John Davis Consulting

Political Maps and Moral Authority are the Most Influential Unknowns in the 2022 Showdown for Power

June 14, 2021       Vol. XIV, No. 9       7:13 am

What if remapping turned Farmington, WV into Farmington, MD?

Imagine how politically disruptive it would be if every 10 years, following the US Census, we redrew all of the state borders. One decade your hometown, say Farmington, West Virginia, is within the boundaries of a conservative Republican-friendly red state, and the next decade Farmington is within the boundaries of a neighboring liberal Democratic-friendly blue state like Maryland.

Sen. Joe Manchin, the conservative West Virginia Democrat who has thwarted the liberal Biden/Schumer/Pelosi legislative agenda on everything from the filibuster and election law reform to infrastructure spending and packing the US Supreme Court, is from Farmington, West Virginia, a small coal mining town of 445 people about 40 miles West of the Maryland state line. Manchin could not win a US Senate seat if Farmington were in Maryland, nor can he keep a US Senate seat in West Virginia if he supports the most liberal line items in the Biden/Schumer/Pelosi agenda.

Bottom line: Political boundaries, whether they be state lines or congressional and legislative maps, determine the moral authority of each lawmaker; a moral obligation in a representative Democracy to vote the way your voters would on legislation before the state legislature or in Washington, DC.

So, what is Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin’s moral obligation to West Virginia?

In 2020, Republican President Donald Trump won every single county in West Virginia. Every single county. He carried the state by 69% to only 30% for Biden. Cook Political Report shows West Virginia as second only to Wyoming as the most Republican state in the nation.

For Emphasis: Voters in the second most Republican state in the nation, where President Trump carried every county, are the foundation of Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s political moral authority. It’s why he consistently rejects legislation proposed by left-of-left liberals in Congress.

It’s not how I was raised.

On November 9, 2020, Sen. Joe Manchin told Bret Baier on FOX News’ Special Report with Bret Baier, “When you’re talking about basically Green New Deal and all this ‘socialism,’ that’s not who we are as a Democratic Party. It’s not how I was raised in West Virginia.”

Hmmmm. So, the state where you are raised influences your political ideology?

In 2019 and 2020, Manchin was ranked #3 most conservative Democrat in the US Senate by GovTrack.us. On the other end of the spectrum, the least conservative Democrat, ergo the #1 most liberal US Senate Democrat, was then-Sen. Kamala Harris, raised in Berkeley, California, located in the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland area, with a population of 8.7 million.

In her book, The Truths We Hold, Harris writes that her parents, while doctoral students at UC-Berkeley, “often brought me in a stroller with them to civil rights marches.” Do you think being raised on the campus at Berkeley informed Harris’s political biases in the same way being raised in Farmington, West Virginia informed Manchin’s biases?

Like Joe Manchin, Kamala Harris’s moral authority as a US Senator came from the voters in the state she represented, the 6^th most reliably Democratic state in the nation; from the voters in the San Francisco Bay Area, the #1 most liberal area in the nation.

That was then. Now, Vice President Kamala Harris, like President Joe Biden, must look to the entire nation for moral authority to lead. If they do not, Democrats risk losing moral authority over extreme liberal ideas like the federal takeover of redistricting and election laws.

Democrats’ national moral authority threatened by liberal power grab

On Sunday, June 6, 2021, Sen. Joe Manchin wrote an Op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Why I’m voting against the For the People Act. The bill is the federal takeover of elections, from state legislative remapping and voter registration laws to early voting and mail-in ballots.

Sen. Manchin’s argument was that the For the People Act was a partisan power grab. “Partisan policymaking won’t instill confidence in our democracy — it will destroy it,” he said.

So, why do Congressional Democrats want to nationalize the power to draw congressional and legislative districts and enact election laws? Because thanks to former President Barack Obama’s political naïveté, Republicans have controlled most state capitols since 2010, a disastrous election year for Democrats that Obama admitted was “a shellacking.”

Democrats, with a narrow 222 to 213 US House majority, know that the party controlling the White House usually loses a net of 23 seats in a new president’s first midterm elections. They also know that the GOP has an advantage in the number of states where mapmaking is controlled by the parties.

Per the Cook Political Report, states where Republicans have final authority over congressional maps have a combined total of 187 districts (including North Carolina’s 14 districts), with Democratic controlled states having the final say over a total of 75 district maps. States where independent commissions draw the maps have a combined total of 121 congressional districts, and states where partisan power is split have a total of 46 districts. Six states have only one congressional district.

Unfortunately for Democrats, Sen. Joe Manchin gets his moral authority on the matter of the federalization of redistricting and election laws from the voters of West Virginia, folks who do not want liberals in Washington DC telling them how to run their elections. If Democrats in Congress continue their effort to take remapping and election law reform away from the states, they will lose the national moral authority to lead. If that happens, they will lose the Congress.

Political maps and moral authority are the most influential unknowns in the 2022 showdown for power in Washington DC and the state capitals.

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Thank You for reading the John Davis Political Report

John N. Davis

Need a speaker or continuing education presentation? Visit www.johndavisconsulting.com

Ousting Liz Cheney Carries Little Political Risk but Pinning Your Hopes on Trump is the Biggest Risk of All

May 14, 2021       Vol. XIV, No. 8       7:13 am

Trump’s irresponsible statement this week has political consequences

Is anyone surprised that US Senate Republicans have not elected Sen. Mitt Romney as a leader of their caucus, the only Republican Senator to vote “yes” to convict President Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial last year? Surely not.

So why is anyone surprised that US House Republicans voted against Rep. Liz Cheney as a leader of their caucus this week, one of only 10 Republicans to vote “yes” to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection” earlier this year? The 197 GOP House members who voted “No” on Trump’s second impeachment have a right to leaders who mirror their judgement on politics and public policy.

Of course, Democrats are delighted with both Romney and Cheney. The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award was given to Sen. Romney on March 21, 2021, for going against all other Senate Republicans with his vote to convict President Trump for abuse of power. And it’s just a matter of time before the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award will be given to Rep. Cheney.

