from Chicago Tribune Editorial Page July 3rd, 2024 I, like millions of other Americans and people from around the world, watched the cringe-worthy presidential debate. Neither candidate inspires confidence in the United States as a …
New actions will bar migrants who cross our Southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum Biden taking action as Congressional Republicans put partisan politics ahead of national security, twice voting against toughest reforms in decades Since …
The president was livid. He had just been shown pictures of civilians killed by Israeli shelling, including a small baby with an arm blown off. He ordered aides to get the Israeli prime minister on …
Washington, D.C. (March 12, 2024) – Since the very first Earth Day in 1970, millions of people from more than 190 countries worldwide have come together every April 22nd to stand up for the planet …
Assemblyman Freddie Rodriguez re-elected to AD52 2021-2025
Governor Newsom with New State Party Chair Rusty Hicks!
Our Dream Team!
Encounter at Governor’s annual party.
Former President Barack Obama, center, waves to the crowd after speaking at a campaign rally to support Democratic California congressional candidates, Josh Harder, T.J. Cox, Gil Cisneros, Katie Porter, Harley Rouda, Mike Levin, from left, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim on Saturday, Sept. 8, 2018. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)
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During the debate, former President Donald Trump said that Biden was the only reason he was running and that he would rather be doing anything else, but he was compelled for the sake of the nation to run again. Biden said he is running to protect democracy and protect the nation from the influence of Trump and his MAGA followers. I agree with the editorial board; Biden should step aside. I will go further and say that the Republican Party should hold Trump to his word and have him step down as well, should Biden choose not to run.
The question on everyone’s mind is: Who should run? I would like to see a matchup between either former Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C., or Gov. Kim Reynolds, R-Iowa, and either Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Michigan, or U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois. In my opinion, a presidential race between either of these Republicans and either of these Democrats would be beneficial for the country, as well as our standing in the world.
— Scott P. Lauder, Webster, Wisconsin
It’s a win-win for media
Regarding the editorial: I understand what the Tribune Editorial Board says about the “debate,” but it’s what the board isn’t saying that leads me to write.
The only reason we have to suffer presidential debating this early is because the nominations are already a foregone conclusion. If the editorial board can declare Joe Biden unfit for office on the basis of a head cold, then how can it completely elide the far more salient evidence of unfitness on the part of Donald Trump, namely that he is a convicted criminal? But Trump will drop dead before he drops out. Considering what’s at stake in this election — the continuation of our democracy — Biden would hardly be inclined to quit the race also.
For the Tribune Editorial Board and the rest of the mainstream media, it’s a win-win. If Biden does follow the editorial board’s advice and quit, the board can unfurl its hardy “Democrats in disarray” boilerplate once more. If Biden denies the board that pleasure, then it can go back to hammering the age question all the way up to November, even afterward, if Biden wins.
But if worse comes to worst and Trump wins, I guess the board could tell us what democracy looks like in the rearview mirror.
— Jeffrey Hobbs, Springfield
Nullifying voters’ choice
The Tribune Editorial Board seems to be in favor of Joe Biden stepping aside and not continuing his campaign. My question to this assumption is: How is this not considered voter suppression? Millions of voters have cast their votes for Biden to be the Democratic nominee for president. Now, it’s being suggested that Biden should step aside and allow the party to come up with a better nominee — someone the American voter did not choose to represent their vital interests in democracy.
Is this the new game we are having shoved down our throats? Put a candidate up, see if he has no chance, then replace him with a hand-picked candidate?
Sounds like “democracy” to me.
— John Caponi, Darien
More suited as a ringmaster
Much has been said about President Joe Biden’s so-called weak performance during the debate, but the key word here is “performance.” He is not a performer, but an elder statesman who knows how to lead our country, work with allies, make hard decisions, listen to advisers, respond to citizens’ needs, put forth an agenda, work with those across the aisle, etc.
Biden’s opponent is a performer, a man concerned about himself, a person full of bluster with no regard for the country at all. If one were truly listening to Donald Trump’s claims, one would notice that facts were missing from his remarks. Instead, he relied on hyperbole and untruths. Yes, he has a strong voice, unlike Biden, who is soft-spoken, but this hardly makes Biden weak. Unfortunately, Trump seems to equate a loud mouth with intelligence.
I hope the voters will eventually realize that Trump is more suited as a ringmaster than a president, for he will lead us into a three-ring circus, just as he did during his first presidency. If that happens, “Send in the clowns”!
