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Month: June 2024

How Should The Biden Camp Rebound?

Published by digby on June 29, 2024

Following up on my post below I thought I’d post this excerpt from Dan Pfeiffer’s newletter. His analysis is similar to mine. He too thinks that a brokered convention is way too risky and that the “Biden endorses Harris with the full support of the Democratic establishment” scenario is the only alternative to the wounded Biden soldiering on. He writes:

There are two possible scenarios. The first is that Biden steps aside and endorses Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee, and the party coalesces around her. She would have to pick a Vice Presidential nominee and be ratified as the nominee by the delegates at the convention. That vote would be pro forma and drama-free. The race against Trump would start immediately. She would possibly get an opportunity to debate Trump at the scheduled debate in September.

The other scenario is the circus sideshow of a brokered convention which would be very risky.

Pfeiffer then discusses what Biden can do to right the ship if he decides to stay in:

  1. Acknowledge the Obvious: In the immediate aftermath of the debate, some Biden aides and supporters dismissed the concerns from the Democratic Party as if they were simply more examples of people underestimating President Biden. That’s a mistake. People can’t ignore what is obvious to everyone. It’s better to acknowledge it like President Biden did in his rally when he said:I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I know. I know how to tell the truth. I know how to do this job.People appreciate honesty.
  2. Embrace the Underdog Status: For months now, Democrats have pushed back on every poll that shows Trump leading. The President himself has argued that polling is broken because it’s so hard to get people on the phone (He may be right!). Yes, this is a close, winnable race, but it’s clear that Trump has the upper hand. We can debate how significant the advantage is, but all of us must act as if we are behind and have a hell of a lot of work to do to win.Biden’s campaign team is top-notch and they have been smart and aggressive. However, aside from his now ill-fated decision to seek out an early debate, Biden , himself, has largely been running as if he is in the lead. I know he is busy as President, but his campaign schedule is light (Trump’s is lighter). The Biden digital team does innovative things, but his communications strategy has been somewhat risk averse. Pehaps the debate shows why that’s the case. Regardless, the President needs to be everywhere at once. They should seek out tough interviews, constant appearances and opportunities for virality. The only way to clean up this mess is to show everyone a different Biden. That only happens with a change in approach.
  3. Make the Race Bigger than Biden v. Trump: We have limited data since the debate. However, in the FivethirtyEight/Ipsos poll, people who watched the debate thought Trump did better, but it didn’t move many votes. This dovetails with the anecdotal reports from various focus groups where voters were dismayed by Biden’s performance but didn’t choose Trump. Now, it’s worth noting that debate watchers are more likely to be partisans who made up their minds a long time ago and are therefore less likely to move based on one debate performance. What’s clear is that many voters are not excited about either of these candidates. Therefore, the best way to win is to make this election about more than Joe Biden and Donald Trump. We must raise the stakes. I recommend focusing on preserving freedom and defeating extremists who want to control every aspect of our lives. We need the votes of people who don’t love Biden and think he may be too old. Making their vote about something bigger than individual candidates is our best bet. Biden and Trump’s favorable ratings have been largely the same for years. We can’t convince most persuadable that Biden is great and Trump is even more terrible than we thought, but we can convince them that voting Biden is important to their lives and their country.
  4. Demand a Second Debate: This is going to sound insane. Just writing it makes me want to puke but Biden should be demanding a second or even a third debate. Trump probably won’t agree, but it’s better to look like someone who wants another shot than someone who is afraid of a repeat performance. Ratings for that debate would be through the roof. Biden would be better… and probably much better. Obama cleaned up his first debate disaster with two subsequent strong performances. Biden needs the same opportunity. It’s risky though. If he and his team do not think he can perform in another debate or a series of tough interviews and press conferences, those calling him to step aside are right.

Boy, that last one is a real gut check. I disagree that Trump will duck more debates. I think he’ll be thrilled to do them every week. Pfeiffer may be right that Biden will almost certainly do better but man is it a risk. He was that terrible.

I suspect it would be smart to get Harris out there a lot more. If he doesn’t make it through a second term, which I think is now on everyone’s mind, she’ll be the one we’re all voting for this November as much as Biden.