Meanwhile, Republican House members believe their best hope for winning back the majority is to remain loyal to former President Trump and the 74,222,960 Americans who voted for him last November, conservative voters who are hell bent to avenge Trump’s loss of the White House by turning out in big numbers against Democrats in the 2022 congressional races.

Ousting Rep. Cheney carries little political risk. But what about pinning your hopes on Trump?

On Wednesday, after US House Republicans stood with former President Trump and voted to oust Rep. Liz Cheney as the No. 3 caucus leader, Trump stated, “Liz Cheney is a bitter, horrible human being.” That’s a terribly irresponsible thing to say, one with political consequences.

If Trump continues to demean Republicans, he will divide the party and dissuade voters who were once reliable Republicans, like suburban voters. Trump could cost the GOP the House majority in 2022 like he did the US Senate majority earlier this year.

Doubt that? The proof is in the Georgia US Senate runoff election results.

Trump discouraged GOP turnout in Georgia US Senate runoffs

From Election Day November 3, 2020, to the Georgia US Senate runoff elections January 5, 2021, President Trump tweeted almost daily that his “landslide victory” was “stolen.” He actually suggested that Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp, Republican Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger were complicit in election fraud.

Trump tweeted that Georgia Governor Kemp was “the hapless Governor of Georgia” who refused to overrule his “obstinate Secretary of State.” Trump tweeted, “What a fool Gov Kemp of Georgia is,” and, “Demand this clown call a Special Session.”

President Trump actually tweeted that Republican Governor Kemp and Republican Lt. Governor Duncan were “a disgrace to the great people of Georgia.”

There is no doubt that President Trump discouraged GOP turnout in the January 5, 2021 US Senate runoff elections in Georgia by dividing the party and undermining the integrity of Georgia elections.

Here are the facts comparing January 5, 2021 county voting results to November 3, 2020:

• In the January 5, 2021 runoff election, Democrat Jon Ossoff improved on his November vote share in 157 of 159 counties.
• On the same day, Republican Sen. David Purdue improved on his November vote share in only 75 of 159 counties.
• For emphasis: In January 2021, Democrats failed to improve on their November vote share in only 2 of 159 counties. Republicans failed to improve their share in 84 of 159 counties.

Both Democrats and Republicans had an equal opportunity to improve their turnout in January, especially in the state’s largest counties around Atlanta where even a small percentage improvement could yield the winning difference in what everyone knew would be a close race. Democrat Ossoff improved his vote share in the top five most populous counties by 2.24% while Republican Purdue improved his vote share in those same five counties by only 0.22%.

Republican US Sen. David Perdue lost by 49% (2,214,979) to Democrat Jon Ossoff’s 51% (2,269,923). At the same time Democrats were doing everything they could to turn out their vote, including outperforming Republicans with absentee voters by 57% (1,783,877) to 43% (1,374,090), President Trump was discouraging GOP turnout by dividing Georgia Republicans against each other and undermining the integrity of Georgia elections by demeaning the Republican Governor, Lt. Governor and Secretary of State, suggesting that they were complicit in election fraud.

Ousting Rep. Liz Cheney this week carries little political risk, but pinning your 2022 hopes on Trump is the biggest risk of all.

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Thank You for reading the John Davis Political ReportJohn N. Davis

Need a speaker or continuing education presentation? Visit www.johndavisconsulting.com

Redemption Begins When We Stop Calling People “Racist” and Start Dealing With “Systemic Racism”

April 30, 2021       Vol. XIV, No. 7       2:13 pm

“Systemic racism,” yes. “Racist,” no.

On Wednesday, Sen. Tim Scott, an African American Republican from South Carolina, said during his response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address, “Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country.” On Thursday, President Biden, in an interview with TODAY’s Craig Melvin, was asked to comment on Scott’s statement. “I don’t think America’s racist,” Biden said, “but I think the overhang from all of the Jim Crow (laws), and before that slavery, have had a cost, and we have to deal with it.”

Those two statements this week by Republican Sen. Scott and Democratic President Biden are potentially transformative in bridging America’s racial divide. They allow us to begin to accept the fact that although there are still racial advantages and disadvantages in America that need to be dealt with, the nation is not a nation of evil racists. “Systemic racism,” yes. “Racist,” no.

The distinction between the terms “systemic racism” and “racist” is well illustrated by former President Jimmy Carter, born October 1, 1924, in his book, An Hour Before Daylight, about his racial indoctrination as a young boy growing up on a farm in South Georgia.

President Carter’s personal story helps us see that a society racially segregated by the law of the land and social custom is a systemically racist society. But it also helps us see that not all members of a systemically racist society are racists. Was Jimmy Carter a racist? No.

Kept apart by social custom and the law of the land

Jimmy Carter did not hate the Black people of his day, but he participated in a systemically racist society that gave him privileges and opportunities denied to Blacks. Here are excerpts from his book:

“Our two races, although inseparable in our daily lives, were kept apart by social custom, misinterpretation of the Holy Scriptures, and the unchallenged law of the land as mandated by the United States Supreme Court.”

Carter says that throughout his boyhood and youth, “…the political and social dominance of whites was an accepted fact, never challenged or even debated, so far as I knew, by white liberals or black protestors.”

Most 20^th Century Americans were not filled with racial hatred, an implied characteristic of the term racist. Rather, like Carter, most were simply members of a systemically racist society founded on social custom, misinterpretation of the Holy Scriptures, and the unchallenged law of the land.

Most 21^st Century Americans are not filled with racial hatred either, yet the racial divide continues. So, how do we bridge the racial divide in America?

So, how do we bridge the racial divide in America?

In the interest of bipartisan progress on issues of race, we must first decouple the terms “racist” and “systemic racism.” Why? Because most of our relationships with each other are more influenced by social custom than racial hostility.

In order to bridge the racial divide in America, Democrats must join President Biden in accepting the fact that most Americans, including the conservatives, are not hate-filled racists and therefore should not be called racists, a word that implies racial hatred.

It is equally important for Republicans to accept the fact that social customs and business practices that favor one race over another is a form of systemic racism that needs to be dealt with. As Sen. Tim Scott said Wednesday night, “Believe me, I know our healing is not finished.”