Biden taking action as Congressional Republicans put partisan politics ahead of national security, twice voting against toughest reforms in decades
Since his first day in office, President Biden has called on Congress to secure our border and address our broken immigration system. Over the past three years, while Congress has failed to act, the President has acted to secure our border. His Administration has deployed the most agents and officers ever to address the situation at the Southern border, seized record levels of illicit fentanyl at our ports of entry, and brought together world leaders on a framework to deal with changing migration patterns that are impacting the entire Western Hemisphere.
Earlier this year, the President and his team reached a historic bipartisan agreement with Senate Democrats and Republicans to deliver the most consequential reforms of America’s immigration laws in decades. This agreement would have added critical border and immigration personnel, invested in technology to catch illegal fentanyl, delivered sweeping reforms to the asylum system, and provided emergency authority for the President to shut down the border when the system is overwhelmed. But Republicans in Congress chose to put partisan politics ahead of our national security, twice voting against the toughest and fairest set of reforms in decades.
President Biden believes we must secure our border. That is why today, he announced executive actions to bar migrants who cross our Southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum. These actions will be in effect when high levels of encounters at the Southern Border exceed our ability to deliver timely consequences, as is the case today. They will make it easier for immigration officers to remove those without a lawful basis to remain and reduce the burden on our Border Patrol agents.
But we must be clear: this cannot achieve the same results as Congressional action, and it does not provide the critical personnel and funding needed to further secure our Southern border. Congress still must act.
The Biden-Harris Administration’s executive actions will:
Bar Migrants Who Cross the Southern Border Unlawfully From Receiving Asylum
President Biden issued a proclamation under Immigration and Nationality Act sections 212(f) and 215(a) suspending entry of noncitizens who cross the Southern border into the United States unlawfully. This proclamation is accompanied by an interim final rule from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security that restricts asylum for those noncitizens.
These actions will be in effect when the Southern border is overwhelmed, and they will make it easier for immigration officers to quickly remove individuals who do not have a legal basis to remain in the United States.
These actions are not permanent. They will be discontinued when the number of migrants who cross the border between ports of entry is low enough for America’s system to safely and effectively manage border operations. These actions also include similar humanitarian exceptions to those included in the bipartisan border agreement announced in the Senate, including those for unaccompanied children and victims of trafficking.
Recent Actions to secure our border and address our broken immigration system:
Strengthening the Asylum Screening Process
The Department of Homeland Security published a proposed rule to ensure that migrants who pose a public safety or national security risk are removed as quickly in the process as possible rather than remaining in prolonged, costly detention prior to removal. This proposed rule will enhance security and deliver more timely consequences for those who do not have a legal basis to remain in the United States.
Announced new actions to more quickly resolve immigration cases
The Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security launched a Recent Arrivals docket to more quickly resolve a portion of immigration cases for migrants who attempt to cross between ports of entry at the Southern border in violation of our immigration laws.
Through this process, the Department of Justice will be able to hear these cases more quickly and the Department of Homeland Security will be able to more quickly remove individuals who do not have a legal basis to remain in the United States and grant protection to those with valid claims.
The bipartisan border agreement would have created and supported an even more efficient framework for issuing final decisions to all asylum seekers. This new process to reform our overwhelmed immigration system can only be created and funded by Congress.
Revoked visas of CEOs and government officials who profit from migrants coming to the U.S. unlawfully
The Department of State imposed visa restrictions on executives of several Colombian transportation companies who profit from smuggling migrants by sea. This action cracks down on companies that help facilitate unlawful entry into the United States, and sends a clear message that no one should profit from the exploitation of vulnerable migrants.
The State Department also imposed visa restrictions on over 250 members of the Nicaraguan government, non-governmental actors, and their immediate family members for their roles in supporting the Ortega-Murillo regime, which is selling transit visas to migrants from within and beyond the Western Hemisphere who ultimately make their way to the Southern border.
Previously, the State Department revoked visas of executives of charter airlines for similar actions.
Expanded Efforts to Dismantle Human Smuggling and Support Immigration Prosecutions
The Departments of State and Justice launched an “Anti-Smuggling Rewards” initiative designed to dismantle the leadership of human smuggling organizations that bring migrants through Central America and across the Southern U.S. border. The initiative will offer financial rewards for information leading to the identification, location, arrest, or conviction of those most responsible for significant human smuggling activities in the region.
