Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.

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

People are weird.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

The revolution will be supervised.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Books are my comfort food!

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Not all heroes wear capes.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. Do not congratulate. This is not business as usual.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Late Night Schadenfreude Interesting Read: ‘What’s Discipline Got to Do with *Winning*?’

Late Night Schadenfreude Interesting Read: ‘What’s Discipline Got to Do with *Winning*?’

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This article would make an interesting Downfall parody on YouTube. Tim Alberta, professional Never-Trumper, at the Atlantic — “Inside the Ruthless, Restless Final Days of Trump’s Campaign” [gift link]:

At the end of June, in the afterglow of a debate performance that would ultimately prompt President Joe Biden to end his campaign for reelection, Donald Trump startled his aides by announcing that he’d come up with a new nickname for his opponent.

“The guy’s a retard. He’s retarded. I think that’s what I’ll start calling him,” Trump declared aboard his campaign plane, en route to a rally that evening, according to three people who heard him make the remarks: “Retarded Joe Biden.”

The staffers present—and, within hours, others who’d heard about the epithet secondhand—pleaded with Trump not to say this publicly. They warned him that it would antagonize the moderate voters who’d been breaking in their direction, while engendering sympathy for a politician who, at that moment, was the subject of widespread ridicule. As Trump demurred, musing that he might debut the nickname at that night’s event, his staffers puzzled over the timing. Biden was on the ropes. Polls showed Trump jumping out to the biggest lead he’d enjoyed in any of his three campaigns for the presidency. Everything was going right for the Republican Party and its nominee. Why would he jeopardize that for the sake of slinging a juvenile insult? (A campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said the nickname “was never discussed and this is materially false.”)

Over the next several days—as Trump’s aides held their breath, convinced he would debut this latest slur at any moment—they came to realize something about Trump: He was restless, unhappy, and, yes, tired of winning. For the previous 20 months, he’d been hemmed in by a campaign built on the principles of restraint and competence. The former president’s ugliest impulses were regularly curbed by his top advisers; his most obnoxious allies and most outlandish ideas were sidelined. These guardrails had produced a professional campaign—a campaign that was headed for victory. But now, like a predator toying with its wounded catch, Trump had become bored. It reminded some allies of his havoc-making decisions in the White House. Trump never had much use for calm and quiet. He didn’t appreciate normalcy. Above all, he couldn’t stand being babysat.

“People are calling this the most disciplined campaign they’ve ever seen,” Trump remarked to friends at a fundraiser this summer, according to someone who heard the conversation. He smirked at the compliment. “What’s discipline got to do with winning?”

Trump never did deploy the nickname against Biden in public. Yet the restiveness he felt during that stretch of the race foretold a dramatic shift in the tone and tenor of his campaign. Within weeks, Trump would survive an assassination attempt, Biden would abandon his candidacy, Vice President Kamala Harris would replace him atop the Democratic ticket, and polls would show an election that once appeared finished suddenly reverting to coin-flip status. All the while, Trump became more agitated with what he saw as the trust-the-plan, run-out-the-clock strategy of his campaign—and more convinced that this cautious approach was going to cost him a second term.

In conversations with nearly a dozen of the former president’s aides, advisers, and friends, it became apparent that Trump’s feeling of midsummer tedium marked a crucial moment in his political career, setting off a chain reaction that nearly destroyed his campaign and continues to threaten his chances of victory. Even as they battled Democrats in a race that refuses to move outside the margin of error, some of Trump’s closest allies spent the closing months of the campaign at war with one another: planting damaging stories, rallying to the defense of wronged colleagues, and preemptively pointing fingers in the event of an electoral defeat…

In the days after his NABJ appearance—as staffers scrambled to satisfy their boss’s appetite for pugilism without indulging his racist and misogynistic impulses—Trump began to lose confidence in his team. He had long dismissed the warnings from certain friends, such as his former acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, that Wiles and LaCivita weren’t up to the job. But now he had reason to wonder. With Harris climbing rapidly in the polls and his own favorability numbers slipping, Trump was pondering, for the first time, a shake-up of his team. (Cheung said Trump never considered a change to his campaign leadership.)