In order to bridge the racial divide in America, we must limit our racially sensitive arguments to public policy ideas. It is not OK to belittle each other with name calling simply because we disagree on the best policy for ending systemic racism. For example, once you call someone a racist, the opportunity for constructive dialogue ends. Why? Because you do not negotiate with a racist any more than you negotiate with a terrorist! Right? “You’re a racist!” Boom! Conversation over.

In order to bridge the racial divide in America, we must talk openly and honestly about systemic racism and it’s terrible aftermath in the United States in terms of what “we” did as a nation, “our” mistakes of the past. Once we think we have greater moral authority to judge other Americans on the subject of race, we lose the trust of those we seek to persuade.

Many Americans sincerely believe that we must work just as diligently to identify and eliminate well-intentioned government programs that they think have created more harm than good as we work to identify and eliminate cultural systemic racism in America. The future of Black children will not be improved without addressing all sources of destruction of their potential, whether it be racism, systemic racism, or well-intentioned government programs.

Finally, we would do well to weigh the closing thoughts of Sen. Tim Scott, who said on Wednesday night, “Original sin is never the end of the story. Not in our souls, and not for our nation.”

“The real story is always redemption,” he concluded. Redemption. That’s the bridge.

Redemption begins when we stop calling people “racist” and start dealing with “systemic racism.”

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Thank You for reading the John Davis Political Report

John N. Davis

For more information visit website: www.johndavisconsulting.com

Today’s US Census Release Shows Most Maps in States Gaining Seats in Congress to be Redrawn by GOP

April 26, 2021       Vol. XIV, No. 6       3:13 pm

North Carolina will have 14 congressional seats

It’s official! The US Census Bureau announced at 3 o’clock this afternoon that North Carolina is one of six states gaining a combined total of seven seats in the United States Congress, with five of the seven seats in states where Republicans control remapping.

Thanks to a decade of population growth, states gaining seats in Congress include Texas (+2 seats), Florida (+1 seat), North Carolina (+1 seat), Montana (+1 seat), Colorado (+1 seat), and Oregon (+1 seat). Republicans have exclusive control over remapping in Texas, Florida and Montana thanks to GOP Governors and GOP majorities in the state legislatures.

Republicans also have exclusive control of remapping in North Carolina, as Gov. Roy Cooper, D-Nash, has no authority to veto reapportionment bills. (Clarification: Republicans have exclusive control of remapping in North Carolina subject to ten years of litigation.)

Colorado, dominated by Democrats, has an independent redistricting commission.

Bottom Line: Republicans were dealt a better hand today with remapping congressional districts for the remainder of the decade. Most states gaining seats in Congress are GOP-friendly states. Most states losing seats in Congress are controlled by Democrats: New York (-1 seats), Illinois (-1 seat), Pennsylvania (-1 seat), Michigan (-1 seat), and California (-1 seat), along with two Republican-friendly states, Ohio (-1 seat), and West Virginia (-1 seat).

Democrats have a razor-thin majority in the US Congress, having won 222 seats last November to 213 for the Republicans. If you add today’s Republican advantage in drawing new congressional seats to the historic fact that most new US presidents see an average loss of 23 seats for their party during the first midterm elections, you can readily see that the GOP has better odds than Democrats of winning the majority of congressional races next year.

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Thank You for reading the John Davis Political Report

John N. Davis

How a Secret Group Anticipated and Blocked President Trump’s Attempt to Reverse a Losing Campaign

March 4, 2021         Vol. XIV, No. 5       6:13 am

What Democrats did was worse than corrupt, it was legal

Last Sunday, at one hour and ten minutes (01:10:24) into his CPAC speech, former President Donald Trump described as “corrupt” what a Time Magazine article disclosed as how the Democrats won the White House. He said, “It’s a disaster for our country that we can allow something so corrupt to happen. Read that article. I really encourage you. You read that article.”

So, I read the article.

The Time Magazine story held in such contempt by Trump, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election, by Molly Ball, Time’s National Political Correspondent, is about “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” It’s about how they:

• Changed voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding;
• Fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time;
• Successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation.

The story confirms what I concluded in my February 2, 2021 report on how Democrats defeated President Trump, The US Constitution Giveth and the US Constitution Taketh Away; Blessed Be the US Constitution: “They exploited a coronavirus pandemic to send tens of millions of absentee ballots to their voters and then used unprecedented emergency state authority to reduce validation requirements and extend the time allowed for counting ballots to gain a political advantage.”

Yes, a secret group of Democrats did all of that. But it was not corrupt.

Trump has survived impeachment, divorces, bankruptcies, accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits, but he could not win one of the 62 suits claiming corruption in the 2020 presidential race brought before 90 judges and a 6-to-3 Republican-appointed US Supreme Court.

The Time Magazine story reveals that what Democrats did to defeat Trump was worse than corruption, it was legal. It’s the story of why even Republican judges could not rule in his favor.

 Democrats anticipated and blocked Trump’s attempt to reverse the election

The Time article tells of how Democrats anticipated that President Trump would attempt to overturn the election results with claims of fraud filed in either Republican-friendly states or in federal courts where President Trump had 234 nominees confirmed by the US Senate, so they created a comprehensive counter-offensive that crossed all the legal t’s and dotted all the i’s.

Democrats knew like everyone else that Trump was incapable of accepting defeat.

On November 1, 2020, two days before election day, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former “fixer,” told The New Yorker that if he loses, “He will not concede. Never, ever, ever.” The article, Why Trump Can’t Afford to Lose by Jane Mayer, includes the following telling quotes:

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer:

• “I believe he’s going to challenge the validity of the vote in each and every state he loses—claiming ballot fraud, seeking to undermine the process and invalidate it.”
• “Every day, he’ll rant and rave and yell and scream about how they stole the Presidency from him. He’ll say he won by millions and millions of ballots, and they cheated with votes from dead people and people who weren’t born yet. He’ll tell all sorts of lies and activate his militias. But, by stacking the Supreme Court, he’ll think he can get an injunction. 

Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter of Donald Trump’s best-seller, “The Art of the Deal:”

• Trump “will do anything to make the case he didn’t lose.”
• “If Biden is inaugurated President, we’ll know that there’s a new boss, a new sheriff in town. But, until then, the biggest danger is that Trump will implicitly or explicitly tell his supporters to be violent.”

Last Sunday, former President Trump continued to claim that what Democrats did was corrupt. He said that the US Supreme Court “didn’t have the courage to act,” adding, “they should be ashamed of themselves.” He blamed everyone but himself for losing the White House and the US Senate majority.

It is the predictability of Trump’s “sore loser” behavior that gave that secret group of Democrats the ability to anticipate and legally block his attempt to reverse a losing campaign.

Maybe it’s the predictability of Trump’s behavior that explains why only 55% of the CPAC crowd on Sunday chose Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential nominee straw poll.

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Thank You for reading the John Davis Political ReportJohn N. Davis

For more information: www.johndavisconsulting.com

Biden Executive Orders Revoke Trump Legacy; Will He Avoid the First Term Disasters of Clinton and Obama?

February 23, 2021         Vol. XIV, No. 4       7:13 am

32 Biden executive orders show power to circumvent Congress

Nothing says presidential power like the power to revoke the executive orders of your predecessor. Case in point: Last week, President Biden signed his 32^nd executive order since his January 20, 2021 Inauguration, Executive Order on the Revocation of Executive Order 13801. Here is the link to all of President Biden’s executive orders as maintained by the Federal Register.

Just like that, with each stroke of President Biden’s pen, the residual power of President Trump’s pen weakened. “America First” nationalism swapped for global reengagement; the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Agreement. Travel ban reversed on certain Muslim countries.

Just like that, domestic priorities reversed. Obamacare marketplaces reopened, construction of President Trump’s border wall ended, and the Keystone XL pipeline shut down. With the stroke of Biden’s pen, certain restrictions on abortion funding lifted, LGBTQ community protections expanded, climate change now a national security priority, and collective bargaining for federal workers restored.

So, how do Biden’s 32 first-month executive orders compare to the executive orders issued by all other US presidents? Per The American Presidency Project, President George Washington issued only eight executive orders in his entire eight-year presidency.

• The first 15 presidents, Washington through Buchanan, issued a combined total of 143 executive orders, an average of 9.5 orders during their entire tenure as president.
• The next 15 presidents, Lincoln through Coolidge, issued a combined total of 6,452 executive orders, an average of 430 during their entire tenure as president.
• The next 15 presidents, Herbert Hoover through Donald Trump, issued a combined Total of 9,152 executive orders, an average of 610 per administration.

As to 21^st Century presidents, George W. Bush issued 291 executive orders for an average of 36 per year; Barack Obama issued 276 for a 35-per-year average; Donald Trump issued 220 for a 55-per-year average. Though Biden’s 32 orders in a month may seem excessive, he knows what he is doing.

What sets President Biden apart from former presidents is that he is beginning his tenure with almost five decades of experience in Washington. He knows every trick in the book, including how to accomplish his policy objectives by using executive orders to circumvent the legislative process.

First term political disasters of Clinton and Obama

If the Biden Administration allows its priorities to be set exclusively by urban voters, those who live in the 551 counties he won in 2020 — out of the nation’s 3,139 total counties — he will pay the same political price paid by former Democratic Presidents Clinton and Obama. While true that only 18% of all U.S. counties gave him the win and 7 million more votes than Trump, ignoring the 82% of the counties that voted against him risks disastrous political consequences in next year’s elections.

Metropolitan counties are the home of the Biden coalition. More diverse. More college-educated. Younger. Upper-income liberals. And home to most of the nation’s economic activity. Think about this: per Brookings, 71% of U.S. economic activity is in the 18% of American counties carried by Biden. Only 29% of the nation’s GDP is generated in the 82% of counties carried by Trump.

These facts help explain the partisan estrangement in America. The great divide between Biden and Trump voters is not just about the nation’s cultural and policy differences, it is as much about the availability of income opportunities in the very counties we call home. All 3,139 of them.

Joe Biden knows that rookie mistakes made by the last two Democratic presidents were responsible for catastrophic losses in Congressional seats. The mistakes? Rushing to appease the demands of urban liberal voters at the expense of moderate and conservative voters in non-metropolitan counties.

In 1994, early first-term mistakes made by President Bill Clinton fueled the loss of the Democratic majority in the US House, held by Democrats for 40 years, as well as the US Senate. In 2010, mistakes made by President Barack Obama during his first two years cost Democrats a net loss of 63 seats and control of the US House, the greatest loss of seats since the GOP lost 75 seats in 1948.

President Biden is not likely to make the same mistakes.

Biden is a wise old hand in the wily ways of Washington

President Biden is a wise old hand in the wily ways of Washington. He has served for 47 years in the nation’s capital: the US Senate, 1973-2009; the Vice Presidency, 2009-2017; and now the US Presidency. He starts every negotiation with the advantage of unmatched political experience.

Biden has seen how Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, GW Bush, Obama, and Trump used their authority to accomplish great things. And he remembers their mistakes.

Odds are Biden knows exactly what he is doing with his record-setting pace of 32 executive orders in his first month in office. It is also likely that Biden plans to govern closer to the nation’s ideological center this year, much to the chagrin of left-wing Democrats, all in the effort to avoid a political disaster during the 2022 elections, much to the chagrin of right-wing Republicans.

Will President Biden avoid the first term political disasters of Clinton and Obama?

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Thank You for reading the John Davis Political Report

John N. Davis

For more information: www.johndavisconsulting.com

Failure of Democrats to Apply the Pelosi-Nadler Impeachment Test Drives Trump’s Return to Power

February 17, 2021         Vol. XIV, No. 3       1:13 pm

The sinister smirk that said impeachment was abuse of authority

The image of that sinister smirk is emblazoned in my mind. It was a we-finally-got-him smirk by one of the US House impeachment managers as they walked ceremoniously past the TV crews in the Capitol Rotunda to deliver the Articles of Impeachment to the US Senate.

