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Month: July 2024

The Democrats Are Healthy, The Republicans Are Sick

Published by digby on July 22, 2024

JV Last at the Bulwark has some interesting thoughts on the events of the last day:

On the night of June 27, the various power centers within the Democratic party began a difficult conversation: Was Joe Biden still capable of running a vigorous campaign?

Over three weeks the party reached a diffuse—if not unanimous—consensus: He was not. This consensus was the product of all levels of the party: Elder statesmen such as Nancy Pelosi, elected Democrats analyzing their own future prospects, donors making decisions about spending, and the main body of public opinion among Democratic voters.

Once this consensus was reached, the various power centers began a dialogue with the party’s leader, President Biden. The party expressed its choice. Biden pushed back. The party took up the question again and, after due consideration, held firm.

Joe Biden then stepped aside for the good of the nation.

This is how healthy institutions are supposed to work.

[…]

He notes that the party vetted Harris over the three weeks of fretting, with voters, donors and elected Dems getting comfortable with the idea and when no anti-Harris movement surfaced they realized that she was the best candidate. In fact, the party is more unified than was before.

He makes the point that Harris has all the benefits of incumbency but can run as a change agent. That’s unusual and I think it’s a true advantage. Also, Trump now “holds the age bomb.” No one deserves it more.

Every split screen now makes Trump look old and decrepit by comparison.

He notes that since the announcement, Harris has raised over r $100 million from small-dollar donors And there’s news today that one of the big super pacs has also raised over $150 million, which means that the campaign has raised at least a quarter of a billion dollars in 24 hours. That suggests some very serious enthusiasm.

The Republicans are losing it, screeching about filing lawsuits to force Biden on to the ticket and other ridiculous tantrums.

Why? Last says this:

The Republican party is a failed state.

At the debate, Donald Trump also demonstrated (again) that he is unfit for office. He rambled and lied incoherently. He is a convicted felon. A jury found him guilty of sexual assault. He has said he wants to be a “dictator” and that he wants to “terminate” parts of the Constitution. He selected as his running mate a man who advised disobeying orders from the Supreme Court and forcing a constitutional crisis.

Until last week there was nothing stopping the Republican party from forcing Trump off the ticket. The party elders and elected officials could have demanded that Trump step aside. Republican voters could have said that they had no confidence in his ability to govern. Donors could have closed their wallets.

But the plain fact is that not one single Republican called on Trump to step aside.

Not one.

Why? Because the various precincts of the Republican party understand that they hold no power—at all—over Trump. They could not ask him to withdraw from the race. Even broaching the subject would be grounds for excommunication from the party.

The Democratic party is a functioning institution, with checks and balances; constituencies and power structures. Like any institution, it is amorphous and its decision making is mostly organic.

The Republican party is an autocracy where the only thing that matters is the will of the leader. All power flows through him. All decisions are made by him. There are no competing power centers—only vassal states overseen by his noblemen.

That’s right. And it’s one of those decrepit institutions that’s imploding from within. If we can keep them from power — again — it’s possible that it might just finally collapse and make way for something more normal. (Or not.)

He Has Been A Good President

Published by digby on July 22, 2024

Sen. Chris Murphy:

On this historic day, I want to tell you a story about Joe Biden, and what he did behind the scenes to make the historic 2022 gun bill – the first major gun safety legislation in 30 years – a reality.

1/ It starts with a phone call he made to me days after the Uvalde shooting. 

2/ After the tragic Uvalde and Buffalo shootings, Biden wanted to give a prime time address to push the Congress to act.

But several of his advisors told him not to waste one of his few prime time speeches on guns. Congress will never pass a gun bill, they told him. 

3/ He called me to ask my opinion. In 2013, he and I had sat for hours with the Sandy Hook parents, and parents of kids killed in Hartford and Bridgeport. I knew how personal those families’ pain was to him.

“I want to give this speech, even if a bill is a long shot,” he said. 

4/ Days later, he called back and told me he had made up his mind to give the speech – bc he worried if he didn’t, the urgency would dissipate (Congress was on recess that week) and our chance to do something would be lost.

Now, he wanted to go over the details of the address. 

5/ He went through the speech with me, line by line, asking what words would spur on or hurt the bipartisan negotiations that had just begun.

Most presidents would send a staffer on this mission. But he was personally invested in getting every line right. 

6/ His speech was perfect and deeply impactful. During a week when we could have lost all momentum, Biden’s prime time address helped keep the attention on the issue and pressure on the negotiations.

I’m not sure the historic 2022 gun bill would have passed without that speech. 

