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Month: September 2021

It’s the pandemic, stupid

Published by digby on September 20, 2021

Biden’s approval ratings have taken a beating over the past few weeks which is usually attributed to the Afghanistan withdrawal and the hysterical coverage that accompanies it. But it’s more likely that his drop is attributed to the Delta variant sweeping through the south this summer and the necessary reinstitution of masks and other mitigation efforts to contain it elsewhere. This comment from one pollster certainly indicates that is the issue:

“One thing that we’ve seen in our polling not just of the president — we also track approval ratings of all 50 governors — one thing that we’ve seen throughout this pandemic is that regardless of the policy decisions that are made, there’s a pretty strong correlation between the Covid picture and a governor’s approval rating, and therefore a president’s approval rating,” says Morning Consult senior editor Cameron Easley.

This tracks with the obvious fact that the reason the virus has spread as it has is because a third of the country refuses to get vaccinated, most of them right wing Trump voters who are listening to bullshit from right wing media and GOP leaders who have jumped on the bandwagon in the name of “freedom.”

The strategy is clear. Biden ran on being competent in a crisis and fixing big problems. He said he wanted to “restore the soul of America” and unify the country. Republicansw ant him to fail at all of that so they can regain power in order to … well, I’m not sure what anymore. They have the courts and massive tax cuts for the rich and that’s all they care about. So really, their only goal is to stop the Democrats from doing anything, anything at all.

Republicans don’t have the congressional majority so they’re limited. Luckily for them, there are Democrats who are willing to do their dirty work for them so that’s nice. But they also have their base which is working overtime to ensure that Biden is unable to contain the pandemic by refusing to get vaccinated and dying in droves. It’s quite the sacrifice. But it shows just how dedicated they all are to the cause. Owning the libs is everything.

Dispatch from Real America

Published by digby on September 20, 2021

I’m just going to leave this here. If you have a few minutes to catch up with the folks from Mayberry, it will be illuminating.

I know we’re all tired of the attention this cultural demographic gets in the press. But it’s important to check in once in a while. They have much more power than their numbers would normally provide simply because of the ridiculous way our political system is structured. You can’t ignore that.

They booed Paul Ryan

Published by digby on September 20, 2021

There’s chatter today about whether or not Trump’s call to depose Mitch McConnell has any traction. So far his loyal minions in the Senate are saying no, even Tommy Tuberville!

Mr. Trump has spoken recently with senators and allies about trying to depose Mr. McConnell and whether any Republicans are interested in mounting a challenge, according to people familiar with the conversations. There is little appetite among Senate Republicans for such a plan, lawmakers and aides said, but the discussions risk driving a wedge deeper between the most influential figure in the Republican Party and its highest-ranking member in elected office.

Since failing to be re-elected, the former president has maintained high levels of support among conservative voters, and polls show he has convinced much of the party that the 2020 results were fraudulent. Mr. McConnell has said that President Biden won the election and that Mr. Trump’s “wild falsehoods” about the outcome were responsible for the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol.

They have also split on policy this year. Mr. McConnell joined 18 fellow Senate Republicans in voting for a roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, despite Mr. Trump saying the deal “makes the Republicans look weak, foolish, and dumb.”

The feud between the two men threatens to splinter the party when Republicans could be building momentum in their bid to recapture control of Congress next year. As polls have shown Mr. Biden’s approval rating dipping below 50% this summer—a troubling signal for Democrats’ political fortunes—the two Republican septuagenarians remain divided over how to tilt the balance of a 50-50 Senate back toward their party.

In a recent interview, Mr. Trump declined to discuss whether he was recruiting challengers for Mr. McConnell. The former president did say he wanted Senate Republicans to oust the Kentuckian from the leadership position he has held for almost 15 years.

“They ought to,” Mr. Trump said. “I think he’s very bad for the Republican Party.”

The Senators aren’t going to turn on Mitch solely because Trump wants them to. He’s very powerful and he’s quite effective for their goals, particularly when it comes to pleasing their rich benefactors.

Political-action committees run by allies of Mr. McConnell—including the Senate Leadership Fund, American Crossroads and various state-specific groups—spent $462.5 million in helping to elect Republicans in 2020.

