It’s the Repubs’ last best hope, and it’s not going well for them. Josh Marshall, at TPM:
I wanted to flag two articles to your attention, one from the Post and the other from CNN. They both cover similar ground but in different ways. The gist is that the Trump campaign has essentially given up on trying to improve voters’ impression of Donald Trump and decided the only path to victory is driving down Harris’ favorability numbers. When I first read the Post piece, it had the feel of what journalists call a “source greaser” — a favorable piece aimed at generating good will on the part of the subject and sources of the piece. The quote from GOP consultant Josh Holmes captures the tone of the piece: “I think it’s a serious paper tiger we’re dealing with here. I don’t think for 60 days they can keep the train on the tracks.”…
But there are still interesting details in the Post piece. The key one is that the campaign appears to have given up trying to get Trump to focus policy attacks which they think have traction against Harris’ campaign — mostly inflation and border policy. He wants to go with personal attacks. And they seem to have decided that’s just how it’s going to be.
The CNN piece puts more focus on the fact that while Trump’s campaign has committed to a wholly negative campaign, it actually hasn’t worked yet. There’s an early phase of defining a new candidate. And they didn’t lay a glove on her in that initial three- or four-week period. I will admit to a real degree of present surprise over this. Let’s be frank: these are accomplished and talented evildoers. Trump certainly is. And his co-campaign managers LaCivita and Wiles are seen as being at the top of their game, far more able people than Trump has had at most points in the past. The CNN piece puts Trump basically in a battle against himself. He’s resorting to an increasingly brutal series of personal attacks on Harris. And the question is whether that acceleration will actually hurt Harris or deepen and intensify the revulsion many people have for Trump…
There is a tendency that a number of people have recently noted: reporters sanitize or simply normalize the things Trump says. This isn’t bias, exactly. The actual things he says are often expressed in such antic and disordered trains of thought, so riddled with lies or bizarre statements, that it’s simply hard to know how to deal with them in the context of ordinary campaign coverage. A reporter has to reduce something to a politically comprehensible thing before one can address it as a reporter, at least in the normal bounds of campaign coverage. There’s something similar happening when it comes to Trump campaign strategy and particularly the gap between what the campaign’s strategy is or wants to be and what Trump’s own notional “strategy” might be.
But Trump doesn’t have a strategy. He has an impulse. And the difference is more than semantic. What we’re seeing isn’t a strategy. It’s a guy overcome by rage and acting on that rage, acting out. The part of his campaign that is him is locked into his tangle of rage and fear that seems far less directed and nimble than it was four or eight years ago. Some of that is clearly capacity. But he also has a lot more on the line. 2016 was all gravy. In 2020, other than ego, there was no big downside to losing the election. The legal exposure he faces now almost all comes from his attempt to overturn the 2020 election result. (The exception is the Stormy Daniels case and I’m skeptical that ever would have been charged if not for the way Trump’s term ended.) The stakes are now far greater. So the pressure is greater. He’s less able to deal effectively with any of it. The whole thing is a struggle between this one man’s psychodrama which exists uneasily within (ghost in the machine?) and is only partly tethered to a staff that wants to run a relatively conventional campaign against an incumbent party, if no longer the incumbent president.
As I noted above, I feel like the attacks are landing or that they should land. But the evidence we have outside of our political-obsessive bubbles doesn’t bear that out. At least not yet. To partly paraphrase that old Zuckerberg film, if they knew how to damage Harris they would have done it already. It seems harder than they want to admit. They don’t have forever to figure it out.
"When a showman like Trump is no longer the center of attention, he turns into that most pathetic of Hollywood creatures: a has-been. With her 'that’s it' declaration, Harris left Trump standing alone in the pit, covered in mud, with nobody to wrestle." https://t.co/vDAZV9u8Bb
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 4, 2024
Hat tip to the Blogmaster for this one… David Lurie, at Public Notice, “Kamala Harris is cutting off Trump’s political oxygen”:
Kamala Harris is succeeding in accomplishing something none of Donald Trump’s adversaries have since 2016: Turning off his political oxygen supply by refusing to engage with his manufactured spectacles of insults and taunts, or with the often wholly substance-free issues that preoccupy the press.
As last Thursday’s CNN interview of Harris and her running mate Tim Walz made clear, she’s resolutely unwilling to let the press — or Trump himself — set the agenda for her presidential campaign. In the process, she’s managed to blunt the tools Trump has repeatedly used to undermine his opponents: drawing them into responding to his schoolyard slights, and turning the media’s pursuit of purportedly “legitimate” questions about his opponents — many of them formulated by GOP partisans — into political weapons.
Harris’s refusal to engage with Trump on his terms represents a break from how Democrats traditionally have dealt with him. In related news, her favorables continue to rise while an obviously flustered Trump flails at ghosts and searches in vain for a smear campaign that will allow him to regain the initiative…
Trump has long relied on tempting his adversaries to respond to his insults and bigoted taunts. That is how he has, for years, maintained control of the news cycle and made himself the perpetual center of attention. Harris’s curt dismissal of Trump’s most recent round of racism as a tired replay of a stale show marginalized him more effectively than most any of his adversaries, Republican or Democratic, have ever accomplished.
When a showman like Trump is no longer the center of attention, he turns into that most pathetic of Hollywood creatures: a has-been. With her “that’s it” declaration, Harris left Trump standing alone in the pit, covered in mud, with nobody to wrestle…
During the initial weeks of Harris’s presidential campaign, members of the press joined the Trump campaign in fulminating over her delay in making herself available for a “tough” interview. Harris met those press demands with a firm (and as soon became clear astute) response: not now.
Harris instead spent those crucial initial weeks introducing herself to voters on her own terms without the filter of journalists operating under the guise of “hard hitting” questions, many whose origins could be traced back to GOP opposition research memoranda, including the bogus “stolen valor” assertions against Walz.
By the time Harris gave her first campaign interview to CNN, the event’s significance had been blunted from the outset, since voters’ views of Harris had already begun to be established, largely positively…
As last week’s CNN interview demonstrated, Harris has learned from Clinton’s experiences. Instead of accepting Bash’s framing and “admitting” that she had “flip-flopped,” Harris stated repeatedly that her “values have not changed.” Indeed, as Harris asserted, her willingness to alter her positions on certain matters when presented with new evidence and new realities demonstrates a consistent adherence to her “values,” not a willingness to compromise them.
The result? Bash’s line of questioning lost its punch for much the same reason that her effort to bait Harris to engage with Trump’s racist taunts failed: because Harris has refused to play by the tired old rules.
It’s hardly a coincidence that over the past several weeks, the power of the press to impact the tenor and focus of the presidential campaign — and the power of Trump to do the same — has been suddenly thrown into question. By refusing to engage with Trump’s taunts or play by journalists’ rules, Harris has upended presumptions about politics that have dominated during most of the past decade. And that’s a good thing.
TBone
Pooty, trying to be helpful, sarcastically “endorsed” Kamala Harris. I’m guessing that hit dog hollered not from the stance of a victor, but from a place of desperation deep within that dialed up his false bravado. What a putz.
I’d like to see him in a cage match with Liz Cheney. She’d kick his ass with a quickness.
Wapiti
At the beginning of the presidential debate, do the two candidate traditionally shake hands? Harris needs to avoid that.
Kosh III
A Harris win means I can look forward to Buttigieg/AOC 2032.
TBone
@Wapiti: pretty sure the plague-ridden Donvict’s previous debate where he tried to infect everyone put an end to that.
bbleh
The bit about having to move Harris’s numbers rather than focus on his own seems almost too obvious to mention. There can’t be ANYBODY in the country who doesn’t know TOO MUCH about him, and only the very VERY few who are precariously balanced between instinctive atavism and outright disgust are even worth thinking about — that’s why his “floor” is effectively the same as his “ceiling,” at least for now. But as to HOW to attack her, what the campaign is putting out seems like window-dressing at best.
The fact is, he CAN’T do anything else at this point. He’s not mentally or emotionally capable of doing anything else. He’s like a punch-drunk boxer with a lot of TBE. He’s swinging wildly and hoping he’ll connect, and his handlers matter no more than anybody else yelling from the sidelines.
I still think there’s a significant possibility of a Biden-at-the-debate moment, at a debate or at a rally or somewhere else in public, where he VERY visibly does something that indicates a real and serious incapacity. His stans would just deny it happened of course, but they’re only about half to two-thirds of his support. There’s another significant chunk who still think he’s capable of the job but who could be shocked out of their complacency. I think this is the main reason they’re doing everything they can to keep him off the trail and entertained at Mag-a-Lardo. (It’s the Truman Show candidacy.)