Franklin Foer wrote a book about Biden recently and spent a lot of time with him. In this piece in the Atlantic he says that Biden’s self-confidence, skill and wisdom led him to have a unexpectedly successful term. (Foer wrote this before those same skills led Biden to make the decision to withdraw, saying they were leading him astray. They didn’t…)

Anyway, this is an excellent short rundown of what will make his legacy historic:

When Biden came to office, pundits liked to cast him as a placeholder—a well-meaning grandpa who would help restore the country’s equilibrium in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s madness. In Biden’s mind, that was just the members of the elite dismissing him, as they always did. Their underestimation stoked his determination to prove himself as one of history’s great men. He privately boasted that his performance would make him worthy of the presidential pantheon that included Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson.

With a one-vote majority in the Senate, he audaciously set out to test the limits of what he could accomplish. The American Rescue Plan, passed in the first months of his presidency, pushed social policy in novel directions. It transferred money directly into bank accounts through the child tax credit, the closest the federal government has come to experimenting with universal basic income. For a brief, glorious moment, the legislation helped cut childhood poverty in half.

But the American Rescue Plan was just the early harvest of an exceptionally verdant legislative season. At a moment when Democrats described moderate Republicans as useless toadies, Biden wooed them—and cobbled together bipartisan majorities to pass an infrastructure bill and the CHIPS Act. Like Biden, these bills were dismissed as unexciting. But Biden was trying to restore the American state to its postwar glories. Harkening back to Cold War investments in science, the CHIPS bill spends significant cash on research and development, and the infrastructure bill renovates the transit systems, byways of economic competitiveness.

His signature accomplishment was the Inflation Reduction Act, a dreadfully unexciting name for a hugely significant bill. With its subsidies for clean energy, it will be remembered as the first massive American effort to contain climate change. And perhaps just as significantly, it will be remembered as the moment when the nation reembraced industrial policy. That is, the state began using its resources to guarantee the international dominance of American firms in electric vehicles and alternative energies, the industries of the future.

That’s the most surprising part of the Biden presidency. He broke with the economic paradigm that dominated policy in the Clinton and Obama administrations. Whereas those presidents choked when delivering the praise for unions that party politics demanded, Biden walked the picket line and lent presidential prestige to the movement. He reversed several generations of indifference to the problem of monopoly and installed regulators who went after Big Tech ferociously.

His supreme self-confidence allowed him to buck the conventional wisdom of foreign-policy mandarins. Both Barack Obama and Trump wanted to end the war in Afghanistan, but only Biden had the courage to actually follow through on that decision—although his chaotic execution of a move that voters overwhelmingly supported eroded confidence in his presidency. A devoted believer in old-fashioned transatlanticism, he plowed money and arms into the defense of Ukraine, as if the future of Europe depended on it. These were bold decisions that a president with lesser experience—and a lesser sense of his own acumen—wouldn’t have had the gumption to make.

Biden hates abstraction and pretension. But in his best moments, he could think like a grand strategist. I once heard him extemporaneously describe everything he had done to counter China, and it was impressive to behold. He deepened America’s entanglement with Australia. He helped mend the long rift between Japan and South Korea, so that they could focus on the shared threat they now faced. He successfully schmoozed Narendra Modi, so that India shifted toward the American sphere of influence. Without receiving much credit, he actually managed the pivot to Asia that Obama first promised.

Over the course of Biden’s term, when the press dismissed him as a failure, he kept pushing forward. He never shifted blame onto his aides—and never fired them to cover his own mistakes. He pushed ambitiously, even though he often did so at the risk of his own humiliation.

Before his age became the source of his political demise, it supplied him with wisdom. Before his stubbornness inured him to the inevitable, it carried him to unlikely triumphs. His response to criticism was to always double down on himself.

And in the end those characteristics led him to the right decision.

The Kamala Attack Book

Published by digby on July 22, 2024

Then there’s this, which I saw all over twitter yesterday:

And this disgusting piece of misogyny:

That’s an illustration of this from the Dear Leader.

This is what we can expect from that pig and his henchmen. Just thought you should know.

And by the way, I truly doubt the suburban moms Trump needs to win in those big midwest states are on board with this crap.

The Un-Vance

Published by digby on July 22, 2024

I know Tom is for N. Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper for Veep and he makes good points. If he put the state in play he’s obviously the front runner. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is also mentioned frequently and he’s very good. He’s also from a state that knows from Appalachia and can counter JD Vance’s gross propaganda which I think is useful.

I have no dog in this fight. There are a number of excellent choices. I just thought I’d feature this one since he’s on the short list.