In early August, Trump started courting two of his longtime allies and former campaign managers from 2016, Kellyanne Conway and Corey Lewandowski, discussing what it might look like if they rejoined his political operation in a formal capacity. Trump told Lewandowski—who promptly agreed to come aboard—that he missed the “fun,” freewheeling nature of that first run for the White House. He told Conway, meanwhile, that he worried he was being overly “managed” by his current team…

In truth, the real threat was Lewandowski.

A tough-talking operative who had famously accosted a female reporter in 2016 and later allegedly made unwanted sexual advances toward a Republican donor’s wife, Lewandowski had promised Trump a return to the “killer” vibes of 2016. But the details of his new role were left open to interpretation. Lewandowski believed—and told anyone who would listen—that he would outrank the existing campaign leadership. Trump himself, meanwhile, assured Wiles and LaCivita that Lewandowski would be a utility man, serving as a key surrogate while helping organize election-security efforts and field operations in swing states…

Determined to assert himself, Lewandowski arrived at Palm Beach headquarters in mid-August with designs on running the place. Wiles accompanies Trump nearly everywhere on the trail, and LaCivita, when not joining them, often works from his home in Virginia, leaving Lewandowski with a free hand in Florida. He began taking aside junior staffers and department heads alike, one at a time, informing them that he spoke for Trump himself. He made it known that he would be in charge of all spending, and that he needed people to tell him what wasn’t working so he could fix it. Meanwhile, he began calling the campaign’s key operatives in the battleground states, probing for weaknesses in Trump’s ground game and assuring them that a strategy shift was in the works.

Even as colleagues grew tired of hearing Lewandowski describe himself as the former president’s personal proxy, they realized he wasn’t wrong. His arrival coincided with a marked shift in Trump’s mood and behavior. Gone, suddenly, was the candidate of 2024, who despite all the inevitable outbursts was at least receptive to direction and aware of consequences; in his place, as the summer progressed, was the alter ego of 2016, the candidate who did and said whatever he wanted and ignored anyone who sought to rein him in…

As a reminder, Lewandowski and Steve Cheung are the self-proclaimed Tough Dudes responsible for the ‘altercation’ at Arlington National Cemetery. Whatever the ‘truth’ of the Who lost Trump 2024? narrative, blaming those two is a pretty defensible choice!

Reader Interactions

141Comments

  2. 2.

    Rose Judson

    Genuinely LOL’d at the detail that what got Laura Loomer yeeted from Trump’s orbit was aides showing him how much plastic surgery she’d had.

    Apparently plastic surgery repulses him.

    Which explains the state of his marriage.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    I’ve completely lost interest in all things Trump, but maybe I’ll enjoy an article or two discussing his misery after his downfall.

  5. 5.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Msb: Every word a lie, including “and” and “the”, as per the old saying.

    Most of the people in Trump’s orbit – or perhaps it’s better described as an accretion disk, like the one spinning around a black hole? – have such a tenuous relationship with the truth that if they said the sky was blue, I’d doublecheck with a Pantone chart.

    The uglier side of my personality is looking forward to some epic Downfall parody videos about that gang.

  9. 9.

    TS

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR:

    So liked your post from the last thread – bringing it over here

    There’s the aphorism about women and minorities having to work twice as hard for half the credit, and it shows; there’s also the anecdote about Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels.

    If Donald Trump had to put in half the work that Kamala Harris has put in, it would probably kill him. Not metaphorically, but stone-cold flat-line dead.

    Also, Kamala appears able and willing to poke fun at herself, a talent that Barack Obama famously possessed as well, and that Donald Trump absolutely lacks.

    trump could not do what Kamala has done – he wouldn’t even try. he is lazy in the extreme and thinks he is owed respect and adoration. Not even the disciples give him that, they just come for the hate and abuse.

    What MVP has done over the past many weeks is amazing, I doubt many – if any – other politician (or person) could have done it. She earns and expects the best from her team and the next 4 years may exceed what Biden has done & see the best the US has to offer.

  12. 12.

    Splitting Image

    Alberta is actually parroting the New York Times’ narrative about the debate here. To be sure Biden had a bad night, but Trump was as disjointed and hostile that night as he has been ever since. My main objection to the “Biden must go” chorus at the time was that all of the singers were quashing the real story about Trump’s debate performance.

