“When Donald Trump came out of hiding this week”- I mean god damn.
Mistermix is right- these fuckers know how to fight. As I said on twitter the other day, I would give my left nut or something useful for Democrats to fight like this, but then again, if Democrats did cut an ad like this Chuck Todd and the rest of the beltway media would be in meltdown mode.
Bob
Democrats once had balls –
youtube.com/watch?v=dDTBnsqxZ3k
Dorothy A. Winsor
That’s a great ad.
JPL
How long before they show the fencing in front of the White House and use Reagan’s words. Mr. trump tear down this wall. In the olden days, conservatives called that the people’s house.. oh well
Baud
Biden’s ads have been perfectly fine, especially given that his task is different than the Lincoln Project’s
JPL
@Bob: The first time that I saw that on TV, it was absolutely chilling. It still is.
Feathers
And it says everything that only a Republican outlet would be able to get away with running it.
Maybe these protests and the ripping away of Republican lies will help end the ‘truth is always on the right’ period in the American media.
germy
Only Nixon could go to China.
Kent
Democrats (by which I mean the official Democratic campaign and DLC Apparatchiks) seem to think that getting mean like this is only going to alienate swing voters. So they always back off.
Republicans, of course, have no such qualms. Ever.
I don’t pretend to know the magic formula. But if you want to motivate disaffected and disengaged voters, then I expect this is what is needed, not centrist mush.
MisterForkbeard
“America or Trump” is a particularly good slogan. It should be adopted by Democrats.
It’s nearly stated outright in Mattis’ statement, and it’s the same point Biden keeps making. But it should be said outright.
PenAndKey
@Baud: I’m actually glad we’re getting both. Biden’s task is to unite. The Lincoln Projects self-selected task is, from all appearances, to take the fight directly to Trump and the GOP in the language they understand best.
trollhattan
@Bob:
IIRC is was broadcast as paid advertisement once, and replayed countless times in stories about the ad itself. The stuff of legends from smack in the middle of the “Mad Men” era.
LarryB
It makes you wonder why these same people were so utterly feckless and ineffectual in 2016.
cckids
They hadn’t gotten their enormous tax cut yet.
mrmoshpotato
And I would think Chuckles could completely go fuck himself even more than I currently think he can completely go fuck himself.
dr. bloor
@LarryB: Like so many others before, they thought they were going to be able to handle Trumpenstein rather than be dragged down and pantsed by him.
trollhattan
@Kent:
Turnout. It’s hard to envision anybody sitting this election out but if there’s an overarching message before November, it’s “You have to vote to change things. Yes, you, and you and you and you.”
The Lincoln Project ads are good for stirring up the sense of needing to do something, and Biden’s ads (and appearances, etc.) need to given them someone to feel good about voting for and by the way, make sure you vote for the senator who can help him plug the holes in this sinking ship and steer it in the right direction.
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t think that’s Biden’s temperament or approach anyway. It isn’t how he is and “how he is” has worked for him. I think it would be a real mistake for him to try to out-nasty Trump. He won’t be good at it and it won’t be authentic to him.
We also know Trump only has “nasty”. He can’t do what Biden does. Cannot.
jonas
Lol! So true!
West of the Rockies
You know, I’d almost welcome a pop-in visit from BoB or Ted and Helen… I wonder if they still support Trump.
As I’ve said before, Trump is maybe gaining a few hundred new Redditors, but he has to be shedding many hundreds more of people who voted for him in ’16 who now have to be befuddled and worried about the state of the country.
A few hundred in Montana, a few thousand in Michigan, it adds up.
scav
I keep having flashbacks to the fencing Doonesbury erected around the White House. How soon will big gilt letters spelling out T.R.U.M.P. be superglued to the cobbled together chainlink fence they’ve got going there?
MattF
Trump’s claim to be ‘conservative’ drives them crazy. And not just ‘Umm, hey, WTF’ crazy, but hair-stands-on-end, red-faced, steam-out-of-ears crazy.
mrmoshpotato
@LarryB:
@cckids: Also, they probably didn’t think the monster factory they worked in for the past 40+ years would create such a horrible, fascistic monster that will eat them and their party. They wanted JEB!, a soft-spoken, smile-in-your-face, behind-the-scenes sack of shit.
As driftglass says, they’re Germans running away from Berlin stopping long enough to burn their uniforms.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. Especially when it’s opportunistic ratfuckers who’re responsible for the past 40+ years of GOP ratfucking.
That said, I’ll take the ads but expect these motherfuckers to scream about President-elect Biden starting right after he hits 270 electoral votes on the night of the 3rd.
Turgidson
Yep, Rick Wilson spent his entire career until about 30 seconds ago as a GOP sleaze merchant. I fully expect that he’ll scurry back into the GOP tent the moment Joltin Joe proposes his first tax increase, as will George Conway, Stu Stevens, and the rest. Max Boot and Jen Rubin may need some time and convincing, but I expect them to switch sides again eventually too. All of them thought the teabaggers were awesome despite it being an obviously racist astroturfed farce of dipshits who didn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground. They’re not on our side for the long haul. They’re opportunists, with a barely-functioning moral compass that can’t stomach this shit, for now.
But I’ll grant – Wilson et al are good at this kind of thing and I welcome their help in this project. And the thing about Hair Furor is that you can create absolutely brutal ads against him just by quoting the fucker at length. No need for ratfucking or lying or manufactured scaremongering. Just quote the dipshit and cite facts. They do all the talking necessary.
Kay
During Trump’s last campaign I wanted either one of his opponents or media or a debate moderator to just ask him simple follow up questions. Really simple. Like “what is NAFTA? What do those letters stand for? Which countries are in it?” Like that, but for every subject. Judges do this for people they suspect are complete frauds and it’s just the most wonderful thing and it’s easy, but you have to be willing to basically insult the person to do it, and people were way too polite with Trump.
