Month: June 2020

Listening to stories from the families and friends of black women and men lost to violence, especially to recent police violence, what is striking is the grinding fear underlying their lives. Fear that the society that advertises so much freedom and opportunity delivers so little. Fear that their existence is at best only tolerated, never really valued. Fear that people sworn to protect their lives might take them over some trifling offense, real or imagined, any time they leave the house. Breonna Taylor and Atatiana Jefferson did not even have to leave theirs.

Some of what they have to fear are fearful white people. Fear is something they share in common without realizing it. Only what white people fear is losing control, losing face, losing power to people they consider lessers in the social pecking order.

It is said that the higher one stands on the social ladder, the more insecure one is about maintaining status. Thus the propensity to kiss up and kick down. After observing racial epithets on signs his motorcade passed in Tennessee, President Lyndon Baines Johnson observed to Bill Moyers, “I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” he said. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Those undervalued and ground underfoot for so long by this society’s inequities are telling the world they have had enough. Like Howard Beale, they are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. Only they are not simply screaming out their windows. They have taken to the streets. Allied with them are a lot of white people who, thanks to cell phone video, finally see the fearful reality their nonwhite brethren live with day in and day out.

Torrance, California…

In the early running for 2020 KOY.

Karen Of The Year… https://t.co/78VnqymYe2

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) June 10, 2020

The sham of it all. Of chest-thumping American exceptionalism, of flags and USA#1 tags, of red MAGA hats. And “values.” The same United States that preens and struts about freedom jails more of its people than any other country on Earth. Americans feel obliged to walk around armed to the teeth, fearful that death or disrespect lies around any corner. Or worse, fearing the loss of somebody to look down on. Their response to fear is to instill it in others.

The months-long stress from COVID-19, the loss of incomes and failed businesses, the floundering non-response from the White House, and death “like nobody’s ever seen,” to borrow a phrase, finally put the lie to American supremacy. The videoed strangulation murder by police of George Floyd and Donald Trump’s military crackdown on protesters exposed America’s underlying white supremacy to disinfecting sunshine. We are humiliated before the world.

Now that polls show Americans aren't in favor of cops just beating the hell out of anyone they want, it was inevitable we'd get the Pat Lynch PBA version of Galt's Gulch. https://t.co/Apn03DQkhg

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) June 11, 2020

Police are on the defensive and so are some white people. The Anti-Defamation League finds, “Amid the ongoing threat of the coronavirus, there are surging reports of xenophobic and racist incidents targeting members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community in the U.S.”

Just south of Brunswick, Georgia where black jogger, Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, was hunted like game by white men in trucks, Thomas Langdale on Friday was charged with aggravated assault. The white man aimed a gun at Eric Dawson, a black man, in a grocery store parking lot. Dawson’s son had accidentally brushed against Langdale’s car:

“He yelled out, ‘I’ve been watching him in my rearview mirror. He doesn’t need to brush up against my car. He’s not worth enough to brush up against my car. Don’t ever come up beside my car again,’” Dawson said.

Dawson tried calming Langdale down, but instead, Dawson said Langdale raised his gun and at one point called him a racial slur.

“He pointed it directly at me in my face. All I could see was the barrel of that gun,” Dawson said. “Then he said, ‘I’ll shoot you. I’ll kill you.’”

Fear is something they have in common. Different fears, but fear still. Admittedly, Langdale seems to have an edge in rage.

“White rage is something Trump knows well; he rode it all the way to the White House,” Paul Waldman writes at Plum Line. Rage and white fear of losing status — Trump means to stoke them as we head into the political summer of 2020. He will have help and plenty of fuel.

“This may be a lot of things, this moment we are living through, but it is definitely not about black lives and remember that when they come for you, and at this rate, they will,” Tucker Carlson told his white Fox News audience on Monday.

White supremacist monuments to the Confederate “Lost Cause” are coming down across the South. Non-supremacists think it is time the Lost Cause got lost. Christopher Columbus’ place of honor in American cities may be over as well.

Members of the American Indian Movement are preparing to tear down the statue of Christopher Columbus at the Minnesota State capitol pic.twitter.com/8vLdELlxqG

— Max Nesterak (@maxnesterak) June 10, 2020

NASCAR announced Wednesday it would ban Confederate flags from its events and venues.

NASCAR truck racer Ray Ciccarelli says he's quitting after Confederate flag ban https://t.co/JQq7XrbT1O

— MSN (@MSN) June 11, 2020

The Trump campaign has announced plans to hold its first rally since March in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 19 (Juneteenth). Tulsa was the site of the largest white massacre of blacks in America history. One hundred years ago next year, a white mob burned hundreds of black-owned businesses and homes over 48 hours. The Washington Post recounted last year, “Historians believe as many as 300 black people were killed and 10,000 were left homeless.”

