He's always said whatever comes into his head and, as he gets more confused, the message gets weirder. His supporters clearly are either not listening, or just don't care. Donald Trump is very confused https://t.co/j4RTzDqbRA
— Prof. Peter Doherty (@ProfPCDoherty) January 24, 2024
An excellent essay, which deserves wider circulation, from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post — “Donald Trump is very confused”: [gift link]
… New Hampshire showed us, beyond all doubt, that Donald Trump is very, very confused…
I went to Trump’s rally on Saturday night in Manchester, where he didn’t address the Haley-Pelosi mix-up but assured his supporters that he “took a cognitive test” and “I aced it.” He has previously boasted of his ability to identify an image of a “whale” on said assessment, but, as The Post’s Ashley Parker and Dan Diamond pointed out, there is no such marine mammal on any version of the test. (Maybe he was being “sarcastic” about the whale, too.)
But I listened carefully to Trump that night — no easy feat because he went on for 100 minutes — and noticed that, even though his text was fed to him through a teleprompter, he told many of the same stories over and over again, repeating some lines almost word for word in the same speech, with no apparent awareness that he had done so…
In fairness, the Trump of four and eight years ago was also plenty erratic. But a closer look at his public performances — his courtroom outbursts and on the stump — suggests the very stable genius is off his game. He’s propped up by a very professional campaign, which he didn’t have before, and more insulated from questions and spontaneous exchanges. Yet he’s still saying and doing the sort of things that, had Biden done them, Republicans would cry: dementia!
“Each drug dealer kills on average 500 people during his or her lifetime,” he informed his audience early in his speech.
“Each dealer is responsible for the deaths during their lives of over 500 people or more,” he informed them late in his speech…
Trump similarly told and retold a tale about Biden’s competence. “He’s a threat to democracy,” Trump said, for “a couple of reasons. But, you know, the first reason why, he’s grossly incompetent.”
“He’s a threat to democracy,” Trump repeated later.
And again, still later: “Joe Biden is a threat to democracy for a number of reasons,” primarily because “he’s grossly incompetent.”
Sounds as though somebody needs a nap.
And it wasn’t just one off night. At a rally the next night, Trump mispronounced the name of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), his devoted ally who had just come to campaign for him in New Hampshire. He mentioned the name of a pollster — his pollster — Tony Fabrizio, with an Italian accent, then asked, “Is he a relation to Al Capone?” The following night, he served up this puzzler: “We are an institute and a powerful death penalty. We will put this on.”
It’s perhaps easy to lose all this in the grotesque carnival that is a Trump rally…
There are the gratuitous, extravagant lies. There were but 4,500 souls in the arena, which has a maximum capacity of 12,000, but Trump told them they “set every record” for attendance. Turnout in the Iowa Republican caucuses was only 15 percent, the lowest in years, but one lawmaker Trump called onstage announced that Iowa just voted in “record numbers.” Trump falsely complained that the state’s anti-Trump Republican governor, Chris Sununu, “allows Democrats to vote in the Republican primary” to help Haley; state law has long allowed independents (not Democrats) to vote in either primary.
There are the barely veiled appeals to white nationalism. A video played on the big screen before Trump takes the stage had the tagline: “Make America Great For Us Again.” Of his political opponents, Trump told the crowd: “This nation does not belong to them. This nation belongs to you. This is your home. This is your heritage.”
Above all there was his apocalyptic description of America, now recited over orchestral music. Trump told his followers: “We are a failing nation. We are a nation that has the highest inflation in 50 years, where banks are collapsing. … We are a Third World nation. … Fake news is all you get, and they are indeed the enemy of the people. … We are a nation that, in many ways has become a joke. … We are a nation whose economy is collapsing into a cesspool of ruin, whose supply chain is broken, whose stores are not stocked.”…
And then Milbank has a snarky section on my favorite primary chewtoy, Dean Phillips. Followed by:
… Sununu, New Hampshire’s governor, has been going everywhere with Haley to drum up support. “This is great!” he screamed as he took the stage in Exeter, N.H., Sunday night, a few hours after DeSantis dropped out. “A little while ago there were 13 candidates in the race and now there are only two.” This, Sununu said, was because “Nikki Haley came along and wiped them all out.”
