Navy with Game-Changing Anti-Ship Missiles,” Real Context News, April 10, 2022.  For a detailed albeit slightly outdated visual representation of the military strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. relative to each other overall as well as the rapid increase in China’s military capabilities, see Project Air Force: An Interactive Look at the U.S.-China Military Scorecard (RAND Corporation, 2017).  For a much more recent report on China’s naval buildup relative to the U.S., see Ronald O’Rourke, China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2023).

[14] Mike Yeo, “Britain, Germany give update on future Indo-Pacific naval deployments,” Defense News, June 5, 2023.

[15]William Yang, How prepared is Taiwan for a potential Chinese attack?, Deutsche Welle, May 12, 2023; author calculations using data from: International Database (IDB), China and Taiwan selection, U.S. Census Bureau, 2023; and World GP Ranking 2022, Knoema (2022).

[16] “U.S. to boost Taiwan’s stretched air force with $428 mln in spare parts,” Reuters, December 6, 2022; Kayleigh Madjar, “Taiwan thanks US for military sales,” Taipei Times, December 8, 2022; Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023.

[17] Kapil Kajal, “US approves sale of Volcano anti-tank systems to Taiwan,” Jane’s, January 2, 2023; Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023.

[18] Ben Blanchard “Taiwan military to get $619 million U.S. arms boost as China keeps up pressure,” Reuters, March 6, 2023; Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023.

[19] Jon Grevatt, “US approves 30 mm ammunition sale to Taiwan,” Jane’s, June 30; Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023.

[20] Matthew Lee, “US approves new $500M arms sale to Taiwan as tension from China intensifies,” Associated Press (AP), August 23, 2023; Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023.

[21] “China sends aircraft and vessels toward Taiwan days after US approves $500-million arms sale,” Associated Press (AP), August 26, 2023.  

[22] Jennifer Kavanagh and Jordan Cohen, “The Real Reasons for Taiwan’s Arms Backlog — And How to Help Fill It,” War on the Rocks, January 13, 2023; Joe Gould, “Slow arms deliveries to Taiwan blamed on US production bottlenecks,” Defense News, February 24, 2023; Nick Wilson, “Ratner: Taiwan weapons transfers delayed by systemic industrial base issues,” inside Defense,July 20, 2023; Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer, “Taiwan Faces No Trade-Offs With Ukraine But Taipei is also getting tired of supply chain issues,” Foreign Policy, June 1, 2023; John Grady, “U.S. Needs to Clear $19B in Arms Sale Backlog to Taiwan, says HASC member,” USNI News, December 14, 2022; Patricia Zengerle, “US Senator Menendez says he has not changed opposition to Turkey F-16 sale,” Reuters, July 27, 2023; U.S. Department of State Office of the Spokesperson, “FMS 2023: Retooling Foreign Military Sales for An Age of Strategic Competition,” May 18, 2023; U.S. Department of Defense, “Department of Defense Unveils Comprehensive Recommendations to Strengthen Foreign Military Sales June 13, 2023.  On the chronic underestimation of the Biden Administration, see my own thoughts in several Real Context News articles: “A BIG F**KING DEAL: Biden’s Infrastructure Bill in Historical Perspective,” November 15, 2021; “Media Keeps Portraying Democrats and Biden as a Mess, Ignoring Data Proving that Could Not Be Further from Truth,” July 11, 2022; and “Biden’s and Democrats’ Historic Awesomeness Cannot Be Denied: Midterms Edition,” January 6, 2023.

[23]James V. Saturno and Megan S. Lynch, The Appropriations Process: A Brief Overview (Congressional Research Service [CRS], 2023); Policy Basics: Introduction to the Federal Budget Process(Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2022); Budget Basics: Spending (Peter G. Peterson Foundation, 2023; Budget Process (Peter G. Peterson Foundation, n.d.).

[24] Maegan Vazquez, “Biden signs vital $858 billion defense bill into law, nixing military’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate,” CNN, December 23, 2022; Patricia Zengerle, “U.S. military bill features up to $10 billion to boost Taiwan,” Reuters, December 8, 2022.

[25] Tami Luhby, “Here’s what’s in the $858 billion defense bill,” CNN, December 15, 2022; Mark F. Cancian and Bonny Lin, A New Mechanism for an Old Policy: The United States Uses Drawdown Authority to Support Taiwan (Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS], 2023); Cambell, Taiwan CRS; Bryant Harris, “Pentagon to use new Taiwan arms transfer authority, similar to Ukraine,” Defense News, April 6, 2023.

[26] Bryant Harris, “Congress forgoes $2 billion Taiwan security grants in favor of loans,” Defense News, Dec 21, 2022; Bryant Harris and Joe Gould, “Congress clashes on loans vs. grants for Taiwan military aid,” Defense News, December 15, 2022; Joe Gould and Bryant Harris “Congress wants to arm Taiwan, but hasn’t figured out how to pay for it,” Defense News, December 1, 2022; Russell Hsiao, “The Security Assistance for Taiwan Debate: FMF Loans versus Grants,” Global Taiwan Brief, 8, no. 5 (March 2023): 1-3 [this source is a useful discussion but seems to be confused about the FMF aid being set up possibly as loans, but the text of the TERA section of NDAA bill is clear that there is FMF aid set separately as both loans and grants]; Patricia Zengerle and Michael Martina, “Analysis: How a U.S. budget dispute imperils funding for Taiwan weapons,” Reuters, February 22, 2023; Campbell, 2023. 

[27] Nomaan Merchant, Ellen Knickmeyer, Zeke Miller, and Tara Copp, “US announces $345 million military aid package for Taiwan, July 29, 2023; Forum on the Arms Trade, 2023.

[28] Lara Seligman, “U.S. announces $345M weapons package for Taiwan,” Politico, July 28, 2023.

[29] Evaluating U.S-China Policy in the era of Strategic Competition, 118 Cong. (2023) (statements of Ely Ratner, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, and Wendy Sherman, Deputy Secretary of State, February 9, 2023).

[30] For a prominent example an either-or thinking wanting to divert Ukraine aid to Taiwan, see the Dec. 6, 2022, letter from extremist Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) to Sec. of State Blinken.

[31] Ali Zaslav, Ted Barrett, and Clare Foran, “Senate passes $1.7 trillion government funding bill to avert shutdown,” CNN, December 22, 2022; Fitch, “Fitch Downgrades the United States’ Long-Term Ratings to ‘AA+’ from ‘AAA’; Outlook Stable,” August 1, 2023.

[32] As an example of the delays, the Cancian and Lin CSIS briefing did not come out until August 2023.  The relatively lesser-known Defense News covered this well throughout, and I have relied on it for some of the details, but there was little major news or major institutional coverage until more recently.  On the general crisis of the U.S. news media, see State of the News Media (Project), Pew, n.d.; Lauren Harris, “Five big findings from the Journalism Crisis Project,” Columbia Journalism Review, March 3, 2021; and Penelope Muse Abernathy and Tim Franklin, The State of Local News 2022 Expanding News Deserts, Growing Gaps, Emerging Models The State of Local News 2022 (Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communication, 2022).  Currently, there are very few reporters covering the details about Taiwan in the current NDAA and appropriations fights, so my regrettable overreliance on Harris of Defense News (who is usually solid, but it is always regrettable to rely so much on one source and corroboration of his details are few and far between in other sources).  Perhaps the more confusing current coverage is a result of resources being spread thin among so many outlets/institutions covering major stories happening at once at a time of shrinking newsrooms and resources.  It would take a lot more time for me, writing this report, to go into more detail on this subtopic in large part because of this.