The acting president is likely too ignorant to know that. But senior policy advisor and Trump speechwriter Stephen Miller is not. Ronald Reagan was a comparative piker when he launched his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964. If Reagan meant to send a thinly veiled signal to white southerners, Trump’s Tulsa gambit screams “It’s on!” to armed white supremacists itching for a race war.

Public anger over racial injustice and Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus have dropped his net approval rating 19 points in a month. The Trump campaign is so unnerved about its reelection campaign against Democrat Joe Biden that it sent a cease and desist order to CNN demanding it retract and apologize (that’s oddly familiar) for its poll showing Trump “trailing the former vice president by 14 points, 55%-41%, among registered voters.“

Perhaps the Trump campaign sees igniting a race war as its Hail Mary play.

Charlie Pierce writes at Esquire Politics that fraught matters of race may not be swept away under history’s rug this time:

None of us really knows where this is headed. All we really know is that the momentum is, at the moment, ceaseless. It is strong enough to prevent its being wedged in the mossbacked categories of our ongoing culture war. It has been strong enough to force already serious changes in police practices in a number of cities. It has been strong enough to force a change not only in police precincts, but also in the upper echelons of The New York Times.

It has been strong enough to get Gone With The Wind pulled from the HBO playlist. It has been strong enough to reinvigorate the campaign to rid the country of memorials to those who committed treason in defense of slavery, and it has been strong enough to reach overseas and bring an overdue reckoning to memorials to slave traders in England and genocidal rulers in Belgium. It has been strong enough to bring the phrase BLACK LIVES MATTER to the street in front of the White House. It has shaken history and language as it has passed through them, and left them changed in its wake. It is real, and it is not going away.

The Democrats’ nominee for president gets it:

https://twitter.com/KHiveQueenBee/status/1270710641171394561

It’s “definitely not a good time” to be white supremacist.

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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

I just found out there is a spreadsheet of the hundreds of videos of police brutality across the country. Activists Create Public Online Spreadsheet of Police Violence Video  It’s horrific. It made me sad and angry. After my outrage I thought “What can we do with this resource to drive change?”

People are already using the videos to change laws and public opinion. That’s a great, but in our country you also need money to fund change and to fight the powerful, well-funded groups who don’t want change.

When I saw the videos I knew they could also be used to get money from civil lawsuits and that money could be used to drive police reform actions.

When I mentioned this idea to people they quickly pointed out that the money doesn’t come out of the police department budget. It’s all covered by the cities’ insurance polices. That’s when I fell into Helpless Defeatist mode. What yanked me out of HD mode was something I learned from listening to Sam Seder talk to trial lawyers like Mike Papantonio on Ring of Fire:

Here is Ring of Fire episode 543: We Know the Police Can do Better;

When trial lawyers win big civil lawsuits the settlements sometimes can change policy for an entire industry. So what if the police are  shielded by the cities’ current insurance polices? Create settlements that involve more that just getting the cities’ money for individuals. Develop settlement agreements that involve putting the money into specific social services or to pay for independent monitoring of the police.

There is probably some Latin legal name for what I’ll call a “Police Brutality Class Action Civil Suit.” Specific victims in the video who were hurt are the lead plaintiffs, but everyone attending the protest is part of the suit.  The proceeds can cover an individual’s specific damages, but a larger amount for the rest of the people can be used to fund specific police reforms. In addition, some money would be used to hire people who will keep fighting for those reforms.

• LAPD investigating 56 allegations of misconduct by officers during protests; 7 taken out of the field   Link

My Money. My Agenda.

The “Defund the police” conversation has led to, “How can we move money from the police to other services?”

Citizens can re-prioritize where the money goes. They change city budgets. First step is to look at where the money comes from then who controls it and what strings are attached to that money.

How do cities get money? They Issue bonds. Raise taxes. Get federal money. Get private money. Raise fees. Assess penalties. Seize assets. Have the police write tickets for violations of laws (BTW, that was how Ferguson got a lot of their money.) There are always multiple demands on how the money will be used. However, if the source of money is the Police Brutality Class Action Civil Suit, that money can be directed to policing reform.

Police reform is wasted without corresponding accountability

Tuesday on the Rachel Maddow show she talked to Reddit Hudson, the co-founder of the National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officers for Justice.  Hudson talked about their effort for reform that have been put into place, but were not effective. He noted that “any training  or reform that is going to be effective has to come first with real accountability.”

He then described what happened in Saint Louis after Ferguson where a great bill to create an independent panel that would investigate all police-involved shootings was put up by St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner. The Saint Louis Police officers Association, run by“a buffoon” Jeff Roorda, politically leveraged their influence and the bill wasn’t even brought to the floor for a vote.

(Gardner is now suing the Police union alleging a coordinated, racist conspiracy to drive her from office.)