    As it happens, the Democrats switching to Harris as their nominee seems to have worked out about as well as it possibly could have, but if the Times editorial staff had had the foresight to see that, they wouldn’t have remarked on Biden’s performance even once.

    As for his campaign being disciplined before the debate, well… if you don’t count his trial and conviction on 34 counts of falsifying his business records, and his falling asleep at the trial, and defying his gag order multiple times, and threatening the judge. And a good many other things. He said that he would be a dictator on day one, for Christ’s sake. This was last December. “Restraint and competence?”

  13. 13.

    David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch

    These idiots want to blame Dump, but they’re the ones who approved the racists speeches, insult by insult, at Sunday’s Nazi rally.

  15. 15.

    JoyceH

    @Baud: but heh – just now on CNN. The anchor called Harris’ appearance on SNL “reaching out to younger voters”. Guys? SNL is half a century old.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @JoyceH:

    I don’t know the SNL demo these days, but social media suggests that a lot of youngsters still watch it.

    Still, I don’t know I would say that she went on to SNL specifically for younger voters.

  18. 18.

    sab

    Re: Trump’s 2024 professional operatives. You know they are professionals and not cultists when they throw you under the bus the weekend before the election because you rarely took their advice and never when it mattered.

    You know they were political operatives because they hired on to work for you knowing what you are (although they seriously misunderestimated how damaged a human being you are.)

  21. 21.

    Baud

    @sab:

    I stopped a long time ago. Of course, now, a lot of people watch clips after the fact on YouTube or social media, as I just did.

  22. 22.

    sab

    @Baud: I stopped about 1980. Too much snotty mean girl. But my contemporaries have been watching it all along.

    My stepkids watch it because I don’t, forgetting that their father still does.

    ETA And I keep forgetting my stepkids are no longer young ( 40s). Grandkids (oldest born the year of 9/11)  don’t watch tv at all. Tiktok is their medium.

    ETA My youngest grandchild is learning Japanese because of whatever she watches. Whole different world out there for these kids.

  23. 23.

    Chet Murthy

    @Geoduck: i Googled Harold Sakata, and he was a good looking guy.  Very healthy, serious amount of man-meat on his frame.  Steven Cheung is not that. That’s for sure.

  24. 24.

    satby

    @Splitting Image: As it happens, the Democrats switching to Harris as their nominee seems to have worked out about as well as it possibly could have, but if the Times editorial staff had had the foresight to see that, they wouldn’t have remarked on Biden’s performance even once.

    And that is the absolute truth, and why Black Twitter and many of us considered it a risky move. And without that “senile” old Biden’s canny, full-throated support it might not have worked out so well. So props to Biden, always, for his true dedication to his country.

  25. 25.

    satby

    Letting Trump be Trump reminds everyone why there was dancing in the streets when Biden won. Dancing and fireworks when Harris does!

  26. 26.

    Baud

    I haven’t been a fan of the media for a long time, but this year more than any other,  even 2016, has really demonstrated his they prop up Republicans.

  29. 29.

    TS

    I look forward to Nate Silver being wrong again, hopefully this will be the end of his formula for smoothing polls. He’s been riding his 2008 stats for way too long – while always saying he gets it right because of the % chances he gives. This year he is complaining about the pollsters – someone has to be wrong apparently but not his statistics.

    There is a major horse race in Australia on the first Tuesday in November (so mostly corresponds to your election day). Way back in my youth, someone put out a system for picking the winner – based on other spring races (it’s spring down under). I used it one year & backed the winner at 33/1. Celebrations all round. Next 10 years it failed to pick a place, let alone the winner. This doesn’t work on % chances, but it reminds me of the poll averaging – every so often you might get it right.

  31. 31.

    sab

    @TS: Horse race: Politics, or horses racing? Spouse spent whole day watching horses racing  and all I could do was worry about the health and care for horses in the care of grifting money grubbing horse owners.

  33. 33.

    Montanareddog

    @Baud: it occurred to me that the cameraman or -woman going rogue is the audiovisual equivalent of practising journalism instead of stenography.  Well done to them.

  35. 35.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:  The gaslighting has been visible from space.

    Also:  thanks Anne Laurie.  Fun read.  GOP gonna need a bigger bus.

