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Month: July 2024

Whither The Money?

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 11, 2024

And when?

https://x.com/mluckovichajc/status/1811125592294838464

Several stories appeared yesterday about where and when Joe Biden’s war chest would go should he drop out of the presidential race as the slavering press hopes.

Days ago, The Wall Street Journal alleged that Biden could not transfer the entirety of the nearly $100 million to Kamala Harris until after he is his party’s official nominee. The DNC still plans to hold a virtual roll call vote for that purpose sometime between July 21 and August 7. The move was originally planned to work around a rule in Ohio (since rescinded) that required a party’s candidate there to be formalized before August 7.

The New York Times seems to confirm the WSJ report that were Biden “to be officially nominated” Harris might receive the funds seamlessly since her name is already on the ticket. The Times and Forbes also run down options for where else the money might go.

But there is a lot of gray area, reports USA Today.

“It’s not crystal clear because I’m not sure if the people who drafted the Federal Election Campaign Act anticipated this situation,” said Dan Weiner, the director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Elections & Government Program.

A matter of timing

Should Biden exit, the most logical alternate candidate is Harris. But the timing problem means opposing voices both in the press and in his own party would have at a minimum another 10 days to beat the war drums calling for his exit and leaving his party weakened for any replacement. Not to mention that pundits and the “Biden must go” faction will keep hammering the party for sitting on its hands doing nothing when doing something before making Biden the official candidate would imperil funds meant for the replacement candidate they keep demanding.

Meantime, Newsweek reports:

Congressional Democratic and party donors may be pushing for President Joe Biden to leave the 2024 race, but polls and reports from battleground states suggest that American voters aren’t abandoning him amid his post-debate crisis.

[…]

A USA Today/Suffolk University survey released Monday found that 85 percent of Democrats would vote for Biden in the 2024 election were held today, a four-point increase from the 81 percent who said the same in March.

The president did see a slight drop in support from voters who backed him in the last election. Of those, 78 percent said they would vote for him in the July poll. In March, Biden saw 79 percent support among his 2020 voters.

On the GOP side, Tim Alberta writes at The Atlantic, Trump campaign spokesman Chris LaCivita is trash-talking Biden. He’s just the guy they want to run against:

One of the two principals tasked with returning Trump to the White House, LaCivita had long conceived of the 2024 race as a contest that would be “extraordinarily visual”—namely, a contrast of strength versus weakness. Trump, whatever his countless liabilities as a candidate, would be cast as the dauntless and forceful alpha, while Biden would be painted as the pitiable old heel, less a bad guy than the butt of a very bad joke, America’s lovable but lethargic uncle who needed, at long last, to be put to bed.

As the likelihood of a Trump-versus-Biden rematch set in, the public responded to the two candidates precisely as LaCivita and his campaign co-manager, Susie Wiles, had hoped. The percentage of voters who felt that Biden, at 81, was too old for another term rose throughout 2023, even as the electorate’s concerns about Trump’s age, 78, remained relatively static. By the end of the primaries, the public’s attitude toward the two nominees had begun to harden: One was a liar, a scoundrel, and a crook—but the other one, the old one, was unfit to be president.

Yikes is right.

Once again:

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.

Democrats use their heads. Republicans know in their guts. In Colbert Report fashion, they plan to feel the election at you. What scares me is how many Americans will keep buying what they’re selling.

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Thank Goodness We Have One Very Stable Genius On The Ballot

Published by digby on July 10, 2024

It’s astonishing to me that anyone could think this is preferable to even the decaying corpse of Joe Biden being propped up behind the resolute desk. But apparently, at least half the country will vote for him some of whom are saying they will do so because they think Biden is too old to do the job. But this guy is a batshit crazy, criminal, imbecile who is surrounded by fascist freaks. I’ll pick halting old guy with normal professional staff over that any day if that’s what’s on the menu.

