It’s early in the morning where I am, so I’ve been terminally behind. Here are some of yesterday’s tabs.
This is worth 6 seconds of your time (via Jeff Tiedrich):
Aaron Rupar has a good piece about Harris’ strategy of not getting down in the mud with Trump:
Harris is also reconfiguring journalists’ relationship with her as a candidate in a way that’s frustrating many members of the press while also creating serious hurdles for Trump.
For over a decade, nearly every non-Trump candidate has played by the same rules in their interactions with the press. The first rule was the presumption that members of the “fourth estate” posed important and “tough questions” because the voting public needed answers to them. The second is that any politician who refused to fully engage with and answer the press’s questions was acting dishonorably and likely had something to hide.
But what those rules didn’t take into account is a reality that’s only grown more apparent in recent years — that the press often asks insipid questions, and indeed can easily by manipulated to serve as conduits for entirely bogus claims and theories pushed by GOP partisans.
This phenomenon was exemplified during the 2016 campaign — specifically, the press’s nearly two year long pursuit of the Hillary Clinton email “scandals.”
From the outset of the primary campaign in 2015, Clinton accepted the proposition that the email imbroglio, initially ginned up by right-wing partisans in the House, had to be addressed by providing the press with the “facts.” This was exemplified in a September 2015 Meet the Press interview in which HRC allowed NBC’s Chuck Todd to spend virtually the entire segment deposing her about the intricacies of her IT record keeping. Todd greeted every factually accurate response from Clinton with skepticism and further questions.
Clinton learned too late that answering the press’s “legitimate” questions made her more, not less, vulnerable. Once the proposition that there was a “scandal” had been legitimized, it was inevitable that Clinton would be placed on the defensive for the entire campaign. This situation was relentlessly exploited by Trump, who inevitably lied or otherwise obfuscated when presented with questions about his own shady conduct.
If this fucked up Goldilocks analogy isn’t the most predictable response ever, I don’t know what is:
Dana Bash has hit back at critics of her interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, saying she knows it was “just right” because it “p**sed off” both the left and the right.
This is either a lie or an indication that she’s been marinating in DC press culture for so long that she’s forgotten what actually informing viewers means:
“My job wasn’t to nail her,” Bash added. “My job was to illuminate and to get an understanding of of her positions, of her sensibility, of her approach and of her goals.
Here’s a good piece by a MSNBC contributor on what it would sound like if the media covered Trump without cleaning up his nonsense.
Finally, you know it wasn’t going to go well for RFK the lesser when the judge’s ruling in Michigan began with “Elections are not just games, and the Secretary of State (SOS) is not obligated to honor the whims of candidates for public office.” Because he’s on the ballot line for a minor third party, Michigan law states he can’t withdraw, so he’ll be on the ballot there in November.
Montana Tribal Leaders Respond to Racist Carpetbagging Poser Showing His True Colors with His Big Donors, Mocking Native Americans with Every Racist Trope There Is
Baud
Glad Harris has only done one interview. Hope she shuns the NYT altogether.
Trollhattan
Love that RFK Jr will in fact siphon off Trump votes in MI. Sucks to be you, Diaper Don and Dead Bear Boy.
Trollhattan
@Baud: Yep.
Not kidding that I’d like her to do an interview with Teen Vogue while flipping off NYT and WaPo.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: After her inauguration, too.
SatanicPanic
By asking about Trump questioning her race?
I guess she did get an understanding of how Harris would handle that stupid question- by brushing it off.
Wapiti
“My job wasn’t to look out the window and figure out if it was raining,” Bash added. “Since Trump said that Kamala Harris only recently identified as Black, there was no way a person, even a national-level journalist, could look at her public history and determine whether or not it was true.”
(quote made up by me, of course)
SatanicPanic
@Wapiti: you had me going there
Bill Arnold
This was good to see. (Much more at the link.)
If Republicans Want to Win, They Need Trump to Lose — Big – To dominate the country once more, Republicans need to hasten the move to a post-Trump party. (Politico Playbook, Right Wing Opinion, JONATHAN MARTIN, 09/04/2024)
Core of his argument:
More:
More, bold mine:
Chris
Okay.
Now that you’ve interviewed her, please explain her positions, her sensibility, her approach, and her goals. Go.
(I know, I know. “Well, I can’t, but that’s just her fault for not answering my questions clearly enough…”)
Geminid
Something for Arizonans to look forward to: Politico reports that a Club for Growth-affiliated group, “Win ut Back PAC,” is buying $12 million in asd time to promote Scary Kari Lake. The English- and Spanish-language ads will begin running in the Tucson and Phoenix areas today.