  37. 37.

    Anne Laurie

    @sab: My youngest grandchild is learning Japanese because of whatever she watches. Whole different world out there for these kids.

    And in many ways a better one!  But I gotta brag: Spousal Unit got his official First Level Japanese Proficiency degree just before the pandemic kicked in & he’s still taking a class every week… so that he can read manga (the Japanese graphic novels most anime cartoons are based on) in the original kanji…

  39. 39.

    Tony Jay

    @sab:

      Despite unexpected wins up and down the East Coast, sources close to the campaign bus fear delayed counts in Red Heartland states could still turn this result on its head.

    NYT – ELECTION UPDATE CENTRAL

    Dismissing early signs of a nationwide sweep of EC votes, experts warn that California turning red and a supervolcano eruption in New York could be Trump’s best route to an upset victory.

    NYT – ELECTION UPDATE CENTRAL

  42. 42.

    Baud

    Via bluesky

    i don’t think harris will actually win iowa but if she does we will have clear evidence that Iowans demand black presidents

  43. 43.

    Chris Johnson

    @Baud: That’s exactly correct. If you go with the idea that they’re bad actors from the get-go, then the next question is ‘what can they do that most reinforces MAGA terrorists running amok, since they can’t get MAGA to win the actual Presidency?’

    And it’s that. They will suggest or perhaps just loudly and confidently assert that a blue wave post-Dobbs, post-Garbage etc. can only mean the whole thing is fake (presumably because everybody loves Dobbs and being called garbage).

    So, if the Times are bad actors, they will reinforce other bad actors by trying to manufacture a myth of illegitimacy. That’s literally what they’ll do.

  44. 44.

    TBone

    The reporter in the featured article lost me at this point:

    For the previous 20 months, he’d been hemmed in by a campaign built on the principles of restraint and competence.

    Ummm, nope 🤡

  46. 46.

    Geminid

    There’s a weird story out of Israel. The security service Shin Bet arrested someone in the Prime Minister’s office 6 days ago. The man is still in custody, under investigation for mishandling, altering and circulating sensitive documents including reports from the IDF and Shin Bet relating to the war in Gaza and the hostage/ceasefire talks.

    There is a gag order in place, but the person has been identified as the former spokesman for the PM’s chief of staff. It’s widely believed that these falsified documents were given to Israeli media friendly to Prime Minister Netanyahu in order to make him look as good as possible while discrediting the IDF and Shin Bet.

  47. 47.

    hueyplong

    Schadenfreude is a helluva drug. The more I get the more I want.

    I want Laura Loomer telling Trump acolytes that she saw his risen fecal mass, including the scar where the stake had been driven in the chest cavity where legend has it a shriveled heart had resided. And then they all forswear politics and voting, spreading the Gospel of a pure life separate from interaction with the feminized, trans- and niCLANG-influenced general public.

  50. 50.

    Betty Cracker

    I’m sure the Iowa poll was discussed here yesterday while I was watching college football, drinking beer and eating pizza, but damn: (Source: Des Moines Register)

    • Democrat Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump in Iowa 47% to 44%, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows.
    • A victory for Harris would be a shocking development after Iowa has swung aggressively to the right in recent elections, delivering Trump solid victories in 2016 and 2020.
    • The poll shows that women — particularly those who are older or are politically independent — are driving the late shift toward Harris.
    • Trump continues to lead with his core base of support: men, evangelicals, rural residents and those without a college degree.

    Emphasis mine. Polls, schmolls, but FWIW, this is from a high quality outfit. If it’s accurately capturing a trend in Iowa, it’s probably indicating movement that’s taking place nationwide. That would be very good news for Team Donk.

  52. 52.

    Betty Cracker

    Oh gross — I just saw an ad from a pro-Trump PAC attempting to appeal to liberal Jewish voters via fear mongering. The stereotypes deployed were so clumsy that the ad verged on antisemitism in its own right. I don’t think it will work…

  54. 54.

    Shalimar

    @satby: I am ecstatic about just about everything the national campaign has done from the moment Biden announced he was stepping aside.  But I also think I was right to be incredibly sceptical before then, because Democrats have a long history of fucking things up and there was no reason to think this year would turn out to be the exception.

