Rep. James Clyburn (D) of South Carolina said today on Meet the Press that he supports adding four new Justices to the Supreme Court. This would bring the total to 13. That is a common number people have focused on since there are 13 judicial circuits. In the distant past, the two numbers were kept in line. “13 is a pretty good number,” said Clyburn. “A baker’s dozen would be a good number to have on the Court.” This is a big deal. The particular number doesn’t really matter. I see adding four to get to 13 as sort of the minimum acceptable goal. But the point here is that rapidly (in time for 2029) establishing Court expansion and reform more broadly is becoming the consensus Democratic position. We don’t know if Democrats will get a trifecta in 2028. But it’s the first plausible opportunity to expand the Court.
After the bruising Michigan Senate primary, a new Fox News poll was published showing Abdul El-Sayed four points behind Mike Rogers, with Rogers himself at 51% (Rogers 51%, 47% El-Sayed). That was just one poll. But it crystallized for many Democrats and confirmed for many of El-Sayed’s critics that Democrats had just nominated a man who couldn’t win a general election in Michigan. Today, EPIC-MRA, usually seen as the leading Michigan pollster, released a new poll showing El-Sayed at 47% and Rogers at 43%. In this case, we have another poll from EPIC-MRA released about exactly a month ago which showed the reverse: Rogers 46% and El-Sayed 43%. So we’re able to make an apples to apples comparison which shows El-Sayed’s standing in a pretty strong light.
And those aren’t the only polls. Since the election, four polls had been released before the new EPIC-MRA poll. Two of those were partisan polls. One from the (Democratic) Senate Majority PAC (El-Sayed +6), one from the Trump-aligned and cringely-named League of American Workers (El-Sayed +3), and then two independent polls. One was from AARP (El-Sayed +1) and another from Susquehanna, a respected pollster but generally seen as GOP-aligned or at least mostly working for Republican candidates (El-Sayed +7).
This is a touch meta. But indulge me because I think it could have real world effects. When real world players start acting on new perceptions, beliefs, prognostications, those beliefs become meaningful and consequential even if they’re absurd or unsupported in themselves. Because they are driving actions.
As a general matter, people who write about or strategize about politics greatly overestimate our collective ability to shape how an election will play out, the extent to which clever ideas can pivot the course of an election in any new direction. We’re more small sailboats on a big ocean than some kind of latter-day Neptune actually changing the waves or the wind. But, all that said, Trump may have handed a unique card for Democrats to play against Republican candidates, especially those bordering Canada, which include key states like Michigan, Alaska, and Maine, as well as states with strong trade dependencies like Iowa and Ohio. This part requires little explanation. Heading into an ugly midterm cycle with one damaging and needless war underway, it boggles the mind that he thinks it’s a good idea to start a trade war with America’s second-largest trading partner. Trade wars raise prices; and the cost of living is the largest single issue in the election.
But there’s an additional dimension to the politics.
When some stars or legends die, they spur outpourings and commemorations that appear to transcend the mere mechanics and scaffolding of their fame. Dolly Parton was clearly one of those stars. For many reasons, with her this isn’t surprising. It was predictable and for very good and understandable reasons. But it still hits a certain way when you watch it unfold. It’s certainly not her greatest or hundredth greatest accolade. But I saw someone point out that in the hours after her death she was lauded on the social media feeds of the Democratic Socialists of America and Donald Trump’s — an emblem of her ability to transcend some of the most acidic divides in contemporary American society.
Music has always played a central role in my life. And I have an uncannily strong aural memory, despite having until quite recently virtually no technical knowledge about music theory at all — which tones are associated with which alphabet letters, chord progressions, etc. What I’ve studied pretty closely through my life is popular music history. And if you study the history of the production, composition and performance of music starting around the beginning of the 20th century, you know that one of the biggest throughlines separating the happy stories from the sad and tragic ones is rights and royalties and songwriting credits. Which will bring us back to Parton in a moment.
The U.S.-Canada trade situation is so bleak (as I’ve been discussing in these three posts: 1, 2 and 3) that I guess it could use a bit of comic relief-cum-TPM lore. The current Premier of Ontario (their analog to the governor of state) is Doug Ford. He’s the brother of the late Rob Ford, who you’ll remember was the rotund, buffoonish, crack-smoking mayor of Toronto from 2010 to 2014. In December 2013, Rob Ford won a Golden Duke award and we sent Hunter Walker, then in his first stint at TPM, to personally bestow the Golden Duke statuette to Mayor Ford. Hunter and then-TPM intern Yumi Araki hunted around Toronto to find Ford but finally had to settle on giving it to Ford’s brother Doug. (We’ll come back to their quest in a moment. You can read Nicole LaFond’s recollection of the story for our 20th Anniversary celebration here.)