The Department of Justice will seek new and increased penalties against human smugglers to properly account for the severity of their criminal conduct and the human misery that it causes.
The Department of Justice is also partnering with the Department of Homeland Security to direct additional prosecutors and support staff to increase immigration-related prosecutions in crucial border U.S. Attorney’s Offices. Efforts include deploying additional DHS Special Assistant United States Attorneys to different U.S. Attorneys’ offices, assigning support staff to critical U.S. Attorneys’ offices, including DOJ Attorneys to serve details in U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in several border districts, and partnering with federal agencies to identify additional resources to target these crimes.
Enhancing Immigration Enforcement
The Department of Homeland Security has surged agents to the Southern border and is referring a record number of people into expedited removal.
The Department of Homeland Security is operating more repatriation flights per week than ever before. Over the past year, DHS has removed or returned more than 750,000 people, more than in every fiscal year since 2010.
Working closely with partners throughout the region, the Biden-Harris Administration is identifying and collaborating on enforcement efforts designed to stop irregular migration before migrants reach our Southern border, expand investment and integration opportunities in the region to support those who may otherwise seek to migrate, and increase lawful pathways for migrants as an alternative to irregular migration.
Seizing Fentanyl at our Border
Border officials have seized more fentanyl at ports of entry in the last two years than the past five years combined, and the President has added 40 drug detection machines across points of entry to disrupt the fentanyl smuggling into the Homeland. The bipartisan border agreement would fund the installation of 100 additional cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect fentanyl at our Southern border ports of entry.
In close partnership with the Government of Mexico, the Department of Justice has extradited Nestor Isidro Perez Salaz, known as “El Nini,” from Mexico to the United States to face prosecution for his role in illicit fentanyl trafficking and human rights abuses. This is one of many examples of joint efforts with Mexico to tackle the fentanyl and synthetic drug epidemic that is killing so many people in our countries and globally, and to hold the drug trafficking organizations to account.
The president was livid. He had just been shown pictures of civilians killed by Israeli shelling, including a small baby with an arm blown off. He ordered aides to get the Israeli prime minister on the phone and then dressed him down sharply.
that day, Aug. 12, would be one of the few times aides ever heard the usually mild-mannered president so exercised.
“It is a holocaust,” Mr. Reagan told Mr. Begin angrily.
Mr. Begin, whose parents and brother were killed by the Nazis, snapped back, “Mr. President, I know all about a holocaust.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Reagan retorted, it had to stop. Mr. Begin heeded the demand. Twenty minutes later, he called back and told the president that he had ordered a halt to the shelling. “I didn’t know I had that kind of power,” Mr. Reagan marveled to aides afterward.
It would not be the only time he would use it to rein in Israel. In fact, Mr. Reagan used the power of American arms several times to influence Israeli war policy, at different points ordering warplanes and cluster munitions to be delayed or withheld. His actions take on new meaning four decades later, as President Biden delays a shipment of bombs
and threatens to withhold other offensive weapons from Israel if it attacks Rafah, in southern Gaza.
Even as Republicans rail against Mr. Biden, accusing him of abandoning an ally in the middle of a war, supporters of the president’s decision pointed to the Reagan precedent. If it was reasonable for the Republican presidential icon to limit arms to impose his will on Israel, they argue, it should be acceptable for the current Democratic president to do the same.
But what the Reagan comparison really underscores is how much the politics of Israel have evolved in the United States since the 1980s. For decades, presidents and prime ministers have quarreled without permanently damaging the robust relationship between the two countries.
Dwight D. Eisenhower threatened economic sanctions and an aid cutoff to force Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula after it invaded Egypt in 1956. Gerald R. Ford warned that he would re-evaluate the entire relationship in 1975 over what he considered Israel’s recalcitrance during peace talks with Egypt. George H.W. Bush postponed $10 billion in loan guarantees in 1991 in a dispute over settlements in the West Bank.
In Mr. Reagan’s day, Democrats were thought to be the party that was more supportive of Israel, a perception he wanted to change. By Mr. Reagan’s own account, “they’ve never had a better friend of Israel in the White House.” And yet it was a friendship that was tested again and again.
, a surprise attack that outraged many in Washington. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, considered a friend of the Arabs, urged Mr. Reagan to halt the arms flow to Israel. Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr., considered a friend of Israel, argued against it.