Hudson said, “This is what all the people you see on the screen should expect as we move forward to do this thing. These police unions, you have to be aggressive and take a stand and push for them to acknowledge the human rights, civil rights and civil liberties of the communities they are sworn to serve.”

Hudson knows that to make police reform happen we need to have a movement that has multiple types of power. The “bad optics” of police beating people is huge, but what happens when the people on the streets are back at work 6 months from now? The police unions will still be there working full time to protect their power. For example Saint Louis POA head Jeff Roorda is still in charge. Five Years After Ferguson, Jeff Roorda Is Still a Dick

“What has created the environment in which zero accountability exists and they have expectations that nothing is going to happen is the power and leverage that police unions across the country have enjoyed for generations.”

• 2 more Atlanta cops fired over pulling college students from car at George Floyd protest

  June 10, 2020 CBS News

WATCH: here’s my video of when two young people were tased, dragged out of their car in downtown Atlanta Saturday night. We’re working to find out why this happened and what led up to it @cbs46 https://t.co/JL4nMFCnls pic.twitter.com/USRby69Kp2

— Jasmina Alston (@JasminaAlstonTV) May 31, 2020

I’ve learned from battling the NRA that their constant presence in legislative bodies makes a big difference. I never underestimate their ongoing marketing, PR and lobbying efforts. A bunch of volunteers can try to redirect the money to different institutions than the police but they will be up against highly paid, well-connected lobbyists and their army of men who can legally use deadly force.

Remember when the tobacco companies were sued? The state used a lot of that money for health care but also for ads and programs to stop smoking. Let’s do the same. Use “class action” police brutality settlements to fund police reform but also to remind people why it was done, how it’s working and what is different now. Give people metrics, both financial and emotional. “Unlike last year, the city did NOT spend 30 million in police brutality settlements. Also police beatings are down 60% following the new reforms.”

Criminal cases are going to be filed. They won’t all succeed but the civil lawsuits coming out of those might. Those civil cases have a better chance of winning, so let’s be creative NOW about how those cases are used to achieve our goal of police reform and to help the people in the community where the protesters were beaten.

My thoughts on using financial leverage comes from my own methods used on defunding RW media but also from the Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuits where they sued to get the assets of racists and hate groups. If I understand correctly the SPLS doesn’t get the assets for people and then turn around and say, ‘Now give us all the money we won for you.” Those people decide what to do with the assets.

City Governments Ask: Where’s the money for change coming from?

I know people in city government who want police reform. They know their city is going to be hit with massive lawsuits and they can’t pass on the financial pain to the police culprits. This is where smart, successful civil rights lawyers and political policy people can help. Look into methods to fund the fight for reform. Financial gains from civil lawsuits can drive change and be used to counter the powerful police lobby that blocks reform.

Insurance leverage. No compliance. No coverage.

Another way city governments can force police reform is to look closely at their insurance policies. City charters require they carry insurance for their fire, police and city workers. In order to remain covered those groups have to be in compliance. My friends in the insurance industry have pointed out that many police department aren’t in compliance with the terms and conditions of their policies.

If the police see they are out of compliance and aren’t covered that’s a opportunity to take the cost of the settlements out of the police budget. One friend in Colorado suggested the cost should come out of the police pension fund! The police will scream–and start complying.

Hudson points out that the legal and financial systems were set in place by the police lobbyists to protect them from criminal and financial accountability. We can use the money from the Police Brutality Class Action Civil Suits to fund ongoing pressure for change in those system.

Has it always been the case that the taxpayers funded the Secret Service for vacation trips by a president’s 40-something children? Maybe they did. But let’s just say this is particularly sickening since Trump’s 40-something son is traveling all over the world killing threatened animals and helping his father kill American democracy.

Donald Trump Jr.’s trip to Mongolia last August, where he hunted a rare breed of giant sheep, cost US taxpayers about $75,000 in Secret Service protection, according to documents obtained by a government watchdog group.

The documents requested by the nonpartisan and nonprofit group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington showed the United States Secret Service estimated Trump Jr.’s 8-day trip racked up expenses totaling $76,859.36.An official who works for Trump Jr. told CNN the trip to Mongolia, with the exception of Secret Service, was personally paid for by Trump Jr

.The journey to East Asia by President Donald Trump’s eldest son included a hunt of Argali sheep, the largest species of sheep, noted for their giant horns. Argali are considered a near-threatened species, according to the Red List of Threatened Species, in large part due to trophy hunting. Trump Jr. often shares social media posts with images from his hunting and fishing trips to locations across the globe. He has received harsh criticism from animal rights’ groups and conservationists for his penchant for trophy and “big game” hunting.

Junior is supposedly very busy running the vast Trump empire worth billions of dollars without even talking to his daddy about it. He sure seems to have a lot of time on his hands to kill animals, attend right-wing events and tweet conspiracy theories.