That’s one hypothesis. Another, with rather more evidence, is that Trump wiped them all out and Haley is the last one still holding on, by a thread…
If I squinted my eyes just right in the Exeter auditorium, I could almost see it working for Haley. There was a bank of 20 TV and video cameras on tripods, 20 more still cameras in front of the stage and a loud, passionate group of Haley supporters. But it wasn’t clear that many of them were Republicans.
When Judge Judy, introducing Haley, made a disapproving reference to Trump, a guy in the crowd shouted: “Put Trump in prison!” When Haley made her usual comment about Biden’s declining faculties, the crowd reacted with a displeased “oooh.” When she said that it’s not reasonable to have only electric cars by 2033, somebody shouted: “Why not?” Her usual line that “we won’t survive” four more years of Trump’s chaos brought huge applause.
Haley, reading the room, skipped her usual complaint about trans athletes…
Worth reading the whole article!
Late Night Open Thread
Manyakitty
“Haley, reading the room” 🤣🤣😂😂😭😭 Hey, whatever gets her focused on bashing trump works.
Kay
He almost got there, but then this last:
Political media consistently underestimate Biden. Joe Biden has won many more elections than Trump and Haley combined. It’s just strange that “winning” doesn’t seem to matter to people who are supposedly political pros and constantly bleating about merit.
Trump’s entire winning margin v Haley came from GOP men. What’s the theory here? Haley picks up 30 million Democratic women to replace the GOP men who won’t support her? Didn’t these dopes already disprove this theory with Sara Palin?
Kay
The former SC governor, who is far, far Right ideologically and blathers on about “wokeness” and bashes trans people to gin up hate only slightly less than the other loser, Ron DeSantis, who can’t win her own Party’s primary because conservative men won’t vote for her, would “handily” beat Joe Biden in a general.
In the land of make believe where pundits reside and adding up numbers to make a majority doesn’t matter in winning elections.
Brachiator
It’s weird how the political media is yearning for Biden’s defeat. Also I don’t see Hayley as a refreshing alternative to anything, and can’t imagine that the Republican Party will ever be healthy.
Earlier today I watched some guy on CNN interview Joe Manchin, practically begging him to become a third party candidate. For his part, Manchin went full both-siderism, insisting that Biden and the Republicans are equally extremist. Manchin insisted that only he possessed the special juice of bipartisanship, and knew how to work with Congress.
So now the Establishment political narrative has gone through the following iterations.
The common theme of course is that the Democrats just ain’t bona fide.
It’s going to be a sad, sappy election season.
mrmoshpotato
@Brachiator:
Is it? Is it? They spent 4+ years pleasuring themselves to every horrible thing that the orange shitstain bellowed out of his fat, orange, fascist face. They were happy as pigs in shit (and that’s an insult to swine.)
They don’t want to have to do borrrrrring reporting on actual government. They want the shitshow back!
Subsole
@Brachiator:
Y’know, a lot of this media framing feels like a bunch of country club Kissingers lashing out at all us filthy peasants for refusing to get in line.
Baud
@Brachiator:
This right here.
satby
@Brachiator: Well, they’re beyond delusional if they think Manchin is some sort of alternative.
satby
@Baud: Truth. Democrats have a constituency of people who historically weren’t allowed to vote at all, so none of us are bona fide citizens. Hell, in rural areas “city” residents aren’t either, that’s how “urban” became a dog whistle.
eclare
Colbert showed a clip of TFG speaking this past week, maybe from his victory speech in NH. TFG was rambling on about something, I can’t remember what, and then blurted out the word “hopscotch.” Huh?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/stephen-colbert-trump-losing-it_n_65b20bbde4b04d89950fe5ab
Aussie Sheila
@Kay:
But if women outnumber men in a ballot, is it really a win? I mean you know-do they know what they’re doing?
Dangerman
@mrmoshpotato: Best refereeing or umpiring is when you don’t notice the referees or umpires. Biden is joyously boring. Good for me, bad for ratings.
Kay
Joining Elon Musk and SpaceX in destroying worker, consumer and environmental protections:
SpaceX is involved in an NLRB action because they illegally fired workers for criticizing Elon Musk.
Trader Joes is owned by a German company. They comply with Germany’s much stricter worker protection laws, but refuse to comply with US labor law. They think American workers (and consumers) are suckers who will passively accept being treated like garbage.
Baud
@Kay:
Can’t blame them.
Kay
@Aussie Sheila:
Lol. That margin is just unheard of. Gives one real, concrete insight into what motivates Trump supporters- much more real and reliable than interviewing them in diners every 20 minutes.
eclare
@Dangerman:
I like having a government where I don’t have to worry that it is selling our national parks or leaving NATO. Drama is way overrated in real life, I get mine from tv.
Baud
@Dangerman:
Good analogy.
Kay
@Baud:
They’re not treating workers and consumers like this in their Netherlands operations, that’s for sure. They wouldn’t put up with it. Aldi Nord only violates labor, consumer and environmental laws in the US. They have contempt for us.
p.a.
Remember South Park’s Celine Dion was a floor mop? I just saw Puffs, a H Potter spoof, and the production had Harry carry a red and a brown mop to rep Ron & Hermione. The MSM would so characterize a mop as the “reasonable alternative, traditional republican” to D tRump as a way to normalize that degenerate political party.
Baud
@Kay:
I respect European labor. They’re unified. I know ours is getting better, but they’ve hurt themselves with crab bucket politics.
Kay
Trump is using a photo Trump’s team took with O’Brien where O’Brien appears to be endorsing Trump, leading to accusations that O’Brien is lying to members and secretly backing Trump without a vote.
So one of two things is true- O’Brien is lying to members and secretly backing Trump without a vote – he can actually be removed for that – OR O’Brien is a dope who got played by Trump and is probably too stupid to be leading anything.
It is just amazing how people will destroy their own reputations and careers for Donald Trump. Hundreds of powerful people have now done this. They apparently enjoy humiliation.
Kay
The President of the Teamsters backs Trump’s Dept of Labor (led by Justice Scalia’s son – yet another nepotism hire) and Trump’s vehemently anti labor, anti Teamster NLRB.
They need to get rid of O’Brien if they want to be taken seriously on wages. He’s a clown.
Baud
@Kay:
This is what we’re up against.
Anyway
Good morning and sorry to start the weekend off with a downer post– can’t get past the tortorously administered execution in Alabama. I swear confederate states get off on cruelty.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s a real test of labor. If they reject Biden no one should take them seriously on wages or job protections- they’re Right wing culture warriors and that’s all they are. It isn’t anyone elses job to protect them from themselves.
Barry
“It’s weird how the political media is yearning for Biden’s defeat.”
It’s clear that the economic elites in the USA have gone all in for fascism.
Baud
@Kay:
I’m out if Biden loses. I see no reason to spend my remaining years worrying about people who are comfortable being natural serfs.
Kay
It’s a good article. I’m shocked the NYTimes printed it.
eclare
@Anyway:
I know. I’ve seen the headlines, but I am not going to read anymore. It’s too awful.
Kay
@Baud:
That seems like a good decision point. I don’t think one can ask good people to endure Donald Trump and his merry band of authoritarian crooks twice. It’s too much.
Baud
@Kay:
It’s too much given how amazing Biden has been. The contrast couldn’t be greater.