In the end, Mr. Reagan agreed to vote to condemn Israel at the United Nations Security Council and to delay the delivery of four F-16s due that summer — what Patrick Tyler, in “A World of Trouble,
” his history of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, characterized as “a minimal rebuke.”
out of concern that such munitions were being used against civilians in violation of agreements. Around the same time, he delayed the delivery of 75 F-16 warplanes without explanation until March 1983, when he announced that he would not release the jets until Israel withdrew forces from Lebanon.
The move caused no wave of criticism like that seen in Washington this week. “Maybe it was a necessary signal to Israel,” Mr. Reagan wrote mildly in his diary that night in describing his decision. In the days that followed, stories in The New York Times did not include criticism from members of Congress in either party. Not until a week later did William Safire, a conservative columnist for The Times, fault Mr. Reagan’s move as “a tragic flip-flop on Israel ” as he put it.
“Reagan had public support for withholding aid because the bombing of Beirut was witnessed on American television,” recalled Lou Cannon, the Reagan biographer. “As with Gaza, it was horrible.”
Since then, of course, Republicans have repositioned themselves as the party that unquestionably supports Israel while Democrats who bristle at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long conservative reign have become more divided on the issue. Today, there is none of the tempered deference that Mr. Reagan enjoyed from across the aisle on foreign policy.
The August 1982 bombardment in particular affected Mr. Reagan in a powerful way. Whatever his politics or policy, he reacted viscerally to the pictures he saw.
“Reagan was deeply upset by the bombardment of Beirut,” Richard Murphy, his ambassador to Saudi Arabia, recalled in an oral history by Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober. “He made it very plain that he wanted this to come to a stop when the human side was pushed in his face.”
Mr. Reagan did not hold back and was willing to put it all on the line. “I was angry,” he wrote in his diary that last night, describing the tense conversation with Mr. Begin. “I told him it had to stop or our entire future relationship was endangered.” And stop it did, at least temporarily.
Washington, D.C. (March 12, 2024) – Since the very first Earth Day in 1970, millions of people from more than 190 countries worldwide have come together every April 22nd to stand up for the planet and champion a greener, more equitable future for us all. Now in its 54th year, Earth Day serves as a poignant reminder of our collective responsibility to safeguard the environment and our own future.
With less than 50 days until Earth Day, it is important to remember no matter who you are, where you are or what you do, you have the power to bring about real and positive change. To help you do that, EARTHDAY.ORG– the driving force behind Earth Day– proudly presents the ‘How to Do Earth Day 2024‘ toolkit.
The ‘How to Do Earth Day 2024’ toolkit provides practical guidance and actionable steps for everyone to participate in the environmental movement, all in accordance with our 2024 theme, Planet vs. Plastics.
Regardless of if you are a parent, student, grandparent, teacher, faith leader, journalist, business owner, politician, someone serving in uniform, or working in manufacturing or retail – whatever it is – there is ALWAYS something you can do for your planet! For example, here are 5 key ways to get involved this Earth Day:
–Students- this one’s for you! Join our Campus Coalition and become an activist!
-Reject fast fashion by signing our petition to force change in the fashion industry.
Post and share the Your Art, Our Earth poster competition winners on social media to help spread Earth Day’s message. To view the 5-17 age group winner, click here. To view the 18+ age group winner, click here.
For more detailed information and ways to get involved this Earth Day, be sure to check out the ‘How to Do Earth Day 2024‘ toolkit and visit the official Earth Day 2024 page to stay updated on upcoming events, initiatives, and opportunities to make a difference.
About EARTHDAY.ORG:
EARTHDAY.ORG’s founders created and organized the very first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Since then, EARTHDAY.ORG has mobilized over 1 billion people annually on Earth Day, and every other day, to protect the planet. EARTHDAY.ORG’s mission is to diversify, educate, and activate the environmental movement worldwide. EARTHDAY.ORG is the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement, working with more than 150,000 partners in nearly 192 countries to build environmental democracy. Learn more at EARTHDAY.ORG. It’s not a day, it’s a movement.
Republican and Democratic senators are taking to the airwaves, scrambling to pass severe restrictions on migrants flooding across the U.S.-Mexico border. There’s just one thing: Their plan is all but dead.
Why it matters: The Senate might pass the plan, which would be one of the harshest immigration bills of the century. President Biden is ready to sign it. But House Republicans — egged on by former President Trump — already are planning to shut it down.
