It was baked in that Saturday Night Live would use Alabama Sen. Katie Britt’s “absurdly overdramatic” SOTU performance as it’s cold open. My problem with SNL’s sketch? “Bless his heart” Britt will probably just be flattered that SNL asked Scarlett Johansson to play her.
“What was the point of that nonsense?” The American Conservativeasked, descrbing Britt’s appearance as a ” hyper-emotional speech that verged from creepy to hormonal to giddy within the span of twenty minutes.” It’s a wonder SNL did not just replicate Britt’s address almost word-for-word, as Tina Fey once did in mocking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
But The American Conservative‘s response to Biden’s SOTU was just as bizarre, judging it a declaration of war on half the country while calling Biden a liar and Britt “authentic.”
Judge for yourself which of the likely 2024 presidential candidates is the kind of authentic you want sitting in the Oval Office.
The American Conservative declares the SOTU a tradition draped in “pseudo-monarchic pomp” and out of character for “a country that defines itself against hereditary hierarchy,” yet “arch-feudal in spirit.” On that, we agree. Especially regarding conservatives who yearn for an emotionally stunted child-king.
I’m sure you are aware that the Academy Awards ceremonies are this Sunday. As an alleged “movie critic”, I sheepishly admit I have only seen 1 of the10 nominees for 2023’s Best Picture: Oppenheimer, if you really must pry (“I must! I must!”). Then again, it’s been years since Academy voters and I have seen eye to eye as to what constitutes a “best picture”. Either my aesthetic has changed, or the Academy has lowered its standards. I don’t think my aesthetic has changed, if you catch my drift.
This is my way of explaining in advance why you may notice only one “Best Picture” winner from the last several decades made my list, which I have culled from the previous 95 Academy Awards. Or perhaps it’s just my long-winded way of saying “they don’t make ‘em like they used to”. And stay the hell off my lawn.
You Can’t Take it With You (Best Picture of 1938) – 86 years on, Frank Capra’s movie version of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s stage play (adapted for the screen by Robert Riskin, who was nominated) still resonates in light of our current economic woes.
A Wall Street fat cat (Edward Arnold) comes up with various nefarious machinations to force a stubborn but happy-go-lucky homeowner (Lionel Barrymore) and his eccentric and free-spirited family to sell him his property, in order to make way for a new factory he wants to build in a prime metropolitan location.
Complications ensue when Barrymore’s granddaughter (Jean Arthur) falls in love with Arnold’s son (James Stewart). Hilarity abounds, fueled by contrasting worldviews of Arnold’s uptight, greedy capitalist and Barrymore’s fun-loving non-conformist. There’s tons of slapstick, and in accordance with the rules of screwball comedy, nearly the entire cast eventually ends up standing before a judge (en masse) with a lot of explaining to do.
Although this is one of Capra’s more lightweight films, he still folds in social commentary about the disparity between the haves vs. the have-nots; in some respects it feels like a warm-up for It’sa Wonderful Life. Capra also picked up a Best Director win.
Casablanca (Best Picture of 1943)-Romance, exotic intrigue, Bogie, Ingrid Bergman, evil Nazis, selfless acts of quiet heroism, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Rick’s Café, Claude Rains rounding up the usual suspects, Dooley singing “As Time Goes By”, the beginning of a beautiful friendship, the most rousing rendition of “La Marseille” you’ve ever heard, that goodbye scene at the airfield, and a timeless message (if you love someone, set them free). What’s not to love about this movie-lover’s movie? Michael Curtiz directed; Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch adapted the screenplay from a play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison.
From Here to Eternity (Best Picture of 1953) – Even though James Jones’ steamy source novel about restless G.I.s stationed at Pearl Harbor was sanitized for the screen, Fred Zinnemann’s film was still relatively risqué and heady adult fare for its time.
Montgomery Clift was born to play angst-ridden company bugler (and sometime pugilist) Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt, a “hard case” at constant loggerheads with his superiors (and his personal demons).
And what a cast-outstanding performances abound from Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Frank Sinatra (he won Best Actor in a Supporting Role), Jack Warden, Ernest Borgnine, and Donna Reed. At that point of Reed’s career, it was considered casting against type to have her portray a sex worker, but it paid off with a Best Actress in a Supporting Role win.