I guess the Trump empire is so great that it pretty much runs itself. Either that or it is a total con-job that’s worth almost nothing aside from the real estate holdings Trump’s daddy helped him buy years ago and the stale licensing deals that are set to expire any day now. Hmmm.

This is anything but surprising. We knew that when Defense secretary Esper made the statement that he didn’t thin the Insurrection Act was called for and very tepidly criticized the idea that the active-duty military should be brought into the streets of America, that Trump would go ballistic. I think I referred to him as a dead man walking. Apparently, it came very close:

President Trump reportedly came close to firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper after the Pentagon official broke with the President over invoking the Insurrection Act to quell the violence that emerged during nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

Last week, Esper contradicted Trump’s demand for governors to “dominate” protesters by activating the National Guard. Esper also argued that active duty forces should only be used in a law enforcement role as a “last resort.” CNN reported that Trump and other top officials were “not happy” with Esper following his remarks.

According to a Wall Street Journal report on Tuesday citing several administration officials, advisers and allies on Capitol Hill talked the President out of firing Esper. Officials told the Journal that Trump was “furious” over the defense secretary’s opposition to invoking the Insurrection Act.

The officials also told WSJ that Trump consulted several advisers — which included White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; longtime Trump friend and outside adviser David Urban; and Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and James Inhofe (R-OK) — about their opinion regarding Esper’s stance, and Trump intended to fire the defense secretary that day.

After speaking with advisers — who warned the President against firing Esper because it would put his administration in a tough spot — Trump held off, the officials told WSJ.

Esper reported also had his resignation letter all ready to go but was talked out of submitting it.

So, in the end, Trump didn’t fire him and he didn’t resign. How convenient. For Trump. I would expect that as soon as things cool off just a bit, Esper will be gone. That’s the kind of thing Trump will never forgive. If you’re going to do it you probably should just say your piece and then resign.

David Neiwert catches us up on the War on Antifa that being fought in small towns all over America:

In rural towns across America this past week, men with guns have been roaming the streets, looking out for the threat to their homes they were warned about on Facebook: hordes of ravening “antifa” activists, loaded en masse onto buses and intent on wreaking havoc. Local sheriffs jumped on the bandwagon, too. Nevermind that it was all a hoax.

In at least one case, a suspected “antifa bus” (actually occupied by a multiracial family of four, out for a camping excursion) was surrounded in a parking lot and chased out—then later harassed at their campsite by locals felling trees across their access road in order to trap them.

The hoaxes were primarily spread on Facebook, though some Twitter accounts relayed the fake information as well. A typical post followed the formula used in others: a claim to have “real information” about “antifa” piling into buses from nearby urban centers with the intent of attacking defenseless small towns.

One such hoax circulated in the Midwest, citing the notorious conspiracy-theory operation Natural News, and claiming that “Antifa operatives are organizing a plan to bus large numbers of Antifa terrorists to the vicinity of Sparta, Illinois, where they will be directed to target rural white Americans by burning farm houses and killing livestock. The purpose of the attack, according to sources, is so that Antifa can send a message to white America that “not even rural whites are safe” from the reach of Antifa, and that if their radical left-wing demands are not met, all of America will burn (not just the cities).”

It went on:

Antifa terrorists are currently expected to move along state routes 154 and 4, seeking out rural targets including isolated homes and farms to cause maximum mayhem and property destruction. Although our sources did not specifically mention the methods by which killing livestock would be accomplished, it seems almost certain that firearms would be the most effective way for Antifa terrorists to achieve that morbid goal.

In Idaho, rumors spread by the militia group Real Three Percenters of Idaho on Facebook claimed that antifascists were being bused into Boise and neighboring counties to ransack local businesses. “Their plan is to destroy private property in the city and continue to residential areas,” the post said. “We are calling on all business owners to contact us if you are concerned for your business and your private property immediately. We are here to protect you, your private business, and have teams on the ground standing by.”

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the local chamber of commerce spread the rumors, tweeting out: “We’re being told that buses are en route from Fargo for today’s march downtown. DT businesses—please bring in any furniture, signs, etc. that could possibly be thrown through windows. Let’s keep our city safe and peaceful!”

“I am not one to spread false information,” one post circulated in Klamath Falls, Oregon, claimed. “There are two buses heading this way from Portland, full of ANTIFA members and loaded with bricks. Their intentions are to come to Klamath Falls, destroy it, and murder police officers. There have been rumors of the antifa going into residential areas to ‘fuck up the white hoods.’”

