Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… among the most cringeworthy communications in the history of the alphabet!

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

We still have time to mess this up!

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Day By Day By Day

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Day By Day By Day

by | 216 Comments

This post is in: , , ,


Reader Interactions

216Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    I am glad to hear the CDC has ordered the moratorium against evictions to be extended through the end of the year. Not sure how they have authority to do this, but this is a very good thing. Certainly more so than demanding Big 10 football return.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    Republicans disbelieve polls to fool themselves into thinking they’re winning and Democrats disbelieve polls to fool themselves into thinking they’re losing.

    Self-disinformation is just as harmful as third-party disinformation.

    The polls are what they are.

  4. 4.

    Anne Laurie

    @debbie: First off, it’s only for Federal-controlled housing, and from what I’m reading even that may be more than Trump can actually enforce.

    Second, as a lot of alarmed experts are pointing out, it’s a stay, not a payment — those missed rental payments will still be due, all at once, come January.  And the people who can’t afford to pay a month’s rent now are unlikely to have 4, 6, or 8 months’ rent on hand then.

    But it will be after the election, which is all that matters to the Squatter-in-Chief and his minions!

    One more reason to vote Biden, bigly:  We need to have a better tactic come January than we’ll ever get from the GOP.  Of course “we” won’t be able to pass legislation by January 1st, but Biden / Pelosi / Schumer are sure to have made public some wide-ranging recovery plans that hopefully will keep people from being thrown out of their homes in mid-winter.

  5. 5.

    Sloane Ranger

    Open thread so, Extinction Rebellion protests in their 2nd day here in the UK. There were 160 arrests for various public order offences yesterday. There is currently a large crowd outside the Houses of Parliament. According to the BBC most are wearing face coverings and trying to socially distance as much as possible. They interviewed one of the organisers who said this had been an important part of their planning.

    There is apparently a miniscule counter protest nearby. How anyone can be in favour of, or in denial of, climate change with the evidence all about us is a mystery to me.

    I hope the protests continue to be mostly peaceful. Last time this happened idiots did stupid things like super glueing themselves to tube trains, loosing a lot of public support.

  7. 7.

    Steeplejack

    Newsy niblets today: Justice Department zeroing in on longtime GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy (story by Matt Zapotosky, Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind Helderman):

    Federal prosecutors are preparing to charge longtime GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy in connection with efforts to influence the U.S. government on behalf of foreign interests, according to people familiar with the matter, a result of a sprawling, years-long investigation that involved a figure who helped raise millions for Donald Trump’s election and the Republican Party.

    Broidy is under scrutiny for his alleged role in a campaign to persuade high-level Trump administration officials to drop an investigation of Malaysian government corruption, as well as for his attempt to push for the extradition of an outspoken Chinese dissident back to his home country, according to the people, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation.

    He has been in discussions with the Justice Department and could ultimately reach a plea deal, they said.

    The case has intensified in recent weeks, with prosecutors securing a guilty plea Monday from one of Broidy’s business associates, Nickie Mali Lum Davis, who admitted to taking part in what prosecutors have described in charging documents as a “back-channel lobbying campaign” to end the Malaysian corruption investigation and to return Chinese exile Guo Wengui to his home country.

    [. . .]

    The investigation of Broidy has its roots in a massive probe of theft from a Malaysian government development fund that has come to be known by the shorthand “1MDB.” In previous civil and criminal cases, federal prosecutors have alleged that stolen money that made its way into the United States was used to buy pricey real estate and even fund the award-winning movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak was accused of being involved in the corruption. He was convicted in July and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

  8. 8.

    Baud

    Desperate and silly (Politico)

    President Donald Trump pointed on Wednesday to Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy’s defeat in a Democratic primary as evidence that the party has come to be dominated by the “Radical Left.”

  9. 9.

    Baud

    In early July the Department of Homeland Security withheld publication of an intelligence bulletin warning law enforcement agencies of a Russian scheme to promote “allegations about the poor mental health” of former Vice President Joe Biden, according to internal emails and a draft of the document obtained by ABC News

  10. 10.

    Kay

    Well, we know more than we did 2 weeks ago. We know they’ve settled on a Biden attack they think is working after cycling thru 5 or 6. The only question is whether this one works.

  11. 11.

    Gravenstone

    @Baud: Wouldn’t a Kennedy win have been more evidence of ‘radical leftists’ in ascension?

    I know, logic not exactly a Trump long suit.

  13. 13.

    John S.

    @Baud: Hauling in over $350M in a single month is another strong indicator. The majority of people are fed up and want the orange clown and his army of idiots gone.

    People should forget about the loudmouth neighbor with the red hat, the crazy uncle posting on Facebook, and the bots swarming Twitter. That’s anecdote, not data.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    It would be cool if the far left actually took umbrage over the idea that attacking a candidate as far left is a winning argument.

  16. 16.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    And ultimately futile. In their desperation to deny that he’s destroying the country and normalize him they’re ensuring he destroys the country. They’ll lose what they think they’re protecting anyway. You can’t wish it away. There won’t be a “normal” to return to.

  17. 17.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Gravenstone: Not particularly, since the Bernie/Our Revolution left generally endorsed Markey and the perception was that Kennedy was the relative centrist in the race. But Markey is the incumbent! He’s been in Congress forever! He’s not some new development.

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The Mole Agent: the story of the most unusual documentary of the year

    With The Mole Agent, Maite Alberdi set out to make a film noir documentary about a spy in a nursing home. She did not expect it to transform into an aching meditation on isolation and loneliness.
    …………………………..
    The film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, follows the octogenarian Sergio Chamy who is hired by a private eye, Rómulo Aitken, to snoop around a nursing home. Gradually, life chips away at the Pink Panther playfulness of the premise, and the film settles into a sombre look at ageing and desperately hanging on to human connection.
    ……………………………….
    She already had a crew on scene before Chamy’s arrival. The staff were told that her crew was making a documentary about daily life in a nursing home. That turns out to be closer to what the film became, since Chamy soon grew tired of spying. Despite all the deception, the film ended up being far more honest than intended.