It was a smirk that confirmed what I had grown to believe, that the House majority had weaponized their impeachment authority for the illegitimate political purpose of destroying the President and his party. The President was Bill Clinton. The impeachment manager behind the sinister smirk was Rep. Lindsey Graham, a two-term Republican House member from South Carolina.

Why had I concluded that President Bill Clinton’s impeachment was illegitimate? Because Special Prosecutor Ken Starr’s investigation meandered for four years from one dead-end scandal to another, spending $70 million, before Bill Clinton’s infamous lie about his affair with a White House intern. Finally, Starr had a hook to hang an impeachment on. Perjury about an affair. Impeach him!

Can you imagine how many Presidents would have been impeached over lying about an affair?

In 1998, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a 58-year-old Democrat from California, said on the eve of the House vote on Articles of Impeachment, “We are here today because the Republicans in the House are paralyzed with hatred of President Clinton.” Pelosi argued that the real reason Speaker Newt Gingrich and the GOP Caucus were impeaching Clinton was partisan revenge, an election year political gambit.

Wait. Was Pelosi accusing the Republican caucus of abusing their impeachment authority for political retribution and tactical advantage? If true, how would you ever know?

The answer to that question came from Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-NY, during the 1998 impeachment debate. “There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment supported by one of our major political parties and opposed by the other.”

So, using Rep. Nadler’s test, was there bipartisan support in 1998 for impeaching President Clinton for perjuring himself about an affair? Of 228 “Yea” votes, 223 were Republicans, 5 were Democrats.

Pelosi and Nadler were right in their assessment of the impeachment of President Clinton. The motive was political because it was a “narrowly voted impeachment” supported by only one party.

Now you know why I have never forgotten Rep. Lindsay Graham’s “we finally got him” smirk.

Did Trump’s first impeachment pass the Pelosi-Nadler test?

Applying the 1998 Pelosi-Nadler test using bipartisanship to establish the legitimacy of an impeachment against a US President, let’s examine the Trump impeachments led by Speaker Pelosi.

First, it is important to remember that Pelosi was adamantly against impeaching President Trump early on. During an interview with the Washington Post in March 2019, Pelosi said, “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path.”

As to why she would change her mind on impeaching President Trump without bipartisan support, Pelosi told the Washington Post that the country was strong enough to withstand one Trump term, “But maybe not two [Trump] terms. So we have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

In May 2019, Rep. Al Green, D-TX, confirmed the Democrats’ motive for impeaching President Trump when he said, “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.”

In November 2019, two House Committees, Intelligence and Judiciary, led by Democrats, heard allegations of impeachable offenses committed by President Trump during a phone call with the Ukrainian president. The committees voted to proceed with impeachment with “0” bipartisan votes.

On December 18, 2019, not one of the 198 Republican members of the US House was persuaded to vote for the articles of impeachment against President Trump. Zero “0” bipartisan votes.

So, with “0” bipartisan support in the House, how could Democrats expect to persuade 20 Republicans in the US Senate to vote to convict? They didn’t. Conviction was never the goal. On December 20, 2019, Pelosi admitted as much in an AP interview, “He just got impeached. He’ll be impeached forever. No matter what the Senate does.”

The impeachment of President Trump in 2019 failed the Pelosi-Nadler test using bipartisanship for establishing the legitimacy of an impeachment. It was a “narrowly voted impeachment” supported by only one party. Democrats hated Trump. Impeachment was partisan vengeance.

Did Trump’s second impeachment pass the Pelosi-Nadler test?

How about the second impeachment of President Trump, did it pass the Pelosi-Nadler test?

The articles of impeachment alleged President Trump incited an insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Did Democrats really believe they could get 17 Republican Senators, 34% of the GOP Caucus, to vote guilty, when only 5% of the GOP House Caucus supported impeachment?

Applying the Pelosi-Nadler test using bipartisan support to establish the legitimacy of the impeachment of President Trump for incitement of insurrection, of the 232 “Yea” votes, 222 were Democrats, 10 were Republicans. The impeachment vote clearly failed the Pelosi-Nadler test because it was a “narrowly voted impeachment” supported almost entirely by one party (Democrats 96%; Republicans 4%).

Before the second impeachment, Speaker Pelosi had Trump on the mat. She had played a key role in helping former Vice President Joe Biden defeat Trump in 2020. Trump was down for the count.

But now, because Speaker Pelosi proceeded with the impeachment of President Trump for incitement of insurrection without passing the Pelosi-Nadler test, everyone knows the real motive was revenge. Revenge drove Pelosi to impeach Trump twice. Revenge is why she lost twice.

Speaker Pelosi’s hatred of Trump is now aiding his political recovery.

New poll shows Trump’s standing among GOP on the rise

A new Morning Consult poll released yesterday, Tuesday, February 16, 2021, is titled, Trump Emerges From Impeachment Trial With Sturdy Backing From GOP Voters. The poll shows that 54% of GOP voters would support Trump in a hypothetical 2024 GOP primary.

• 59% of GOP voters said Trump should play a “major role” in the Republican Party going forward, up 18 points since a Jan. 6-7 survey.
• The share of Republicans who said Trump is at least somewhat responsible for the events of Jan. 6 is down 14 points, to 27%, from early January.

In 1998, House Republicans learned a valuable political lesson about impeachment. If revenge is your motive, voters will turn on you. The day after the GOP House passed the Articles of Impeachment against President Clinton, his “favorability” soared to 72%!

The failure of Democrats to apply the 1998 Pelosi-Nadler test using bipartisanship to measure the legitimacy of articles of impeachment is now driving former President Trump’s return to power.

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Thank You for reading the John Davis Political Report

John N. Davis

For more information: www.johndavisconsulting.com

Impeachment Trial Will Show Foolish Demagoguery as Constitutional, Not an Incitement of Insurrection

February 9, 2021         Vol. XIV, No. 2       4:13 pm

Foolish demagoguery is constitutional

Donald Trump brings out the worst in everyone, friend and foe alike. He brings out the worst in friends when he expects blind loyalty to everything he says or does, even if his expectations explode angrily from a narcissistic temper tantrum rather than the wise counsel of presidential advisors.