In the first six months of 2021, Mr. Trump stockpiled $102 million in political cash. He reported no donations to Republican campaigns during that time.

However, that doesn’t mean McConnell is safe. I would just remind everyone that the rabid base of the GOP wields just as much power. Trump can’t take out McConnell — he was just re-elected. But he can make big trouble for the Senators who protect him by activating his cult on this issue.

It’s happened before, even prior to Trump’s full takeover of the party:

Paul Ryan was not popular in West Virginia on Thursday, the mention of his name drawing boos from a crowd of supporters at a Donald Trump rally in Charleston.

Pastor Mark Burns fired up the audience by criticizing the House Speaker’s comments that he could not currently support the presumptive Republican nominee.

“On CNN, we’re told that Paul Ryan said, ‘I will never endorse Donald Trump,” Burns exclaimed prior to Trump’s entrance, which drew loud boos from the crowd of supporters.
(Ryan actually said he was “just not ready” to endorse Trump, though “I hope to.”)

By the way, Ryan did endorse Trump. But he was out within two years. The base hated him at the end.

Before that, there was this:

In a shocker, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has lost the Republican primary in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District to a relatively unknown college professor, David Brat. Brat spent little money in the race; Cantor spent over a million dollars. The political media will spend days trying to figure out what happened, but here are a few quick thoughts.

First, this race had a heavy insider vs. outsider dynamic, and the tea party is definitely not dead. As my colleague Nate Silver pointed out previously, it was probably too early to call for the tea party’s demise. Cantor’s loss puts an exclamation point on that.

And this:

“He’s not going anywhere.” That’s what Kevin Smith, the communications director for the Speaker of the House, said about his boss, John Boehner, in a Time article published Thursday. “If there’s a small crew of members who think that he’s just going to pick up and resign in the middle of his term, they are going to be sadly mistaken,” he said.

But just a day later, a small crew of House members who wanted Boehner gone got their wish. On Friday, Boehner told his fellow House Republicans that he would quit the post at the end of October. He apparently was bowing to pressure from some members of the Freedom Caucus, a group of more than 30 of the most conservative Republicans who wanted Boehner to push harder to defund Planned Parenthood, even if it meant shutting down the government next week. If all members of the caucus had voted to oust Boehner, he would not have had a Republican majority to keep his job.

Don’t think it can’t happen to Mitch. It’s unlikely but not impossible.

In Memorium

Published by digby on September 20, 2021

Stunning isn’t the word. These flags represent 275,000 more lives than the 400,000 than lie in Arlington National Cemetery.

The last hundred thousand or so were entirely preventable.

Update:

The Authority of the Mob

Published by digby on September 20, 2021

There’s been a ton of reporting and analysis on Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book, “Peril”, most of it focusing on the final days of the Trump administration — which by all accounts were even more of a chaotic mess than we could see from the outside (and we saw plenty). The bizarre antics from the president and his henchmen regarding the election results were unprecedented and continue to this day.

But one of the most chilling quotes from the book that I’ve seen so far comes from this review of the book by history professor Eric Rauchway in the Washington Post. As we knew, Vice President Mike Pence tried every way he could to come up with a rationale to do Trump’s bidding and refuse to ceremonially confirm the electoral count in the joint session of Congress on January 6th. On that morning, before the fateful rally that inspired the insurrection, Pence came to the White House to reluctantly tell his boss that he just didn’t have the power to do that under the Constitution:

Gesturing at some of his supporters already gathered and shouting outside the White House, Trump asked, “Well, what if these people say you do?

When Pence demurred again, Trump mused, “wouldn’t it almost be cool to have that power?”

As Rauchway points out, “the president was willing to find authority in the mob if he lacked it in the law.” It’s entirely possible that if the mob had succeeded in finding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or the vice president or had been able to corner some of those elected officials in the Capitol that day, Trump would have gone along with it. All the recent books, including “Peril” have Trump watching the event unfold and being unmoved by exhortations to step in from everyone from his daughter Ivanka to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, to whom he reportedly said, “well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

That comment about the mob conferring the power to overturn the election results got me thinking about the timeline on Jan. 6 and it occurs to me that Trump only issued his pathetic video in which he said he loved the gathered rioters but implored them to go on home once it became clear that all the officials had gotten away safely and there was no longer any chance his supporters would succeed in finding them. He had waited to see if they could physically force the Congress to overturn the election.

