A double-digit increase in popularity, rising Democratic enthusiasm and an early edge for representing “change” have vaulted Vice President Kamala Harris forward and reshuffled the 2024 presidential contest, according to a new national NBC News poll.
With just over six weeks until Election Day, the poll finds Harris with a 5-point lead over former PresidentDonald Trump among registered voters, 49% to 44%. While that result is within the margin of error, it’s a clear shift from July’s poll, when Trump was ahead by 2 points before President Joe Biden’s exit.
Kamala’s favorability has jumped 16 points since July, “the largest increase for any politician in NBC News polling since then-PresidentGeorge W. Bush’s standing surgedafter the9/11 terrorist attacks.”
Harris also holds the advantage over Trump onbeing seen as competent and effective, as well as onhaving the mental and physical health to be president — a reversal from Trump’s leads on those qualities when he was matched up againstBiden.
And in a contest between a sitting vice president and an ex-president, featuring an electorate that overwhelmingly thinks the U.S. is “on the wrong track,” Harris has the upper hand on which candidate better represents change and which candidate can get the country headed in the right direction.
That last is because we feel like we’ve been forced to deal with Orange Julius Caesar for at least a century.
A little tidbit:
In an expanded ballot with third-party candidates, Harris leads Trump by 6 points, 47% to 41% — with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 2%, Jill Stein at 2% and Libertarian Chase Oliver at 1%. (Respondents were only able to pick from the major third-party candidates who will actuallyappear on the ballot in their states.)
As for “issues” people still inexplicably think Trump will be better on inflation and toughness on the border:
Harris’ best results are on protecting immigrant rights (where she has a 28-point lead over Trump), abortion (+21 points), having the necessary mental and physical health to be president (+20 points), having the right temperament to be president (+16 points) and representing change (+9 points).
By comparison, Trump’s biggest leads are on securing the border (+21), the economy (+9) and dealing with the cost of living (+8).
However:
Those current Trump advantages, however, are all down from when Biden was still in the race. When NBC News put those questions to voters about Trump and Biden in January, Trump led the president by 35 points on the issue of securing the border and controlling immigration and by 22 points on dealing with the economy.
In April, voters gave Trump a 22-point edge over Biden on dealing with inflation and the cost of living, too.
This is huge:
In July, 32% of registered voters had a positive view of Harris, versus 50% who saw her in a negative light (-18 net rating) — almost identical to Biden’s rating.
But in this new poll, Harris is now at 48% positive, 45% negative (+3).
No major-party presidential candidate in the 35-year history of the NBC News poll has seen this kind of jump in popularity in an election.
All in all, a very positive result. I still can’t believe it’s this close but I’ll take it.
The Reformation may have decentralized the faith and brought it closer to the people, but it also meant by the late 20th century that any American huckster with a flashy suit, an expensive coif, a sonorous voice, and a black, Morocco-bound, gilt-edged, King James red-letter edition could define Christianity pretty much any damned way he pleased. And did. Who was to say he was wrong?
“I’ll tell you a secret, since media is not here,” Johnson teased the group, unaware that his hosts were streaming video of the event. Johnson informed his audience that God “had been speaking to me” about becoming speaker, communicating “very specifically,” in fact, waking him at night and giving him “plans and procedures.”
God, said Johnson, told him that “we’re coming to a Red Sea moment” and that Johnson needed to be prepared — to be Moses! Throughout the speakership battle, “the Lord kept telling me to wait,” Johnson recounted. “And it came to the end, and the Lord said, ‘Now, step forward.’” Johnson told them that “only God saw the path through the roiling sea.”
In Sleeper (1973), Miles Monroe (Woody Allen) is asked 200 years in the future to identify photos of people from his time. One could replace Billy Graham with Mike Johnson:
This is Billy Graham. He was very big in the religion business, you know. He knew God personally. Got him his complete wardrobe to go out on double dates together. It was a very big thing. They were romantically linked for awhile.
Johnson’s tenure is just as absurd and covers a period both tumultuous and damnably unproductive. What will future histotians will make of it?