Think of these former Trump Administration officials who were summarily dismissed and thrown under the bus by Trump in a tirade of insulting tweets because they refused to grovel sufficiently:

Per the website Trump Twitter Archive, a compilation of the 26,237 tweets he posted during his presidency, Trump tweeted that his first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was “dumb as a rock and totally ill prepared and ill equipped to be Secretary of State.” He tweeted that his first Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis was “our Country’s most overrated General…he was terrible!”

Of his first Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump said, “He’s not mentally qualified to be Attorney General.”  He called National Security Advisor John Bolton a “washed up Creepster…a lowlife who should be in jail,” and said his first Chief of Staff John Kelly “went out with a whimper.”

The Trump Twitter Archive documents that President Trump has sent 234 tweets with the expression “loser;” 222 tweets with the expression “dumb” or “dummy;” 183 tweets with the expression “stupid;” 156 tweets with the expression “weak;” and 117 tweets with the expression “dope” or “dopey.”

In hundreds of additional tweets President Trump used insults like “incompetent,” “pathetic,” “moron,” and “lowlife.” On 83 occasions, Trump used the word “fool” in his tweets, which, along with all the other thousands of slights, puts him on the short list of America’s most foolish presidents.

However, foolish demagoguery is not unconstitutional, nor is it an incitement of insurrection.

On January 6, 2021, at the “Save America Rally,” Trump continued to insist that the presidential election was stolen. The fact that no court or state official, including in GOP-led states, had found indictable evidence of election fraud was irrelevant. He believed there was fraud.

Refusing to accept the rulings of state and federal courts, including the US Supreme Court, on the constitutionality of election law changes necessitated by the pandemic may be foolish, and firing up the MAGA crowd to march to the US Capitol and protest their sincere belief that those courts and election officials were wrong, may be doubly foolish, but both are constitutionally protected speech.

Domestic terrorists and violent extremists exploited Trump protest

Domestic terrorists and violent extremists were identified by the Department of Homeland Security in their Homeland Threat Assessment published in October 2020 as those “who seek to force ideological change in the United States through violence, death, and destruction.”

A particularly relevant section of the Homeland Threat Assessment report is titled, Exploitation of Lawful and Protected Speech and Protests. It describes an “alarming trend of exploitation of lawful protests causing violence, death, and destruction in American communities.”

That is what happened on January 6.

The officially permitted “Save America Rally” got out of hand at the Capitol when domestic terrorists and violent extremists in the crowd exploited an otherwise peaceful march. They assaulted cops, overran the security perimeter, broke into the Capitol, destroyed property, and disrupted a Joint Session of Congress. It was violent anti-government, anti-authority anarchists who struck a Capitol Police officer with a fire extinguisher so violently that he died the next day from his injuries.

Per the Homeland Threat Assessment report, “As of the date of this publication, we have seen over 100 days of violence and destruction in our cities. The co-opting of lawful protests led to destruction of government property and have turned deadly. Indeed, Department of Homeland Security law enforcement officers suffered over 300 separate injuries and were assaulted with sledgehammers, commercial grade fireworks, rocks, metal pipes, improvised explosive devices, and more.

Domestic terrorists and violent extremists also exploited otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter marches all over the country, turning them into insurrections characterized by arson, looting and violence against cops. Domestic terrorists and violent extremists are the insurrectionists, not Trump.

On January 6, Congress was forced to adjourn at 2:20 pm because domestic terrorists and violent extremists were ransacking the Capitol. At 2:38 pm, President Trump tweeted, “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”

He should have sent that tweet earlier. He did not. That makes him foolish, not an insurrectionist.

So, here we are, February 9, 2021, the first day of former President Trump’s second impeachment trial. A trial that will likely be equal in its foolishness to anything President Trump has said or done because it will be seen as an abuse of House authority, motivated by revenge and partisan politics under the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Donald Trump brings out the worst in everyone.

But nothing said or done by either President Trump or Nancy Pelosi compares to the foolishness noticed worldwide on January 8 this year, two days after the storming of the US Capitol. Go to website Trump Twitter Archive and look at the top of the page. There you will see the following:

“Twitter has permanently suspended Trump’s account (January 8, 2021)”

The most foolish of all are those who would deny any American the right to be foolish.

When all is said and done, former President Trump’s second impeachment trial will likely show that foolish demagoguery is constitutionally protected speech, not an incitement of insurrection.

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Thank You for reading the John Davis Political Report

John N. Davis

For more information: www.johndavisconsulting.com

The US Constitution Giveth and the US Constitution Taketh Away; Blessed Be the US Constitution

February 2, 2021         Vol. XIV, No. 1       11:13 am

US Constitution requires 67 votes for conviction. Period. End of story.

Next Monday, February 8, 2021, former president Donald Trump will try to win an acquittal in the court of public opinion by arguing during his second impeachment trial that he was unfairly cheated out of a second term in the Oval Office. That the January 6 storming of the US Capitol was spontaneous, not orchestrated. That lawlessness was due to a few bad actors, unwittingly abetted by poor security planning.

If Trump succeeds in the court of public opinion, Democrats will have no chance of persuading the 17 Republican Senators needed for 67 votes required to convict him of the charge that he “engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States.”

And no matter what any of us think about the legitimacy of Trump’s defense strategy, the US Constitution says that without 67 votes to convict, he will be acquitted. Period. End of story.

In my judgment, the Trump legal team is likely to succeed in winning the argument in the court of public opinion that Trump and his supporters genuinely believed that he was cheated out of a second term; that an otherwise peaceful and officially permitted “Save America” rally and march to the US Capitol became violent only because radical, right-wing thugs assaulted and overran cops; a security breach that led to lives being lost and government leaders and staff threatened in great part because of a failure of federal and DC bureaucrats to plan for the angry crowd cautioned days earlier by the FBI.

If Trump succeeds next week, he will live to reign supreme for another day with his “Save America” PAC and a $31 million year-end 2020 cash balance reported Sunday. If Trump succeeds, Mar-a-Lago will become the center of the Republican universe and Speaker Pelosi will go down in history as the only speaker who exploited the US Constitutional impeachment authority twice … and lost both times.

