I’m sure you’re not surprised to learn that they do this. And Lake is a former anchor who probably did it herself (although it’s hard to know who she did it for since she is a soulless opportunist with zero integrity.) Trump loves her:
Donald Trump loves all the candidates he endorses, so long as they win.
But at Mar-a-Lago fundraisers and rallies for Republican candidates, one beneficiary of his political largesse is more likely to come up than others — Kari Lake.
Trump, aides say, has delighted in watching Lake’s rise, seeing echoes of his own. A former TV news anchor-turned right wing gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, she, like him, has delighted in sparring with the media and made repeated falsehoods about the 2020 election the centerpiece of her campaign. Her monomaniacal focus on that topic, in fact, has made even Trump himself blush.
“It doesn’t matter what you ask Kari Lake about – ‘How’s your family?’ And she’s like, ‘The family’s fine but they’re never going to be great until we have free and fair elections,’” the former president has frequently recounted to donors, according to a source close to Trump’s political operation. “He was like, ‘You could ask her, how’s the weather?’ And she’ll turn it into the election. ‘Oh, the weather in Phoenix is OK, but you can never have great weather unless the election is fair.’”
Over the past year Lake has appeared with Trump at rallies and spotted at Mar-a-lago events. She is a favorite guest on conservative shows, although she appeared on Fox News only once during primetime hours. There has been so much buzz around Lake that it has led to speculation in her circles and among her right wing fans that she could be on Trump’s short list for a potential running mate, should she ultimately become governor and he run again for president. Those familiar with Trump’s thinking say they’re unfamiliar with any such talk and speculation is painfully premature.
“Kari Lake is honored to have the support of President Trump,” said Lake campaign spokesperson Ross Trumble. “She is solely focused on defeating Katie Hobbs and advancing the Arizona First agenda.”
Lake formally secured her party’s nomination on Thursday after a tight primary fight. By Friday, at CPAC in Dallas, she was greeted like a rock star by the crowd of conservative activists.
“Kari Lake won this tough race in which was outspent 10-to-1 by sticking to the key, vital issue that the 2020 election in Arizona, and nationwide, was rigged and stolen,” said Boris Epshteyn, former special assistant to Trump in the White House who worked on the ground in Arizona challenging the election results. “Major reasons why Kari Lake is widely praised is that she has not deviated and she is not scared of the mainstream media, the Democrats, or the RINOs. Kari stuck to the main MAGA issue and she won.”
[…]
After her primary win, Lake met with Republican Governors Association officials about working to support her through the general election. The RGA, which helps GOP candidates across the country, is currently chaired by outgoing Arizona governor Ducey, who backed Robson in the primary.
“The RGA congratulates Kari on her primary victory, and we look forward to working to get her elected governor this November,” said RGA Vice Chair Kim Reynolds in a statement.
On the day after Tuesday’s primary election, before results had been called, Lake was asked by NBC News if she had a message to the establishment Republicans, including Pence and Ducey, who she excoriated in personal ways.
“I want to bring the Republican party together. We’re one big happy-sometimes, sometimes dysfunctional family, but we can come together,” Lake said. “I want to bring folks together.”
But at that press conference, she went back to talking about unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
“We have a lot of evidence of irregularities and problems, and we’re going to address those. I’m not going to release them to the fake news,” Lake said.
She’s 100% phony, but then so is Trump, her idol. She’s a TV personality following the formula. And she’s a terrible person which makes her perfect for the Republican Party 2022.
The assassination of the daughter of Putin’s favorite philosopher Alexander Dugin may or may not have been an attempt on the life of Dugin himself. (From what I understand, she was a chip off the old block so who knows?) Ukraine denies doing it but it didn’t have to be a state sponsored action. Dugin is considered to be Putin’s greatest ally in the invasion of Ukraine.
But Dugin is someone people should be aware of because to the extent there is an intellectual underpinning of Trumpism, he’s right in the middle of it. I wrote this piece about Steve Bannon and his favorite philosopher Julius Evola back in 2017. As it happens he’s also Dugin’s favorite philosopher:
It just goes to show you how uneducated I am about these things, but I had never heard of this philosopher before I read this chilling long read in the New York Times.
Those trying to divine the roots of Stephen K. Bannon’s dark and at times apocalyptic worldview have repeatedly combed over a speech that Mr. Bannon, President Trump’s ideological guru, made in 2014 to a Vatican conference, where he expounded on Islam, populism and capitalism.
But for all the examination of those remarks, a passing reference by Mr. Bannon to an esoteric Italian philosopher has gone little noticed, except perhaps by scholars and followers of the deeply taboo, Nazi-affiliated thinker, Julius Evola.
