Kamala Harris Lost Because I Was Right
Why does nobody acknowledge that Trump won to validate me---and not you?
Good Evening:
Kamala Harris lost the presidency because I was right.
I’ve been saying it for years—and nobody would listen.
The mainstream media didn’t listen. The Democratic Party didn’t listen. Joe Biden didn’t listen. Even Harris herself acted as though this was a conventional campaign, rather than one that was all about validating my premises and proving your premises wrong.
But I’ll tell you who saw the writing on the walls: the voters.
They knew that this election hinged on. They knew that proving that what I’ve been saying all along was what was really on the ballot in 2024. This effect didn’t show up in the polls, of course, because pollsters are always fighting the last battle. Determined to figure out how to weight party identification to make sure the electorate looked like it did in 2020, they didn’t ask people the key questions.
But the signs were there for anyone who wanted to look. Consider: I was available to go on cable television and offer my predictions at any time. I had done three whole focus groups with voters in key swing states who all said exactly what I predicted they would say. And I was prepared to cite all of the polls that supported my position, while discussing all of the methodological flaws with the ones that didn’t.
What’s more, I wrote several carefully-hedged articles that clearly stated there was a coin-flip possibility of exactly the outcome that, in fact, happened.
For all of which reason, it makes me a little mad when the Left looks at the election and says it shows that the party should have been more Left and should have had less Liz Cheney and the center looks at it and says, it should have been less Left and had more Liz Cheney. And the people who don’t like the woke stuff say it was because of the identity politics and the trans stuff., and the people who do like the woke stuff say it was about the price of eggs And the people who don’t like Kamala say it was because she didn’t do enough interviews, and the people who don’t like Biden say it was because he waited too long.
And nobody at all is validating me.
Just saying.
Me.
I was right.
Today on #DogShirtTV, I shared a tale of horror: I awoke this morning to find that someone had snuck into my bedroom last night, applied venomous fangs to my innocent foot, and fled. Was it Dracula? A spider? Or Ric Grenell, with his known fascination with my feet? I leave it for you to decide.
The estimable John Hawkinson joined me to share how Ric Grenell might have run over John’s bike last week, though he cannot prove Grenell’s involvement.
The estimable Samuel Moyn also dropped in to discuss his recent article, which does not, alas, contain any baseless allegations against Ric Grenell:
Today on Lawfare
The Situation
In my column today, I reflected on Jack Smith’s decision to drop the Jan. 6 prosecution of President-elect Trump. Smith has no choice, and yet I am grouchy about it:
It’s not, understand, that the government no longer stands by its case. Smith goes out of his way to note that the prohibition against prosecuting a sitting president ”is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind.” He later adds that, “The Government’s position on the merits of the defendant’s prosecution has not changed.“
Consider these words for a moment. In just under two months, a man will take the oath of office as president of the United States—a man whom the Justice Department argued only today has committed grave crimes for which the evidence is strong and prosecution merited. And he will do so with that same Justice Department having released him from criminal prosecution not because he’s innocent, not because new evidence has arisen, and not because we have repealed any of the laws in question. He will do so because, and only because, the electorate chose him to be president notwithstanding the indictment and, in a democratic republic, the electorate’s choice must reign supreme even over the criminal law.
Tackling Data Brokerage Threats to American National Security
Justin Sherman discusses the recent expose published by WIRED, Bayerischer Rundfunk, and Netzpolitik.org detailing how U.S. data brokers legally provide foreign actors with affordable and reliable ways to track the movements of American military and intelligence personnel. Sherman discussed how U.S. data brokerages and aggregated geolocation data pose an active operational national security threat, potential ways to address this problem, and more:
Far from an isolated incident, this latest, troubling story speaks to an urgent problem for the incoming presidential administration and Congress: how to keep building out data security protections for all Americans, including military service members and intelligence community personnel, in light of ever-expanding for-profit data collection and a raft of growing data threats from—among others—the Chinese government. It is far too easy for foreign actors to obtain highly sensitive data, including geolocation data on people serving in the military and intelligence community, via data brokers and other commercial firms and use it to harm those people and the country.
The ICC’s Unsurprising Decision on Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Deif
Chimène Keitner examines the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, also known as Deif, the commander of Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades. Keitner explained the ICC’s justification for each warrant, the details of the substantive charges, Nethanyahu and Gallant’s likely future as “fugitives from the international rule of law,” and more:
Most reactions to the arrest warrants—both positive and negative—focus on the warrants for Israeli officials. That said, it would be a mistake to overlook the PTC’s assessment that the Oct. 7 attacks, and the ongoing detention and maltreatment of hostages, are international crimes. This characterization should give pause to those who glorify hostage-taking and violence against civilians (including against civilians in Gaza) perpetrated by Hamas and other jihadist groups. The most prominent Islamic scholar in Gaza recently issued a detailed fatwa criticizing Hamas for “violating Islamic principles governing jihad.” Attacks on civilians should be condemned in any conflict, regardless of which side perpetrates them.
Assessing Hezbollah’s Intelligence Failure
In this week’s installment of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Nadav Pollak discusses Hezbollah’s failure to anticipate Israel’s recent attacks in Lebanon. Pollak explained how senior Hezbollah leaders operated under the misconception that Israel would be unwilling to pursue aggressive military action to preserve its national security, and how Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack led to a “profound change” in Israel’s military strategy:
But Israel before Oct. 7 is not the Israel after Oct. 7, and Hezbollah and Nasrallah missed this profound change. The atrocious attack by Hamas and Hezbollah’s attacks that followed on Oct. 8 shocked Israelis to their core. The threat of Hezbollah invading was not an extreme scenario anymore, but a likely one unless Israel did something to stop it.
On the Lawfare Daily podcast, Paul Ohm sits down with Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Chinmayi Sharma and Eugene Volokh for a conversation on artificial intelligence (AI) regulation and free speech, AI liability, and more:
No, I’m sorry, but this robot dog is not eligible to be #BeastOfTheDay:
The rules are the rules, guys.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is a baby otter conducting a thorough and unbiased investigation of the concept of fingers:
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