Zinnemann won Best Director, screenwriter Daniel Taradash picked up a Best Writing (Screenplay) for his adaptation, Burnett Guffey won for Cinematography (Black and White), and William A. Lyon took home a statue for Best Film Editing.
West Side Story (Best Picture of 1961)- Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise co-directed this classic musical drama (with a screenplay adapted by Ernest Lehman from the stage version). You know, there are so many Deep Thoughts that I have gleaned as a result of myriad viewings of this fine film over the years; and since I am holding the Talking Stick, I wish to share a few of them with you now:
Lawrence of Arabia (Best Picture of 1962) – Until you have viewed David Lean’s masterpiece on a theater screen, you can’t really comprehend how big the desert is. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. Or how commanding and charismatic 29 year-old Peter O’Toole was in his first starring role.
O’Toole delivers a larger-than-life performance as T.E. Lawrence, a flamboyant and outspoken British army officer who reinvented himself as a guerilla leader, gathering up warring Arab tribes and uniting them in a common cause to oust the Turks during WW I.
Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson based their literate screenplay on Lawrence’s memoirs, sustaining a sense of intimacy throughout. This was no small feat, considering the film’s overall epic sweep and visual splendor (DP Freddie Young and editor Anne V. Coates more than earned their Oscars).
Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Claude Rains and Jose Ferrer round off a fine cast, and you can’t discuss this film without acknowledging Maurice Jarre’s magnificent “Best Score”.
In the Heat of the Night (Best Picture of 1967) – “They call me Mister Tibbs!” Sidney Poitier plays a cosmopolitan police detective from Philly who gets waylaid in a torpid Mississippi backwater, where he is reluctantly recruited into helping the bigoted sheriff (Rod Steiger) solve a local murder.
Poitier really nails his performance; you can feel Virgil Tibb’s pain as he tries to maintain his professional cool amidst a brace of surly rednecks, who throw up roadblocks at every turn.
While Steiger is outstanding as well, I find it ironic that he was the one who won “Best Actor in a leading role”, when Poitier was the star of the film (it seems Hollywood didn’t get the film’s message).
Sterling Silliphant’s brilliant screenplay (another Oscar) works as a crime thriller and a “fish out of water” story. Director Norman Jewison was nominated but didn’t score a win. Future director Hal Ashby won for Best Editing. Quincy Jones composed the soundtrack, and Ray Charles sings the sultry theme.
Midnight Cowboy (Best Picture of 1969) – “I’m WALKIN’ heah!” Aside from its distinction as being the only X-rated film to earn Oscars, John Schlesinger’s groundbreaking, idiosyncratic character study Midnight Cowboy (1969) also ushered in an era of mature, gritty realism in American film that flourished from the early to mid-1970s. The film was Schlesinger’s first U.S.-based project; he had already made a name for himself in his native England with films like A Kind of Loving, Billy Liar, Darling, and Far From the Madding Crowd.
Dustin Hoffman has seldom matched his character work here as Ratso Rizzo, a homeless New York City con artist who adopts country bumpkin/aspiring male hustler Joe Buck (Jon Voight) as his “protégé”. The two leads are outstanding, as is the supporting cast, which includes John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes and a teenage Bob Balaban. Also look for cameos from several of Warhol’s “Factory” regulars in a memorable party scene.
In hindsight, the location filming provides a fascinating historical document of the seedy milieu that was “classic” Times Square (New York “plays itself” very well here). Schlesinger won an Oscar for Best Director, as did Waldo Salt for his screenplay.
The Godfather (Best Picture of 1972) and The Godfather, Part II (Best Picture of 1974)-Yes, I’m counting them as one; because in a narrative and artistic sense, they are. Got a problem with that? Tell it to Luca Brasi. Taken as a whole, Francis Ford Coppola’s two-part masterpiece (with screenplays co-written by the director with Mario Puzo) is best summed up thusly: Brando, Pacino, and De Niro.
Annie Hall (Best Picture of 1977) – As far as his “earlier, funny films” go, this semi-autobiographical entry ranks as one of Woody Allen’s finest, and represents the moment he found his voice as a filmmaker.
The Academy concurred, awarding three additional Oscars as well-for Best Actress (leading lady Diane Keaton, in her career-defining role), for Director (Allen) and for Best Original Screenplay (Allen again, along with co-writer Marshall Brickman).
