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Tag: 2024 presidential election
Elise Stefanik

Expose Of Stefanik's Privileged Life Blows Up Her 'Humble Origins' Myth

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has often painted herself as someone who came from a humble working-class background but pulled herself up by the bootstraps.

Stefanik, who Donald Trump is reportedly considering as a possible running mate in the 2024 presidential race, acknowledges that she attended Harvard University. But she paints her Ivy League education as an example of beating and overcoming the odds — not an example of privilege.

In an article published on April 14, however, Daily Beast reporters William Bredderman and Jake Lahut stress that Stefanik has had a much more comfortable life than she claims.

"If Stefanik was supposed to remember where she came from," Bredderman and Lahut explain, "she seems to have forgotten — to the point of making blatantly misleading statements, beginning in her first congressional campaign — how her family's wealth has given her a leg up, from providing her with an expensive private-school education to her parents buying her a $1.2 million D.C. townhouse when she was just 26. Instead of acknowledging those advantages, Stefanik has repeatedly downplayed her wealth, including in a statement to The Daily Beast."

Bredderman and Lahut add that Stefanik's "humble origin story falls away under a little pressure."

"From the start, she has maintained that she saw her parents 'risk everything' to establish Premium Plywood Products when she was a child," the reporters note. "But even the story she has told of the company's founding is incomplete. While every business venture involves risk, the Stefaniks didn't shoulder it alone: less than two months after incorporating Premium Plywood Products in late 1991, public records show they secured a Small Business Administration-guaranteed loan worth $335,000 — roughly $755,000 in today's money."

According to Bredderman and Lahut, Stefanik's "private education at Albany Academy for Girls offered a crash course in the ways of the New York capital’s moneyed elite."

"The children of political tycoons, from former President Theodore Roosevelt to former Gov. Mario Cuomo, have sent their children to its all-male counterpart across the street, The Albany Academy, where students pay the same tuition — $25,600 for the most recent academic year," Bredderman and Lahut report. "After graduating from Harvard in 2006, Stefanik decamped to D.C. to serve in then-President George W. Bush's administration — a role one of her Ivy League mentors helped her land. She would work her way up into the White House Chief of Staff's Office."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Nancy Jacobson No Labels

With No Candidate And No Campaign, No Labels Is Zeroed Out

Well, well, well. It seems that No Labels has no future. At least, not in the 2024 presidential election.

The supposedly centrist, supposedly bipartisan group that tried desperately to find someone—literally, anyone—to run on a “unity” ticket against President Joe Biden is admitting defeat, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down,” said Nancy Jacobson, founder and CEO of No Labels in a statement.

It’s not for lack of trying. Like, really trying—by basically begging everyone they could think of. As Daily Kos reported just a few weeks ago, the list of people who said no to No Labels was quite long:

  • Former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming
  • Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan
  • Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp
  • Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
  • Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels
  • New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu
  • Failed Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley
  • Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick
  • Businessman Mark Cuban
  • Retired Navy Adm. William McRaven
  • Actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

You might notice that most of the people on that list are Republicans, though the group was apparently desperate enough to ask the Democratic former governor of Massachusetts if he’d be willing to give it a go.

But that’s no accident. In December, the group’s chief strategist admitted that the “unity” ticket didn’t need to have any Democrats on it. A Republican and an independent would do just fine!

Well, it turns out the No Labels ticket won’t have a Democrat on it after all. Or a Republican. Or anyone at all. Or an independent. What a shame.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Historian Who Predicts Presidents Says Biden Can 'Absolutely' Win In 2024

Historian Who Predicts Presidents Says Biden Can 'Absolutely' Win In 2024

On the eve of Joe Biden's State of the Union address, amid a chorus of Democratic bedwetters, the historian who has accurately predicted every presidential race over the past 40 years says that the president "absolutely" can win in November.

Indeed, Allan Lichtman, the distinguished professor of history at American University whose methods of election analysis have proved successful for decades, went even further in a British Times Radio interview on Super Tuesday. While acknowledging that "it's way too early to make a final prediction," he said, "a lot would have to go wrong for Joe Biden to lose this election. I absolutely think Joe Biden can win a second term."

Biden can ‘absolutely’ win the US election | Professor Allan Lichtmanyoutu.be

Lichtman dismissed recent polls, several of which have shown Trump leading Biden. "Take the early polls and do with them what the great British philosopher David Hughes said you should do with works of superstition – consign them to the flames," said the erudite professor. "They have absolutely no predictive value. There is so much yet to come."

In 2016, he was among a tiny minority of analysts who predicted that the Republican would win, and received a signed photo from Trump after the election. He told The Sun newspaper that he doesn't expect any such appreciative gesture from Trump in November 2024. (The prospective GOP nominee may also recall that Lichtman wrote a book calling for his impeachment in 2017.)

As outlined in a Newsmax article on Lichtman, his keys to victory include"

  • Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. (Not so in 2024, but Democrats beat the "red wave" in 2022 and are near parity.)
  • Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
  • Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
  • Third party: There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.
  • Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
  • Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
  • Policy change: The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy.
  • Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
  • Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
  • Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
  • Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
  • Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
  • Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

"Based upon the keys, a lot of keys would have to turn, over the next few months, against Joe Biden to predict his defeat," as Lichtman explained to Times Radio.