As predicted, the “Justice forJ6” rally last Saturday was a non-event. More media showed up than protesters, largely because the organizer has no talent for organizing and the word on all right-wing social media was that the FBI was going to arrest everyone. As I noted earlier, Trump himself said it was a “set-up.” But in case anyone wondered where he stood on the premise of this rally, which is that the federal authorities are unjustly holding peaceful protesters as political prisoners, he left no doubt when he issued his statement in solidarity. “Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election. In addition to everything else, it has proven conclusively that we are a two-tiered system of justice.”

ABC’s Jonathan Karl reported on “This Week” that when he’s interviewed Trump for his new book, it’s clear that Trump has no regrets:

I was absolutely dumbfounded at how fondly he looks back on January 6th. He thinks it was a great day. He thinks it was one of the greatest days of his time in politics.

Trump is still flouting the law and openly condoning the violent insurrection. As Rauchway said, he “finds authority in the mob.” He’s always engaged in lurid rhetoric and has nudged his followers and police to beat protesters and the like. But starting with his calls to “liberate” states that were trying to mitigate the spread of the pandemic, he has been backing insurrectionist and vigilante activity. And his followers are listening.

We’ve seen threats and intimidation against government workers and public health officials for months. Congressional representatives are under constant threat having to hire private security and bodyguards. We are starting to see violence in everyday interactions between local officials and their constituents. School board meetings have become fraught with locals citizens yelling at officials that they know where they live and they will find them. Last week GOP Congressman Anthony Gonzales announced that he would not run for reelection in Ohio because ever since he voted to impeach Donald Trump after the insurrection he and his family have needed security due of the risk of violence from Trump supporters. Trump quickly put out a statement indicating his elation at the success of that intimidation:

The 9 he refers to are the other Republicans who voted to impeach him. He is using the “authority of the mob” to chase his perceived enemies in the GOP out of politics and to send a message to all the other Republicans that they will be subject to the same treatment if they cross him.

All the recent polls show Trump is as popular as ever with Republicans. His obsessive attention to his Big Lie seems to have hardened their attitudes with more of them believing he was cheated than believed it last January. The vast majority of his voters have lost faith in the electoral system to deliver a fair result and will likely not accept anything but a victory going forward, particularly if Donald Trump is on the ballot.

Rauchway’s review of “Peril” features an unexpected insight into President Biden’s view of Trumpism. He writes:

Biden regards the -ism, not the man, as the real threat; Trump put the nation in peril because he evoked and organized a darkness that was already there.

That darkness isn’t going away. It is energized and stimulated by the strong threat of violence that is running through our politics. Like it’s leader Trump, it sees the “authority in the mob” as the best way to preserve its dominance in a culture it believes is slipping away. Biden is right that Trump is not the real threat. The threat is the violent beast he has unleashed and there isn’t any obvious way to put it back in its cage. 

Salon

The Party of Personal Responsibility

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 20, 2021

You can’t even…. I can’t either.

Lake Wobegon has Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility. Real America™ has the Brotherhood of Perpetual Victimhood.

For easier reading:

As Vanderbrouk observes, a lot to unpack there. Beginning with “organized” and “left” in the same sentence.

Who knew unmanly, mask-wearing, lefty snowflakes were unleashing fascist violence across America? I missed their cop-beating, Build Back Better assault on the Capitol, did I?

Who knew the un-message-disciplined bullies had employed Jedi mind-tricksy, switcheroo psychology to make Trump supporters reject wearing masks and getting vaccines so they’d hasten their removal from the voter rolls? Even Republicans’ most groveling Trumpist governors were taken in.

Not that such mind-trickery would be hard with people who find their truth “in other ways” they “won’t say.”