Part 1 of a triptych (or so the theory goes) that continued with Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters, it is also the film that neatly divides the history of the romantic comedy in half. So many of the narrative framing techniques and comic inventions that Allen utilized have become so de rigueur for the genre that it’s easy to forget how wonderfully innovative and fresh this film was back in 1977. A funny, bittersweet, and perceptive look at modern romance.
No Country for Old Men (Best Picture of 2007) – The bodies pile up faster than you can say Blood Simple in Joel and Ethan Coen’s masterfully constructed neo-noir (which earned them a shared Best Director trophy). The brothers’ Oscar-winning screenplay (adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel) is rich in characterization and thankfully devoid of the self-conscious quirkiness that has left some of their latter-day films teetering on self-parody.
The story is set among the sagebrush and desert heat of the Tex-Mex border, where the deer and the antelope play. One day, good ol’ boy Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) is shootin’ at some food (the playful antelope) when he encounters a grievously wounded pit bull. The blood trail leads to discovery of the aftermath of a shootout. As this is Coen country…that twisty trail does lead to a twisty tale.
Tommy Lee Jones gives a wonderful low-key performance as an old-school, Gary Cooper-ish lawman who (you guessed it) comes from a long line of lawmen. Jones’ face is a craggy, world-weary road map of someone who has reluctantly borne witness to every inhumanity man is capable of, and is counting down the days to imminent retirement (‘cos it’s becoming no country for old men…).
The cast is outstanding. Javier Bardem picked up a Best Supporting Actor statue for his turn as a psychotic hit man. His performance is understated, yet menacing, made all the more unsettling by his Peter Tork haircut. Kelly McDonald and Woody Harrelson are standouts as well. Curiously, Roger Deakins wasn’t nominated for his cinematography, but his work on this film ranks among his best. (Full review)
Sen Katie Britt says sexual assault is the worst thing that can happen to a woman while encouraging Americans to vote for a convicted sexual predator. pic.twitter.com/oKZdUZuy3u
“We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days. When I took office, I took a different approach. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas. That’s where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped. The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoe box of a room, and they sent men through that door over and over again for hours and hours on end. We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it. President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”
If you were watching Britt’s speech on Thursday night, you likely would have thought she was talking about a recent victim of sex trafficking who was abused in the United States andsuffered because of President Biden’s policies.
If you did, you would have been wrong. Sean Ross, Britt’s communications director, confirmed that she was talking about Karla Jacinto Romero — who has testified before Congress about being forced to work in Mexican brothels from 2004 to 2008. (A viral TikTok by journalist Jonathan Katz first revealed that Britt was speaking about Romero.) In a phone conversation and a statement, Ross disputed that Britt’s language was misleading.
We disagree. Let’s take a look.
Britt’s account of Romero’s experience was a centerpiece of her rebuttal to Biden’s address. The way Britt sets up the story, there is no indication that she is talking about a woman who was working in brothels in Mexico during the George W. Bush administration. This is how the passage unfolds.
-She first blames Biden for the surge of migrants at the border.
-Then she says she visited the border shortly after she took office. That would be 2023.
-At length, she details the story of an unnamed victim that she says she met on her trip. The implication is that the woman recently crossed the border — because of “sex trafficking by the cartels.”
-She strongly suggests that her abuse took place in the United States: “We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it.”
-She ends by reinforcing that such alleged trafficking is Biden’s fault: “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”
But Biden has nothing to do with Romero’s story. As she testified nine years ago, her mother threw her out of her house at age 12 and she “fell prey to a professional pimp.” She says she then spent the next four years in brothels before a regular client helped her escape when she was 16 years old. There is no indication in her story that drug cartels were involved, though Britt said that in the State of the Union response and has made a similar claim on at least one other occasion. Romero was never trafficked to the United States; instead, she says many men who paid to have sex with her were “foreigners visiting my city looking to have sexual interactions with minors like me.”
In a YouTube video, Britt features images of her hugging Romero during her 2023 trip to the border. “If we as leaders of the greatest nation in the world are not fighting to protect the most vulnerable, we are not doing our job,” she saidin the video. The implication again is that this happened on Biden’s watch.
When Donald Trump was president, he regularly decried human trafficking that he claimed was happening at the border, including that “thousands of young girls and women” were being smuggled across the border for prostitution. In 2019, we investigated that claim and found no evidence to support it. Most human trafficking prosecutions generally involve legal border crossings, visa fraud and travel into the United States on airplanes. Victim organizations say there are relatively few cases that involve forced kidnapping across the border. This might be one reason Britt regularly cites a case that happened long ago and did not involve crossing the border.