State of play: Illegal immigration has rocketed to the top of voters’ concerns, and Biden has become increasingly desperate for a solution. Trump and conservative Republicans see a political opportunity to squeeze Biden and Democrats on the issue.
Trump, whose front-runner status in the Republican presidential race has solidified his leadership of the GOP, has loudly vowed to kill the bipartisan border deal.
“It’s not going to happen, and I’ll fight it all the way,” Trump said Saturday in Nevada.
Zoom in: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has fallen in line. He called the deal “dead on arrival” on Friday, then doubled down over the weekend, claiming it wouldn’t do enough to stop illegal border crossings.
He has said he talks frequently with Trump about the border.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned senators last week that Trump’s opposition would make it difficult to get a border plan through Congress.
A sign of Trump’s influence: Oklahoma’s GOP voted Saturday to censure Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) for being a lead negotiator in the border policy discussions.
The details: The text of the border bill is expected to drop soon. It will include a measure that effectively would block illegal border crossers from asylum once the number of migrant encounters hits a daily average of 5,000 in a week or 8,500 on a single day, as Axios has reported.
Those restrictions would remain until illegal crossings drop and remain low for an extended period of time.
The deal also would expedite the asylum process and limit the use of parole to release migrants into the U.S.
The big picture: The migrant crisis at the border and in major U.S. cities is one of the most jeopardizing issues for Biden and Democrats this November.
It’s also Trump’s marquee political issue. He has every incentive to keep it front and center as he heads toward a likely rematch against Biden.
Biden has doubled down on a tougher border image in recent months, and has signaled his willingness to “shut down the border” if he’s given new authority under the Senate agreement.
What they’re saying: The White House is accusing Republicans of flip-flopping for politics — first supporting their own strict immigration bill and now saying Biden already has the authority to close the border.
“If Speaker Johnson continues to believe — as President Biden and Republicans and Democrats in Congress do — that we have an imperative to act immediately on the border, he should give this administration the authority and funding we’re requesting,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
“Right now [the plan’s critics] are functioning off of internet rumors of what’s in the bill, and many of them are false,” Lankford said on “Face the Nation,” defending the plan he has been negotiating.
“I want to know how house R’s square their support for H.R. 2 with their position now that we should do nothing,” one senior GOP Senate aide told Axios, referring to a sweeping border bill passed by House Republicans last year.
Republicans “are redefining the terms of any debate for the future,” one former Biden official told Axios. “A very extreme, enforcement-heavy package is now being rejected as not tough enough.”
An important disclaimer: the future is unpredictable.
No matter the amount of research you gather, the trends you uncover or even your faith in personal intuition, you can never truly know what’s ahead. This piece is less a prediction of the future and more a reflection of the current state of the Republican Party.
Upon reflection, their current strategy is the impetus for which they will be defeated in the 2024 presidential election.
The Republican strategy can be divided into two main parts.
First, bolstered by former President Donald J. Trump and his constituents, the GOP has taken a hardline on enabling the radical minority bloc within their own party. This was best demonstrated by the election of Republican Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, which was temporarily blocked by a group of right-wing dissidents.
After a historic 15 rounds of voting, McCarthy eventually won their support by making personal concessions, such as giving them leadership roles within powerful committees. This approach, however, incentivizes the broader Republican Party to shift further right, reaping the short-term political benefits.
The second element of the Republican strategy is a focus on social issues instead of traditional topics such as the economy, inflation, war and international relations.This is where the strategy falls flat, as hot-topic issues like abortion, transgender rights and gun control illustrate the party’s growing dissonance with the American people.
These issues surrounding identity politics are summed up best through the Republican Party’s catch-all term of “wokeness.” According to recent polls, 69% of Americans consider themselves “woke” on the issue of accepting people who are gay, lesbian or bisexual, while 29% consider themselves “anti-woke.”
While the Republican Party’s stance on social issues becomes more rigid, the general public is increasingly more accepting and diverse. This widening contradiction shows the GOP is failing to adapt to a shifting socioeconomic landscape.
A major issue working against the Republican Party is gun control. Despite a clear majority in bipartisan support for sensible gun control measures, the party has maintained an absolutist stance for supporting pro-gun causes. This unwillingness to address the issue has ultimately backfired, as young voters are galvanized to take action. This is best shown through recent events in Tennessee, where the GOP expelled two Democratic lawmakers for leading a youth protest after a school shooting — a reminder of how the party’s approach is retaliatory and self-isolating.