[33] Patricia Zengerle, US Senate backs sweeping defense policy bill, sets up clash with House bill,” Reuters, July 27, 2023; “Actions Overview: H.R.7776 – James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023,” U.S. Congress, 2022; Fareed Zakaria, U.S.’s political madness takes place against a backdrop of astonishing strength,” The Washington Post, 26, 2023; Julia Horowitz, Denmark has a debt ceiling, too. It’s never been a problem Julia Horowitz,” CNN, May 10, 2023.

[34] Quote from Bryant Harris and Leo Shane III, “Senators rally to boost defense spending, with $1 billion for Taiwan,” Defense News, July 27; Bryant Harris, “Taiwan military aid granted by once-reluctant appropriators, Defense News, June 22, 2023; Bryant Harris, “House narrowly passes defense bill after Dems defect over abortion,” Defense News, July 14, 2023;   Various sources present different numbers for the NDAA bill totals, which is odd; for examples, Roll Call, extremely reliable on Congressional matters, has the Senate NDAA at $874 billion and relatively deep-diver Harris for Breaking Defense had $874 billion for the House NDAA; but CNN, Washington Post, and New York Timeshad $886 billion for both House and Senate, so I went with that number.  Some of the confusion may be due to differences between what relevant committees passed before the full chambers approved the NDAAs.  The lack of detailed coverage and conflicting numbers suggest a news media spread thin as much as anything else considering how big these bills are along with the fact that most detailed discussions of the two large bills passed in late 2022 did not occur until months later.  But it also a cry for this basic information to be clearly presented within the bills in question, perhaps a total figure broken down into components at the top or bottom, Congress?

[35] Bryant Harris, “Congress aims for faster arms sales with defense bills and task force,” Defense News, June 28, 2023.

[36] Justin Katz, “Ducking the culture wars, Senate passes NDAA 86-11,” Breaking Defense, July 27, 2023; Karoun Demirjian, “Senate Passes Bipartisan Defense Bill, Setting Up a Clash With the House,” The New York Times, July 27, 2023; Dan Balz, “House Republicans wage ‘woke’ culture wars with the military,” The Washington Post, July 15, 2023.

[37] See my piece: Brian E. Frydenborg, “9/11 Marked Continuation, Not Beginning, of Politicization of Foreign Policy & National Security,” LinkedIn Pulse, September 15, 2016.

[38] Cancian and Bonny, New Mechanism CSIS; Kavanagh and Cohen, Real Reasons for Backlog.

[39] Mark Hertling @MarkHertling “Make No Mistake, China is Watching“, Twitter, August 4, 2022, 10:54 A.M.

[40] See my Russia-Ukraine war articles at Real Context News: “Russia’s Defeat in Ukraine May Take Some Time, But It’s Coming and Sooner Than You Think,” July 30, 2022; “Russia’s Pyrrhic Advances at Soledar Near Bakhmut Setting Up Ukrainian Counteroffensive, Not Russian Victory,” January 13, 2023; “Why Putin Has Doomed Himself with His Ukraine Fiasco,” September 27, 2022; “Putin’s (and Russia’s) Naked Weakness,” June 28, 2023.

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) July 10, 2023; see related February 17, 2017 two-part article: Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part I: Defining Democracy, Fascism, and Democratic Fascism Usefully, and Spin vs. Lies and Trump, the Global Democratic Fascist Movement, Putin’s War on the West, and a Choice for Liberals: Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part II; 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. Also, Brian is running for U.S. Senate for Maryland and you can learn about his campaign here.

SILVER SPRING—I am giving myself the privilege of reading Orwell in Spain, the Penguin Classics edition of Homage to Catalonia by Eric Blair of the immortal pseudonym George Orwell and one of the original antifascists, bookended by a number of relevant letters written by Orwell and those in his circles and with context from editor Peter Davison throughout.  The volume also includes occasional files from archives of the Soviets, who were targeting Orwell, his wife, and his other comrades for a future show-trial just as Orwell and his wife slipped out of Spain; some of his comrades were not so fortunate as he by far.

Orwell went to Spain in late 1936 in the spirit of pitching in for the fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) on behalf of the Spanish Republic, supported by numerous liberal and leftist volunteers from around the world and ostensibly supported by dictator Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union against General Francisco Franco’s fascists, in turn supported by Hitler’s Nazi Germany.  For his efforts, Orwell took a bullet through the neck but survived that and many other hardships, acquitting himself well in having genuinely sacrificed for a cause worthy of such sacrifice, but one that was undermined in part by Spain’s supposed ally, the Soviet Union, whose agents in Spain often focused on settling scores within the international leftist/socialist/communist movement and who turned on many of their supposed allies to engage in purges and trials based on lies and gaslighting.  This would be a main reason that the Republic would fall completely to Franco’s fascist Nationalists in 1939, shortly before the beginning of World War II.

Hitchens on Orwell, Ringing with Urgent Relevance for the Present

As usual, the late legend and one of the few humans who could rightly be described to be at least a partial heir to Orwell, Christopher Hitchens, provides an introduction to Orwell in Spain that is as mind-blowing as it is well-written and pithy (the introduction was also published around the same time as Orwell in Spain as an essay in The Los Angeles Times).  Hitchens’ essay on his hero Orwell’s experiences in Spain includes some points that hit all too close to home in the here-and-now:

The history of the May events in Barcelona in 1937 was certainly buried for years under a slag heap of slander and falsification.  Orwell, indeed, derived his terrifying notion of the memory-hole and the rewritten past, in Nineteen Eighty-four, from exactly this single instance of the abolished memory.  ‘This kind of thing is frightening to me,’ he wrote about Catalonia, ‘because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world’:

But in our very immediate past, documents have surfaced to show that his vulgar, empirical, personal, commonsensical deposition was verifiable after all.  The recent opening of communist records in Moscow and of closely held Franco-era documentation in Madrid and Salamanca has provided a posthumous vindication.

The narrative core of Homage to Catalonia, it might be argued, is a series of events that occurred in and around the Barcelona telephone exchange in early May 1937.  Orwell was a witness to these events, by the relative accident of his having signed up with the militia of the anti-Stalinist POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) upon arriving in Spain.  Allowing as he did for the bias that this lent to his firsthand observations, he nonetheless became convinced that he had been the spectator of a full-blown Stalinist putsch, complete with rigged evidence, false allegations and an ulterior hand directed by Moscow.  The outright and evidently concerted fabrications that immediately followed in the press, which convinced or neutralized so many ‘progressive intellectuals,’ only persuaded him the more that he had watched a lie being gestated and then born.