Today, Johnson’s run looks anything but heaven-sent. In the first 18 months of this Congress, only 70 laws were enacted. Calculations by political scientist Tobin Grant, who tracks congressional output over time, put this Congress on course to be the do-nothingest since 1859-1861 — when the Union was dissolving. But Johnson’s House isn’t merely unproductive; it is positively lunatic. Republicans have filled their committee hearings and their bills with white nationalist attacks on racial diversity and immigrants, attempts to ban abortion and to expand access to the sort of guns used in mass shootings, incessant harassment of LGBTQ Americans, and even routine potshots at the U.S. military. They insulted each other’s private parts, accused each other of sexual and financial crimes, and scuffled with each other in the Capitol basement. They screamed “Bullshit!” at President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address. They stood up for the Confederacy and used their official powers to spread conspiracy theories about the “Deep State.” Some even lent credence to the idea that there has been a century-old Deep State coverup of space aliens, with possible involvement by Mussolini and the Vatican.
You get the picture.
Donald Trump’s crank politics became a thing to emulate to get ahead in his Republican Party. David French at the Times suggests that Republicans’ and evangelicals’ taste for transgressiveness matching his has led to men like Mark “I’m a Black Nazi” Robinson being chosen by GOP primary voters as their candidate for governor in North Carolina by a 45-point margin over his nearest compretitor. It’s how you get a Marjorie Taylor Greene, or a Lauren Boebert, or a Matt Gaetz, French explains. Leaders change insitutions. “They make them into images of themselves.” And hoo-boy, did he ever.
“Republican voters knew [Robinson] was a bad man when they chose him. Now they know he is a very bad man,” French writes.
Yes, that’s what they like about him. In their nihilism (or is it apocalypticism?), the MAGA cult is prepared to burn down the republic and install a dictator in a Bizarro version of Jesus overturning the money changers’ tables. It’s what Donald would do. (WWDD?)
French is concerned what it means for the trajectory of the Republican Party:
The yearslong elevation of figures like Mark Robinson and the many other outrageous MAGA personalities, along with the devolution of people in MAGA’s inner orbit — JD Vance, Elon Musk, Lindsey Graham and so very many others — has established beyond doubt that Trump has changed the Republican Party and Republican Christians far more than they have changed him.
In nine years, countless Republican primary voters have moved from voting for Trump in spite of his transgressions to rejecting anyone who doesn’t transgress. If you’re not transgressive, you’re suspicious. Decency is countercultural in the Republican Party. It’s seen as a rebuke of Trump.
But it’s the linkage between Christianity and transgressive politics that French glosses over that should be disturbing to the vast majority of American Christians who’ve escaped the Trump contagion. Any day soon, MAGA could declare Trump born of a virgin and, as I beagn above, who is to call it blasphemy. Christianity seems no more able to police itself than the Republican Party.
Battleground state doesn’t just refer to the election
Marc Elias of Democracy Docket previews his newsletter today (sorry, no link). He’s focused on efforts in the courts to preserve voting rights vs. those who challenge them. Two graphics are particularly handy.
First the trend in voting lawsuits since 2020:
The second graphic displays the number of active voting rights lawsuits by state.
Texas and California may be outliers because they are each so big, population-wise as well as Latino population-wise. The other 7+ states are six swing states in hot contention this fall. Republicans would convince their base that it is “Democrats and progressive groups are actively using the courts to bring last minute litigation to change the rules of voting.” The data says otherwise, Elias contends.
He writes:
The state of our democracy has revealed itself. Democrats will go into the election supporting free and fair elections while Republicans will continue to attack them. I wish it were otherwise. Perhaps if they suffer big enough losses, in two years it will be. But for now, election denialism remains firmly in control of the once grand old party.
As hordes of photographers began descending on a small, rural community to capture its vibrant autumnal colours, local residents have been fighting back – and winning.
To enter the town of Pomfret, located in the US state of Vermont, is to be instantly struck by its bucolic beauty. From the north, Howe Hill Road winds downhill in a series of gentle curves, each sweep revealing verdant farm fields dotted with sheep, or swaths of forest in which the red and orange autumn leaves cling to boughs. At one home, a tree heavy with apples bends over a meticulously maintained stone wall, its slate top filled with decaying fruit.
But come early autumn, more than half of the cars driving through this 900-person town will sport out-of-state license plates, coming to abrupt stops on a road with a 45-mile-per-hour speed limit, blocking one of two lanes. The reason? To take a picture of a farm’s silo against a backdrop of autumn leaves.
With a mere handful of businesses – a general mercantile store, an art centre with a gallery and a theatre and a few pick-your-own apple or pumpkin farms – Pomfret is generally a quiet, unassuming place. But in autumn as “leaf-peepers” from around the world descend on the region’s rolling hills and fetching small towns to witness its kaleidoscopic foliage, that all changes.