    Also, the non-politicians who wanted Biden out were parroting a Russian anti-Democrat psy-ops campaign, and fuck them for that.

  55. 55.

    TBone

    @TBone: Whar Epstein.  FBI raided his safe, evidence suppressed.  This guy says “hold my beer.”

    Wolff said of the photos, “They were with Trump at Epstein’s Palm Beach house sitting around the pool with these young girls, and the young girls are topless.
    “And in some of the pictures, they’re sitting in his lap. I mean, and, and then there’s one I especially remember where there’s a stain, a telltale stain and on the front of Trump’s pants, and the girls are pointing at him and laughing.” Trump separated from his second wife Marla Maples in 1997 and began dating his third wife, Melania, in 1998.

  56. 56.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: They have been doing it, as long as I have been in this country, since the mid 90s. Propping up a manifestly unsuitable candidate who is lacking in basic human decency has made that too obvious to deny.

  57. 57.

    Princess

    I love how Alberta uses Cheung as anti-confirmation confirmation here — Cheung’s reputation as a spinner and liar is so strong that quoting him denying something makes it sound even more true.

  60. 60.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: What I would enjoy most is seeing the wheels of justice grinding him into tallow. Whether our institutions are up to it is unclear, but it’s what I most want to see…right after a landslide Harris victory.

  61. 61.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: I think you are correct that trends in Iowa are not limited to that state alone. US politics are much more national these days, with fewer differences in electoral behavior from state to state and region to region.

    Who knows? The trends seen in Iowa might even manifest in Florida, that most singular of states politically.

  64. 64.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    Yeah, i know FL is more Republican these days, but surely they aren’t as conservative as Iowans.

    The abortion amendment is expected to pass, so if we don’t win FL, you’ll have a bunch of people ticket splitting to hurt people elsewhere.

  67. 67.

    hueyplong

    @Geminid: I’m rarely glass-half-full, but I suspect that Iowa might actually be the only state outside “the seven” to give us such a wonderful surprise.  The other candidates are places (Texas, Florida) where the GOPers have been actively working their thumbs on the scales because they anticipated Iowa-like voter sentiments.  Iowa itself seems to have been caught off guard.

    The others are places where the shift is real, but not enough actually to win (Kansas).

    As for Iowa, isn’t that one of the places where Trump’s prior tariff war made things so bad they had to give out straight cash to keep the otherwise GOPer farmers from freaking out?  Add that to the always underestimated Dobbs effect and you’ve got a place where Harris has a legit chance.

  69. 69.

    TS

    @sab:

    Horse race: Politics, or horses racing?

    Real Horse Race – Melbourne Cup – $$$m in prizes and massive betting. Guess it is like Kentucky Derby or Grand National in the UK, The country stops working – teachers used to bring in a radio when I was at school – now they no doubt watch it online.

    Our politics is boring. Just had an election, labor lost (left wing). No-one is much interested, The policies are almost the same. The new lot are trying to attack reproductive freedom (wonder who gave them that idea) but they don’t have the numbers, too many in their own party support the right to abortion.

  70. 70.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Betty Cracker: There were articles in Politico and Newsweek two days ago that discussed evidence of Trump being behind in the Senior vote in PA. He’s losing women and if he loses seniors too (granted not mutually exclusive) he’s cooked.

  71. 71.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Rose Judson:

    I think Trump assumes women naturally look like plastic surgery makes them look.  So most of the women he’s attracted to have had plastic surgery and he has no clue until he is told about an individual one.

  72. 72.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Most polls I’ve seen have #4 getting well over 50% but falling just short of the 60% needed. I hope the expectations you cite are correct!

    ETA: There’s lots of evidence Floridians will split the ticket on progressive ballot initiatives. For example, a minimum wage ballot initiative passed in a year GOP candidates won.

  76. 76.

    Princess

    Okay, now I’ve read the whole thing. I don’t know if Trump is going to lose but his campaign chairs Wiles and LaCivita think he’s going to lose.

  78. 78.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: Thanks. This was not  the first time either. She wanted me to wear a sari and a mangalsutra while visiting her relatives in Chennai and she tried to give me those instructions via my mother. My mom said she is an adult, talk to her directly.

    God I miss my mom so much.