Ksmiami
@Baud: the world is a big and amazing place. Trump really will destroy the country and gf if he gets in again, he’ll never leave. So yeah… I’m not staying either
Princess
@satby: you know, I knew this, that the majority of people who vote Democrat wouldn’t have been able to vote at all for much of the history of the States. But something about how you phrased it really hit me. That’s why someone like Dana Millbank has such utter contempt for Democrats. That’s why they all have contempt for us. We’re not even supposed to be here and if they have their way, we won’t be. Millbank knows Trump is completely Gaga but he’ll be dragging him across the finish line, you just watch.
Baud
@Ksmiami:
I’m not planning on moving. I’m just going to stop caring.
Ksmiami
@Baud: easier said than done. Our relatives lived under thuggish and incompetent rule. It pervades everything. A second Trump will diminish the country and end in massive strife. No thanks. I’ll grab my kids and bail
eclare
@Ksmiami:
A friend and her husband bought a home in Canada about a year ago. He is already living there while she stays behind in NC while their youngest finishes high school. If TFG wins, forget finishing high school here, she and their son are out.
TBone
The look on her face is how I feel today.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uaqoQr-aCtQ
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Re the verdict:
This is when a smart lawyer reaches out and says “look, we’ll pay you $20M and do an agreed injunction with whatever conditions you want with steep liquidated damages for each violation.”
Baud
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Hey, I was wondering where you were.
Baud
@Ksmiami:
Where would you go?
I could leave, but I’m not planning on it.
Geminid
Yesterday Turkish President Erdogan signed the National Assembly’s ratification of Sweden’s accession to Nato. Also, the U.S. State Department notified Congress that it has approved the sale to Turkiye of 40 new F-16s and modernization packages for 80 more, total $20 billion.
The State Department paired this with approval of a sale of F-35s to Greece. That and the sidelining of Turkiye-foe Robert Menendez will likely ensure that Congress will not block these sales.
Sweden’s membership in Nato has not yet been approved by Hungary, but it is unlikely they will hold out.
Sweden has already integrated its air defenses with those of Finland, Norway and Denmark, and is coordinating other defense measures with Nato, so it is in many practical ways a member of the alliance already. Sweden’s formal membership in Nato will officially end a neutrality that dates back to 1815.
Baud
@Geminid:
👍
Ksmiami
@eclare: I’m thinking of Canada or Greece.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Baud:
Been fiddling around at Threads quite a bit. It’s pretty quick on breaking news and my feed is well curated away from too many negatives.
TBone
Who pissed in everyone’s Cheerios? Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice: pull down yer pants and slide on the ice!
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Ksmiami:
Crete for me.
Baud
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Cool. I’ve been meaning to try out BlueSky beyond lurking, but haven’t yet gotten over the hump of starting.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Baud:
I also took a long Caribbean sojourn in December for a couple of weeks, and am headed to Malta for a couple of weeks in February.
Baud
@TBone:
We’re just lamenting the unnecessary risks posed by American Idiots of all stripes. No one has predicted a loss in this thread.
Baud
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Nice.
Ksmiami
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: I spent a lot of time on Crete. Amazing island. I’m thinking Athens though .
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Baud: Threads was pretty seamlessly easy.
Baud
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
I don’t have an Instagram account. Didn’t feel like creating one.
TBone
@Baud: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their cowards!”
Ksmiami
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: I like Threads. It will probably win the alt- X prize.
Baud
@Ksmiami:
Do you need an app?
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Ksmiami:
I like the idea of oceanview somewhere around Chora Sfakion. Probably could get something pretty nice for under $200K.
Winter would be quiet.
I’d consider Gavdos, but you’d probably be pretty stuck from December to March.
eclare
@Baud:
I’m not on FB or IG, so I’m sticking with Twitter til it dies. I only follow about a dozen people/entities, and I limit what I see to who I follow, so I don’t see the horrible racist, misogynist, Nazi, etc. crap.