    “Our heart was not in the case,” Alberdi said, explaining how her crew followed Chamy’s lead. Though he found his “target”, made contact and regularly checked in on her wellbeing, his undercover dispatches to Aitken grew less frequent. The gentle spy grew resentful of his boss and the covert job. Instead, Chamy befriended other residents and turned his attention to them. And the documentary became about the long-term care home’s social dynamic.

    Early scenes show the predominantly female residents watching the cameras suspiciously, reminding each other that those boom mics are listening in on their conversations, as if they too had secret agendas. But eventually they ignore the crew’s presence and carry on, often fawning over Chamy, who was one of only a handful of men in that home.
    ……………………………….
    In The Mole Agent, Alberdi homes in on the micro-society the women and the nurses build for themselves, and how Chamy navigates that. In scenes that alternate between humour and heartbreak, he brings them conversation and comfort. He helps them cope, and when needed, stand on their own two feet. He keeps the home’s resident kleptomaniac in check, returning stolen necklaces to their owners with a gentle nod of disapproval towards the amusing culprit. And, if only for a short while, he entertains the amorous eyes of women like Berta.

    “I would consider giving God my virginity through my future husband,” says the simultaneously pious and randy Berta, who’s been in the home for 25 years. Alberdi’s film is particularly attentive to how Catholicism, patriarchy and female sexuality can thrive at once in this environment. That one line from Berta nails it all.

    The sadness that throbs throughout the film swells near the end, when the women in the home pour their heart out to Chamy about missing their families and being left behind. With that emotional finale, Alberdi expected her film to inspire a conversation in Chile about the loneliness and depression experienced by seniors. But Covid-19 did that instead.

    I hope I get to see this one.

  21. 21.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: Which one?  They are still running several:

    — Joe is senile
    — Radical Bernie took over
    — Dark shadowy street figures (AKA African Americans) control Biden
    — Biden hates police
    –. Joos and Sorros run the country and Joe
    — Blacks are coming for your wimmins

    I am sure there are others

  22. 22.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I think they have to respond to real threats though and they think it’s a real threat, we must assume if we think they know what they’re doing and we do. Worse would be pretending it’s not and sleeping on it.

  23. 23.

    p.a.

    What is (is there) a process for removing someone from the Oval Office who refuses to go? Would love to see him frog-marched out on livet.v.
    Maybe just start serving vegetarian meals in the W.H.

  24. 24.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    The main post shows they’re not ignoring it.  In fact, they’re taking it to Trump on safety.  Offense.  I like it.

  25. 25.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: Of course, here in Mass., Many on the far left were pissed that Markey claimed he was a leftie because as on guy said, “Markey is right of Pelosi!” That of course horrified many leftylefts.

  26. 26.

    Steeplejack

    Interesting Republican apologia from never-Trumper Tom Nichols, defending against the “You Republicans were always like this” charge. He traces the die-out of “good Republicans” to the 1990s and the rise of “dipshit College Republican types.”

    I was 34 [in 1995], an avowed conservative. I’d already worked in DC and on the Hill. I was part of the optimistic, can-do, Reaganite wing. I thought, the left is terrible but mostly feckless, and I was confident in the GOP being the party with better ideas.

    What I didn’t count on was the party being taken over not by the rural rube wing, but by the dipshit College Republican types who thought their moment in the sun had arrived first with Reagan and then with Newt. It didn’t, and I underestimated their general bitterness.

    These were the kids you rolled your eyes at in your college seminar (just like the left-wing radical kid in the same class). The lefty kid was a future Dem problem, but I assumed the GOP was a party of boring grownups who could assimilate their bow-tied Tucker Carlson nimrods.

    What Applebaum’s account suggests is that the GOP itself probably did assimilate them, but left them nowhere to go once they learned after ’94 that governing is boring and hard. Ingraham and others were stalled; cable, culture war, and the frisson of extremism saved them.

    In the classic case of becoming what you pretend to be, they’re now convinced that the case they made for themselves—that Reagan didn’t save you, Gingrich didn’t save you, Bush, McCain, and Romney betrayed you—is true. They’ve committed to the bit so much it’s real now.

    Nichols is responding to Anne Applebaum’s July 16 piece “Laura Ingraham’s Descent into Despair” in The Atlantic. “At some point, her Reaganite optimism slowly hardened into something better described as a form of apocalyptic pessimism.”

    Nichols’s thread is worth a read, and it prompted a lot of interesting comments about the decline of the GOP into Trumpism.

  31. 31.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    Dark shadowy street figures (AKA African Americans) control Biden
    — Biden hates police
    — Blacks are coming for your wimmins

    They probably have polling and Biden does too. They’re both putting money into it, so they think this attack is more productive for Trump than the others. They always have congressional district polling because the candidates and parties poll those and they don’t just poll the congressional race, they poll the presidential. It’s more granular than the state polls we get. Less reliable because it’s smaller sample than a state poll, but more specific to areas of swing states.
    Biden already knows what he needs in X county in each swing state. It’s just +, +, + = some number

    It’s fine. This is the attack – there was going to be one. They were going to find something that was more or less “effective”, the whole question is contained within “more or less” :)

    Sleepy Joe and Corrupt Joe and Dementia Joe were losers. So now we see whether “weak on crime” Joe is.

  32. 32.

    Zinsky

    @oatler.:   I like the ‘Godspell’ reference!  Clever!

    Also, I wonder if anyone else saw the Rachel Maddow interview with Melania’s former BFF and chief of staff last night?   It was almost uncomfortable to watch as this Stephanie Winston-whatever ripped Melania a new one for being cold and callous about the plight of migrant children.  Brutal.

    She also noted that she is cooperating in three separate investigations of the 2016 Trump Inauguration, where about $40 million has turned up missing!  It could be she fingers the Trump grifters in a very huge embezzlement scheme!   One of the Juicers upthread noted Elliot Briody about to be indicted.   He may also rat out the Trumps about their involvement in this very large grift.  Shit could get real soon!!

    Watch here:  https://youtu.be/e-CodQInsEM

  33. 33.

    Ken

    prompted frustrated White House aids to start talking about how Trump could play a role in getting the Big Ten’s teams back on the field

    Because the last time Trump got involved with a football league worked out so well.

    Maybe he could borrow Obama’s time machine to go back eight months and convince himself that COVID was not a hoax and needed a real response.  Or five years and convince himself not to run for president.  Or eighty years and convince his father to get a vasectomy.

  34. 34.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: No doubt!  There actually is a deep bench here.  When Markey or Warren retire or move to the admin., Don’t forget we have Pressley as a truly excellent Senate possibility too.  And others!

  35. 35.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I liked the Biden ad. To some degree, it depends on visual allusions though. People have to be able to very quickly recognize scenes like Charlottesville or Trump’s truck caravan in Portland and place them for what they are–not BLM but Trump people.

  36. 36.

    debbie

    @Anne Laurie:

    I figured it was basically kicking the can down the road, but there are plenty of people around here with zero chance of making their September rent payments.

  40. 40.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    They put a lot into corrupt Joe, recall, and corrupt Joe failed. They were so confident of corrupt Joe working they put the Trump appointees in the DOJ and the State Department on it- it still failed. Fox did “corrupt Joe” for weeks. Still failed.

    There’s no more “corrupt Joe” campaign because the effort failed. This one they think will work but they also thought the others would.

  43. 43.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    Massachusetts is lucky to have such nice choices.

    And then, of course, there’s Joe “Me, ME, ME!!!” Kennedy’s now-open seat which runs the risk of Auchincloss — a Repub now claiming to be a Dem — winning the Dem primary. [Disclaimer: it’s neck-and-neck between him and Mermell, an actual Dem, with around 25 percent each, and I have no idea if there can/will be a runoff.]

    I guess the Dems are in no danger of losing the seat, but will the new Rep be a Steven Lynch-type Dem, or an actual liberal? Thanks, Joe, for making it “interesting.”

  44. 44.

    germy

    Kenosha business owner declines President Trump photo-op, former owner replaces him

    A Kenosha business owner is accusing President Donald Trump of using his destroyed store for political gain.

    Tom Gram’s century-old camera shop burned to the ground a week ago during the unrest in Uptown Kenosha. Gram said he declined President Trump’s request to be a part of his tour of damage Tuesday in Kenosha. Instead, a former owner of the shop was invited and he praised the president’s efforts.

    https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/kenosha-business-owner-declines-president-trump-photo-op-former-owner-replaces-him

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    Biden has a great ad team. IMO, the ad ably countered Trump’s lies about Biden not condemning looting and violence, then it jujitsu’d the civil unrest back on Trump by pointing out that he always pours gasoline on fires and never calls out the “very fine” Nazis and MAGA troublemakers who support Trump.

    I also liked that Biden worked the phrase “armed militias” into the speech. Armed right-wing goons strutting around statehouses, cities and towns is scarier than that big ol’ vegan teddy bear Cory Booker. I’m not a “suburban housewife,” but I’m adjacent enough to the type to believe they’ll have a similar reaction.

  46. 46.

    trnc

    given the mostly piss-poor job white house correspondents specifically and national media more generally have done with the current occupant, i’m okay with bypassing the press conferences for now.

    Regardless of the lousy press, I’m not sure what the downside would be for Biden to have press conferences. Any bullshit gotcha question he gets, he’d probably put the reporter on the spot if he said, “What was DT’s answer to that?”

    ETA: That’s not to say that I care about what press-conference-botherers say.

  49. 49.

    Immanentize

    @Ken: I should add, the hootie hoos at the Big Ten (plus four?) Really really want to play — but the virus is not cooperating.  Schools are starting to get hit and some will be closing again.  UT just reported community transmission in two dorms (one of which, Jestor, is huge — 3200 student cap.)  And then, there are the players who actually have a say.

  50. 50.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Baud: He’s less hoarse since his vocal cord surgery.

    @Zinsky: I saw part of that Maddow interview last night. A whole lot of inauguration money disappeared. The Trump people make me the think of the end of Fargo, where Marge is taking in the bad guy and she marvels, “You did all that for what? Money?” The destructiveness and risk just go so far beyond what they gain.

  51. 51.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Oh, I’m glad. That’s one of the polls national pundity use.

    I don’t want Democrats to freak out but I do want them to be prepared for the hard part- the hard part is after Labor Day and that’s always been true. It hasn’t gotten rough yet, but it will. These people are absolutely desperate to hang onto power because they have to dismantle all of the checks because they’re criminals. We’ve just scratched the surface of the rot on the Right – they’re doing all they can to protect themselves- and STILL it’s bubbling up enough to lead to indictments; the NRA, Bannon, Falwell. They’re all fucking dirty.

    It will be hard to win but it was always going to be hard to win.

  52. 52.

    Princess

    @Steeplejack: This is interesting. The problem with Nichols though is that he’s a guy who dislikes the Democrats for aesthetic reasons but fundamentally, in terms of what he believes about policies, he’s a Democrat and always has been, albeit at the moderate end of the party. He wrote a kind of manifesto about what he thinks a while back and it all could fit neatly within the Democratic party. But he got convinced early on that the Dems were annoying feckless scolds, and he’s a bit of a contrarian, so he shunned them.

  53. 53.

    Matt McIrvin

    @p.a.: The Secret Service Uniformed Division, which guards the White House and its grounds, is responsible for ejecting trespassers to the White House. Regardless of what Trump does, if he loses the election he ceases to be President at noon on Inauguration Day. From then on, he’s a trespasser.

    Needless to say, this only applies if they actually follow the law, but I don’t get the impression these people have any great love for Trump.

  54. 54.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    Sleepy Joe and Corrupt Joe and Dementia Joe were losers. So now we see whether “weak on crime” Joe is.