They Thought They Had It In The Bag

Published by digby on July 22, 2024

Sunday July 21st was one of those “where were you when you heard” days that you’ll remember for a long time to come. I was online and I saw the news that President Joe Biden was withdrawing from the presidential race come across my social media feed in real time. A friend texted me “You were right, it wasn’t going to happen until the moment it happened.” That’s what I’d been saying for the past couple of weeks when people would get anxious whenever Biden would say that he was absolutely not dropping out. No candidate would ever say “well, I’m thinking of giving up.” They’re all in until they’re not.

Since the night of the debate I was fairly convinced that the Biden candidacy was over. I kept an open mind, thinking maybe he really was just under the weather that night but it had opened the floodgates of concerns that had been out there for a while. The presidency ages everyone who is in it, even the younger ones, and it has clearly taken a toll on the president. I figured the polls would take a while to show a drop and it was obvious that the media’s 24/7 crisis mode was almost certainly going to have an effect. Reports from behind the scenes this weekend say that Biden was shown polling that said he had no chance to win and that’s when he finally pulled the plug.

Everyone I know reported feeling sad when they heard. He’s been an excellent president, far exceeding the expectations of many of us. If time had not caught up with him, as it does with all of us, most Democrats would have been happy to see him continue. But Biden is a tough old bird and he’s a canny political veteran who understood that if he lost the race his legacy would be utterly destroyed. More importantly, he understands the stakes and knows that the country may not survive another Trump term. As much as I’m sure he loathed having to withdraw, in a long life filled with searing personal tragedies, having to drop out of the race for a second term as president doesn’t rank among his worst days.

Wisely, he immediately endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris, as I predicted he would some time ago. Setting aside various logistical complications, Biden needed to take the lead in settling down the chaos and reassure his own loyal voters about the campaign carrying on with his imprimatur. I wasn’t sure if the rest of the Party was going to get with the program but a long string of Harris endorsements from elected officials, state party chairs and delegates throughout the day indicate that there is no appetite for the kind of open primary free-for-all contemplated by some pundits and strategists. (The unspeakably daft proposal for a “blitz-primary” with events featuring Oprah, Taylor Swift, Pastor Rick Warren and Tim McGraw among dozens of others seems very unlikely now, thank goodness.)

There is some talk of W. Va. Sen. Joe Manchin, the diva who ostentatiously left the Democratic Party just a few months ago, throwing his hat into the ring, backed by some disgruntled conservative donors. And perhaps someone else will decide that this is his moment to shine as well. But for now the Democrats appear to be forming a consensus that Harris is their best bet under the circumstances. In fact, judging from the monster fundraising through the Act Blue platform for small donors yesterday, enthusiasm is off the charts.

So what do the Republicans think about all this? Surprisingly, they didn’t seem to see this coming, which is astonishing. The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta who published a long disturbing piece a couple of weeks ago called “Trump is planning for a landslide win” noted in an update on Sunday that they had convinced themselves the window for Biden to drop out had closed and that the election was in the bag. He wrote:

Republicans I spoke with today, some of them still hungover from celebrating what felt to many like a victory-night celebration in Milwaukee, registered shock at the news of Biden’s departure. Party officials had left town believing the race was all but over. Now they were confronting the reality of reimagining a campaign—one that had been optimized, in every way, to defeat Biden—against a new and unknown challenger. “So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race,” a clearly peeved Trump wrote Sunday on Truth Social. “Now we have to start all over again.”

They seem to have been caught completely flat-footed. Trump was all over his social media platform whining that Republicans should be reimbursed for spending money to run against Biden and running away from debating in September unless the debate will be held on Fox News. The best Sean Hannity could come up with was that Harris wants to take away their plastic straws and is “detested” for laughing:

And Trump’s close adviser Stephen Miller pretty much had a shrieking tantrum on Laura Ingraham’s show about the Democrats allegedly overturning an election. (Yes, his chutzpah knows no bounds.)

It seems that they may not have anticipated that Joe Biden gracefully withdrawing from the race might be seen as an act of selfless patriotism in contrast to their leader Donald Trump, the grasping egomaniac who incited a riot rather than admit that he lost. The contrast couldn’t be more vivid. And while the country has spent the last few weeks contemplating the toll the pressures of the presidency took on Joe Biden as he entered his 8th decade, starting today similar thoughts about Donald Trump are inevitable.

As Rachel Maddow said on MSNBC:

Trump’s remarkable recent run of political good luck came to an end with a crash. The old man in the race now is Donald Trump, 78 years old and only occasionally coherent, with a record as president that is viewed by historians as the worst in history.

The following ad is from 2019 but it is even more potent today. It’s a new race and Trump is now the former president who tried to stage a coup, perpetuated the Big Lie and is a 78 year old convicted felon.