He doesn’t know what any of these things are or what any of these words mean. You have to take him out of the frame of a normal Presidential candidate, where you can make some assumptions about what they know, and put him WAY the hell back to basic definitions. He survives by staying in that space where he says lots of words but has no real understanding. Take him out of there. Force him out.
Uncle Cosmo
@mrmoshpotato: Choke Toad needs to become Choked Toad.
TaMara (HFG)
@MisterForkbeard:
America or Trump
I’d put that bumper sticker on my car.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Absolutly This.
It’s Biden’s appeal, he is the anti-shitforbrains. As much as I’d like one of the other people originally running, Biden’s overall appeal is his humanity and his experience. Not a bad combo.
MattF
@Turgidson: Disagree. The only one in that crowd that I really mistrust is Conway. His judgement is obviously… questionable.
ETA: And Wilson’s past admiration for Giuliani is a WTF.
eddie blake
@Turgidson:
no. i think rubin (and several of the OTHER red-sea-pedestrian neocons were flat out HORRIFIED by the OPEN embrace of fascists and neonazis.
she’s never going back.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Yeah. I’m so sick of how everything has to turn into an attack on the Democrats. They can’t do this, obviously. And LBJ caught holy hell for that daisy ad.
Bluegirlfromwyo
I wish we could have this happen without screwing over Biden.
zhena gogolia
Remember “deplorables”?
Remember “bitter clinging”?
Kay
@Turgidson:
I think they’re interesting to have on our side because they worry about different things. They were all really spooked by the idea of Nixonian “law and order” bellowing by Trump. That, IMO, comes from them, their personal views and ideology. They worry that will be effective because it would be effective with them. I think that’s somewhat useful to us, that perspective.
Ruckus
@scav:
They won’t be, that’s not tacky enough for shitforbrains.
I like how my phone has learned to spell shitforbrains, even while it still thinks it’s misspelled.
eddie blake
@Kay:
i was STUNNED that no intrepid reporter asked “so what’s in the bill of rights?” or, “sooo your father was in the klan?”
STUNNED.
Mo Salad
@Uncle Cosmo: Cuck Choad?
Turgidson
@MattF: Well I’d like to be wrong. The best messengers are often the recent converts, so I wouldn’t mind keeping them on our team. I am just skeptical. Maybe the current moment is hardening their opposition to the party as well as Hair Furor, but for most of his presidency, too much of the never-Trump criticism was “why is he saying the quiet parts loud and being such a boor? He’s embarrassing us” more so than “he’s a fucking existential threat to what this country is supposed to stand for”.
I guess we’ll see…
hueyplong
The formula is exactly what’s happening right now. Lincoln Project makes the ads the FTFNYT would spend a month carping about on civility grounds if released by Democrats, while Biden works at being the person the Lincoln Project ads eventually highlight as the alternative to Trump’s smoldering corpse of a campaign and administration.
An argument could be made that Lincoln Project types are our version of taking a gun to a gun fight. It’s been forever since our side did that. Trump’s going to get dirtier and dirtier as we approach November, and we need some rat fuckers on our side who both recognize Trump’s shit right away and have zero qualms about getting in the gutter with them and knifing away.
These Lincoln Project people aren’t going to run back to the GOP right away, because today’s GOP isn’t about forgiving and forgetting, and if they lose bigly in November, lots and lots of people are going to be giving LP folks a lot of “credit” for that result. Spend 30 seconds in the comments section of any of the “former GOP” people we’re talking about and you’ll see how hated they are by the people we’re trying to beat.
cckids
@TaMara (HFG): Me too.
Plus, that IS something that Biden could say – and mean it – entirely authentically. It’s harsh, and cutting, and so, so true.
Joe doesn’t do mean, or unkind, but his “no malarkey” includes harsh, unvarnished truths.
Kay
@Ruckus:
I like the Lincoln Project for one reason- they promote the idea that the election is a referendum on Trump. That’s what they’re good for and that’s worthwhile and valuable and enough. Biden has a bigger job. Just let people do what they do best.
Soprano2
I shared that on FB. Wow, it’s something else. I agree that if any Democrats dared to say such things, or make an ad like that, all the Beltway press people would clutch their pearls and retire to their fainting couches, crying out about how “uncivil” Democrats are. I think they could do that right after reporting on Trump’s latest outrageous tweet or statement as if it’s no big deal.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I believe what you just described about shitforbrains is called “Bullshiting.”
And you are correct, it is all he knows. And he’s so far gone he has no idea he’s there.
Aleta
An ad I imagine: “This November, vote for an exorcism of Trump and Pence. Cast the evil out of the White House and the GOP’s Senate.”
I’m happy about the ads. (Though I wish they’d cover his abuse of refugees and immigrants.) But as for Trump’s former supporters (Mattis, etc.) now turning on him, I won’t relax unless they start to include Pence, Mitch and the others. Are they just pushing Trump step to aside because he’s suddenly just too toxic to win, hoping to replace him with a less tainted candidate?
FelonyGovt
I anticipate that if the GOP goes down as big as we (FSM willing) expect and hope, eventually a new “conservative” party will arise and most of these folks will be in it. That’s fine. For now, I’m very grateful for ads like this, while fully recognizing that the Lincoln Project people helped create the monster.
Kent
They spent their entire professional lives hating on the Russians. I think Trump living up inside Putin’s ass is what has horrified them most of all. That is the most inexplicable part of the Trump presidency. And it has lead to disasters like his abandonment of the Kurds.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
And also, the racist, fascistic, Soviet shitpile mobster manbaby is doing plenty to show the country (and the world) what a repulsive, anti-American, fascist sack of shit he is. It would be hard to “out-nasty” our current reality.
Uncle Cosmo
@Mo Salad: He was in over his wedge-shaped amphibian head when he was a lowly data analyst. Ever since he’s had delusions of adequacy abetted by his Nutwork.