Hitchens continues later in his introduction:

…‘History to the Defeated’ is the underlying subject and text of this collection of pages and fragments.  Like several others in the ‘midnight of the century,’ the glacial period that reached its nadir in the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Orwell wrote gloomily but defiantly for the bottom drawer.  He belongs in the lonely 1930s tradition of Victor Serge and Boris Souvarine and David Rousset — speaking truth to power but without a real audience or a living jury.  It is almost tragic that, picking through the rubble of that epoch, one cannot admire him and Auden simultaneously.  ‘All I have is a voice,’ wrote Auden in ‘September 1, 1939,’ ‘To undo the folded lie,/The romantic lie in the brain … And the lie of Authority.’  All Orwell had was a voice, and to him, too, the blatant lies of authority were one thing and the ‘folded’ lies that clever people tell themselves were another.  The tacit or overt collusion between the two was the ultimate foe.

Let’s let that sink in: it is not the generally bad-faith “blatant lies of authority” that is “the ultimate foe,” but the “tacit or overt collusion between” those “blatant lies of authority” and that authority on one side with the “’folded’ lies that clever people tell themselves” and those clever people on the other.  As a consistent antifascist, Hitchens himself often energetically dedicated himself to taking on such “clever people:” intellectuals and leaders who should know and act better but in their actions still give aid and comfort to the “blatant lies of authority,” often unintentionally making good faith yet terrible arguments as “useful idiots” (to borrow the phrase attributed to Lenin, perhaps falsely) but other times lying deliberately (hello Ted Cruz).  Thus, Hitchens happily took on fellow leftist intelligentsia members and activists like George Galloway, Julian Assange, and Noam Chomsky (almost?) as fiercely as he critiqued Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Kim Jong-il.

Fighting the Rewriting of History from 1937 to 2023

For the Stalinists and their apologists Orwell stood up against (and, indeed, for the fascists of that era as well), the fastidious, near-robotic repetition of baseless lies and disinformation over and over and over again served to give reality to such “alternative facts,” to borrow former Trumpist mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway’s Trumpian phrase.  And, of course, it is altogether fitting to quote that disgraced woman—her own daughter and now former husband even very publicly more honorably refused to support Trump’s lies and hers—because what is terrifying my soul even as I write part of this is that the Trumpist movement—now one of the two largest political factions in the United States of American in 2023—is very much successfully engaging in that tactic Orwell dedicated much of his writing to combatting, a tactic used by the people Orwell spent much of life fighting.

A stark example is the recent Ohio Republican Jim Jordan-led U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the so-called “Durham Report”  and the related investigation of Trump’s Justice Department-appointed Special Counsel John Durham’s pathetic, embarrassing, and failed attempt to find proof that the U.S. government’s investigation into Trump’s Russia ties and 2016 election interference was a baseless, politically-motivated witch hunt; this in and of itself is gaslighting and “hypocrisy” in the extreme, as the opposite is true, a truth I spent years of research and writing on in detail.  Short of ending in appalling violence, is there anything more politically Stalinist than an investigation ordered in bad-faith and/or extreme delusion to smear and undermine a good-faith investigation into topics most deserving of investigation, that then twists the results of the failed counter investigation to continue to make claims wholly unsubstantiated by reality??  In this vein, Republicans even spitefully, shamelessly, and wholly inappropriately censured—censured!—Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) the same day as the Durham hearing for his work against Trump on impeachment and his efforts to get answers on Trump-Russia, a ridiculous act of distraction from their embarrassing failure of a Durham hearing and in spirit also a pure act of abusive political retaliation: only five members of the House were censured in all the twentieth century and Schiff is only the third member of the House of Representatives this century and only the twenty-fifth member of the House in all of U.S. history to be censured, an act that is for generally serious offenses, including violence or incitement to violence, sexual misconduct, financial misconduct, and—at the time of the Civil War (1861-1865)—supporting the rebel “Confederacy.”

To go back to Durham and his probe, former Special Counsel Durham seems to be at least a partly honorable fool.  On the one hand, Durham seems to incorrectly accept as articles of faith that the Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller probes were baseless political hit jobs (the first in his deluded mind concocted by the Clintons) and that there is nothing to Trump-Russia to the degree that he is unaware of many of the facts and much of the evidence and context surrounding team Trump’s deeply troubling ties to Russia, his perspective warped enough to believe in the nonsense and/or gaslighting his higher-ups—including then Attorney General Bill Barr—and others fed him and that he fed himself: during the Judiciary Committee hearing, I heard him tell Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) that he did not think Barr’s infamous memo had “blatantly mischaracterized” the Mueller report, which it clearly and obviously very much did, even according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller himself.  On the other hand, Durham more or less carried out an investigation that at least mostly adhered to rules and the law within the confines of his warped worldview even as that worldview was biased, selective, and inaccurate when it came to the issues between Trump and Russia, and that is why his results were so limited along with the reality that the evidence he sought didn’t exist because the investigation’s premises were false.

Both those who put Durham in place as Special Counsel and the rest of the Trump faithful were hoping as much as possible over the course of the four years of the Durham probe of to undermine investigations into Trump, playing politics with legitimate, serious investigations. Durham’s disappointing results—0 for 2 on prosecutions that went to trial, defeated twice by unanimous juries that returned “not guilty” verdicts and one plea deal with no trial for an FBI employee doctoring an e-mail who was determined by the presiding judge not to have acted with any political bias (confirming the previous findings of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s far more credible report) and who only received a year of probation—speak volumes about Durham’s probe’s credibility despite the spin of his “report” and show just how baseless was his effort to show that the Biden Administration Department of Justice was weaponized as a tool of political persecution.  In the end, it was Durham’s and Barr’s own conduct that actually revealed it was the Trump Administration Department of Justice that fell into being weaponized, yet Jordan, Trump, and many other Republicans and “useful idiots” insist on persisting in gaslighting or making unsubstantiated arguments with their original unsubstantiated claims even after Durham’s probe failed to prove them (ironically, it seems the probe did find enough evidence of possible financial criminal wrongdoing involving Trump that the Durham probe was forced to launch a criminal investigation into that, which, unsurprisingly, we have heard very little about…).

And herein is one of the more horrific aspects of this Jordan’s show-hearing that should be giving us all trouble sleeping at night: some of the Republicans on Jordan’s committee, most notably the vile Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), are furious at Durham not for the degree to which he was inaccurate, ignorant, or possibly dishonest but for the degree to which he did not go into full Stalinist show-trial mode because he did not run wild with lies and falsehoods but, rather, still operated within some level of orbit of reality.

To be clear, this hearing is not a Stalinist show-trial, and does not carry the consequences of them.  But they do share, on the part of today’s Republicans and their accomplices on one hand and the those of the Stalinists and their accomplices of yesteryear on the other, absolute contempt for truth and justice and an absolute commitment to pursuing the party line relentlessly.  And both Orwell’s and Hitchens’s words rang loudly in my mind throughout my viewing of the hearing as I digested it in terror, far more profoundly for having recently read certain pages of Orwell in Spain.

