Month: December 2023

Nikki Haley’s gaffe illustrates her emptiness

If there’s a worse time to drop a nuclear powered campaign gaffe than the week between Christmas and New Years less than a month before the primaries begin, I don’t know what it is. Many people are off work, sitting around watching TV, talking about world events with relatives and otherwise tuning into the news with a focus and attention they usually don’t have time for. Meanwhile, the news is usually pretty slow that time of year so any gaffe is going to get outsized attention on a loop because the media is desperate for campaign stories that aren’t dull as dishwater. Something that might be one little item in a crowded new cycle becomes The Major Story and a campaign is pushed back on its heels.

If you’re one of those who tuned in over the past 36 hours you’ve heard about former S. Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s massive gaffe in New Hampshire on Wednesday when she was asked a very simple question at a town hall meeting: “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” That’s not a trick question or a gotcha. The answer is very simple: “slavery.” But what Haley said was absolute gobblydygook:

A: Well, don’t come with an easy question, right? I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was gonna run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do. What do you think the cause of the Civil War was?

Q: [Inaudible]

A: I’m sorry?

Q: I’m not running for president. I wanted to see [what your view was] on the cause of the Civil War.

A: I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government. And what the rights of the people are. And we, I, will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom. We need to have capitalism, we need to have economic freedom, we need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties, so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.

Q: Thank you. And in the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answered that question without mentioning the word, “slavery.”

A: What do you want me to say about slavery?

Q: No, you’ve answered my question, thank you.

She did answer the question, in a way, and it wasn’t good. All of her babbling about freedom seemed to be aimed at the freedom of the enslavers, not the freedom of the enslaved. It’s absolutely the case that those rich plantation owners “wanted the freedom to do and be anything they wanted to be without the government getting in the way.” That’s why they seceded from the union.

It took many hours before she amended her statement which was an act of political malpractice in a situation like this. And what she finally said made it even worse:

Of course the Civil War was about slavery. We know that. That’s the easy part of it. What I was saying was, what does it mean to us today. What it means to us today is about freedom. That’s what that was all about. It was about individual freedom, it was about economic freedom, it was about individual rights. Our goal is to make sure, no, we never go back to slavery, but what’s the lesson in all that?

If it was so easy, you’d think she might have mentioned it. And again she doesn’t seem to be talking about the enslaved with all that freedom talk. People held in bondage didn’t have any capital or individual rights and the federal government was the least of their problems — they were held against their will by private individuals.

No, Haley was trying to incorporate standard libertarian dogma up there in the Live Free Or Die state and ran smack into an internal contradiction of that philosophy. “Keep the government out of our lives … so that we can continue to expand slavery” was the fundamental demand of the confederacy.

Remember, that statement of hers was supposed to be the clean up and it’s almost as incomprehensible as her first answer. And that leads to the real question about all this. Why was it so hard for her to answer this question like virtually any normal American in 2023 would answer it?

Sadly, the answer to that is in the numbers of Republicans who don’t believe that slavery was the cause of the civil war. YouGov did a poll a few months back about this very subject and it’s disheartening. First of all there are large numbers of Americans who apparently know next to nothing about the civil war one way or another. But among those who do have opinions about it, only 50% of Trump voters believe that slavery was the cause of the civil war. Only 40% of Republicans said they believe the North was more justified, with a large plurality of Trump voters saying that both sides were equally justified.

Nikki Haley has been trying to finesse this question going all the way back to 2010 when she first ran for Governor and defended the confederate flag. She later recanted and had the flag removed but only after the mass killing of innocent Black church goers in Charleston by a racist, confederate flag waving monster. In New Hampshire she tried to frame the question in libertarian language in an attempt to appeal to the Independents she needs to have a good showing and did a shockingly poor job of it. But she’s looking at going back to her home state in a few weeks, where Donald Trump is way ahead of her and she knows that any discussion of slavery will be a death knell in that primary.

Haley knows all about this— she’s from South Carolina — and as she’s done with the issue of abortion, she was trying to have it both ways. Her spectacular clumsiness with this question at a very bad time in the campaign news cycle is likely to hurt her but not because of the slavery question which, as we’ve seen, isn’t any kind of deal breaker among Republicans. It’s because it exacerbates her existing image as someone who doesn’t have any real center and isn’t her own person. This is a person who publicly promised not to run against Trump and is now doing it anyway while holding back on criticizing him and refusing to rule out becoming his vice president. (For what it’s worth, Don Jr. says he would do everything in his power to stop that and he’s not the only one.)