Ross, Britt’s spokesman, said that Romero’s story was indicative of trafficking that is now happening at the border and that should be clear from Britt’s framing in the speech.
He said the reference to a “Third World country” was generic and was not intended to refer to Mexico, which he said is not a Third World country. Third World is a dated Cold War-era term previously used to refer to poor or developing countries. Global South, indicating low income and high poverty, is a more common expression today. Mexico is considered part of the Global South, though it is also a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Right. The current term isn’t “third world country.” It’s “shit hole country.” Everyone knows that.
He went on to claim that Britt was “100% correct” because there are, in fact, women being trafficked right now, which she blames on Biden. Hoookay.
The Post gives her 4 Pinnocchios. Because she is a liar.
Oh, and by the way:
Not only did Katie Britt dishonestly co-opt the horrific 2015 congressional testimony of a Mexican activist relating events in Mexico during the Bush admin, the anti-sex trafficking policies the activist was advocating were thwarted by *Donald Trump* & reversed under Biden pic.twitter.com/jiIw8kl2ev
— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) March 9, 2024
It appears that the campaign is hitting the ground running. Let’s hope they keep it up:
In “For You” President Biden discusses how his wisdom, experience, and—yes, even age—have been critical to getting big things done for the American people in his first term, and the choice Americans will face this November between Joe Biden’s experienced and effective leadership versus Donald Trump and his assault on Americans’ rights and democracy.
The six-week ad flight will air on national cable and local broadcast and cable television in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina. The ad campaign will target audiences in the key markets of Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Phoenix, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Raleigh, with a focus on voters of color and young voters. The ad will air on popular entertainment and sports programming on stations like ESPN, TNT, FX, Adult Swim, and Comedy Central and during high-viewership moments like the NCAA March Madness Tournament. It will also run digitally across platforms – with a heavy emphasis on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
The following is a statement from Biden-Harris Campaign Communications Director Michael Tyler:
“Y’all want to talk about age? Let’s talk about age. At 77, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. At 78, he led us through the COVID crisis, put us on a path to creating nearly 15 million new jobs since the day he took office, and passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to repair our roads and bridges and expand access to broadband internet to every community. At 79, he got us the most significant gun safety legislation in a generation and became the first president to beat Big Pharma and cap the cost of insulin at $35 for seniors. At the same time, he made the single largest investment in history to combat climate change – all before his 80th birthday. Meanwhile, the only helpful thing Donald Trump did for the American people in four years was lose the 2020 election to Joe Biden – and it’s the one thing he won’t take credit for.”
“Now, Joe Biden is 81 and he’s going to beat Donald Trump again because he wakes up every single day fighting for the American people while Trump wages a campaign of revenge and retribution focused on himself. Trump may be four years younger than Joe Biden, but his ideas are old as hell and they’ve already been rejected by the American people. Joe Biden is running to make sure we reject them for good.”
Biden had a good SOTU address and the press is laying off of him for the moment, This ad is good and hopefully there will be more of them that we can see and send around to people who might need to see it. But I do want to caution everyone to be aware that there are going to be many bad days to come. It’s the nature of this closely divided electorate and a media that craves the controversy so I have no doubt we’ll be losing sleep over the next few months. But this moment at least marks the beginning of Biden and his campaign taking the initiative to turn the ship around and it’s heartening to see it.
He doesn’t want women being reminded about his piggish behavior
I’m not surprised he’s having problems getting the money together to pay his massive judgments. He’s such a liar about his net worth and it’s hard to believe that any legitimate financial institution is going to issue a bond for that huge amount required in the fraud case. However, he can sell secrets to rich foreign actors and there’s not much anyone can do about it. I suspect someone is going to bail him out and I don’t know that we’ll ever know who it was or exactly why they did it.
Meanwhile, this piece, also by Haberman, was a delicious little bit of tea about how much Trump hates the hush money case, which may be the only trial that he has to face before the election at this point:
For the past couple of weeks, the spotlight has been focused on the timing of Donald Trump’s four criminal trials and the prospect that at least two of them might not go to a jury before this fall’s election. And the one trial that seems certain to be held before Election Day — his so-called hush money case — has often been dismissed by experts and observers as old, legally dubious and lacking in the sort of weighty issues that sit at the heart of, say, his two election interference cases.
But the hush money case arguably is an election interference case, centering on allegations that, on the eve of the 2016 presidential race, Trump falsified business records as part of a scheme to buy the silence of a porn star to keep her from going public with claims that they had an affair.
And as the trial draws nearer — it is set to start on March 25 in Manhattan — it’s become apparent that prosecutors would like to tell a wide ranging story full of tabloid details, one that could be personally embarrassing to Trump.
The hush money case, which is being prosecuted by Alvin Bragg, the district attorney in Manhattan, has always been an awkward mix of the serious and the profane, based around a seamy tale of extramarital sex, business records and presidential politics. Trump’s aides are blunt that he particularly hates this case given the nature of the story that prosecutors intend to put in front of the jury.
Huh. He doesn’t want to brag that he is the world’s greatest cocksman who bangs porn stars and playmates two at a time? How unusual.
Well good. He should hate it because it’s yet another illustration of one particularly odious aspect of his black character. He has been a disgusting pig toward women his entire life. And apparently, Bragg wants to bring up that fact in the trial
But recently, Bragg and his team asked Justice Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the trial, for permission to tell a much more sweeping tale, one involving not just a single secret payoff but three of them. They also want to relate in detail how Trump used his ties to a publisher of supermarket tabloids to preemptively stop embarrassing accounts about him from seeing the light of day, a process known as “catch and kill.”
And if that were not enough, the prosecutors want to introduce evidence about the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape. In the tape, which surfaced in the closing weeks of the 2016 campaign and captured a conversation from years earlier, Trump spoke openly about grabbing female body parts without permission.
Oh, and by the way, he’s been found guilty of assault and defamation in a federal civil suit and has to pay his victim almost a hundred million dollars. It’s not as if any of this is hard to believe. Everyone knows what he is, even his cult followers who simply admire him for being such a manly man.
They want to bring up Karen McDougal and the doorman they paid off not to say that he fathered a child with his housekeeper (which apparently is not true.) Trump’s lawyers are having a meltdown over this, saying that it’s nothing but an attempt to sully Trump’s reputation with these salacious details which is hilarious. As I said, a jury has already found him to be rapist and he’s on tape talking about grabbing women by the pussy so I think that ship sailed a long time ago.
They’re asking the judge not to allow the prosecution to say anything about trying to influence the election at all ludicrously asserting that he just didn’t want “adverse publicity” coming out about him. Right. I don’t think that’s going to fly since they went to great lengths to conceal the payments with false invoices which they needn’t have done if they weren’t flouting campaign finance laws, which is the heart of this case. It’s not like Melania was pouring over the books.
Haberman looks at the political implications:
When Justice Merchan makes his decision about how much of this extra evidence to allow into the trial, it could have political — and not just legal — ramifications.
Trump’s aides have long regarded the hush money trial as the least legally impactful, given that it relates to allegations of behavior between consenting adults. His supporters viewed the indictment as a partisan attack when it was handed down last March, and that perspective has only hardened as Trump has insisted he’s facing a “witch hunt.”
But the details of Trump’s behavior could also further alienate women and swing voters whose backing he needs in a general election. The details being made public also upset Trump, according to people who’ve spoken with him, and the impact the case may have on his behavior inside and outside court remains to be seen.
It is not in dispute that he paid off those women and he did it in a particularly devious way, working with the National Inquirer. He’ll have to contend with all those details being on the front pages and at the top of the news again and he deserves it. He can insist that it’s a witch hunt all he wants but he can’t dispute the facts. Donald Trump is a pig and the last thing he needs at a time when he’s bragging about banning abortion and IVF being outlawed is for women to be reminded of just how grotesque he really is. You bet he’s losing sleep over this one.
The 2024 State of the Union address drew a larger TV audience than the 2023 address.
President Joe Biden’s speech to Congress averaged 32.23 million viewers across 14 broadcast and cable outlets, almost 5 million more viewers than the 2023 State of the Union. Viewership rose on all of the largest outlets as Biden’s address grew by about 18 percent.
The vast majority of viewers — 28.47 million — watched the State of the Union on the big four broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) and the three largest cable news outlets (CNN, Fox News and MSNBC). All seven outlets drew a bigger audience than they did for last year’s address.