    I’m still waiting for some slicker variation of “Biden is a COVID-19 supporter/enabler.”

    Also: The Traitor Shill Barr hasn’t yet ramped up the various Ukraine/China-related corruption investigations of Biden. I give it two or three weeks.

  55. 55.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Baud: I read that they did, but I don’t know what a Trump flag looks like and I couldn’t identify one from that clip. Maybe I’m underestimating other folks who will see the ad. I’m  just conscious that I’m on twitter and watch a lot of MSNBC, so I always worry I’m in a bubble.

  57. 57.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I want Dems to get voters to understand that Dems are better at national security, the economy, and “law and order.”

    There’s absolutely no reason for the GOP to continue to have an automatic edge on those issues, if there ever was.

  58. 58.

    germy

    “I THINK WHAT NO ONE IN THIS ROOM WANTS TO ADMIT IS THAT TRUMP HAS HELPED ALL OF YOU….HE COULDN’T SELL STEAKS OR VODKA OR WATER OR COLLEGE OR TIES OR ERIC BUT HE HAS HELPED YOU. HE HAS HELPED YOU SELL YOUR PAPERS AND YOUR BOOKS AND YOUR TV. YOU HELPED CREATE THIS MONSTER AND NOW YOU ARE PROFITING OFF OF HIM.”

    (Michelle Wolf, to the beltway press)

  59. 59.

    Amir Khalid

    @Steeplejack:

    I would find it too, too sweet if your president were directly embroiled in our 1MDB scandal. Maybe we could then extradite him to Malaysia to stand trial.

  60. 60.

    Steeplejack

    @Zinsky:

    That interview with Stephanie Winston Wolkoff was very interesting. She came across (to me) as very shallow—you could see why she and Melania would be “ladies who lunch” BFFs—but also very fearful and feeling trapped in something much bigger than she bargained for.

    Apparently she has audiotapes of conversations with Melania, which she started making after she realized that she was being underbussed. They formed some of the basis for her book, e.g., Melania’s insensitive comments about caged kids at the border. Those could be even more inflammatory if they become public.

  61. 61.

    hueyplong

    @Kay: To some unmeasurable extent, it’s possible that the racial attacks are a combination of Trump’s default settings in his advancing neurological failure and Putin’s idea of a good plan.  Trump talks to him a lot and (for reasons we often guess at) is incapable of disagreeing with anything Putin suggests.

    Certainly the way they’re handling protests and the post office is Putinesque.  Why not the rest?

  62. 62.

    SFAW

    @germy:

    Kenosha business owner declines President Trump photo-op, former owner replaces him

    I’ve stopped trying to guess what new insanity/fuckery those mofos will come up with next, because my (so-called) mind can’t come up with scenarios stupid/insane enough.

  63. 63.

    WereBear

    @Steeplejack: from the article

    I was confident in the GOP being the party with better ideas.

     
    Like what? Since when? Honestagawd, someone tell me ONE “conservative principle” that either works in real life (apparently W’s two terms was their Dream List) or they actually do (like their concerns about deficits).

    It’s bullshit and incompetence and corruption, all the way down.

  64. 64.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: I have another thought too — the Trump team always signalled that they would run on law and order — that they would run out Nixon’s ’72 (Now more than ever!) Campaign.  And they had that in the can.  The caravans was a preview as was the Trump innaugral.  But then, Corona virus hit and the great economy part of Nixon 72 disappeared.  But Trump people couldn’t adapt at all.  They just kept running the planned campaign which requires them to create the carnage, not just say it’s happening.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    This is anecdotal and it may be because I live in a Trumpy area of Ohio, but the online commentary that only “very online” Dems think it will be close is the opposite of what I see. Our people who are NOT online- those who get most of their news from tv- always thought it would be close. They’re treating it like a 2 point election and always have.

    My son, who is a (union) electrician and somewhat active in his union said to me the other day genuinely perplexed “you didn’t think it would be close? Everyone I know thinks it will be close”

    IMO the NOT “very online” people are less confident than the online people, perhaps because of the different media “diets” the two groups consume.

  67. 67.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: “Law and order” doesn’t mean law and it doesn’t mean order. Democrats can’t and shouldn’t be better at what it really means.

  68. 68.

    germy

    Guy's lawyers threatened to sue me for accurately quoting a story about him from a big outlet and we didn't have the resources to fight so we took the piece down.

    Hope he gets locked up.

    "DOJ zeroing in on longtime GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy" https://t.co/M1KICgF3vu

    — Joshua Holland ? (@JoshuaHol) September 1, 2020

  69. 69.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It doesn’t mean that to the GOP.  But the public doesn’t want crime.  I don’t care what label we use to convey that, but we should not give the issue away to the GOP.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    I agree 100%. I didn’t realize until I read Dave Weigel’s twitter (he pointed it out) that some of these attacks are EXACTLY what they used in ’18- same idea.

    Frankly, it’s all they have. Everything else they tried failed. So there’s that too- the money could be going not to an “effective” attack but to the only attack they’ve come up with.

  73. 73.

    Steeplejack

    @Princess:

    That’s true. One of the things that Trumpism is revealing is the surprising (to me) number of Republicans who cannot consider voting for a Democrat under any circumstances—even with an existential threat to the republic. And, as you said, when their own positions are mostly (rightish) Democratic in all but name only.

  74. 74.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: I think the “corrupt Joe” and “sleepy/dementia Joe” attack angles were doomed because they don’t pass the laugh test when coming from Trump. Even a mostly bullshit line of attack has to come from someone with a leg to stand on.

    Similar attacks worked against Clinton because so many people already hated her, and they thought Trump was the reality TV show guy. Now he’s the president whose entire campaign staff has been indicted and jailed and who says crazy shit all the time.

    One vulnerability the Trump people could maybe exploit would be Biden’s 40+ years in politics. They do go to that well occasionally, but it’s not the main focus.