Who knew Black Lives Matter would taken a break from burning down cities every day, deliberately purchase thousands of pieces of Trump merch — MAGA hats, Trump flags and tee-shirts — and caravan to Washington, D.C. made-up in white face to cheer through a couple of hours of Trump’s rally and assault the U.S. Capitol (a couple giving their lives) just to stick it to Trump and his cult?

The buck never stops with the Party of Personal Responsibility.

Martyrdom cosplay

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 20, 2021
Photo via Facebook .

Cult of presonality? Check. Insurrection? Check. Mass insanity? Check. Martyrdom? Check.

But hey, if an anti-vaxxer is going to become a martyr for the Bleach King, why not have fun with it? How about throwing in some cosplay, too?

As if the anti-vaxx, MAGA death cult wasn’t weird enough (Insider):

In a nod to the “Harry Potter” series, some unvaccinated people are calling themselves “purebloods” on TikTok.

People have started using the hashtags #purebloods and #unvaxxed on the sharing platform and saying they want to be known by the former term. In J.K. Rowling’s books, the word “pureblood” is used to refer to wizard families with a “pure” bloodline, or an unmixed ancestry that has never intermarried with non-magical people. It also comes with a darker connotation of superiority over those whose bloodlines are a mix of magical and non-magical ancestries.

In its coverge of the phenomenon, USA Today reminds readers:

The trend comes as the U.S. deals with another surge of COVID-19 cases, most from the more contagious delta variant. Now 7 in 10 American adults have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, but the new rise in cases threatens to undo the country’s progress toward normality.

But sure, have fun while you don’t need a ventilator.

The TikTok trend may be a poor attempt at a joke, a reference to conspiracist rumors that mRNA Covid vaccines somehow alter one’s genetic code. It’s not the first time anti-vaxxers have employed pop-culture references in branding themselves on TikTok, reports the Daily Dot:

They previously used the audio of The Hunger Games whistle to “call out” to their un-vaxxed “brothers and sisters” and find out what state they were from. They have also used audio from Transformers (2007) in which Optimus Prime says, “I send this message to any surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars: We are here. We are waiting.”

https://twitter.com/AndytheCorsair/status/1437490383815159810?s=20

But one would have to be clueless in the current political environment not to hear racist dogwhistles or worse in invoking “purebloods” in the real word. But cluelessness is its own epidemic. Rowling herself acknowleged conscious use of Nazi overtones in her writing. One critic on TikTok points out:

TikTok user @goodtrouble_ shows @kats.outta.the.bag’s video then says, “So first you were comparing yourselves to the Jews and the Holocaust, and now you’re the Nazis? Pick a fucking lane.”

Perhaps the government’s next free-drug program should involve dispensing antipsychotics. /s

A public health culture

Published by digby on September 19, 2021

I thought this analysis looking at why California currently has the lowest COVID rate in the country was quite astute:

California hit the lowest coronavirus case rate in the nation Friday — thanks not only to high vaccination and masking, but also to a state culture that generally embraces public health precautions, experts said.

Despite the highly contagious delta variant, which accounts for essentially all COVID cases in California, coronavirus infections are plummeting in the state, with a 32% drop in average weekly cases as of Thursday compared to a month earlier — 25 per 100,000 people, down from 33 per 100,000.

[…]

In much of the country outside the Northeast, case rates are at least double, or even five times higher, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.

California’s ability to reduce the spread of the virus lies partly in vaccinations. Among residents 18 and older, 69% are fully vaccinated, according to the New York Times vaccination tracker.

That’s good, but nowhere near good enough, said Stephen Shortell, dean emeritus at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, who said it may take a 90% vaccination rate to achieve herd immunity because of the delta variant.

California is the 19th state by vaccination percentage.

“We are not the most vaccinated state,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of UCSF’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. “But we are also a state that has not completely abandoned the other mitigation methods.”

California requires mask wearing at schools, on public transportation, and in hospitals, nursing homes and prisons. Masks in other indoor settings are recommended.

The Bay Area has been far more aggressive than the state. In eight of the nine counties, masks are required in nearly all indoor public settings — restaurants and bars being the main exceptions, though San Francisco, Berkeley and Contra Costa County require people to be vaccinated to enter those venues. Case rates in the region have plunged faster in recent weeks than those statewide.