What Comes Next?

Published by digby on June 29, 2024

Is it Party ID uber alles? It’s the most important thing, that’s for sure. We are living in a tribal era and the two tribes really don’t like each other. So maybe it doesn’t really matter who is on the ticket. It certainly doesn’t matter to me, not at this point. I will vote for the Democrat against Trump, no matter who it is because Trump and his MAGA movement are fascist and they must be stopped.

As anyone who’s read me over the years knows, I don’t “love” politicians. I may like one or the other more or have a feeling about their symbolic value but as much as I might feel for them as human beings, as politicians I see them as instruments to achieve political goals. My number one goal right now is to beat Trump. And while I see Biden as having been a very good president, way beyond my expectations, I’m fine with him dropping out for someone else if that’s the best way to beat Trump. I’m also fine with keeping him on the ticket if the party ID factor remains the most important criteria because replacement carries its own risks. When you look at that chart above, if it’s true, it may not matter all that much who it is.

It’s very late in the cycle and it would be a cataclysmic upheaval which makes it unpredictable. One of the big risks is that the Democratic coalition will fracture under the pressure. It wouldn’t be the first time (see:1968.) Never assume that it won’t happen. Democrats love to fight each other much more than they like to fight the opposition. It’s just how they roll.

For reasons I have never understood there seems to be a real hostility toward Kamala Harris, almost at the level of Hillary Clinton loathing. She’s too ambitious, too arrogant, all the usual. That opinion seems to not just be rooted in the usual antipathy toward women in power but also her race which makes it even more fraught. But the fact is that factions in the Democratic base, particularly it’s most loyal constituency of Black women, will not take kindly to her being usurped.

And you can’t blame them. After all, she’s the current VP and had the ancient mariner shuffled off his mortal coil at any point in the last four years she would be the president today. We all knew that when we voted in 2020 and Biden’s age was a top concern then too. Any regrets now are probably too late. If Biden’s out I think Harris has to be in and that seems to bother the people who are calling for Biden to abdicate almost as much as Biden’s debate performance. None of them have anything close to a clear idea about who the alternative should be which just shows how risky this whole thing actually is.

The talk of a “brokered convention” with smoke filled rooms and floor fights is not only unrealistic it’s destructive. The main argument against MAGA is that they are chaos agents. So let’s stage a massive circus sideshow two months before the election proving that the Democrats are just as undisciplined. It would be a huge mistake.

I feel quite confident that If Biden drops out he will almost certainly endorse his VP and the rest of the establishment will go along. That’s fine with me. So if you want him gone you’d better make your peace with Harris or sign on for a new Trump term.

But I have no idea whether that’s going to happen. This is a very fluid situation. I just wish the pundits and operatives who are all wringing their hands in public would take a step back and let the dust settle a bit before having hysterical fits over this. It’s unnerving to watch and it’s making everything worse. If you want to know why a lot of people think Democrats are weak, acting like a bunch of panicked old ladies at the first sign of trouble is one of the reasons.

As for the NY Times editorial board calling for Biden to step down . Please. Last month Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies in Manhattan, their home town, and they didn’t call for him to step down. They need to shut their pie holes. They have no credibility at this point.

Like everyone else, I was shocked by Biden’s performance and am terrified that it will outweigh the fact that Trump is a psychopath. I’m just waiting to see how the public perceived it and whether or not it’s a deal breaker with those all important undecided voters in three swing states. The next week are two are going to be very rough.

Is it time to start drinking yet?

Giving America A Lobotomy

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 29, 2024

Project 2025 authoritarians think a dumber populace is easier to control

If you thought George W. Bush sending inexperienced, 20-something, quasi-libertarian loyalists to run the Iraq occupation worked out well, imagine what a second Trump administration would do to our own country.

The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent spoke with Dave Roberts, a.k.a. Dr. Volts, this week not about the environment but about fascist plans to burn the U.S. government to the ground. The occasion was the Twitter thread below that Roberts posted on Wednesday. Do yourselves a favor and spend 25 minutes with it.

