Prime

Yesterday I noted this odd report that Elon Musk’s weird foray into Russo-Ukraine War peacemaking was preceded by a call with Vladimir Putin. This was revealed in a global intelligence newsletter published by Ian Bremmer. Then Musk denied that any such call had happened. That’s where we got to yesterday. But there’s more from overnight that I want to update you on.

The short version is that it seems pretty clear that Musk’s denial is a lie. And the original tweets themselves have a variety of references that seem like they come from a Russian nationalist or someone very familiar with the set of post-Soviet grievances which are the mother’s milk of Putin’s political world. (They refer to “Khrushchev’s Mistake” and the conquest of Crimea in 1783.)

Here’s the somewhat longer version.

Bernie Sanders has an article in The Guardian saying it’s a mistake for Democrats to make abortion central to their closing argument for the 2022 election. He’s wrong. Let me explain why.

First, Sanders prefaces his argument with all sorts of caveats. He’s 100% pro-choice; he hates the Dobbs decision; abortion should definitely be part of their message. But the closing argument should be on the economy and economic justice. That’s his argument.

This argument will be grist for those in the Democratic Party who think that Sanders and the Sanders wing of the party see economics and mixed economy social justice as the essence of real progressivism while things like abortion are important but secondary — both substantively and politically. That’s a critique and intramural argument among Democrats I’m not going to resolve here. But my disagreement with Sanders is more focused.

TPM Reader GS followed up with this note about my crime post. Again, I know this can seem a little insular, writing about crime in my hometown. But I am doing so to address issues about crime, perceptions of crime and the politics of crime that are by no means local or regional.

Today a TPM Reader who left New York City during the pandemic wrote in to ask if the crime situation in the city is really as out of control as he hears. He told me he’s going on what he hears from people who still live in the city, media reports, etc. I told him that the city definitely feels grittier, dirtier and in some ways less safe than it did before the pandemic. I frequently hear people tell me they’re more leery of going on the subways late at night. So I told this reader that even among people who know the city well and have no political motive to play up crime or perceptions of social disorder many people do feel this way. But what I told this reader is that I hadn’t actually looked at the statistics recently, something I’ve done fairly regularly through much of my career since it’s a major interest of mine. So I did. The actual data is quite interesting, certainly more complex than the back-to-the-’80s narrative but also one that shows that many forms of crime have gone up quite a bit.

(Admittedly, this is a New York-centric post. But I write about it here as a proxy for the broader national mood about crime and the backdrop it is playing for the midterm election.)

Close elections can come down to highly contingent factors. In Georgia Republicans are suffering the completely predictable results of their own cynical decision to back Herschel Walker’s absurd campaign. But something else may be afoot in Nevada.

This has been a pretty close race all year, with a very thin margin for the incumbent, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto. But just over the last couple weeks Adam Laxalt has moved into the thinnest of leads. These are very, very small differences. It might be noise. It might be the general ebbing of the summer-long Democratic surge. Maybe Laxalt is just running a strong campaign. But there’s something else I want to point out. Where I live in New York, gas prices have been fairly stable recently. Still highish, but way down off the spring highs.

The Miami Herald has gotten the first state documents from Gov. DeSantis’s migrant shipment operation. You can see its report here. The actual documents are here and here.

I’m going through the documents now. Want to join me? Tell me what you find by email. Two things have jumped out at me so far. One is that the contract seemed to put the state on the line for pretty top dollar to spend on flights. $325,000 to fly 8 people. I don’t book a lot of private jets but isn’t that a lot? The State of Florida paid $615,000 just for the Vineyard flights. So just for 40-some people. That’s a huge amount of money.

And then there’s something else.

There are various stories about how Pennsylvania became the “Keystone State.” The truth seems to be mostly hidden in the mists of time. There are a number of contending theories. But it’s not clear which has the real origin of the label. Most of these center on Pennsylvania’s literal centrality in the early United States. It was the keystone (the top-most stone) in the arch which spanned from the New England to the Southern colonies, the keystone of the union. Or it was the necessary keystone in the process of building sentiment in favor of the federal constitution of 1787. But it’s one of the later stories I want to focus on. In the Jacksonian Era — 1820s through the 1840s — Pennsylvania was often referred to as the “Keystone in the Democratic arch,” the sectional coalition made up of — using the jargon of the age — “the working men of the North and the planters of the South.” Let’s state with some understatement that the described coalition and language is rather dated. But the more I look at the numbers in the final stretch, Pennsylvania is the cornerstone. It remains the Keystone in 2022, albeit for other reasons and with a very different coalition.

Let me walk you through it.

Yesterday Rep. Ro Khanna (D) said we should send a message to the Saudis that they change their oil quota decision or face a cut in the military spare parts their U.S.-manufactured army requires to function. This is in the context of new hardball from the White House, which is apparently sending a comparable message. Just a moment ago I saw a tweet from Sen. Dick Durbin (D) saying that it’s time for the U.S. to ditch the U.S.-Saudi alliance. These are things we’ve heard for ages from backbenchers in the House or others distant from the centers of power. They’re close to unheard of for people at the center of power.

Get the all the facts before you make up your story, says the bible. Well, not the bible but still a good rule of thumb. It’s one Herschel Walker’s campaign didn’t go with apparently. The Daily Beast has a follow up story to the abortion story which triggered the (I think even more damaging) attacks from his son. Walker categorically denied the story and claims he has no idea what woman might be leveling the accusations. Since Walker appears to have had quite a few out of wedlock children, one might snark that … well, maybe he doesn’t know who she is. After all, there are so many.