Experts say many residents go beyond the rules.

“I think in California, there is a social norm around masking,” said Arnab Mukherjea, chair of Cal State East Bay’s public health department. “If you go outside, 75% of people are wearing masks.”

The state had the lowest COVID rates in the country on Friday, with 114 weekly cases for every 100,000 residents, according to the CDC’s tracker map.

Wyoming has one of the highest state rates, with a weekly figure of 659 cases per 100,000 residents. Only half of its residents 18 and older are fully vaccinated — trailing every state except West Virginia. Wyoming’s governor lifted the state’s mask mandate in March.

“In a way, the idea of American independent thinking is working against us in the pandemic,” said Dr. Robert Siegel, an immunology expert at in Stanford University, who is teaching a course called the “Vaccine Revolution” this semester.

Connecticut and Vermont have the highest vaccination rates in the nation, with 79% of adults having gotten their shots in each state.

Not coincidentally, Connecticut’s seven-day case rate was nearly as low as California’s on Friday, and Vermont’s was only slightly higher than Connecticut’s.

Dr. Tim Lahey, infectious disease expert at the University of Vermont Medical Center, credited not just his state’s high vaccination rate, but its science-based leadership for its comparatively low weekly COVID rate of 151 cases per 100,000 residents.

[…]

California has not quite cultivated a Vermont-like reputation for neighborliness. But a similar approach has evolved over decades that set the stage for California’s pandemic-era health actions, experts said.

In 1995, after California became the first state to ban smoking in workplaces — influencing about half the states, including Vermont and Connecticut — “we made it socially acceptable” to broadly adopt public health practices, said Mukherjea of Cal State East Bay.

But the state’s commitment to public health alliances among key groups goes back to the 1980s, said Dr. John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley.

Early on, those most at risk for getting sick and dying from AIDS clashed with public health officials. But “we really ironed it out,” Swartzberg said. “We realized we were all on the same team, and we did a spectacular job.”

Up and down the state, he said, “we made a cultural shift that positioned us really well for tackling the pandemic in ways that other states didn’t have in place.”

Swartzberg hastened to say that public health systems in many other states also work well with their communities.

Even so, he added, “I do think that, even if we are not unique, then at least culturally we were prepared for these times.”

There is an emphasis on health in California much to the annoyance of certain people. But it came in handy when the pandemic hit.

It seems to me that the lesson here is that big states with diverse populations needed to work a lot harder on the mitigation efforts until they could get their people vaccinated. Instead, states like Florida and Texas defied all that, acted like vaccination was an afterthought and are actively hostile to the mitigation efforts that are clearly saving lives. They could have led. Instead they chose to follow their extremist base. And people died because of it.

Your way is failing, Governor

Published by digby on September 19, 2021

Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi on why his state government is willing to impose mandates for other vaccines but not Covid: “The question here is not about what we do in Mississippi, it’s about what this POTUS is trying to impose on the American worker.”

Jake Tapper notes that Mississippi has the worst Covid death rate of any state, then tells Gov. Tate Reeves, “your way is failing.”

Reeves doesn’t really take issue with that characterization.

TAPPER: Governor, if Mississippi were a country, you would have the 2nd worst per capita death toll in the world. And I’m saying, are you going to do anything to try to change that?

TATE REEVES: Deaths unfortunately are a lagging indicator

Originally tweeted by Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) on September 19, 2021.

He thinks that saying “deaths are a lagging indicator” is a good answer to the question of what he plans to do about the fact that if it were a country, Mississippi would have the highest death rate per capita in the world except for Peru.

In other words — he’s just letting the virus course through the state unchecked and let the chips fall where they may. Because freedom. He even at one point tried to say Tapper was picking on red states and suggested he look at Kentucky and West Virginia. West Virginia is a red state …

It was a terrible performance by Tate illustrating perfectly exactly why the states’ vaccination rate is so low and why they all think this whole thing is nothing but a political plot. That’s how their leaders treat it.

Also, they are poorly informed, to say the least: