Things that could throw the 2024 election to Trump seem likely to crop up. Maybe prosecution of Trump or a court finding that he is disqualified to run under the 14th Amendment could derail him. At this point, it seems that the election will be close, so it might not take much to tip the outcome one way or the other.
Wild cards include how effective authoritarian Republican laws to suppress non-Republican votes and to rig state elections will be. A related wild card is the effectiveness of vicious radical right lies and slander propaganda to poison Biden and Democrats generally.
Another tactic the radical right is using is funding groups that pretend to be something other than Republican, but designed to siphon votes from Biden or dampen enthusiasm for Democratic voters. The AP writes about one such group, No Labels:
A third party signed up 15,000 voters in ArizonaDemocrats worry that’s enough for a Biden spoilerMore than 15,000 people in Arizona have registered to join a new political party floating a possible bipartisan “unity ticket” against Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
While that’s less than the population of each of the state’s 40 largest cities, it’s still a number big enough to tip the presidential election in a critical swing state. And that is alarming people trying to stop Trump from winning the White House again.
The very existence of the No Labels group is fanning Democratic anxiety about Trump’s chances against an incumbent president facing questions about his age and record. While it hasn’t committed to running candidates for president and vice president, No Labels has already secured ballot access in Arizona and 10 other states. Its organizers say they are on track to reach 20 states by the end of this year and all 50 states by Election Day.
“If they have someone on the ballot who is designed to bring the country together, that clearly draws votes away from Joe Biden and does not draw votes away from Donald Trump,” said Rodd McLeod, a Democratic strategist in Arizona.
No Labels leaders say they’ll decide after the Super Tuesday primaries in March whether to run a candidate, who would be nominated at a convention in Dallas in April.
No Labels leaders vehemently deny that they’ll be a spoiler for Trump and say they’ll only proceed if their candidate has a path to victory. But it’s unclear how certain that path will have to be.
Despite the No Labels vehement denial that it would be a spoiler, they have no way to know that and are just making that up. It is ludicrous to think that their candidate would have any path to victory. Money flowing into No Labels comes mostly from Republican donors.
Also a possible spoiler is the Green Party, which siphons more votes from Democrats than the radical right Libertarian Party takes from Republicans. Cornel West is running for the People's Party and he would drain votes from Biden.
Like it or not, there definitely be Republican election subversion laws in effect and probably at least one or two other spoilers in the mix. It's not yet clear how all of that will affect the election.
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Jessica Burgess, a Nebraska mother accused of helping her teenage daughter use pills to end her pregnancy, was sentenced on Friday to two years in prison.
Burgess and her daughter, Celeste Burgess, stand accused of working together to end Celeste Burgess’s pregnancy in April 2022.
Court documents in the case revealed that Facebook’s parent company Meta supplied police with the private Facebook messages that Celeste and Jessica Burgess had sent one another.
LOCK HER UP!! LOCK HER UP!! LOCK HER UP!!
Go Republican Party & Christian nationalism!
Thank you Mark Zuckerberg for maintaining law & order!
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Everybody is reporting about Bob Menendez and his stashes of cash and gold bars. The WaPo wrote in one article:
Menendez on Friday cited having beat a previous indictment, in 2018, and accused prosecutors of having “misrepresented the normal work of a congressional office.”
“On top of that, not content with making false claims against me, they have attacked my wife for the long-standing friendships she had before she and I even met,” Menendez added.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is already calling for Menendez’s resignation, as is the state Democratic Party chairman.
In the near term, Democratic Party rules mean he’ll have to at least temporarily relinquish his chairmanship of the Foreign Relations committee.
Given how slowly corruption cases move through the courts — Menendez’s last one started more than two years after his indictment — it would seem unlikely this one would be resolved before the state’s June 4 primary and possibly even the November 2024 general election.
“The excesses of these prosecutors is apparent,” he said, adding: “They wrote these charges as they wanted; the facts are not as presented. Prosecutors did that the last time and look what a trial demonstrates. People should remember that before accepting the prosecutor’s version.”
Once again, as usual, the accused accuses the accusers. The usual list of accusations is in play, e.g., bad motives, no evidence, witch hunt, legal business as usual, lying about the facts and/or whatever else fees right at the moment. That's the norm for modern politicians. Unfortunately the norm also includes the crooks getting off.
Q: Is it fair to consider an accused politician to be a criminal even if he is acquitted in court or in an impeachment if there is sufficient evidence to reasonably believe that?
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The AP reports about how radical right Republican politicians in Georgia plan to keep Trump out of court and out of jail:
A judge expressed skepticism Friday at demands to freeze a new Georgia law creating a commission to discipline and remove state prosecutors.
Some Republicans want the new commission to discipline or remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for winning indictments of former President Donald Trump and 18 others.
That’s in part a way to evade demands from some Republicans that lawmakers call themselves into special session to attack Willis. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has rejected both a special session and the notion that Willis has done anything that merits sanctions from the new commission, although he supported the law, saying when he signed it that it would curb “far-left prosecutors” who are “making our communities less safe.”
A lawyer for the state argued Georgia lawmakers noted the state constitution expressly says lawmakers can pass laws to discipline or remove district attorneys, and said lawmakers can also define a prosecutor’s duties.
Georgia’s law is one in a series of attempts nationwide by Republicans to impose controls on prosecutors they don’t like. Republicans have inveighed against progressive prosecutors after some have brought fewer drug possession cases and sought shorter prison sentences, arguing Democrats are coddling criminals.
Q: Who coddles criminals more, Dems, Repubs, or are both about the same but in different ways (Dems coddle low level criminals and Repubs coddle Republican elites)? In view of their track record of constant, blatant mendacidty, how credible are radical right Repubs to criticize the Dems of anything without a lot of rock solid evidence to back it up?
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