“The fact that Bannon even knows Evola is significant,” said Mark Sedgwick, a leading scholar of Traditionalists at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Evola, who died in 1974, wrote on everything from Eastern religions to the metaphysics of sex to alchemy. But he is best known as a leading proponent of Traditionalism, a worldview popular in far-right and alternative religious circles that believes progress and equality are poisonous illusions.
Evola became a darling of Italian Fascists, and Italy’s post-Fascist terrorists of the 1960s and 1970s looked to him as a spiritual and intellectual godfather.
They called themselves Children of the Sun after Evola’s vision of a bourgeoisie-smashing new order that he called the Solar Civilization. Today, the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn includes his works on its suggested reading list, and the leader of Jobbik, the Hungarian nationalist party, admires Evola and wrote an introduction to his works.
More important for the current American administration, Evola also caught on in the United States with leaders of the alt-right movement, which Mr. Bannon nurtured as the head of Breitbart News and then helped harness for Mr. Trump.
[…]
“When I started working on Evola, you had to plow through Italian,” said Mr. Sedgwick, who keeps track of Traditionalist movements and thought on his blog, Traditionalists. “Now he’s available in English, German, Russian, Serbian, Greek, Hungarian. First I saw Evola boom, and then I realized the number of people interested in that sort of idea was booming.”
Born in 1898, Evola liked to call himself a baron and in later life sported a monocle in his left eye.
A brilliant student and talented artist, he came home after fighting in World War I and became a leading exponent in Italy of the Dada movement, which, like Evola, rejected the church and bourgeois institutions.
Evola’s early artistic endeavors gave way to his love of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and he developed a worldview with an overriding animosity toward the decadence of modernity. Influenced by mystical works and the occult, Evola began developing an idea of the individual’s ability to transcend his reality and “be unconditionally whatever one wants.”
Under the influence of René Guénon, a French metaphysicist and convert to Islam, Evola in 1934 published his most influential work, “The Revolt Against the Modern World,” which cast materialism as an eroding influence on ancient values.
It viewed humanism, the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution all as historical disasters that took man further away from a transcendental perennial truth.
Changing the system, Evola argued, was “not a question of contesting and polemicizing, but of blowing everything up.”
Evola’s ideal order, Professor Drake wrote, was based on “hierarchy, caste, monarchy, race, myth, religion and ritual.”
That made a fan out of Benito Mussolini.
The dictator already admired Evola’s early writings on race, which influenced the 1938 Racial Laws restricting the rights of Jews in Italy.
Mussolini so liked Evola’s 1941 book, “Synthesis on the Doctrine of Race,” which advocated a form of spiritual, and not merely biological, racism, that he invited Evola to meet him in September of that year.
Evola eventually broke with Mussolini and the Italian Fascists because he considered them overly tame and corrupted by compromise. Instead he preferred the Nazi SS officers, seeing in them something closer to a mythic ideal. They also shared his anti-Semitism.
A demonstration last month by Golden Dawn, the Greek neo-Nazi party, which includes Evola’s works on a suggested reading list. Michalis Karagiannis/Reuters Mr. Bannon suggested in his Vatican remarks that the Fascist movement had come out of Evola’s ideas.
As Mr. Bannon expounded on the intellectual motivations of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, he mentioned “Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century who are really the supporters of what’s called the Traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into Italian Fascism.”
The reality, historians say, is that Evola sought to “infiltrate and influence” the Fascists, as Mr. Sedgwick put it, as a powerful vehicle to spread his ideas.
In his Vatican talk, Mr. Bannon suggested that although Mr. Putin represented a “kleptocracy,” the Russian president understood the existential danger posed by “a potential new caliphate” and the importance of using nationalism to stand up for traditional institutions.
“We, the Judeo-Christian West,” Mr. Bannon added, “really have to look at what he’s talking about as far as Traditionalism goes — particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism.”
As Mr. Bannon suggested in his speech, Mr. Putin’s most influential thinker is Aleksandr Dugin, the ultranationalist Russian Traditionalist and anti-liberal writer sometimes called “Putin’s Rasputin.”
An intellectual descendant of Evola, Mr. Dugin has called for a “genuine, true, radically revolutionary, and consistent fascist fascism” and advocated a geography-based theory of “Eurasianism” — which has provided a philosophical framework for Mr. Putin’s expansionism and meddling in Western European politics.
Mr. Dugin sees European Traditionalists as needing Russia, and Mr. Putin, to defend them from the onslaught of Western liberal democracy, individual liberty, and materialism — all Evolian bête noirs.
This appeal of traditional values on populist voters and against out-of-touch elites, the “Pan-European Union” and “centralized government in the United States,” as Mr. Bannon put it, was not lost on Mr. Trump’s ideological guru.
“A lot of people that are Traditionalists,” he said in his Vatican remarks, “are attracted to that.”