That, of course, is the goal of the strongman: to destroy independent sources of information. It was the goal of Orwell’s Big Brother, to operate a totalitarian state with the power to define and redefine reality at will. There is no truth but what Dear Leader says it is. People who once decried the left as holding squishy morals will under Project 2025 swear themselves to whatever Dear Leader says is true today and to the opposite tomorrow if Dear Leader wills it.

I’m reminded of the choose-you-own-reality nature of the New Age Movement that I found so amusing and mostly harmless in the 1990s. Soundprint’s Larry Massett observed in “A Night on Mt. Shasta” (recorded during the1980s Harmonic Convergence), how many New Agers he met began sentences with “for me.” He began to think of it as a “universal prepositional solvent, making conflict impossible, dissolving external reality.” Project 2025 means to dissolve external reality for purposes of making opposition to the MAGA movement impossible. Under Trump, its authors will have all the powers of the executive branch behind them.

What we take for granted is the culture of public service behind the kind of government experts who predict our weather and collect our crop data and archive history and objective facts.

Michael Lewis in his book “The Fifth Risk” wrote that government manages a portfolio of risks that requires “mission-driven” careerists, experts with a dedication to the work, not to making big money from it. Donald Trump’s administration came to Washington to upend that system. Not to improve it, but to exploit it for profit. They abandoned data collection on anything Trumpers opposed, the New York Times review explained, “like climate change or food safety regulations, or that they didn’t care about, like poverty, or stuff that they assumed were government boondoggles, which was most everything not involving the Pentagon.”

Project 2025 means to destroy that public service culture to secure control. If information is power, authoritarians want it. All of it. This is more than the usual ref-gaming from the right, Sargent observes. They want the power to declare what reality is. Trump believes he can do that by repeating his falsehoods until they take on lives of their own. Others repeating his baseless lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him is a mark of loyalty and will be prerequisite for hiring. “The lie is the point.” Competence just gets in the way.

When conservatives are out of power, they express concern for fairness and complain that measuring their statements against objective reality is unfair, Roberts replies. “But the more power they get, the less thay have to put on that mask.”

The truth comes out. Fact-checking them “is in their minds, a power move. Everything, in their minds, is a power move.” Stephen Colbert once parodied the right as claiming that reality has a left-wing bias. But that’s what they believe.

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November Is A Bidenary Choice

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 29, 2024

Democrats want to govern. Republicans want to rule.

Photo by author.

Confidence, even false confidence, inspires. As Bill McKibben once wrote:

The power of the Christian right rests largely in the fact that they boldly claim religious authority, and by their boldness convince the rest of us that they must know what they’re talking about. They’re like the guy who gives you directions with such loud confidence that you drive on even though the road appears to be turning into a faint, rutted track.

Democrats’ loud, public second-guessing themselves about Joe Biden looks desperate. It’s a bad look.

So take a long, deep breath through your nose. Hold it a beat. Then exhale slowly through your mouth. Do it again. (Relax those shoulders.) If you lean Democrat, I know. It’s hard.

Joe Biden had a bad night on Thursday. “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” Barack Obama tweeted Friday afternoon.

The president responded to his bad debate an hour or so earlier on Friday with a forceful speech in Raleigh, N.C. I was there right up front. His performances were literally night and day. This was the guy we’d hoped would show up to face Donald Trump.

Biden wiped his left eye a couple of times as if it was watering while his wife Jill introduced him. So maybe the campaign explanation for Thursday that he’s working through a cold has merit.

But in Raleigh, Biden delivered a lot of lines he’d likely prepared but failed to deliver on Thursday. When Trump boasted about “acing” his cognitive test Thursday night, I thought, “Here we go,” and figured Biden would pounce. He didn’t. More’s the pity.

“Donald Trump isn’t just a convicted felon—Donald Trump is a one-man crime wave,” Biden insisted on Friday, just not to a worldwide audience. Too late, but on Friday Biden was on.

What Democrats must defeat before Donald Trump are their own insecurities. Trump is a Sam’s Club pallet of them. Don’t be like Donald. Except where it comes to projecting confidence.