The World According To MAGA

Published by digby on July 10, 2024
creative commons 4.0

We haven’t seen much of Donald Trump lately but he did poke his head up yesterday to speak at a little rally he held at his Doral golf resort, almost certainly paid for by his campaign and put directly into his pocket. (Too bad he’s stiffed so many of the other venues that have hosted him but that’s just his way.) It wasn’t anything special. He sounded as unhinged as usual, delivering his greatest hits to a hot and wilted but adoring Florida crowd.

He did admit that when he became president he didn’t even know what NATO was before he launched into his tiresome rant about making the alliance countries pay their dues (they don’t have dues) and reiterating that he told some unnamed foreign leader that he wouldn’t defend them against Russian aggression if they were “delinquent.”.

That stale lie is standard boilerplate at his rallies and hasn’t changed since he first started saying it years ago. But it was especially crude of him to say it on the day the NATO meeting was taking place in Washington DC on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the alliance. He was speaking at roughly the same moment as President Biden, in fact. The contrast couldn’t be more stark:

Setting aside all the current drama over Biden’s candidacy, when it comes to his presidency there is simply no comparison between his performance on the world stage and Donald Trump. Trump was a dangerously ignorant embarrassment with a strange need to beg and scrape for approval from dictators and tyrants like some sad little flunky trying to impress the playground bully. Part of his suck-up performance was to browbeat America’s allies to impress the despots whose attention he craved. NATO was his favorite punching bag for obvious reasons. His idol Vladimir Putin is its sworn enemy.

Biden, on the other hand, very deftly brought NATO together to meet the most acute threat it’s faced since since WWII, with the invasion of Ukraine by Trump’s bosom pal, Putin. The most striking evidence of just how important this was is the fact that Sweden and Finland joined the alliance after 50 years of neutrality due to the dire threat from Russia. His leadership has been, by all accounts, reassuring and stabilizing, the exact opposite of what they felt during Trump’s administration and what they fear from another one.

Right now NATO allied countries are in the midst of a massive military buildup and it has nothing to do with Trump’s demands that they “pay their bills” despite Trump’s boasts that he is responsible for forcing them to do it. It’s because they rightfully fear that the US is no longer going to be a reliable ally should Trump win. He’s made it pretty clear that he thinks treaty obligations are for suckers and losers.

Trump has been trying to distance himself from Project 2025, the MAGA Manifesto and detailed plan for his second term. It’s ridiculous, of course. It’s being written by former Trump administration officials, most of whom are being mentioned for important roles in a second term. Nonetheless, Trump and his campaign managers are obviously worried about the fact that it’s so extreme that it would be radioactive if people were aware of it so they are pointing everyone to the RNC platform, which is so puerile it reads like a 5th grade book report.

When it comes to foreign policy, this is all it says:

Prevent World War Three, Restore Peace in Europe and in the Middle East, and build a great iron dome missile defense shield over our entire country — all made in America.

That sounds just great. Unfortunately, how this is going to be accomplished is unknown. When asked, Trump simply says that if he were president nothing bad would have happened and if he’s re-elected everything will magically fix itself. His followers like to think it’s because all the “bad guys” will slink away with their tails between their legs when they see his huge hands once more on the tiller, but the truth is that he will no doubt give the green light for his dictator buddies to do anything they want.

There are people at Project 2025 thinking about how to change the direction of America’s foreign policy however, and it’s not much better. Generally speaking those writing on national security and foreign policy are concentrating on many of the same culture war issues that the domestic policy planners are obsessed with. They want to take a wrecking ball to all the institutions and replace the personnel, including the officer corps of the military, whom they claim have weakened the services with their “woke” attitudes. Virtually the entire State Department will also have to go because they are similarly seen as a bunch of wimpy liberals who don’t recognize the great strategic brilliance of Donald Trump. It recommends that all treaty negotiations halt immediately for re-evaluation by the president and it appears that they feel perfectly comfortable reneging on any agreements they don’t believe serve “the national interest” which will be defined by Trump, the man who sees the entire world as one big real estate con. They say, “the next conservative President has the opportunity to restructure the making and execution of U.S. defense and foreign policy and reset the nation’s role in the world.” Yikes.