Events like this have a devastating impact on the party’s chances.Polls indicate the Republican Party has radicalized young voters into being the most liberal bloc of the electorate. Unless the party change their stances, this trend is likely to continue. Furthermore, with each new mass shooting, the GOP’s resistance to gun control faces renewed scrutiny, making it difficult for them to win over voters on this issue.
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One of the most prominent shortcomings of this overreaching Republican strategy is the recent Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. With a majority on the bench at stake, both Democrats and Republicans came into this race understanding the influence the outcome could hold on issues like abortion, gerrymandering, identity rights and even pathways to influence the 2024 presidential election.
Janet Protasiewicz, the Democratic candidate, won what is now the most expensive judiciary race in American history, with over $40 million being spent on the election. Protasiewicz credited her success to the high turnout of young voters who were energized by her focus on key social issues during her campaign.
Besides young voters, the GOP appears to be losing support from the business community, too. Many corporations are now taking a public stance on the party’s position on social issues — a stark contrast from the past.
For example, after Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled to federally block a popular abortion pill, more than 400 senior executives of pharmaceutical and biotech companies criticized the decision and requested it be repealed. The modern business community is more diverse and open-minded than ever before, and they recognize how any significant change against that would negatively disrupt their industries.
In conclusion, the Republican Party has taken on a losing edge. With their current strategy, they are becoming less favorable to the majority of Americans as they drift further to the right. They still have a chance of recovering provided they can reconsider their strategy and look for methods to engage a larger audience.
Despite this, the GOP is doubling down on intra-party radicalization and a lack of sensitivity for a changing society. Consequently, it is likely Republicans will lose the election in 2024. People will not go backward — not in the long run.
Jason Li is a sophomore studying Finance, Investment and Banking at UW-Madison. Do you believe the Republican Party will win or lose the 2024 presidential election? Let us know at opinion@dailycardinal.com.
President Joe Biden, right, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear at a briefing at a local elementary school, on response efforts to flooding in Kentucky, in August 2022.Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau.
The 2023 general election on Tuesday, November 7, featured only a grab-bag group of contests, but there was one clear overall theme in the results: Democrats did well.
Gov. Andy Beshear (D) won reelection in deep-red Kentucky. Democrats held onto the Virginia state Senate and took over the Virginia state House, blocking Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s hopes of passing conservative policies (and perhaps his ambitions in national politics). Meanwhile, Ohio voters enshrined the protection of abortion rights in the state constitution and legalized recreational cannabis.
Strangely, all this happened while President Joe Biden has been getting some of his worst polling numbers yet. As in the 2022 midterms, though, national dissatisfaction with Biden did not lead to a red wave sweeping out Democrats across the country or to wins for conservative policy proposals in ballot initiatives.
If you’re looking for tea leaves about how 2024 will go, don’t get carried away. Many of these outcomes were driven by local personalities, issues, and circumstances. And they took place in so few states that the results hardly present a clear picture of where opinion in the country is, or where it will be next year. But wins are wins, and Democrats got some significant ones on Tuesday.
Winner: Democrats
Incumbent Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear speaks to the press and supporters on his last campaign stop before the election, on November 6, 2023, in Louisville, Kentucky.Michael Swensen/Getty Images
Democrats had about as good a night on Tuesday as they could have reasonably expected.
Gov. Beshear’s reelection in Kentucky proves that Democrats can still win in Trump country, especially if they happen to be the son of a popular former governor. Though Republicans won the other statewide races on the ballot in Kentucky, Beshear beat back the candidacy of Daniel Cameron, who had been hyped as a Republican rising star, to win a second term.
The other governor’s race on the ballot was in Mississippi, where Brandon Presley (D) put forth a surprisingly strong challenge to Gov. Tate Reeves (R) in this red state but ultimately conceded the race late Tuesday night.
Then, in Virginia, Democrats swept into control of both sides of the state’s General Assembly, prevailing in an expensive contest against Gov. Youngkin and Virginia Republicans. Legislative races in the other states on the ballot this year — New Jersey, Louisiana, and Mississippi — appeared to show little change. A Democrat won in Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court race as well, preserving the party’s 5-2 majority in a court that heard many election-related challenges in 2020.