MAGA Republicans stand unshakably behind a 34-time convicted criminal ruled liable for sexual assault, a man who (Republicans invented the catchphrase) “pals around with” dictators. Trump is emotionally stunted, mentally unstable, amoral, deeply insecure, needy, venal, vain and vengeful, a pathological liar and con man. He played a successful businessman on TV but in reality failed to run casinos profitably. His went bankrupt. Other Trump enterprises have been ruled frauds and dissolved. But an effective con man projects confidence to take in his marks. Trump does that well.

Trump has been banned from doing business in New York. Trump wants to sell out NATO and Ukraine to Russia. He racked up 30,000 false and misleading statements during his presidency and added to them with virtually every statement Thursday night.

Trump’s mishandling of the response to COVID-19 cost hundreds of thousands of Americans their lives. Oh, and he’s delusional.

Teed up for a second Trump term, Project 2025 wants to lobotomize the federal government and dissolve external reality to ensconce an American dictator. MAGA Republicans’ candidate wants the world’s dictators to welcome him into their autocrats club.

After (allegedly) provoking an insurrectionist mob to storm and sack the U.S. Capitol, and after (allegedly) storing national security documents in a golf resort bathroom, and after (allegedly) plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Donald Trump is asking Americans for just one more chance. Many will give it to him if we don’t stop him.

“This may seem like an inopportune moment to ask, Dean Wormer, but do you think you could see your way clear to giving us just one more chance?”

President Joe Biden, meanwhile, looked old (and old-school) and gave a poor performance Thursday night. He got whupped. That makes him the underdog less-political Americans love to root for to beat the assholish bully. Work with that. Trump wants power for himself. Biden wants to stomp him and for America to live up to its potential as a multicultural democracy.

So chill out before panicking and calling for an open Democratic convention that’s not going to happen. Republicans wouldn’t.

President Bill Clinton understood the risks of Democrats’ second-guessing themselves over 20 years ago: ”When people are feeling insecure, they’d rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right.” That’s the risk here. Further weakening Biden with talk of replacing him exposes Democrats’ soft underbellies and empowers Trump.

A pundit on MSNBC’s “The Beat” Friday night referenced a “The Simpsons'” episode contrasting Republicans and Democrats. As Chai Komanduri remembered it, the GOP platform was “We Hate Democrats.” The Democrats’ platform was “We Hate Ourselves.” See actual images below.

November is a Bidenary choice: Democracy or dictatorship? Freedom or serfdom?

Unless Biden steps aside, there will not be an alternate Democratic candidate. This is a “run what you brung” presidential race. Democrats brought Biden. Republicans brought Trump. As WisDems chair Ben Wikler tweeted, recommit. Americans pull for an underdog with heart. Biden clearly has one.

Former Republican Rick Wilson gave Democrats sound advice just weeks ago:

“You better start thinking of Joe Biden as 12 ft. tall, covered in steel, brilliant, with a 12-inch dick. Stop acting like he’s a feeble old man,” Wilson shouts at Democrats. “Toughen the fuck up!”

Or else Trump won’t beat Joe Biden. His own party will.

Update: From Jasmine Crockett

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The Reset

Published by digby on June 28, 2024

Let’s take a look at the two candidates on the day after the debate:

Blah,blah, blah. He’s just as offensive and nuts as ever.

And this says it all:

Meanwhile, here’s Biden. (I posted this earlier but it needs to go viral so here it is again.)

Then he went to NY to dedicate the new Stonewall LGBTQ Monument visitor’s center. If you start this speech at about 10 minutes in you’ll hear him tell a story I’ve never heard before about how he first saw two men kissing when he was 16 years old and he turned to his dad for an explanation and he told him, “they just love each other.” I’ll admit it brought a tear to my eye. Nobody does that better than him.

I know we’re all traumatized by what we saw last night. Despite the hand wringing by the pundits and anonymous Democrats, today is a reset. And today Biden is better than Trump.

By the way, the Biden campaign raised 14 million yesterday. Trump raised 8. Just saying.