That thread gained support with a screenshot message from Col. Jeff Edwards, commander of the Oregon Air National Guard’s 173rd Fighter Wing based in Klamath Falls, posted to one of the groups, reading:  “Team Kingsley, for your safety I ask you to please avoid the downtown area this evening. We received an alert that there may be 2 busloads of ANTIFA protesters en route to Klamath Falls and arriving in downtown around 2030 tonight.”

A spokesperson for the 173rd Fighter Wing confirmed that the message had come from Edwards, saying he had sent it “to the Citizen-Airmen of the 173d Fighter Wing for their situational awareness and safety.” She noted that Edwards’ message was shared with local law enforcement, and it spread from there.

In  Humboldt County, California, Sheriff William Honsel not only spread the hoax widely, but insisted afterward that it was perfectly legitimate: “We did have reports—substantiated, law enforcement reports—that said antifa did have people in buses that were in southern Oregon and in the Central Valley … ,” he said. “These aren’t unsubstantiated stories. This is the reality, and we have to deal with that.”

In Curry County, Oregon, Sheriff John Ward informed his constituents: “I don’t know if the rumors are true or not just yet but I got information about 3 bus loads of ANTIFA protesters are making their way from Douglas County headed for Coquille then to Coos Bay.”

And in Snohomish, Washington, the police chief responded to the Facebook rumors by staging 50 officers at an emergency operations center, “ready to converge if necessary” should any reports of arriving antifa buses or accompanying property destruction arise. The chief also positioned officers on the roof of the city hall.  

Some law-enforcement officers did try to squelch the false rumors. In Toms River, New Jersey, the sheriff and county prosecutor posted warnings on social media that the widely circulating rumors of “antifa” planning to riot in “primarily white neighborhoods” were “not true.” “I am spending an inordinate amount of time dispelling social media rumors and misinformation,” said Ocean County prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer.

Yet even despite those warnings, the outcome became predictable in an age where armed “Patriots” eager for a “Boogaloo”: Businesses boarded up their windows, and militiamen began organizing street patrols through social media.

In Klamath Falls, as Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins reported, the whole town was buzzing with anticipation of the incoming “antifa buses.” It became something of a game, shared on Facebook: An empty green bus at the community college was spotted. So was a white bus with “Black Lives Matter” and peace signs painted on it, in the local Walmart parking lot. A U-Haul in front of T.J. Maxx somehow set off alarms.

“I saw some scattered SJWs and some in black at Albertsons,” one woman posted.

Read on for the details. They are so inane you’re tempted to laugh. But when you have the Attorney General of the United States making these charges and the President tweeting about it constantly, even suggesting that elderly peace protesters assaulted by police are really Antifa terrorists, you know that this is no laughing matter.

It’s crazy and not in a zany, kooky way. It’s dangerous. We’re lucky that so far it’s just a few yahoos playing soldier.

Pew did a survey and it’s interesting:

Twitter is a modern public square where many voices discuss, debate and share their views. Media personalities, politicians and the public turn to social networks for real-time information and reactions to the day’s events. But compared with the U.S. public overall, which voices are represented on Twitter?

To examine this question, Pew Research Center conducted a nationally representative survey of 2,791 U.S. adult Twitter users who were willing to share their Twitter handles.¹ The design of this survey provides a unique opportunity to measure the characteristics and attitudes of Twitter users in the United States and link those observations to actual Twitter behaviors, such as how often users tweet or how many accounts they follow.

The analysis indicates that the 22% of American adults who use Twitter are representative of the broader population in certain ways, but not others. Twitter users are younger, more likely to identify as Democrats, more highly educated and have higher incomes than U.S. adults overall. Twitter users also differ from the broader population on some key social issues. For instance, Twitter users are somewhat more likely to say that immigrants strengthen rather than weaken the country and to see evidence of racial and gender-based inequalities in society. But on other subjects, the views of Twitter users are not dramatically different from those expressed by all U.S. adults.

In addition to teasing out these differences between Twitter users and the population as a whole, this analysis also highlights the sizable diversity among Twitter users themselves. The median user tweets just twice each month, but a small cohort of extremely active Twitter users posts with much greater regularity. As a result, much of the content posted by Americans on Twitter reflects a small number of authors. The 10% of users who are most active in terms of tweeting are responsible for 80% of all tweets created by U.S. users.

Individuals who are among the top 10% most active tweeters also differ from those who tweet rarely in ways that go beyond the volume of content they produce. Compared with other U.S. adults on Twitter, they are much more likely to be women and more likely to say they regularly tweet about politics. That said, there are only modest differences in many attitudes between those who tweet frequently and those who do not.

This surprised me:

Twitter users are more likely to identify with the Democratic Party compared with U.S. adults more generally: 36% do so, compared with 30% of U.S. adults, according to a national survey of all adults conducted in November 2018. Similarly, 26% of U.S. adults identify as Republican, versus 21% of adult Twitter users. Political independents make up a similar share of the general public (27%) and Twitter users (29%).