  80. 80.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Splitting Image: Yep, Trump has always been a loose cannon, rolling around on the deck, randomly crushing any number of campaign initiatives. There’s never been discipline; the earlier behavior simply appears more disciplined compared to what’s happening now. Now,  the seas are getting choppier. The cannon is careening around even more randomly as the deck rocks from gunwale to gunwale. And the rats are having a tough time picking the right moment to jump, and so are turning on one another.

    Excellent.

  81. 81.

    Geminid

    @hueyplong: Yeah, the farmer/tariff dynamic does separate Iowa from many other states. There might also be some angst among Iowans because the long-overdue Farm Bill remains stuck in Congress.

    These five year bills usually pass on time with bipartisan majorities, but Freedom Caucus Republicans are holding this one up like they they did the last one. Maybe Nikki Budzinski, WaterGirl’s new Congresswoman, can help ram it through during the Lame Duck session.

  83. 83.

    Baud

    Via reddit

    Crime in Detroit is at its lowest since 1966, community groups help, police say

    Thanks, Biden.

    I don’t think even the Republicans are running on crime, except for over hyping immigrant crime.

  87. 87.

    Rathskeller

    @TBone: that’s from Wiles and LaCivita’s perspective, since they or their aides are responsible for this article. He was good when they listened to him, bad when he stopped.

    fascinating to see the player’s perspective take over though

  89. 89.

    satby

    @Shalimar: Not to reignite the whole thing, but this: “Also, the non-politicians who wanted Biden out were parroting a Russian anti-Democrat psy-ops campaign, and fuck them for that.” is true too. And with hard work and determination, they were outsmarted. But if people don’t recognize those factors, it will happen again and the stars may not align as well the next time. Because there will be a next time. And another one after that.

  90. 90.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @sab: Meh. Maybe. But the desire to drag out the clicks and eyeballs will be balanced with the desire to be the first to “call the race.”

  92. 92.

    Baud

    @satby:

    The last few weeks have revealed more widespread normie awareness of the media game than I can ever remember. The question is whether it’ll stick after the election, especially if we win. I can see people falling back to the old ways if they feel the threat has passed.

  93. 93.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @satby: Yeah we really need to figure out and implement a robust defense against foreign election interference..Three cycles in a row it’s been a problem and is obviously not going away on its own.

  95. 95.

    Betty Cracker

    @satby: I‘ve got no desire to relitigate this either, but the idea that anti-Biden sentiment was wholly a media or Russian troll creation is bullshit.

  99. 99.

    sdhays

    @Tony Jay: Don’t be ridiculous, Tony. The New York Times won’t be covering the election Tuesday night because their data team will be on strike.

  100. 100.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Rose Judson: ​Apparently plastic surgery repulses him.

     I’ve seen the before and after photos of his elder daughter; and I refute it thus.

    [hat tip: Samuel Johnson]

  102. 102.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Rathskeller:his daughter has had her nose and cheeks done ​

     As is her privilege, of course.

    I don’t feel much compassion for the results of that woman’s adult actions; but imagining her childhood gives me the shudders.

  103. 103.

    Harrison Wesley

    I think there’s a chance Florida will go Blue, but I find politics here very confusing.  In a state full of us Olds, the guy who presided over the biggest Medicare fraud in history was elected governor twice, once so far to the US Senate, and looks to go back there.  I am somewhat encourged that the new head of the state Democrats seems very tuned in and avoids some mistakes of the past.  We’ll see on Tuesday.  I hope.

  107. 107.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: In my dreamiest daydreams, I dream of Dark Brandon (figuratively) cutting off heads on Wednesday morning after a Harris landslide victory Tuesday night. They know who is taking Russian, Chinese, and Iranian money – start/accelerate the investigations. They also know who the problem children are in the FBI and other alphabet agencies – start the reassignments and loss of access. It’d be great if Uncle Joe were to leave a clean(er) house for President Harris.

  108. 108.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Splitting Image: I agree with you that there are threads of B.S. all through this article, as one would expect from a team of grifters (in this case, aka a team of rivals). User and used, along with his supporters, they all deserve each other.

  109. 109.

    hueyplong

    @Baud: “I don’t think even the Republicans are running on crime, except for over hyping immigrant crime.”