Haley’s bump in the past few weeks has been based on the idea that she’s a better general election candidate than Trump. This controversy cuts into that argument and frankly she doesn’t have a better one. A gaffe only matters if it reinforces an existing belief about a person and this one illustrates her central problem perfectly.

Salon

Extremists insist you fund religious schools

They are relentless. Give them that. The investor class backed by useful idiots among Christian nationalists are determined to tear public education down to the foundations. Just as the fringe right finally ended women’s right to bodily autonomy with Dobbs, education remains in the crosshairs. They’re teeing up another Supreme Court test case (Politico):

Groups aligned with the conservative legal movement and its financial architect, Leonard Leo, are working to promote a publicly funded Christian school in Oklahoma, hoping to create a test case to change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state.

At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The school received preliminary approval from the state’s charter school board in June. If it survives legal challenges, it would open the door for state legislatures across the country to direct taxpayer funding to the creation of Christian or other sectarian schools.

They want that separation of church and state gone and some of that sweet, sweet public tax money going to teach flat earth theory and creation “science.” And they have Leo and a “billion-dollar network of nonprofits” backing them.

“The Christian conservative legal movement, which has its fingerprints all over what’s going on in Oklahoma, is a pretty small, tight knit group of individuals,” said Paul Collins, a legal studies and politics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “They recognize the opportunity to get a state to fund a religious institution is a watershed moment,” said Collins, author of Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, adding that“They have a very, very sympathetic audience at the Supreme Court. When you have that on the Supreme Court you’re going to put a lot of resources into bringing these cases quickly.”

In Oklahoma, the legal team representing the state’s virtual charter school board, the Alliance Defending Freedom [ADF], helped develop arguments that led to the end of Roe v. Wade. It is significantly funded by donor-advised funds that allow their patrons to keep their identities secret but which receive large amounts of money from Leo-aligned groups.

Who are they?

They include Donors Trust, often called the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement. In recent years, Donors Trust has been the largest single beneficiary of Leo’s primary dark money group, the Judicial Education Project. Donors Trust, in turn, gave $4 million to Leo’s Federalist Society in 2022, according to the IRS filings.

Since 2020, when Leo received a $1.6 billion windfall from Chicago electronics magnate Barre Seid, among the largest contributions to a political advocacy group in history, other groups funded by Leo’s network have become substantial contributors to ADF. For instance, Schwab Charitable Fund, which has given at least $4 million to ADF, received $153 million in 2021 from a new Leo-aligned nonprofit that received the Seid funding.

ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler said in an emailed statement that his group is defending the board “in order to ensure people of faith are not treated like second-class citizens.” Sechler, who said he “cannot predict” whether the case will land at the Supreme Court, did not comment on the group’s funding.

If you believe donors like Schwab are in it for constitutional principle, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Let me repeat, investors see the hundreds of billions the states spend each year on public education as “The Big Enchilada“:

Here’s what we are doing. The collective We are abetting the investor class in raiding the public purse for its own gain. Investors have coopted religious conservatives to help divert funds from public schools the country has supported since the Articles of Confederation to private school vouchers and to charter schools.

Why? They want the billion$. Public education is required by 48 state constitutions. It’s the largest annual budget item in all 50 states. Here’s a recent one from Noth Carolina. Your state budget looks similar.

If you think the conservative furor over critical race theory and grooming and book bans is about culture war issues, you probably think George W. Bush’s push to privatize Social Security was about getting you, Average Taxpayer, a better long-term return on your paycheck witholdings.

It’s about the money. What stands between the investor class and the hundreds of billions states spend, not-for-profit, on public education annually are teachers and school custodians and school administers and state boards of education. They’ve got to go.

Just as Republicans spent decades undermining public confidence in free and fair elections to pave the way for a one-party state, the investor class has worked quietly at diverting more and more public tax dollars away from public schools to charters and voucher programs. Religious conservatives are useful idiots in the project.

“Venture capitalists and for-profit firms are salivating over the exploding $788.7 billion market in K-12 education,” read the subhead on Lee Fang’s warning in 2014. Like I said, they are relentless. 