Baud
@eclare:
You’ll also have the benefits of one-stop financial services soon.
Ksmiami
@Baud: No. I just made a ghost like insta. It was easy
Ksmiami
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: yeah I’m looking at neighborhoods on Engels and volker
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Baud:
I would definitely trust Captain Apartheid with money.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Ksmiami:
Oh, NICE!
Geminid
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Crete should really be quiet now. On his visit to Athens last month, Erdogan declared that the Aegean will be “a Sea of Cooperation and Peace.” So you won’t have to worry about those new Turkish F-16s rattling your windows. Maybe.
m.j.
Ahh…show-biz song and dance. Theater. We want to be entertained. Donny is absurd and absurdity is a comic hallmark. The world loves a clown. Ha.
geg6
@Kay:
The union VP has called out O’Brien on this bullshit:
https://twitter.com/ErikLoomis/status/1750917033389166997
Yarrow
@Kay:
I saw this Twitter thread and thought you (and others) would find it interesting.
It’s a long thread with interesting data from quite a few countries.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Geminid:
I just love the relish I hear from modern Crete residents when they describe the history of driving Turks off Crete. They may hate the government in Athens, but they hate Turks more.
Betty
@satby: Biden is too old. Manchin at 76 isn’t?
Anne Laurie
I’m trying to train myself to reply to people I chose to follow, as a starting point.
Problem is, I was right in hesitating: I’m not a fast reader, so I can either post here or reply there. Which means I’ll go for a few days between ‘showing up’ on BlueSky, and that’s no way to build muscle memory…
RevRick
@Kay: Initially, Republican men loved Sarah Palin. Rich Lowry professed he saw “star bursts” when she was nominated by McCain. And most Republicans duly voted for the ticket in November, despite the disastrous economy that was rapidly imploding with the financial crisis.
Misogyny no doubt plays a huge role in the GOP primary. But that’s just a subset of the fascist desires on full display at the Trump rally. Make America Great For Us Again? This is our country ? It doesn’t belong to them? This is a direct appeal to those men who are outraged that the nation no longer kowtows to them, that the nation no longer tolerates their asshole behavior, that the nation no longer places them automagically at the head of the line.
These men would vote for Nikki Haley if , by some meteorite, she becomes the nominee. But Republican men much prefer Trump’s naked fascism.
Jeffg166
TFG may not be demented but he sure is dumb.
TS
@RevRick:
Not all of them by any means – if trump is not their nominee a good % will stay home or vote for trump as a write-in. If he is not the GOP nominee, he will be the GOP spoiler (or Haley will be the trump spoiler)
Betty
@geg6: I love the indirect reference to an organized crime figure.
Another Scott
@satby: +1
Isn’t Manchin also “old”? (Yes, he’s 76.)
Isn’t Manchin also “unpopular”? (Yes, he got fewer vote than “ceasefire”, IIRC.)
The political pundits like chaos, no matter how much they claim to want moderation and centrism. It draws eyeballs and clicks and TV appearances and book sales. Nobody reads newspapers for “everything’s peaceful and calm and healthy and great and loving and friendly in the USA today” stories.
[ insert tired / wired meme ]
Cheers,
Scott.
RevRick
@Brachiator: I don’t know if the media yearns for Biden’s defeat. I failed mind-reading in seminary. But it does seem clear they yearn for the drama. Joe is kind of boring and soft-spoken. He’s not a stem-winder kind of guy.
A part of the claim that Haley would beat Biden in the general election is due to current polling. But that’s largely due to Haley being a kind of Nikki Barbie in the public imagination. They hear she’s contesting Trump and they’re grumpy about Biden, so they’re projecting their wishes for something “better” upon her. She is the public’s fantasy candidate: stable, sane, experienced, younger. She’d make the public feel good about themselves: see, we voted for a woman, and one of South Asian descent! Kind of like Barack Obama, part two. But they’re unaware of her policies.