But even if Pelosi and her prosecution team fail to win the Constitutionally required 67 votes to convict Trump of High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Joe Biden will still be President of the United States.

Constitution requires 270 electors for president. Period. End of story.

During the past four years, we have heard Democrats claim time and again that President Trump’s presidency was somehow illegitimate because Hillary Clinton won 2.87 million more votes in 2016. Unfortunately for the Clinton camp, the US Constitution does not account for the national popular vote.

Donald John Trump was declared winner because he won the 270 electors required by the US Constitution for a term as president of the United States (Trump 304; Clinton 227). Period. End of story.

But it was not the end of the story for many Democrats who believe to this day that the Trump Administration was illegitimately won. Democrats, like the late Rep. John Lewis from Georgia, who  refused to attend Trump’s inauguration, saying in an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” “I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president.”

Not only did Rep. John Lewis and many like-minded House members not attend President-elect Trump’s inauguration, many also never attended a Trump State of the Union Address.

Democrats spent four years denying the legitimacy of Trump’s 2016 win. Hillary Clinton told the Washington Post on September 26, 2019, that Trump was an “illegitimate president” who “knows he stole the 2016 election.”

Exploiting a pandemic for political gain is not unconstitutional

Sound familiar? Stole the election? Cheated? Unfair? Misrepresented the truth?

How about Trump’s claim: They exploited a coronavirus pandemic to send tens of millions of absentee ballots to their voters and then used unprecedented emergency state authority to reduce validation requirements and extend the time allowed for counting ballots to gain a political advantage.

Or how about Trump’s claim: the news media withheld a scandalous story about my opponent.

In the matter of the election of a US president, the US Constitution has no interest in whether the news media tried to influence the race unfairly by withholding potentially damning stories such as the one about Joe Biden being complicit in family business deals with China while he was Vice President.

In fact, the US Constitution allows the news media to be recklessly unprofessional; allows reporters to destroy the trust of Americans by choosing sides in a presidential race and faking their objectivity. There is nothing unconstitutional about media bias in story selection or the use of loaded words intended to politically influence readers and listeners. Recklessly unprofessional? Yes, but not unconstitutional.

Likewise, the US Constitution is not interested in whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, purposely stalled the negotiations on the second coronavirus stimulus package to keep President Trump from a politically valuable legislative accomplishment. Nor does the US Constitution care if Pfizer and Moderna intentionally waited for political reasons, as some have suggested, until after election day to announce the availability of their COVID vaccines (Pfizer announced Nov 9; Moderna Nov 16).

Reprehensible? If true, yes. Seeking to gain a political advantage in a presidential race by delaying desperately needed stimulus money and vaccines is reprehensible, but not unconstitutional.

The bottom line is this: exploiting a national crisis by driving up the number of absentee ballots distributed and certified is not unconstitutional. Neither is exaggerating the truth nor withholding a story.

The US Constitution asks but one question after a presidential race

You can stand before the US Constitution all day arguing that President Trump’s election was stolen because of absentee ballots, biased news sources or ruthlessly partisan opposition leaders, but the US Constitution, after listening patiently, will ask you but one question: Did one of the contenders for president win a minimum majority of 270 certified Electoral College votes?

At 1:00 pm, Wednesday, January 6, 2021, the 117^th US Congress met in joint session, then-Vice President Mike Pence presiding, to count certified ballots from each state for US President and Vice President. Shortly thereafter, tens of thousands of marchers arrived at the Capitol from a Trump-led “Save America” rally to protest the count, believing, as President Trump had argued, that the election had been stolen, even though no state or federal court had ruled in their favor on allegations of fraudulent balloting.

Per a USA TODAY timeline, at a little after 1:00 pm, violent protesters in the crowd began grappling with Capitol Police in what became an hour-long struggle to breach the security barriers. By 2:00 pm, rioters had breached the severely outnumbered security officers and the perimeter fencing on the west (Mall) side of the Capitol. Thousands of marchers, most unaware of the violence, followed each other up the Capitol steps and proudly stood waving their pro-Trump banners.

At about 2:20 pm, as violence escalated inside the Capitol, Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi were escorted from the Senate and House chambers, abruptly ending a two-hour debate over an objection to counting Arizona’s votes, required if both a House and Senate member sign an objection.

During the next three and a half hours, we watched in shock as many “Save America” marchers morphed into violent insurrectionists. They occupied the Senate and House chambers. They destroyed property. One hit Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick on the head with a fire extinguisher so violently that Officer Brian Sicknick died the next day.

Next week, we will see the video footage of the rioting as House Democratic Impeachment Managers make their case that former president Donald Trump should be found guilty of intentionally inciting the insurrection of January 6, 2021. That he should never be allowed to hold office again.

But this week, I want to emphasize what happened after the Capitol was finally secure at 5:49 pm.

At 8:06 pm, the Senate reconvened to continue the debate over an objection to counting Arizona’s electoral votes. Following the two-hour debate, the objection failed by a vote of 93-6.

At 9:00 pm, the House reconvened to continue the debate over an objection to counting Arizona’s electoral votes. Following the two-hour debate, the objection failed by a vote of 303-121.

At 12:15 am, another objection was raised by a House and Senate Republican to the counting of the Pennsylvania votes, leading to two more hours of debate. The objection was rejected at 3:10 am.

At 3:41 am, Vice President Mike Pence affirmed that Congress had completed the counting of the electoral votes and that former Vice President Joe Biden had won the presidency, 306-232.

Four years earlier, on January 6, 2017, it was then-Vice President Joe Biden who presided over the certification of Donald Trump as the winner of the Electoral College votes. There were many objections initiated by angry Democratic House members over claims like Russian collusion, voting machine malfunctions and voter suppression. But Biden refused to grant House Democrats two hours to debate because they failed to qualify their objections with a cosigning Senator as required by law.

Then, as in the wee hours of the morning on January 7, 2021, and in every presidential election since General George Washington was elected by a unanimous vote of electors on February 4, 1789, the US Constitution decides who would receive the keys to the Oval Office.

The US Constitution giveth and the US Constitution taketh away; blessed be the US Constitution.