Of course, many political independents actually lean toward one of the two major parties. Of the Americans who lean toward either party, 52% of U.S. adults identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 60% of U.S. adult Twitter users say the same. Similarly, 43% of U.S. adults identify as or lean Republican, compared with 35% of adult Twitter users.

These partisan differences between Twitter users and the general public persist when looking across certain age groups. Specifically, nearly two-thirds (63%) of Twitter users ages 18 to 49 identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with the 55% of 18- to 49-year-olds who identify the same way. Among older users, these differences are similar. Some 53% of Twitter users age 50 or older identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, a figure that is somewhat higher than the 47% of U.S. adults in this age group who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.

In terms of political ideology, Twitter users are less likely than U.S. adults more broadly to characterize their views as very conservative. On an 11-point scale ranging from 0 (“very conservative”) to 10 (“very liberal”), 14% of Twitter users place themselves between 0 and 2, compared with 25% of the general public. At the same time, similar shares of Twitter users and U.S. adults identify as very liberal. And although Twitter users are somewhat more likely to report having voted in the 2018 midterm elections, these differences are relatively modest: 60% of Twitter users reported that they definitely voted in 2018, compared with 55% of all U.S. adults.

I think Facebook is the primary social media platform for conservatives. I would guess that most right-wingers find out about Trump’s tweets there when their circle shares them rather than on twitter itself. And it appears Facebook knows which side its bread is buttered on too.

I’ve always favored twitter over Facebook because it’s quick and dirty and I don’t have the kind of time it takes wo sift through Facebook. I follow quite a few right-wingers on twitter and they get re-tweeted by others as well so it’s easy to see what they’re up to. But I would guess that a lot of people live in a left-wing twitter silo as well.

Wow Lara has issues pic.twitter.com/tXAUwaAdgA

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 9, 2020

https://twitter.com/Kris_Sacrebleu/status/1269847708958777345

Logan suffered a very serious attack in the Tahrir Square protests and one might be inclined to forgive her for being affected by that. But the truth is that she was a right winger long before that happened. And she’s not just a right winger, a right wing propagandist.

No one can be surprised by Logan spreading disinformation. Back in 2013 when she perpetrated an egregious Benghazi hoax on 60 Minutes and CBS News took months to properly deal with it. She even stayed at CBS until 2019!

I’m very surprised she didn’t end up on Fox News as a regular a long time ago. According to Wikipedia, “in 2019, she joined the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative media company. In January 2020, she joined Fox Nation, a subscription streaming service run by Fox News.” And apparently Hannity has been pushing for her to be hired for the big show.

If you need reminding of her outrageous Benghazi hoax and the comments she made for years about “taking out” Pakistani Taliban sympathisers and showing the world that America is not to be trifled with etc, I wrote a bunch about it at the time. She’s a real piece of work, always has been.

If you are one of the many millions of people who don’t pay attention to the president’s Twitter feed, you might not know that he is having a very rough time right now. His whining and complaining has exceeded the level of bragging and gloating by at least two to one, and he is clearly spending much of his time watching the right wing propaganda outfit OANN and scrolling through the fringiest followers’ feeds and retweeting the most absurd conspiracy theories and crude insults. If the eyes are the window to the soul, Trump’s Twitter habits are the window to his id.

He’s right to be nervous. Things are not going well. This week showed some very substantial erosion in his polling numbers. According to Nate Silver at 538, his approval rating is sinking among registered or likely voters — 54.9% disapprove of his performance now, compared to 50.3% on April 1. And the head to head match-up with Biden now has him at least ten points behind, as Nate Cohn reports for the New York Times:

New polls show Biden building a wide 10 point lead over the president
His advantage is driven by a gigantic advantage among women and gains among white voters without a degreehttps://t.co/Cfwz039fkT pic.twitter.com/QXeQdWG6Y8

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) June 9, 2020

This week’s CNN poll shows him with just a 38% approval rating, and trailing Biden by 14 points.

State polling isn’t looking good either. According to Cohn’s report, Trump’s drop in approval among non-college educated white voters and senior citizens puts states like Iowa and Ohio potentially in play. And while men seem to be sticking with him in the same numbers he got against Clinton, his “woman problem” across the board is getting worse. “He trails Mr. Biden by 25 points among them,” Cohn writes, “far worse than his 14-point deficit four years ago.”

Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair reports that Trump is, in the words of one former adviser, “malignantly crazy about the bad poll numbers” and is threatening to “broom” his son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Brad Parscale. Trump’s reportedly so distraught about the poll numbers he’s calling up his friends in New York and “asking people to agree with him that the polls are biased,” according to a source of Sherman’s. “But no one is telling him what he wants to hear.”