Certainly can’t count on a breakdown, although every day and every bit of pressure makes it more likely, but if it happens, it’s Game Over
In the meantime, volunteer! postcard! knock on doors! GOTV!!
satby
I sent that to you yesterday AL 😉
Or linked it here; forget which.
Math Guy
@Wapiti: I don’t recall Biden shaking his hand at their last debate. Either way, she should not extend him that courtesy.
TBone
@satby: I saw your link, which I remember because I got the visual from the headline.
Anne Laurie
@satby: Thank you!
(I *do* have my own TPM subscription, though… )
bbleh
@Wapiti: @TBone: concur entirely she shouldn’t, not least because he’s already tried once to use his weight to yank the other person off balance and make them look weak (Justin Trudeau, who was having none of it).
Matt McIrvin
This is also Russia’s primary propaganda tactic: not to make their own leaders look good but to dirty everyone else, and say “You think your shit doesn’t stink? It’s a dirty world.” Used to great effect in Soviet days and even earlier; now it’s RT’s go-to approach.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@bbleh: It’s hard for a lot of people to see Trump in a decisive disqualifying moment because you can’t figure out what the hell he just said. You have to step back from the statement itself and make a higher level judgement.
jonas
@Wapiti: At the last debate, it was agreed there would be no handshaking. I think that comes after the debates in 2020 when Trump had tested positive for Covid and the campaign didn’t disclose it the night of the debate, probably hoping to get Biden sick.
Scout211
That long time Trump volunteer was fired for saying that the race in New Hampshire was not going well and the campaign needed to focus on other battleground states. But Axios this morning in their “scoop” reports that the Trump campaign is doing exactly that.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: It’s the only way to do anything when you refuse to, or are incapable of, improving your own behaviors or situation.
They do it economically and socially too. Just like the Republicans do. Anyone doing well at all needs to be dragged down to their level.
Dorothy A. Winsor
OT and apologies: The ebook of Glass Girl is temporarily on sale for $1.99 at Amazon because the sequel, Dragoncraft, comes out Sept 21. I’m excited. A writer spends a lot of days writing a book in proportion to a few days like this.
Now back to trying to save democracy.
jonas
In addition to what Marshall says, it’s also important to recognize that Trump hates spending money. He views his campaign war chest as “his” money, and if there are PACs out there with tens of millions to spend on flooding the airwaves with negative ads against Harris, why not kick back, relax, and let them do the work while he hits the links and holds the occasional, rambling, incoherent news conference.
JWR
@Wapiti and @jonas: I thought the hand shake had gone the way of the Dodo bird after Clinton and Trump’s first debate.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
100%. And more than just propaganda, it’s actual policy. Anybody with any power in Russia has pretty much figured out that they’re never going to climb to first world status, and if they did, it wouldn’t be a world they’d want to live in anyway. So instead they’ll settle on bringing everybody else crashing down. The entire campaign to break up the West into a bunch of balkanized states governed and pillaged by the Trumps and BoJos of the world is all about this. They want the West to go through its own 1991, not just out of spite, but because it’s the only way they’ll ever have a chance to overtake it.
I rarely have anything nice to say about the PRC, but to the extent that there’s any difference between Russia and China today, it’s that China still seems to think it can win by climbing to the top. Russia just wants to bring everyone else crashing down to the bottom.
Scout211
Let’s make it so. LFG!
Baud
@Scout211:
Even Reagan in 84?
bbleh
@Dorothy A. Winsor: yeah I think it would have to be physical. Like suddenly starting to slur badly and for more than just a few words, or a physical slump, or a petit-mal-type moment where he’s just absent for 20-30 seconds. The nonsensicality of what he says is just part of the package, almost like Dadaist poetry. As long as he tosses in a few code words — border, JY-na, Afghanistan, Obama, anything to trigger the knuckle-draggers — the rest doesn’t matter.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@bbleh: Not just Trudeau. I once saw a montage of all the world leaders he pulled that shit on. Shake, shake, YANK. Trudeau was just the guy who was ready for it.
Kay
I think the analysis is fine. It’s just not new. This has always been what Trump does. The whole thing for all of these races involving Trump has been Trump at 48 with Trump and media and Trump’s campaign team trying to keep his opponent at 48 or bring his opponent down to 48.
It only worked once, btw. Republicans have either lost or barely held ground in every cycle since 2016. They had that one win in 2016 and people have been analyzing it ever since. The “MAGA movement” in terms of getting people elected is a giant flop. The Tea Party did a lot better.
Chris
@Scout211:
Ah, my alma mater.
It’s funny. He very much supported the idea that if Biden had to step down, his replacement could only be Harris, because it was the only way you maintained any form of incumbency advantage. But instead, we’ve ended up in a place where Trump is now being treated as the incumbent rather than Harris, but since incumbency isn’t a good thing right now, the bottom line remains.
TBone
This has been a helpful resource all along (also, vatniksoup.com):
https://voxukraine.org/en/the-network-of-russian-propaganda-what-connects-western-experts-promoting-narratives-beneficial-to-russia
Handy chart!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
From the quoted article:
Was that supposed to be “pleasant surprise”? Text to speech error? Weird brain glitch (I do that, my fingers substituting a similar sounding word as my attention wanders while typing)?
I saw the discussion of code-switching in the overnight thread. It’s one of their weird [*] attacks that (I hope) isn’t landing. It shouldn’t land, because as people observed in the overnight thread, EVERYBODY who dropped a childhood dialect / accent in their adult life does that. Patrick Stewart in his autobiography talks about switching to Yorkshire dialect when he went home. My wife switches to Long Island if in a room with Long Islanders. There were many examples in the thread. It’s not a conscious process, it’s just something humans do.
[*] It’s funny how “weird” just comes up naturally every single time when describing the things they say and do.
zhena gogolia
@bbleh: The focus groups after the debate with Biden were all negative about Trump. It was the media and the Dems who made it all about Biden.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
And half of the people in media focus groups of undecided voters are Republican.
Ohio Mom
All over the U.S., for future reference, reporters are noting the end of the pre-debate handshake. Many years from now, when things have reverted back to the mean (hopefully), there will be a debate where the candidates start by shaking hands and all the talking heads will announce, “This is the first handshake since 2020, when a Covid-infected Donald Trump…”
satby
@Anne Laurie: 👍
lowtechcyclist
Josh Marshall:
Here’s an idea: how about if they include direct quotes of those disordered trains of thought, and leave it up to the reader to ‘deal with them’?
Ohio Mom
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Josh Marshall is famous for his typos.
Yes, there’s lots of code switching that people don’t recognize as such. Among my people, it’s sprinkling your dialog with Yiddish words and phrases. It’s a wink and a nod that we are connected.
Kay
Trump has changed (a little) too in response to the Harris/Walz positivity/joy theme. He now tries to be smarmily ingratiating in Fox interviews.
His attempt to seem “nice” is in many ways more horrifying than his real mean spirited and self centered personality. Reminds me of the Grinch and Cindy Lou Who.
SatanicPanic
@Scout211: not this guy again. I was hoping I’d heard the last of him.
zhena gogolia
I finally watched the clip of Bash asking Harris that disgusting question. She handled it perfectly.
Chris
@TBone:
To me it pretty much comes down to one thing – the GOP. Once you’ve got them, all their assets and useful idiots in politics follow. The MSM which is pathologically incapable of not putting their finger on their scale for the Republicans? Now doing the same for you. The Greens and other supposedly far-left ratfuckers who try to sink the Democrats in every election cycle? Now doing the same for you. Those Democratic centrists or just chickenshits who are constantly pulling punches and/or forcing the party to do the same because bipartisanship means the enemy should always get a vote? Now doing the same for you. Even the average low-information putz on the street who’s used to thinking that if the Republicans are saying this, maybe it’s not true, but at least I have to take it seriously? Now doing the same for you.
Kay
@SatanicPanic:
You’ll never hear the last of him. He had an identical analysis for Biden btw.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
The Trump question about her identity?
kindness
The press normalizing Trump, taking his spoken word salad and translating it into something coherent is just going to have to be something our side rises above. We should point it out and complain, but it can’t be a major campaign component. It’s not like the press and the publishers are ever going to admit their love of Republican daddies.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Yes! “Weird” is just so apt. That’s why it stuck.
SatanicPanic
@Kay: the fact that he predicted Trump winning the popular vote against Hillary Clinton should be big red flag.
CaseyL
Negative advertising has historically worked so I’m not happy that’s going to be the Trump campaign’s focus. Harris-Walz has famously mostly campaigned positively, but I do hope they get some negative advertising in as well.
They don’t even have to make stuff up, or try to extrapolate from known facts. Recent history and the known facts are negative enough: the loss of life from Covid, the economic damage that pre-dated Covid and got exponentially worse during the pandemic, Project 2025, the promise to turn government into a patronage operation… stuff people care about, because it impacts their own daily lives.