This wasn’t a blue wave sweeping the nation, exactly. And the margins of key Virginia races looked more similar to 2021’s than 2020’s (when Biden won the state big). But considering how the incumbent president’s party usually suffers in off-year elections, and how bad Biden’s national numbers have been, Democrats should be pretty pleased with these outcomes.
Winner: Abortion rights
Megan Jelinger/AFP via Getty Images
Tuesday was an excellent night for supporters of abortion rights — again.
Their biggest victory was in the ballot referendum in Ohio, which both codified abortion access up to the point when a fetus is viable and made clear abortions would be permitted even after viability if a doctor deems it necessary to protect a patient’s health. Ohio Republicans had previously passed a law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, but it had been blocked in court, with the state Supreme Court hearing arguments about it in September. Now that’s off the table.
But abortion rights were a major theme in Beshear’s reelection campaign in Kentucky and Youngkin’s attempt to flip the state legislature in Virginia, as well as in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court race. In election after election and referendum after referendum in the post-Dobbs era, voters have made clear — even in many red states — that they are not enthusiastic about major abortion restrictions.
Yet Republicans remain beholden to right-wing voters and activists demanding such restrictions — and it keeps backfiring on them in elections.
Loser: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin
Glenn Youngkin, governor of Virginia, speaks during a “Get Out the Vote” rally in Richmond, Virginia, on November 5, 2023.Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Every so often this year, a story would pop up claiming that Youngkin was consideringchallengingDonald Trump in the GOP presidential primary. However, these stories usually claimed Youngkin would wait to make up his mind until after his state’s legislative elections, in which he was hoping to wrest control of the state Senate from Democrats. Big wins for Virginia Republicans, the theory went, would prove Youngkin was a political powerhouse who could win nationally too.
This never made a ton of sense, both because there are such things as ballot deadlines that would make the timing extremely difficult, and because national GOP voters have been quite loyal to Trump. More likely, Youngkin hoped that full control of Virginia’s government could let him pass laws like a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, making himself a champion of the right and positioning him well for the 2028 presidential race. He made no secret of his abortion policy — hoping that he could show Republicans how to run on the issue and win.
But he didn’t win. Republicans fell short of retaking the state Senate and they lost control of the House of Delegates, likely in part because Democrats campaigned on abortion. Those wins will prevent Youngkin from using the legislature to cozy up to the national right. And Youngkin won’t get another shot — Virginia governors can’t run for reelection. So while it may be too sweeping to say his presidential ambitions have been squashed, they’ve certainly taken a serious hit.
Winner: Joe Biden
President Joe Biden speaks at Tioga Marine Terminal on October 13, 2023, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Mark Makela/Getty Images
Biden was not on the ballot in any state this year, and it would be a mistake to think that Tuesday’s results have any real connection to how he’ll do in 2024.
But, as mentioned above, the president has been dogged by a series of brutal polls of late showing him trailing Donald Trump nationally and in most battleground states.
Democrats and political analysts have hotly debated what to make of these polls, with some arguing that they show Biden is a badly flawed candidate who might put Trump back into the White House if he persists in running again. Former Obama adviser David Axelrod tweeted this weekend that Biden needed to consider whether it would be “wise” for him to run again. Recent news reports spoke of some Democrats’ “worry,” “frustrations,” and “panic.”
But others have argued that these polls tell us little of value. After all, they’re being taken a year in advance of the election at a time when Biden’s likely opponent, Trump, has had a relatively minor (for him) role in the news cycle. Such a panic occurred before the 2022 midterms, they point out, and yet Democrats did better than expected there. Biden’s numbers will likely recover once the choice is clearly framed for voters as Biden or Trump, the argument goes.
Democrats’ wins Tuesday will likely ease some of the pressure on Biden, feeding a sense in the party that, regardless of what the polls say, Democrats’ strategy and coalition turn out to be solid when people actually vote.
Now, it’s not clear whether that inference would actually be correct. I said just a few paragraphs ago that it would be a mistake to connect these races to 2024, which will feature a very different electorate. (It’s possible that Democrats are now the party that is structurally advantaged in non-presidential-year elections, since they now do so well among college-educated voters, who are more likely to vote consistently.) And even if Biden’s party does well now, it’s still possible that he himself is a uniquely vulnerable candidate, either due to his age or his record in office.
Still, winning is better than losing. So regardless of what the future holds, Biden has good reason to be happy about Tuesday’s results.
Update, November 8, 9 am ET: This post has been updated to reflect the Virginia House of Delegates results.
