New Year's resolution.
December 30, 2023
As we head into the final weekend of the year, President Biden is vacationing at a private residence located on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. However, in a sign of the tense international situation, Joe and Jill Biden will be accompanied on their vacation by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan (and other White House staff members).
The leading stories on Friday focused on Trump's disqualification from the Maine primary ballot and Nikki Haley’s inability to come up with a coherent explanation for failing to identify slavery as the cause of the Civil War.
This short newsletter is intended as a launching pad for posting in the Comment section over the weekend. I will return to my regular publication schedule on Tuesday, January 2, 2024—which is my way of saying I will not publish a newsletter on Monday, January 1 (because my wife and I will be hosting a New Year’s Eve party on December 31). And, in case you are wondering—Yes! We will stay awake until 9:00 PM to ring in the new year on the East Coast from our home in Los Angeles.
I hope you have a safe and happy New Year’s weekend!
January-February Schedule.
To help prepare us for the expected stories in the new year, the list below sets forth important dates in January and February:
Jan 02: President Biden returns to D.C.
Jan 08: Senate reconvenes.
Jan 09: House reconvenes
Jan 09: Oral argument on Trump's presidential immunity defense.
Jan 15: Martin Luther King Day observed (Congress not in session)
Jan 15: Iowa Republican Caucus.
Jan 19: First “Continuing Resolution” for 2024 budget expires (Agriculture, VA, HUD)
Jan 22-26: House not in session (so-called “District Workdays”)
Jan 23: New Hampshire Republican Primary.
Feb 02: Second “Continuing resolution” for 2024 budget expires (Commerce, DOJ, Science, Homeland Security, Labor, Education, Interior, Foreign operations)
Feb 05: Senate not in session
Feb 06: Nevada primary..
Feb 12-23: Senate not in session (so-called “State Work Session.”)
As you can see, January and February will be busy—and the above schedule does not include any action by the Supreme Court on Trump's disqualification in Colorado and Maine.
It is difficult to see how Congress can pass the appropriation bills necessary to fund the government by January 19 and Feb 2, as the current schedule requires. So, we will either see a GOP intra-party fight, a partial government shutdown, or another Democratic-led legislative victory to keep the government open. Stay tuned!
Reaction to the Maine Secretary of State ruling that Trump's petition to run in the primary is invalid.
The ruling by the Maine Secretary of State that Trump's primary petition was “invalid” under state law and Section 3 of the 14th Amendment provoked an avalanche of reaction. In the interest of brevity, I will address only two of the reactions.
Senator Susan Collins says, “Let the people decide.”
Senator Susan Collins of Maine—who never met a controversy she couldn’t dodge—retreated to the “Let the people decide” argument. She wrote,
The Secretary of State’s decision would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, and it should be overturned.
‘That argument is so bad, it’s not even wrong.’ (A saying often attributed to Wolfgang Pauli).
First, Trump's primary petition is invalid not because of anything the Maine Secretary of State did. It is invalid because Trump engaged in insurrection after having sworn to defend the Constitution. By operation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Trump is not qualified to be approved for the Maine primary ballot. Susan Collins is smart enough to know those facts—but doesn’t want to admit that the US Constitution bars Trump from holding federal office.
Second, Senator Collins effectively argues that we should create a “Trump exception” to the 14th Amendment by suspending its application to him. Why? Although Collins does not explain her reasoning, it is because she (and others) fear that Trump's base will resort to violence or refuse to accept the legitimacy of the election.
If all it takes to overturn the Constitution is fear of violence when it is enforced, the Constitution is not worth the paper it is written on.
It is true that voters have been denied the opportunity to vote for Trump—but that situation was created by Trump, not the state officials or judges who have applied the Constitution as written.
The reaction of Trump's competitors in the 2024 GOP primary.
Trump's competitors in the Maine GOP primary argued that he should be allowed to remain on the ballot. Vivek Ramaswamy summed it up for his Republican competitors when he posted the following:
A random person in Maine decides one day that Trump shouldn’t be on the ballot & there you go. It’s unconstitutional. It’s monarchical. It’s anti-American.
Wow! There’s a lot to unpack in Ramaswamy’s statement, but let’s take the low-hanging fruit:
The “random person” who issued the ruling was the Secretary of State, who is obligated by state law to rule on objections to primary petitions.
The Secretary of State didn’t “decide one day” to disqualify Trump—she held a public hearing on December 15 that was live-streamed (as required by law) and issued a detailed opinion explaining the basis for her ruling.
The Secretary of State’s ruling was not “unconstitutional.” It was based on the straightforward application of the US Constitution.
The decision was not “monarchical.” The Secretary of State is a constitutional officer appointed by the legislature who is subject to removal by impeachment. Her decision is reviewable by the courts of Maine and the United States of America.
The only “un-American” aspect of the situation was Trump's effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power on January 6, 2021—an effort that Ramaswamy has claimed is an “inside job” to make Trump look bad.
The other candidates (including Chris Christie) defaulted to the “Let the people decide” mantra. Can someone remind me why they are bothering to run against Trump when they are falling over themselves to keep him on the ballot?
Nikki Haley—Part II.
It is difficult to imagine that Nikki Haley could make things worse than failing to cite slavery as a cause of the Civil War, but she has managed to do so. Her new tack is to claim that it is “given” for people who grew up in the South that slavery was a cause of the Civil War. She then expands on that statement, saying
To me, it was about freedom. It's bigger than slavery.
To be clear, when Haley cites “freedom” as a cause of the Civil War, she isn’t talking about the emancipation of enslaved people. She is talking about the “freedom” of some people to own other people as slaves. That is a perverse sense of freedom. Her big-money funders must be holding emergency meetings, asking themselves, “Why can’t she tell the truth about slavery and then stop talking?”
Many readers from the South responded to yesterday’s newsletter by noting that the Civil War is often referred to as “the War of Northern Aggression.” That view is apparently widespread—and may explain Haley’s unwillingness to say that the Civil War was about slavery. She fears that recognizing the truth will make her more unelectable than she already is.
This episode has revealed several of Haley’s weaknesses.
For the last several weeks, readers have expressed fear that Trump will not be nominated by the GOP and that Nikki Haley will beat Biden. We shouldn’t look for disaster under every rock. Don’t assume that Haley will be a strong candidate if she secures the nomination.
Haley has been in second place for about three weeks—and is stumbling badly. If she beats Trump, her biggest problem will be the wrath of Trump's base. If she is still standing (politically) when they are done pummeling her, Joe Biden can and will beat her. She is hostage to large swaths of southern voters who call the Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression.”
Okay, I admit I have drifted a bit, but I received another “Will Nikki Haley beat Biden?” email while writing this newsletter. Apologies for the digression.
Concluding Thoughts.
Here’s a new year’s resolution: Let’s not worry about imagined disasters. We should be realistic. We should be open to the truth. But let’s stop rehearsing catastrophe in our heads as a defense mechanism against disappointment or as a way of mediating anxiety. Action is the antidote to anxiety. The harder we work, the less anxious we will be. And our action will make Joe Biden’s re-election in 2024 more likely! A win-win!
Happy new year, everyone!
Talk to you on January 2, 2024!
I do love the line about Collins never meeting a controversy she couldn’t dodge.
Happy New Year in advance, Robert! And to Jill, too. No one deserves it more than the two of you!