NotMax
Nilsson, Think About Your Troubles.
;)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ohio Mom: I switch from English professor to normal human in most situations.
bbleh
@zhena gogolia: oh yeah, and during the debate as well! The “dial” responses went negative pretty much every time the Felon opened his mouth. Other than his stans — who I think make up less than 2/3 of his support — people generally don’t like what they see when they focus on him.
And not saying I thought the debate exposed Biden as “incompetent” the way some would have it, or as the Vichy Times and others have been insisting for OVER A YEAR now. But it WAS a bit of a shock. He looked like an 80-y/o guy who had just been halfway around the world yet again and was just TIRED.
People just don’t think about that possibility, and about how DRAINING that job is, unless it’s shoved in their faces. I think that was a big part of the whole “story” for people: not merely that Biden’s age was an issue but that age IN GENERAL is an issue for that job. And that’s not an entirely bad thing (and I say this as an Old).
SatanicPanic
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: “present surprise “ is when you get a present and it’s a surprise.
Mark’s Bubbie
@Wapiti: Or, if she shakes, she should have an assistant hand her an antiseptic wipe, like on “Monk.” (Love that Tony Shalhoub.)
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Yes.
Kay
@SatanicPanic:
I knew the Biden campaign was tanking when they cited The Fourteen Keys. “Oh fuck, their internal numbers must be brutal”. It’s like saying “the only poll that matters is election day” – it means “we’re losing” :)
I think Harris is in pretty good shape though. I’d rather be her than Donald Trump in this contest.
RevRick
@bbleh: He twice referred to Biden as his opponent in a town hall on Fox in New Hampshire.
zhena gogolia
@bbleh: I had the unhappy experience of wading back into our recent history yesterday, so I’m not going to comment on that, but I’m just saying that I don’t worry about how NORMAL PEOPLE will perceive Trump in the debate. I’m worried about how the media and our own side will react. I hope especially that Harris supporters will push back strongly on any attempt by the media to declare Trump the winner. He won’t be.
zhena gogolia
@Mark’s Bubbie: Let’s get Sharona in there! (Or Natalie, I like them both.)
zhena gogolia
I see we’re not going to be able to let it go. The winners just can’t stop gloating. Buh-bye.
bbleh
@Kay: I think I’d rather be her than him in ANY situation, from cocktail party to post-nuclear-war-hellscape.
(Ok, maybe not at a Klan rally …)
Chris
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I think the reason it stuck is that it so clearly gets under their skin in a way that almost nothing else does. They’ve been laughing off “racist” and “sexist” and even “creep” and “rapist” since forever, but “weird” attacks the very core of their self-identity.
TBone
@TBone: posted downstairs in wrong thread, so reposting:
I wish this Digby post also addressed Putin’s “endorsement” of Kamala Harris made yesterday, but it’s good nonetheless.
https://digbysblog.net/2024/09/05/liz-cheney-patriot/
Please don’t @ me about Liz, I know her allyship is temporary and I also know where she comes from. But she’s doing a good thing at a great time at a great location. And she said the important part in no uncertain terms.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia:
“Tired of so much winning.”
//
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: I certainly am!
UncleEbeneezer
Trump is not out of the woods yet on the documents case (the one that is still the easiest and most likely to yield a conviction once it goes forward). Given how utterly ridiculous Cannon’s dismissal was (the right for DOJ to appoint Special/Independent Counsel is explicitly justified by FOUR different statutes passed by Congress, and upheld by SCOTUS in Nixon), I expect that the 11th Circuit will overturn it and possibly reassign it to another judge. Roger Parloff did a good thread (thread-reader link) on the amicus brief to the court, from numerous attorneys suggesting that the case needs to be reassigned:
bbleh
@zhena gogolia: relax, not gloating — I routinely argued NOT to push Biden out — just saying that it WAS a shock to watch, in large part because it was partly physical, and that’s the kind of shock that I think a big chunk of the Felon’s supporters would need to start wavering.
Mousebumples
Reposting from downstairs –
Postcards updates –
I’m off to my day job, but let’s keep putting in the work!
TBone
@Chris: Donvict said “not weird” so many times even Hannity was uncomfortable (you could see how weird he felt) last night 😆
SatanicPanic
@Kay: Wow I didn’t know the campaign was citing him. That is unnerving.
i agree on Harris tho- he’s probably right. But like, anyone could see that she’s a strong candidate
Matt McIrvin
@zhena gogolia: I think we’re mostly picking on this Lichtman character, who I find fascinating as an example of how easy it is to look infallible to inattentive people if you keep moving the goalposts. It’s nice that he’s bullish for our side, but, eh, don’t read too much into it. If things change and it looks like Trump is winning at the 11th hour, he’ll proclaim that the Keys have shifted–it’s what he does.
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
Maybe you can explain the rules to me. You are allowed to announce (yet again) that disloyal Democrats brought Biden down but anyone who states a different view is “gloating” and not permitted to express that view.
Steve LaBonne
@TBone: Also too, the Tenet Media indictment (see Heather Cox Richardson this morning) documents that the main Trumper talking points bear a curiously strong resemblance to the ones the Russians have been feeding them. Just a coincidence I’m sure.
TBone
@UncleEbeneezer: excellent analysis, thank you!
UncleEbeneezer
@Ohio Mom: Any person who has ever gone on a job interview has code-switched. Any one who works with kids code-switches. Etc. We all do it, all the damn time.
TBone
@Steve LaBonne: the ONE day I skipped reading her first thing 😂 thank you, I will go to my email and do that reading!
Kay
@SatanicPanic:
Klain – the former chief of staff.
UncleEbeneezer
@Mousebumples: Nice! I still have 75 Nevada postcards to write but I will probably wait until next week since my wrist is really sore from a tennis injury (I think).
Jackie
@CaseyL: Negative advertising has always been TCFG’s go-to, so nothing new there.
GQP candidates also go low and dirty. It’s their MO.
SatanicPanic
@Kay: 🤦♂️
lowtechcyclist
@Scout211:
Actually, eight at most: he failed to predict GWB’s win in 2000. Afterwards, he decided that his keys really only predicted the popular vote. Then he said they predicted a Trump win in 2016, but Trump didn’t win the popular vote.
I understand he’s since reversed himself again, and his keys now predict who actually wins the election. He likely realized that predictions about the popular vote winner wouldn’t be of much interest anymore.
TBone
@Chris: 👍
BR
This debate is a funny situation where neither side is lowering expectations. I suppose playing the expectations game only matters to people who are really tuned into politics and who care about political news coverage. But if lots of people tune in to watch, as they probably will, then all that matters is how the 90 minutes on stage go.
Kay
@SatanicPanic:
I wish her state polls were a little stronger but breaking 50 nationally is a very good, I think. I also think she’s kept a lot of states in play where Trump has a much narrower path. I can live with 2 blue wall plus 2 from the south/west column. Trump contesting scares me a lot less this time out because he’s not in power. I’ll predict right now that his “contesting results” peters out a lot faster than last time. I love Democrats but we always fight the last war – obviously a lot more difficult to preempt new threats.
Kay
@SatanicPanic:
I also think we’re going to take the House so contesting in any substantive way will be curtailed by that.
The big story of this cycle IMO is how strong down ballot D’s are- they’re not “supposed” to be this strong. They’ve had three good cycles. I think it’s a real indictment of “MAGA” as a political movement. They really don’t win elections. I mean, the one big win in 2016 and not much after that.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: The “Keys” are so subjective that it’s pretty easy to phrase them such that they predict a win by whoever your gut says is ahead right now, and I think that’s what he generally does. In spirit this appears to be a “fundamentals” model, and political-science “fundamentals” models based on objectively checkable data don’t have as wonderful a track record, but I suspect that’s mostly because they are objectively checkable.
BR
Kay, I remember you saying one of your kids was Bernie-curious at some point. I was thinking recently that Walz can bring in some of the Bernie-curious young men (those who aren’t died in the wool DSA / horseshoe lefty types). How is Walz playing in your observation?
PST
@Ohio Mom:
And sometimes a way to bagel a new acquaintance, in case you’re curious and not sure.
Math Guy
@Kay: Similar to DeSantis’ attempts at laughter.
BR
@Math Guy:
I don’t subject myself to Trump interviews if I can avoid it, but Colbert and Seth Meyers played some clips in their shows this week and Trump just seemed low energy in a way that he wasn’t in the past. He was always incoherent but now he’s mumbly and incoherent. I imagine he takes a stimulant for his rallies, and probably will for the debate, so he won’t seem low energy in those settings, but there’s a definite change.