Who’s This Guy?

Published by digby on June 28, 2024

That was Biden at a rally in North Carolina today. He was the guy we usually see. I don’t know who that guy last night was.

CNN has a snap poll about the debate. Make of it what you will:

Registered voters who watched CNN’s presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump largely think Trump outperformed Biden, according to a CNN poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS, with most saying they have no real confidence in Biden’s ability to lead the country.

At the same time, a majority who tuned in say it had little or no effect on their choice for president.

okay…

Debate watchers say, 67% to 33%, that Trump turned in a better performance Thursday. Prior to the debate, the same voters said, 55% to 45%, that they expected Trump to turn in a better performance than Biden. And in 2020, Biden was seen by debate watchers as outperforming Trump in both of their presidential debates.

Republicans who watched the first 2024 debate expressed broad confidence in Trump’s performance, the poll finds, with Democrats less sanguine about their party’s presumptive nominee. A near-universal 96% of GOP debate watchers say Trump did the better job in the debate, while a more modest 69% of Democratic debate watchers view Biden as the night’s winner.

[…]

An 81% majority of registered voters who watched the debate say it had no effect on their choice for president, with another 14% saying that it made them reconsider but didn’t change their mind. Just 5% say it changed their minds about whom to vote for.

Roughly equal shares of Biden and Trump supporters – about 3% of each – say the debate had changed their mind. Larger shares of those supporting other candidates say that the debate had changed their minds. Among debate watchers who said pre-debate that they hadn’t chosen a candidate or were open to changing their minds, 9% said that the debate had changed their minds, and 25% were reconsidering.

Just 3% of debate watchers who said in the pre-debate survey that they supported Trump currently say they’d consider voting for Biden, while 5% of Biden supporters currently say they’d consider a vote for Trump.

Among debate watchers overall, 48% say they’d only consider voting for Trump, 40% that they’d only consider voting for Biden, 2% that they’re considering both candidates, and 11% that they aren’t considering voting for either.

The question of whether or not they have any confidence in either candidate to lead the country, the numbers were unchanged by the debate. (More have confidence in Trump than Biden.) None of this is good, that’s for sure. In a close election even a small share of people deciding to go for Trump will make the difference, as we saw in 2016. But it may not be the knock out punch many seem to think it is.

Also keep this in mind:

The poll’s results reflect opinions of the debate only among those voters who tuned in and aren’t representative of the views of the full voting public – in their demographics, their political preferences or the level of attention they pay to politics. Debate watchers in the poll were 5 points likelier to be Republican-aligned than Democratic-aligned, making for an audience that was slightly more GOP-leaning than all registered voters nationally.

The missed opportunity for Biden to really stick it to Trump can’t be overstated. It’s a huge miss. And Biden will be dogged by this forever. People haven’t fully absorbed the hysterical garment rending of the Democratic establishment yet so in a few days they may come to believe that this was an unrecoverable error after all. But so much of this race is baked in that even a devastating performance by either candidate may not move the dial all that much, at least not yet. Stay tuned.

Update: This just dropped too

A Word To The Wise From An Unexpected Source

Published by digby on June 28, 2024

Not Kamala, David Frum:

A word to everybody writing, “The Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves” takes … 

The fundamental reason we’re in this crisis this morning is that the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan is about to nominate for president a dictator-loving criminal against the Constitution. That disgrace and shame is theirs. 

If President Biden had posted an equally poor performance against presumptive GOP nominee Nikki Haley, then in that case yes, the Democrats would have nobody to blame but themselves – too bad for them, but the Constitution would not be in danger. 

The Republicans could have nominated somebody else. They chose Trump over many alternatives. They did it because their core voters like and enjoy Trump. Tell me again, who has nobody to blame but themselves? 

Last night, operating in the truest spirit of “good people on both sides,” a CNN moderator asked President Biden whether he thought that Trump’s voters were voting against democracy. Biden evaded the question, as any vote-seeking candidate would and should and must. 

But the terrible true answer to the moderator’s question is: “Yes.” Trump’s voters are voting to return to power a president who attempted a coup. Whatever their justifications or rationalizations, that’s what they are doing. 