It is a most fascinating tale and I highly recommend you read it to get a sense of the intellectual influences of Trump’s most trusted consiglieri. It’s obvious that Bannon sees Trump as a useful tool — Trump hasn’t even read a comic book since his teens, obviously. But Bannon has a developed worldview and when you dig beneath the surface of the “nationalism” and the “anti-globalism” and the more “modern “alt-right” nomenclature, Bannon is a fascist, the real deal. His influences aren’t limited to this philosopher, but they all seem to be found on the same deplorable shelf in the bookstore.
It’s considered hyperbolic to say that, I know. Trump hasn’t opened any camps yet. But the Third Reich wasn’t built in a day and Trump’s Great America won’t be either. It happens slowly at first and then all at once.
Americans thought they were voting for a reality show star and assumed this was all going to be good fun sticking it to the hates liberal elite and the “welfare queens” who vote for them. They weren’t thinking in these terms, not even the more homespun American “traditionalists” who are cut from a different cloth altogether. It may not end up being as much fun for them as they thought.
Dugin is Putin’s biggest influence on his desire to reclaim the Russian Empire, with a particular animus toward Ukraine. It’s unsurprising that he and his family would be a target.
After a recent announcement that I’ve decided to retire this column and leave The Washington Post, a Vanity Fair reporter asked me by email about the media’s performance in covering threats to democracy. That certainly was a fair question, since it’s been one of my most frequent subjects here.
I’m “encouraged one day, despairing the next,” I told her, adding that the next election cycle is going to be a real test for the reality-based press.
This is my last column for The Post — my plans include teaching at Duke University and publishing a book this fall, both a personal memoir and a tell-all about what I’ve seen in my four decades in journalism. SoI’ll explain more about what I meant.
Here’s the good news: The media has come a long, long way in figuring out how to cover the democracy-threatening ways of Donald Trump and his allies, including his stalwart helpers in right-wing media. It is now common to see headlines and stories that plainly refer to some politicians as “election deniers,” and journalists are far less hesitant to use the blunt and clarifyingword “lie” to describe Trump’s false statements. That includes, of course, the former president’s near-constant campaign to claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged to prevent him from keeping the White House.
What’s more, the media seems finally to have absorbed what should have been blindingly obvious from the beginning: Trump is by no means a normal political figure, and he will never reform into some kind of responsible statesman. (Who can forget the perennial predictions that he was becoming “presidential” every time he read from a teleprompter instead of veering off on an insulting rant?)
Another encouraging development is the decision by a number of major media organizations, including The Post, to form democracy teams or beats, concentrating on efforts to limit voting access, the politicization of election systems and the insidious efforts to instill doubt in the public about legitimate voting results.
And yet, I worry that it’s not nearly enough. I don’t mean to suggest that journalists can address the threats to democracy all by themselves — but they must do more.
I’m often reminded of the troubling questions posed by ABC News’s Jonathan Karl in multipleinterviews late last year about what it would mean to cover Trump if and when he runs for president again. He deemed it perhaps the greatest challenge American political reporters will ever face.
“How do you cover a candidate who is effectively anti-democratic? How do you cover a candidate who is running both against whoever the Democratic candidate is but also running against the very democratic system that makes all of this possible?” wondered Karl, a former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. His questions hit hard, the more so because of his reputation in the political press corps as a straight shooter.
The deeper question is whether news organizations can break free of their hidebound practices — the love of political conflict, the addiction to elections as a horse race— to address those concerns effectively.
For the sake of democracy, they must.
Journalists certainly shouldn’t shill for Trump’s 2024 rivals — whoever they may be — but they have to be willing to show their readers, viewers and listeners that electing him againwould be dangerous. That’s a tricky tightrope to walk.
One thing is certain. News outlets can’t continue to do speech, rally and debate coverage — the heart of campaign reporting — in the same old way. They will need to lean less on knee-jerk live coverage and more on reporting that relentlessly provides meaningful context.
Real-time fact checking is of limited usefulness, in my view. Better to wait until these live events have occurred and then present them packaged with plenty of truthful reporting around them.
Journalists simply can’t allow themselves to be megaphones or stenographers. They have to be dedicated truth-tellers, using clear language, plenty of context and thoughtful framing to get that truth across.
Consider, for example, the disparate presentations that the Associated Press and the New York Times gave to a recent story out of Florida about a new push by Gov. Ron DeSantis to crack down on the supposedly terrible problem of voter fraud; in fact, illegal voting is a rare occurrence, though something that Trump and his allies would have you believe underlies all the efforts to deny him victory.
As Kate Pickert, director of Loyola Marymount’s journalism program, noted last week, AP’s Twitter news alert took DeSantis’s hyperventilating news conference at face value, providing the kind of treatment the governor might have written himself: “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced criminal charges against 20 people for illegally voting in 2020, the first major public move from the Republican’s controversial new election police unit.” Whereas the New York Times tweet cut through the noise (I’ve added the italics): “Gov. Ron DeSantis said 17 people have been charged with casting illegal ballots in the 2020 election, in which 11.1 million Floridians voted. There is no evidence that election crimes are a serious problem in Florida or anywhere else in the U.S.”
