MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told CNBC he has spent $25 million of his own money pushing the false claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump and he plans to keep spending through the 2022 midterm elections.
Said Lindell: “I will keep spending it because there is no tomorrow. We lose our country. We either only have two paths: either it gets changed before the 2022 election or we lose our country forever. I will spend every dime I have. I will spend whatever it takes.”
Thomas Edsall: “Political analysts, scholars and close observers of government are explicitly raising the possibility that the polarized American electoral system has come to the point at which a return to traditional democratic norms will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.”
The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection “interviewed current and former employees of the Georgia Secretary of State’s office Wednesday about former President Donald Trump’s extensive attempts to overturn the 2020 election results,” Georgia Public Broadcasting reports.
New York magazine has some choice quotes about New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) from current and former staffers:
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball reports there are now 26 states with congressional maps in place for the 2022 election.
“These 26 states will have a combined 169 U.S. House seats based on the new census, or about 39% of all the seats. Currently in these states, Republicans have a 96-70 edge. Based on the new apportionment, these states have collectively added 3 net seats, which accounts for the discrepancy between the number of seats these states currently have (166) compared to what they will have under the new census (169).”
“Based on our Crystal Ball ratings for the new districts in these completed states, we have 99 districts at least leaning to the Republicans, 65 at least leaning to the Democrats, and 5 Toss-ups. One of the Toss-ups is a newly-added seat in Colorado, CO-8; the other 4 are currently Democratic-held seats IA-3, IL-17, ME-2, and NC-1. So one way of looking at this is that the Republicans are up 3 seats in these states, collectively, while the Democrats would have to win all of the Toss-ups just to get to the 70 seats they currently hold in these states.”
Jonathan Bersnstein: “President Joe Biden’s approval ratings seem to have bottomed out for now, and may even be rising. According to the FiveThirtyEight estimate (based on adjusted averages of all the public-opinion polls), he’s up to 43.8% approval, which is 1.5 percentage points above his Dec. 2 low; his disapproval is at 50.6%, down from a 52.3% peak just before Thanksgiving. Random variation could account for some of that move, but it seems likely that Biden’s slide stopped right around the beginning of November, and that he has probably recovered a bit since then. He’s still, to be sure, below water. At least for now.”
“Biden also remains the least popular of the 14 polling-era presidents at this point, 330 days into his presidency, except for Donald Trump, who was dead last for most of his first year and close to last during most of his presidency. The good news for Biden is that he’s now closer to the tier ahead of him — Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and Harry Truman — than he is to Trump.”
The difference in death rates from Covid-19 between Republican and Democratic counties is becoming even more staggering.
A new Bright Line Watch poll finds just 27% of Republicans accept President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.
“As Donald Trump and his allies squeezed then-Vice President Mike Pence to single-handedly stop Joe Biden’s presidency in the weeks ahead of Jan. 6, they used one particular tool that’s been largely ignored ever since,” Politico reports.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) sued Pence on Dec. 27, just as Trump was ratcheting up his pressure campaign against his vice president… Gohmert’s move forced Pence to publicly resist Trump’s subversion of the election, only a week before the fateful Jan. 6 joint session of Congress. When the Justice Department stepped in to defend Pence from the lawsuit on Dec. 29, it marked the first time Pence signaled he wouldn’t fold to Trump’s demands.”
“But what remains unknown is just how involved Trump was in Gohmert’s legal strategy.”
Playbook: “It’s a fitting end to a year dominated by two Senate Democrats at the center of pretty much everything in 2021: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have all but put the kibosh on two major proposals their own party was hoping to pass before the holiday break.”
However, from Punchbowl News: “Democrats are fighting among themselves over SALT and immigration. That’s not Manchin’s fault. And the parliamentarian hasn’t finished scrubbing the bill for possible Byrd Rule problem. And that isn’t Manchin’s fault.”
“So let’s be real. It’s not just Manchin. He’s a big problem for the leadership and White House, easily the most high profile headache, but hardly the only one. They don’t have the text of the legislation finished. The parliamentarian is still grinding away.”
“A small circle of Republican lawmakers, working closely with President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, took on an outsize role in pressuring the Justice Department, amplifying conspiracy theories and flooding the courts in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election,” the New York Times reports.
William Saletan: The chilling lesson of Mark Meadows’ text messages.
Tomas Pueyo: “If you haven’t had COVID before, you’re going to get it.”
“You can only escape it while you lock yourself out. The moment you come back into society, you will get exposed to it. Paradoxically, this can be good.”
“This is the final battle for COVID. It’s throwing everything it has at us and will overwhelm the world. But in doing so, it might have weakened itself. And it’s attacking at a moment when the world is well-armed with vaccines and prior infections.”
“In this final battle, many people will die. But they might be few in comparison to what it could have been.”
The Guardian: Omicron found to grow 70 times faster than Delta in bronchial tissue.
“The Taliban have executed scores of officials linked to the fallen government and displayed their bodies to spread fear despite declaring an amnesty after taking over the country in August,“ the Times of London reports.
The United Nations Human Rights Council “said it had heard of the killings of more than 100 former government officials, most attributed to the Taliban, along with the summary execution of suspected Islamic State members, including hangings and beheadings.”
FiveThirtyEight: “Although redistricting complicates this analysis… Democrats are the ones mainly leaving behind swingy territory. Ten Democrats are abandoning seats that are less than 10 points more Democratic than the country as a whole, while only one Republican is exiting a seat that’s less than 10 points more Republican.”
“Incumbents have less of an advantage than they once did, but this is still a negative development for Democrats hoping to limit their House losses to the low single-digits next November.”
Washington Post: “Since Trump returned from his New Jersey club to Palm Beach, Fla., this fall, Mar-a-Lago has become a hotbed for Republican fundraisers, with candidates jockeying to line the former president’s pockets in hopes of winning his endorsement, get a photo with him or simply give donors a chance to be in his presence.”
“The surge in business at his private club spotlights the unparalleled way in which Trump has personally profited from his presidency and his popularity in the GOP — a revenue stream that began during his time in the White House and has only strengthened since he left office. Rather than hosting fellow Republicans, Trump is charging them for the privilege of using his venues.”
Dallas Morning News: “Nearly a quarter of a million people were incarcerated in Texas when the Census was taken last year. When lawmakers redrew the state’s voting maps this fall, these inmates were counted in the prison towns where they were locked up, rather than where they lived beforehand.”
“A Dallas Morning News analysis of Census and prison data found this practice, which opponents call ‘prison gerrymandering,’ inflates the political power of Republican districts while draining clout from Democratic strongholds. It also makes more conservative, rural areas of the state look larger and more diverse than they truly are.”
Former President Donald Trump has been “particularly upset” and “distraught” by a passage in Mark Meadows’s new book that describes the former president’s hair “was a mess” when he was sick with Covid-19, the Washington Post reports.
Said Trump to an unnamed associate: “This guy is talking about what I look like, in my bedroom.”
“Americans’ impressions of the nation’s economy remain gloomy and broad majorities think the federal government has done too little to try to solve problems with the nation’s supply chain and rising inflation,” according to a new CNN Poll.
“All told, three-quarters say they are worried about the state of the economy in their own community (75%) and 63% say the nation’s economy is in poor shape. Nearly 6 in 10 (57%) say that the economic news they’ve heard lately has been mostly bad, with just 19% saying they are hearing mostly good news about the economy right now.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.