Kay
@eddie blake:
“Obamacare- how do the exchanges work?” They skipped right to “give us your opinion on this thing” and he doesn’t know what the thing IS. Okay, so that’s new for them- anyone who reached that level would have some familiarity with these laws and things, but he didn’t and he profited off their reluctance to put him in a lower category. And it would have been weird! Clinton would get “how will you pay for the increased subsidy on the Obamacare exchanges without a middle class tax increase?” and Trump would get “what are the exchanges?” So they were uncomfortable doing it but they should have! That’s how he got away with it.
PenAndKey
Honestly, I see many involved in the Lincoln Project the same way I see John. They started on the wrong side, but as long as they’re fighting for the right side I’m willing to work past that.
MattF
@Turgidson: I think there’s a permanent split on the right between the collaborators (e.g., nearly all R Senators) and the never-Trumpers. Exactly who ends up on which side is a mystery to us libtards, but I’m convinced the split is real.
Kent
from Today’s NYT (yes…I know)
YOU HAD YOUR FUCKING CHANCE WHEN IT COUNTED ON FEBRUARY 5 OF THIS YEAR.
Nothing that has happened since then has been particularly relevatory about Trump. He has become more embarrassing perhaps, but not different. NOW the rats like Murkowski are finally thinking about jumping ship? NOW?
Aleta
@Kay: Instead of verbal debates, I’d like to see them writing out their answers underneath a live camera. Including some basic multiple choice questions about government and laws and some essays like “How would you handle …”
bemused
I visualize an ad featuring cuts of bully Farkus/trump and Ralphie/liberals not taking it anymore.
Barbara
I am sure these adds will drive Trump crazy but I honestly don’t know whether they are powerful in the sense that they persuade people who are on the fence (although it’s not clear there are many of those). I just don’t think someone as deeply entrenched as I am on the Democratic side of the spectrum can look at these things in an unbiased way.
CaseyL
Rick Wilson is basically a clown – just a really nasty, shit-throwing clown. If he wants to be inside the tent throwing his shit outside the tent, fine. I don’t know what his actual values are, other than liking guns and booze.
The Lincoln Project isn’t aimed at people like us. I mean, yes, I love that their ads are vicious, mean, and draw blood. But they speak to non-crazy GOP voters and “independent” voters more than to Democrats. The ads are designed to speak to non-Democrats. The Lincoln Project doesn’t have to convince Democrats; it has to convince people who normally wouldn’t vote for Democrats.
Whether it does… well, I guess we’ll find out in November.
LongHairedWeirdo
It’s not just Chuck Todd. If the Democrats did an ad like that, the right wing noise machine would find something horrible about it, e.g., “They practically called Donald Trump unamerican! Can you believe it? The President of the United States, who’s fighting every day to save lives from the pandemic, and working so hard on his plans for police reform, and they spend their time trying to beat him down.”
The next day, the report would be that the commercial actually *called* the President “unamerican”, in the same way people are swearing Biden said black people must vote for him. (Biden said that he felt black people weren’t on the fence in this election (while (self-)admittedly being a bit of a “wise guy”) – and, clearly, felt that a significant majority should choose him over Trump, but never specifically *said* that.)
Now, if more Democratic PACs or other such organizations did this, that might be good, if they’re not linked to a live candidate where hate ads could be spun off from them.
Cacti
The fact that the NYT gave Tom Cotton an op-ed to advocate fascism with zero push back just confirms that the “librul media” will never hold the GOP to any set of rules, norms, or standards.
The Dems need to stop fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. If not now, then when? It’s pitiful that we have to rely on malcontent Republicans to say the obvious.
John Cole
@Turgidson: After Hitler was dead we didn’t have much use for Stalin.
different-church-lady
@eddie blake: “Can you tie your own shoes?”
Jinchi
I don’t know about the rest of the Lincoln Project, but George Conway was still pro-Trump in 2016.
hueyplong
@Kent: Murkowski’s comments are better than silence, but they’re not a break. They’re just an expression of Collins-like concern dialed up to 9 and pondering aloud the concept of 11.
She said what she said today in an attempt to get someone else to go full-on break.
An uncharitable characterization is that Murkowski has said out loud that she’s not going first.
Nettoyeur
@eddie blake: Ms Rubin also gets the underlying anti-Semitism (which is going to come out more and more as Trump goes full Führer).
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@MattF: Disasterous relationship choices and political choices are not related. Conway came out pretty early against Trump, well before the ship even looked like it might sink.
Another Scott
@Kay:
Obligatory – twitter.com/bideninsultbot?lang=en
Hehe.
vox.com/2020/2/10/21131327/biden-dog-faced-pony-soldier-new-hampshire
Biden’s an experienced politician. He can bring the heat if he feels he needs to.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Turgidson: Not sure about Stu Stevens, but I only heard about Stevens recently.
It Was All A Lie
He’s put pen to paper about this decades-long shitshow however.
Ocotillo
Bloomberg said he was going to spend money to get rid of Trump whether he was the nominee or not. The guy is a former Republican, he ought to just throw some heavy duty funding to this PAC and put this stuff out there far and wide.
We still have 5 months to go, I hope he throws in and they carpet bomb the airwaves with this sort of stuff in October.
Mike in NC
The ridiculous pro-Trump ad playing locally actually calls him a bull in a China shop, as if that could ever be seen as a good thing.
Kent
In a way, they are sort of like the Bernie folk opening fire on Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, etc. al. Some of the most vicious stuff in politics is internecine. They would probably all be sucking on Kasich or Romney if either of them were viable GOP-daddy alternatives to Trump. But they don’t have that option so this is what is left for them.
But yeah, they will all flip back to the GOP in a nanosecond the instant there is a non-Trump traditional alternative for them to follow.
hueyplong
@Ocotillo: I’ll say it, I trust the Lincoln Project more than I do Bloomberg.
Kent
They are probably desperately trying to recapture their 2016 magic when that was actually a reasonable message to project for a certain segment of the population. I know my MAGA relatives were all about stirring shit up in Washington. I think right now they just want their jobs back. So I don’t see that sort of message flying. We are standing knee-deep in broken china right now.
matt
The ‘fact checking’ if a Democrat ran this ad would be spectacular. Yes, our country is corrupt.