One of the positive consequences to come out of the brutal conflagrations of the first part of the 20th century was the idea (only sporadically realized and often betrayed) that democracy and shared values among allies could prevent any more bloodbaths like the horrors of the two world wars. The various authoritarian movements that are growing throughout the world today present a serious challenge to those ideas and the consequence of the planet’s only superpower joining them isn’t just terrifying for those of us who live here. Much of the rest of the world is petrified at the prospect as well.

As NATO was preparing for the big meeting taking place in Washington, over the last two weeks we’ve seen Trump’s favorite European neo-fascist Viktor Orban of Hungary (a NATO member) travel to Moscow and then Beijing to meet with their respective autocratic leaders on a so-called “peace mission.” (Putin put an exclamation point on that one by bombing a children’s hospital in Kiev on the same day.) The Prime Minister of India, Nahendra Modi was in Russia with Russian president Vladimir Putin just this week and Putin met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and President Xi of China recently as well. This is the club Donald Trump would like to join. These are his role models. There is no group of world leaders he admires more.

Salon

Meanwhile, In Wingnuttia

Published by digby on July 10, 2024

ROB SCHMITT (HOST): Do these donors really think that Kamala Harris is going to do better in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania than Joe Biden would? I mean, that’s — because it can’t be anybody else, right?

SEBASTIAN GORKA (GUEST): Rob, you’re being logical. Stop it. All right. She’s a DEI hire, right? She’s a woman. She’s colored. Therefore, she’s got to be good. And at least her brain doesn’t literally freeze in mid-sentence. 

That’s what we can expect from the right if Biden drops out. On the other hand, it’s so crude and disgusting it might galvanize the Democrats to come out and beat them. I wish I could be sure of that but I’m not sure of anything right now.

No One Is Safe

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 10, 2024

No, not you either

Machetes collected after the Rwandan genocide. Photo: James Nachtwey

Women across the U.S. learned in 2022 that they’d lost control of their bodies when the conservative majority on the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Remember when the prospective justices pledged fealty to stare decisis in their Senate confirmation hearings? Right? Their statements under oath were and are worthless. Because the ends that justify the means with this crowd.

Since Donald Trump lost the presidency in 2020, conservative reactionaries have dropped the coy act. They’re saying out loud what they plan to do to America — to you — when they regain control of the White House. SCOTUS just promised Trump king-like immunity for whatever crimes he commits under the color of official acts. He’s drooling.

The Lincoln Project is made up of former Republicans. They know their former allies. They created a primer on what’s ahead. Yes, they mean to scare you straight. Straight to the voting booth.

John Yoo authored the infamous Bush administration memos that justified torture of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Torture wasn’t about the mythical ticking time-bomb scenario. It was about exacting revenge on suspected terrorists in the wake of the September 11 attacks. In the conservative Matrix, laws are bent to justify criminal acts, revenge, and retribution.

Jonathan Chait wrote recently about Yoo’s concern for norms and his vision for twisting the laws to exact Republican revenge on Democratic enemies:

John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer (who himself escaped prosecution for his role in constructing legal justifications to torture detainees, many of whom turned out to be held wrongfully in the first place), has an essay in National Review arguing for revenge prosecutions. The imprimatur of Yoo, a Berkeley law professor and fellow at two of the conservative movement’s least-insane think tanks (the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution), underscores the progression of “lock her up” from wild seriously-not-literally Trump-campaign demagoguery in 2016 to party doctrine in 2024.

“Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you,” urges Yoo. “In order to prevent the case against Trump from assuming a permanent place in the American political system, Republicans will have to bring charges against Democratic officers, even presidents.”

Like allegations of stolen elections and voter fraud, no evidence required. Republicans will lock up opponents for unspecified “crimes.”