Until recently, the number of leaf-peepers visiting Pomfret was more trickle than torrent. But ever since images of Sleepy Hollow Farm, a 115-acre private property set on a rustic road, began going viral on social media a few years ago, locals say things have gotten out of hand. […]
“It’s a beautiful spot. It’s too bad it’s been ruined for everybody,” said Deborah Goodwin, the exhibits coordinator at Pomfret’s Artistree Community Arts Center. “[For] the past couple years it’s been out of control. Tour buses were just dumping… people out there.”
Goodwin says social media influencers would regularly climb over a gate plastered with “No Trespassing” signs, set up changing booths to accommodate their many costume swaps, get their “city cars” stuck on the narrow dirt road, and leave bodily waste by the roadside. “It was bad,” she recalled. “The residents went to the [local government] and said, ‘We can’t have this anymore.'”
During the 2022 leaf-peeping season, law enforcement temporarily turned the road past Sleepy Hollow into a one-way thoroughfare. It wasn’t enough to deter tourists from behaving badly. In 2023, local residents tried a different approach: crowdsourced funding. […]
As a result, town officials voted to close the roads leading to the farm during the peak fall foliage season (23 September to 15 October) to non-residents, spurring the ire of travellers who had driven to the area in hopes of capturing a perfectly curated autumn photo.
“It’s a hotel and amusement park,” scoffed one Instagrammer with 153,000 followers. “Bring all your friends and RVs.”
Most Pomfret residents stressed that they’re not anti-tourist; they simply want people to treat their hometown with respect. Even more concerning than issues of private property, several mentioned, are safety concerns for the residents of Cloudland Road, as well as the tourists themselves.
According to Windsor County Sheriff Ryan Palmer, “This is not a road that’s designed to have multiple vehicles on it. [In 2021 and 2022] there were lines of traffic parked up and down the roadway, and you couldn’t get fire apparatus or an ambulance through. It was just overwhelming the infrastructure in the area.” […]
Palmer hopes that the Pomfret drama is a “one-and-done” deal. Residents have floated the idea of creating a reservation or ticketing system for visits to Sleepy Hollow to help manage the tourist rush in a more responsible way, but as far as he knows, that option isn’t under serious consideration. In fact: feedback on the traffic pattern changes implemented in 2023 has been largely positive, leading to the Pomfret Selectboard’s decision to implement similar road closures for the imminent 2024 foliage season.
Very bucolic, but I’m happy to simply enjoy the photo; I don’t feel an urge to drive several thousand miles just to snap a selfie. As Roy Neary says in CloseEncounters of the Third Kind, “You think I investigate every Walter Cronkite story there is?!”
As another character in Close Encounters observes, “Einstein was right”. Each year passes faster than the previous. Per Pink Floyd, You can runto catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking; racing around to come up behind you again. To wit…The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older; shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Don’t you hate that?
Since the Fall Equinox has raced around and come up behind us again, I thought I’d rake through my music collection and curate a pile of suitably autumnal tunes.
To follow Shel Silverstein’s lead…Let’s jump right in!
“Autumn Almanac” – The Kinks
Released as a single in the UK in 1967, Ray Davies’ fond sense memory of the Muswell Hill neighborhood of North London where he grew up recalls The Beatles’ “Penny Lane”.
From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar When the dawn begins to crack It’s all part of my autumn almanac
Breeze blows leaves of a musty-coloured yellow So I sweep them in my sack Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
“Autumn Leaves” -Jim Hall & Ron Carter
Lovely instrumental cover of Joeseph Kosma & Jacques Prevert’s classic (originally popularized by Yves Montand in Marcel Carné’s 1946 film noir Les Portes de la Nuit) performed live by two jazz greats-Jim Hall (guitar) and Ron Carter (stand-up bass).
“The Boys of Summer” – Don Henley
I suppose one could make a case either way as to whether Don Henley’s 1984 hit qualifies as a “summer song” or an “autumn song”. Here’s my gauge: generally speaking, upbeat and celebratory is a summer mood; wistful and introspective is autumnal.
Nobody on the road Nobody on the beach I feel it in the air The summer’s out of reach Empty lake, empty streets The sun goes down alone I’m driving by your house Though I know you’re not home
“Falling” – Joe Vitale
Joe Vitale was a key member of Joe Walsh’s first post-James Gang band Barnstorm. In addition to contributing drums, flute, keyboards and vocals, Vitale also co-wrote some of the songs. This cut is from his outstanding debut solo album, Roller Coaster Weekend (1974).
“Forever Autumn” – Justin Hayward
This lovely tune, featuring a lead vocal by Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues was a highlight of Jeff Wayne’s 1978 double LP rock musical adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.
“Harvest Moon” – Neil Young
This track is from from Young’s eponymous 1992 album (a sort of sequel to 1972’s Harvest), which won a Juno award (Canada’s equivalent to a Grammy) for Album of the Year.
“Indian Summer” -Dream Academy
The Dream Academy’s most wistful and transporting song is best appreciated with a good set of headphones. Drift away…
It was the time of year just after the summer’s gone When August and September just become memories of songs To be put away with the summer clothes And packed up in the attic for another year We had decided to stay on for a few weeks more Although the season was over now the days were still warm And seemed reluctant to five up and hand over to winter for another year
“Inner Garden I” – King Crimson
Contrary to what you may assume, not every track by this venerable prog-rock outfit takes up half an album side; some of their best compositions say all they need to say with surprising brevity.
Autumn has come to rest in her garden Come to paint the trees with emptiness And no pardon So many things have come undone Like the leaves on the ground And suddenly she begins to cry But she doesn’t know why…
But the last day of summer Never felt so cold The last day of summer Never felt so old
“Leaf and Stream” – Wishbone Ash
This compelling, melancholic track is sandwiched between a couple of epic rockers on the Ash’s best album, 1972’s Argus (which I wrote about here).
Find myself beside a stream of empty thought, Like a leaf that’s fallen to the ground, And carried by the flow of water to my dreams Woken only by your sound.
“Leaves in the Wind” -Back Street Crawler
Back Street Crawler was a short-lived group formed in 1975 by guitarist Paul Kossoff after he left Free. Sadly, by the time 2nd Street was released in 1976, Kossoff was dead at 25 (lending additional poignancy to his mournful guitar fills on this track).
“Moondance”– Van Morrison
The evocative title track from Morrison’s 1970 album is one of his signature tunes.
Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance With the stars up above in your eyes A fantabulous night to make romance ‘Neath the cover of October skies
“November” -Tom Waits
This song is a tad unsettling, yet oddly beautiful. Not unlike Waits’ voice. Dig the theremin.
No shadow No stars No moon No care November It only believes In a pile of dead leaves And a moon That’s the color of bone
“October”-U2
Sporting but two short verses, this was an uncharacteristically minimalist arrangement for U2 at this stage of their career (from the band’s eponymous 1981 album).
October And the trees are stripped bare Of all they wear What do I care?
October And kingdoms rise And kingdoms fall But you go on And on
“Ramble On”-Led Zeppelin
Arguably the One Autumnal Song to Rule Them All, with all its wistfulness and stirrings of wanderlust. Only don’t try to make any sense of the Gollum reference-it’ll make you crazy.
Leaves are falling all around It’s time I was on my way Thanks to you I’m much obliged For such a pleasant stay But now it’s time for me to go The autumn moon lights my way For now I smell the rain And with it pain And it’s headed my way…
“September” – Earth, Wind, & Fire
Well of course I remember “the 21st of September”…it’s today’s date, fergawdsake! Sheesh. One of EWF’s biggest hits, it reached #1 on the Billboard charts in 1978. Ba-dee-yah.
“September Gurls” – Big Star
Founded in 1971 by singer-guitarist Chris Bell and ex-Box Tops singer/guitarist Alex Chilton, Big Star is one of the seminal power pop bands, and this is one of their most defining songs.
“Summer’s Almost Gone” – The Doors
From the Doors’ 1968 album Waiting For the Sun. Haunting, with Jim Morrison in fine form.
Morning found us calmly unaware Noon burn gold into our hair At night, we swim the laughin’ sea When summer’s gone Where will we be?
“Time of No Reply” – Nick Drake
Gone much too soon, his sad short life was as enigmatic as the amazing catalog he left behind.
Summer was gone and the heat died down And Autumn reached for her golden crown I looked behind as I heard a sigh But this was the time of no reply
The sun went down and the crowd went home I was left by the roadside all alone I turned to speak as they went by But this was the time of no reply
“Urge for Going”– Joni Mitchell
You thought I forgot this one, didn’t you? Luck of the alphabet. It feels redundant to label any Joni Mitchell song as “genius”, but it’s hard to believe this came from the pen of a 22 year-old.
I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town It hovered in a frozen sky, then it gobbled summer down When the sun turns traitor cold And all trees are shivering in a naked row I get the urge for going but I never seem to go I get the urge for going When the meadow grass is turning brown
Voter registration is breaking records as Election Day approaches, particularly among young people, many of whom are first-time voters.
On Tuesday’s National Voter Registration Day more than 150,000 people registered through Vote.org, the most the organization has ever seen on that day. The organizationregistered 279,400 voters in all of last year.
Last week, 337,826 people visited a link posted on Instagram by pop star Taylor Swift that directed them to their state’s voter registration site.
Although Swift noted that she would be voting for the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, people don’t have to declare a party affiliation when they register and neither vote.org nor Swift tracked registrations by party. Vote.org has previously told USA TODAY that about 80% of people they register turn out in the next election.
A huge percentage of the newly registered voters are young people, many voting for the first time.
According to Vote.org, voters under 35 made up 81% of Tuesday’s registrations, with the biggest spike among 18-year-olds. On this year’s National Voter Registration Day, 11% of those registered were 18, which is 53% higher than on the same day four years ago.
I may be going out on a limb here but I’d guess most of those young people are going to vote Democratic. Sure, there will be a few incel Trump fans and some who’ll vote 3rd party. But I think these young voters can see where the future is and it isn’t with the weirdos.
It’s going to be a very busy day. Usually the new president goes to the inaugural brunch, takes a nap and then goes to the inaugural ball on day one. Trump says he’s going to take 200 actions and counting.
“A lot but not all of what Trump says he wants to do on day one is going to be illegal or impractical,” said Steve Vladeck, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown University Law Center and a critic of how Trump has wielded executive power. “But even the illegal stuff might go into effect for some time, and he might actually succeed in pushing the law in his direction.”
Here’s a little taste of what he’s promising on immigration on day one:
Ity sounds like it’s going to be quite a day.
Obviously, he can’t do all or really, any of that, on the first day. But recall that in 2017 it didn’t take him very long to enact his Muslim ban and even though the courts eventually pared it back, it created chaos and ended up being fairly draconian in the end anyway. I think we can expect the Mass Deportation promise to be the same. This time, especially if he has a majority in the congress, he’s going to get away with a lot more since the Supreme Court is practically in bed with him.
I have no doubt that he’s much more intent upon carrying out his promises and he will have nothing by henchmen and sycophants willing to help him do it throughout the government. He’s not a paper tiger.
Trump has taken to saying that he never asked to prosecute his enemies because it wouldn’t have been right. he even says about Hillary Clinton that he didn’t think it would be right to put the wife of a president in jail (as if that’s all she was….) He is, as usual, lying through his big, white, fake teeth.
The fact is that Trump repeatedly ordered his DOJ to prosecute his enemies. His minions managed to keep- him from doing his worst. Here’s how this story by Mike Schmidt in the NY Times starts out (gift link below.)
It was the spring of 2018 and President Donald J. Trump, faced with an accelerating inquiry into his campaign’s ties to Russia, was furious that the Justice Department was reluctant to strike back at those he saw as his enemies.
In an Oval Office meeting, Mr. Trump told startled aides that if Attorney General Jeff Sessions would not order the department to go after Hillary Clinton and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, Mr. Trump would prosecute them himself.
Recognizing the extraordinary dangers of a president seeking not just to weaponize the criminal justice system for political ends but trying as well to assume personal control over who should be investigated and charged, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, sought to stall.
“How about I do this?” Mr. McGahn told Mr. Trump, according to an account verified by witnesses. “I’m going to write you a memo explaining to you what the law is and how it works, and I’ll give that memo to you and you can decide what you want to do.”’
The episode marked the start of a more aggressive effort by Mr. Trump to deploy his power against his perceived enemies despite warnings not to do so by top aides. And a look back at the cases of 10 individuals brings a pattern into clearer focus: After Mr. Trump made repeated public or private demands for them to be targeted by the government, they faced federal pressure of one kind or another.
it highlights how closely his expressed desires to go after people who had drawn his ire were sometimes followed by the Justice Department, F.B.I. or other agencies. Even without his direct order, his indirect influence could serve his ends and leave those in his sights facing expensive, time-consuming legal proceedings or other high-stress inquiries.
The story of that period has a powerful resonance today as Mr. Trump, angered in part by the two federal and two state-level indictments of him since leaving office, threatens to carry out a campaign of retribution if he returns to the White House. He has signaled that a second Trump administration would be stocked not with people who served as guardrails during his first term, but with carefully vetted loyalists who would eagerly carry out his wishes.
And there’s this:
If elected again, he would also return to the White House bolstered by the Supreme Court’s ruling in July that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution for official acts taken while in office.
Schmidt apparently had access to memos memorializing Trump’s orders and discussions among the staff as to their legality which members of the Trump administration snuck out of the White House. (Trump directed that people in the WH not take notes.) Both privately and publicly Trump was intent upon having the DOJ punish his enemies despite the constant admonishment by WH lawyers that it would cause havoc. And apparently, some of the lawyers who were very much against what he was trying to do, nonetheless reluctantly concluded that he could legally do it even though it would violate long established normas and result in mass resignations at the DOJ.
Schmidt doesn’t really go into what Bill Barr did personally, but we all know that he was almost as anxious to stick it to Trump’s enemies and the man himself.
Joe Biden has not ordered the DOJ to go after Trump. In fact, he’s stood silent as they prosecuted his beloved only surviving son on charges that would not have been brought against anyone else. So, even though Trump has been charged with federal crimes since he left office, the charges were fully justified — he tried to overturn the election and stole classified documents. — he cannot use Biden as an excuse to throw his enemies in jail if he becomes president again.
Now that he knows he has immunity and will not have to seek another term (whether he leaves voluntarily or just decides he’s going to stay as long as he wants) all bets are off. He’s going to do it.
“I’m talking to my constituents and I’m hearing terrible things about what’s going on in Springfield, and Kamala Harris’ open-border policies have caused these problems,” Vance said. Moments later, he said, “Murders are up by 81% because of what Kamala Harris has allowed to happen to this small community.”
We looked into this claim and found it’s a good example of how statistics can be cherry-picked and misleadingly framed to serve unfounded narratives.
“During the time that I’ve been with the prosecutor’s office, which is 21 years now, we have not had any murders involving the Haitian community – as either the victims or as the perpetrators of those murders,” Daniel Driscoll, the Republican top prosecutor in Clark County, in which Springfield is the largest city, said in a Friday interview.
Vance was citing real data, but he didn’t mention what the underlying numbers are. Spokesperson William Martin said Vance was talking about official Ohio figures showing that Springfield had five murders in 2021 and nine murders in 2023.
That four-murder increase is indeed an increase of 80%. An increase from five murders one year to nine murders two years later, though, does not prove Vance’s claim that Harris and immigrants have caused a murder spike — or even that there is a current murder spike.
In small communities, Driscoll said, “if you were to have one murder one year and two murders the next year, you’ve suddenly got a 100% increase in the rate, but that’s not an appreciable difference in the number of murders you have.” He said what he looks at is “trends” — and “we’ve not seen any trend showing that the amount of murders is going up in Clark County.”
Springfield had more total murders under President Donald Trump than under Biden-Harris.
Vance said murders in Springfield have soared “because of” Harris’ policies. But a quick glance at Springfield’s murder numbers for the last three presidential terms – which are easily available online from the FBI and the state of Ohio – immediately calls his assertion into question.
President Barack Obama’s second term: 30 murders. Six in 2013; seven in 2014; 12 in 2015; five in 2016.
Trump’s term: 33 murders. Nine in 2017 (he took over from Obama on January 20 that year); 13 in 2018; three in 2019; eight in 2020.
President Joe Biden’s term through 3.5 years: 22 murders. Five in 2021 (he took over from Trump on January 20 that year); six in 2022; nine in 2023; two in the first half of 2024.
Even if you exclude the half-year 2024 data and only compare the three completed years of the Biden-Harris administration to either the first three years or last three years under the Trump administration, there have still been fewer murders under Biden-Harris.
So, if the president’s policies are causing murders, then Trump’s policies were obviously much worse. Of course, the president’s policies aren’t really responsible for murders (except to the extent that he’s been pushing unfettered gun rights) so it’s a ridiculous statement on its face. But if you’re going to make it, it’s very dishonest to cherry pick the figures to exonerate the man whose record is actually the worst one of the last three presidents.
But then this is JD Vance we’re talking about.
And by the way, there’s no reason to think that even the spike in murders that happened under Trump were caused by Haitian immigrants:
As we’ve repeatedly noted in fact checks about crime, identifying specific reasons for particular cities’ increases or decreases in any given year is notoriously difficult. And nobody has demonstrated that Haitian immigrants in particular or immigrants in general were responsible for the four additional murders in 2023 compared to 2021. (One prominent local case from 2023, in which a Haitian immigrant committed aggravated vehicular homicide and involuntary manslaughter when he accidentally crashed his minivan into a school bus and killed a child, is not classified as a murder, and the child’s father has said explicitly that it was not a murder.)
Local and state officials have certainly not attributed the uptick in murder to immigrants. Driscoll described it as “luck, or a lack thereof.” And Andy Wilson, now Ohio’s public safety director under Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and formerly the Clark County prosecutor before Driscoll, told reporters this week that the main public safety issue with regard to Haitian immigrants in the state is safe driving, “not crime” and “not violence.”
There are a number of other data points on this at the link.
The influx of immigrants has caused some problems, as it would when any place has a rise in population in a fairly short period of time. Government resources are stretched, traffic, things like that. There’s a bigger upside, though. Businesses flourish, revenue rises for the town etc. This happens all the time.
We all know what the problem is. Black foreigners have come into this small insular town for work and the locals are uncomfortable with that. Some are downright racist. And Donald Trump and JD Vance and their MAGA followers are exploiting that to argue for mass round-ups, detention camps and deportation of tens of millions of people. It’s disgusting.
Dear Leader has some inspiring words to share with you
Thank you Daddy:
Daddy’s awfully busy running for president…
While Republicans are looking for leadership on issues with less than 50 days until the election, Trump launches a $100 commemorative coin featuring his “very beautiful face.” pic.twitter.com/YEVUmQfNqX
As Digby noted yesterday, “the media has now found some integrity just in time to help [Trump], even as their previous irresponsibility also helped him.” That is, by burying Trump documents Iranian hackers recently hacked.
“Working the refs” is the phrase long used to describe how conservatives cowed journalists into treating the right’s lunacy as normal politics when its sabotage of democracy was still in previews. Both-sidesism is one approach press stenographers use to prove they have no liberal bias (for fear of being called bad names by the right and to preserve access to Republicans inside the Beltway).
Oh, but criticism is starting to bite. Access reporters cowed by the right object to being criticized by the left.
Maggie Haberman tells NPR that there is an "industry" dedicated to "attacking the media" from the left for its Trump coverage, which is "undermining faith" in journalism.
Access journalism, press stenography, and bothsidesism has undermined faith in what you do, not criticism from the left. Press consolidation under private equity and hedge funds has not helped one bit:
Brooke Gladstone: In recent years, billionaire owners have snapped up outlets like The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and others, with three of the top newspaper chains in the country are currently owned not by individuals or families but by private investment firms. According to Margot Susca, Assistant Professor of Journalism, Accountability, and Democracy at American University, we’re currently in the private investment era of media.
Private equity firms and hedge funds may function differently in the marketplace but Susca says they have a similarly ravenous approach to buying up news outlets and selling them off for parts. Susca, author of Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy, debunks the notion that it was solely the dawn of the internet that failed local news.
James Fallows follows up on Froomkin’s comment on FKA twitter:
Obviously I disagree w main points here: that press has overall done very good job covering Trump, and that there is a left-wing “industry” that is “dedicated toward attacking the media,” especially NYT.
But (seriously, no snark) credit to at least one prominent NYT figure for acknowledging that there is a critique.
Next step would be engagement on some specifics people have actually been asking about:
– Why framing / headline / social-promo of stories takes a certain shape so predictably as to have given rise to the Pitchbot – Why no retrospective public discussion, at all, about coverage in 2016 (Her emails!!!!) and lessons thereof. After Iraq WMD coverage, NYT under Bill Keller did a public retrospective (“what we got wrong”) etc – Why no public explanation of diff between coverage of HRC/Podesta Russian-hacked emails and silence on Trump Iranian-hacked emails – Why diff between extent / persistence of Biden “fitness to govern” cognitive overage vs Trump-cognitive issues. – Thoughts about proportion of “guy in a diner” stories, vs “women in the suburbs” stories. And proportion of “econ is good but feels bad” stories. – Whether there’s a diff in general outlook of coverage of US politics (need for “balance”) vs coverage of the rest of the range of news. And so on