And you can be damn sure that the Biden campaign would hammer her about those. The real Nikki Haley shines far less brightly than Nikki Barbie.
TBone
There is drama aplenty. Nimrata is no Barbie, and that comparison can be easily illustrated when necessary (but unless that putrid carbunkle strokes out in prison, it won’t).
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/column-nikki-haley-is-as-bad-on-abortion-and-health-as-any-other-republican/ar-BB1hitUm
Geminid
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Yeah, there’s a lot of bad blood between Turks and Greeks.
I saw something funny about that though, a couple months ago on Turkish engineer Bora Bingol’s Twitter account. Bingol retweeted a post by a Greek named Yannis, was responding to the question, “How would you feel if a Turk bought an apartment in your building?”
Yannis answered that he’d be relieved that it wasn’t a northern European. They’d be bugging him about being too loud and smoking in the stairwell, and whether he had the right color tags on his recyclying bags. If it was a Turk, Yannis said, they could talk about the important things, like who makes the best baklava?
Bora Bingol commented: “Yannis just made my day!”
hueyplong
Kind of curious to know how “beat handily” is defined. Under most rational definitions, the last Dem “beaten handily” was Dukakis in 1988. Most can agree that was a while ago.
It’s nearly inconceivable that Haley could get the GOP nomination without a non-trivial percentage of the cult losing their minds and much preferring her death to the concept of voting for her.
And this is without taking into account the fact that she would be a walking, talking symbol of the death of Roe v Wade, the single best Dem electoral issue of our time.
The “beat Biden handily” statement is a laughable throwaway line that ought to be scoffed at as such.
Another Scott
@Kay: This story doesn’t make any sense, and I’m especially suspicious of “fine” hanging out there by itself. Beware the ellipsis.
A union president endorsing someone without the union itself being behind it is meaningless. What’s he, by himself, going to do? His picture with TIFG isn’t going to do much – not as much as an army of motivated members working on the campaign.
Fox is trying to put its thumb on the scale, as always.
Let’s see what happens.
(Yeah, I too remember the old Hoffa days and all the rest. Some union bosses were very happy to be GQP operatives. But those days are long gone.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@TBone: I know. I said it earlier, it’s quite obvious the last 48 hours the GoPers and the Masters of the Universe are visibly panicking.
karen marie
@RevRick: Let’s not forget that Haley said she’d pardon Trump “to unite the country.”
That’s a disqualifier if only because believing that pardoning Trump would do any such thing is insane.
Another Scott
@Baud: TIFG is a loser.
The only questions are the margin and what happens in the legislature and down-ballot.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
TBone
@RevRick: Amen brotha.
artem1s
@RevRick:
They’ve been headed in that direction for awhile. W was preferable to McCain because the Bush Crime family was clearly more fascist than the ‘Maverick’. And they stayed away in droves when RMoney got the nomination – the Mormon thing was just too foreign for them. They prefer white and male, but it’s got to be the ‘right’ kind of white and male. Their problem with TIFG is he was the perfect combo of awful but turned out to be an opportunistic conman who tricked them into believing he was a fascist. Now he’s cleaned out their coffers and stolen their donor lists. And just like any other dumb rube that got conned they can’t admit it and cut their losses.
TBone
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: yessiree!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@hueyplong: Sure, Haley would lose, but of all the Republicans running in their primary she would likely do the best against Biden since she isn’t an anger inducing a-hole like Trump or DeSantis and likely she would pick up some of the hard left who are upset over Gaza.
RevRick
@TS: That’s probably true. No candidate has excited the Republican base as much as Trump. In 2020 he did get the second highest number of votes in a Presidential election ever. He increased his vote total by 7 million over 2016. But he also rouses the Democratic base more than any candidate as 11 million more of us turned out than in 2016.
RevRick
@karen marie: It’s definitely a disqualifier for me and you. But I wouldn’t be so sure with the general public.