    It’s tough but not impossible for an awful person who’s been in office to pull that “outsider” shtick off — Rick Scott did against Bill Nelson in Florida. But Rick Scott is ten times more smart and disciplined than Donald Trump.

  76. 76.

    Betty

    Sorry I couldn’t edit my comment. Sitting in the White House does not make you President. If Joe is elected, he will be President wherever he lives.

  77. 77.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    I want Dems to get voters to understand that Dems are better at national security, the economy, and “law and order.”

    And I want to be 30 years younger, and have a full head of hair.

    To be more serious: a large part of that would require “working the refs” (i.e., the MSM) for a decade or more. Long-term campaigns — ones related to issues, not specific candidates — have not been a strong suit of the Dems, but maybe they can learn.

  78. 78.

    hueyplong

    @MattF: That article smells a lot like an Ingraham contingency plan for positioning herself as a serious person forced to play an awkward campaign role in case she finds herself living in a post-Trump apocalypse, pimping for Tom Cotton.

    It will all be forgotten if, instead, we see her doing her Heil Trump act at a second, thinly-attended Inaugural.

  80. 80.

    Baud

    @SFAW:

    Agree. It’ll take a long term effort. But so will making a lot of these red states blue.  But it’s worth it.  We shouldnt be handing any serious issues to the GOP.

  81. 81.

    SFAW

    @WereBear:

    Like what? Since when? Honestagawd, someone tell me ONE “conservative principle” that either works in real life (apparently W’s two terms was their Dream List) or they actually do (like their concerns about deficits).

    Steve Gilliard’s “I’m a Fighting Liberal” addressed that to some extent.

  83. 83.

    Amir Khalid

    @p.a.:

    My understanding is that, if Trump loses the vote and then in the Electoral College, the transfer of the Presidency to Joe Biden in January is automatic. And if he thereafter insists on being a squatter in the White House — well, like Joe said, the US Government knows how to deal with that.

  84. 84.

    Joe Falco

    @debbie: AOC has replaced Pelosi as the “scary liberal” to tie Democratic candidates with in Georgia. A more local version is former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. The back-and-forth attacks ads between sitting Senator Kelly Loeffler and Trump’s huckleberry attack hound, Rep. Doug Collins, are racing to see who can attach Abrams to the other in the back of the mind of GOP voters.

  86. 86.

    Steeplejack

    @WereBear:

    They hand-wave about “fiscally responsible, small-c conservatism that also values government action when more efficient in serving the greater good.” That’s a direct quote from one of the thread commenters. The kicker: “Kasich possesses this.” ?

    Nichols also doesn’t address the fact that the demise of the Soviet Union took away a lot of the GOP’s fear-mongering talking points.

  87. 87.

    sanjeevs

    News to make you vomit

    https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-sarah-sanders-one-for-team-kim-jong-un-2020-9

    • President Donald Trump told former press secretary Sarah Sanders to go to North Korea and take “one for the team,” after Kim Jong Un appeared to wink at her, she claims in a new memoir.
    • Sanders recounts an incident during a summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un in Singapore in 2018, when ‘Kim nodded and appeared to wink at me.’
    • “Well, Sarah, that settles it. You’re going to North Korea and taking one for the team! Your husband and kids will miss you, but you’ll be a hero to your country!” Sanders reports Trump as saying
  88. 88.

    Baud

    @Steeplejack:

    Nichols also doesn’t address the fact that the demise of the Soviet Union took away a lot of the GOP’s fear-mongering talking points

    Good point.  Without the USSR as a foil, all they have is racism and taxes.

  89. 89.

    catclub

    @Immanentize: But then, Corona virus hit and the great economy part of Nixon 72 disappeared.

     

    also there is no civil war in the Democratic Party this year.

    and the economy has shrunk 20% versus all good in 1972.

  94. 94.

    rp

    That Applebaum article is idiotic. She’s trying to come across as a reasonable conservative, but it was obvious in the mid-90s that they were full of s***. And she’s still talking about “cancel culture” being a real problem that society needs to address. What the f*** ever.

  95. 95.

    Immanentize

    Thanksgiving at the Kennedy compound:

    Joe3 in Corner: silent

    Bobby Kennedy 3 : well, someone had to fail the family.  Thanks, cuz.

    Maria Shriver Terminator: oh leave him alone, we all know he tried. Didn’t you, Joe.

    RFK Jr. I told you he never should have been vaccinated.

     

  96. 96.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    “Regular” Democrats (not very online obsessives) are kind of “behind”. So, for example, I’ll try to cheer them up and say “Biden’s polling is good” and they say “the polls were wrong last time”

    The last they saw the polls were wrong. They never got to the whole post-election “they were RIGHT for the popular vote margin but flawed at the state level due to not weighting for education….”

    Only very online people know that shit. I know I’m talking to one of “us” when I get this granular, up to the minute analysis. Regular Democrats are like “will we win?” – very wary.

    I hope it helps turnout. Massive turnout cures a lot of the uncertainty.

  97. 97.

    Steeplejack

    @Matt McIrvin:

    He gets dragged for that in the comments. People also pointing out that Pat Buchanan and William Kristol et al. weren’t College Republican dipshits in the ’90s.

  98. 98.

    TS (the original)

    @Baud:

    national security

    is best served via trade and treaties and good relationships with other countries. Trump has burned them all. This should not be hard for democrats to emphasize.

  100. 100.

    MattF

    @hueyplong: It’s fair to say that being mentored by Pat Buchanan and partying with David Brooks is cause for suspicion. And I didn’t know that Applebaum was so deeply into the RW scene. I guess I’ve assumed that bitter, sectarian ideological division was a distinguishing feature of left-wing politics, but not so much for the right-wing. But, after all, ex-Trotskyites are everywhere on the political spectrum.

  101. 101.

    Baud

    The horse race headlines are talking about Joe Biden’s lead “narrowing” to seven points (right after the GOP convention).

    Trumpmemtum!

  105. 105.

    Nicole

    @oatler.:

    oh dear Lord three things I pray.