There are few services more American than public education:

Public education required by stateship acts (of 37 states) = 14
Land reserved for public schools (of 37 states) = 24
Public education required by state constitutions = 48
Public education free per state constitutions = 35

One more time (from a decade ago):

John Adams (a tea party favorite) wrote in 1785, “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”

To that purpose, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (passed under the Articles of Confederation prior to ratification of the U.S. Constitution) called for new states formed from what is now the American Midwest to encourage “schools and the means of education,” and the Enabling Act of 1802 signed by President Thomas Jefferson (for admitting the same Ohio that Santorum visited on Saturday) required — as a condition of statehood — the establishment of schools and public roads, funded in part by the sale of public lands. Enabling acts for later states followed the 1802 template, establishing permanent funds for public schools, federal lands for state buildings, state universities and public works projects (canals, irrigation, etc.), and are reflected in state constitutions from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The practice continued up to and including the enabling act for the admission of Hawaii in 1959 as America’s 50th state, for example (emphasis added):

(f) The lands granted to the State of Hawaii by subsection (b) of this section and public lands retained by the United States under subsections (c) and (d) and later conveyed to the State under subsection (e), together with the proceeds from the sale or other disposition of any such lands and the income therefrom, shall be held by said State as a public trust for the support of the public schools and other public educational institutions, for the betterment of the conditions of native Hawaiians, as defined in the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, 1920, as amended, for the development of farm and home ownership on as widespread a basis as possible for the making of public improvements, and for the provision of lands for public use. Such lands, proceeds, and income shall be managed and disposed of for one or more of the foregoing purposes in such manner as the constitution and laws of said State may provide, and their use for any other object shall constitute a breach of trust for which suit may be brought by the United States. The schools and other educational institutions supported, in whole or in part out of such public trust shall forever remain under the exclusive control of said State; and no part of the proceeds or income from the lands granted under this Act shall be used for the support of any sectarian or denominational school, college, or university.

The workaround Leo, investors, and ADF pursue now is to eliminate the separation of church and state so the public expense of educating America’s children extends to their religious and private, for-profit education (without state supervision or standards, I might add).

They’ll claim their court case is about freedom and principle. No, it’s about the money. It’s always about the money.

Trump barred from 2024 primary ballot

First Colorado. Now Maine.

Maine on Thursday became the second state to bar Donald Trump from the 2024 primary ballot over his actions related to the Jan. 6 insurrection. Several Maine citizens challenged Trump’s eligibility for the presidency under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) reviewed the Jan. 6 record and found the reasoning of the Colorado Supreme Court to strike Trump from the primary ballot there “compelling.”

“The U.S. Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government, and Section 336 [Maine statutes] requires me to act in response,” Bellows writes. “I am mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”

Live shot of Maine's secretary of state striking Trump from the ballot pic.twitter.com/TTjZo5Qwa2

— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) December 29, 2023

Trump will appeal both the Maine and Colorado decisions.

So many court cases, so little time

California gets in on the action, says nope (New York Times):

Hours later, her counterpart in California announced that Mr. Trump would remain on the ballot in the nation’s most populous state, where election officials have limited power to remove candidates.

The Michigan Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that Michigan’s secretary of state lacks the authority to remove Trump from the primary ballot, writing, “At the moment, the only event about to occur is the presidential primary election. But as explained, whether Trump is disqualified is irrelevant to his placement on that particular ballot.”

New York Times:

Ron Fein, the legal director of Free Speech For People, which filed the lawsuit seeking to disqualify Mr. Trump, said the Michigan Supreme Court ruled narrowly, sidestepping the core questions at the heart of the case.

But, he noted in a statement, “The Michigan Supreme Court did not rule out that the question of Donald Trump’s disqualification for engaging in insurrection against the U.S. Constitution may be resolved at a later stage.”

“Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade announced on Nov. 30 that she does not have the legal authority to remove Trump from the primary ballot,” reported the Central Oregon Daily News on Thursday.

“I understand that people want to skip to the end of this story. But right now, we don’t even know who the nominee will be,” said Secretary Griffin-Valade in the statement. “When the general election comes, we’ll follow the law and be completely transparent with our reasoning.”

With felony charges to fend off in four jurisdictions and efforts countrywide to bar insurrectionists from state general election ballots, Donald Trump may have trouble finding time to actually campaign for president. Or one can hope.

He’ll fundraise the hell out of them all, naturally.