(For the record, the AP often does a good job with framing, and the Times sometimes blows it.)
News organizations also have to continually explain to their readers, viewers and listeners why they are doing what they’re doing. If they aren’t airing a speech live, for example, they ought to say why. Not because they are on the team of the opposing candidates, but because they are not in the business of spreading lies.
If Trump runs, as Karl put it, he will be running “against the very democratic system that makes this all possible.” And he’s bringing the vast bulk of the Republican Party along with him.
As Edward Luce, associate editor of the Financial Times, tweeted this month: “I’ve covered extremism and violent ideologies around the world over my career. Have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous & contemptible than today’s Republicans. Nothing close.” Gen. Michael Hayden, the former CIA director appointed by George W. Bush, chimed in with two ominous words: “I agree.”
So my prescription — and it’s only a start — is less live campaign coverage, more context and thoughtful framing, and more fearless straight talk from news leaders about what’s at stake and why politics coverage looks different. The latter could take many forms: editors’ notes on stories, columns written by news directors and posted prominently on websites, public appearances, and more.
Even if the reality-based press does a perfect job with coverage focused nonstop on the truth — and that’s unlikely — it will be no match for the duplicitous right-wing media, particularly Fox News with its all-in audience and constant work on behalf of Trump and his allies. Prime-time commentators like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity will do the heavy lifting. A candidate can’t buy that kind of help.
I hope that newsroom leaders are thinking hard about moving outside their long-standing practices as the presidential campaign approaches. This will not be a traditional contest, and the stakes are high. We simply have to get it right.
We simply have to get it right. But it appears to me that we may actually be going the wrong way. CNN seems to be taking a wrong turn with the arrival of right wing zealot John Malone as its major stockholder who says he wants a more “centrist” CNN. What he means is that he wants the network to adhere to the “both-sides” pablum that created the environment in which the Republican party metastasized into the radical force they are today. He is one of them.
MAGA nominee for MI Governor Tudor Dixon is asked why she is against a 14 year-old rape victim being allowed to get an abortion. She says the bond that rape victims will have with their babies will help them heal. pic.twitter.com/6ajtBp1JNi
Tudor Dixon, Michigan’s Trump-endorsed Republican nominee for governor, said in an interview this week that she opposes rape exceptions to abortion bans—even for children and teens—because having a baby can be “healing” after the trauma of sexual assault.
When a Fox 2 Detroit anchor pressed her on why she would deny a 14-year-old rape victim an abortion, Dixon said it’s because she’s spoken to children born of rape. “The bond that those two people made and the fact that out of that tragedy there was healing through that baby, it’s something that we don’t think about,” she said.
“We assume that that story is someone who was taken from the front yard, then returned,” she told anchor Roop Raj of young women who have been raped.
“Those voices—the babies of rape victims—that have come forward are very powerful when you hear their story and what the truth is behind that,” she added. “It’s very hard to not stand up for those people.”
Apparently, she finds it quite easy not to stand up for the rape victims themselves. They are just vessels for the fetus after all and anyway they’ll be “healed” through forced childbirth.
14 year old rape victims are traumatized children. And this loon thinks that putting them through a pregnancy and forced childbirth is necessary because an unviable fetus is more important than these young girls are. It’s monstrous.
Mitch McConnell may be using a bit of psychology to raise Republican enthusiasm by suggesting that they are in trouble — but they are in trouble. And he’s making sure that everyone knows whose fault it is. Trump chose the loons and his voters love him and Mitch can’t do anything about it.
Trump isn’t happy about that:
Former President Donald Trump went after Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., over social media for expressing skepticism around Republicans’ chances of retaking congressional majorities in the November midterms.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump called the Senate minority leader a “broken down political hack” and challenged his party loyalty.
“Why do Republicans Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard working Republican candidates for the United States Senate,” Trump asked.
He added: “This is such an affront to honor and to leadership. He should spend more time (and money!) helping them get elected, and less time helping his crazy wife and family get rich on China!”
Having driven out the one member of their party who fought back against Donald Trump’s election lies, Republicans find themselves mystified that election liars are taking over. What is fascinating is that the party’s mainstream wing sees no connection between these two things at all.
Trump began to signal his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election months beforehand. The Republican Establishment has dealt with this by refusing to acknowledge it and hoping the problem goes away on its own. Mick Mulvaney famously wrote an op-ed before the election predicting, “If He Loses, Trump Will Concede Gracefully.” When Trump refused to concede defeat, McConnell went along, saying, “A few legal inquiries from the president do not exactly spell the end of the republic.” For a few days during and after the insurrection, Republicans were prepared to make a break with Trump, but quickly reconsidered. One week after the insurrection, on January 13, Axios reported that McConnell still leaned toward impeaching Trump, but his allies were “divided whether to do it with one quick kill via impeachment, or let him slowly fade away.” The question answered itself: If Trump was going to “fade away” without them having to take action, why bother?
After making the decision to stop challenging Trump’s election lies, it followed that the rest of the party needed to go along. Cheney stubbornly refused. As a result, Republicans stripped her of her leadership post and then began to abandon her as Trump backed a primary challenge.
The party Establishment decided to treat Trump’s coup as a minor detail they could put to the side. Confronting the insurrection would open a damaging schism within the party. They expected the party to work together in an authoritarian-led coalition.
Accordingly, the Establishment Republican view is that Cheney has nobody to blame for her defeat but herself. Cheney might be correct about the 2020 election result, but she should have kept quiet. “In Wyoming, Cheney lost because her constituents saw that she cared more about fighting Trump than fighting Biden. She was more concerned with waging a civil war within the Republican Party than the inflation that is forcing her voters to choose between staples such as gas and food,” argues Marc Thiessen. “Telling truths is important, but we rightly regard people who only ever tell the same one truth all the time as fanatics who have lost perspective,” explains the National Review’s Dan McLaughlin.
But of course one completely foreseeable consequence of the party’s decision to cede the argument over 2020 to Trump is that it has allowed Trump to retain his influence. Republicans complain over the personal aspect of Trump’s influence — he has interceded in primaries to endorse unqualified candidates — but his ideological influence is more profound.
If Republican voters believe the 2020 election was stolen, of course they are going to demand their party nominate candidates who will stop it. Why would they even consider “moving on” from a historical crime so profound? It makes perfect sense that their primary consideration in choosing nominees going forward is a willingness to fight against the future steals they believe will occur.
Yet the party Establishment has persisted in believing Trump’s influence is the result of choices other than their own refusal to confront him. This explains why the Democratic Party tactic of running ads highlighting the extremism of Trumpist primary candidates, and thus to help them win, has become an obsession of anti-anti-Trump Republicans. The tactic may be deplorable, but its effect on the outcome of Republicans primaries is marginal. The greatest determinate by far is the GOP backing off its brief determination to purge Trump. Once they decided they couldn’t win without him, they ceded all the leverage to Trump.
In a just world, the Republican Establishment would pay a dear price for its cowardice. In reality, the price is likely to be bearable. Very few Republicans have any moral compunction against electing extreme or even outright fascistic Republicans to office. Witness the near-total absence of any intraparty resistance to candidates like election denier Kari Lake or Christian nationalist and Nazi ally Doug Mastriano, both of whom have enjoyed full public endorsements from Ron DeSantis, the main hope of the GOP’s non-Trump wing.
The Establishment is not worried about kooks being elected. It is worried about the kooks losing to Democrats.
They had their chance with the 2nd impeachment to put Trump away but they were afraid he’d go against him and use his clout to interfere with the party. He did it anyway. And now he’s going to be their nominee in 2024 (unless something very drastic happens.) It’s all on them.
Grace Christian School in Valrico, FL has asked all LBGTQ students to leave immediately. This is probably not what Jesus would do. pic.twitter.com/qBg5k7WVGb
If you think LGBT rights aren’t on the agenda think again. It’s clear it’s not just trans rights. They are after gay rights too. These people play a very long game and they are not being subtle about where they are going.
I hope people have learned something from the long march to ban abortion. Counting on the Supreme Court to observe precedent is a fools game. In the hands of right wing radicals it has no problem advancing its agenda without regard to it’s own reputation or institutional integrity.
They don’t care about this:
SCOTUS net favorability has dropped 40 points (!) in 4 years: from +33 in July 2018 to -7 today.
Worth a read this morning, outcast Republican Rusty Bowers speaks freely (The Guardian):
“The constitution is hanging by a thread,” he told me. “The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And it’s my side. That just rips at my heart: that we would be the people who would surrender the constitution in order to win an election. That just blows my mind.”
His eyes have been opened even if his mind is unchanged:
“It’s not like I’m alone in the wilderness. There’s a lot of people from all over the United States thanking me.”
But for now, he accepts that things are likely to get much worse before they get better. I ask him, at this moment, is the Republican party in Arizona lost?
“Yeah,” he said. “They’ve invented a new way. It’s a party that doesn’t have any thought. It’s all emotional, it’s all revenge. It’s all anger. That’s all it is.”
He held the thumb and digit finger of his right hand so close together that they were almost touching. “The veneer of civilization is this thin,” he said. “It still exists – I haven’t been hanged yet. But holy moly, this is just crazy. The place has lost its mind.”
Where’ve you been, Rusty?
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Multiple people here at Netroots-Pittsburgh came away more hopeful than when they arrived. Legislative wins for Democrats, more legal bruising for the former guy (TFG), and a couple of favorable polls for the left have activists and organizers leaving here feeling more upbeat about Democrats’ propsects for the fall than they were a month ago.
After a couple of years of COVID and Zoom, people expressed joy and relief to finally see each other in person again. Even if the reunion was in masks and the crowd smaller than peak years (unofficially, I heard about 2,500).
Cautious optimism
Leaning on conventional wisdom in an uncomventional political environment is a bad bet. Naturally, it is the reflexive bet most pundits in the press will make. While activists derided as “the professional left” left more upbeat, they were not perhaps as upbeat as Simon Rosenberg.
Susan Glasser of The New Yorker considers what the prospects are for a not-awful 2022 for Democrats. She spoke wth Rosenberg who has positioned himself as a prophet of not-doom:
“In the age of Trump, nothing is normal,” Simon Rosenberg, the president of the liberal think tank the New Democrat Network and a veteran strategist, told me, on Thursday. “Nothing is following traditional physics and rules, so why would this midterm?”
Rosenberg, a staunchly public proponent of this view for the past few months, argues that Trump’s continued hold over the Republican Party is actually good news for Democrats this fall—and beyond. Trump, he posits, is not so much killing off his political enemies as he is destroying his own host organism, the G.O.P. itself.
Recent events, according to Rosenberg, have started to prove his case, including what appears to be the easing of inflation, lower gas prices, and Congress’s passage of Biden’s long-stalled signature climate-change-and-health-care legislation. The horrific school-shooting massacre in Uvalde, Texas, upset pro-gun-control Democratic voters across the country, and the Supreme Court’s decision to toss out Roe v. Wade is giving millions of Americans a reason to vote in November. “It’s a new, bluer election,” Rosenberg tweeted, on Thursday, as part of a long thread of upbeat-for-Democrats data points. Or, as he put it when we spoke: “There was never really a red wave.”
The Trump factor, according to Rosenberg, is key. For the past several election cycles, nothing has united Democratic voters more than the chance to vote against him. And all summer Trump has been back in the news, thanks to revelations from testimony in the House’s January 6th hearings; the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago, for classified documents improperly taken from the White House; and endless speculation about whether Trump will be indicted or run again for President—or both. “It awakened the anti-maga majority in the country,” Rosenberg insisted.
Many women came off their couches for the first time after Trump’s inauguration and the Women’s March in January 2017. Heading into the 2018 midterms, several new county chair contacted me looking for help in coordinating getting out the vote as rookies with little or no prior political experience. Post-Dobbs, expect to see that again, and then some. Yes, it’s a narrow window into the wider political environment. But then 2018 worked out pretty well for Dermocrats.
From Netroots Nation-Pittsburgh
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Where is this year going? I just realized I’ve built a pile of great reissues in 2022. Here are a few recommendations for my fellow physical media hounds.
An Unsuitable Job For a Woman(Indicator UK & US) – In his original review of Christopher Petit’s 1982 mystery-thriller, Financial Times reviewer Nigel Andrews wrote:
Petit has a wonderful compensatory feel for the drip torture of English emotion. Motive and passion are squeezed out drop-by-drop in a rural England landscape that seems bloated with past rain, and ever cloaked with pencil-grey cloud or thin sun.
In two sentences, Andrews not only nails the atmosphere of An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, but articulates what I find so inexplicably compelling about Petit’s stunning 1979 debut, Radio On…a film that I simply must revisit annually, and of which I wrote:
As the protagonist journeys across an England full of bleak yet perversely beautiful industrial landscapes in his boxy sedan, accompanied by a moody electronic score (mostly Kraftwerk and David Bowie) the film becomes hypnotic. A textbook example of how the cinema can capture and preserve the zeitgeist of an ephemeral moment (e.g. England on the cusp of the Thatcher era) like no other art form.
Now the embarrassing part. I had no clue that a feature film adaptation of An Unsuitable Job for a Woman existed until this Blu-ray reissue was out. I am a fan of the eponymous 2-season UK television series from the late 90s (in fact, I own it on DVD), but this was an interesting discovery.
Adapted from a P.D. James novel (co-scripted by the director and Elizabeth McKay), Petit’s film stars Pippa Guard as Cordelia Grey, a young woman who unceremoniously inherits a small detective agency after discovering her boss dead in his office (little explanation is offered, and not unlike Helen Baxendale in the TV version, Guard plays Cordelia in an oddly detached manner…not having read James’ original novels, I’ll assume this is how the character is written?).