Does Trump have the strength and the stamina to meet the challenge? I wouldn’t bet money on it.

Stephen Miller Loses His Sh#t

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 22, 2024

Not that he had it to lose

Trump Plaza demolition.

President Biden upset someone’s evil plans by handing off his party’s (presumptive) presidential nomination to VP Kamala Harris.

“Discount Goebbels” has a sad. Trump adviser Stephen Miller is freaking out. This is absolutely delicious. I could have stripped naked and danced in the street. Christmas came early.

Miller is as vile as Trump, but far more strategic. He relished the idea of running Trump against Biden almost as much as sending troops to round up immigrants in detention camps and deporting them by the millions.

The prospect of Biden resigning and handing Harris the presidency meant she, not Trump, would be president No. 47. All that Trump 47 merch would be instantly obsolete. But with Biden’s withdrawal, a whole lot more MAGA gear is obsolete as well as demolishing Miller’s and Trump’s campaign plans.

Miller and Trump are furious. They now have to heavily retool their campaign with only months to go.

Trump hates losing money almost as much as he hates America. (He could declare bankruptcy on the Taj Mahal, and did, one of several Trump bankruptcies.)

But never fear. They’ve already moved on to deploying misogynism and racist stereotypes against Harris.

Will Trump dare debate Harris, former prosecutor os sex offenders, or be branded a coward? Stay tuned.

The worst, ugliest impulses of Trump and his MAGA base will be on display for independent voters to see.

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Roy Cooper for VP?

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 22, 2024

North Carolina is in play

N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper (D)

“Sunday was the single biggest day for online Democratic donations in years, reads the subhead at The New York Times this morning. With President Biden’s withdrawal Sunday, with his endorsement of his vice president as his replacement, and with Kamala Harris the clear pick of multiple state Democratic delegations, now comes the veepstakes.

An avalanche of cash for the Harris coffers followed the announcement — more than $50 million. Endorsements flooded in as well, including 50 state Democratic chairs, members of Congress and governors. A palpable sense of relief flowed through the Democratic Party.

The next big question, and Harris’s first big decision, will be her vice presidential pick.

Swing state governors are clear favorites. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (46), Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (51), and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (52) are in Slate’s Tier 1. But Whitmer has said she doesn’t want it. When did Kentucky become a swing state? Donald Trump won it with over 62 percent in both 2016 and 2020. Shapiro is a possible. He could bring with him 19 electoral votes. Others mentioned in the press are more fantasy football. California Gov. Gavin Newsome brings no new electoral votes into the Democrats’ column, and he’s got a 12th Amendment problem. Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker has been named, but he brings no additional electoral votes for Democrats either. Quick-witted Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, would be an excellent foil for Trump’s VP pick, Sen. J.D. Vance.

Slate names some replaceable senators as possible VPs: Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet (59), Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly (60), and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy (50).

I’m going to make a pitch for North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (67). “I’ve literally never heard of Roy Cooper,” a Left Coast friend said over the weekend. Let my friends at Carolina Forward introduce you.

North Carolina (16 electoral votes) has not gone blue since 2008, but it has been narrowly contested. Trump won it in 2016 by under 4 points, and in 2020 against Biden by under 2. Cooper won the governorship in this purplish state in both those elections. He knows Harris going back to their days as attorneys general. He is past president of the National Association of Attorneys General and past chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

The Biden-Harris campaign sees North Carolina as in play and has been pouring more field organizers into the state (and farther out into the red counties than I’ve ever seen). Biden appeared in Raleigh the day after his debate. Harris popped into the state days ago for a rally in Fayetteville that received national press. She has appeared in the state a half-dozen times so far this year. Democrats’ Gen Z state chair Anderson Clayton cut her teeth as an Iowa field organizer for Harris in 2020, so as with Cooper they have a personal connection.

Harris has spoken at length with both Beshear and Cooper. Cooper is also term limited. His dance card is wide open.

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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.

He’s Not Joking (unfortunately)

Published by digby on July 21, 2024

I thought this was satire at first. It’s not:

The problem in the real world is that there isn’t a Democrat who is polling significantly better than Mr. Biden. And quitting, as heroic as it may be in this case, doesn’t really put a lump in our throats.

But there’s something the Democrats can do that would not just put a lump in people’s throats with its appeal to stop-Donald-Trump-at-all-costs unity, but with its originality and sense of sacrifice. So here’s my pitch to the writers’ room: The Democratic Party should pick a Republican.

At their convention next month, the Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney.

You read that right.

I guess Sorkin as lost his touch because that wouldn’t be a lump in the throat it would be a primal scream. Besides, Mitt Romney is 77 years old. Come on.

