On the menu today: When Donald Trump and Joe Biden meet on a debate stage on June 27, Biden is likely to bring up Trump’s ongoing trial in Manhattan and the charges of falsifying business records. Kimberley Strassel points out that the president might try this jab while his son is in court on gun charges. Meanwhile, there’s some reason to think that ticket-splitting might save Democrats in some key Senate races this year. And beware pacifist assassins.
Why Hunter Biden Matters
The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel notices that Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial in Delaware is scheduled to begin June 3, and that Donald Trump is almost certain to bring it up during his June 27 debate with President Biden.
I can hear someone asking now: “Why does Hunter Biden matter? So the president has a screwed-up son. What does that have to do with how he’s doing his job as president?”
Hunter Biden matters because he illuminates how much the top figures in the Democratic Party do not recognize themselves as unaccountable powerful elites who do not believe that the laws or rules apply to them. This is one of the reasons so many Trump fans hand-wave away the allegation that Trump falsified business records to hide a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, or that he violated federal law by taking lots of classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago, or everything associated with “Stop the Steal” and January 6. Their attitude is, “They’re all a bunch of crooks, Trump’s no worse than the rest of them, he’s just getting prosecuted over politics.”
Of course, insisting that your guy shouldn’t be held accountable for wrongdoing because the other guy wasn’t held accountable for wrongdoing is a good way to ensure that no one ever gets held accountable for wrongdoing. Two wrongs don’t make a right. At some point, we need to start holding people accountable for wrongdoing!
Democrats believe that they are the party that is serious about government, the ones who dutifully pay their taxes so that the government can perform its wide-ranging necessary duties. Hunter Biden, however, didn’t pay more than a million dollars in taxes he owed, and then he hired prostitutes and told the IRS that the money he spent on them was a legitimate business expense.
Democrats believe that they are the party that is serious about gun violence and crime. But Hunter Biden lied, under penalty of perjury, on his federal Firearm Transaction Record, certifying that he was “not an unlawful user of, or addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance.” Biden then purchased a Colt Cobra revolver; Hallie Biden, the widow of the late Beau Biden and then Hunter’s lover, was concerned Hunter would do something dangerous with the gun. She took the gun and threw it in a trash can behind a grocery store, only to return later to find it gone. This is not responsible gun ownership.
Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale, according to two people, one of whom has firsthand knowledge of the episode and the other was briefed by a Secret Service agent after the fact.
The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that the Secret Service officers wanted to hide Hunter’s ownership of the missing gun in case it were to be involved in a crime, the two people said. The owner, Ron Palmieri, later turned over the papers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which oversees federal gun laws.
Here is the U.S. Secret Service seemingly attempting to cover up evidence of the former vice president’s son committing a crime. Three years later, Biden would announce that his administration would have a “zero tolerance” policy for gun crimes.
Democrats believe that they are the party serious about opposing the exploitation of women. Hunter Biden has schtupped prostitutes, impregnated a stripper, and then refused to pay child support. Joe Biden had to be shamed into acknowledging the existence of his seventh grandchild.
Democrats believe that they are the party that is serious about the rule of law. Joe Biden spent decades enacting harsher penalties for drug use, possession, and dealing. Hunter Biden broke those laws many, many times and never suffered any legal consequence.
Finally, for decades, Joe Biden pitched himself as this old-fashioned family man, where “his word as a Biden” meant a solemn promise, a man of traditional values shaped by the working-class virtues of Scranton, Pa. It’s just random bad luck that his younger son turned into Caligula.
A lot of people think the myth of Narcissus is about a man who falls in love with himself — but the real “sin” in the myth is that Narcissus does not recognize himself. No one in government can address the deep skepticism and mistrust in the American public if they cannot see themselves and their past records clearly.
But hey, President Biden can’t even see the past inflation rate clearly.
Why Ticket-Splitting Could Save Senate Democrats
If you’re a Democrat with lingering anxiety over November because of what that New York Times poll revealed at the start of the week, you’ve probably reassured yourself that the Senate outlook is considerably better. And there’s a logic to that way of thinking: The Democratic brand may not be wildly popular, but Joe Biden is a particularly weak incumbent president (and Kamala Harris is a particularly weak vice president). The outrageous and unpredictable Donald Trump has an appeal to working-class whites that might not transfer to the typical Republican Senate candidate.
While Trump led Biden in five of the six swing states, that New York Times poll showed Democratic Senate candidates roughly where they would want to be, or at least ahead, in four states:
In Pennsylvania, Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat, has the support of 46 percent of voters, against the 41 percent who say they back his Republican challenger, the wealthy finance executive David McCormick, although Mr. Trump holds a slender advantage in a head-to-head race with Mr. Biden, 47 percent to 44 percent.
In Wisconsin, the Democratic incumbent, Senator Tammy Baldwin, holds a wider, 49-percent-to-40 percent lead over the Republican banker Eric Hovde. Mr. Biden is up slightly against Mr. Trump, 47 percent to 45 percent.
In Nevada, where Mr. Biden is struggling the most, Senator Jacky Rosen, a Democrat, narrowly leads her Republican challenger, Sam Brown, a wounded combat veteran, 40 percent to 38 percent, with 23 percent of registered voters undecided.
In Arizona, the one battleground state polled with an open Senate seat, Representative Ruben Gallego, a Phoenix-area Democrat, leads Kari Lake, the Republican former news anchor who is closely allied with Mr. Trump, 45 percent to 41 percent, with 14 percent undecided. Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden in Arizona, 49 percent to 42 percent.
Gee, who could have foreseen that Kari Lake would be a less-than-ideal general-election candidate?
(Michigan will also have an open-seat Senate race this year, but “because the Republican candidate won’t be settled until the August primary, the Times/Siena poll did not ask Michigan voters their preference.” And for the first time in what feels like forever, Georgia does not have a Senate race this cycle.)
If you’re thinking, “How likely is it that Trump would win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona, and then the Democratic candidates would win those Senate races?” you’re asking a fair question. As J. Miles Coleman of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics noted, voters are growing less inclined to split tickets between their presidential and U.S. Senate choices:
The differences between the two races on the ballot are generally getting smaller, and even in just the last couple of decades, there has been a huge decline in the amount of ticket-splitting we see in these races. That does not automatically mean [Joe] Manchin, [Jon] Tester, and [Sherrod] Brown are going to lose, but the challenge each faces is clear.
That was written in February 2023, before Joe Manchin announced he wasn’t running for reelection. Jim Justice, the current Republican governor, is extremely likely to win the West Virginia Senate race against Democrat Glenn Elliott.
Montana Democratic senator Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown are always on the GOP’s top-target list, and both always seem to find a way to hang on. (Any three-term Senate incumbent running for reelection this year has run in the 2006 Democratic midterm wave, then Obama’s reelection bid in 2012, and then the 2018 Democratic midterm wave. Those three years were all about as good as it gets for Democrats!)
But there is an example of decisive ticket-spitting in the not-too-distant past.
In 2012, Democrats expanded their Senate majority, increasing it from 51 seats to 53 seats. Republicans lost a lot of Senate races that they thought they should have won, in states that were normally Republican-leaning. In Indiana, Joe Donnelly beat Richard Mourdock, 50 percent to 44 percent, while Mitt Romney won the state in the presidential race, 54 percent to 44 percent. In Montana, Tester beat Denny Rehberg, 48 percent to 45 percent, while Romney won the state, 55 percent to 42 percent. In North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp beat Rick Berg, 50 percent to 49 percent, while Romney won the state, 58 percent to 39 percent.
You could find other glaring underperformances. Obama beat Romney in Florida by less than 1 percent — the closest finish, percentage-wise, of any state — but incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson thrashed Connie Mack IV, 55 percent to 42 percent. (You could argue this was the last year that the Florida Democratic Party had a pulse.) In Minnesota, Romney finished with 44.9 percent; the GOP Senate candidate, Kurt Bills, finished with 30.6 percent. In Michigan, Romney’s finish with 44.7 percent was indisputably a disappointment, but GOP Senate nominee Pete Hoekstra did even worse at 38 percent.
(Certain GOP circles believe that Romney was the ultimate loser — never mind that his 47.1 percent of the popular vote in 2012 was the highest share for a Republican since George W. Bush’s 50.7 percent in 2004, and he was running against an incumbent and the first African-American president in history.)
ADDENDUM: There are a lot of dangerous people out there . . . including the founder of the Slovakian group “Against Violence,” who just shot the country’s prime minister.