What would rattle the public at large is her support for a 6week abortion ban.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Even if Trump wins, a large fraction and possibly a majority of the US electorate will have voted against him. That’s what happened in 2016. The election is likely to be close regardless, because these days, they all are. I don’t see a large moral difference between an electorate in which Biden was 1 vote shy of winning and 1 vote over the line in some crucial state, but that’s how we run things.
Matt McIrvin
@Yarrow: The graph for the US was initially shocking to me because I was reading it upside down, on the basis of conventional “red”/”blue” associations in US politics. Wait, young men are moving to the right that rapidly? No, young men are pretty much staying put in the US, young women are moving to the left that rapidly. That squares with my experience. But something disturbing is happening in South Korea.
…Well, maybe. I see they don’t have a lot of data points in South Korea and these data seem to have a lot of year-to-year noise and outliers.
RevRick
@Another Scott: I think Manchin is playing rope-a-dope with the press and NoLabels here. He’s dangling the possibility of an independent run, but at his heart he’s still pretty much a loyal Democrat.
Look at what he pulled off with the IRA. He promised McConnell that Biden’s Build Back Better proposal was deader than a door nail. That allowed Biden to win crucial Republican votes in the Senate to pass the Infrastructure Bill and the Chips Act. And then, when they were signed into law, surprise, surprise Manchin revived the IRA, leaving McConnell sputtering about betrayal.
Manchin knows he can’t win a Presidential election. I think he’s really aiming for a return to the WVA governor.
Geminid
@RevRick: One thing about that baseline of Trump’s 2016 performance: that year he had the second lowest Republican vote total since 2000. Only John McCain did worse, in 2008.
H.E.Wolf
@Brachiator:
It’s odd, but your spellcheck/autocorrect consistently adds a “y” to the middle of Nikki Haley’s surname.
(An inadvertent mashup with Sterling Hayden, maybe? – now there’s an image!)
Ken
So heaven knows what Habba will do.
Brian Manookian is being widely quoted. That’s a nitter link, so in case you don’t want to go there, here’s the key part:
lowtechcyclist
@Anyway:
Aaaaaaaaaand the FTFNYT bothsides it:
‘Textbook’ Execution or Botched One? Alabama Case Leaves Sides Divided.
That’s their headline, I didn’t read further.
Elizabelle
@Kay: That paragraph ruined Milbank’s essay for me, because it is so false and, as you say, totally underestimates Joe Biden.
Nikki Haley would not defeat Joe Biden. Dobbs, anyone? The fact she’d be a figurehead for the white male GOP?
It’s sickening he felt he had to include that slap at Biden. Undermined the whole thing.
Another Scott
@RevRick: Good points about Manchin and the IRA. The press didn’t cover that well at all. (And Moscow Mitch getting rolled again was delicious. As Adam and others have noted, Moscow Mitch isn’t really that good at his job. He could pass tax cuts and block stuff when he was in the majority, but that’s it.)
I don’t know WV politics well at all, either, but with the congressional districts being R+30 (or whatever), it’s hard to see a Democrat winning anything for a while. Maybe he’d have a chance running as an independent, but why would a MAGA state vote for him with a bunch of MAGA choices right there??
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
RevRick
@Another Scott: He was Governor before being elected to the Senate. It would be a tough race, but the voters of WV liked him in that role previously.
kalakal
@Dangerman:
At work I like boring. Exciting means I’m dialling 911
RevRick
@Geminid: Here’s the GOP votes totals since 2000
Bush – 50,456,000
Bush – 62,042,610
McCain – 59,948,723
Romney – 61,923,503
Trump – 62,924,826
Trump – 74,216,154
Trump garnered the most votes ever by a GOP candidate twice.
sdhays
@Betty: Anyone who complains about Biden’s age and then supports someone else who is in their 70’s has no credibility with me.