It never fails. The man simply cannot be a decent human being.

After months of Lieberman saying that there was no way that No Labels would do anything to help Donald Trump get a load of this:

Tensions flared around No Labels, the quixotic third-party operation attempting to place Joe Manchin (or another centrist-ish candidate) on 2024 ballots. On Wednesday, the group’s founding chairman, Joe Lieberman, hit back at Democratic anguish over the group’s spoilsport campaign, tellingThe Wall Street Journal that “Right now, looking at the polling, it’s not No Labels that’s going to re-elect Donald Trump… Right now, it looks like it’s Joe Biden who’s going to re-elect Donald Trump.”

Lieberman’s out-of-right-field attack isn’t shocking; after losing the 2006 Connecticut Senate primary, he left the party and successfully ran as an independent, while still caucusing with Dems. Two years later, he crossed party lines to campaign for John McCain, cementing his apostasy with a speech at the Republican National Convention.

But the comment is nonetheless extraordinary. For one, Lieberman served for 20 years with Biden, in a chamber and at a time when insults were watered down, indirect, and aimed toward colleagues described as “my friend.” And for all of Lieberman’s beef with Democrats, it’s hard to find much public friction with Biden. Moreover, it’s worth asking how Lieberman squares his current advocacy for a third-party ticket with his own painful experience in 2000, when Ralph Nader vaporized his vice presidential aspirations.

I don’t have the energy to dredge up the mountains of posts I’ve written over the years about this egomaniac. His hatred for the left is so overwhelming that it rivals Donald Trump’s at this point. I honestly believe that he would be happy to see Biden fail at his hands just to teach the Democratic Party a lesson.

I don’t know what can stop these craven No Labels grifters and saboteurs but I certainly hope something does. This is not time for Joe Lieberman’s outsized ego to get another 15 minutes.

You’ve already heard about the head of the Republican Party down in Florida who is accused of raping a woman with whom he and his wife, a founding member of the far right, anti-LGBTQ “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty, had previously had a three way sexual affair. It turns out that they aren’t the only hypocrites in the GOP. (Ya think????)

Here’s another lovely mom for liberty:

A former Pennsylvania lieutenant governor candidate and outspoken voice in the conservative “parental rights” school movement has been charged with punching a teenager while hosting an underage drinking party at her Bucks County home in September. 

Clarice Schillinger, 36, is facing criminal charges of assault, harassment and furnishing minors with alcohol during her daughter’s birthday party, according to the case filed in late October. Her attorney has denied all charges and said she will fight them in court.

Schillinger made an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor as a Republican last year and has played an instrumental role in a political action committee that has poured more than $800,000 into Pennsylvania school district races since 2021. The PAC has focused on supporting school board candidates who opposed COVID-19 lockdowns and argue left-wing ideologies are invading the education system.

In the recent criminal case, Schillinger is accused of punching a partygoer several times in the face during a series of alleged outbursts by drunken adults at her home on Liz Circle in Doylestown, according to an affidavit of probable cause.

The documents state that during the event — which started Sept. 29 and went past midnight — Schillinger’s then-boyfriend allegedly grabbed a 16-year-old by the neck for intervening in a fight between the couple and hit a 15-year-old in the face during an argument over football. According to the allegations in court papers, her intoxicated mother also punched the older teen in the eye and chased him around the kitchen island. Police said they had cellphone recordings of some of these reported events.

To escape the unruly adults, several minors started making their way out of the home, even as Schillinger ordered them to stay, court documents allege.

Cellphone footage showed that as the teens gathered in the foyer Schillinger lunged toward one partygoer before others began restraining her. That individual told police Schillinger struck him three times with a closed fist but that he wasn’t injured, according to the affidavit. 

Schillinger had been throwing a 17th birthday party for her daughter that night, hosting about 20 teens in her basement, where there was a bar stocked with New Amsterdam vodka and Malibu Bay Breeze rum, police wrote in the affidavit. In addition to supplying the underage group with alcohol, she allegedly poured liquor for the teens, asked them to take a shot with her and played beer pong with them, witnesses later told authorities.

State law makes it illegal to serve or allow minors to drink alcohol.

One of the teen’s parents called police early the morning of Sept. 30 to report the assaults and the underage drinking at Schillinger’s home. Investigators interviewed multiple teens who had attended the party, the affidavit states. 