Fox News led all outlets with 5.84 million viewers for Biden’s speech, beating out the 5.24 million for ABC, which had the biggest tune-in among the broadcast networks. NBC’s 4.47 million viewers finished third, followed by MSNBC (4.43 million, its biggest audience ever for a State of the Union), CBS (4.09 million), CNN (2.63 million) and the Fox broadcast network (1.77 million).
Univision (970,000 viewers) fell a little from 1.08 million for last year’s State of the Union, while Telemundo (900,000) gained 64,000 viewers, bringing the total for the address 30.34 million. The averages for both Spanish-language networks encompass pre- and post-speech analysis and the Republican response. The remaining 1.89 million viewers viewers came via CNNe, Fox Business, Newsmax, NewsNation and PBS.
Even without factoring in other broadcast and cable channels, the audience on the seven biggest networks surpassed the all-network total of 27.31 million viewers last year. Thursday’s speech was the second largest address to Congress of Biden’s term, behind the 38.2 million who watched the 2022 State of the Union.
NBC had the most viewers in the core news demographic of adults 25-54 with 1.18 million, just ahead of the 1.14 million for Fox News and 1.07 million for ABC. CBS averaged 824,000 viewers in 25-54 demo, followed by CNN (710,000), MSNBC (695,000) and Fox’s broadcast coverage (517,000).
This doesn’t count the many people who watched via streaming and later on Youtube. So, quite a few people saw Biden’s bravura performance.
Now I’m sure someone will find a way to say this is bad news for Joe Biden but in reality I’d imagine that the low bar the right wing (with the help of the media) has set for Biden ended up helping Biden by making more people tune in to see if he would drool on his tie and fall down the stairs. And he most assuredly did not do that.
It was nice of Trump to eschew his usual red, white and blue patriot ensemble for the sake of his honored guest.
In case you were wondering if all this dictator talk is just liberal hysteria, I give you exhibit A:
Trump on Hungary’s autocratic PM Viktor Orban: “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban…He’s a non-controversial figure because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it…He’s the boss.”pic.twitter.com/5lU60bYEfu
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) March 9, 2024
Listen to the difference between Alabama Senator Katie Britt’s natural voice and her speech voice. Britt delivered the Republican Party response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address last night. pic.twitter.com/uUN89QX774
You know what No Labels is. Digby’s been shouting it. But they are stuck with no serious candidate yet still hope to keep the spoiler train roling. Without the spoiling.
The contents of the call offered nothing to dispel this fear. The call consisted of No Labels party members from numerous states, each reporting on what members in their states and regions were thinking and feeling. While many of these local leaders said there’s a lot of enthusiasm for a No Labels run, some of them reported that members are wary of functioning as a spoiler.
For instance, a No Labels leader in Idaho said that while members are all for run, they believe the ticket should “only” be offered to a candidate who has a “reasonable path to succeed and not be a spoiler.” A leader in Iowa said the candidate must be “strong” and have “the ability to win.”
They don’t know what they want but they want it now. Somehow.
What was striking about this call was how deeply a lot of these party members have bought into No Labels’ hype. One leader after another repeated, almost robotically, the idea that a No Labels candidacy would be a true act of heroism that could only rescue the country from the alleged horrors of having to choose between Biden and Trump.
I don’t know what they’re smoking, but it’s not your grandfather’s weed.
Biden, of course, has at times governed in a bipartisan way—which No Labels says it prizes. And there’s a vast asymmetry at play here, in which Trump poses a severe threat to our democracy and our country, and one major party is his willing accomplice in this regard, even as Biden and Democrats pose no such threat.
But No Labels simply refuses to accept this basic state of affairs. And there was no sense on the call that party members have seriously grappled with what it means that one side poses that dire threat while the other does not, or whether that creates an obligation for No Labels to be particularly cautious in proceeding. Instead, there was a lot of self-congratulatory talk about the group’s own bravery.
And you thought MAGA was the only political cult loose in the land. What do you call a personality cult in search of a personality?
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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
Watch the following if you have time. It is utterly inspiring. We used to talk a lot about ecology but I feel as if it’s slipped down the list of priorities as we face other environmental challenges. This story is such a perfect lesson in how we humans screw everything up and how nature, left alone, can heal itself.
In 1995, 14 wolves were released in Yellowstone National Park. No one expected the miracle that the wolves would bring