He’s not the only one. Get a load of the “plan” that’s being circulated for the “mini-primary.”

Uhm. No. We’re not doing this. Biden has endorsed Harris and I believe the party will coalesce around her as well. This fantasy football stuff is nonsense.


About That Speech

Published by digby on July 21, 2024

James Fallows is a great writer and a professional speechwriter. His examination of Trump’s dumpster fire of a speech and the media’s reaction to it is well worth your while. Every journalist and opinion writer needs to read it .

The piece begins like this:

This post has one central point. It is that the press should give “fair and balanced” attention to what each of the major candidates is revealing about temperament, competence, and cognition, especially in their public performances.

Right now we have these opposing, imbalanced narrative cycles:

—For Joe Biden, every flub, freeze, slurred word, or physical-or-verbal misstep adds to the case against him. There’s an ever-mounting dossier, which can only grow in cumulative importance. “In another difficult moment for the President….” “Coming after his disastrous debate appearance…”

—For Donald Trump, every flub, fantasy, non-sequitur, “Sir” story, or revelation of profound ignorance dulls and blunts the case against him. “That’s just Trump.” “Are you new here? Never heard a MAGA rally speech before?” “It’s what the crowd is waiting for.” “Oh, here comes the ‘shark’ again!” There’s an ever-thickening layer of habituation, normalization, jadedness, just plain tedium. The first five times Trump tells the Hannibal Lecter story, reporters notice and write about it. The next hundred times, they’re checking their phones.

Last night a member of the Washington Post editorial board actually put it just this bluntly. Mehdi Hasan, formerly of MSNBC and now of Zeteo, asked Shadi Hamid, of the Post, about the many ludicrous and damaging claims in Trump’s convention speech, which Hamid had waved off as “just normal Trump.” Hamid chuckled and answered, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that Trump is Trump, and it’s a low bar, and that’s what we’ve got to work with.” To which Hasan replied, “Some of us are trying to raise the bar.” You can see it here.

I’m sure that on reflection Shadi Hamid would have made the point more carefully. But his instant reaction distilled the “it’s just Trump!” framing that has prevailed through the 2024 campaign.

The obvious and unequal result: The public registers more and more about Biden’s “fitness” based on his appearances, less and less about Trump’s.

Then he goes into the speech and it’s devastating. A short excerpt:

First, it was not a ‘speech.’

Eight years ago, I stood near the front of the crowd at the Republican Convention in Cleveland, listening to Donald Trump give his first acceptance speech. I thought it was dark, dystopian, and narcissistic. But it was a speech. It had a beginning, a middle section, and a conclusion. It had a theme. (That theme, unfortunately, was “everything is broken, and I alone can fix it.”) It appeared to have been “written,” and Trump appeared mainly to be saying what was set out in the text. The crowd roared when Trump gave the big, planned applause lines.

Thursday night’s speech started out that way. It had some “writerly” early segments—which you can always identify in Trump’s speeches by the way his voice and rhythm change. When he’s sounding out words from “planned” text on a teleprompter, the energy goes out of his voice, and his tone is that of a schoolboy struggling through an unfamiliar primer. Sometimes he gives a little aside of meta-commentary appreciation for a nice line he’s just read: “You know, that’s so true.”

The written part of this speech contained a “bring us together” line that died on Trump’s lips even as he said it: “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.” And his opening description of the shooting had an unmistakable “he is risen!” framing. For example, with emphasis added:

Many people say it was a providential moment. Probably was. When I rose [!], surrounded by Secret Service, the crowd was confused because they thought I was dead. And there was great, great sorrow. I could see that on their faces as I looked out.

They didn’t know I was looking out; they thought it was over.

But I could see it and I wanted to do something to let them know I was OK. I raised my right arm, looked at the thousands and thousands of people that were breathlessly waiting and started shouting, “Fight, fight, fight.”

You don’t have be a Christian to recognize the Easter-weekend iconography.

Ugh. And then he kissed a helmet.

Fallows says that if he had gone on in this vein it would have marked a new direction for Trump. But it did not. After the first 30 minutes of his “prepared speech” he went into his usual litany of grievances, hate and gibberish.

To return to the theme of age and its toll on candidates: this was different from 2016. Then, Trump held the crowd throughout. Now, he came across as the guy in a bar you couldn’t get away from. Has age affected Joe Biden? Yes. And Donald Trump too.

Read the whole thing. He makes many very cogent points that should have been taken by the media on the day after and certainly by now. Unfortunately, they have learned nothing from previous mistakes in coverage. So, we have Biden the ancient loser and Trump the “changed man.”