This wasn’t the first time police visited Schillinger’s home — which she’s been renting since the spring — for reports of an underage party, according to court documents.

Emergency dispatch data provided by the Bucks County Emergency Service Division logged at least four different calls at the address.

Buckingham Township police responded to a noise complaint call and possible underage party at Schillinger’s home on Sept. 24, the weekend before the birthday party, according to 911 data and court records.

Police reported in one affidavit spotting a number of beer cans strewn around the property and street that night. They also saw about 20 teens dart into the home and, when they tried speaking with Schillinger, found her to be “intoxicated and uncooperative,” the affidavit states. 

They seem nice. And so morally upright. We really should listen to them when they say they know better about what your children should be taught.

Meanwhile, Republicans are having a little family fight over yet another example of right wing hypocrisy. Get a load of this hot wingnut on wingnut action from the conservative site the Washington Examiner:

In the dumbest possible online nontroversy that has been branded #Calendargate, a handful of conservatives — and disproportionately, conservative women — are apoplectic over a calendar featuring photo shoots of various right-wing bloggers and “influencers.” Meant to lampoon the leftist notions that men can be women and that anorexia and obesity are considered beautiful by Hollywood and the corporate media, the “Real Women of America” 2024 calendar operates as part pin-up and part not-so-subtle advertisement for the creator, “Conservative Dad,” and his Ultra Right Beer.

It is kitschy. The photo shoots boast a relatively low production value, and the aesthetic is certainly catering to a working-class sensibility, not the world of high fashion or museum curation. But the calendar itself is anodyne and innocuous at worst and a fine celebration of real, conservative women of all races and healthy, attractive body types. It’s PG-13 and tolerably cringe, but pin-ups are neither meant to be high art nor pornography. The most scantily dressed model is the bikini-clad cover star, Riley Gaines, who became a conservative celebrity as a collegiate swimmer who competed against biological male Lia Thomas, and the rest of the models are fully clothed.

That hasn’t stopped yet another right-wing outrage cycle.

Q: What's the conservative antidote to feminism?
A: Take your shirt off, get in the tub, and arch your back for the camera, kiddo https://t.co/IcAUhsWGhB

— Peachy Keenan (@KeenanPeachy) December 27, 2023

Yep. Those right wing outrage cycles really are tiresome aren’t they? I feel you buddy.

I know, I know. They are shameless and hypocrisy is no longer operative. But we all know that this stuff is deeply uncomfortable for some of them even if they don’t admit it. They know that we know that they are completely full of shit. Most don’t care. But the ones who do must be forced to own their nonsense.

Why does this keep coming up?

I feel like not enough attention is being paid to Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) saying that Republicans in Congress are being blackmailed by Russian operatives using hookers and drugs to get them to change their votes on legislation.

Guessing a lot of them don't support Ukraine aid. pic.twitter.com/a18rswjUHQ

— Melanie D'Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) December 27, 2023

That guy’s a bit of a nut. On the other hand, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard this sort of thing. Remember this?

 A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

Before the conversation, McCarthy and Ryan had emerged from separate talks at the Capitol with Ukrainian Prime Minister Vladi­mir Groysman, who had described a Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undercut Eastern European democratic institutions.

News had just broken the day before in The Washington Post that Russian government hackers had penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee, prompting McCarthy to shift the conversation from Russian meddling in Europe to events closer to home.

Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”

Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

And they wonder how anyone could have fallen for the pee tape rumor….

Is there any truth to this? Who knows? Would I be surprised if it were true. Not a bit. The GOP is that corrupt. Look who they worship like a god.

He can’t win but if he dirties up Trump it’s fine with me.

I can’t argue with a thing he says there. Stay in Chris! You’ve already burned your bridges with MAGA. You have nothing to lose.

Trump and Fox

Nina Burleigh has written a great piece for TNR about Joe Biden’s other opponent in the 2024 election: Fox News. I urge you to read the whole thing if you can. It will be worth your while.

It opens with this:

On October 6, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report for September. The numbers were extremely positive, with 336,000 jobs added, almost double the forecast. Most media outlets were reporting the numbers as a sign of improvement in the economy—which they are. But Fox reported otherwise. On his prime-time show that night, host Jesse Watters called the report “a straight-up scandal.” He accused the Biden administration of “cherry-picking and double counting the numbers.” As he babbled, chyrons drove home the point in capital letters, for anyone watching with the sound down, in, say, a bar or a gym: “Biden’s Jobs Numbers Scandal” and “Biden’s Economy Is Smoke & Mirrors.”