Matt
A good reminder that at the end of the day guys like Dana are still wingnut trash. The only thing that distinguishes Ms. Indian Hitler from Trump is the marketing.
Brachiator
@RevRick:
This is why I don’t pay attention to early polls. Most people don’t know anything about her actual policy positions.
I also don’t know that she had been making a big deal about her youth until recently, so I don’t know how this may have influenced polling.
A majority of people voted for Hillary Clinton, so I don’t know that voters are looking at self-validation in supporting Haley. And Republicans had embraced Sarah Palin, knowing that she might succeed McCain. As a GOP hopeful, she is a stronger candidate than was Ron DeSantis.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
They can say “the public” will like her but they have a couple of primaries to look at now and Republican men didn’t vote for her. In real life.
its not like there’s millions of votes to spare on the Right. Republicans haven’t had a President who won by big margins since Reagan. They need every vote in the same way we do. They can’t replace 30 million GOP men with squishy, flighty “moderates” who may or may not show up.
She needs to start at 45%, just like we do.
RevRick
@Kay: Bush 1 spanked Dukakis by 9%, which approaches landslide territory. Nobody has won by a margin that large since.
Kay
@RevRick:
Obama had Democrats. He started with our entire base and built the last 6 points from there.
Haley doesn’t have her base and she won’t get it. It’s disqualifying. She can’t make up base Republicans – it has to be GOP plus X.
Glidwrith
@Anyway: What gets me is the sheer bloodthirst we’ve seen in these states. A governor is voted out of power and he rushes to kill as many people as possible who are on death row before losing power. Those people sat on death row for years, why is there a sudden rush to kill them?
Uncle Cosmo
Just FTR, that’s only the case when the opposing sides agree to compete more or less within the boundaries set by the rules. If the refs/umps just stand back and “let ’em play” when one side is consistently committing infractions, they’re not doing their jobs. (And if both sides are violating the rules, all you get is an unregulated brawl.) For many years the Cheatriots (in)famously made a living in the NFL postseason by mugging the opponent’s receivers and counting on the refs not to throw flags for fear of accusations that their calls would decide the outcome – which they should have.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud:
Oh, I went beyond that wrt 2020 Trump voters and current Trump supporters. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I profoundly wish them pain and misery, with death as early as possible. They’ve self-identified as horrid, horrid human beings who should be stymied in all aspects of their lives.
In short, I hope they all step on rakes.
Tom Levenson
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: I love Crete. Would consider that as a destination. (Was there just once in the late 2010s.) We were on hill above Kalyves just a little bit east of Chania. Would happily locate anywhere around that area.
I’d consider Canada…but too much of it is too cold for my old bones.
RevRick
@Kay: With all due respect to our rock star he built nothing. Lehman Brothers built that last 6%. Up until the Wall Street Meltdown, McCain was neck and neck with Obama (though there had been some slippage when it became obvious what a dunce Palin was).
Heck, given the fundamentals of that election, I probably could have won!
Ksmiami
@Chief Oshkosh: Trump supporters and enablers are fascist garbage people
Ksmiami
@Tom Levenson: at least we might be able to resurrect democracy from its civilization cradle
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
It’s weird how the political media is yearning for Biden’s defeat.
Not really. Who owns a lot of the political media?
And what other than President Biden’s age do they have to hang on him? That he’s not a conservative? That he is inexperienced? That he’s old? (He’s 4 yrs older than ShitForBrains and just large tad smarter, realistic, knowledgeable, and he’s not senile, stupid or an ass)
Gee when I put it that way…..
Ruckus
@Subsole:
Bingo!
Ruckus
@Jeffg166:
Both? It is entirely possible…. probable both is more like it.
scott alloway
@Baud: Is there evidence to the contrary? Been through many a labor issue with management in my 58 years at a few jobs. I am 73 now.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus:
Actually it is closer to 2 1/2 years.
The Lodger
@H.E.Wolf: Hayley Mills probably inspired that.