MattF
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: A fair point. But Conway freely uses a mental illness argument against Trump, where I think a political argument is necessary.
leeleeFL
@germy: Great minds and all that! I was remembering that precisely!
And the Daisy ad was the one that got it done, for sure. Goldwater mellowed (see Mitt Romney) as he recovered from losing that election,and Johnson muddied his legacy with Vietnam. But the fact is, Lyndon Johnson was the only choice then, if we planned on surviving as a planet.
I was young (13), and I knew that.
PST
@Kent:
I agree. This crowd has never been very interested in domestic issues, and in particular, not much interested in the culture war. They are unavoidably complicit in the party’s racism, but in the form of overlooking it, not promoting it. I suspect it is a relief to shed that. I think what horrifies them just as much as Trump’s Russophilia is the craven surrender of the entire party on this and every other Trump issue. No one can honestly say to himself, “this too will pass,” and the party I thought I knew will be back to promote a strong American-dominated internationalism. I sense in some, including Rubin, some honest soul searching and changes of attitude.
Gin & Tonic
@Ocotillo:
He won’t. That was bullshit for the rubes.
Ocotillo
@Kay: Oh yeah, there are so many things that could be asked of him to explain to the American people by a moderator or debate opponent that would expose him for the idiot that he really is.
Kay
@Aleta:
I wasn’t a Biden supporter in the primary but I did watch the debates and Biden knows a lot. He knew more than the rest of them. It was almost like he would reluctantly show what he knows but if you listened to his answers they were always informed and usually “right” in the sense of “correct” even if you don’t agree with him. He’s been around a long time. He knows this stuff. I don’t think people think of him as especially brainy or quick, and we had a really smart field, but he was better versed in the actual policy than the rest of them.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I think it would also hurt his ability to govern when he wins. We’ve seen how government works when the goal is only to work for the President’s base, and it’s not what we want. Biden needs to govern all of America, even diehard Trump voters. Of course that shouldn’t stop him from prosecuting actual crimes by Trump and his cronies in the name of reconciliation.
Jinchi
The only way we’re going to see Trump’s support drop from 40% to 20% is if people who tolerated a whole lot of awful finally reach a breaking point. If Murkowski actually comes out and publicly rejects Trump, there’s no point in chasing her back to him.
Trump needs to be repudiated by a whole lot more Republicans or we’ll see more like him running for office. Bush was followed by the Tea Party, was followed by Trump. Don’t ever think they can’t go lower if they think they can get away with it.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
The conservative brain trust are still such assholes. I heard George Will talking about his despairing abaondonment of the GOP on public radio in the car today and he HAS TO DO this nasty dismissal of Biden “Biden has benefited from staying in his basement”. Oh, fuck you, genius. You better PRAY Biden rescues your coddled ass if you want to have a country left. Show some humility and gratitude. Joe Biden didn’t get them into this mess- they and their Party did. Drop the superior sneer. We’re all done with that.
The Moar You Know
@Turgidson: “time and convincing”. I give them a week at the most. The very most. Once Trump is out every last one of these fuckers will go home to the GOP and start hammering on the Dem party as hard as they can. Why? Because we don’t stand for anything they do! Why would they stay? Like the actors say: “what’s my motivation?”
We won’t give them tax cuts, “separate but equal” charter schools, busted unions or plausibly deniable segregation.
We have nothing for former Republicans. They will not stay. And frankly I find that a relief. They cut good ads but I don’t want them dragging my party even farther rightward. They can fix their own fucking party.
ETA: oh yeah, fucking George Conway. There is something really bad there. And we are not going to like it when we find out what it is. He and his wife and their employer, the Mercers…some serious shenanigans going on there and they’re not going to be to anyone’s benefit.
Aleta
The service for George Floyd is streaming live now. At the Post, etc.
raven
@zhena gogolia: fuck lbj
MattF
@Kay: Yeah, Will just can’t help it, I guess. He takes a shot at Hillary Clinton every now and then as well. George Will is George Will’s idea of a smart person.
leeleeFL
I think it’s like waking up next to the person you’ve been married to for years, and realizing, in that moment, that you have wasted your life in a Fool’s errand and if you don’t scrape them off, you are complicit in your own destruction, as well as that of others. Or your Nation.
Don’t ask how I know. K thx bye
Cermet
Ads like this also help motivate democrats so yes, these are good ads -further, they piss off the bunker baby, nail Rump cult members, show wishy-washy independents the truth and fianlly, just tell it exactly like it is. Whats not to like?
Matt McIrvin
I used to hate it so much during the Bush years when liberals claimed that Pat Buchanan was making sense. This is just the flip side (the other side of that particular schism within the right). Welcome support when you can but watch your back.
Jinchi
We’re starting from a really low bar.
47% was a 50 year high for an off-year election. A little over 60% would be a record high for a presidential one.
Kent
Yeah. I guess I agree. But it is still frustrating as hell that none of them (except Romney) actually had the courage of their convictions when it mattered.
sdhays
I don’t trust the Lincoln Project folks past the election either, but I will say that it would be easy for them to just cut ads like this attacking Dump and leave the Congressional Republicans alone. That they haven’t, instead going directly after MoscowMitch and LeningradLindsey and others, is to their credit.
Kay
I heard Sherrod Brown talking with Ohio county chairs yesterday and he said an interesting thing. He specifically called out Trump’s secretary of labor (who is Scalia’s son).
You don’t hear about him. He’s not nearly the famous villain that Betsy DeVos is but he’s just as far Right and just as awful. I wonder if we’ll be hearing more about him :)
I’m all for that.
Kent
There is some really weird sexual dysfunction wrapped up into all of it. I expect some really disturbing scary hair-curling shit is buried there. I mean James Carville and Mary Matalin was weird enough. But they were actually paid professionals and you could actually see they had chemistry. Conway is just going all freelance.