According to Politico, Lake needs the help:
Captain C
“If I’m taking flak from both sides, I must be over the target!”
Yeah, and maybe the target’s a children’s hospital, and everybody wants to stop you from bombing it, you pretentious fuck.
(Or in this case, maybe you’re just a vacuous ass.)
Bill Arnold
Nice tight framing in the last sentence:
Long form (not twitter):
As Go Unions, So Goes America – Power concedes nothing but to collective action. (MICHAEL PODHORZER, SEP 03, 2024)
Captain C
@Baud: I hope she gives an interview to the New York Post before she ever gives one to the FTFNYT (which I hope never gets one).
The Audacity of Krope
Granted that I haven’t watched the whole interview, this does not describe the portions I saw.
West of the Rockies
@Bill Arnold:
A 6-3 conservative SCOTUS majority is just the replacement of two justices from being a 5-4 liberal SCOTUS. The oldest justices are Thomas (75) and Alito (73), neither of whom look like Jack LaLanne. The next four years could potentially be extremely transformative.
We need Harris to win (for this and a thousand more reasons).
Chris
@Captain C:
Has anybody ever stopped and asked questions about that phrase in the literal sense? I can’t imagine any situation in wartime in which taking flak from both sides doesn’t mean the pilot has fucked up somehow.
Reminds me of the World War Two joke: “when German planes fly overhead, Allied soldiers duck. When British planes fly overhead, German soldiers duck. When American planes fly overhead, everybody ducks!” It isn’t intended as a compliment to the Americans.
Ishiyama
She should do an appearance on The Breakfast Club 105.1.
Belafon
One of my fantasies is watching Roberts banging his gavel repeatedly trying to declare that Supreme Court has found that adding four new justices is unconstitutional as the new members pull their chairs up to sit beside him.
West of the Rockies
@Geminid:
Hopefully that will be conservative cash flushed down the can.
Chris
@Captain C:
Still wishing that she’d make it a point to give interviews to local news stations and newspapers. They’re not going to say no, especially the newspapers – they need all the publicity boosts they can get.
Chris
@The Audacity of Krope:
Possibly the worst interpretation is that maybe it does, and that Bash sincerely believes that this kind of inane gossip is in fact a serious assessment of policy positions and governing priorities.
The Audacity of Krope
Would be worth it just to troll the Times.
In order to curate my information stream without driving myself crazy having to do in-depth research for every news organization, I have set a simple rule for myself. I will not watch any political event sponsored by or as covered by any organization where their top reporters or anchors or editorialists are paid over a million dollars .
Not foolproof, by any means, but it gets to what I see as the core problems; treating news as showbusiness and the insidious effects of money.
Soprano2
Oh good grief, they all think their job is to “nail” the candidate, to get a sound bite of something controversial they can play and analyse over and over. Who does she think she’s kidding? What was all the questioning about fracking about, if not that?
scav
@Captain C: I failed both English classes I’m taking! Clearly my performance is impeccable and cannot be bettered!
The Audacity of Krope
I wish I had an example that showed otherwise from Bash or any other network anchors. I can’t think of one.
Frankensteinbeck
Look, being a pundit practically demands an attitude of ‘smartest person in the room’ or what are you even bringing to the job. As anyone who has dealt with a 19 year old libertarian knows, they’re usually the dumbest person in the room and boy, do they love patting each other on the back that everyone else is just jealous.
Bill Arnold
@West of the Rockies:
I suspect that there is unstated reasoning in that article about how a GOP-controlled Senate would simply refuse to fill a SCOTUS vacancy.
E.g. Scalia’s death in early 2016 resulted in a right-wing replacement.
But yeah, there could easily be a shift in the partisan balance of the SCOTUS.
The Audacity of Krope
With the right nerdy hobbies, you might find yourself with large groups of such people, entire function halls. I haven’t played Magic the Gathering in a while, but I’m damned curious to know how many of the old Ron Paul supporters I knew back in the day have moved on to Trump.
I only kept touch with one and he became an emphatic Trumper. Freedom for me but not for thee, typical.
patrick II
A question from a non-lawyer.
I have been reading about Republican plots in contending states to overthrow a state’s votes if they do not go Trump’s way. Isn’t it illegal be involved in a conspiracy to commit a crime, and isn’t the deliberate misrepresentation of election results a crime? Aren’t we already prosecuting some Republican state election officials for that same crime? If we catch someone conspiring to commit a crime must we wait until the actual crime is committed before we investigate and possibly indict?