So he hired a famously wrong pollster to put out an embarrassing statement suggesting just that, even saying that all the polling outfits were trying to “dampen the enthusiasm of Trump voters.” (None of his supposed “analysis” is correct.)

Trump’s also getting the 2016 campaign band back together, perhaps in an effort to make himself feel better. Seemingly, the only alumnus who isn’t coming back on board is Paul Manafort, who remains under house arrest after being released from prison due to coronavirus fears, although presumably he’s still available by phone. And Roger Stone would certainly be happy do whatever he can, especially since his old boss tweeted that Stone can “sleep well at night” in answer to one of his follower’s suggestions that he give a full pardon to his old friend.

But Trump appears to be so in the dumps about all of this that his team wanted to do a little something to buck him up — as well as show him that they are hard at work touting his alleged accomplishments — so they bought $400,000 worth of ads on all the cable networks just for the D.C. area, knowing that he obsessively watches news and would see them. What’s nearly a half a million dollars to make the boss feel better?

The problem, of course, is that Trump’s numbers aren’t a result of bad “messaging” or collusion by pollsters. The problem is that the trifecta of the pandemic, economic collapse and national social upheaval are challenges he is completely unable to meet. It is simply beyond his ability and skill to handle a real crisis, and his character and personality will not allow him to delegate or even accept advice from people who do know what to do. For the first time in his presidency, Trump is facing problems that aren’t purely political problems of his own making. These crises require him to actually be the president, not just play one on TV.

For him, the presidency is defined as a public relations job which he believes he accomplishes with the pageantry of foreign trips, and television appearances of him sitting at the resolute desk in the Oval Office surrounded by various supplicants and sycophants as he throws insults at the press. Sometimes he will hold a similar set-piece at a conference table or with a visiting dignitary, also featuring insults hurled at the press.

And, of course, there’s “chopper talk,” in which he stops on the way to board Marine One before heading to some event or one of his resort properties, and the press screams questions nobody can hear while Trump yells back answers.

But what he truly believes is his real job — and the one which he believes he does with great skill and finesse — is to rally his faithful followers. And ever since the pandemic hit, he’s been denied the forum that allows him to show off his true presidential chops, which in his mind almost certainly accounts for the drop in his popularity.

For a while there were the daily coronavirus briefings (where again, yes, he insulted the press) which he believed made up for his canceled rallies, often citing the great TV ratings they were getting, as if that was a measure of approval for his performance. But in reality, those briefings so starkly illustrated his ignorance and incompetence in the middle of a catastrophic health crisis that they likely started the downward slide in his approval ratings, which has only picked up speed with his stunningly off-key response to the Black Lives Matter protests.

Streets overflowing with protesters have given Trump the excuse he has been looking for to restart his campaign rallies. It was announced on Tuesday that they may begin again as early as next week. Some people suggested they could be held outdoors and that masks could be handed out to the attendees, but Trump has made it clear that he wants “real rallies,” and we all know that he doesn’t like the look of masks, and neither do his followers. So, I would expect that unlike the protests, where exposure may be mitigated by the fact they are outdoors and most are wearing masks (as well as the relative youth of the participants), Trump’s new rallies with his older fans, yelling and screaming in close quarters, may be a lot riskier for the spread of coronavirus.

He does not care. After Trump had a temper tantrum over the North Carolina government’s insistence that they simply could not guarantee that the RNC Convention scheduled for August would not require social distancing, the RNC has decided that while the business of the convention would still be in Charlotte, Trump will “accept the party’s nomination during a celebration in another city.” He simply has to have his big night with all his worshipful supporters — even if it kills them.

My Salon column reprinted with permission

How are we feeling today?

White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Covid-19 turned out to be his “worst nightmare” come to life as the coronavirus continues to rapidly spread across the globe.

The virus is “something that’s highly transmissible. … In a period — if you just think about it — in a period of four months, it has devastated the world,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview with the BIO Digital virtual health-care conference that aired Tuesday.

“That’s millions and millions of infections worldwide. And it isn’t over yet. And it’s condensed in a very, very small time frame,” he said. “You know, first notice at the end of December, hit China in January, hit the rest of the world in February, March, April, May, early June.”

The coronavirus, which emerged in Wuhan, China, in late December, has infected more than 7 million people worldwide and killed at least 408,244, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Fauci said the virus is “very different” from other outbreaks such as Ebola and HIV. The virus jumped from an animal host and has a high degree of transmissibility and mortality, he said. It is historically one of the worst pandemics the world has ever experienced, he said, adding people have compared it to the 1918 flu.

“I mean, Ebola was scary. But Ebola would never be easily transmitted in a global way,” he said. “HIV, as important as it is, was drawn out over an extended period of time. I mean, I think the ultimate impact of AIDS almost certainly will be greater than anything we’re talking about now.”

The coronavirus just “took over the planet,” he said.

