Constant readers will notice that our regular right-column commentator, pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay, is and has always been a never-Trumper. He is conservative, not populist, representing the pro-business and free-trade pre-2016 GOP. 

But we welcome civilly stated comments from pro-MAGA conservatives as well and hope to engage readers with a wide range of political thought. Here at The Hustings we’re looking for insight on how Donald J. Trump has been able to keep the GOP under his control all these years. 

Whatever your politics, we want to hear from you. Email your comments on our recent political news/news aggregates and/or recent right-column or left-column commentary to editors@thehustings.news and please be sure to indicate your political leanings in the subject line so we can post them in the appropriate column.

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By Ken Zino

The results of the New Hampshire GOP primary were nothing new. It confirmed the rematch of President Biden versus the 91-count indicted, defeated ex-President Trump. Now, the Republicans can scuffle with each other over who will be their vice-presidential candidate. Yawn. The main event will be the competent and winning Biden-Harris Democratic ticket versus Captain Chaos and his sinking ship, the SS Insurrectionist, which is running out of steam.

Significant here in my view is the weakness of Donald J. Trump. “This race is far from over,” Nikki Haley said Tuesday night. She managed a relatively strong showing against the person who allegedly has a grip on the Republican Party. (Haley received 133,017, or 43.3%, of the vote. Trump got 167,210 for 54.5%). There is a significant number of members of the Grand Old Party who think the party is over for above-the-law King Donald. 

A divided party in the primaries historically -- study history, don’t ban it -- has a tough time in the general election. Take Gerald Ford “the Pardon Watergate Nixon and play golf for life” guy who lost in 1976. George H.W. Bush lost the White House in 1992 after Pat Buchanan took 37% in the New Hampshire primary. Bush won the Republican presidential nomination. Clinton defeated him with 370 electoral votes to Bush’s 168, ending three straight terms of Republican control of the presidency. Don’t read my lips here. Listen to the Republican outcry against Trump.

Freedom Message

Biden-Harris and their newly expanded reelection campaign staff of Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Mike Donilon who just transferred from their White House roles to leadership of the reelection staff are already accelerating the freedom message (https://youtu.be/ChjibtX0UzU) – freedom of choice, freedom to vote, freedom from political violence and chaos. These are the demonstrated policy and positions of Democratic candidates with vast foreign policy experience who can point to a growing economy that is uplifting all. They support and can advance reproductive rights and gun control regulations. They want to make the wealthy two-percenters pay their share of taxes. Biden-Harris addressed climate change and are rebuilding and expanding the infrastructure. They are also bringing Wi-Fi to rural economies, not just cities. Neither has an indictment or conviction on their record.

Biden-Harris beat Trump before. In Iowa roughly as many Republicans in total voted against Trump as voted for him. The same applies to New, err Old Hampshire. Biden-Harris can win again. Let them get on with amplifying the policy and positions that matter to the many Republicans (in name only?) who are unhappy with Trump. “If Donald Trump is our opponent, we can expect vile attacks, endless lies, and massive spending,” the reelection campaign website https://joebiden.com/ says.

“Stand up for our personal freedom. Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights,” President Biden says in his campaign video.

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TUESDAY 1/23/24

Biden Wins New Hampshire

Although he was not on the ballot, President Biden won New Hampshire’s Democratic primary Tuesday as a write-in with 66,081 votes, or 56.6%, according to The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ. In addition, “Write-In” took another 18,284 votes, or 15.7%. 

This would be a good spot to note that Donald J. Trump beat Nikki Haley in the Republican primary by 34,054 votes.

Biden was not on the ballot because his campaign wanted the February 3 South Carolina primary to be first on his party’s calendar, ahead of Iowa as well as New Hampshire. Decision Desk HQ notes that the Biden campaign’s write-in campaign encouraged voters to write in anything indicating the president, including “Joe and Kamala” or even a misspelling like “Bidon.”

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) took second place, with 23,498 votes, or 20.1% and author Marianne Williamson got 4,746 votes, or 4.1% and just ahead of “Other” at 4,192 votes or 3.6.%. 

