Archives for 2024

Tim Walz has a restored Scout, because of course he does.  I wrote about my experience with a Scout as a kid a few years ago.

Here he is explaining how to use an 8-track from the driver’s seat of his Scout:

The seats look original to me, as does the spare tire cover. I can’t imagine it’s an original engine because they were shit, but maybe someone babied this thing.

The Walz Content We All NeedPost + Comments (252)

This is from drag queen Pattiegonia’s Instagram.  And, yes, bottom left, JD Vance in drag at Yale Law.  That’s the same JD who said yesterday that Tim Walz supports kidnapping kids who want to transition if their parents don’t agree.  Here’s the truth on that:

Walz has never signed any legislation, nor expressed support for legislation, that would allow the state to remove children from their parent’s custody if they didn’t consent to gender transition treatment. Walz has come under attack from Republicans for an April 2023 law he signed that protects transgender patients, parents and healthcare providers from out-of-state laws that would punish them for receiving care. Among other provisions, the law gives “temporary emergency jurisdiction” to state courts to arbitrate custody disputes that cross state lines and involve a debate between parents over the care in question. It does not give the state the authority to remove children from their parents’ custody for declining to pursue gender transition care, a Minnesota LGBTQ advocacy organization director told the Washington Post.

So, as Pattie asks, is JD a bitter homophobe because he couldn’t serve?  Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m not ruling it out.

(BTW here’s what serve means in this context.  It’s short for a something that many might find offensive so don’t click this link if you don’t want to be offended.)

JD Can’t ServePost + Comments (200)

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are going to repeat themselves, with variations and additions, for the next few days. That’s just how it works. Here’s a good thread on why that bores the media:

campaigns understand this, they get that most people are not watching youtube livestreams of their stumps speeches. so a big part of campaigning is figuring out how to *break through* to these lesser engaged populations.

one way is the tour + stump speech.

this gets interested people out to see you speak, hear your (and your surrogates’) pitches, gets clips on the local news, etc. but this means the stump speech is **the same** everywhere you go. a simple message you are repeating in lots of media markets to push it through to the non-junkies

heres the thing: for reporters who follow the campaigns around, this is *boring.* hearing the same speech 2 or 3 times…kinda annoying. hearing it 2 or 3 times a day gets stale real fast. early on there is enough tweaking that they can fixate on the changes and read tea leaves. later…not so much

bc these are solipsistic morons, when they get bored, they tend to impute that to the campaign. “i’m bored, so the speech must be stale. the campaign must be Out of Ideas.” a disconnect between how they receive the campaign messaging and how normal people do. this is a problem campaigns must manage!

trump is not like this. he goes up and rambles extemporaneously. most of it is nonsense. but it is *different.* and therefore interesting, and exciting. political reporters enjoy this constant newness more the boring (but effective) repeated stump speech. this is a big reason they like trump.

“he makes our job less boring” is somehow an even worse reason to give trump glowing coverage than “he generates clicks/sells papers.” unfortunately, our political media is filled with absolute dullards who cannot stop gazing at their own navels. this is a major driving force of pro-trump coverage.

whether they do it consciously or not, this is also why they clean up his ramblings. if they *punished* him for it by printing them verbatim in the paper, then he might stop. and that’d be bad! then he’d be normal and boring. so instead they facilitate him. for their own amusement.

Marcy Wheeler makes another important point:

This is actually the purpose rallies are supposed to serve at this point of a campaign, even one launched a mere three weeks ago. These crowds are important not (just) because they lead Trump to melt down, but because they’re a necessary way to catch up on volunteer recruitment Biden hadn’t been doing. This is why Walz, especially, makes an ask at every one of these rallies. This is why Kamala always talks about the hard work ahead.

This is about recruiting bodies to do voter identification, persuasion, and ultimately GOTV. This is about basic campaign work.

Trump, meanwhile, has sent JD out to speak to empty parking lots.

Anyway, you probably all know this but there are a lot of people who don’t.

Stump Speeches, So BoringPost + Comments (327)