JMG
If Biden is elected, it’s perfectly OK if the Lincoln Project gang goes back to being full-time Republicans. For now, anybody who wants to help us is welcome. Even Murkowski’s statement, wishy-washy as it is, is a push in the right direction. If you want a big majority, and we do, don’t we, you have to welcome folks to your side whose thinking is vastly different from your own.
sdhays
@The Moar You Know: As a counterpoint, the guy who runs Media Matters was a nasty Republican dirty trickster who finally couldn’t live with himself and has dedicated that last 20-some years of his life to documenting right-wing media bias and lies. It does happen, sometimes in big ways.
WereBear
They got here by being hired gun, not True Believers of anything.
Remember that.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
I’ve said it before: I’m not surprised there are principled Republicans for whom Trump was the last straw, but I’m regularly amazed at who they are and what principles they were unwilling to break.
catclub
@West of the Rockies:
It is not befuddled that Trump is aiming for. It is fear, and thinking that Trump has made them safer. I have no idea what goes through their heads.
PenAndKey
@sdhays: My own father was a devout Hannity and Limbaugh listening republican until Bush Jr. The GOPs reaction to 9/11 drove him from the party and he’s now even more liberal than I am. Our own host here on this site is a former GOP believer. It happens, and while I’ll always be on guard around formerly ardent GOP operatives I’ll gladly welcome them to the fold as long as they’re willing to take the fight to the GOP. The Democratic party in the US is multiple factions and I have never, in my life, expected to agree with all of those factions all the time. What’s one more, even if they’re only with us for the moment?
Kent
The best anti-evangelical writers are all former evangelicals, not the long-term atheists like Richard Dawkins. I guess they know where all the dirt is buried.
catclub
@Roger Moore: Apparently a big article in Atlantic describing the occupied nation collaboration justifications for not stopping Trump.
I think they all come down to “Well, putting babies in prisons and shooting at protesters is bad, but Democrats will take away our freedoms.” Given Trump gets thrown out, not a good look.
steppy
Meidas Touch beat Lincoln Project to it, just an hour ago.
youtube.com/watch?v=1X90Y7gOwNg
Skepticat
Someone sent me a clip of Cavuto’s piece on Faux News, which was pretty surprising and gave me some hope there’s a crack in that wall.
youtube.com/watch?v=fwc9K5W6fgw
mrmoshpotato
@Kay: Let’s not forget that sack of shit Matt Lauer continually cut off Hillary’s answers at the Command-in-Chief forum.
“Hey Matt, you predatory shitstain! If you ask a question that requires a 2-minute answer instead of 2 words, STFU and listen!”
JustRuss
This. From what I understand, that’s Rhode Island. The Republican party barely exists, and the Democrats are pretty lousy, because anyone who’s serious about politics is a Dem, regardless of how liberal they are, or are not.
So sure, thanks for helping get rid of Trump, now get out.
Turgidson
@mrmoshpotato:
Hmm, the description of that book suggests that Stevens might be off the GOP wagon for good – he’s finally either realizing or admitting (I suspect the latter but I’m cynical) that the GOP has been using hate and grievance, racial and otherwise, as electoral bludgeons for decades. Hard to come back from that. Glad to see it.
WereBear
@Turgidson: he is also retired.
The Moar You Know
@Kent: my concerns about the Mercers is that they have shown themselves to be the kind of people who would have no qualms about, oh, something like launching a nerve gas attack on Blue State America because of our “ungodliness”, not because they might be getting up to some distasteful tricks with their personal plumbing apparatus. That’s between them and their incredibly angry and vengeful god.
catclub
“When Donald Trump came out of hiding this week”-
Harks back to 4th grade poetry recital: similar cadence.
“If Nancy Hanks came back as a ghost…
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
RommelRick Wilson…. you magnificent bastard!catclub
@steppy: excellent!
Roger Moore
@PST:
I think Max Boot has said almost exactly this. He was on board with the Republicans for one big issue and had qualms about the other stuff that he was willing to stifle to get that one big thing. But when that one big thing fell by the wayside, he realized it was always just window dressing to them and he had been working to help them with all their other disastrous shit. I respect him more than most of the rest of the Never Trumpers because he’s been open in admitting that he is guilty of all the bad stuff Republicans have been doing and needs to make amends.
eddie blake
@Nettoyeur:
sure, that’s what i was getting at. you can’t really do the nazi thing without hating on the jews.
as a red-sea-pedestrian myself, i would just say that the only jews who pal around with fascists are the ones who wanna be kapos. they wanna go last.
soup time
Maybe the best part of the ad:
Trump being called a coward BY A WOMAN. Most excellent. And probably deliberate. Should be done daily.
sdhays
Apparently Leningrad Lindsey is upset that James Mattis criticized Daddy Dump, saying “It’s so fashionable to blame President Trump”.
Please, South Carolina. Please shitcan this piece of shit this November.
catclub
Is even Romney voting against judges?
Roger Moore
@sdhays:
I think there’s a big chunk of “in for a penny, in for a pound” in the Lincoln Project. They know they are now apostates in the Republican Party, and their only ticket back to power is to dismantle it and rebuild from the ground up.
Aziz, light!
Murkowski telling us how much she is “struggling” with supporting Trump is like the black sheriff in “Blazing Saddles” pointing a gun at his own head. She isn’t going to pull the trigger. All her votes will continue to be party-line votes. But it plays well with Alaskans, who self-identify as (staunchly Republican voting) independents.
Roger Moore
@Kent:
Count me among those who think the Conways are doing an act. George is covering their bases so they won’t be completely SOL if/when the Republican Party decides to de-Trumpify.
catclub
haha. She is still voting for all the judges.
The Moar You Know
@catclub: Nope. Judges are one of the payoffs of the job, for him.
Roger Moore
@Kent:
At least as much, they really understand how the other guy thinks. They can get inside their erstwhile fellows’ heads in ways people who have always been vehemently opposed to them can never achieve.
