Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder takes to the NYT to proclaim, “This Redistricting Chaos Must End.” He spends most of the essay explaining why the ongoing gerrymandering fight is dangerous and how we got here, both of which regular readers here are well acquainted. What’s more interesting is his proposed fix.

The next time Democrats take control of Congress and the White House, their top priority must be to rebuild and reimagine American democracy, creating a system that, more than ever before, reflects and is responsive to the will of the American people. That means banning partisan gerrymandering — and much more.

[…]

In the short term, pro-democracy forces can ask state courts to toss skewed maps in states that restrict partisan gerrymandering. Meanwhile, if Republicans continue to redraw their maps for partisan advantage, Democratic states must be willing to respond by redrawing maps in the states they control, even if it means suspending for a time the independent redistricting commissions that I have fought for.

Despite the obstacles that the Roberts court and the Republican Party have put in front of them, citizens must use the power they have to vote in local, state and federal elections to begin to carve a path to ultimately achieve much-needed reforms.

[…]

Long term, Congress needs to pass new voting rights legislation and reform the Supreme Court, so that this hyper-ideological majority cannot use a skewed reading of the Constitution to block laws that protect democracy.

When Democrats eventually take control of Congress and the White House, top of their list should be banning partisan gerrymandering and mid-decade redistricting, along with reviving protections against racial gerrymandering and guarding against other forms of voter suppression. Democratic senators should exempt such a bill from being filibustered, preventing Republicans from blocking it.

[…]

Even this would not be enough. The Supreme Court’s destruction of the Voting Rights Act, a law that was enacted and repeatedly reauthorized in Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support and under multiple Republican presidents, shows that democracy reforms will be at legal risk as long as a radical court majority rules with obvious favoritism for one side. Senate Republicans constructed this majority by freezing out Democratic court nominees while fast-tracking Republican ones. The court needs to be reined in and reinvigorated.

Congress should impose Supreme Court term limits of 18 years, a binding code of ethics that applies to the justices and a provision that requires a new justice to be appointed in the first and third years of each presidential term. This would expand the court’s membership at first, but, over time, the court would revert to a nine-member institution. Vacancies and appointments would be less subject to partisan manipulation and drama, and public confidence in the court’s independence would grow.

This is . . . a lot. And maybe not enough.

First and foremost, it requires Democrats winning back the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives under conditions that give Republicans a significant thumb on the scale. The Electoral College and Senate have long given the party an advantage, and the very problem Holder is attempting to solve does so in the House.

Those hurdles cleared, you would need to have majority support in both Houses for “banning partisan gerrymandering and mid-decade redistricting, along with reviving protections against racial gerrymandering and guarding against other forms of voter suppression.” I’m not sure what “banning partisan gerrymandering” looks like in practice, but it would seem to be within Congress’ express powers. Banning mid-decade redistricting (presumably, a return to the standard practice of redistricting pursuant to the decennial census, effective with the year ending in 2) certainly would. I have no idea what “guarding against other forms of voter suppression” looks like, but it may be within Congress’ power. Certainly, the enforcement provisions of the VRA having been struck down, “reviving protections against racial gerrymandering” would not.

While I certainly defer to Holder’s legal expertise, it has long been understood that Article III’s declaration that, “The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour” confers lifetime appointments. Imposing 18-year term limits, which I would support, would therefore almost certainly require a Constitutional amendment.

Assuming majority support in both Houses of Congress, I believe a judicial code of ethics and the appointment of a new Justice in the first and third years of every presidential term would survive Constitutional muster. But it likely wouldn’t achieve Holder’s goal. The Democratic President would only be guaranteed a Democratic Senate for the first of those appointments. S/he would need to preserve the Senate majority in the midterms to be guaranteed confirmation of the second Justice. And that would, barring retirements, only give us a 6-5 Court with a Republican swing Justice. It would require the re-election of said Democrat and keeping the Senate for a third consecutive cycle to reach 6-6, and keeping the Senate through the midterms to reach a 7-6 Democratic majority.* (Granted, it’s unlikely the current Republicans all survive that long.)

All of this, mind you, just gets us back to the status quo ante.