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

By Stephen Macaulay

In 2020 Joe Biden came in fifth in the New Hampshire primary.

Now he is president. Erm, well, while that seems to have been a fact, it seems as though there are quite a number of people in New Hampshire who think that it is an alternative fact, despite their alleged plain-spoken, clear-eyed Yankeeness.

It is just fake news.

As Donald Trump said to the annual VFW convention held in Kansas City on July 24, 2018: “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. . . . What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

Or, to bring it up to date: Didn’t happen.

Donald Trump received 54.5% of the votes in the New Hampshire primary. Did that really happen?

A Slogan

The New Hampshire slogan, famously, is “Live Free or Die.”

It goes back to General John Stark, New Hampshire’s most famous solider in the American Revolutionary War, the victor of the Battle of Bennington.

The U.S. War of Independence, fought from 1775 to 1793, was in opposition to the British crown, which essentially ran the country (a.k.a., the colonies) from the time the Jamestown colony was established in Virginia. (Sir Walter Raleigh had established the Roanoke Colony in North Carolina in 1585, but mysteriously, by 1590 the colonists had disappeared, just as Donald Trump had predicted the coronavirus would, starting in February 2020 -- he was a bit off, as more than 1 million Americans disappeared from the face of the Earth.)

Donald Trump has said on several occasions that he plans to be a dictator on Day One of his next administration.

Seems like there is a non-trivial number of New Hampshirites whom General John Stark would have no truck with.

After all, he fought against a king, a person with absolute power.

And some 163,700 people in New Hampshire voted for a person who says he wants just that.

Voters So White

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the white population of New Hampshire is 88.8%. The percentage of Asians, which includes those who are from India, is 3.2%.

Not a whole lot of “diversity.”

Is it any wonder that Donald Trump boorishly attacked Nikki Haley’s ethnicity prior to the New Hampshire primary?

Expectations

Haley received 43.2% of the votes. Some 129,646 people voted for her. No doubt there were more than a rounding error who voted for Haley who are not Republicans but who wanted to vote against Trump.

She exceeded expectations.

But the reputationally ornery New Hampshire Republican party members proved themselves to be as homogenized as those in Iowa.

Good and Bad

There is an aphorism that says “The perfect is the enemy of good.”

We’re not talking phone calls here.

A variant on that is “The bad is better than a loss.”

There are a number of Republicans — both those who are pre-Trump Republicans and those who are MAGA Republicans — who have come out in support of Trump with the rationale that it is better to coalesce around him now rather than to have an actual contest.

Trump avoided all debates, so he didn’t have to go up against anyone there.

And evidently Nikki Haley is getting under his skin sufficiently such that he is having trouble with things like facts. (No, he isn’t running against Obama.)

Those Republicans don’t care. They think that as long as there is someone who is ostensibly a Republican in the White House it will be good for them.

Until he decides that he doesn’t like them. And then it won’t be.

John F. Kelly, retired Marine Corps general and former White House chief of staff during the Trump administration, described Trump to Jake Tapper on CNN October 2, 2023: “A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”

What would General John Stark think about the 163,700 people in New Hampshire who voted for that man?

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay makes a conservative never-Trumper argument for why Donald J. Trump’s big win in the Iowa caucuses shouldn’t matter so much. Scroll down using the trackbar at the far right to read his commentary and Ken Zino’s left-column take. 

Use the scroll bar at the near right to read how you can comment on Macaulay’s commentary, Zino’s commentary or (preferably, for the sake of balance) both.

Be sure to read, also, Macaulay’s take on Trump’s attacks on his UN ambassador, Nikki Haley’s birth name and ethnic background in “Teach Your Children Well” in The Gray Area. Click on the tab above to read it.

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Your civil commentary on these latest news items or recent issues discussed in The Hustings is most welcomed and indeed, encouraged. If you lean right or conservative, click on this column and go to the Comment section of the page. We will post any civil, fact-based opinions in this column whether you are pro-MAGA or never Trump.

Or email editors@thehustings.news and indicate in the subject line whether you are conservative or liberal.

No matter your politics, we encourage you to eschew echo chambers and read political news and analysis in the center column and liberal/progressive commentary in the left column as well as conservative/right-wing commentary in this column.