Bex
@West of the Rockies: I miss Brinks Trucks Full Of Money or whatever their nym was. //
trollhattan
@Kent:
Susie Essman has stories of strangers approaching her in the supermarket asking her to cuss them out like her “Curb” character does so very well. I know damn well Kellyanne’s “on screen” demeanor cannot be switched on and off, so George must be getting something out of being punching bag on the homefront.
cain
@Bob:
We don’t have balls because our own people get all squeamish. Fuck them. If you are squeamish it is because you aren’t angry enough. This is white entitlement in the other direction. Fuck them. Get angry, take no prisoners. Drive a stake into these vampires.
JaneE
I think this is better coming from nominal Republicans. Anything a Democrat says will be dismissed as partisanship. Their anger at being betrayed by the Republican party comes through loud and clear.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@sdhays: 1776: It’s so fashionable to blame King George III!
1861: It’s so fashionable to blame the South!
1945: It’s so fashionable to blame Hitler!
trollhattan
@Aziz, light!:
Guessing Murkowski’s in a weird spot because, well, Alaska’s wierd. She won her last term as an independent after losing the Republican primary to a tea partier. Does that leave an opening for a Dem challenge?
geg6
@Mike in NC:
Yes! The first time I saw it, I actually stopped what I was doing because I thought it was from the Lincoln Project or some other pac. Then I realized it was an actual Trump ad. It still makes no sense to me. A bull in a china shop is a bad thing.
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
You’re gonna have to give me some cites for this.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@germy: I direct you to the utter “fainting couch” reaction to Hillary’s Basket of Deplorables remark. We are not allowed to call a fascist puppet of Putin a fascist. Too harsh, too rude, might hurt someone feelings. And if I have to see one more “Lesser of 2 evils” comment at some of the other blogs I read (in relation to Biden) I will barf.
Kent
No, to the contrary. I spent a decade living and working in Alaska and was pretty close to the politics up there and very active in Democratic politics.
Murkowski has broad support across Alaska but the wingnut fringe don’t like her because she isn’t wingnut enough. She lost her primary in a really low turnout election to a local tea party crazy who just out-wingnutted her. She won’t make that mistake again.
There won’t ever be any serious Dem opposition to her. Sure, some low-funded sacrificial lamb will run against her as always. But Dems will focus their efforts on the Governor’s race where Dunleavy (a Sam Brownback style Koch-funded creature) is much less popular and more vulnerable.
Matt McIrvin
@geg6: oh God, can’t find the cites now but it kept happening sporadically because he opposed the Iraq invasion and would speak out against it. More often once he got on Rachel Maddow’s show, which was in 2008.
Geoduck
@The Moar You Know: I’ve always worked from the assumption that Conway and his wife are cold-blooded mercenaries who are working both sides so that whoever wins, they still have a meal-ticket. Who knows what if anything either of them believe.
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, he was right about that. Doesn’t mean I or anyone else who agreed that the Iraq invasion was an idiotic, vicious mistake would, in any way, consider him as one of us. Maddow and all the cable shows have a lot of people on I wish they wouldn’t, but they don’t seem to care what I think.
Sab
@Kay:I agree with you. Let Biden be Biden and let others do the attacks.
Mike deWine ran for Senate as a crazy asshole ( even had a Twin Towers burning ad) and Sherrod Brown beat him. He ran for governor in as the responsible adult in the room and won, and remained popular when he shut the state down for a month.
Yutsano
I mean I just don’t see how J-Rub is going back to the Republican fold. I wonder if the scales have finally fallen from her eyes.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
Unless you hate the china shop.
Medicine Man
Maybe y’all have a point with Conway – who I’ve heard admit he was happy with the judges that have been confirmed – but I don’t think many of the Nevertrumpers are going to get back aboard the GOP until it has been burned to ash. Not one of them talks as if their problem with the enterprise is simply a lack of adult, indoor voice; down to the last one of them, they operate as if the GOP has sold its soul and should be burned at the stake.
geg6
@Yutsano:
I agree. I think she is the John Cole of the Beltway Pundit set.
Matt McIrvin
@West of the Rockies: I don’t actually miss any of those people. But for a moment I thought you were talking about BiP, not BoB, and I found BiP fascinating in that he seemed to be an actual old lefty who swallowed the Putin/RT/Sputnik line completely, and I wonder sometimes if he *became* a Trump supporter.
I don’t wonder too hard, though.
Matt McIrvin
@geg6: I got the sense that Buchanan was opposed to anything Israel was for on antisemitic grounds, which meant that he’d be right for very wrong reasons on occasion. I just felt like warning people that this guy was going to surprise you with a truckload of ugly sooner or later.
The Moar You Know
@cain: You just expressed something I’ve been trying to for years and never had the words for. This is it. Morals are for people who can afford them. How much longer are we going to let our base – people of color, labor, working folks – take the hit so we can sit up and say “don’t go low, stay high!”
Don’t get me wrong, I love Michelle, but that statement has caused me more heartburn than anything any Dem has ever said. It says you can afford losses so long as you feel good about yourself at the end of the day. Well, between COVID and Hitler’s Second Coming, we can’t afford losses anymore. And this day, where we ran out of people, lives and money to burn, was always going to come.
We now have a generation of Dems that have been trained not to fight back. The shit has hit the fan and we (and the nation) can’t afford that mindset anymore.
trollhattan
@Kent:
Mark Begich did manage that lone term following Ted series-of-tubes Stephens, so miracles happen.
Ruckus
@MattF:
RG never really has had anything to talk about but now he’s in senior decline, which is not what happens when a HS senior starts drinking cheap beer. RG has lost the plot, the keys to the plot, the starting instructions to his brain, along with the ability to read, and yes follow the instructions if he did locate them.
Kristine
It is a good ad. But it’s not aimed at Democrats. It’s aimed at Indies and Republicans who would blow off such an ad from a Democratic source and label it propaganda. It’s giving them permission to either vote for Biden or sit out this election.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I fully agree with you.