"By running, Joe Biden wins the incumbency key, one of my keys, he wins the party contest key because there's no battle. That's two off the top. Six more would have to go against him to predict his defeat.

"[If] Joe Biden doesn't run, they lose incumbency, they lose the party contest because there's no heir apparent and only four keys would have to fall to predict a Democrat defeat."

Lichtman is a serious scholar and acclaimed author who has written books on many topics, including an important 2008 history of the right, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement.

Joe Biden

To Win, Democrats Should Stop Talking Down -- And Start Speaking Up

Schmaltz. That, and generosity, and a dollop of out loud love for the good old U.S.A. That’s what the Democrats should use this year as we campaign for offices from the White House to the Senate and House to positions in state and local governments around the country.

People are sick and tired of being depressed about everything from you-know-who – we’ll get to him in a minute – to the wars overseas to the “situation at the border” as it is referred to euphemistically these days, to what many of us see as the ongoing threat to our democracy. I’m not saying we should put it all aside and paste smiles on our faces and push feelgoodism as a platform, but I have to tell you that I sure do wish that “It’s morning in America” wasn’t already taken, because that’s exactly the kind of schmaltz I’m talking about.

I agree that this is the most important election in our lifetimes. I just don’t think we need to hear that every five minutes between now and November. What we need to do is start acting like it is and not use that phrase with each other so much. I think independents and undecideds – there are more than a few of them out there – understand that they’re being talked down to by that kind of rhetoric. It sounds like we think they don’t know the election is important, and even if some of them don’t think the situation is as desperate as we do, we shouldn’t act like they need to be led to water to get a drink. Frantic is not a good look for a political party that got 80 million votes in the last presidential election and won the popular vote in three of the last four.

It doesn’t work for us to sound as negative and pessimistic as the other side. Trump’s rally speeches are filled with the words “carnage” and “chaos.” He talks about crime as a scourge at a time when violent crime is going down everywhere, especially in big cities, and blames it on Democrats when the one place violent crime is actually increasing is in rural, mostly red parts of the country. On Saturday, he gave yet another unhinged speech at a rally in North Carolina telling his crowd that Biden is the one who is “engaged in a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.” He is pushing the idea that Biden is “the real threat to democracy” as a major theme of his campaign.

Here's the problem we face: Sure, he has flipped the script. He’s doing that thing of accusing the other side of exactly what he’s guilty of. But it doesn’t work for us to constantly be making the case that he is the one who’s guilty, even though he is. He is cranking up the paranoia of the right-wing, as if it needed to be any higher, but we can’t counter with paranoia of our own.

It doesn’t work to sound like him, to say the things he’s saying. We have to be different. We need to draw distinctions between Republicans and us, not sound like them. Donald Trump and Republicans are running as the party of pessimism. We need to be positive. We need to affirm the essential goodness of people.

Americans want to think better of themselves and of each other. That includes our own base voters, but I think it’s especially true of independents and swing voters who are looking for a reason to vote for rather than against all the time. Teagan Goddard of Political Wire dug an interesting number out of the depths of that New York Times/Siena poll that had Trump ahead of Biden that everyone is flapping their hands about. Among the 19 percent of voters polled who disapprove of both candidates, pressed to pick one or the other, Biden beat Trump 45 to 33 percent.

See? They are the pox-on-both-your-houses people who are mad at both parties because the choice this time is the same as it was in 2020. But why is Biden more appealing to them than Trump by such a wide margin? I think they’re tired of Trump’s pessimism and negativity. Say what you will about Joe Biden, but that man does not come across as down on everything the way Trump does, and that aspect of him comes across clearly. Trump is angry about everything. Biden just isn’t.

If anything, Joe Biden comes across as calm and collected. The way he responded to that disaster with the aid convoy in Gaza is a perfect example. He ordered food and other supplies to be airdropped into Gaza, and 24 hours later, it was happening. It’s decisive. It’s positive. And it’s working.

Every other day, there’s another story about the trouble the Biden campaign has had with convincing people that he has accomplished more than any president in 20 years. You know the drill. All the good numbers are up. All the bad ones are down. The infrastructure bill. Student loan forgiveness. On and on.

If specifics aren’t working, then I say promote pride. America is the greatest country in the world. As a people, we are generous and outgoing and forgiving. We work hard. We love our families. When disaster strikes, we take care of each other.

Americans don’t want to wake up every day and be told how terrible things are, how insoluble problems like immigration and the border are, and I don’t think they want to be told over and over how evil those on the other side are. Sure, we have our problems – poverty and racism and xenophobia and sexism – but on the whole, we are a good people. This is a good country. Americans want to feel good about ourselves and each other. I’m not saying if they go low, we go high. We’re going to have to fight and fight hard to win this year. But part of our job is to give people a reason to vote for us as much as against the other side. If that means vote for the nice guy, not the asshole, then we should say it.

Nice is better than nasty. Positive is better than negative. Sanity is better than crazy. Pride is better than paranoia. It’s a clear choice, and we should run on it.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

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