The gaslighting is also strong with the claim that Trump is being persecuted unfairly and Hunter Biden might get off with a “sweetheart deal” should a submitted plea deal between Hunter and the government be approved, which was reported the day before the Durham hearing and Schiff censure.  Again, the opposite is true: people in a position similar to Hunter Biden when it comes to gun possession while being an addict are rarely criminally charged or see jail time, as are first-time offenders in terms of the tax violations he had committed and has since paid off his debts in relation to, including back taxes and penalties.  If anything, his treatment has been harsher because he is Joe Biden’s son and the government is going out of its way to avoid any credible suggestion that the son of the sitting president is being treated lightly while the former president, Trump, is not; and, if anything, Trump has been treated with an extraordinarily light touch, given the nature and severity of his crimes and the more than two-years’ worth of blatant obstruction of justice committed by Trump to further his crimes.  The gaslighting only becomes even more ludicrous when Trump’s defenders claims there is a “two-tiered” system of justice, with the Trumps of the world being the victims, a deeply “insulting” claim coming from many white Republicans who have been loath to acknowledge the very real systemic racial disparities in the American criminal justice system—let alone do anything about them—but now whine for “justice” (i.e., impunity and immunity) for Trump.

The gaslighting is also front-and-center when Trump’s insanely ridiculous classified documents case for which he has been indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith is claimed to be equivalent or close to the Biden classified documents case or Hillary Clinton’s (conspicuously omitting Pence’s case, which is pretty similar to Biden’s), all the other cases including Clinton’s case were dramatically different especially regarding intent and when the Biden/Pence examples only turned up a comparatively small number of documents which were promptly returned and both of them agreed rapidly to have their respective locations searched, bearing no resemblance to Trump’s obstructionist and gaslighting conduct and the severity of the material at issue.

And those are merely a few current examples…

Orwell and His “Power of Facing”: A Ghostbuster to the Gaslighting Ghosts of Nazism and Stalinism Rearing their Ghastly Heads Today

We fought a world war some eight decades ago against a totalitarian fascism that I have previously noted gaslit reality to the point of being at war with reality itself, and we triumphed some four-and-a-half decades later against a Soviet totalitarian communism that similarly gaslit reality and also, like the Nazis it defended its homeland against in the earlier world war, used disinformation as a preferred weapon of choice in its losing ideological struggle against the capitalist democratic West.

After the West’s victories in World War II and the Cold War, how depressing is it, then, that, in 2023 the West finds itself embroiled both internally and externally with major forces practicing and embodying much of the same spirit of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany when it comes to waging new wars on reality, with its biggest centers of gravity in Putin’s fascist Russia—resurrecting the Soviet war on reality as the successor state to the Soviet Union—and in the Trumpist fascist movement and its media and political allies within the West (if you doubt the appropriateness of the label fascist for Trump or Putin, read my two-parter [part I and part II] and realize that was written well before the violence of January 6, 2021 or the massively increased levels of violence and war crimes Russia has been perpetrating in Ukraine since February 24, 2022).  While the Chinese Communist Party helms a Chinese state that is increasingly totalitarian under the leadership of Xi Jinping and also embraces a war on reality, it is not nearly as aggressive with this tactic on the international stage as Russia, thus, China’s current relative restraint means its threat to the West is, for now at least, far less potent than that of both Russia and Trump as it is Russia that routinely engages in electoral and political interference in the West and Trump’s brand of fascism and its like-minded allies are a clear and present danger within the U.S. and elsewhere in the West, with fascists having real chances of gaining political power—even the U.S. presidency once again, though I do not believe they will succeed in this coming American election in 2024.  Other countries, such as France and Italy, are far more vulnerable, and some, like Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and Israel, are veering hard in that direction.  Indeed, while I have been warning of this possibility since just after Trump’s inauguration in 2017 and even earlier in 2016, it brings little comfort to see the modern versions of fascism and their accompanying wars on reality staring us down directly in the face while also staring deeply into the past at horrors that we had vanquished twice in living memory, drawing power from their zombie-Frankenstein cousins from the Cold War and World War II.

Orwell would truly be rolling over in his grave were he aware of what was happening today, after so much blood and toil and sacrifice in the twentieth century to defeat fascist and communist regimes, to transcend their lies and assault against reality, and yet, he could take comfort in his words standing the test of time, not only validating his prescient view of past evils, but that his words could still be so useful and relevant today.  Yes, this is bittersweet, for we should have transcended those phantoms from past eras, but at least we have in Orwell the perfect guide to fighting these nefarious forces, that honesty, reality, truth, persistence, and simple eloquence can confront the enemy and defeat their lies, sometimes even without the forces of arms.  Orwell did risk life and limb (and was even shot) in Spain against Franco’s fascists (and Soviet agents), but it was in his writing that he made his largest contributions in the fight for freedom against fascism and communism.  Like Orwell and like his admirer and perhaps his heir Hitchens, we can and must be unflinching in the face of the gaslighting of Trump and Putin and their allies who constantly assert “that two and two are five” and that things that happened “never happened” (from the January 6 U.S. Capitol Insurrection—team Trump claiming “it was Antifa”—to the Russian military torturing and executing civilians in Ukraine—Putin saying, ludicrously, that: “The Russian army does not strike at civilian facilities. There is no need for that.”).  Though Orwell had “the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world,” he never gave up and never ceased articulating the truth through his brave and, it seems, timeless writing.

As Hitchens wrote in his magisterial and pithy Why Orwell Matters:

‘I knew,’ said Orwell in 1946 about his early youth, ‘that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.’  Not the ability to face them, you notice, but ‘a power of facing’.  It’s oddly well put.  A commissar who realizes that his five-year plan is off-target and that the people detest him or laugh at him may be said, in a base manner, to be confronting an unpleasant fact.  So, for that matter, may a priest with ‘doubts’.  The reaction of such people to unpleasant facts is rarely self-critical; they do not have the ‘power of facing’.  Their confrontation with the fact takes the form of an evasion; the reaction to the unpleasant discovery is a redoubling of efforts to overcome the obvious.  The ‘unpleasant facts’ that Orwell faced were usually the ones that put his own position or preference to the test.

In the spirit of Orwell and (even if to a somewhat lesser degree) Hitchens, we must wield a similar “power of facing” in the face of the fascisms of Trump, Putin, and their lesser emulators.  In particular, the “clever people” and “progressive intellectuals” that Hitchens and Orwell single out who “tell themselves” Auden’s “’folded’ lies” that, when in “tacit or overt collusion” with “the blatant lies of authority,” become “the ultimate foe.”

Prominent “useful idiot” fools on such matters include Noam Chomsky, Elon Musk, Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Briahna Joy Grey, Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, Michael Tracey, Caitlin Johnstone, Katie Halper, RFK Jr., Russell Brand, John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Joe Rogan, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Jill Stein, Tulsi Gabbard, Cornell West, Jordan Peterson, George Galloway, Scott Ritter, even Peter Hitchens (Christopher’s own rather less impressive brother) and others who fancy themselves public figures displaying freethinking but who ultimately do little more on these matters than to give aid and comfort to fascism and even colonialism and imperialism in the name of supposed “pacificism” or “free speech.”  Those people and their ilk make their arguments in ways that usually show they have little understanding of peace or the U.S. Constitution.  In particular, they often keep parroting debunked Kremlin talking points about Western “escalation” and NATO expansion, which I have debunked myself repeatedly.  Or they will conflate moderation of disinformation on private platforms with unconstitutional “censorship.”  Orwell has the best of possible responses to the first group, the so-called “pacifists,” here in his perfect essay from 1942 “Pacifism and the War” in which he noted that “Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist.” Orwell therein further elucidated his views:

What I object to is the intellectual cowardice of people who are objectively and to some extent emotionally pro-Fascist, but who don’t care to say so and take refuge behind the formula ‘I am just as anti-fascist as anyone, but—’.  The result of this is that so-called peace propaganda is just as dishonest and intellectually disgusting as war propaganda.  Like war propaganda, it concentrates on putting forward a ‘case’, obscuring the opponent’s point of view and avoiding awkward questions.