To navigate, scroll up and down each column with the near-track bar. To read earlier posts, scroll down using the track bar on the far right.

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By Ken Zino

Two percent. That’s the number of Iowa electors as a percentage of the total delegates to the 2024 Republican National Convention where the presidential candidate and vice-presidential candidates will be selected or rejected. With the Iowa results fresh-frozen yesterday, here’s a bird’s eye view of (apologies to Brooklyn born Clarence B, the founder of what became General Foods) the Iowa Republican Caucuses.

The vote in Iowa on Monday may or may not signify something new. Consider some history that is a miniscule part of all the millennia of history studies that Republicans want to ban. Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee were the last three winners of the Iowa Caucuses. I’m still waiting for any of them to become a presidential candidate. Advice to followers of the often-breathless coverage of such non-events. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Republican cornfield crownees to run, unless it’s from a congressional committee, grand jury or court.

This brings us to Mr. Trump’s win in Iowa. If there was any doubt about his grip on the base of the basest in the Republican party in a voter’s mind, it shouldn’t require electro-shock therapy now to understand the obvious. Trump is going to be the Republican candidate for president. He held sway among rural Iowa caucus voters who already think he should be president because the election was “stolen.” Christion nationalism is the latest name for white fascism and supremacy.

Yes, Donald Trump was indicted four times. And yet, Trump appears to have a fundraising advantage so far. Polls are showing that Trump and President Biden are roughly tied. But consider the well-timed strategic broadcast leak on MSNBC Sunday with former White House insider Jen Psaki that played under the guise of an interview with Biden’s re-election campaign staff. It is more than likely that aside from political nerds, the potential voters who will decide the 2024 Presidential race are not paying any attention to the race yet. Moreover, Trump’s Republican opposition in Iowa didn’t force him to clarify his position on any of the issues that will be crucial in swing states. 

Now is the is the time for Biden and his campaign staff to play up the policy and positions of the president. The incumbent with vast foreign policy experience is grappling with Gaza. He can point to a great, growing economy that is uplifting all here and is in far better shape than the post-pandemic economy in the rest of the world. He supports reproductive rights and gun control regulations. He wants to make the wealthy two-percenters pay their share of taxes. He has demonstrated ability to address climate change and fix the infrastructure, including bringing Wi-Fi to rural economies and he has no indictments or convictions on his record.

Biden has beaten Trump before. The president made a mockery of the “Red Wave” in the midterms. 

In Iowa, roughly as many Republicans in total voted against Trump as voted for him.

Biden needs to address younger voters’ concerns in way they can relate to. Biden is pro-democracy. His party needs to be actively talking about this non-stop. Biden can win again. Let’s get on with clarifying the policy and positions that matter.

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What Does Iowa Mean?

Read the right column for pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay’s take on the Iowa Republican Caucus and then let us know what you think, with an e-mail to editors@thehustings.news. 

Whether you are liberal, never-Trumper conservative or pro-Trump conservative, The Hustings values your civilly stated Comments. Please indicate in the subject line whether you identify as left/liberal or right/conservative, or Democrat or Republican. Independents are welcome as well, but please tell us whether your comments should be in the left or right column.

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By Stephen Macaulay

There are approximately 3.2 million people who live in Iowa. The population of Los Angeles is bigger. The population density in Iowa is 57.1 people per square mile. In LA its 8,304.2. Of course, Los Angeles measure 469.69 square miles while Iowa is 55,853.42 square miles, so there’s more room to spread out. Of the people in Iowa, 89.8% are white. In LA it is 41.2%.

This is not to say that Los Angeles is America. 

But arguably Iowa is closer to the other 49 states than you might think.

As in, for the U.S. as a whole, the population density is 93.8 people, which is a whole lot closer to 57.1 than it is to 8,304.2. What’s more, the percentage of those who simply checked the box next to “White” on the U.S. Census Bureau form is 75.5%, which means a delta of 14.3% with Iowa and 34.3% with LA.

And while some liberal commentators and pundits would like us to believe that plenty of people in Iowa are hicks — as in awkward provincial people, not smooth urban sophisticates, as they fancy themselves — 93% of those in Iowa are high school graduates or higher. In LA the number is 78.7%. It is 89.1% for the U.S. as a whole.

Again, Iowa comes closer to the norm than LA in that context.

And a political fun fact: U.S. presidents were born in a total 21 states. Iowa is one of them. It gave us Herbert Hoover.

California was the birthplace of one president, too: Richard Nixon. 

But one of the things that is different about Iowa goes back to that comparatively low population density. A large percentage of its voters are rural, not suburban, and certainly not urban. They have a different perspective on things than those in large cities and its surroundings. 

States like Kansas, Nebraska and North Dakota have low population densities.

States like New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts have high population densities.

Clearly, that makes a difference in how people vote.

Is it a surprise that Trump dominated in Iowa?

Nope.

Odds are there is nothing that is going to happen that will derail the Trump train.

As Newton’s first law has it, a body in motion stays in motion unless a force acts against it and those two aren’t notable forces.

DeSantis and Haley are largely things that allow reporters to write about something else. They aren’t forces with serious momentum.

Going back to point-of-view, it is different in Cedar Rapids than Stamford, more pragmatic.

The Dem’s messaging about “an existential threat to freedom and democracy” plays bettter in New Haven than in Waterloo.

Iowa is the leading corn producing state in the country and while the word “corny” comes to mind with regard to “Bidenomics,” some people in Iowa would probably not use their state’s agricultural bounty in vain and simply consider it to be “bullshit.”

While it may seem absurd that a rich (well, perceived so) real estate businessman from New York City and now a tony part of Florida plays well in Iowa, it is the fact that he is being plain-spoken that undoubtedly resonates.

If Biden wants to win among large numbers of people who are more akin to the ethos of Middle America rather than the Coasts, then he basically has to become more fundamental:

• “We need roads and bridges. I got the legislation that is making that happen. He kept announcing ‘infrastructure initiatives’ that was simply hot air.”
• “We need more manufacturing in America. And were getting them. Remember the jobs at the Indianapolis Carrier plant that he ‘saved’? It simply cost a whole lot of tax-payer money and didn’t save a hell of a lot of jobs.”
• “We need to keep politicians within check. He’s actually talking about running things the way he wants to, not necessarily the way you want. That’s not what America is about.”

Iowa’s results are inevitable. And they point to something far larger than what they’re talking about on MSNBC.

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

By Ken Zino

Let me start by saying that all roads on the journey to the 2024 election lead toward the politicized U.S. Supreme Court. The State of Colorado has ruled that Mr. Trump should be taken off the 2024 Republican primary ballot because he is an insurrectionist. Four Republicans and two independents in the state brought the challenge. Colorado ruled for the ballot removal after a trial that based on evidence presented by eight witnesses -- and no defense from Trump himself -- that he provoked a violent uprising after losing the 2020 election. 

Those actions occurred before and after the election, and in fact continue to this day. Trump defense lawyer Scott Gessler said the connections the plaintiffs had drawn between Mr. Trump and groups such as the Proud Boys were incorrect because the insurrectionists had deluded themselves into thinking Trump was speaking to them. He said this was a political question. Well, it is in the sense that politics that led to the Civil War resulted in a constitutional amendment to prevent insurrectionists or their abettors from ever holding office again. 

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” 

This will end up in the Supreme Court because this ballot eligibility question has not happened since the aftermath of our Civil War that led to the amendment. The question has therefore never been legally vetted. There are challenges to Trump ‘s ballot eligibility in dozens of states. Arguments that he is immune because he was president –- the equivalent of the divine right of kings –- are laughable. We fought The Revolution over such thinking and then wrote the Constitution to say that we will be governed differently. See the Federalist Papers. No president or any inhabitant of the United States is immune from or above the law. 

Tuesday’s hearing in Washington before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in my view settles the argument. Trump’s lawyer D. John Sauer argued Trump should not be prosecuted for actions he took while in the White House, Sauer claimed. This was a so-called qualified “yes” after he repeatedly tried to duck the central issue; Could a president assassinate a political rival using the military (one judge chose the Navy SEALS as the example) and be shielded from prosecution unless the Senate first convicted him at an impeachment proceeding? Suppose the president had all the members of opposing political views killed? No impeachment is possible. Absurd on the face of it and were not the issue so serious to a constitutional democracy, laughable. 

Moreover, Judge Karen L. Henderson, the only Republican appointee, dismissed Trump’s argument that his efforts to overturn his loss to the current president, Joe Biden, is immune from prosecution because presidents have a constitutional duty to ensure that election laws are upheld. “I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate the criminal law,” Judge Henderson said. We await the final ruling.

In my own state of Michigan, Trump remains on the primary ballot (voting is February 27) after the highest Michigan court ruled that a party can put anyone it wants on the ballot. Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson noted in a statement that the state’s court had correctly ruled that she lacked the authority to prevent Mr. Trump from appearing on the primary ballot. However, Benson said the U.S. Supreme Court should take up the matter. “I continue to hope they do this sooner rather than later to ensure that we can move forward into 2024’s election season focused on ensuring all voters are fully informed and universally engaged in deciding the issues at stake,” the statement said. The ruling is here.

“We are disappointed by the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision,” said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech for People, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “The ruling conflicts with longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent that makes clear that when political parties use the election machinery of the state to select, via the primary process, their candidates for the general election, they must comply with all constitutional requirements in that process. However, the Michigan Supreme Court did not rule out that the question of Donald Trump’s disqualification for engaging in insurrection against the U.S. Constitution may be resolved at a later stage. The decision isn’t binding on any court outside Michigan and we continue our current and planned legal actions in other states to enforce Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment against Donald Trump.”

Michigan Justice Elizabeth M. Welch said that Colorado state law made clear that political parties could only put forward “qualified” candidates in a primary presidential ballot. Michigan election law includes no such requirement, she wrote. Michigan’s secretary of state “lacks the legal authority to remove a legally ineligible candidate from the ballot once their name has been put forward by a political party,” Justice Welch said.

Trump’s strategy is clear to me. Delay legal actions against him until after the election, which he thinks he can win, then misuse his power as president to make all the legal cases go away. On to the Supreme Court…

COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news — please indicate your left- or right-leanings in the subject line.

By Stephen Macaulay

This isn’t hard, Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Let’s break down some aspects of this that ought to make even the most textualist members of the Supreme Court not need reach for their copy of Black’s:

• “any office, civil or military …” The presidency is an office. It has civil powers. The president is the Commander in Chief (per Article II, Section 2). Seems like it checks both boxes.
• “having previously taken an oath. . .to support the Constitution of the United States.” On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump took that oath.
• “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same …” With “the same” being the Constitution. While there could be some quibbling about whether Trump’s exhortation to the mob constituted an insurrection against the government in the form of Congress doing its job of certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, given what was revealed by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol, Trump’s efforts not to leave office that began before the election on November 3, 2020, it is clear he was knowingly violating Article II, Section 1: “The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President.” While he probably didn’t know that precise passage, he knew what he was doing.
• “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”… This is Trump’s final tweet of the day on January 6, 2021: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” Sounds like he was giving comfort to what he describes as “great patriots” who stormed the Capitol and participated in what Matthew Graves, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, recently described as “likely the largest single-day, mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation’s history.”

Hard to imagine a strict constructionist not concluding that Trump is disqualified from holding the presidency, and if that is the case, then allowing him to run for that position is simply absurd.

COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news …Please indicate your political leanings in the subject line .

Our first debate in The Hustings posted September 30, 2020, with a center-column covering the first presidential debate between Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden. You can read that here: https://thehustings.news/page/71/

Contributing pundit Michelle Naranjo wrote the left-column commentary on that debate. (Re-)read that here: https://thehustings.news/reality-tv-producers-will-be-jealous-of-this-first-debate/

Will this fall’s presidential race be a mirror-image repeat of 2020? Email your comments to editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your political leanings in the subject line.

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Email your COMMENTS to editors@thehustings.news and please list your political leanings (left-right, or liberal-conservative) in the subject line.

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