Her first case is investigating the alleged suicide of a free-spirited young man who is the son of a powerful businessman (a quietly menacing Paul Freeman). The story is more of a perverse family melodrama than a conventional mystery-thriller; but it’s fascinating watching Cordelia as she spirals into an obsession with the victim that recalls Dana Andrews’ unrequited detective in Laura. And it’s always a pleasure to watch the great Billie Whitelaw do her voodoo (as Freeman’s P.A.). This kind of slow boil may not be for all tastes; but again, this film is mostly about atmosphere.
Indicator’s transfer is taken from a new 4K scan of the original negative, accentuating DP Martin Schäfer’s artful and unique use of Afgacolor stock. Plenty of extras, including new interviews with the director, Ms. Guard’s brother Dominic (also featured in the cast), and producer Don Boyd. The exclusive limited-edition booklet includes an insightful new essay by Claire Monk and more.
Get Carter (BFI; Region B) – Easily vying for the crown as the best British gangster film of all time (or perhaps a photo-finish with The Long Good Friday), Mike Hodges’ classic 1971 adaptation of Ted Lewis’ novel Jack’s Return Home was a superb showcase for star Michael Caine.
The meaty role was also a departure for Caine; while he had already played anti-heroes (most notably in the “Harry Palmer” spy film trilogy), Jack Carter was arguably the least sympathetic character he had tackled up to that point in time (bit of a sociopath, actually).
The plot is minimal: Carter, a low-level but coldly efficient London gangster hops a train to Newcastle to investigate his brother’s “accidental” death (against the strong advisement of his superiors). The deeper he digs, the more feathers he ruffles. Does he care? Fuck all. Gritty, seedy, and shockingly brutal, it’s an uncannily realistic dip into the criminal underworld.
Caine’s indelible performance is just the icing on the cake. Hodges’ assured direction, the immersive verité location filming (by Wolfgang Suschitzky), outstanding supporting cast (Ian Hendry, Britt Ekland, John Osborne, George Sewell, Alun Armstrong, et.al.) and an unforgettable opening title sequence (driven by Roy Budd’s ultra-cool, proto-acid jazz theme) make for a heady mix.
BFI’s limited edition reissue is a real treat for fans of the film (guilty!). The 4K restoration is jaw-dropping; the film has never looked this good in a home video format. Two audio commentary tracks; one archival with Hodges, Caine and Suschitzky, the other is a new one with two film historians. There is a new 60-minute interview with Hodges, a new 17-minute feature reviewing Roy Budd’s career, an exhaustive 80-page booklet, and much more. The only catch: Please note it is Region B locked!
Heartbreakers (Fun City Editions) – Earlier this year, I posted my picks for the top 10 1980s “sleepers”, lamenting about how several of them remained criminally unavailable on DVD or Blu-ray. I was quite surprised (and delighted) to see this 1984 gem finally making the cut.
Writer-director Bobby Roth delivers an absorbing character study about a pair of 30-something pals going through transitions in their personal and professional lives. Peter Coyote is excellent as petulant man-child Blue, a starving artist who specializes in fetishistic female portraiture (his character is based in part on artist Robert Blue).
Blue is nurturing a broken heart; his long-time girlfriend (Kathryn Harrold), tired of waiting for him to grow up, has dumped him. Blue’s friend Eli (Nick Mancuso) is a quintessential Yuppie who lives in a dream bachelor pad boasting a lofty view of the L.A. Basin. Despite being financially secure, Eli is also emotionally unfulfilled. With his male model looks and shiny toys, he has no problem with hookups; he just can’t find The One (yes, I know…how many nights of empty sex with an endless parade of beautiful women can one guy stand?).
Just when the commiserating duo’s love lives are looking hopeless, they both meet The One. Unfortunately, she is the same One (Carole Laure). The plot thickens, and the friendship is about to be tested. Formulaic as it sounds, Roth’s film is a keenly observed look at modern love (and sex) in the Big City. Max Gail (best known for his role on the sitcom Barney Miller) is great here, as is Carol Wayne (sadly, this is her last film).
Fun City used a newly restored 2K print for the transfer (DP on the film was longtime Fassbinder collaborator Michael Ballhaus, and his work here is gorgeous). Extras include new interviews with the director, as well as stars Coyote and Mancuso, and a booklet with several new critic essays.
Pink Flamingos(Criterion) – “Oh Babs! I’m starving to death. Hasn’t that egg man come yet?” If Baltimore filmmaker/true crime buff/self-styled czar of “bad taste” John Waters had completely ceased making films after this jaw-dropping 1972 entry, his place in the cult movie pantheon would still be assured. Waters’ favorite leading lady (and sometimes leading man) Divine was born to play Babs Johnson, who fights to retain her title of The Filthiest Person Alive against arch-nemesis Connie Marble (Mink Stole) and her skuzzy hubby.