He is enthusiastic about a vaccine so there’s that …

Georgia’s new ballot-marking voting machines would not work. Poll workers were unfamiliar with their operation. Precincts lacked enough paper to print provisional ballots. They opened late. Social-distancing meant lines snaked down streets and around blocks. Some voters waited hours to vote or went home.

BREAKING NEWS: Voters outraged because they can’t vote. @cbs46
Voting machines are down & systems aren’t working all over #Atlanta
Some people have left the polls because the line has NOT moved since 6 A.M. pic.twitter.com/QfJ8fxz5TQ

— Barmel Lyons (@BarmelLyonsTV) June 9, 2020

Tuesday’s primary election featuring Georgia’s new touch-screen voting machines was, Mark Niesse explains in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, chaos:

Problems have been building for weeks as precincts closed, poll workers quit and the primary was postponed because of the health danger posed by the coronavirus crisis. Some voters south of Atlanta waited eight hours to vote on the last day of early voting Friday.

But the election went worse than expected Tuesday, especially in metro Atlanta, when poll workers couldn’t get Georgia’s new $104 million voting system system running. The system uses touchscreens and printers to create paper ballots.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tweeted reports that none of the machines were working in some of the largest Atlanta-area precincts.

Now being told line is out to the street at Sandtown Recreation Center and their machines are not working either @gasecofstate. Is this happening across the county or just on the south end? https://t.co/szO7srzpWs

— Keisha Lance Bottoms (@KeishaBottoms) June 9, 2020

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) blamed Fulton and DeKalb county officials for poor planning. Gwinnett County had “underestimated the number and size of trucks needed” to transport the new voting equipment, said a spokeswoman for the secretary of state.

GA SOS tells me Gwinnett only discovered yesterday that the new voting machines don’t fit on trucks the same was as old ones. SOS is questioning why county waited to last minute to move the machines https://t.co/TYgqOOxrVf

— Justin Gray (@JustinGrayWSB) June 9, 2020

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Georgia sent absentee-ballot requests to every active registered voter, leading to record levels of voting by mail. Absentee voting split evenly between Republicans and Democrats.

Latrisha Hernandez says she never received her absentee ballot. She was not alone.

Hernandez complained that when she tried to vote in person at Park Tavern precinct (Fulton County), “They didn’t have the password to the system, so we had to sit to the side until they finally had a password to get it reset.”

So new county numbers put the percentage of precincts impacted in Gwinnett County at about 9% so far . (8.66 for mathematicians out there )@wsbtv

— Tony Thomas (@TonyThomasATL) June 9, 2020

Elton Harden and his wife found no machines when they arrived at a polling place in Gwinnett County before 7 a.m. His wife, scheduled for a surgery later in the morning, did not get to vote. Harden, who is African American, said, “If we’re going through this now, just think what November is going to be like.”

Voting was extended in DeKalb, Fulton, Gwinnett, and another 17 counties across the state.

A viewer sent me this video of incredibly long lines at the FanPlex polling place on Hank Aaron Dr. in SE Atlanta. pic.twitter.com/xGRJPXJp2Y

— Richard Elliot (@RElliotWSB) June 9, 2020

Hanlon’s razor advises, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” But after a second voting disaster in Georgia, one wonders if Hanlon applies here.

Democrat Stacey Abrams lost her 2018 gubernatorial bid to then-secretary of state Brian Kemp, a Republican, by the thinnest of margins. Abrams deemed the election “rotten and rigged.”

Georgians deserve better. I voted today bc of absentee ballot defects. From Jasper to Fulton to Coffee & Chatham, long lines, inoperable machines & under-resourced communities are being hurt. @GaSecofState owns this disaster. He must stop finger-pointing and fix it. #gapol

— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) June 9, 2020

“From Jasper to Fulton to Coffee & Chatham, long lines, inoperable machines & under-resourced communities are being hurt,” Abrams tweeted. Raffensperger “owns this disaster.”

NBC News adds:

Democrats have targeted Georgia — which has added 700,000 registered voters to the rolls since 2018 — as a possible swing state in November. Rachana Desai Martin, the national director of voter protection for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said that what happened Tuesday is “unacceptable” and noted that many voters reported asking for — and never receiving — absentee ballots.

“We only have a few months left until voters around the nation head to the polls again, and efforts should begin immediately to ensure that every Georgian — and every American — is able to safely exercise their right to vote,” said Martin, whose candidate NBC News projected to win the Democratic primary in the state shortly after the official poll closing time. Martin said the Biden campaign “will remain fully engaged in defending” the right to vote.

This fall’s election is going to be a fight. Opponents of democracy won’t be observing Marquess of Queensberry rules. Or wearing gloves. Democrats will need to put up more of a fight than they have in years. The other team will give no quarter.

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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.