These guys are not just cranks with a podcast, like Tim Pool (above). These guys are serious. “Some folks need killing”? Guess who?

They are state figures, national figures.

Conservative reactionaries are being egged on by Trump’s growing thirst for blood:

Trump’s suggestion that there should be a migrant fighting league is dehumanizing and part of a much larger pattern of racism, white supremacy, and nativism against Black and brown people. Channeling Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump has repeatedly described non-white migrants and refugees as “vermin” and “poison” in the blood of the nation. A migrant fight club is the logical next step in such beliefs.

Oh, but those people are not like me? Think again.

And women? Roe was just the beginning. They’re coming for birth control and more.

Jamelle Bouie:

Where the 2016 and 2020 Republican platforms called for a national abortion ban, demanded a constitutional amendment to establish due-process rights for embryos and fetuses and stated that “the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed,” the 2024 platform simply states the Republican Party’s belief that “the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied life or liberty without due process and that the states are, therefore, free to pass laws protecting those rights.”

Read “fetal personhood,” couched euphemistically.

Lest I start quoting “First they came for,” recall, we here at Hullabaloo in 2019 got threatened with a defamation suit brought by Trump and the Trump Organization. We treated it as a joke. It’s a fun anecdote to tell at parties. (Like, join the club of people Trump’s threatened to sue.) But under Project 2025 in a second Trump administration, who knows how low down the food chain these fascists will go? Who have you pissed off?

So. Find your local Democrats and donate, volunteer, stat! Local Dems are useless and have no “game”? (Yup, that happens.) Try the local Indivisible or the League of Women Voters. How about Field Team 6? There are lots of ways to impact the trajectory of this election even in a solidly blue state.

My advice? Don’t wind up as political roadkill. Or actual kill.

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Cooler heads

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 10, 2024

Pun intended

Younger voters might save us after all.

CNN caught GenZ Rep. Max Frost (D-FL) Tuesday morning and he, like other younger party electeds, is standing behind Joe Biden:

Frost said that he had discussions with young voters, during which he said he heard concerns about Project 2025 — a playbook from the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation for a potential Trump presidency — not about Biden’s age. Former President Donald Trump has sought to distance himself from Project 2025, claiming he doesn’t know anything about it.

Frost added that he plans to head to New Hampshire this weekend to continue engaging with young voters.

Frost said he is convinced Biden will secure a second term this November and help Democrats regain control of the House.

Why, I don’t know, but electeds like Frost, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of The Squad seem not just cooler than some of the old party hands, but have kept cooler heads during the public freakout over Biden’s awful June 27 debate. The Congressional Black Caucus remains committed to Biden. Others who have asked Biden to step aside are accepting that he will not.

Intelligencer on the progress of Debategate:

A week and a half after Joe Biden’s unsettling debate performance prompted widespread concerns over his mental and physical fitness and ability to defeat Donald Trump, there’s no indication he is even considering dropping out of the presidential race. But while the 81-year-old president has repeatedly insisted he’s still fit to serve and can and will defeat Donald Trump in November, a sizable number of congressional Democrats remain unconvinced — and there are at least some signs they may try to pressure him to step aside so he can be replaced as the party’s nominee. How many ultimately do so, in what way, and whether their efforts make a difference remains to be seen. Biden and his allies on Capitol Hill are already fighting back. 

It seems the Monday verbal slugfest in the White House press room was prompted by half-assed re-reporting from the New York Times (Washington Post):

On Saturday morning, the New York Post reported that Kevin Cannard, “a Parkinson’s disease expert at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center,” met with Biden’s personal physician, Kevin O’Connor, at the White House in January. They were joined, the Post reported, by a cardiologist.

That same day, Alex Berenson — who gained fame as a purveyor of misinformation during the pandemic — noted on Substack that Cannard had made more than a half-dozen visits to the White House in the past year. Berenson described this information as being “VERY URGENT.”