It’s a white trash smack down of the lowest order; shocking, sleazy, utterly depraved-and funny as hell. Animal lovers be warned-a chicken was definitely harmed during the making of the film (Waters insists that it was completely unintended, if that’s any consolation). If you are only familiar with Waters’ more recent work and want to explore his truly indie “roots” I’d recommend watching this one first. If you can make it through without losing your lunch, consider yourself prepped for the rest of his oeuvre.
Criterion has really gone all out for this belated Blu-ray reissue, from the faux “plain brown package” cover art (replete with a mail label addressed to “Babs Johnson, A Trailer, Phoenix, MD”) to a generous helping of extras. The 4K restoration looks great (probably a little too sharp and detailed for many scenes!). There are two audio commentaries by Waters; one from the 1997 Criterion laser disc and the other from the 2001 DVD (per usual, he is never at a loss for words). Also: deleted scenes, essays, and an entertaining (new) conversation between Waters and Jim Jarmusch.
Touch of Evil (Kino) – Yes, this is Orson Welles’ classic 1958 sleaze-noir with that celebrated and oft-imitated tracking shot, Charlton Heston as a Mexican police detective, and Janet Leigh in various stages of undress. Welles casts himself as Hank Quinlan, a morally bankrupt police captain who lords over a corrupt border town. Quinlan is the most singularly grotesque character Welles ever created as an actor and one of the most offbeat heavies in film noir.
This is also one of the last great roles for Marlene Dietrich (“You should lay off those candy bars.”). The creepy and disturbing scene where Leigh is terrorized in an abandoned motel by a group of thugs led by a leather-jacketed Mercedes McCambridge presages David Lynch; there are numerous flourishes throughout that are light-years ahead of anything else going on in American cinema at the time. Welles famously despised the studio’s original 96-minute theatrical cut; there have been nearly half a dozen re-edited versions released since 1975.
I think I’ve quadruple-dipped by now on “definitive” editions of this film, but Kino’s 2022 reissue features the most crystalline transfer I’ve seen to date. The package includes new 4K restorations of the theatrical, preview, and “reconstructed” cuts (the latter re-edited as close as possible to Welles’ original vision, based on his notes and studio memorandums). Each version includes audio commentary by film historians (two are new; others are ported over from previous editions).
Republican Senate hopefuls are getting crushed on airwaves across the country while their national campaign fund is pulling ads and running low on cash — leading some campaign advisers to ask where all the money went and todemand an audit of the committee’s finances, according to Republican strategists involved in the discussions.
In a highly unusual move, the National Republican Senatorial Committee this week canceled bookings worth about $10 million, including in the critical states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona. A spokesman said the NRSC is not abandoning those races but prioritizing ad spots that are shared with campaigns and benefit from discounted rates. Still, the cancellations forfeit cheaper prices that came from booking early, and better budgeting could have covered both.
“The fact that they canceled these reservations was a huge problem — you can’t get them back,” said one Senate Republican strategist, who like others spokes on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. “You can’t win elections if you don’t have money to run ads.”
The NRSC’s retreat came after months of touting record fundraising, topping $173 million so far this election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures. But the committee has burned through nearly all of it, with the NRSC’s cash on hand dwindling to $28.4 million by the end of June.
As of that month, the committee disclosed spending just $23 million on ads, with more than $21 million going into text messages and more than $12 million to American Express credit cardpayments, whose ultimate purpose isn’t clear from the filings. The committee also spent at least $13 million on consultants, $9 million on debt payments and more than $7.9 million renting mailing lists, campaign finance data show.
“If they were a corporation, the CEO would be fired and investigated,” said a national Republican consultant working on Senate races. “The way this money has been burned, there needs to be an audit or investigation because we’re not gonna take the Senate now and this money has been squandered. It’s a rip-off.”
The NRSC’s chairman, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, has already taken heat from fellow Republicans for running ads featuring him on camera and releasing his own policy agenda that became a Democratic punching bag — leading to jokes that “NRSC” stood for “National Rick Scott Committee” in a bid to fuel his own presumed presidential ambitions.
Other spending decisions, such as putting about $1 million total into reliably blue Colorado and Washington earlier this month sparked fresh questions after the committee turned around and canceled buys in core battlegrounds.
The NRSC invested heavily in expanding its digital fundraising and building up its database of small-dollar donors. But online giving to Republicans, not just the NRSC, sagged earlier this year from what consultants said was a combination of inflation, changes to Facebook advertising policies, concerns about emails caught in spam filters, and complacency with an anticipated Republican wave. Some Republicans also suspect former president Donald Trump’s relentless fundraising pitches and cash hoarding has exhausted the party’s online donor base.
Rick Scott made his name as a Health Care executive convicted of massive Medicare fraud so they get what they deserve. Why would they expect anything different?
The party has been sleepwalking through this cycle assuming they couldn’t lose and probably saw all this money sloshing around as a personal perk. That’s how they roll.