Kay
@BR:
My youngest supported Bernie. He’s entering his last year in college, has a gf that seems long term and he is very focused on life after school so he is less involved politically now.
My middle son, the IBEW guy, also supported Bernie but is now more of a mainstream Dem. He’s a poll worker, even. He likes Harris – he hasn’t mentioned Walz. I asked him if his co worker electricians liked Harris and he said “they think she’s good looking” which I thought was amusing – it’s true. She is good looking. Can’t hurt, right?
I felt that Harris would be a very strong candidate because she’s warm – it’s unusual in a pol. I think it’s genuine and people react to it. She has real charisma and it’s her own. I think she’s kind of fascinating, really.
lowtechcyclist
@kindness:
What GOP daddies? There aren’t any, anymore. Just a bunch of crazies who’ve all gone off the deep end together.
“Press and publishers” are people who are supposedly paying attention. The economy? The deficit? The Dems have been both the most effective and the most responsible party for decades now. Bill Clinton even balanced the budget for four years in a row. “Oh, but the GOP is the party of foreign policy and a strong defense.” Not since our invasion of Iraq went sideways 20 years ago.
How can anyone who’s been paying attention see the GOP as ‘daddies’ unless their idea of a daddy is a frequently unemployed drunk who spouts nonsense and blames everyone else for his failures?
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
People believe what they want to believe.
Kay
@BR:
We just got back from Copenhagen – we go a lot, our son lives there- and the Danes we have met over the past couple of years were very apprehensive over the US election. Ukraine is a bigger deal there than it is here. They see Russia as a real threat so are anti Trump in a self interested way. They also have their own far Right that is growing.
cain
@Baud: that should be a warning sign to the GOP 😅
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I’ve been seeing a lot of fretting that claims that the situation is way worse this time than in 2020, and knock on wood but I don’t see it. They have more county officials lined up to try to block it, but that’s because the state approach will likely only work in Georgia this time. The track record of trying to nullify a whole state election because some county official refuses to certify it is not strong.
I do worry about Georgia– hope our prospects don’t depend on it, because the Republicans are going to try to move heaven and earth to bring it back one way or another.
Chris
@Kay:
One of my biggest fears when Trump was elected was that he’d end NATO. I’m still kind of amazed it survived his four years in office. Don’t think it’ll survive another four.
sdhays
@Chris: Chinese nationalist strategic thinking is MUCH longer term than anyone else. 2000 years of considering themselves the center of civilization sets the perspective: their natural place is the top country in the world, and they’ve just had some temporary setbacks. If they work at it, they’ll resume their rightful place eventually (is their perspective).
Russia’s history is more brutal and chaotic. They are very much convinced they deserve to be rulers, but aren’t much interested in building anything to do it. Brutality doesn’t take as much work or planning.
PST
@Kay:
Alan Lichtman is about the same age as Donald Trump, so there is a limit to how much longer either one will keep popping up every four years. I don’t mean any ill will by that. I knew Lichtman in 1971-72 when I was a freshman and he was close to getting his PhD. Nice guy, but the keys to the presidency is, in my opinion, a good example of that era’s misuse of statistical methods by social scientists. Back then, with computer power and programs like SPSS just becoming available, there was a tendency to toss every plausible variable into a multiple regression analysis, see which ones produced a good fit, and imagine that you had discovered something significant. Econometricians were the worst culprits but not the only ones. It eventually became clear that models produced this way were not reliably predictive.
cain
@Kay:
No what they have been winning is the judiciary. Even that is mixed results.
Kicking the vermin out of state houses is going to be key in the next 4 years.
sdhays
@Chris: The Trump presidency really demonstrated to me how worthless our treaty system is set up. I mean, Andrew Jackson already demonstrated that, but that was in the early 1800’s. It’s incredibly difficult to ratify a treaty, but any President can just end it if they have a particularly bad shit one day.
Problematic!
BR
@Kay:
That’s good to hear. Yeah, there was a random “man on the street” interview I read an anecdote about right after Biden dropped out. It was an interview with a Latino man who had been a swing voter in the past. He said he was going to vote for Harris because then “North America will have the most attractive leaders in the whole world.” It’s not nothing. Even Trump’s lizard brain gets this, but he seems to think that saying “I’m more attractive than Harris” is a good idea.
BR
@Kay:
Speaking of warmth, I posted this before, but I really like the cake video of Harris from last week:
https://www.tiktok.com/@kamalaharris/video/7408711099140394271
There are remixes:
https://www.tiktok.com/@casadimusic/video/7409046409644657966
Gin & Tonic
@Kay:
It is.
BR
@Matt McIrvin:
The flip side, I think, is that if the Georgia margin this year is bigger than Biden’s in 2020, I would bet that Kemp, who wants to be the future of the GOP rather than playing second fiddle to Trump, will quietly let the chips fall where they may (while publicly sounding supportive to Trump). He’s clearly ambitious and there’s no love lost between him and Trump.
Betty Cracker
The most recent Pod Save America podcast features a longish interview with Doug Emhoff.
Hungry Joe
POSTCARD UPDATE
Postcards to Swing States:
Yesterday — 1*
Running total — 172
* All day I didn’t get around to writing any, but just before going to bed I dashed off one. It was like laying down a bunt with two out ninth, and the opposing pitcher has a no-hitter going.
Shalimar
Republicans destroy things because it excites the base and the rich keep whatever is left, part 1435657457.
Kay
@Gin & Tonic:
Right. It’s topical in a way I haven’t seen in the US though- other than in Cleveland. It extends to Russian expats in Denmark. The Danish norm is to be quiet on public transportation – they’re really indulgent with children but they expect adults to be very considerate of others. They complain that Russians are loud on the metro – you get the sense it’s a larger complaint – that Russians are “out of bounds” – a very Danish disapproval of excess or intrusion- literally encroaching on their space.
Ksmiami
@Kay: attractiveness during a televised debate is huge
Jeffro
(reposted from the thread below) – two happy topics:
(for that second one: I wish we were in a better position to capitalize on them fighting…but hopefully it’s bad enough on the R side that our candidate can squeak in! )
WaterGirl
@bbleh: telling some who is upset to relax or calm down is the most infuriating thing someone can do.
The Thin Black Duke
@Ksmiami: Yes, unfortunately. As an example, people who listened to the JFK/Nixon presidential debates on the radio instead of on TV thought Nixon “won”.
Ohio Mom
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I had a friend who often got stuck in English professor mode. When in groups, her husband would try gently to get her to turn it off.
Frankensteinbeck
@lowtechcyclist:
The ones the press knows must exist because gutting the safety net is such a brave, responsible act. I still remember with horror watching a table of major newscasters nodding solemnly to the declaration that the middle class would have to learn to live without ‘entitlements’.
There are a lot of reasons the press gropes relentlessly for an excuse to see the batshit modern GOP as the Daddy Party, but a big one is that their conventional wisdom is thick with abuser logic, and Republicans have been abusers at least since Reagan.
trollhattan
Just like with Donny, assume everything out of Vlad’s yap is the opposite.
As if, dude.
“I like strong lady. Grrr.”
Jeffro
@Kay:
amen! it’s downright creepy.
What’s funny is how he’s STILL obsessing over being called “weird”. He tried to defend himself and Vance to Hannity at that taped ‘town hall’ yesterday…didn’t fly. Of course not. They are weird, creepy dudes.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
I think what has people fretting is that last time’s coup attempt, however half-assed, was unprecedented, and that the Republican reaction, as with Watergate, was largely initial shock and failure to go along with it, but then a reassessment after the fact leading to a decision that yeah, actually, we’re okay with this. Which means from now on the reaction to every election is going to be “it looks good, but we won’t know for sure until election day and probably after when we see what kinds of lawless shenanigans the right-wingers try to pull. Will it work this time? Hope not. But the threat is there, and it’s going to stay there in every election for a long time.”
(And some of those right-wingers are the Supreme Court, which has already shown a willingness to decide an election by fiat, and that was in a much less extreme and overtly anti-democratic era).
Chris
@sdhays:
When you look at it that way, it makes sense. Because if China’s perspective is “we’ve been on top before and we will be again,” then Russia’s equivalent would be “we’ve never been on top, there’s always been somebody thwarting us, we’ve been treated very very unfairly, most unfairly treated country in history, and if we can’t win the game we’re just going to flip over the table and end it for everyone.”
Jeffro
@Mousebumples: that’s awesome!
I’m doing 10 a day, early in the day, each day until I get my 300 done. It’s done wonders for my attitude re: the election.
Jeffro
if trumpov is re-elected, we’ll be out of NATO before Valentine’s Day 2025
SuzieC
@Jackie: What can they throw at Harris that hasn’t already been out there? The birther stuff is old news, the blow job thing is crass and repulsive, and the commie stuff is just what they say about every Dem.
Mousebumples
@UncleEbeneezer: you’ve got this! Take care of yourself, too. 😊
@Hungry Joe: nice hitting streak!
BR
@trollhattan:
He is such a bad liar. Must be why they’re paying each right wing youtuber *hundreds of thousands of dollars per month* to help Trump and parrot the Russian line.
Mousebumples
@Jeffro: that’s the way! And I agree. I can’t affect much outside of my sphere, but postcards are my little something extra to do.
Jeffro
100%
I don’t know if it was here or on another site, but someone recommended Howard French’s “Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power” to me a few years ago, and he laid it all out really, really well. Definitely worth folks’ time.
BR
@SuzieC:
I hope they continue with the birther stuff. Not only is it old, but I think if they keep pushing the Dred Scott stuff against her, I hope it will solidify support in the black community and other non-white communities (where there are pockets of weakness) because it’s basically saying that anyone who’s non-white is not a citizen.
Chris
@Kay:
Russians have a reputation abroad that makes the Ugly American stereotype look flattering.
One of the funniest moments of my study abroad in Egypt came at a weekend in Sharm El Sheikh, a town on the Red Sea that Russian tourists use the same way American tourists use the Caribbean islands. I sit down in a restaurant, the waiter comes up to me and just starts speaking Russian. I correct him about my nationality. Him, in English, with visible relief: “Ah! American! Thank God!”
This was 2008. I never got a compliment on my nationality, even as a joke. “I like American people just fine, but I don’t like American government” was the go-to phrase. I was definitely thinking “man, Russian tourists must be real dicks for me to get that kind of welcome.”
Kay
@Jeffro:
His new “smile” – ugh. Like a crocodile. Reptilian.
There’s a LOT of unhappiness on the Right now. It’s two camps – the Trump true believers are bitching about the campaign and the less cultish are bitching about Trump himself.
Democrats in blue areas see Republicans as this lockstep group but it really isn’t true. They have as much or more infighting as we do. I think the unhappiness is going to reduce turnout for them. They’re just SOUR on this whole election. I can understand it. They thought they were cruising to victory and could just fucking punch Biden over and over and overnight the whole thing changed. I would be mad myself were I a Republican. It was so close! Snatched away.
Captain C
@bbleh:
This, of course, including the FTFNYT, probably titling the article, “[Dear Leader TCFG]’s Verbal Innovations Flummox DEI-Hire Harris”
(Followed by a week of “Why we’re not racist, you are” editorials and columns, including by Bobo and Chunky Reese Witherspoon.)
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: It’s been a historical idea with the press that the R’s are the responsible, daddy party that reins in the excesses of the D’s, who they see as the permissive, mommy party. The roles have changed, but the press is still following the old template.
Ohio Mom
@Chris: I’ve heard the China thing about being comfortable with waiting centuries until they return to their rightful place as the center of the world — the first time years ago from a pediatrician speaking on cultural sensitivity in medical settings.
It appears to be in their national self-concept. We Americans have Mom, baseball and apple pie, the Chinese have Our time will come.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
Honestly, I think the bottom line is pretty crude: “rich East Coasters vote Republican” is one of the oldest tribal-partisan associations in politics, and most of the pundits, the owners, and the managers are rich East Coasters.
SatanicPanic
@SuzieC: “She is lying about working at McDonald’s”
Kay
@Chris:
It makes me laugh because it’s just so Danish to be “they’re loud on the train” – bitching about this over and over – but really they mean “they’re excessive, violent people who will overrun us“.
True of Danish Americans too. Small cultural norms are proxy for much bigger ideas, so hugely important.
Ruckus
SFB is reaching the end of cognitive life. He’s aging out. People do this for different reasons and different ages. SFB seemingly has reached that age, and it’s likely from stress and from his personality. He’s always been the odd man out, was when he was “growing up,” which of course limited his “growth.” He’s always thought he was more than he’s even close to being as a human. Which means he never actually learned how. He’s always thought that money is what made him great, but money doesn’t think or act or understand. It’s money. And because he’s always thought it was his money that made him, any time he’s in a situation where money may talk but really doesn’t have the power he thinks it does – of making him a better human. It is a fault of many that don’t actually earn their way. And he’s never earned even doodly squat.
Soprano2
I’ve seen this in MO. The R’s had a supermajority in the state legislature this year, but they were unable to get their #1 priority done (an amendment making it a lot harder to amend the state constitution) because of their equivalent of the “Freedom Caucus” in the state House and Senate. They held up must-pass stuff so much that thank God they didn’t have enough time to get that abomination passed and on the ballot. I think R’s would function better here if they didn’t have a supermajority – it makes them lazy.
Captain C
@TBone:
So stealing this.
SatanicPanic
@Kay: I agree. I’m not as concerned about election theft this time. If the election is called for Harris right off I think Trump is going to have a hard time even finding people who want to get themselves into legal trouble for him, again.
Soprano2
@Ruckus: Greg Sargent wrote in the New Republic (here) that since Mike Barnicle went on Morning Joe and exploded about how the press refuses to talk about what a problem TCFG’s mental state and deterioration is he thinks the press might start to talk about it more. Funny how since Biden left the race the press pretty much quit talking about whether the other candidate is too old.
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: Trump feels no joy, and he seems to think that showing his teeth is a smile. He truly has no idea. So he is baring his teeth as a predator, and thinking he’s smiling. There’s no hiding a sociopath. He’s even bad at mimicking acceptable behavior.
TBone
Absolutely hysterically funny Story of the Day! 😆
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/woman-who-got-trump-tattoo-on-forehead-now-wants-to-erase-it-asks-strangers-for-help-removing-controversial-ink/ar-AA1q1cr7
REGERTS!!! 😆 How much money do you think she sent Donvict?
Mr. Bemused Senior
The smug closed-mouth smirk is a dead giveaway. With a “thumb[s] up.”
I hope the image of him standing at a grave in that position gets more play. It is a perfect capture of his soul.
SatanicPanic
@Soprano2: The media is really dropping the ball on covering his incoherence.
I know there’s previously been a lot of talk about de-platforming Trump, but at this point, maybe we need to platform him. If the media isn’t going to cover it, maybe voters can just hear it.
BR
Ooh, I like this — CNBC dude talking about how Trump’s economic plans will cause stagflation. That’s a dirty and feared word in the business world. We need to talk about it as well. If it catches on among business types, it’s devastating.
Geminid
During July’s long Biden/Harris debate, I basically took the view that switching to Harris would be risky. I knew Harris was well-qualified to be President, but I believed she was not so well-known to the general public and I feared that the Republican poison machine would tear her down.
The switch was made, and I came to see my fears were exaggerated. This reminded me of a favorite passage in Ulysses Grant’s Memoirs where Grant described his first Civil War campaign, in late 1861. A guerilla regiment under the command of Confederate Colonel Thomas Harris had been raiding eastern Missouri and Grant was ordered take his own regiment and drive Harris away.
Grant had demonstrated his physical courage several times during the Mexican War, but he found that command responsibility required a different sort of courage:
Grant halted at the top of the hill and saw a deserted camp. Col. Harris and his men were gone.
I cite this passage with reference to my own fears and no one else’s.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Scout211
Okay, jackals. I feel sufficiently chastised for posting a silly link to Alan Lichtman’s “prediction.” Sorry, but I thought that my point of “let’s make it so” communicated that I was not posting it as a fact, but just as something positive in the morning that we need to do the work to actually make happen. But okay, he’s a crank and a kook. I get it.
BR
@Scout211:
Don’t feel bad about it — there are lots of forecasters, and they’ll have opinions. I think for once it’s a good thing for our side to feel like we’re winning. Because optimism is contagious, and I think we’ve learned the lesson of 2016.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@TBone:
Sounds like she doesn’t regret the tattoo or her support for TFG. Just doesn’t like the attention she gets for putting a T***P sign literally in the face of everyone she meets. So no sympathy from me.
For a brief moment a couple of days ago I saw a flagpole in my neighborhood and thought my T***py neighbor had taken down his T***P 2024 flag. But alas, I was in a different block, and he’s still flying that thing.
SatanicPanic
@Scout211: Sorry for jumping on you about that. I hope Alan’s right, obviously.
Omnes Omnibus
What they said!
Captain C
@WaterGirl:
I don’t think he ever really had to even think about doing so until he ran for President.
TBone
@Scout211: don’t sweat the small stuff, I saw your let’s make it happen! quite clearly. You’re good to go!
TBone
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
And that is precisely why I find the whole thing so laughable!
Sorry about your neighbor and that fleeting false hope! I too had similar hopes with my rumpy neighbors who had removed all their offensive campaign signs. Then they put some back up a few weeks ago…ugh
Hoodie
@Kay: There’s probably a good bit of buyer’s remorse among that group, e.g., think about non-insane NC Republicans (I know a few) stuck with Mark Robinson as their candidate for governor. He’s a fucking weirdo and his support seems to be collapsing.
Stuart Stevens was interviewed the other night and said he thought there’s a good chance that Trump’s support will collapse towards mid October because he’s not trying to engage any new voters in any serious way. For example, good luck getting women; everyone knows he’s lying about paying for IVF and he’s obviously hemmed in by the anti-abortion zealots as evidenced by his flopping on the FL abortion amendment. The non-MAGA elements of the GOP may leave that portion of the ballot empty if it becomes clear he’s going to lose, as that’s really the only way to get rid of him. A bad debate – which is very possible given his degraded mental state and Harris’ proven skills as a trial lawyer – could be a catalyst for that.
K-Mo
I love the Lurie article, especially the part about Trump and oxygen. Actually he could have fed the press part through the oxygen lens, too. Thinking back on the CNN interview, the remarkable thing is that there was so little about it that was memorable. The one thing you remember is that she totally dismissed the race question. That didn’t just deny oxygen to Trump- it denied it to the promo crew at CNN. They designed the show to intersperse short, dramatic clips of Harris with Dana Bash’s breathless buildup at various points, and there wasn’t much to work with. “When we come back we’ll hear the banal details of the conversation Harris had with Biden on the phone. … get this, *she was making pancakes * (oohahhgasp)”
TBone
@Hoodie:
My Donvict Theme of the Day!
brantl
It’s heartening that KH has figured out how to let the gas out of the Orange Fart Cloud; it’s disheartening that they are the exact methods needed to defeat a schoolyard bully.
TBone
@Captain C: sprinkle it all over the place! 😊
Steve LaBonne
@Soprano2: They can’t talk about a thing if they can’t bothsides it. So pathetic.
TBone
@brantl: I been here talking about making them spit their chiclets since I started commenting at BJ.
It’s the only way they’ll understand.
SFAW
@WaterGirl:
I saw that line, and for some reason, I thought of the Kzin, and then thought Donvict is not really a predator.
But then I reconsidered, because he truly is. It’s just that he preys on persons who don’t have enough money/power/status/what-have-you to be able to defend themselves. Were he in a “fair fight” with an actual predator, he’d be yesterday’s lunch meat.
rikyrah
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Thank you.
Bought 🤗
TBone
@TBone: Even Putin agrees 😆😆😆
Ksmiami
@BR: Bloomberg pans his tariff/weak dollar plans today…
Dorothy A. Winsor
@rikyrah: No, thank you! I hope you enjoy it.
Kay
@Hoodie:
I saw that. Not the interview – I lurk on Twitter sometimes. I think it’s a possibility.
My sense here locally (Trump 75% county) was also that the military dust ups hurt Trump with Republicans. The Medal of Honor disrespect. Republicans know it too- that’s why they did the Arlington stunt. I know we always say “nothing matters” but instead of absolute slogans like that I think we should look to smaller damage to him. There isn’t going to be some magic political “kill shot” that just does away with him. It’s inch by inch.
They’re sniping at each other because they’re losing. It’s when Democrats fight too.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
One of the first things in politics, be very careful about bringing up the opponents bad faults if your candidate has them in a much higher level.
And here, today, their candidate is all the time on the crap side of candidates. He’s old – and obviously aging out. Now we all get older but there is a difference between getting older and aging out. And SFB is aging out. Take this from someone not much younger than him who lives in a 55+ apartment complex. This weekend one of the ladies that lives here is having a party for her 90th birthday. Another lady just had her 98th birthday. About 1/2 my neighbors are retired, hell, I’m retired. The average age here is 70+.
My point is that we all age, some age faster, some age worse, shitforbrains is doing both. Why some think he will make ANY kind of president other than the worst ever should amaze me. But then I think of staunch conservatives I’ve known and am not amazed in the least. They seem to think that they want to go backwards but what they are asking for is to go backasswards. It’s not a good move in the least and it always ends up worse.
There is a reason I call him shitforbrains. And it’s getting more and more obvious by the minute
Second point. This is politics, wide open and out in front of everyone. Republicans do not seem to have ever wanted any one not an old fart, that would never want to change anything, make anything better or give anyone a hand up as their candidate, no matter his age. Democrats want improvement, better, not to travel backwards in time, as that never works.
Another Scott
@Geminid: Nice.
Just so you know, you weren’t alone in those fears and in your joy that things have turned out so well afterwards.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Jinchi
Do they still do that post Covid? I wonder what the debate rules are.
Manyakitty
@rikyrah: morning! 🌅
StringOnAStick
Seems to me the reason they are going negative on Harris is because tRump is such a woman hater, he is incapable of doing anything else. At this point he is so addled the campaign people are in Hail Mary mode and just aiming their erratic human missile and hoping he doesn’t explode before November.
Kay
Someone on Twitter wrote that RFK Jr looks like a character in a horror movie and now I can’t unsee that. I loved horror movies as a kid and teenager – I no longer understand why I loved them.
It’s true. He has the face that is revealed when the slasher takes his mask off.
Chris
@SFAW:
If this were The Godfather, he’d be a Tattaglia.
Chris
@Kay:
I’d never actually bothered to look up what RFK Jr. looked like until some time in the last few weeks.
At which point I was like “Jesus Christ, and we thought Trump looked bad!”
Ruckus
@StringOnAStick:
Too late, that fuse is already lit. The explosion is already happening. It will likely be a slow motion explosion but it is progressing. Take it from this old fart, it ain’t going well in any way, shape or form for SFB.
Geminid
@Ksmiami: Last month Oil Price had an article examining Trump’s tariff plans. The conclusion was that if carried out they would depress the world economy and probably cause a recession.
TBone
@Ruckus: 🖤 warms the cockles of my black heart
Manyakitty
@Ruckus: like many things, his deterioration will happen slowly, then all at once. Hoping he bursts into a cloud of man tan and Cheeto dust on stage at the debate.
Soprano2
@BR: Optimism is contagious; people want to be on the winning side. That’s one reason TCFG never admits he lost anything.
Kay
@Chris:
There’s something brutal about his face. Genuinely scary.
Geminid
@Kay: I follow some Republican Ukraine Hawks on Twitter and most of them say they will not vote for Trump. They regard support for Ukraine and Nato as paramount issues worth defecting over. This is not a large group numerically, but they are otherwise reliable Republican voters and Trump can’t afford to lose many of them.
Jinchi
Republicans might take the kill shot themselves if they are stupid enough to shut down the government weeks before the election ( and they just might be).
Soprano2
@Steve LaBonne: Well, in a way they could “bothsides” it, because they could reference it with Biden dropping out. I think they don’t want to because many of them are still hoping TCFG will win, although I think maybe they’re thinking covering Harris wouldn’t be so bad.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@SFAW: My wife the cat person never read any Larry Niven, but I’ve described the Kzin to her, including the “smile = challenge” thing, and she loves it. I also told her about one story where human slaves were used as nannies, and had introduced the concept of balls of string as playthings, which the adults also found strangely fascinating. That cracked her up and she mentions it frequently.
When I heard about The Former Guy trying for a smiling delivery, my mind went to this.
JustRuss
Man, I need to write a book about our 4th estate: None Dare Call It Bias.
It is bias. They may not be doing it because they love Trump, but what’s in their hearts doesn’t matter. When you edit a raging buffoon to make him fit the normal candidate mold, you’re being dishonest in that candidate’s favor. That’s bias.
Chris
@Geminid:
Neocons are the one faction that I could actually see flipping from Republican to Democrat. They’re probably not thrilled with what they see in the Democratic Party either, but Trump is something else.
Sadly, they don’t bring many voters with them. (And their influence in political circles took a hit from their 2000s shit shows, too).
dexwood
@Captain C:
It’s a good one I’ve been seeing elsewhere for a couple of weeks.
locanicole
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thanks for the heads up. Starting it now.
Chris
@JustRuss:
The contrast with how they treat Democratic politicians is what makes it bias. You know how the one Biden quote from the debate that they repeated far and wide was the one where he was cut off before he could finish his sentence? Compare and contrast with the number of Trump quotes that they’ve cleaned up to make it sound like what he “probably” meant.
Soprano2
@Ruckus: I’ve come to think this is correct. Last week a two year old pic of my husband with my late cat Gary came up in my FB memories, and I was shocked by how much he’s aged in the past two years. His hair was still partly brown two years ago; now it’s completely white. Being sick, even if it’s not a visible sickness, puts age on you. We all know TCFG has to be unhealthy with his poor habits. I’ve wondered if he’s had small strokes and doesn’t even know it.
Kay
@Geminid:
Oh, i hope so. There’s a fortess protecting the harbor at Copenhagen. They built it after England attacked them in 1800 and again in 1807. It’s still completely intact – one can take a boat out there and just wander around. Just wild to think of them as genuinely apprehensive of an invasion/occupation again.
JWR
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I mean, even Rodger ratf*cker Stone had the good taste to put that ridiculous Nixon tattoo on his back. And yes, I know that “good taste” is asking a lot of those two words.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@locanicole: I hope you enjoy it!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ruckus: You really know how to cheer a girl up, Ruckus! And I mean that unironically.
Chris
@Kay:
There are still people alive who remember the last one, even if they’re almost gone.
Geminid
@Chris: The Ukraine Hawks I read seem more likely to join the ranks of the Independent/Unaffiliated voters. The larger group seems to be a third of the electorate these days. But once they vote for a Democrat they might decide they like it and stick around.
Many in the “#Country Not Party” crowd say they intend to vote for Harris and then come back to wrest control of the Party from the radicals. They’ll find plenty of allies, but it will still be a tough fight that won’t culminate until 2028 at the earliest.
JWR
@K-Mo:
Yes! And I completely accepted Bash’s decision to let it go.
Hoodie
@Chris: They’re a small faction but there are a lot of neocon-adjacent Republicans. For example, there are the business types who know that the shit that Trump’s proposing is ridiculous and dangerous. Tariffs would be anathema to that group. It seems that Trump is increasingly leaning on the wackier parts of the GOP coalition, e.g., fundamentalist evangelicals and alt-right bros. The neocons and the business types may realize that those people are very dangerous to the things they hold dear, much more than a Dem who raises the capital gains rate a few points.
PST
@Scout211: Oh, gosh, I don’t think anyone was criticizing you for posting Lichtman’s prediction. I for one have been waiting to see when he would finally get around to it, so I appreciated the tip.
pluky
@TBone: Tactical error, don’t use your opponent’s framing. People don’t hear the “not”, just the reinforcement of “weird”.
Funny how this was often a failure on the Blue in the past.
Paul in KY
@Kay: It was a wise choice (IMO) for Pres. Biden to give it up & let VP Harris take over.
Geminid
@Hoodie: That point was implied by the Oil Price article I referred to at #171. Oil Price is an industry magazine, but they know demand is a critical component of oil prices. The last thing their readers want is a worldwide recession. They can deal with regulation but they cannot create demand.
planetjanet
@Kay: You just provided a perfect example of what @zhena gogolia was citing.
Captain C
@Chris:
And Putin his Barzini.
sdhays
@Ohio Mom: China’s name in its native language is “Central Country” because for so much of their history, they were the center of civilization.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
It’s just that he preys on persons who don’t have enough money/power/status/what-have-you to be able to defend themselves. Were he in a “fair fight” with an actual predator, he’d be yesterday’s lunch meat.
Something to always remember. He’s not really as smart as he thinks he is, as in no where near as. He had the ability to be reasonably smart, he chose smart ass as his desired end result and we see that he was somewhat successful at that.
Matt McIrvin
@BR: Bernie has been doing fundraising spots for Harris. Don’t know if they’re doing anything else with him but he seems all in, which helps.
different-church-lady
@TBone: If she starts a Go Fund Me to get some mental health treatment I might chip in a tenner.
Ruckus
@Kay:
She smiles genuinely and laughs out loud. This shows up in 2 ways. To some she will seem a bit less serious. To others she will seem more relatable and actually more serious because she easily shows both sides. A lot of politicians are more subdued, at least in public. She seems a touch more human because she replies to the reality in front of her. I remember many officers that I met in the navy, always stern face. But I had one captain that would laugh and joke with me, an enlisted person, and that was just unusual that he actually retained his humanity. It showed in all aspects of his job. He easily earned the respect of his crew. I see a similar aspect of Kamala Harris. She is a real human being, not a statue. I may or may not always agree with her but she is a true leader, an actual human being in a tough job.
Ruckus
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
He has a soul? Well blow me down, I would never have suspected.
I always thought he was just a semi life like mannequin.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus:
Karl Rove really turned that upside down–he discovered that actually you can win this way. Attack your opponent on YOUR candidate’s faults, but get yours in first. It tends to make their attacks look like weak comebacks and neutralizes the issue. The media’s love of “balance” will establish a double standard in which the other side’s weakness seems as bad as yours.
It especially helps if your guy is really brazen about it, because there’s still an idea that “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup” and a lot of people kind of like a rascal who gets away with stuff.
Chris
@Captain C:
Bingo.
@Ruckus:
The main danger from him (and for that matter from his entire faction long before he led it) is that being smart doesn’t get you nearly as far as it should in a meritocratic world. Dumb people with a lot of money, power, connections, and general impunity will go a lot farther than many smart people.
It’s how even most relatively functional governments or corporations plod along; the people running them aren’t geniuses, but as long as they can avoid being total fucking morons, and as long as they don’t face a real run of bad luck, they can more or less stay afloat. And even when they do fuck up, all their peers are there to try and help them back up, because the last thing anyone wants is to live in a world where there are real consequences for people like them fucking up.
Anyway
@Kay: The anxiety (re Russia) was definitely palpable on a recent visit to Tbilisi . They have elections in October and were not happy with the choices. The ruling party – “Georgian Dream” was regularly referred to as “Georgian Nightmare”, everyone we spoke with was very anti-Russian and to coin a phrase “not going back”. They too spoke of increase in Russian expats.
There were many Ukraine flags flying side-by-side with the Georgian flag and lots of Fuck Russia graffiti.
Chris
@Anyway:
An acquaintance on Facebook the other day put up a picture of a Georgian flag, an EU flag, and a Ukrainian flag, all next to each other in chalk on a city wall. IIRC she has some connection to Georgia, so I assume that’s where it came from.
What’s the unhappiness about the choices? Where do the different parties align on the Russia thing?
TBone
@pluky: 👍😆 he can’t help himself!
TBone
@different-church-lady: 😆 that would require a level of self-awareness that is obviously beyond her ability!
Anyway
The ruling party is authoritarian, cozy with Russia and wants to ban/limit democratic processes. There’s an outsized billionaire oligarch calling the shots – recently there were huge protests against a repressive bill but it got rammed though anyway — and on and on. They have hopes that the Prime Minister will turn out to be a force for good but it’s not easy.
Kay
@planetjanet:
I didn’t bring it up – she did.
I don’t agree that Democrats treated Biden unfairly or tanked his candidacy out of pique or jealousy or an attemt to keep Harris out. I do not think that is what happened, so I don’t think Democrats need a preemptive scolding on any criticism of Harris’s future performance. If I want to criticize her debate performance, I will, despite this white knuckled grip on the dialogue here lately. You, of course, are free not to criticize and to disagree with me. In fact, I can almost guarantee that if I criticize Harris there will be a chorus of BJ commenters who tell me I’m disloyal. I don’t care.
I am not, actually, an unpaid political operative for the Democratic Party. I reject that idea of political participation. I’m a citizen who is also a Democrat and if I think a Democrat is underperforming or corrupt or incompetent or impaired I reserve the right to say so.
If you don’t want responses to Biden commentary then don’t do Biden commentary on a political blog.
Ruckus
The rethuglican party has really shot it’s wad with shitforbrains.
Because he is either one of them and their leader, or they are wandering around aimlessly trying to find an actual leader. And he is far enough gone that he really has nothing left to offer. Even to them. Hey I didn’t say that when he did have something it was in any way good, just that he’s an empty nothing now. My last dog would be a better president than SFB because he was smarter and my last dog would be over 50 human years old, if he was still able to bark or do anything else.
Kay
@planetjanet:
I also think Biden’s I/P policy is an unmitigated disaster that will also seriously mar his legacy. Saying “Trump would be worse” – the Blue MAGA response to any policy criticism- doesn’t change that.
I’ll keep saying that too, as long as Biden follows this same approach. Could not disagree with President Biden more strongly on Gaza. Disaster on every level, including his legacy.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
@Chris:
Good points, both of you.
It’s always amazing to me that humanity, which takes in ALL kinds, actually works as well as it does. Of course in not all that long ago, we were at war seemingly more often than not and other than mostly people at the bottom of the food chain paying the highest price, most of the time the results were not good for the people starting the wars. But now that we have seen up close and personal what war looks like and how many die from the process being repeated daily on the news, it seems that possibly we, as the human race, have learned a tad bit and seem to realize that possibly there is a better way. I’m not sure we’ve found that or that everyone is even looking, but the possibility is stronger than it was 50-75 yrs ago. Many aspects of life have changed rather dramatically in that 1/2-3/4 of a century. Communications, information has increased exponentially. Humanity not that much but still it is moving in the right direction, and if for no other reason than that communication and information aspect. Like what we are doing now. Most of us have never met and likely never will, but we can still learn from each other.
prostratedragon
Another fail by JV’s advance team😉: Marcy Kaptur [of Toledo, Ohio] is subtle.
Kay
@planetjanet:
Say anything you want about Biden stepping aside, including warning Democrats about disloyalty. But don’t expect me to agree with it. I think this blog – the majority of the commentors and all the front pagers- got the Biden competency issue completely wrong.
So therefore I don’t believe the Democratic Party was wrong to push him to step aside. I think Pelosi and Obama and the rest were right. Good call on their part and excellent execution of the switch. That’s my opinion. I actually think it shows the competency of the Democratic Party – that it’s a functioning institution that adjusts to facts and responds appropriately and well.
MagdaInBlack
@zhena gogolia: I think I’m right behind you.
Chris
@Kay:
Oh, foreign policy’s just been a goddamn disaster.
Chris
@Ruckus:
Oh, humanity’s not that bad.
I think Tolkien had most people pegged, even though he was theoretically writing about dwarves, when he coined the phrase “decent enough people, if you don’t expect too much.”
K-Mo
@Kay: I feel similarly.
Kay
@Chris:
Like Obama with education except, well, a lot of dead civilians. Ooof.I saw that while I was in Denmark they finally admitted Netanyahu is holding up the deal. They’ve been lying about that to Americans since July 2nd, so of course now they have no credibility at all, on any of it.
I understand bluffing once in a negotiation but as soon as Netanyahu called them on their first bluff why in gods name did they keep trying the same thing over and over?Do you know how many times they have announced a deal is imminent? NINE TIMES. What the fuck?
Wait until the real civilian casualty counts come in – in excess of 100k, easily. Israel dropped as many US bombs on Gaza as were dropped on Dresden and London combined. It’s a parking lot.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Dorothy A. Winsor: just bought it :-) thanks for the tip
Kay
@Chris:
I think the gaslighting the Biden Administration has done on Gaza is outrageous. Well, “gaslighting” – blatant lying to the public since January, more like. We would be insane with rage if a GOP President had done it.
Blinken is a fucking joke at this point. I don’t believe a word he says.
Chris
@Kay:
Oddly enough, as pissed off as I get about it, Gaza is the one I’m less angry at him for, because the real issue there is simply that the Democratic Party is crammed to the gills with Israel-is-never-wrongers. Biden may be one of them out of conviction or he may just not want to rock the boat in an election year, but either way the issue would remain.
The three years of foot-dragging on Ukraine, on the other hand, doesn’t have even that kind of excuse. “Let’s help Ukraine stomp the Russian invaders into the ground” is not a hard sell. Republican ideologues might not like it, but the average guy on the street is fine with it, which is why even this year a lot of Republicans voted for the arms shipments, and the Democrats are damn near unanimously behind it. There’s no political cost-and-benefit-weighing going on there, it’s just sheer disastrous incompetence.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I actually think it shows the competency of the Democratic Party – that it’s a functioning institution that adjusts to facts and responds appropriately and well.
For a vast amount of the time – absolutely. It is a gaggle of humans so there will on occasion be issues. IMO far fewer occasions and far less dramatic issues than the other side. Look at Joe Biden. A good man but we all lose bits and pieces as we age. And yet we need to have adult experiences to do what he does, it’s just at some point, all of us age out. For some it’s about their 12th birthday and for others it is quite a few decades later. For sfb it was quite a long time ago – and I’m not sure it wasn’t before he was out of HS.
zhena gogolia
@Chris: Oh, for fuck’s sake.
zhena gogolia
Trump (the Republican nominee for president this year) attempted to blackmail Ukraine. When he takes office, he will cut off all aid to Ukraine, withdraw from NATO, and tell Putin to do “whatever the hell he wants.”
Biden rallied Europe in defense of Ukraine. There is a difference. If you think the “average guy on the street” is all for going to war with Russia (nuclear, by the way) in defense of Ukraine, you are insane.
Chris
@zhena gogolia:
Thank God the only two alternatives are “literally Trump” and “literally nuclear war with Russia.”
And it’s such a wonder not everybody takes you seriously.
zhena gogolia
@Chris: Yeah, those are literally the two alternatives. I’m so scared somebody on Balloon Juice won’t take me seriously!
Kay
@Chris:
Except, I read that Biden has stubbornly refused to take any advice or input on Gaza at all, including from Tim Kaine, who called the Gaza approach a “failed policy” way back in April.
When people excuse this as some “sentimental” blindness for Biden I’m just appalled. 50,000 civilians are dead. I don’t give a shit about his “sentimental attachments”.
I read some of the US commentary on Gaza and I just can no longer deny that it reflects the view that Palestinians are not really human beings. It has to be that. It can’t be anything other than that at this point.
Nowhere else in the world were people told Hamas was refusing a deal. Only the US public were told that. It was a lie. Blinen was lyng to Americans every time he went out there.
Kay
@Chris:
And the rapes. I do not understand how it can be that Israel is currently investigating the IDF raping bound detainees and not one US official had mentioned it. It’s a fucking war crime! There’s video! Our gaslighting politicians are pretending it isn’t happening. They discuss this in Denmark! They admit it’s happening! Why can’t we?
Bill Arnold
@lowtechcyclist:
Indeed.
I occasionally see entirely different, but oh so confident, (right) wingnut translations of Trump utterances.
If wingnuts can’t reliably translate Felonious D’s utterances, why should non-partisan (hah!) media try?
Just report the gibberish!
Ruckus
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
If you move to or are in a situation where the general speech idioms are different than what you normally use, it becomes easy (or at least easier) to unconsciously change your speech patterns. I’ve lived in 3 distinct areas of this country and while speech is less differing overall now than it was 50 yrs ago, there are still differences. I believe that TV has made speech more consistent than we used to have. Not exactly the same of course, just more so.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Another Scott: ditto!
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Kay: I was a strong supporter of Biden staying and was afraid of what would happen if he was convinced to step down. I am happy and relieved at how it all shook out and am very impressed by Biden and Harris’s management of The Switch. So yes, it was, and is, a good thing. Also I was hating on Nancy Pelosi for a while, and now think she is a brave and ruthless leader who saw what had to be done and did it. I’m sure she greatly admires Biden, but her overall mission is to stop Trump and nothing can be allowed to interfere with that.
Ruckus
@Manyakitty:
Hoping he bursts into a cloud of man tan and Cheeto dust on stage at the debate.
Had to see that again! If he does though, will they have to just burn down the entire building? Because there will be way too much shit to clean up.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
I’ve wondered if he’s had small strokes and doesn’t even know it.
There is so much he doesn’t know or wouldn’t admit if he did know because he is not in any way a normal, healthy human being. I don’t call him shitforbrains without good reason.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I agree with you. We all age out at some point. Some do it dramatically, some do it slowly and quietly. Doing it while president is not a good thing. BUT. While we should have had a choice, I think/feel that we really didn’t the last election. Shitforbrains had/has a following and our only realistic other choice was Joe. And no it’s not that I think Kamala Harris would have been a bad president, I was and am absolutely on her side as a candidate. I just see that we have such a two sided voting public that she needed to earn the trust of many that didn’t see her like most of us here seem to. I just think that many had to see the old guard – Joe Biden, age out before they’d look at her as a real possibility. I could be and really hope I’m wrong but I don’t think I am.
My point is that I’m on her side, but there are people on our side that likely aren’t until it’s her or a rethuglican. And if for no other reason, who do they have after shitforbrains because I really think he will lose big if he runs. He’s a convicted criminal, he’s an old fart showing his worst sides (and he has more than a few….) and he was a rather shitty president, who isn’t going to be anything but far worse – if he gets another shot at it. IOW he REALLY, REALLY, REALLY cannot be given ANY power whatsoever. He will FUCK IT UP. Big time.
Ruckus
@Chris:
Parts of humanity really are. Always have been and likely always will be. Now it may not be a significant part of humanity but there aways will be some that are that bad or worse. Just remember how large humanity is, how greedy some parts are, how shitty some parts are, that the shitforbrains category is not a single person in this world, he has followers. Sure he’s losing a lot of them but that’s not because they didn’t like who he was, they don’t like he got caught and that he’s turning into what I call him right in front of all of us. If another shitforbrains comes along, there are people that would support him.
The Audacity of Krope
And I think you and they are too focused on tactical considerations and lost the plot completely in terms of evaluating based on competence or morals.
Appeasement isn’t exactly a strategy with an illustrious history.