    This is how you say “I don’t live in NC” without saying I don’t live in NC.  Signs, ads, everything from Trump promises crime if the prosecutor wins, “safety” if the multiple felon wins.  Immigration is a big part of it, but nowhere near all.

  110. 110.

    zhena gogolia

    I just have this burning desire to go over to my neighbor’s house — the Catholic neighbor, mother of two and grandmother of who knows how many, with the “TRUMP 2024 — Take America Back” sign in front of her house — and get my phone and show her Trump giving a blow job to a microphone, and say “You’re voting for THAT?”

  111. 111.

    Ken

    @Betty Cracker: Most polls I’ve seen have #4 getting well over 50% but falling just short of the 60% needed. I hope the expectations you cite are correct!

    Consider the polling before the Kansas abortion-rights amendment, versus the actual vote.

    I like to think that vote caused at least a few Republicans, hopefully among them some of the Supreme Six, to think “My God, what have we done?”

  116. 116.

    Starfish

    @pat: De-emphasizing the negative parts of history seems like a pretty normal thing that many countries engage in.

    But it really is disappointing because by getting rid of the emphasis on the negative parts of American history, she is removing the representation of non-white folks in that history.

    In Colorado, we have a national historic site dedicated to a massacre of the native people. We are rare in that way.

  117. 117.

    sdhays

    @zhena gogolia: If I were dictator, the only picture of Trump that would be allowed from now on would be “cursed garbage truck sex doll Trump”, since it distills the man’s essence so perfectly.

  118. 118.

    SFAW

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Sorry to hear your (and Magda’s) MiL being “difficult.”

    I consider myself exceedingly fortunate that my own MiL was a pretty good person, and she and I got along fairly well. She’s been gone more than 10 years, but I still miss her.

    I sometimes forget that others have not been as fortunate as I was; seeing examples like yours makes me a little sad that they aren’t.

  120. 120.

    Fake Irishman

    @Ken:

    two things:

    1. Since Kansas most of the abortion rights polling has been dead on or close (see Ohio 2023).

    2. Just because polling showing the initiative short of 60 percent doesnt mean it will come up short. Consider a poll that’s at 54-36 with 10 percent undecided. If those undecideds break in proportion (and they may not), that’s a 60-40 final vote and the amendment passes.  So if you are seeing polling at 57-35 or 58-36, that amendment is likely in good shape, assuming the polling has the underlying shape of the electorate right.

    Another example is think about a race where there are only two candidates on the ballot and candidate A is constantly pulling in 47-48 percent in polls while candidate B is at 43-44 percent.  The race has some uncertainty, but unless the situation is unusual, the narrative probably shouldn’t be “candidate A needs 50 percent and is failing to reach that”

  121. 121.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Starfish: remind me, where is it? I’m sort of aware the sand creek massacre has a park , a spot you can go to, but I’ve never found it. Is it off smith road, west of Peoria? I just can’t find drive up access.

  122. 122.

    satby

    @Betty Cracker: Well, every older white woman I knew (IRL) who jumped on it did so after an email forward supposedly sent by Michael Moore and echoing George Clooney that was so obvious as a psyops it was breathtaking. And they uniformly fell for it. Can’t speak to other demographics and don’t want to talk about it further, because I know it’s a contentious subject.

  123. 123.

    Betty Cracker

    @zhena gogolia: I understand. I had to tamp down the urge to send the Trump as hideous inflatable garbageman sex doll pic to every MAGA dope in my contacts — with the same question.

  124. 124.

    tobie

    @satby:

     the stars may not align as well the next time.

    Couldn’t agree more. I’m so happy that things worked out because of the grit and smarts of Harris and her campaign team. I’m not sure Biden would have had the stamina to compete in this race, but I still believe he did great things for the US economy because of his experience in govt. It irritates me that it’s become a truism in American politics that the economy sucks, when even the Economist and the IMF acknowledge that the US has pulled the global economy back from the brink of a recession.

  127. 127.

    Ironcity

    @Tony Jay:   No, not until the whip melts.  In the horse world that is called excessive / inappropriate use of aids and the other competitors and officials notice.  When it gets to the chief steward or the technical delegate you get eliminated (though not with extreme prejudice) and can be warned off for one or more trials or for the whole season.  There are very few egregious cases where people are banned for life.  That would be appropriate for TCFG and his enablers.