*It is not at all clear how or why “over time, the court would revert to a nine-member institution.” Nor, honestly, is it obvious why we would want it to. A process with regular appointments to the Court would solve many problems created by the fixed size, which effectively invites timing judicial retirements with the partisan control of the White House.

NYT (“Trump’s Approval Sinks Amid Unpopular War, Darkening G.O.P. Prospects“):

Most voters think President Trump made the wrong decision to go to war with Iran, a New York Times/Siena poll found, leaving the Republican Party on rocky political footing heading into the midterm elections as his approval rating sinks and economic concerns rise.

Majorities of voters said that the war was not worth the costs and held deeply pessimistic views about the economy.

Mr. Trump’s approval rating — a key historical predictor of how a president’s party will fare in an election — has sunk to a second-term low in Times/Siena polls of 37 percent amid the deeply unpopular Middle East conflict.

Nearly two-thirds of voters said that going to war had been the wrong decision, including almost three-quarters of politically crucial independents. Less than a quarter of all voters thought the conflict had been worth the costs.

Republicans broadly approved of Mr. Trump’s job performance and the war. But most other voters showed serious skepticism of his leadership on other top issues, including the economy and the cost of living. Sixty-four percent of all voters disapproved of his handling of the economy, long a strength for him, and majorities expressed negative views of how he was managing the cost of living, immigration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Independent voters in particular have become unhappier with Mr. Trump. Sixty-nine percent disapproved of his job performance, up from 62 percent in a January Times/Siena poll. Forty-seven percent of independents said his policies had hurt them, up from 41 percent in fall 2025.

Overall, 44 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had hurt them personally, up from 36 percent last fall.

Their chief political analyst, Nate Cohn (“A Crack in the Polling Floor Puts Trump in New Territory“):

Over the last decade, it’s often been said that President Trump’s support has a low ceiling but a high floor.

In this morning’s latest New York Times/Siena poll, whether Mr. Trump really has a high floor is starting to be put to the test.

Just 37 percent of Americans approve of his performance as president, a drop of four percentage points from the last Times/Siena poll in January and his lowest approval rating in any Times/Siena survey in either term.

A four-point decline isn’t necessarily huge, but it puts Mr. Trump’s ratings in new political territory. While recent presidencies have often been unpopular and polarizing, no president’s approval rating has been under 38 percent for more than a few days in the last 17 years, according to our average. If there has been a floor during this partisan era of politics, Mr. Trump’s ratings today have fallen to it.

Cohn, of course, knows that taking a single poll, especially one with a 3.4% margin of sampling error, and extrapolating too much. Looking at the RealClearPolitics average, we see that the numbers are not historically bad by Trump standards:

Indeed, the second term trend has been so constant that I’m surprised by how little an unpopular war and a near doubling of gas prices have impacted it.

Still, Cohn is likely right here:

As in other recent Times/Siena polls, the survey found that young and nonwhite voters have snapped back toward the left. Democrats have regained their usual, pre-Biden advantage among both groups in the race for control of Congress as well as in party identification. Mr. Trump’s approval rating among both groups is abysmal: Among voters 18 to 29 years old, only 19 percent approve of his performance; just 20 percent of Hispanic voters say the same.

While some of the social issues resonated with a segment of Black and Hispanic men, other events during this presidency have surely soured many of them.

I’m more skeptical here, though:

The possibility that Mr. Trump’s floor is cracking raises the prospect of even more significant, longer-term political consequences. If the war and high prices persist, Mr. Trump’s troubles could start to look less like other recent polarizing presidencies and more like those of George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson or Harry Truman, in which quagmire abroad and economic challenges at home did significant political damage to their parties.

Indeed, Cohn sort of anticipates the obvious rejoinder:

Of course, Iran is not doomed to be another Iraq, Vietnam or Korea. For now, there’s a cease-fire; there could be a diplomatic solution at any time. If prior wars are any indication, Mr. Trump has time to resolve these challenges before his approval ratings fall into the lower 30s or beyond.

Unless we send in ground forces in significant numbers, this war is nothing like those. The combat losses, while tragic and needless, have been modest. The main issue, really, has been the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the resulting uptick in gas prices and their ripple effects throughout the economy.

And, while this seems plausible

If the conflict lasts long enough for Mr. Trump to keep bleeding support, Republicans might face something a lot worse than a bad midterm. A midterm defeat was likely even before the war began — it’s the usual fate of parties in power, after all — but the president’s party usually rebounds relative to that for the next presidential election. If Mr. Trump’s approval rating stays in the 30s, it won’t be so easy to assume Republicans will rebound. In the polling era, there are no examples of the president’s party retaining the White House when the president’s approval rating is under 40 percent. More often, the election is a rout.

I’ve all but given up on predicting the behavior of the American electorate. Trump was wildly unpopular in 2016, and in 2024 won the election—albeit with a popular vote deficit of nearly 3 million the first time. Given how few states are in play, and not knowing who the rabid partisans who participate in presidential primaries will nominate, I’m more than a little hesitant to extrapolate the current mood to an election two and a half years into the future.

We continue our in-depth look at Harlan Ellison, the man and his works, with some of his most famous television scripts. “City On The Edge Of Forever” is, of course, one of the most famous and beloved episodes of the original Star Trek TV show. “Soldier” and “Demon With A Glass Hand” are two episodes written by Ellison for the science fiction anthology show, The Outer Limits. All three are at the apex of Ellison’s writing for television, a medium with which he had a…how to say it…complicated relationship. He battled with Roddenberry over his Star Trek script. His Outer Limits episodes were the basis of a law suit against James Cameron. 

We cover those backstories, but we also review the episodes themselves. Both of us enjoyed the heck out of these shows when we first saw them. How well do they stand the proverbial test of time (which is something, considering all three episodes involved time travel)? Were these quintessential Ellison stories? And which version of “The City On The Edge Of Forever” do we prefer, the one that Ellison wrote, or the modified version that was filmed?

We also cover Ellison’s TV appearances, playing himself, on talk shows at the height of his career.

Time-traveling soldiers! Time-traveling robots! Time-traveling aliens! Time-traveling Shatners! A demure Joan Collins! Tom Snyder! Glorious black and white TV! Even more glorious color! It’s all here.

And stay tuned next episode for a movie adaptation and the worst SF TV show we’ve ever seen!

Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of popular culture. We were geeks before it was chic!

For feedback, contact so**************@***il.com. You can also find us on Facebook, Reddit, and Bluesky. Also, check out the Ancient Geeks blog on Substack! And if you like what you hear, please tell a friend. Also, we always appreciate a review on the podcast platform of your choice.

NYT (“Trump Calls Xi a ‘Friend.’ But He Left China Without Any Breakthroughs.”):

There was a vague agreement that China would purchase Boeing jets and more American soybeans. There was discussion about Iran and opening the Strait of Hormuz, and a nod to other issues, like cracking down on chemicals used to make fentanyl.

But President Trump departed Beijing on Friday with almost nothing concrete to show for his two-day summit with President Xi Jinping of China. After months of buildup and a delay necessitated by Mr. Trump’s difficulty in extricating the United States from the war with Iran, the summit ended with no major public progress on the Middle East, trade, Taiwan, nuclear proliferation, artificial intelligence or any of the other myriad issues that are sources of friction between the world’s two superpowers.

Instead, Mr. Trump seemed intent on a different kind of diplomacy, forging a personal bond with a Chinese leader who appeared far more focused on advancing his own nation’s strategic agenda.

Mr. Trump toasted Mr. Xi as “my friend” at their banquet in Beijing on Thursday and said he had “become really a friend” when they sat down before the cameras on Friday.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, asked at a briefing during the summit whether Mr. Xi considered Mr. Trump a friend, responded with boilerplate: “the two sides exchanged views on major issues.”

Mr. Trump has hailed the summit in Beijing as a major success, highlighting the personal bond he says he has built with China’s longtime leader. But the feeling is not necessarily mutual, as evidenced by Mr. Xi’s more measured tone and the lack of clarity about any major agreements.

Orville Schell, vice president of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, called the summit “quite insubstantial and aspirational.”

“We have Trump dreaming out loud,” he said.

The mismatch shows the risks in Mr. Trump’s personality-driven foreign policy, his bet that he can solve the world’s problems and defend American interests by his charm and force of will. In Mr. Xi, the U.S. president faced a counterpart this week well versed in Mr. Trump’s desire for praise and pomp, and with an apparent strategy for how to exploit it.

The result, analysts said, was a summit that illustrated the growing confidence of China on the world stage alongside a strategically muddled U.S. foreign policy under Mr. Trump.

WaPo (“Trump’s China summit shows toll of a difficult year for the president“):

President Donald Trump was riding the early high of his return to power last year when he took his first major foreign trip and declared that he would make a sharp break from years of U.S. nation-building around the world.

Exactly one year after that visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, he came to China at a very different moment in his presidency, with inflation spiraling and no easy way out of a conflict with Iran. The fight has ensnared the U.S. military, driving energy prices up and Trump’s approval rating down.

This time, there were no sweeping declarations about how Trump’s America would manage the world, nor backslapping bonhomie shared with Gulf royals who offered golden swords and honor guards riding Arabian steeds.

Instead, there was Chinese President Xi Jinping, respectful but businesslike, welcoming but appearing to bend little on the U.S. leader’s priorities.

Trump came to Beijing hoping to do trade deals. Xi made it known that Taiwan’s fate, not investment, was China’s top priority — yanking the spotlight from Trump’s preferred focus to warn of “clashes and even conflicts” with the United States should disagreements over the disputed island be mismanaged.

Trump left on Friday with a promise of a Xi trip to the White House in September and trade deals that were mostly a disappointment, at least as measured by the 8 percent drop in Boeing’s stock price between Trump’s arrival in Beijing and his departure. The president declared delight that the trip made it possible for top U.S. business executives to meet the Chinese leader, but offered little evidence of transactions that resulted.

WaPo (“Xi, in summit victory, projected stability and conceded nothing to Trump“):

For Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the 43 hours that President Donald Trump was in Beijing was plenty of time to score diplomatic points while conceding nothing to his U.S. rival.

There were no major breakthroughs and few agreements, but there weren’t any blunders, and the frictionless summit brought China closer to a more stable footing in its most important — and often volatile — bilateral relationship.

That, it seems, was precisely Xi’s objective.

“China’s primary goal,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Washington-based Stimson Center, “is to aim for stability of the relationship: ‘Please don’t bother us. Please don’t harass us. … And let’s find some rules of engagement that will allow us to proceed in relative peace and relative stability.’”

[…]

The absence of tangible outcomes also has risk, leaving plenty of issues unresolved, particularly on trade. Without concrete agreements, experts said, it’s unclear what exactly is stabilizing the relationship.

But Xi also succeeded in presenting himself as a leader at the height of his power, one who did not need to boast of being part of what Trump called the “G2″ because he still has friends and allies that he has no interest in offending, unlike Trump who makes no secret of the view that his America needs no one.

While Trump returned to Washington to grapple with his stalled war against Iran, falling poll numbers and rising inflation, Xi will now turn his focus to another big meeting, with Russia’s Vladimir Putin visiting Beijing this week.

China and Russia, longtime partners in the U.N. Security Council against Western hegemony, have emphasized in recent years their cooperation in constructing a multipolar alternative to the U.S.-led global order.

The United States, while still able to flex military muscle abroad, has lost sway as Trump has alienated traditional allies in Europe and cut off foreign aid and other assistance long relied on by many nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Trump brought an entourage of CEOs to Beijing, but they left without announcing any major deals, creating an impression — reinforced by the president who boasted of introducing them to Xi — that the titans of American industry traveled around the world just for the privilege of shaking his hand.

TMR editor Michael Tomasky is unsparing: “How Do We Know the China Summit Was a Failure? Because Trump Did It.”

Donald Trump says China agreed to buy 200 jets from Boeing. He crowed about it on Fox News Thursday night. But funny thing: A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was asked specifically about the jet deal after Trump spoke, and he said nothing about any such agreement. Wanna take bets on whether it actually happened?

Three points here. First of all, we should stop quickly to note that it’s sad that it’s come to pass that we just automatically believe a foreign government—and China’s no less—over the president of the United States (sad about him, that is, not us). Second, let’s remember that Boeing is an American company in a deep and sustained crisis that was brought on by basic greed: As David Goldstein explained in Democracy journal in 2024, after its acquisition of McDonnell-Douglas in 1997, the historically proud engineering culture at Boeing was destroyed as the company became more anti-union and outsourced more of its production.

And third, assuming that Trump is lying or at least exaggerating, well, we’ve just learned again for the jillionth time that Mr. Art of the Deal is a total fraud. 

[…]

Trump can fool himself, if he wants to, that Xi Jinping was talking about the Biden years when he referred to America’s decline and the suddenly famous “Thucydides Trap.” But everyone knows the truth. He was talking about the United States in general, under both parties—a country that is by now pretty much owned lock, stock, and barrel by a handful of greedy Robber Barons whom the GOP worships and the Democrats haven’t had the stones to stop.

And he was talking about the United States under Trump specifically. Xi may be a ruthlessly immoral tyrant. But one thing he isn’t is dumb. He sees very clearly what the United States is doing to itself, having reelected a low-I.Q. kleptocrat, adjudicated sex offender, and psychologically damaged sociopath who spends the wee hours firing off batshit tweets and obsessing about a ballroom the way the Sun King did over Versailles. That man, not Joe Biden, is why China now tops the United States in global approval ratings.

The United States always led China in those kinds of polls because at the end of the day we could say well, at least we’re a democracy. The way things are going, we’re not even going to be able to say that soon. But hey, he’s a great dealmaker, right?

The Atlantic‘s Franklin Foer is only somewhat kinder (“Xi Jinping Was Only Humoring Trump“):

Spare a moment, please, for the lame-duck superpower. It calls itself the leader of the free world, but the free world no longer believes it. When it extends its hand, nobody rushes to accept. When it threatens, nobody trembles.

After President Trump arrived in Beijing this week, Xi Jinping showered him with pomp befitting a summit of great powers. Yet the Chinese leader permitted potshots at his guest to go viral on his country’s internet rather than suppressing them, as some observers expected he would during a state visit. Xi answered Trump’s lavish praise by sternly lecturing him about meddling with Taiwan. In the end, Xi offered nothing of great substance—no solutions to the war in Iran, no sweeping trade deals, no promises of access to rare earth minerals. Xi used the visit to humor the lame-duck president, waiting for his time to pass.

During the first Trump administration, foreign leaders flattered and accommodated the president out of deference to American power. They feared it; they relied on it. During the second administration, and especially since the beginning of the Iran war, their calculus has quietly shifted—not because the strategy of obsequiousness has failed, but because it’s no longer worth the trouble. Like many of his counterparts around the world, Xi has begun to assume that it’s not just Trump who is term-limited; it’s also his nation.

Trump’s war in Iran was meant to showcase American power. It did the opposite. In the course of failing to remove a much weaker regime or eliminate its nuclear threat, the United States blew through its arsenal—so much so that allies in the Pacific reasonably wonder whether enough munitions remain to protect them. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon is now worried that it lacks the firepower to execute contingency plans for defending Taiwan.

Supporters of the war argued that it would deal China a severe blow by eliminating one of its most potent allies. But the Gulf nations most threatened by Iran have actually turned to China. As first reported by The Washington Post, an intelligence assessment prepared for the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that those countries have begun acquiring from Beijing the systems needed to protect their oil infrastructure and bases. Trump didn’t just fail to weaken China’s position in the Middle East. He strengthened it.

Without exerting itself much, Beijing has profited from America’s self-immolation. China’s petroleum reserves and its investments in renewable energy have allowed it to offer Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia relief from the energy crisis that the United States instigated. Instead of applying diplomatic pressure on Iran to cut a deal, China has let the conflict linger, so that the United States continues to bear the blame for the disruptions to shipping. Meanwhile, China poses as the faithful steward of the rules-based order—the cooler head, the power on which even the U.S. must now rely.

By patiently waiting out this moment, by letting the United States exhaust itself, China has bought time to pursue what Xi calls “national self-reliance”—time to catch up with the West technologically and to fortify itself for the point when competition takes a harsher turn.

Then-Senator Barack Obama rightly came under fire during the 2008 campaign for his repeated declaration that he would negotiate with the Iranian regime “without preconditions” in order to revive diplomatic relations and reach a deal on nuclear proliferation. While dialogue among world leaders is useful in and of itself, there is a longstanding understanding that U.S. Presidents do not travel to summit meetings, lending their prestige to foreign dictators, without significant concessions having been negotiated ahead of time by professional diplomats.

While Obama never backed off his position rhetorically—lest he be accused of flip-flopping—he in fact adhered to that tradition. While he had his flaws as President, an unwillingness to learn from those with more experience was not among them.

It’s possible that more was accomplished at this summit than meets the eye. But it certainly looks at this juncture that Xi came out positioned as the stronger leader. The President of the United States came to court him, along with an entourage of senior U.S. officials and businessmen, with very little to show for it.

Beyond that, the notion that the two men could be “friends” while the two countries are engaged in a level of adversarial competition not seen since the Cold War is rather strange. The Trump 45 administration rightly declared winning the strategic competition with China the top national security priority of the United States. It saw an adversary seeking to “shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests. China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor.” If anything, that has become more plain in the decade since. That is the opposite of friendly.

Bloomberg (“Trump Gets Revenge Against Republican Who Voted to Convict Him“):

President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. succeeded in their efforts to defeat Senator Bill Cassidy in Louisiana’s Republican primary, a signal of the enduring strength of the president’s hold on his party despite an unpopular war and soaring gas prices.

Cassidy was one of seven GOP senators in 2021 who voted to convict Trump on the charge of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6 that year. He placed last in a three-way race Saturday against Representative Julia Letlow, who was endorsed by both Trump and a Kennedy-linked political action committee, and State Treasurer John Fleming.

“His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it’s nice to see that his political career is OVER!” Trump said of Cassidy on social media late Saturday.

With 92.3% of ballots tallied, Letlow has 44.8% of the vote and Fleming has 28.3%. Cassidy trailed with 24.7% of the vote.

Letlow and Fleming will advance to a runoff next month. Whoever wins that contest is virtually assured victory in November in the deep red state. In his reelection race in 2020, just months before his vote to convict Trump, Cassidy won 59% of the vote.

[…]

In a defiant concession speech, Cassidy said: “Let me just set the record straight. Our country is not about one individual, it is about the welfare of all Americans and it is about our Constitution.”

“If someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves, they’re not about serving us,” he added.

NBC News (“Sen. Bill Cassidy’s defeat shows the price of dissent in Trump’s Republican Party“):

Sen. Bill Cassidy’s primary loss Saturday brings an end to a two-decade career in public office that was ultimately defined by tensions with President Donald Trump.

And when Republicans have tensions with Trump, the president usually wins.

[…]

The result marks another trophy for Trump’s collection in his ongoing bid to oust Republicans perceived as disloyal to him.

Throughout Cassidy’s career, there were occasional signs that the physician-turned-politician wasn’t quite in lockstep with his party on a handful of issues, including around health care. But Cassidy’s cardinal sin, in the eyes of Trump and his supporters, was voting in 2021 to convict the then-former president on impeachment charges of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6.

Cassidy had just won re-election weeks earlier by a dominant margin. His vote after the impeachment trial was seen as something of a surprise by a senator not known for bucking his party once the dust settled.

It went against a pattern for Cassidy over his Senate tenure: a tendency to express moderate instincts and occasional disagreements with his party more through words than votes. This time, though, he broke with most of his party on the Senate floor.

“Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person,” Cassidy said in a brief statement after the vote. “I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty.”

And Trump never forgot it, having waged a largely successful campaign to oust Republicans who voted to impeach or convict him. Just two of the other six GOP senators who voted to convict Trump are still in office: Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. And just two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him are still in office, with only one running for re-election this year: Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif.

Cassidy’s vote to convict Trump came just a few months after the senator handily won re-election to his second six-year term. He was first elected to the Senate in the 2014 red wave, ousting Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu. Before that, he served in the House for six years and the Louisiana state Senate for about two years.

It points to the tight grip that Trump maintains over a core GOP electorate that shares his unforgiving demands for lawmakers in the party be loyal to him.

It didn’t matter that Cassidy’s voting record has been closely aligned with Trump’s agenda in the Senate. The senator rarely ever voted against his legislative priorities, administrative personnel or judicial nominees in either term.

Ronald Reagan liked to say, “The person who agrees with you 80% of the time is a friend and an ally, not a 20% traitor.” Trump clearly does not hold to that worldview.

It’s clear that Republican primary voters remain in lockstep with their fearless leader. Longtime incumbents are either being defeated for crossing Trump or simply not bothering to run for re-election. I’ve never seen anything like it in the nearly five decades I’ve been following American politics.

I must confess that I have not followed Cassidy’s career closely enough to have a strong sense of how much good he did/pork he brought home to Louisiana. But it’s noteworthy that he sailed to victory in 2014 over incumbent Mary Landrieu 56-44, becoming the first Republican to hold the seat since 1883. In 2020, he won all-party primary on November 3 with 59.3% of the vote, making a general election unnecessary.

Indeed, this is the first time since 2008 that Louisiana has held single-party primaries—and that election was itself a departure from the state’s tradition. Apparently, the switch caused a lot of confusion. But I don’t think it’s the reason Cassidy came in third.

AP (“Democrats test a new red state strategy: Back independents over their own nominees“):

Democratic leaders, desperate to compete in red states where their party brand is toxic, are embracing something new this midterm season: Not backing Democrats.

In states like Nebraska, Idaho and Alaska, Democratic officials are, in some cases, looking past their own party’s candidates while subtly encouraging — or even openly promoting — independent candidates they hope can outperform the Democratic label. The Democratic National Committee and some of its allies in Washington are quietly supporting the new strategy.

Meanwhile, some of the independent candidates are chatting in a group text about their approach as they plot a path that could shake up Congress, which is consumed by partisan gridlock.

Nebraska Democrats this week chose a nominee for U.S. Senate, Cindy Burbank, who said a major campaign priority was to ensure a Democrat wouldn’t be on the fall ballot to pull support from independent Dan Osborn. Shortly after polls closed, Burbank reiterated her plan to drop out in the coming weeks during a private conversation with a party official, according to state Democratic chair Jane Kleeb.

Democratic leaders believe Osborn, who came within 7 points of winning a Senate seat in 2024, has the best chance to defeat Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts.

Democrats’ pivot toward independents is part of an intentional strategy in some places — and something closer to a wink and a nod in others — that covers a handful of high-profile Senate and House and even statehouse contests. Independent Senate candidates are also running in states like Idaho, South Dakota and Montana, where Democratic leadership has so far been unwilling to fully embrace the independents, although many view them as the Democrats’ best chance to stop Republicans this fall.

“For some states, and Nebraska is one of them, where Democrats are 32% of the electorate, this is a long-term strategy for us,” said Kleeb, who also serves as a vice chair to the Democratic National Committee.

Kleeb said her state party is backing independents in at least four state legislative seats in addition to the U.S. Senate: “We have to build a coalition with independents in order to win elections so we can do good work for the people. Period.”

Some of the Democratic Party’s national political machine appears to be on board.

The Democrats’ fundraising site, ActBlue, serves some of the independent candidates, as do popular Democratic-allied website builders. At the same time, some of the party’s campaign committees in Washington quietly provide logistical support in some cases, while avoiding public criticism of the independent candidates even in some races where there is a Democratic nominee.

“The Democratic Party’s brand is awful right now,” said Democratic strategist Josh Schwerin. “The combination of the brand problem and the existential nature of the threat that our country is facing requires us to have a big tent and look for candidates who can win.”

I saw a report on the Nebraska gambit earlier in the week, but was not aware that it was part of a larger strategy. To the extent Priority One is to deprive President Trump of another two years of a rubber-stamp Congress, it’s a sound approach. But it’s just another illustration of the problems of our bimodal system.

Schwerin is not being hyperbolic when he says, “The Democratic Party’s brand is awful right now.” According to a Pew survey published earlier this month, 59 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the party, compared to 39 percent who view it favorably. Of course, the Republican Party has essentially identical (58-40) ratings. But, with exceedingly rare exception, getting elected to major office (President, US Senator, US Representative, governor) requires running under one of those banners.

Complicating matters further, as we’ve noted here ad nauseam, is that almost every state and Congressional district leans so heavily toward one of these parties that, for all intents and purposes, winning that party’s primary is tantamount to election. While it’s doubtful Osborn can get elected to the Senate from Nebraska as an independent, it’s all but certain he can’t as a Democrat barring some major scandal on Ricketts’ part.

Indeed, according to a recent Tavern sample of likely Nebraska voters,

Against Osborn, Ricketts trails 42-47, with 12% undecided. Against Cindy Burbank, he wins 48-39. Against William J. Forbes, he wins 50-34. Against a generic Democrat — the cleanest test of the partisan baseline — he wins 49-42. Four ballots, same incumbent, same week. One of them looks competitive. Three of them don’t.

The driving factor to this is independents. Against Osborn, independents break 62-20 for the challenger. Against Burbank, they break 48-29. Against Forbes, 47-30. Against a generic Democrat, 54-28. Osborn isn’t picking up a few more independents than a Democrat would. He’s running 14 points stronger with them than the generic Democratic baseline, and roughly doubling Forbes’s margin with the same voters.

He’s also pulling Republicans a Democrat can’t reach. Osborn takes 14% of self-identified Republicans and 17% of Trump 2024 voters. A generic Democrat gets 8% and 9%. That’s the difference between a 5-point race and a 7-point loss. [emphases in original]

Granting that some of this may be a function of Osborn’s personal qualities, including name recognition from his previous run, I’m quite certain that his numbers would be quite a bit lower under the “Democrat” label.

The subterfuge of running a Democratic primary with the intent of having the winner drop out and endorse an “independent” is, to say the least, odd. It deprives hard core Democrats of a candidate in the race. But, alas, in a winner-take-all system where the Democrat can’t win, it makes tactical sense.

Still, some Democrats are not happy.

Some Democratic donors, strategists and party leaders from other states have privately pushed back, insisting Democrats should not look past their own nominees for short-term political gain. They want Democratic officials, in Washington and on the ground in red states, to work harder to make the Democratic brand more attractive — even if it takes several more years to be competitive.

“What’s the independent going to do for the Democratic Party if they win?” asked Democratic strategist Mike Ceraso, who sees the shift toward independents as an attempt to disguise Democrats in some cases. “We’re the party of truth and honesty and integrity, but we’re playing these stupid political games?”

And there is no guarantee that the independent candidates, if elected, would support all of the Democrats’ policy priorities or even Democratic leadership in Congress.

In Idaho, independent Senate candidate Todd Achilles, an Army veteran and former Democratic state legislator, said he won’t be caucusing with either party if elected. He explained his politics as “straight down the middle,” and said he believes in individual liberties.

Of course, the unreliability issue will always be there for Red and Purple state non-Republicans. Any regular OTB reader knows full well the pain Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema caused for the Democratic leadership despite carrying (until near the end, anyway) the party brand. They’d still prefer a majority and dealing with a recalcitrant Manchin than with minority status and his replacement, Republican Jim Justice.

And, if elected, Achilles will soon learn that caucusing with neither party means having next to no influence in the Senate. While he might be able to wrest some concessions here and there in order to be the tiebreaking vote on major bills, real power in Congress comes from committee assignments. Here, again, the fact that there are only two viable parties complicates governing and coalition-building.

Presented without further comment:

Trump: Chinese restaurants in America today outnumber the five largest fast food chains in the United States all combined. That’s a pretty big statement.

Ok, two comments.

1. This sounds like a small child’s idea of diplomatic outreach.
2. I guess immigration isn’t so bad after all.

“Flyover”

July 13, 2025

Pike Road, AL

As I watch the courts and state legislatures continue to try to engineer a pathway for Republicans to retain control of the House, I take heart, to some degree, from things like this via PBS: WATCH: ‘I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation’ when negotiating with Iran, Trump says.

If our only hope for at least one chamber of Congress that will apply some level of accountability is a blue wave, then this helps. Soaring gas prices that can be directly pegged to the choices of a president who says that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation” while also asking for $1 billion for his ballroom, among other vanity projects, will help move the goal along.

Here’s the clip:

I wonder what the over/under is on Kalshi for how many times that clip is going to appear in campaign ads this fall?

Too bad the audio is diminished by the helicopter in the background.