What is the difference between what they are doing now and what they did in 2020?. And why can’t we at least warn them of criminal prosecution if they continue?
Baud
Barrett is awful, but this last year she sided with the libs against some of the crazier decisions of the GOP males. Even if Harris can move one justice from red to blue, we’d be in a much better place.
Steve LaBonne
@Wapiti: And we need to know where she really came from. I mean, this mythical “Oakland, California”? There’s no there there! And her parents were “students”? Very suspicious! She must answer many gotcha questions about these troubling assertions.
scav
@Steve LaBonne: And what kind of “oaks” are there in “Oak”land, if in fact there are any oaks there whatsoever. Furthermore, are they the proper oaks the founding fathers saw? The redblooded oaks of the heartland? Or, are they those invidious live oaks, those woke oaks of California, never dropping their leaves, which are all funny shaped as well. No lobes. Oaks bearing dangerous acorns no less . . .
Death Panel Truck
@Chris: She should interview at the Plain Dealer. They seem to be the only major paper taking her candidacy seriously.
Chris
@The Audacity of Krope:
Pundits are the ones who set the discourse. What they think is important, by definition, must be important. (Otherwise, someone else would be here instead of them). QED.
It’s easy to get high on your own farts at that level.
Kent
Exactly.
And the WW2 joke isn’t even accurate. During WW2 the British did aerial bombing at night which was very imprecise. The Americans did aerial bombing during the day which was much more precise but also much more risky for air crews.
Sometimes when you get criticism from both sides it is because you are really really bad.
Chris
@Baud:
Yeah, it’s notable that the simple change from 5-4 to 6-3 has turned them totally unhinged. It’s given them much more of a safety cushion when it comes to worrying about unexpected defections from an idiosyncratic member of their ranks, and it’s also made it much less likely that a random freak event could suddenly turn them from a conservative to a liberal majority. Therefore, they feel completely unconstrained.
As little as a decade ago, even the hacktacular 5-4 court we had could still hand down decisions like the legalization of gay marriage or the upholding of (most of) the ACA. Both decisions are completely unimaginable today.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@West of the Rockies:
Yes, and if we take the House, there will be impeachment hearings for both. It really doesn’t matter if they are convicted, but the process of impeachment (if done correctly, and with AOC and probably Raskin involved, it probably will) is going to bring out some ugly dirty laundry. It is not hopium or copium to think that impeachment might hasten their retirement. And if it doesn’t, it will certainly diminish the image of the Roberts court.
Kent
@The Audacity of Krope: The actual job of the media and journalists like Bash isn’t to “inform”. It is to create a successful show which means high ratings and increased ad sales. That is the business they are in and what she is hired to do.
They have convinced themselves that what gets them ratings is gotcha questions and trying to trip up a candidate. And it will really make news if they are successful. It is the 60 minutes version of journalism. A 30 minute dry discussion about health care policy that might actually be informative isn’t going to do that.
They are probably right as far as it goes. Scandal does sell. Dry policy detail doesn’t. Just don’t lie to us and tell us you are doing policy discussion and education when you are doing nothing of the sort. You aren’t actually trying to inform. You are trying to generate ratings.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Yes.
She should do interviews with Local Media.
Phuck The MSM Village
CaseyL
@patrick II: Two words: Supreme Court.
Election sabotage can be challenged, and will be: the Democrats have put together a rapid response legal team headed by Marc Elias.
But any victory for the side of legitimate elections can and will be appealed, all the way up to SCOTUS.
And we do surely know what will happen if SCOTUS takes any cases of election subversion: it will find for the GOP.
Snarki, child of Loki
“elections are not just games”
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
rikyrah
@Captain C:
That BOTH SIDES bullshyt
Parfigliano
First order of business for Harris should be kicking FOX out of the press room/pool with a letter stating you testified under oath your not a news organization your entertainment.
KatKapCC
I have always loathed this idea, that if everyone is mad at you, it means you did your job well. I would love to ask these narcissistic members of the press: In what other scenario does that apply?
If you’re a chef in a restaurant, and every person who eats there says your food is disgusting, does that earn you a Michelin star?
If you’re a director and every single movie critic and moviegoer says your movie was the worst they’ve ever seen, should that net you an Oscar?
If you compete in any kind of contest — singing, baking, dancing, painting, comedy, magic, whatever — and every judge and every audience member boos you off the stage, does that mean you were actually the best?
No. It’s only the press who thinks this bullshit idea is valid, and only when it comes to them. Newsflash Dana: If everyone in the room says you’re an asshole, you’re probably an asshole. And you’re even more of an asshole if you think it means you’re NOT an asshole.
rikyrah
@The Audacity of Krope:
Zerlina Maxwell sat and watched the entire interview.