    Oh,  you’re right; that’s probably what she meant.  My brain went straight to The Hooters’ 1985 single and I thought, “deep cut!”

  106. 106.

    SFAW

    @catclub:

    Neal won by a bigger margin than Markey did. Maybe NOW he’ll start acting like a Committee chair that takes his oversight duties seriously. [Yes, I realize that my wish is not logical —  a near-loss to someone (theoretically) more lefty would probably push him to go after Trump a little harder, not vice versa.]

  109. 109.

    rp

    @Steeplejack: His argument (and Applebaum’s) is pretty weak overall. I can accept that there were different types of republicans and that he actually believed in a positive vision of conservatism based on free trade and democracy, but why did it take Donald Trump for him to break with the party? Even if he was young and naive in the mid-90s (a stretch, obviously), it was obvious long before 2016 that the party was dominated by racists, religious zealots, and grifters.

  112. 112.

    SFAW

    @Joe Falco:

    *Pulls out the ANTIFA card*

    What kind of perqs do you get with that card? I mean, outside of the “this card allows you to attempt to overthrow the government without killing or injuring anyone.”

  113. 113.

    MattF

    @Baud: Historically, margins of error get smaller and polls become more predictive as Election Day approaches. But the numerical value of Trump’s deficit in polling depends a lot on what is happening in the tails of distributions, and that’s harder to predict. I’m unconvinced that anything significant is happening.

  114. 114.

    germy

    After Bannon’s arrest for defrauding hundreds of thousands of “We Build the Wall” donors, two people working with him said an effort to found an academy for right-wing Roman Catholic activists in Italy faces a criminal inquiry by the Rome criminal courthttps://t.co/CxyFKxFNyk

    — Wendy Siegelman (@WendySiegelman) September 2, 2020

  120. 120.

    Steeplejack

    @hueyplong:

    Did you read Applebaum’s article? It’s hardly a “contingency plan” for Ingraham. It is of a piece with Applebaum’s history of reportage on authoritarianism, including cheerleaders for the regime.

    There are some clues to her thinking from other times and other places. The Polish writer Jacek Trznadel has described what it felt like, in Stalinist Poland, to be a loud advocate for the regime and to doubt it at the same time. “I was shouting from a tribune at some university meeting in Wrocław, and simultaneously felt panicked at the thought of myself shouting . . . I told myself I was trying to convince [the crowd] by shouting, but in reality I was trying to convince myself.” For some people, loud advocacy of Trump helps to cover up the deep doubt and even shame they feel about their support for Trump. It’s not enough to express tepid approval of a president who is corrupting the White House and destroying America’s alliances and inflicting economic catastrophe on the country: You have to shout if you want to convince yourself as well as others. You have to exaggerate your feelings if you are to make them believable.

    But the answer may also lie, simply, in the depth of Ingraham’s despair. The America of the present, as she sees it, is a dark, nightmarish place where God speaks to only a tiny number of people; where idealism is dead; where civil war and violence are approaching; where democratically elected politicians are no better than foreign dictators and mass murderers; where the “elite” is wallowing in decadence, disarray, death. The America of the present, as she sees it, and as so many others see it, is a place where universities teach people to hate their country, where victims are more celebrated than heroes, where old values have been discarded.

    Any price should be paid, any crime should be forgiven, any outrage should be ignored if that’s what it takes to get the real America, the old America, back.

  123. 123.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @debbie:

    It is another busted norm about “rule by decree” and is a poison pill that will ruin hundreds of thousands of small landlords through the end of the year and throughout 2021.

    Most landlords aren’t evil. This amounts to a taking without compensation, call it a condemnation without any recourse for the person whose income source was condemned.

  124. 124.

    Joe Falco

    @SFAW:

    What kind of perqs do you get with that card? I mean, outside of the “this card allows you to attempt to overthrow the government without killing or injuring anyone.”

    All kinds really if you know how to play your card! You get curfew breakers (an insidious lot them), traffic blockers (denying freedom of movement to America-loving Trump truck drivers), and, worst of all, looters (damaging property, the greatest crime in this nation)!

  128. 128.

    Amir Khalid

    @Amir Khalid:

    @Spanky:

    You were asking what Trump might be sentenced to in the unlikely event he were tried and convicted here. Because corruption/embezzlement is not a capital crime in Malaysia, Trump would most likely get a long stretch in jail like Najib got. I don’t see Donald Trump thriving in a Malaysian prison.

  129. 129.

    cmorenc

    If Biden’s lead stays steady past Labor Day weekend, it will be interesting to watch which Republican Senate incumbents in competitive races start to openly try to separate themselves from Trump.  To some extent, it’s already happening – for example, in Tom Tillis’s ads in his NC race against democrat Cal Cunningham, I have so far seen no mention of Trump whatever, nada, none.  Instead, his ads are all about cutting taxes, regulation, etc.

  139. 139.

    Steeplejack

    @hueyplong:

    I don’t think Applebaum is trying to offer a “reasonable” rationale. She is attempting some analysis deeper than “Ingraham’s a fascist nut—screw her!”

  141. 141.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Steeplejack: I enjoyed this bit from Nichols’ tweets:

    [P]eople like Ingraham were not intelligent conservatives; they were maze-bright rats who’d followed the scent of cheese all the way to DC only to find that governing was not as fun as shitting on other kids in college and that no one wanted to adopt aging lab rats.

    “Maze-bright rats” – proficient at one very narrow skill, which pays off really well, until the cosmic axis shifts and the need for that skill vanishes. The human equivalent of buggy-whip manufacturers.

  142. 142.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Two strangers, with the same first name, and a terrifying story about ketamine in policing

    Elijah McKnight admits he was drunk. The 25-year-old says he’d had a fifth of Jim Beam with a buddy before passing out on his way home on a sidewalk just outside Aurora, Colorado. That is where sheriff’s deputies found him.
    They nudged him awake and the conversation was calm for the first several minutes. Deputies told him they were just checking to see if he was all right. But the encounter ended with McKnight on life support after being injected with a high dose of a drug called ketamine.
    “I was out cold for three days on life support,” he said. “My family didn’t know where I was.”
    When McKnight finally woke up in an Aurora hospital, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing on the news. His eyes widened when he saw a story about another young Black man named Elijah. Elijah McClain was in a coma and near death after a police encounter that also involved a ketamine injection — the same drug McKnight had been given before everything went dark. The two incidents happened just 10 miles apart and within days of each other, but involved different law enforcement and EMT agencies.

    A pretty thorough dive into the use of ketamine for “policing” purposes.

  143. 143.

    rp

    @Steeplejack: I think that’s a ridiculous argument. Does she really think Ingraham is completely sincere and isn’t a cynical opportunist? And she seems to be suggesting that there’s some truth to Ingraham’s vision of the US, which is completely insane.

  145. 145.

    germy

    @rp:  Does she really think Ingraham is completely sincere and isn’t a cynical opportunist?

    I’ve always seen her as a True Believer.

  146. 146.

    Steeplejack

    @Betty Cracker:

    I agree. But I think it’s useful to try to get some of the “story behind the story,” if only to head off the next batch of fascist nuts. Same with Nichols’s blinkered view of GOP history.

  151. 151.

    SFAW

    @germy:

    Doug’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.

    One hopes you don’t mean that in the Frederick Douglass sense.

  152. 152.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker: I remember Laura Ingram in the 90s, when she was part of Bill Maher’s stable of young, rightwing women who would wear mini-skirts and sorta-kinda flirt with him as they spewed nonsense, along with Kellyanne, Coulter, the I’m-not-a-witch Christine (who now that I think of it never wore miniskirts cause her whole schtick was nice Xian girl) and a few others. She was always a nasty shit-flinger, sneering and obnoxious. I even remember reading that article that featured her drunk-driving to Buckwheat Zydeco, and only being surprised that we liked the same band.

    I have some temperamental sympathy with Nichols as a phlegmatic curmudgeon, but it’s kind of odd to see that his answer to “You guys were always like this” is, ‘Nuh-uh, only since 1995!”

    As to the wonderful optimism of Ronald Regan, I wonder if any black conservative is ever gonna address Philadelphia MS and “states’ rights”

  153. 153.

    rp

    @germy: Really? What about Coulter, D’Souza, et al? (didn’t she date d’souza at Dartmouth?)

    I’ve always lumped them together as shallow, attention seeking aholes who are 80% cynical opportunists and 20% actual ideologues. The “maze bright rat” description is a good one.

  154. 154.

    Danielx

    @Immanentize:

    @Baud:

    Yep, clearly. Same here, it’s a scandal waiting to happen. If a FTFNYT reporter/photographer ever sees the inside of my house there will be tears and pearl-clutching the length of the Acela Corridor.

  155. 155.

    Baud

    I appreciate you people who make fine distinctions among right-wingers.  They’re all one big grey soulless lump to me.

  156. 156.

    Miss Bianca

    @Steeplejack: Nichols is now to the “mistakes were made” phase, but still defending an entirely rotten, bankrupt intellectual and political heritage. Fucker worships Reagan, and anyone who can’t see how deep the rot was with that guy just doesn’t want to see it.

    Upgraded from “Fail” to “D-“. Still not an impressive grade.

  159. 159.

    Immanentize

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Nichols is sorta leaving out the fact that Regan’s right-wing optimism was largely a product of happy dementia.

    True story — A one-time colleague was an investigator in the Iran Contra probe in the early Bush I years.  He was involved in dozens of depositions of high ranking Regan officials. The stories he told — but here is my favorite:

    One high up official from State met with Regan a lot.  But Regan insisted that he always tell a joke before the briefing.  He put these on 3×5 cards he tucked into his briefing folder.  This guy said that always during some huge crisis — like the shooting down of the Korean jet airline by the Soviets — he had to scream at his aides: “Where’s my fucking joke card?!!” Before he could go brief the President.

  162. 162.

    Immanentize

    @Gin & Tonic: no shit?  They didn’t even try to disguise it?

    Russia gets everything they wanted — evil West fake news!  But also — everyone knows we can reach them anywhere.

    I guess they really wanted Navalny dead and that didn’t happen

  163. 163.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    Didn’t watch the Today Show, but I heard him a day or two ago. He has a lovely, very sexy speaking voice now that the raspiness is gone. I guess he had some vocal cord nodules removed? Glad he’s back in the game.

  164. 164.

    Gin & Tonic

    @germy:

    All were safely taken into custody at their homes. Six have retired.

    Did they retire after they were arrested? You get to do that?

  165. 165.

    Jay C

    Republicans disbelieve polls to fool themselves into thinking they’re winning and Democrats disbelieve polls to fool themselves into thinking they’re losing.

    I regret I have but one upding for this gem.

  166. 166.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Immanentize: I’m not sure they wanted him dead so much as they wanted him an example. If he’s medevaced to Germany and the Germans say what happened, then people will believe them (people in Russia, I mean.) The potential next Navalny sees that.

  168. 168.

    Immanentize

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: When I find out that someone who I consider odious has gone to see a cool band I like, I just chalk it up to them wanting to be publicly fake cool.

    ETA. I saw Warhol at a Psychedelic Furs concert at the Ritz in the early ’80s (for example, but I don’t find him odious, just a cool hunter)

  169. 169.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Miss Bianca: and between Reagan and Gingrich was Poppy Bush. Before he was the nice old gent who jumped out of airplanes and wished his boy hadn’t gotten us involved in all that Iraq unpleasantness, he was the guy who ran on recycled, half-assed McCarthyism (‘card-carrying member of the ACLU’, the Pledge of Allegiance) and the same kind of racism trump is peddling (Willie Horton), as president tore the country apart to get a reliable theocrat vote on the Court, and used the same sort of dumb jingoism his son would exploit in foreign policy– correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it Poppy and his people who made Lee Greenwood the bard of Real Americans, ten years before 9/11? “I’m proud to be an American, etc etc”. And he still couldn’t keep the Two Pats on a leash (and before there was Reagan or Poppy or Gingrich or Robertson, there was Pat Buchanan, who as I understand is still with us and belching out the occasional op-ed)

  170. 170.