In an interview that aired Sunday, President Joe Biden warned that the MAGA faction of the Republican Party — short for “Make America Great Again,” the now-infamous slogan of former President Donald Trump — poses a threat to democracy, and the 2024 election could be pivotal for the movement.
“I think that this is sort of the last gasp — or maybe the first big gasp — of the MAGA Republicans,” Biden told former CNN journalist John Harwood in an interview for ProPublica. “I think Trump has concluded that he has to win, and they’ll pull out all the stops.”
Biden went on to condemn Trump’s rhetoric — “I never thought I’d hear a president say some of the stuff he says — and drew a parallel to the state of affairs in the House of Representatives, which saw an uprising of far-right members nearly forcing a government shutdown by “bringing everything to a screeching halt.”
The president has defending American democracy a central focus of both his presidency and his 2024 presidential campaign. In Arizona last week, the president delivered his fourth such speech on the subject since taking office in 2021, warning that “there’s something dangerous happening in America right now.”
“There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy — the MAGA movement,” he said last week, later adding: “We should all remember, democracies don’t have to die at the end of a rifle. They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up or condemn threats to democracy, when people are willing to give away that which is most precious to them because they feel frustrated, disillusioned, tired, alienated.”
He also took umbrage with his predecessor’s rhetoric in that address, saying: “Trump says the Constitution gave him quote ‘the right to do whatever he wants as president. I’ve never even heard a president say that in jest.”
In the interview which aired Sunday, Biden similarly attacked Trump’s comments about what he says he’ll do should he regain the Oval Office.
“The things Trump says he will do are a threat to American democracy,” Biden said. “As I travel the world, I have heads of state asking me, conservative heads of state, ‘Look, what’s going to happen?’ Because democracy is in jeopardy in other parts of the world as well.
Referencing former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s comments that the U.S. is “the indispensable nation,” Biden said that “if [democracy] fails here, Katy bar the door.”
Biden told Harwood that part of his desire to “focus on the fundamentals that our democracy is at stake” comes from his worry that the majority of Republicans are not taking the party back from the MAGA faction. The president has repeatedly stated that he does not believe that MAGA Republicans represent the majority of the party.
“I’m convinced that part of it is communicating to the American people that this is bigger than a political disagreement, it’s beyond it,” Biden said, adding that he believes it’s a reason why the 2020 and 2022 elections turned out the way that they did. Polling data shows that democracy was a major motivating factor for voters in last year’s midterms, which saw Democrats outperform expectations.
Harwood pressed Biden on whether he thinks threats to democracy means refusal to accept election results and blocking the transfer of power, or larger concepts like gerrymandering, the Senate filibuster rule, which has stymied some Democratic priorities in recent years, and the Electoral College, which has picked two Republican presidents that have lost the popular vote in the last decade.
“We should never, ever condone violence in a democracy,” Biden fired back, before discussing the underpinnings of American democracy — the Constitution, namely — and condemning some of Trump’s priorities that he has stated should he become president again.
“For example, he wants to change the way the civil service works, he wants a whole new category that is not answerable to the civil service rules, but only answerable to the president,” Biden said.
When asked by if he was confident that the Supreme Court could be relied on to uphold the rule of law, Biden replied that he worries.
“Because I know that if the other team, the MAGA Republicans, win, they don’t want to uphold the rule of law,” Biden said. “They want to get rid of the FBI — the things they say … somehow we’ve got to communicate to the American people that this is for real. This is real.”
But at the end of the day, Biden said he believes the high court, which he called “extreme,” would “sustain the rule of law.”
Please contact Jim Gallagher Club Chair, at chinovalleydemocrats21@gmail.com for information regarding the Club or this website. Your comments and questions are appreciated.
We want you to join us at our next meeting, Monday July 8, 2024 at 7:00 pm!
The Chino Valley Democratic Club will meet on Monday, July 8, at 7 p.m., in a hybrid in-person/ Zoom online meeting. The Club recommends participants contact chinovalleydemocrats21@gmail.com for the location or go to the Zoom link https://tinyurl.com/f47tjtj4 and join at the designated date and time, Monday, July 8 at 7:00 pm. It is recommended participants join the meeting 10-15 minutes before the meeting starts.
Local elections in the Chino Valley covering civic and school district will be discussed..
The Public is invited to join the online Zoom or the in-person meeting. Participants will be placed on mute until designated Q& A time is allotted. Club membership is also available on request.