On Monday, the New York Times covered the visits, walking through the timeline of Cannard’s visits. “Parkinson’s Expert Visited the White House Eight Times in Eight Months,” the headline read. The report triggered a flurry of questions during Monday’s White House press briefing, during which Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, insisted that privacy and security constraints limited her ability to discuss the visits.

The White House posted a memorandum from O’Connor debunking the Parkisnon’s story late Monday. Or reporters could have just Googled Biden’s health report from February, but where are the hot takes and clicks in that?

Marcy Wheeler: “This conspiracy theory started from NYPost and Alex Berenson. People who call themselves journalists took as their assignment editors a right wing propaganda outlet and a notorious conspiracy theorist.”

Who lacks fitness for their jobs?

I’m beginning to wonder if the entire Washington press corps is a Russian psyop. How’s that for a conspiracy theory?

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Gibberish

Published by digby on July 9, 2024

As we all watch with bated breath for Joe Biden to verbally stumble I thought I’d just take a moment to remind ourselves of the kinds of stuff that other guys says. Here’s one from a couple of months ago:

“Our nation was saved by the immortal heroes at Gettysburg. Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was. The battle of Gettysburg, what an unbelievable. I mean it was so, was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways — it represented such a big portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg, wow! I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch. And uh the statement of Robert E. Lee, who’s no longer in favor — did you ever notice that? He’s no longer in favor. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.’ They were fighting uphill, he said. Wow, that was a big mistake, he lost his great general and uh they were fighting uphill. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys,’ but it was too late.”

Just saying.

Four Months To Go

Published by digby on July 9, 2024

Is that good? Hardly. Is it catastrophic? Not really.

That’s from 538. G. Elliott Morris, who runs the place, has this:

It’s 120 days until Election Day, and our model thinks the presidential election could go either way. Right now, President Joe Biden is favored to win in 481 out of 1,000 of our model’s simulations of how the election could go, while former President Donald Trump wins in 516 of our simulations. There is still a small chance of the pure chaos scenario: In 3 simulations, no candidate wins a majority of Electoral College votes, which would throw the election to the House of Representatives.

It might not seem like it based on the panicked reaction to Biden’s poor debate performance nearly two weeks ago, but the election is still a considerable ways away. This means there is a lot of uncertainty about where the polls will end up on Nov. 5. In turn, the 538 election model puts a healthy amount of weight on non-polling factors such as economic growth and political indicators. Today these indicators suggest an outcome closer to a 3-point Biden win — clear in the opposite direction of national polls.

538’s focus on uncertainty partially explains why our election forecast has not moved much in reaction to new national polls showing Trump gaining on Biden. In effect, we are hedging our bets, putting more weight on the so-called “fundamentals” because we believe the campaign could be volatile or polls could be biased. The other big factor explaining our model’s relative stability is the flurry of swing-state polls that were published over the weekend, most good for Biden. The average swing-state poll published since July 6 has Trump leading Biden by 1 point, compared to his 2.2-point lead in national polls today.

538’s forecast is based on a combination of polls and campaign “fundamentals,” such as economic conditions, state partisanship and incumbency. It’s not meant to “call” a winner, but rather to give you a sense of how likely each candidate is to win. Check out our methodology to learn exactly how we calculate these probabilities.

—G. Elliott Morris

Also:

There’s a new chart on the 538 forecast showing the divide between the Electoral College and popular vote for 2024. Currently the forecast suggests Biden would need to win the popular vote by 2 points to win the election, a decline compared to 2020

The 4th Grade Level RNC Platform

Published by digby on July 9, 2024

Seriously, it’s like a 4th grader’s book report — and the 4th grader didn’t read the book. Utterly embarrassing. Steve Benen does a nice job of succinctly critiquing it:

The preamble: Before the blueprint begins in earnest, there’s a preamble, spanning nearly three pages, which appears to have been written by Trump himself. It’s filled with vapid, all-caps, bumper-sticker-style declarations, featuring a combination of vague goals and proposals that President Joe Biden has already delivered.