    TS (the original)

    @germy:

    Odds are based on who the punters think are going to win. It would seem there are a number of trump supporters who gamble – so they will lose their money which is a good thing to happen to them.

  171. 171.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Kay: I think it’s less poll-driven and more the thought that “crime” (i.e., the ability for police to discriminate against and even murder Americans) is an issue where they can force Biden to “pick a side” and shrink his coalition.  It’s a multi-prong strategy and the inciting of riots is a critical component of it.

  172. 172.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Did they retire after they were arrested? You get to do that?

    One of the biggest problems with police misconduct is that the police unions are powerful enough to negotiate truly insane contracts where it is next to impossible to punish bad actors.

  177. 177.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Steeplejack: From the Atlantic article

    It was cocktail hour on the opening day of the new, Republican-dominated Congress, and the long, chandelier-lighted parlor of David Brock’s town house in Georgetown was filling up with exuberant young conservatives fresh from events on the Hill.”

    My god, sounds like a scene from a Hammer Horror movie lol

  179. 179.

    Jay C

    @Immanentize:

    Somebody once wrote that the Reagan Presidency could be summed up as a TV Guide synopsis:

    “The President of The United States is replaced by an actor, and no one notices”

  183. 183.

    Kilgore Trout

    @Immanentize: This is spot on – Trump is entirely dependent on denying the reality of the pandemic. The killer ad will be a montage of his constant moving of the goalposts for “success” against the ever rising graph of deaths.

  185. 185.

    Amir Khalid

    @PPCLI:

    I think I see a problem with that. Trump is not a tenant renting the White House from a landlord; he’s in employee housing, provided by his employer the American people, and if the American people don’t renew his work contract he has no right to stay on.

  189. 189.

    Immanentize

    @debbie: Trump was more savvy than usual on the “Hoax” thing.  He didn’t push it full bore like others in that rage-viroment.  Someone obviously told him, ix-nay on the oax-hay alk-tay.

  191. 191.

    taumaturgo

    @Gravenstone: No, Markley is a liberal who co-sponsored with AOC the Green the New Deal and he also supports M4A.  Kennedy had the unconditional support of the corporate Democrats seeing in him someone who could defeat these two important planks.

  193. 193.

    Miss Bianca

    @taumaturgo: At first I thought, wow, this is a DougJ-esque-level parody of how brain-dead “lesser of two evils” lefties think. Then I saw your nym and realized, “no, it really IS a brain-dead ‘lesser of two evils’ lefty”.

  195. 195.

    catclub

    @taumaturgo: Kennedy had the unconditional support of the corporate Democrats seeing in him someone who could defeat these two important planks.

     

    I think the explanation that Kennedy is a much better fundraiser for other Democrats, is a more realistic explanation.

  197. 197.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Immanentize: Isn’t that how all hipsters identify the people they don’t like?  True fan who understands and appreciates the art v. poseur who is just there to be part of the scene?

  198. 198.

    catclub

    Alexandra Petri at WAPO is GREAT!

     

    Who are these people that are in the dark shadows?

    Not so loud!

    Are they different from the sex demons who are somehow to blame for covid-19?

    We think they are different. We have never seen them in the same place. To be completely fair, we have never seen either of them. Once I thought I saw what I was sure was a Shadow Person but it turned out to be Stephen Miller in bright daylight.

    If they fought the sex demons, would they win?

    They are the allies of the sex demons and it would not be in their interest to fight.

  202. 202.

    Yutsano

    @Immanentize: Sometimes you can catch them making a normal comment…and then their true nature pops up. Happens every time. It’s not even a stopped clock situation.

  203. 203.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Immanentize: I know.  Those fuckers who always hang out in the back right of the concert venue at every concert I go to and hang out at the back left just don’t get it and they write for and read the wrong alt weekly.  I hate them.

  205. 205.

    Ruckus

    @hueyplong:

    vlad is shitforbrains father figure.

    Dad gave him everything. Well that’s not true, but what dad didn’t give him he managed to steal from the rest of the family, which would probably have made dad happy on some level.

  206. 206.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Bobby Thomson: My personal attitude toward all this is something that, I think, Nate Silver said many years ago: we should think of anything between about 10% and 90% as a toss-up. It hardly matters whether Trump’s chance of winning is 30% or 70%; the takeaway should be “it could go either way”, which is highly disturbing.

  207. 207.

    Ruckus

    @WereBear:

    It’s bullshit and incompetence and corruption, all the way down.

    I believe they have that engraved in fake marble somewhere as their major guiding principle.

  210. 210.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:

    He could get 20 yrs and that would be sufficient without affecting any of us who do not think a country should kill it’s citizens for any reason. Hell he might not make the next 4 months, considering that he’s very likely had at least one stroke and has such a healthy lifestyle.

  211. 211.

    JAFD

    @James E Powell: Y’have to remember that most of the population of Delaware gets its TV from the Philly stations, so Rendell always saw Biden as ‘rival for airtime’ – frenemy, maybe, long way back they go – or maybe Ed goes – don’t think Biden goes there.

  215. 215.

    J R in WV

    @Steeplejack:

    But the answer may also lie, simply, in the depth of Ingraham’s despair. The America of the present, as she sees it, is a dark, nightmarish place where God speaks to only a tiny number of people;

    And no one that God really speaks to is actually Republican, nor attending a Mega-Church with a private jet for Pastor.

  216. 216.

    J R in WV

    @Amir Khalid:

    I don’t see Donald Trump thriving in a Malaysian prison.

    Hell, The Don isn’t thriving in the White House. But we can hope he continues to not thrive!

Comments are closed.