Blame Biden’s vanity and stubbornness all you like. Tut-tut over the Democratic party’s collective action problems if you wish. But the reason we are here is because of Trump and those who vote for him – and those who failed to defend democracy in two impeachment trials. 

As we saw last night, the conventions and habits of mass-market media coverage are inadequate to the crisis at hand. A coup against the constitution – first mentioned at minute 41 of the debate – dwindles to one issue among many, alongside food prices and climate change. 

Biden failed to do his job properly last night. Democrats failed to head off that failure. But the reason the failure matters so much – as it wouldn’t in a Biden-Haley race – is that one of the two great parties is ratifying an attempted coup d’etat. END. 

Yup. And when the dust settles I think people will remember that regardless of whether it’s Biden or Harris or someone else against Trump in November. Democrats aren’t going to give up and walk away. Take a breath. Take the weekend off. Let’s see where we are next week.

This Shitty Day Just Got Shittier

Published by digby on June 28, 2024

The high court overruled the Chevron precedent. It’s not entirely unexpected but like Dobbs it’s going to have huge ramifications. Kate Riga at TPM:

The Supreme Court overruled a key pillar of federal agency authority Friday, appropriating a massive amount of executive branch power to itself. In overruling Chevron, the Court decided that federal agencies no longer get to fill in the gaps of Congress’ laws with their experts’ own reasonable interpretation of how to carry them out; that authority now resides in the judiciary. It’s a power grab that the right-wing legal world has been marching towards for years — and they finally got a Court activist enough to do it.

Chief Justice John Roberts, often the tip of the spear for this movement, wrote the majority. Justice Elena Kagan, probably the Court’s best pro-agency voice, wrote the dissent, joined by her two liberal colleagues. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas wrote solo concurrences.

Roberts completed the takeover with very little humility. The thinking underlying Chevron deference is that agencies are staffed by experts who understand the technicalities of their subject matter, and are best equipped to mold often broad statutes into day-to-day regulations. Judges, on the other hand, have no special insight into, say, the Environmental Protection Agency’s calculations to find permissible amounts of air pollution from a factory, or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s experience with how factories should be laid out.

“Delegating ultimate interpretive authority to agencies is simply not necessary to ensure that the resolution of statutory ambiguities is well informed by subject matter expertise,” Roberts hand-waved.

In fulfilling his right-wing mission, Roberts also pretends that letting judges, rather than agencies, fill in statutory specifics won’t result in a whipsawing based on the judges’ partisan leanings — since, per Robrters, judges  don’t act on them. That’ll come as a surprise to the Biden administration, which has seen everything from power plant regulations to student debt relief summarily shot down by the conservative supermajority.  “Courts interpret statutes, no matter the context, based on the traditional tools of statutory construction, not individual policy preferences,” he intoned.

Roberts tried to downplay the ramifications of the ruling by asserting that old agency cases decided by Chevron deference are still good law and beholden to the precedent the Court so blithely tossed away on Friday. 

Kagan made plain the extent of the majority’s grasp for power in her dissent.“In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue — no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden — involving the meaning of regulatory law,” she wrote. “As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar.” 

That’s very bad. Every regulation will now be subject to some district court judge’s interpretation of some statue they have absolutely no experience or expertise to interpret. It will take years for any regulation to wend its way through the courts. Get ready for even more rapid climate change.

They also made homelessness a crime by saying that sleeping in public that can be prosecuted even if someone is sleeping in their own car. And they made it possible to overturn some of the January 6th cases saying the application of statute against obstruction of a proceeding was an overreach (at least in some cases.) We’ll have to see how that shakes out but it could affect Trump’s January 6th case as well.

Roberts announced that the last cases will be handed down on Monday and that means we have to wait all weekend for the big immunity case. I’m fairly sure they’re going to find a reason to send it back down, further delaying it until 2025. If Trump wins, the charges will be thrown out and if he loses they’ll probably make sure that there’s enough to protect Trump.

I think we should all consider starting cocktail hour early today…