He added: “My case against all of them is that they write mentally dishonest propaganda and degrade literary criticism to mutual arse-licking” and that “It is just because I do take the function of the intelligentsia seriously that I don’t like the sneers, libels, parrot phrased and financially profitable back-scratching which flourish in our English literary world, and perhaps in yours also.”  Better descriptions of that crowd’s heirs in the present cannot be written, and, as before in Orwell’s day, many of those in this crowd today are often caught “back-scratching” and “arse-licking” each other in echo chambers.  To listen to them, rather than blatant Russian imperialism and colonialism, the greater evils are supposedly the Western exercise of power in daring to aid a Ukraine that, they will stress, has been dominated by and even been part of Russia for centuries (as if that should matter when Ukrainians themselves have earned their freedom and independence, recognized by formal treaty repeatedly by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union) and, even more so, in asserting either that there is, in fact, a moral dimension to supporting Ukraine or a false equivalence in equating Russia’s exercise and practice of its power in comparison with the America’s and the West’s: whether knowingly or unknowingly, these supposed and self-proclaimed “anti-imperialists” engage in behavior that dismisses, excuses, deflects from, or even advances Russian imperialism and its supporting false narratives. 

There can be but one course of action against today’s “intellectual” descendants of Orwell’s critics and enemies among the intelligentsia, and it must be that we especially utilize our “power of facing” to face them because they are usually the ones weakening the front against today’s fascists without claiming to actually be “for” those fascists, they are the ones who might persuade those with less moral discernment who would never think of consciously siding with fascists and who would be susceptible to low-hanging fruit of arguments relying on “free speech” and “peace” that objectively advance bad-faith disinformation and war against those fighting for their actual freedom.  And perhaps, with relentless opposition to their nonsense, some may even realize their folly and find their own “power of facing” directed back at themselves even though this may “put …[their] own position or preference to the test.”

Hitchens opens his introduction to Orwell in Spain with following two magnificent paragraphs:

The grandeur of George Orwell, in our store of moral and intellectual memory, is to be found partly in his very lack of grandeur.  He is remembered, with different and varying degrees of distinctness, as the man who confronted three of the great crises of the twentieth century and got all three of them, so to speak, ‘right’.  He was right, earlier than most, about imperialism, viewing it as an unjust and unjustifiable form of rule, and also as a cause of war.  He was right, early and often, about the menace presented by Fascism and National Socialism, not just to the peace of the world but to the very idea of civilization.  And he was right about Stalinism, about the great and the small temptations that it offered to certain kinds of intellectual, and about the monstrous consequences that would ensue from that nightmarish sleep of reason.

He brought off this triple achievement, furthermore, in his lowly capacity as an impoverished freelance journalist and amateur novelist.  He had no resources beyond his own, he enjoyed the backing of no party or organization or big newspaper, let alone any department of state.  Much of his energy was dissipated in the simple struggle to get published, or in the banal effort to meet a quotidian schedule of bills and deadlines.  He had no university education, no credential nor area of expertise. He had no capital. Yet his unexciting pen-name, drawn from a rather placid English river, is known to millions as a synonym for prescience and integrity, and the adjective ‘Orwellian’ is understood widely and – this has its significance – ambivalently.  To describe a situation as ‘Orwellian’ is to announce dystopia: the triumph of force and sadism and demagogy over humanism.  To call a person ‘Orwellian’ is to summon the latent ability of an individual to resist such triumphs, or at least to see through them and call them by their right names.

We don’t have to take a bullet in the neck like Orwell did in Spain in 1937, but the least we can do is call out the lies, disinformation, and misinformation religiously in the cause of reality, as Orwell seems to have pretty much always done and Hitchens mostly did (even when Hitch Hitch erred—most notably on Iraq—he usually did so for principled and admirable reasons).  We can, sadly, fall into either of the definitions Hitchens enumerates for “Orwellian,” but we must strive to be his latter definition and we can do so by calling out the imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism of today as Orwell did for the versions in his lifetime.  We can also be sure that Orwell’s stances on Trump, Putin, and their movements and allies would not be doubt were he alive today.

Herein, then, has not been any kind of comprehensive catalogue of Trumpist and Putinist attempts to rewrite history—those of you following these stories are all too familiar with too many of those examples—but a clarion call to honor the spirit of those two writers departed from us, whose careers were mostly dedicated to opposition to lies but fidelity to the truth should inspires us even if we, too, feel frightened like Orwell because we have “the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.”  Orwell consistently and unflinchingly spoke truth to power with “a power of facing unpleasant facts” and so must we.

Brian’s Ukraine analysis has been praised by: Mykhailo Podolyak, a top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; the Ukraine Territorial Defense Forces; Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, U.S. Army (Ret.), former commanding general, U.S. Army Europe; Scott Shane, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist formerly of The New York Times & Baltimore Sun (and featured in HBO’s The Wire, playing himself); Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of the only Republicans to stand up to Trump and member of the January 6th Committee; and Orwell Prize-winning journalist Jenni Russell, among others.

See all Brian’s Ukraine coverage here

© 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).

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.

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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!

It was quite obvious that Trump was grossly guilty of incitement of violent insurrection before this Senate trial, but the Democrats’ impeachment managers have done an amazing job of showing how Trump’s culpability, responsibility, and level of involvement in what happened on January 6 are dramatically worse than it previously seemed.

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Twitter @bfry1981, YouTube, Facebook)  February 13, 2021

SILVER SPRING—After the last three days of Trump’s Senate impeachment trial (the first full day had, absurdly, dealt mainly with the constitutionality of the trial itself apart from a powerful opening argument), in some ways the takeaways are surprisingly profound.

In my time as a journalist, I have passionately advocated the importance of analytical journalism: telling a story to readers not by necessarily adding, highlighting, or focusing primarily on new information, but by putting together and explaining all the component parts of complex and/or massive stories, tying together the information from many articles over a period of time and presenting their sum total in a single piece or a few.  Such articles tend to be quite long, which is a major strike in journalism. Another strike is that such work, wherever it will be published, will have to synthesize many articles from many sources other than the publishing outlet, and outlets tend to be rather tribal in not wanting to highlight the work of other outlets so heavily.  And a third strike is that, in general but especially in the ultracompetitive and struggling crisis era of current journalism, the emphasis is, by far, to be the first to present something new rather than to pause and take stock of the current body of information (why is it “either/or,” why can there not be plenty of room for both?).  These three strikes combine to make such deep-dive analytical pieces quite rare, and I have certainly encountered a lot of opposition (sometimes even hostility) from editors and journalists both to anything that does not offer up some juicy new nugget of information and to analytical journalism in general.

As I have noted before, such a rejectionist approach to analytical journalism is deeply myopic while also contributing to the degree to which the public is confused and unable to weight the importance of so many catchy, endless headlines, and there has been no better example in recent years than the Trump-Russia saga, which I have also taken pains to note (and which is the subject of some of my best deep-dive analytical work).

For many of the journalistic powers that be, “original” reporting is only reporting that contain new scoops, not original analysis no matter how significant that analysis is.  In fact, presenting old facts in a new light, new context, and juxtaposed can sometimes be the among the most valuable information and analysis, just as any intelligence agency staff or criminal investigator would tell you.  They would note that, especially when it comes to reading intent—which is often the most elusive information and yet is always among the valuable—it is this type of analysis that is often the most useful: figuring how and why each piece fits together is itself revelatory, and intent is best able to be discerned by putting everything together.

And that is what I feel happened during the Democratic impeachment managers’ presentation of the case against Trump, perhaps the single most important example of this type of big-picture analysis on a main stage in America in years.

I also feel somewhat traumatized by the experience of both reliving the Capitol assault and seeing how the whole picture of it comes together.  It is a bit like being in a battle and remembering your own experience while also being given the full battle report for how your experiences and impressions fit into the wider truth for the first time; many on social media echoed this sentiment, and most of us can only imagine how much worse this is for any of the people traumatized by actually being in or near the Capitol on January 6. 

The day of the Capitol insurrection was obviously traumatizing and terrible enough for most of the wider public watching it on TV and following it on social media, but most of the worst footage and facts would not come out until days, even weeks later (and I am not even getting to the new footage from the Democrats’ impeachment managers).  I did not expected anything to seriously alter my views from this trial that I already have regarded as an open-and-shut case, but the Democrats’ presentation on February 10-11 did just that and did so in ways that shocked me.

In seeing so much context added and all the clips I had seen earlier and then some put together to show when and where the insurrectionists were on the Capitol grounds in relation to members of Congress and Vice President Pence, and showing what Trump said and tweeted and when before and during the insurrection, a far more sinister picture has emerged.

And very much as a result of the Democratic impeachment managers’ presentations, it is now clear that Trump acted throughout the day not only to knowingly foment and incite a mob-driven intimidation campaign with more than a few hints of violence against Congress and his vice president at the hour they were tallying the Electoral College votes, but that he reacted to the violence at the Capitol by supporting, leveraging, and excusing it in a way that he fully integrated the insurrectionists and their actions into his long campaign to overturn the election results, overthrow our government and republic.

Indeed, they embraced Trump and he embraced them throughout.  Many members of his mob cited Trump’s calls that they march on the Capitol as they were storming it and while arguing and fighting with Capitol police, and while running amok on the Capitol grounds they closely followed and even read allowed his tweets issued while he was watching them storm the Capitol, tweets that encouraged and energized them.

Trump willfully misrepresented the mob, said it was “full of patriots” and that it was “peaceful” even when it was obviously not and he had known his own vice president had to be evacuated within the Capitol because his life was in danger.

During all this, besides following the attack on television, Trump’s main concerns were to reiterate the Big Lie that the election was stolen from him, to criticize Pence for not trying to overturn the election results, and to try to call one Republican Senator, Tommy Tuberville—hiding in the Capitol from the Trumpian mob—and use the situation to pressure the senator to carry out Trump’s plan to overturn the election results. 

Hours into the attack on the Capitol, Congress, and Pence, Trump was still expressing support for the insurrection, and when he finally did call his people off—nearly three-and-a-half hours after the insurrection began, plenty of time for his intended targets to be hurt or even killed when he refused requests to call them off or send in reinforcements, even from members of his own staff and Cabinet (a significant number of whom resigned expressly because of Trump’s role in fomenting the insurrection), even from the Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy—he still, in the very same message, justified their actions and reiterated his Big Lie.

At no time that day did he condemn the insurrection or its attack.  This is a man who often tweets back at TV news personalities within minutes of them criticizing him.  Trump was never shy or dilatory about condemning violence (real or falsely claimed) perceived (accurately or inaccurately) to come from members of the left.  Yet when he was within walking distance from an insurrection at the Capitol carried out by his supporters whom he had just addressed in person, there was no effort to condemn their violence.

Both in their own social media posts and, for those now arrested, in the government’s charging documents, it is clear that these insurrectionists were there because Trump called for them to be there, were acting directly in response to his exhortations, and believed their insurrection was exactly what Trump wanted of them, that they were carrying it out because of and for him at his instruction. 

And in all of this, both his “actions and inactions,” to quote Democratic Impeachment Manager Jamie Raskin, speak loudly.  From his rallies to his supporters’ storming of the Michigan State Capitol and, separately, attempting to kidnap and possibly execute Michigan’s governor to the near-running off of a highway of a Biden campaign bus by a Trump pickup truck caravan, Trump has repeatedly not only failed to condemn violence and physical intimidation on the part of his acolytes, he has repeatedly praised them for such acts, which literally led into and fed each other.  Even in the run-up to the rally, it seems Trump was involved in changing both the date of the rally to coincide with the Electoral College counting at the Capitol and to allow the option for attendees to access the Capitol grounds.  The rally itself, date, time, location, themes, and, apparently, freedom to approach the Capitol were all dependent upon or tied intimately to Trump himself.

This is not just lighting a match and walking away.  It is jumping into an explosives warehouse while using a flamethrower.

To understand this, a few clips are not enough: you need to watch the whole presentation, especially on that of February 10 (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4) but also February 11 (part 1 and part 2).

Before I saw nearly all of this in its entirety, I had still thought it was quite clear that Trump had intended the protest to go to the Capitol, had sought to stir up the crowd and cause them to disrupt the proceedings there, and felt that he more or less just embraced somewhat passively what unfolded after that.  This, of course, for a sitting president is enough for him to be grossly guilty of incitement both from a political impeachment perspective and a legal criminal perspective (two different things, in spite of Trump’s defense attorneys’ attempts to muddy the waters).  But after I saw the Democratic impeachment managers’ presentation, it became clear to me that Trump was no passive observer of what transpired once his crowd left his rally, that Trump deliberately timed his talk to begin just before and last through the beginning of the constitutional proceedings at the Capitol, and that he actively followed and used the insurrection to further his plot to overthrow our republic’s constitutional order and peaceful transition of power, which we had in this country at the presidential from 1789-2017 until Trump’s insurrection, 2021 being the first non-peaceful transfer of presidential power in 232 years.

Even as a passive careless fool, he would be intensely culpable for the insurrection carrying the weight of his office as president, but, as was the case with the circumstances leading to his first impeachment, he knew what he was doing and it was an active campaign in which he was calling the shots and deeply involved to maintain power through nearly any means necessary, no matter how illegal or wrong.  And demonstrating this to be the case with the Capitol insurrection, the case made by the Democratic impeachment managers in Trump’s Senate trial is devastating for Trump and anyone who would defend his actions or claim he does not bear extreme and primary responsibility for the appalling events of January 6, 2021.

Correction appended and updated April 10, 2021 to correct the timeline of events and to add sources related to that timeline.

Also see Brian’s related Jerusalem Report article, Trump Capitol insurrection: The history behind the violence, his related article here, Trump’s Impeachment Trial Exceedingly Simple: No Excuse Not to Convict, his related interview on The Jist Chatter Podcast, and his 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 my podcast interview with Georgia election officials Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, both cited in Trump’s second Senate trial!

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

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, Twitter @bfry1981, YouTube, Facebook)  February 9, 2021

SILVER SPRING—I am being wildly uncharacteristically simple here, but the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the Capitol insurrection incited by Trump can be distilled to a very few simply points that are not debatable and are crystal clear.

I.

Even before the 2016 election, Trump was laying the groundwork to delegitimize any election result that did not have him as the winner.  Such talking points and an emphasis on nonexistent mass voter fraud were constant themes from Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and throughout his presidency until its violent end, with plenty of direct quotes from Trump and his closest allies well-chronicled by others.  Even during the 2016 campaign, Roger Stone—one of his closest friends, confidantes, and surrogates—had threatened violence against delegates if they did not stick with Trump during the Republican National Convention (Trump himself threatened riots) and said that there would be “a bloodbath…if they attempt to steal this and swear Hillary in;” Stone threatened an “insurrection” back in 2017 should Trump be impeached; and Trump has since fully pardoned Stone for his conviction by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team on obstruction of justice, witness intimidation, and lying to Congress, pardoned him for him efforts to cover for and protect Trump during the Russia investigations, Trump officially condoning and excusing the behavior of Stone with his pardon.  Stone is also associated with several of the groups deeply involved in the insurrection, including the Proud Boys, whom Trump told during the first presidential debate with Joe Biden to “stand back and stand by” (for what?  We now know).   So it was not just recent months, but years and especially the past year in which Trump and his allies (many besides Stone) laid the groundwork for his attempt to overturn the election and to spread a historic “big lie” to radicalize his supporters to be ready and motivated to act on his behalf if he lost.  The “bloodbath” predicted by Stone was only ever so narrowly avoided on January 6, 2021.

II.

Going back to the 2016 campaign, Trump has a long history of claiming the “tough people”—within whom he includes bikers, the military, “Second Amendment people,” and police—would stand up for him and use violence if necessary to ensure he won and/or stayed in the presidency.  Many police did support him, and from what we know, it seems he had more than a few supporters working as Capitol Police on the day of the Capitol insurrection who aided and abetted the insurrection, and even more who did not seriously try to stop it.  This all fits well into the context of Trump’s history of inciting violence.  He essentially was telling everyone “I have a violent mob I can activate if you do me wrong,” and we saw what he was saving it up for.

III.

In this context, especially when two days earlier, Trump was in Georgia railing about how the election was stolen from him one day before the Senate runoff elections there, it all fits neatly together: just watch or read his rambling speech at the “March to Save America” rally organized by his people in front of the White House to his mob on January 6. It is clear, crystal clear, what he is saying and doing: he is calling on his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol in the middle of Congress’s and Vice President Pence’s official tallying of the Electoral College majority of votes for Biden over Trump (306-232) to interfere and overturn this process, to enact a preventive coup to stop the legitimate transition of power, and to use intimidation and force if necessary, even against his own vice president.  Trump was even happy about the storming of the Capitol and called a Senator hiding from the mob to pressure him on trying to overturn the election results.  Security was deliberately light by design of the Trump Administration and reinforcements were willfully prevented from being sent when they were most needed.  This is not that difficult to figure out.

IV.

Trump was impeached on January 13 while still in office a week after his culminating effort to incite the January 6 Capitol insurrection and a full week before his term of office was then set to expire on January 20. Even though Republican leadership prevented the Senate from convening in time to hold Trump’s impeachment trial before Trump’s presidency ended, now most Republicans in Congress absurdly claim because Trump in no longer president, his trial is unconstitutional, an argument that is disingenuous, against the intention of the Founders, and a vile assault on historical precedent, the Constitution, and basic logic.  Rather than take my word for it, read a letter penned by over 140 constitutional lawyers or another penned by over 170 legal scholars, both representing a wide ideological variety of views—including many conservatives and Republicans—calling out the hollowness of the “frivolous” idea that the current Senate impeachment trial of Trump is unconstitutional, and while this view is not universal in this field, there very much seems to be a robust majority of experts supporting this current trial’s constitutionality.

V.

No links needed here: his trial can be really simple, so simple, in fact, it could easily have been conducted in the final week of Trump’s presidency before Biden took office, avoiding the sham argument Republicans are making now.  Let us just review what is at stake here:

1. Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection
2. Trump gave a speech at a rally titled “March to Save America” inspired by Trump’s public pressure campaign to overturn the election results
3. Trump riled up, then told and incited his tens of thousands of assembled supporters to march on the Capitol where Congress and the Vice President were carrying out their constitutional duty to tally the Electoral College votes of the 2020 election, which Biden clearly won
4. Trump’s mob went to the capitol and did just that, violently and illegally
5. Trump was pleased by the storming of the Capitol, continued to tweet his inciting lies during the insurrection, praised the insurrectionists, and used their attack to pressure lawmakers and Pence to support his insurrection’s aims
6. All of the jurors in Trump’s trial—our sitting U.S. senators—were literally witnesses to what happened: their lives were in danger and they had to be evacuated for their safety away from a Trump-dispatched mob, of which more than a few people were determined to kill those not caving into Trump’s illegal, unconstitutional demands, so evidence is essentially unnecessary because all the senators lived through it and the vote to confirm Trump incited the insurrection is simply a vote to confirm their own memory and whether or not they think a sitting president inciting violent insurrection to overturn an election result in which he lost is an impeachable offense, not in any real way substantively a vote on “constitutionality”
7. This is not a question of any particular law or legal threshold, though those have been crossed and add to a strong argument; rather, it is a political, not a legal, decision authorized by the constitution to be made by the Senate as to whether Trump’s incitement of violent insurrection is, in the view of sitting senators, an impeachable offense warranting removal from office and the strongest condemnation by the body politic and history, or whether (and which) sitting senators are basically fine with a president inciting violent insurrection against themselves and their own Senate and Congress
8. Most Senate Republicans planning to vote to acquit Trump are pure cowards and unfit for office, hiding behind ludicrous constitutional grounds to avoid having to vote on the clear merits of whether or not Trump incited insurrection because they lived through it and nearly all must know that this is exactly what happened

It is as simple as this: did the senators see, hear, and live through what this nation and they lived through on January 6 (an obvious 100% yes for all of them), and will they adhere to the most basic standards of moral and ethical conduct and conclude that (DUH!) inciting violent insurrection is an impeachable offense warranting removal and conviction by the Senate, or, will they place political party, personal convenience, and the pursuit of power above the republic, the Constitution, and any sense of moral or ethical conduct?

Trump is a mortal threat to our republic, and to set a proper precedent, he must be convicted in this Senate trial and barred from ever holding any federal office ever again, and there is historic bipartisan support for this from Republicans: Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of Republican Vice President Dick Cheney and the third-highest ranking House Republican, noted that “There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution,” voting with an unprecedented ten of her fellow House Republicans to impeach Trump; trial juror Sen. Mitt Romney, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2012, exclaimed that “I believe that what is being alleged and what we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is an impeachable offense.  If not, what is?”

If Trump is not convicted, would-be tyrants will be emboldened by Senate Republicans to think that trying to overthrow the system through incitement and insurrection is not a big deal, not even close to enough of a big deal to warrant removal from office.  These tyrants will know that if they try at the end of their presidency to overthrow a system installing a rival to succeed them, a precedent will have been established, that, as long as they and their political allies wait out the clock, they can just leave office with dignity even if their insurrections fail, with full honors and the ability to hold federal office again, even maybe the presidency.  The Senate, especially Senate Republicans and the Republican Party, are on trial here as much as Trump himself, and will be condoning violent insurrection if they do not vote to convict.

That is all I have to say, so obvious is this open-and-shut case.

Also see Brian’s related Jerusalem Report article, Trump Capitol insurrection: The history behind the violence, his related article here, Trump Impeachment Trial Shockingly Makes Shocking Insurrection Dramatically More Shocking, his related interview on The Jist Chatter Podcast, and his 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 my podcast interview with Georgia election officials Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, both cited in Trump’s second Senate trial!

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

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, Twitter @bfry1981, YouTube, Facebook)  November 4, 2020 (audio version of this article and podcast discussion here)

SILVER SPRING—Decency.  Truth.  Democracy.  They are not candidates, but make no mistake, they are running and on the ballot.  Trump’s supporters tried, surrounding a Joe Biden campaign bus on a highway in Texas, to run it off the road.  The President himself approvingly retweeted their horrific, reckless act; no one was hurt, but that was never a pre-determined outcome on a crowded highway involving many large vehicles, including a large and hard-to-control bus that could easily have ended up in a fatal accident.  The weather could easily have been worse, it could have been at night, any number of other factors could have been part of the equation and you would not be irresponsible for thinking such factors would not have been high on Trump’s or his supporters’ list of concerns.

Besides sending signaling approval of white supremacists, anti-Semites, Islamophobia, proven liars, grifters, convicted felons formerly on his staff, violent police abuse, a supporter who literally killed protesters in a riot, murderous dictators who continually spit at democracy in its face and fight its practice in their countries and abroad, QAnon conspiracy theorists, and plenty of other deplorables, Trump had amplified the messages of all of them and the one condition is that they support him, period, full stop.

This man loves power for his own sake and for power’s sake, two qualities many of the Founders feared with all their hearts and souls in a possible president.  They even wrote a clause into the Constitution, the Foreign Emoluments Clause, to keep the president from being influenced by foreign powers while in office, a clause of the constitution that he has routinely violated (and gotten away with these violations rather inexcusably).  He even disparages those who serve and die for the nation in uniform.  He approaches virtually everything—even sensitive foreign policy decisions—from one or more of two perspectives: if something benefits himself personally or if something benefits himself politically.

Trump has broken the system so that it still sputters along, but hardly works as intended, making our current system of government not only dysfunctional but “extraconstitutional,” as I noted long ago.  He has literally taken a great leap forward away from democracy and towards a democratic form of fascism (which I noted shortly after Trump’s inauguration), one far less violent than its twentieth century counterparts but far more deceptive in its less physically aggressive ways.  Patriots within the system who are not on board to move America in a sharply fascistic direction are labeled by Trump and his sheep as “the deep state,” but as I noted long ago, even through the failure of Congress, the media, and voters to robustly hold Trump and his minions accountable, these so-called deep-staters—bureaucrats and officials whose loyalty is to the Constitution and the system above any loyalty to Trump, as their oath of office requires—have heroically limited the damage of Trump’s first term, but Trump would be able to whittle them down in spirit and numbers over time, and they have done about all they could up to this point: now, it is up to us to make sure they will not be reduced to martyrs flaming out along with the rule of law and the democratic republic we have had for over two centuries, always flawed but always advancing over time ever since its Founding to correct many of its faults and mistakes. 

This is a historic chance to correct one of those mistakes, one of the worst in American history.

Other than his brinksmanship towards war with nuclear powers North Korea and Iran, nothing Trump has done has been more dangerous than his speech late last night, and certainly none have been more damaging to American democracy, when he as a sitting president attacked from the White House the very concept of legally-cast votes being counted and stated he would go to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to stop both votes from being counted and an American presidential election from being completed.

If anything, Trump has gotten worse over time since taking office; rather than the office ennobling him, he has dragged the presidency to his level and, in many ways, the nation along with it, and far before the coronavirus pandemic exposed Trump’s America as something of a failed state.  It is hard to calculate the substantive damage, not even addressing the reputational damage, that Trump has done to America while in office, but it is not hard to imagine how accelerated his destruction of American democracy and American character would be in a second presidential term, and we should not give him the chance to show us since the American republic would not survive this.

I could write a whole other article about the character and experience of Joe Biden, who is a better man than Donald Trump in every possible way, who has far better ideas and policies in every category conceivable, and who would behave presidentially in every instance when Trump has behaved unpresidentially.

It is not just American democracy at stake, but democracy itself and the idea of a West worth emulating that is at risk if Trump hangs on.   It seems we are entering a dark phase of legal challenges based on lies during which Trump will try to steal the election and disenfranchise thousands, maybe even millions, of Americans.  We must all stay engaged and demand from our leaders at every level that they stand up to this and resist, and it may come to the point where we must stand up and resist the tyranny of Trump.  Our republic is on the brink in ways reminiscent of the ancient Roman Republic, driven there by the crude, delusional narcissism and fraud of a madman and his followers.  No president has done more to undermine democracy and the rule of law more with the arguable exception of Andrew Johnson during Reconstruction, right after the Civil War.  You either stand with America and democracy or with Trump and tyranny.  This is not just “another” election.  With any recent presidential election, any Republican or Democrat winning would not be a risk to American democracy itself, but that is exactly where we are now.  Those of you supporting Trump—for whatever reason—yes, you may continue on as our family members and friends, colleagues and bosses, but this mark, this stain, on your values and judgment and conception of being a citizen will never go away and we will never forget.  Whatever issue(s) or sentiments drove you to support Trump, being so blind to or even accepting his wider damage both to American institutions and to fellow Americans make you his accomplices and neither history nor we will forgive or forget.  We will remember the needlessly, vastly amplified numbers of both Americans who died during the pandemic and migrant children separated from their parents at the southern border.  We will remember that you put whatever narrow interests or myopic fears you had ahead of the collective good of the nation and that you tolerated or even embraced behavior you would never, ever have stood for coming from the other side.  You may buy some goodwill by stepping aside and declining to support the would-be tyrant’s efforts to illegally stay in office after what will almost certainly be his loss once the votes are counted, but your actions have spoken for a part of your soul that we cannot ignore but must find some way to learn to live alongside.  We will go on living in the same country as you, but trusting you as fellow citizens again is not guaranteed and only action to right some of the horrors of this era on your part will earn you respect as citizens again.

For Trump, though, there is no redemption, and prison would be his only fitting next act once he is no longer in office.  But for now, all that matters is this moment: the republic must be saved, Trump defeated, Trumpism as a movement massively contained, and Biden sworn in to replace the Trumpian stain and wipe it away clean as much as is possible from the White House and the nation, though a full cleansing may not be possible for a very long time.

Donald Trump is an existential threat to our democratic system as we know it, and a second term for him would be an extinction-level event for American democracy. Our republic needs saving; let us now, during these precarious days and weeks, stay focused and ensure it does get saved. After that, let us make sure we keep it worth saving.

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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