That day, the network flooded all its zones with the same shade. A Fox Business segment hosted Strategic Wealth Partners “investment strategist” Luke Lloyd, who opined that the good numbers merely proved Joe Biden’s socialism. “My reaction? We are becoming a more socialistic country, and these job numbers prove it,” he said. “We’re taking jobs from the private sector and creating them in the public sector. And who’s financing those jobs? Me, you, and the viewers, through inflation…. Government spending is going to keep inflation in the game.”

All that was just Day One. For the next week, the network served up a chorus of boos for the unemployment numbers. The next morning, hosts of Fox & Friends Weekend discussed the U.S. employment data over a chyron announcing, “Biden Criticized Over Handling of Economy.” Host Will Cain reported that the good jobs numbers were actually very bad news in a period of “runaway inflation,” and that more people working was simply going to drive up prices even further. “I got to tell you, when I’m out there talking to friends who are either in real estate or financing, there’s a great amount of fear about this economy and what could happen over the next 12 months … inflation goes high and interest rates goes high.”

As we head into the 2024 election, this is the messaging tone we can expect the nation’s most-watched cable network to spew hourly. No matter who the Republicans run, Fox will exist as an open adversary to Joe Biden—his other opponent. The network has always gone after Democrats—it did this to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Al Gore. But this election year is different. It is a crisis for American democracy, a crisis that is in no small part Fox’s making. And it’s not clear that Democrats have any plan for how to handle their other—perhaps even the stronger—2024 adversary.

[…]

Is the Biden campaign, are the Democrats generally, ready for this? A debate rages right now in Democratic circles about how the party and its officials should deal with Fox—to refuse to appear on the network and instead expose the corruption at its heart, or to play ball with it and try to outsmart it. There are good arguments on both sides. Wherever Biden and his people come down, they need to do so understanding that Fox isn’t merely an unfriendly media property. It’s an opponent, and one with a press pass and the First Amendment to shield its lies.

It’s straight-up lies and propaganda. And you wonder why people are so uninformed in this country. But it’s that last bit that’s immediately concerning.

Most media observers and critics say that unless you are as skilled as Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom it’s probably best not to go on at all. It’s very important to know how to parry their narrative and not everyone can do it. Others disagree pointing out that 40% of independents watch Fox and that the messaging around social security and medicare needs to be shared with the seniors who are watching Fox non-stop.

I honestly don’t know who’s right on this. “Better media training” has been the mantra for as long as I can remember but I’m not sure it’s ever made a difference. And do those seniors who watch Fox will ever believe that Trump and the Republicans will do anything to harm them. Fox blames everything on the Democrats and the hippies no matter what the truth might be!

It is possible to persuade them but the question is how to get it done

A 2022 experiment bears that out to some extent. Researchers paid Fox viewers to watch CNN for just a month—and they changed their minds about things like the government response to Covid and Democrats’ attitudes toward police. But in the real world, with such experiments impossible on a large scale, Democrats in 2024 face the profound challenge of meeting a moment of fascist authoritarian descent at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to messaging.

Burleigh correctly observes that Fox and the Republicans have discovered how to make politics “entertaining” whether it’s as theatre or sporting competition (or maybe lynching?) for the GOP voters who prefer this way of experiencing politics. According to various studies, Democrats apparently prefer to have their political entertainment more policy oriented. The result is that Fox viewers are extremely uniformed. Surprise! And the MSM is more boring…

We’ve all talked about this for years and I’m not sure there are any good answers for it, even now. When I think about it, it’s kind of a miracle that Democrats have managed to win all these elections in the last few years. Maybe that’s a hopeful sign?

Burleigh takes a long look at some of the long term work the Democrats are doing from building local news infrastructure (which sounds very interesting) to legal strategies, boycotts and carriage fees, all of which point to some clear signs that Fox, for all its power, is actually a very “wounded beast.” and may have actually reached the apex of its power some time back. That’s the most optimistic take I’ve seen and it does have a ring of truth. The problem is that they are still massively influential, dedicated to Donald Trump and they aren’t going anywhere before this next election.

So, add Fox to the list of Biden opponents, along with Trump, RFK Jr., Jill Stein and Cornell West. It may be the hardest one to beat out of all of them.