The jobs are completely different and Biden can’t and shouldn’t go there. But the recent defectors from the republican saying it out loud klan, like Wilson, should and are. The LP is brutal and it will cost the people doing it, but the risk for them is of their own making and of their own volition.
LongHairedWeirdo
@PenAndKey: Plus, it will be that much more bitter for the Trumpies, because they’re the only ones supposed to be allowed to be that nasty.
@hueyplong: Honestly, I think the problem at this point is, anyone who breaks with Trump has a whole world of “why didn’t you do something *sooner*?” to go through. Because there’s nothing *new* here. This is who he was on the campaign trail – he loved the thought of protestors getting injured at his events, and offered to cover legal fees; he threatened to jail his political opponent; he was always a pathetically bad liar, completely incompetent, and clearly bigoted. So what’s different now?
A good person still has a duty to perform, all the more so, when it’s (her, in this case) own actions that made the duty difficult.
@Kent: This isn’t really “courage of one’s convictions” territory. That Trump was *STUPID*, and dishonest, was always obvious. Anyone who had the courage of any real convictions would have stopped when Trump explicitly threatened to jail Clinton.
“Lock her up!” was always an egregious, pitiful lie, backed by vicious slander. (The pathetic lie was “she might be guilty of gross negligence” – no, there was no possibility that would be found.)
The instant they not only lied about the law and the fact, but also continued to support a man who threatened to use the DOJ as a political weapon, was the instant that “courage of their convictions” was a null issue going forward.
That is one of the things I think might cause some problems for the national news media. It really is bad enough to have some hysterical seeming facts that are 100% true – like, the obvious: a bunch of people were involved in a criminal enterprise, each of whom had a positive duty to report on wrongdoing; and only one person, just one person, was willing to note that it was patently illegal, leading to the impeachment.
And Bill Barr tried to block even *that*. Barr also noted the corrupt intentions of Trump, by saying that he requested an investigation, to help his campaign, but an investigation wasn’t “a thing of value” so the (campaign finance) investigation could be closed.
The Republicans have overlooked so much corruption, ignored so many problems, etc., that you really would sound a bit unhinged mentioning them all, even if you kept to the facts.
@Roger Moore: I don’t think it’s a bad bet. It’s clear Republicans governors don’t realize they’re juggling greased bottles of nitroglycerine with their lack of concerns about Covid-19. And Trump thinks “if people are pissed off by abusive police actions, have the police go out and act abusively” which… really, talk about maximally counterproductive!
It is not-impossible that the Republicans will have totally destroyed their brand by the election. Spin only works for so long, when the facts on the ground are undeniable.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Yutsano:
I don’t see her going back either. That doesn’t mean she will go full Dem. If Biden gets elected and we take back the Senate, then Dem politicians will start doing things she doesn’t agree with. I see her flipping back and forth between being a conserva-Dem and an independent, depending on who she is the most unhappy with in the moment.
Just Chuck
@Mike in NC:
Turns out it’s an insult to the bulls
Warblewarble
“Friends across the aisle” bullshit must end.Rethugs steal elections with rasism ,gerrymandering,voter suppression,haviing your arse on a seat don’t my make the likes of Mitch, Lindsey,Cotten or any of the rest “friends across the aisle” Please discuss.
Ruckus
@Kent:
For some it does take a lot to redefine their political expectations. The republican party has been all in about there is no other way but our way since, well before WWII. It’s just taken this long for them to find the dipshit who has no filter, no idea about the don’t say it out loud part. What they want really hasn’t changed, it’s what they now have to talk about in public. They know they can’t sell their real program to more that a smallish minority, because it’s crap. They even know it’s crap, which is why they early on decided upon to never say it out loud. shitforbrains knows nothing but out loud and proud. He’s screwed the pooch for them.
Ruckus
@Mike in NC:
The china shop is full of delicate breakable items. Republicans see democrats the same way. Delicate breakable people, who will shatter at the slightest push. That ad wasn’t meant for democrats at all, it was meant for the hardcore trumpers, people who are so delusional about what the republican party really is. It’s a pat on the back, an OK for them to vote for shitforbrains.
Ksmiami
@The Moar You Know: Rt – the only message should be that the GOP has descended into fascism and has no place in America- fight back with everything you have
Ksmiami
@Warblewarble: the only reaching across the aisle is to go for their throats…
low-tech cyclist
John, is this by any chance a reference to Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress? Because I’ve been waiting for years for the Democrats to throw rocks – damn it, big rocks! – at the Republicans. And every cycle, I’m disappointed.
So I’m delighted that an experienced crew of rock-throwers has decided to fill that void, even if they’re not Democrats. There may be hope yet.
Ruckus
@Kent:
What tells you they don’t have the courage of their convictions? That they don’t like shitforbrains? Or that they are willing to vote for him? They want what they want and they know they can not get there with someone like trump, who says all the parts out loud. Don’t confuse their dislike for trump with a dislike of trump’s “ideals.”
Aziz, light!
@LongHairedWeirdo:
And yet, the polls will likely tighten as the election approaches, as they always have, and people who always look for the (R) after the name will keep looking for the (R).
There may be a point or two worth of defectors, but I’m holding out for our turnout to be way up and theirs to be depressed.
joel hanes
@PenAndKey:
I’m actually glad we’re getting both.
This blog does not have upvotes.
This is one.
jc
This ad doesn’t mention Biden by name, which seems strange to me, but I guess that’s intentional.
I suppose it’s Joe’s job to sell his qualifications for the position. Thankfully, he knows how a real president is supposed to speak and act.
joel hanes
@West of the Rockies:
a pop-in visit from [the ghosts of wingnut past]
A guy named Luke Lea used to comment at 3 Quarks Daily, supporting Trumpism and the most resentment-fueled take on wingnut narrative. Last time I saw a comment from him, he was telling us that the US would never have 50,000 COVID-19 deaths.