Only FOUR questions weren’t GOP Talking points.
Only FOUR.
Chris
@Kent:
Correct.
My point wasn’t so much that the joke was accurate: it’s that when people accuse you of that sort of thing, it’s not a good thing. The appropriate rebuttal is “no I’m not,” not “well yes I am and clearly that’s a good thing!”
rikyrah
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
That we STILL don’t know the extent that Unca Clarence is a
LEAVE PAYMENT ON THE NIGHTSTAND HO
Is sort of maddening and enraging.
FYI- those reporters assigned to the Supreme Court need to be fired – en masse.
WHY did Pro Publica scoop them, and continues to scoop them, on the massive corruption on the Court?
After that first Pro Public story…none of the rest of them went investigating?
gvg
@rikyrah: I haven’t found local to be better. It tends worse and is often dead (bankrupt and gone). The non enforcement of monopolies has allowed a lot of consolidation in the small markets, so they all sound alike and don’t actually cover anything local. I gather you’ll know of areas where it’s different. Good for you, but note it won’t wok everywhere.
Chris
@Kent:
Sort of, except that again, a media that was purely obsessed with ratings wouldn’t have spent all of 2016 laser-focused on the intricacies of email server management best practices in the foreign service. Not when the other side of the aisle was offering sex scandals, mob connections, and Russian spies. The mere rumor of any one of these stories, true or not, should have sent them all running after Trump like a greyhound after a hare, if eyeball-clickbait was all they were after. Instead, they went after the most boring story in the world until they’d determinedly made it the story of the year.
Rachel Bakes
@Trollhattan: that would be amazing
laura
@rikyrah: I fervantly hope and wish that President Harris publicly calls for the resignations of pinch-faced Alito and Uncle Ruckus as one of her initial presidential acts- Day One would be swell. Then let them start sweating the impending impeachment inquiries.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Bill Arnold: Exactly right. The union makes us strong.
Kent
One difference is that the GOP RELENTLESSLY drumbeat the emails story at every level from their bazillion BENGAZI!! hearings to endless frothing on Sunday talk shows.
Democrats don’t know how to play that game. Although with the new breed like AOC the seem to be learning. I suspect if the entire Democratic organization had relentlessly drumbeat Trump scandals they would have gotten more play.
Republicans and Democrats are playing two different games. Until recently Democrats seemed to be under the impression that the media was on their side or at least a neutral referee. They are finally learning that is not remotely the case. Harris has learned this lesson and that is heartening. She absolutely refuses to give the slightest bit of oxygen to any of Trump’s ravings and that is the right approach. Hillary didn’t understand that.
Citizen Alan
@The Audacity of Krope: Speaking of which, Google informs me that Dana Bash’s contract pays her $3 million a year to read the news. Her net worth is $9 million, compared to the nation’s median net worth of $192,900.
Bill Arnold
@The Audacity of Krope:
This rule could also be an interesting Kamala Harris interview policy.
The Audacity of Krope
The MSM decided as one that their route to success is breaking Fox’s stranglehold on the coveted 65+ Republican demographic.
Manyakitty
@Soprano2: she’s so proud of herself that she turned off comments on her official Instagram. El. Oh. El. Maybe she should consider that she’s just bad at her job.
Chris T.
@Citizen Alan:
I often wonder how someone with an income that high can have a net worth that (relatively) low. If I brought in $3M even just one year … well, subtract say 40% ($1.2M) for taxes, that leaves $1.8M. I’d try to save at least half of that, dumping most of it in an S&P500 index fund. Do that for just three years and you have almost $3M in the fund and it’s gone up significantly since 2019 so it’s worth over $5M now. And that’s just from those three years!
(Over my career, using SEP-IRAs and 401(k) vehicles, I saved enough to retire a bit early, and it’s really done well under Obama and Biden. We have Spousal Unit’s Social Security for steady income, though it’s not enough for us to live on, and I get to use these savings to defer taking my own SS.)
Meanwhile, according to clickbait articles I read, a net worth of $2.5M makes one “wealthy”. So Dana Bash is well into the “wealthy” category. It used to be that $5M got you into the “ultra high net worth” group, but now it’s ten-to-twenty million.
BTW that 40% figure assumes you’re in a high-state-income-tax state and you don’t play a lot of tax-avoidance games. Now that we’ve moved to Washington (state) we’d pay a lot less than 40%, even on a crazy $3M-in-income year (yeah, I wish!).