What a doozy

WATCH: A voter asks Nikki Haley "what was the cause of the Civil War?" and Haley inexplicably does not mention slavery in her response.

"The cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn't do."

After hearing… pic.twitter.com/6swl0zJGBy

— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) December 28, 2023

Republicans have a real problem when it comes to simple questions about the civil war and slavery. Nikki Haley got caught in a major gaffe yesterday in New Hampshire but Ron DeSantis has a lot of nerve dinging her for it though. He’s the guy who said defended a high school AP curriculum that said slavery helped enslaved Black people develop skills that could be applied for their personal benefit. Please.

Here’s the whole Haley exchange:

This isn’t hard. As Ron Brownstein pointed out, “South Carolina’s 1860 proclamation outlining its reasons for seceding from the Union mentions slavery in its opening sentence & points to the ‘increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery’ as a reason for the state” seceding.”

She tried to clean it up today. First, she said it was a Democratic plant in the audience, as if that would make a difference. And she also said this:

“Of course the Civil War was about slavery … But it was also more than that. It was about the freedoms of every individual. It was about the role of government.”

Hmm. “The freedoms of every individual” in this context would include the freedom of white people to own slaves. “The role of government” would be the role of government to allow the ownership of other human beings. She’s still not willing to speak the simple truth and is instead channeling the old Lost Cause narrative that the civil war was about the “principle” of states’ rights.

Haley should know better. She has a history with this stuff as the Gov. of S. Carolina.

“As she ran for governor in 2010, Haley, in an interview…described the war as between two disparate sides fighting for “tradition” and “change” and said the Confederate flag was “not something that is racist.”

https://t.co/Vkp2RTGYdd

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) December 28, 2023

Apparently, the story hit all the airwaves in New Hampshire last night. It wasn’t exactly a confederate state. It illustrates a central problem for the GOP — there are a lot of racists in the party and they demand to be catered to. But if you aren’t Trump (who’s allowed to vomit up anything and people in the party will excuse it) you’d better be able to smoothly dog whistle your way through it in places where Republicans prefer their racism to be more subtle. Haley just failed that test.

He’s not even your retribution, MAGA

The man spends (how much?) time, bronzer and hairspray on himself each morning before going to work late. He had to have daily presidential security briefings dumbed down to maps and bullet points because he has a short attention span for anything not Donald Trump. He has other priorities (which don’t include personal hygiene).

But question his star power (or his liquidity) and you have his full attention.

Daily Beast:

Donald Trump kept the Christmas spirit going strong on Wednesday when he used his Truth Social account to go after the director of Home Alone and Home Alone 2 for suggesting in an interview that he “bullied” his way into a now-iconic cameo in the 1992 sequel.

Just as Trump has frequently accused special prosecutor Jack Smith of having a fake name, the former president suggested the same of Chris Columbus as he disputed the director’s claims about how his appearance during a scene at the Plaza hotel, which he owned at the time, came to be.

“30 years ago (how time flies!), Chris Columbus, and others, were begging me to make a cameo appearance in Home Alone 2,” Trump wrote, claiming he was “very busy” and “didn’t want to do it” but because they were so “persistent” he agreed “and the rest is history!”

Trump focusing on the big issies like the director of Home Alone 2 saying mean things about him. pic.twitter.com/thu2Nh2DYp

— Drew Savicki (@DrewSav) December 27, 2023

Over the holiday weekend, Columbus told Business Insider that the production paid to film in the Plaza lobby, but there was one condition.

“‘The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie,’” he recalled Trump saying. “So we agreed to put him in the movie, and when we screened it for the first time the oddest thing happened: People cheered when Trump showed up on-screen. So I said to my editor, ‘Leave him in the movie. It’s a moment for the audience.’ But he did bully his way into the movie.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Trump shot back on Wednesday. “That cameo helped make the movie a success, but if they felt bullied, or didn’t want me, why did they put me in, and keep me there, for over 30 years?”

The idea of removing Trump from the film has come up before, such as just after the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021 when someone on Twitter proposed a “petition to digitally replace” Trump in Home Alone 2 with 40-year-old Macaulay Culkin, to which the actor replied, “Sold.”

“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution,” Trump told CPAC in March.

SMH, they believe he has a use for them for anything other than their adulation and “a bit of the old ultra-violence.“