He’s been notably absent for a month.
joel hanes
@Aziz, light!:
they always have
This year is somewhat different than previous election years.
Trump only knows one tactic: double downTrump knows only two tactics: double down, or lie. His blunders and prevarications have grown continually more obvious, catastrophic, and undeniable since he was inaugurated.
I remember elections back to 1968, and I don’t remember one in which a faction of Republicans bitterly attacked the GOP candidate with ads such as the above.
All trends go on forever — until they don’t.
joel hanes
@zhena gogolia:
Remember “deplorables”?
Remember “bitter clinging”?
Both of those were spinnable as attacks on Republican voters. Successful attacks will target Republican candidates.
abrxas
“Or something useful”!!! HA! I love you, John!
dopey-o
“Sometimes there are just not enough rocks.” Forrest Gump.
joel hanes
@Kay:
Your contributions to this thread remind me how much I missed your comments while you were on hiatus.
joel hanes
@The Moar You Know:
Morals are for people who can afford them.
Gandhi-ji and Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela disagree.
evodevo
@Roger Moore: Yes. Ex-evangelicals on Patheos know just what kind of mind-fucking misogynistic rhetoric they put out and what lies underneath, and how to dissect their latest moves and power struggles. They are in a whole ‘nother world than rational people, and comprehending their mindset is impossible if you’ve never been a prisoner in their camp.
evodevo
@Just Chuck: Interestingly enough, it is also hard to be trampled by a horse, or horses. I raised them for 50 years, and never had an incident. They are VERY careful where they put their feet, and if at all possible will try to avoid treading on a person, even if they are moving fast. They WILL knock you down to get out of a corral, however lol
MCA1
@hueyplong: Totally agree, though maybe I’m fooling myself because I just want it to be so. But, based on their current comments and postures, it seems to me that the Never Trumpers and the newly baptized Trump hating Republicans would give a Biden Administration a good bit of leeway. I don’t see Steve Schmidt or Tom Nichols immediately flipping back to flyspecking Biden and his cabinet about every picayune little mistake they might make, or every articulation of a policy that they feel doesn’t make their moderate antennae twitch uncontrollably. They’ve spent the majority of their time railing against Needy Amin, but they’ve spread plenty of disdain around to the complicit remainder of the party, too. If you joined the French Resistance in 1940, you weren’t likely to just go back to working with Vichy collaborationists when the war ended. I mean, I have my reservations about some of these folks, but most of them are openly calling for an up and down the ballot wipeout of all Republicans in national government.
You’re right that they’re unlikely to be welcomed back, anyway, unless and until the Republican Party collapses/splits apart and re-emerges as an actual conservative polical party instead of a reactionary, authoritarian demographic death cult (in which case I’d be glad if they did rejoin and help foster a second constructive party, interested in actual governance instead of grievance feeding). That said, it really feels like a lot of those folks, like Rick Wilson, are fully eyes open about the monster that’s now trying to destroy the entire project of American democracy, whether or not they’re self-aware enough to see their own role in creating it, or gracious enough to ever publicly apologize for it.
For now, I don’t really care, because they are pushing all the right buttons with these ads. I just hope they have the budget to flood the airwaves with them in Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, Florida and Ohio all through the next 5 months. With some left over to go after McConnell, Graham, and other newly vulnerable R Senators.
MCA1
@joel hanes: HEAR, HEAR! I almost wrote basically the same thing last week but never got around to it. Kay, you and your clear, incisive writing style were missed.
J R in WV
@Bex:
Bob in Portland, claimed to be a union organizer, so liberal…. etc. Not.
ballerat
@Kent: Trumpov represents the von Ribbentrop-Molotov Russians.
ballerat
Found the Anne Applebaum piece in the Atlantic you mentioned the other day. Since reading it I think of them as collaborators too, because it’s obvious now that’s what they are.
Miss Bianca
@ballerat: Just read that piece, it’s good.
SFAW
@mrmoshpotato:
So your “Chuck Todd can go fuck himself” meter goes to 11?
Gvg
One problem with not saying the quiet part out loud for decades is, it can turn out that different people thought different things were the goal, different things were lies for the rubes, different hinges went without saying. That’s why some of the never trumpers are attacking their former friends. And the things they are saying are unforgivable, not the welcome back have a cushy job because you were right type things. The thing we need to watch is who still pays them after, not just the never trumpers but the losing GOP pols and their staffers. The funding and the donations ought to be splitting too, as this nutty careless GOP version is very bad for business.
Art
That’s gotta hurt. It’s going to leave a mark,
Love it.
Heath Watts
For forty years, the GOP and centrist Democrats (i.e., neoliberals) has given massive tax breaks to the rich and their corporations, cut public education funding, allowed our infrastructure to decay, hobbled Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. advocated for draconian crime bills, put additional racist cops in the streets, and allowed corporations to leave the U.S. with the wealth that was created by American workers. Republicans and centrist Democrats have done all they can to make the U.S. a plutocracy and to undo FDR’s New Deal, which was some of the only legislation in U.S. history that helped common people, rather than oligarchs.
Donald Trump is a monster. He must go. He is a racist, misogynist, homophobe, and imbecile. However, the same could be said about Ronald Reagan, who began the unraveling of the New Deal to benefit the oligarchy. The evil of Reagan (and GHW and GW Bush) was more subtle than than Trump’s but they were evil nonetheless. The right wing decried Bill Clinton and Obama as racial “liberals”, but their policies differed little from those of the GOP Presidents. Every POTUS since Jimmy Carter has supported neoliberal policies, which have harmed American workers–and workers in other countries–while building a worldwide oligarchy.
The Lincoln Project wants to remove Trump so that they can back a Republican candidate in 2024 who will be just as evil as Trump is, but who will be polished. The GOP now knows that a good portion or the U.S. population supports fascist ideas. They will capitalize on Trump’s success in the future.
I do not trust The Lincoln Project with their empty patriotism and big bank account. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. Centrist Democrats and Republicans do not work for Americans, they work for the oligarchy.