  128. 128.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Peale: ​
     No way to know, and none of our business.

    All we can know, from the vast body of documentation of the phenomenon, is that incest, and incest-adjacent behavior, by parents really messes up the children (and eventual adult survivors); and it can mess up generations beyond that.

    I’m off to read the next post, for more cheerful topics!

  130. 130.

    Ramalama

    @Baud: they, SNL, had a really great musician recently … JellyRoll. The whole band set was so unique and cool and helped give a tight feeling to the singers and musicians backing him.

    Maybe I just enjoyed all of them covering a stage without the dancing. I love dancing but maybe getting tired of it on musicians stages.

    JellyRoll was just different and good.

  132. 132.

    Ramalama

    @SFAW: Yeah other people don’t have it so good. My MiL was so incredibly lovely and kind. We hit it off right away even though my French was crap and her English was non existent. We cooked together all the time. After she died, some of her grandkids, as adults, were psyched that I knew how to cook some of her dishes, and I got to pass some of that down to them.

  134. 134.

    SFAW

    @Betty Cracker:

    Trump as hideous inflatable garbageman sex doll pic

    Ya know, this shit really pisses me off: aren’t sex dolls supposed to be somewhat attractive, or at least not-unattractive? Who in their right mind would want to use something looking like him (in the garbage man photo) for simulated sex? Something/someone that disgusting would kill my “desire” in a nanosecond.

    Kidding about your comment pissing me off, of course — just needed a segue of some sort.

    That said: yeah, he really does look like an inflatable in that photo. Ewwww.

  135. 135.

    John S.

    @satby:

    Every Democrat I know in real life who watched the debate and has two eyes and ears in their heads didn’t need to read anything from Michael Moore or George Clooney to formulate an opinion.

  136. 136.

    Anyway

    I want/hope/pray/expect Dotard to lose LOSE BIG for obvious reasons. Too many to list and shared by jackals. For me an additional minor plus will be to not be subjected to hagiographies of Wiles and LaCivita. They can slink back to their (well-appointed) sewers … 

  138. 138.

    Gvg

    @Betty Cracker: How can we tell when we don’t have an unpolluted baseline to compare with? Not saying you are wrong, just that the foreign influence I’d big and growing, not just from Russia, as it as seen to be not stopped. We are too powerful and important for any other country not to try to influence in their favor if they can, especially if they see other countries they consider enemies doing it. We have to stop it or it will drive us all insane from contradictions. Not to mention rot our brains. Results too unpredictable and not centered on America’s best interests, nor logic.

    There are too many competing influencers that the majority of Americans won’t know the motivations of and therefore can be fooled by them. We know background on our own interest groups and weigh that when we hear arguments about all issues. Having foreign influence coming it is a lot more sneaky. So I am not confident about how much it influences the anti Biden attacks.

  139. 139.

    RaflW

    That Atlantic article is quite something. And Alberta uses the parenthetical references to Steven Cheung’s official campaign responses so well in pointing out what an empty, shitty liar he is.

  140. 140.

    Betty Cracker

    @Gvg: I’m no expert, but as I understand it, Russian influence operations tend to pick up on organic controversies or schisms and amplify them rather than creating them out of whole cloth. I assume that when Biden was our candidate, influence operators were working to undermine him using the age issue. The media certainly dogpiled Biden on that and infuriatingly gave Trump a pass. It wasn’t fair.

    That said, the anxiety about Biden’s age among voters was real. There’s tons of data on that. It was an issue during the 2020 primary too — we discussed it extensively here. Also, Biden is in his 80s and presents as somewhat frail (stiff gait, etc.). Of course his age was a concern for voters — a legitimate concern, IMO.

    My point is attributing it entirely or even mostly to influence operations is bullshit. I think data and plain old common sense back me up on this.

  141. 141.

    dnfree

    @satby: I’m an older white woman (Trump’s age, in fact) who reacted to what I saw at the debate (and yes, I watched the whole thing) and was astounded and appalled.  That was far from the debate I expected to see.  I didn’t need any emails from other sources and didn’t receive any.

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