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Thank You for reading the John Davis Political Report

John N. Davis

December 16, 2020         Vol. XIII, No. 12       4:13 pm

Grace in defeat is not in the DNA of most partisans

It was an especially contentious presidential race. Two parties starkly divided using their corps of politically biased news reporters to advance personal attacks and argue that they were the only true protector of American virtues. One party favoring strong, centralized federal rule and higher taxes; the other preferring a decentralized federal government and lower taxes.

Two presidential contenders. The incumbent President of the United States challenged by a seasoned pro who had run for president before and whose resume included serving as Vice President.

A bitter campaign of personal attacks. One declaring that his opponent was “weak, confused.” The other calling his opponent “obstinate, excessively vain, and takes no counsel from anyone.”

It was a rancorous and vengeful campaign during which both sides exploited every advantage possible, including changing election laws “to ensure a desired result.”

Of course, I am talking about the presidential race of 1800 in which incumbent President John Adams was denied a second term by Vice President Thomas Jefferson. A campaign of personal attacks so ruthless that at 4 o’clock in the morning on Jefferson’s inauguration day “the sullen Adams slipped out of the Executive Mansion without fanfare, boarded a public stage and left Washington.”

As David McCullough wrote in his Pulitzer Prize winning biography John Adams, “Adams could have set an example of grace in defeat, while at the same time paying homage to a system whereby power, according to a written constitution, is transferred peacefully. After so vicious a contest for the highest office, with party hatred so near to igniting in violence, a peaceful transfer of power seemed little short of a miracle. If ever a system has proven to work under extremely adverse circumstances, it was at this inauguration of 1801, and it is regrettable that Adams was not present.”

This is what I expect we will see on January 20, 2021, at President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. President Donald Trump, like President John Adams, so humiliated in defeat that regrettably he will not be capable of celebrating Biden’s victory. Grace in defeat is not in Donald Trump’s DNA.

But grace in defeat is not in the DNA of most partisans. Do you think Democrats in Washington DC have set the example for grace in defeat during the past four years? I didn’t think so. Do you expect Republicans to set the example for grace in defeat during the next four years? I didn’t think so.

Trump would have won but for Sept/Oct Spike in Coronavirus

Now get this: In every presidential race since 1952, Gallup polls have shown that the candidate of the party seen better able to handle the most important problems of the day is the candidate who won. Look at the list and you will see that the rule applies 100% of the time since President Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. Exceptions: In 1980 and 2000, voters were tied on which party was better able.

The most important problem on the mind of voters in 2020 from the start of early voting (as early as September 18 in some states) through Election Day was the coronavirus. President Trump’s job approval on his handling of the coronavirus was a dismal 40%, with 57% disapproval.

But far more important is this: Per Gallup, in the Fall of 2020, “More Americans believe the Democratic Party (47%) than the Republican Party (39%) would do a better job of handling whatever issue they consider to be the most important problem facing the U.S.

What issue did most Americans say was most important 2020 problem? The coronavirus.

Boom. The Trump presidency doomed by his handling of the coronavirus. From my view, Trump should have shown more concern for the sick and more empathy for those grieving the loss of a loved one. And, he should have turned the daily coronavirus briefings over to the medical professionals.

However, despite his personal and presidential failings, President Trump would have most certainly won a second term but for the coronavirus. The economy was poised for growth and unemployment was at a 50-year low, yielding across-the-board wage increases due to a worker shortage.

According to Real Clear Politics, President Trump’s job approval on his handling of the economy during the first quarter of 2020 was 53.4%, with only 41.4% rating him unfavorably. Despite all negatives, Trump’s job approval on his handling of the economy remained at 53% all year. If economic recovery had been the most important problem for voters Trump would have won.

“A little short of a miracle” in a season of miracles

This was a year we will never forget. A year that began contentiously with the all-partisan Impeachment Trial of President Trump. Then, the dreadful coronavirus struck, taking over 300,000 moms and dads and grandparents and healthcare workers and friends and coworkers from us. A virus that has disrupted our personal and professional lives like no other event in our lifetimes.

The virus created an economic crisis, much worse for some. Businesses and organizations of all sizes, from major airlines to family-owned restaurants were forced to accept the bankrupting consequences of pandemic shutdowns. Tens of millions of unemployed renters could not pay rent or utilities and homeowners could not pay mortgages. Many were food insecure for the first time.

 This was a year of a cultural crisis. A year in which the killing of a Black man named George Floyd by a rogue cop sparked violent protests. Peaceful Black Lives Matter protests ultimately discredited by arsonists and looters and chants of “defund the police.” Protests so threatening that they turned what was to be a national blue, Democratic wave into a political ripple that left Republicans in charge of most state capitols and Democrats facing political setbacks on Capitol Hill.

This was the year in which we lost the liberal lioness of the US Supreme Court, the “notorious RBG,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and saw the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, transforming the nation’s high court to a solid 6-3 conservative majority.

Finally, this was a year of a particularly vicious contest for the nation’s highest office, with party hatred seemingly ever near to igniting in violence. A contest that ended on Monday, December 14, 2020, when the Electoral College gave President-elect Joe Biden 306 votes with only 270 needed to win.

Now, with the elections behind us and hope on the horizon for an end to the coronavirus, we end 2020 appropriately in the season of miracles. The month people of many religious traditions throughout the world celebrate the miracles of their faith.

The fact that people from all faiths and ancestral stories and cultural values coexist peacefully in the United States of America despite our rancorous politics is truly a “little short of a miracle,” one that can be traced to a Constitution crafted by founders like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams that gives each citizen the right to consent to how they are governed by way of voting for their leaders.

It will be regrettable if President Donald Trump is not present at President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration if only to honor a constitutional system that has proven to work under the extremely adverse circumstances like the presidential campaigns of 1800 and 2020.

It will be even more regrettable if all of us are not there, at least in spirit, including those walking wounded after President Trump’s defeat. It’s over. It’s time for all of us to stand witness to the peaceful transfer of power, a “little short of a miracle” in a season of miracles.

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Thank You for reading the John Davis Political Report

Happy Holidays!

John N. Davis