Here it is. Definitely a Trump special. Replete with inappropriate caps and bad punctuation.

Our Nation’s History is filled with the stories of brave men and women who gave everything they had to build America into the Greatest Nation in the History of the World. Generations of American Patriots have summoned the American Spirit of Strength, Determination, and Love of Country to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges. The American People have proven time and again that we can overcome any obstacle and any force pitted against us. 

…

But now we are a Nation in SERIOUS DECLINE. Our future, our identity, and our very way of life are under threat like never before. Today we must once again call upon the same American Spirit that led us to prevail through every challenge of the past if we are going to lead our Nation to a brighter future.

For decades, our politicians sold our jobs and livelihoods to the highest bidders overseas with unfair Trade Deals and a blind faith in the siren song of globalism. They insulated themselves from criticism and the consequences of their own bad actions, allowing our Borders to be overrun, our cities to be overtaken by crime, our System of Justice to be weaponized, and our young people to develop a sense of hopelessness and despair. They rejected our History and our Values. Quite simply, they did everything in their power to destroy our Country. 

In 2016, President Donald J. Trump was elected as an unapologetic Champion of the American People. He reignited the American Spirit and called on us to renew our National Pride. His Policies spurred Historic Economic Growth, Job Creation, and a Resurgence of American Manufacturing. President Trump and the Republican Party led America out of the pessimism induced by decades of failed leadership, showing us that the American People want Greatness for our Country again. 

Yet after nearly four years of the Biden administration, America is now rocked by Raging Inflation, Open Borders, Rampant Crime, Attacks on our Children, and Global Conflict, Chaos, and Instability. 

Like the Heroes who built and defended this Nation before us, we will never give up. We will restore our Nation of, by, and for the People.  We will Make America Great Again. 

 …

America needs determined Republican Leadership at every level of Government to address the core threats to our very survival: Our disastrously Open Border, our weakened Economy, crippling restrictions on American Energy Production, our depleted Military, attacks on the American System of Justice, and much more.

To make clear our commitment, we offer to the American people the 2024 GOP Platform to Make America Great Again!  It is a forward-looking Agenda that begins with the following twenty promises that we will accomplish very quickly when we win the White House and Republican Majorities in the House and Senate.

Benen continues:

The contents: Some of the reporting about the new RNC blueprint has suggested that it was made deliberately more “moderate” than some far-right partisans preferred. Don’t believe it. As American Bridge’s Brandon Weathersby summarized in a statement, “The Republican National Committee platform is one of the most extreme party platforms ever in the history of modern presidential elections.” From immigration to education, taxes to law enforcement, there should be no doubt that this assessment is correct.

The omissions: Hoping to avoid campaign-season attacks, the Republican platform no longer calls for federal prohibitions against abortion and same-sex marriage, but as the editorial board of The Washington Post summarized, “The former president wants the 2024 GOP platform to be anodyne, but don’t be fooled. He has an extreme agenda.”

The language: It was hard not to notice that the new Republican platform condemns “Christian-hating Communists,” which is a phrase with a deeply ugly history.

The length: The party’s platform in 2016 was nearly 60 pages. There were some reports indicating that this total, at Trump’s insistence, would be cut in half. Those reports understated matters: The actual text of the 2024 platform spans roughly 10 pages — reinforcing the fact that the contemporary Republican Party just isn’t serious about governing and policymaking.

The process: While Republicans have spent decades crafting the party’s platform in public, this year, the process was moved behind closed doors. Even more incredibly, Politico published this report on the way in which the platform was approved: “Representatives from Trump’s campaign walked around the room with a ‘vote yes’ sign as voice votes were being held. … One RNC member who was present inquired about why staff of the Trump campaign and RNC were taking photographs of delegates as they voted.”

We all know the real platform is Project 2025, of course. But this is what Trump and his henchmen know will appease his deluded base. It’s up to all of us to make sure the rest of the country knows the truth.