Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

While everyone was handwringing about political violence after the shooting last week-end, I wrote that for Salon. Days and days of lugubrious moaning about “changing the tone” and “bringing down the temperature” later:

I wanted to flag to your attention another data point that suggests that reader of ours was on to something when he posited that Tom Crooks, 20 year old who tried to shoot Donald Trump, was more in the line of school shooters and mass shooters than political assassins as we’ve conventionally understood them. CNN now reports that Crooks had been googling information about Ethan Crumbley, a 2021 school shooter, who’s parents were later prosecuted over his murders. Indeed, the FBI seems to be quite literally moving toward this theory of Tom Crooks’ murders.

Quoting CNN: “One emerging theory by investigators, based in part on the timing and subjects of his online searches, is that the shooter was looking to carry out a mass shooting and that the Trump event’s proximity and timing offered the most ready opportunity.”

This is a pretty extraordinary interpretation of the events of one week ago and it matches very closely with what TPM Reader GS surmised the morning after the events. This theory from investigators suggests not simply that Crooks profile matched the sociology and ideation of school/mass shooters but perhaps that he was quite literally planning a mass shooting and the Trump rally, which was announced ten days in advance, simply provided a ready venue for it. I confess even I have some difficulty quite getting my head around this idea. But there it is. And it suggests that rather than some climate of persecution by which “they” – some fuzzy reference to the vast collective of Trump opposition – tried to kill him, as Republicans are now universally claiming, Trump may have fallen victim to the mass shooting/school shooting culture gun rights activists have done so much to foster.

The minute we found out it was a lone 20 year old gun nut who’d been bullied in school, there was a good chance this was what it was.

Contrary to what we’re reading from the Kewl Kidz at Axios and Politico, CNN has a piece today that says the Democrats are actually coming to a consensus that Kamala Harris has to be the nominee if Biden steps aside. (Duh…) The way they describe the dynamic rings true to me:

No one quite knows what the process of picking a new nominee would be if Joe Biden did step aside – but many Democrats say that any process is likelier than ever to quickly end with Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee. The informal conversations about how a fight to replace Biden at the top of the ticket would play out have been raging for weeks behind the scenes. But uncertainty about the process has been so unclear it’s given multiple Democrats – even those with serious concerns about Biden – pause about coming out against the president’s candidacy, given that what comes next could be even messier.

“F**k it, I’m coconut pilled. I just want this to stop,” said one well-known Democratic operative, referring to the online meme that has taken off from an old video of the vice president telling a story of her mother saying, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”

It’s not that everyone has suddenly coalesced – but exhaustion is gelling into consensus.Internal polls that show Harris would at least be more helpful to boosting Democratic enthusiasm and aiding down ballot races are getting passed around. Arguments that she would be fastest to put together a campaign are landing harder. Daydreams of her making a more active and vigorous case against Donald Trump are taking root.

Many are deliberately holding off talking about hypotheticals as Biden aides say he plans to get back on the campaign trail next week once he recovers from Covid-19. But if that suddenly changes, two dozen leading Democratic politicians and operatives told CNN, they can’t realistically see this ending any other way.

Some are pushing for a fast and closed process, where delegates would bless the swap as part of their planned pre-convention virtual nomination plan. Some reject the idea of a coronation, either because they prefer others or don’t like the way that would look. But – though there are musings about quickly creating a series of blitz primaries or town halls – no one can agree how that would work with just over 100 days until the election and much less than that before Democrats are scheduled to gather in Chicago. Still, it’s an idea some Harris backers support, doubting that anyone serious would challenge her, as much chest puffing as there is behind the scenes.

Multiple Democratic members of Congress who have called for Biden to go declined on Friday when asked by CNN if they were ready to say they want Harris to be the nominee.If nothing else, people connected with several of the other possible most serious options and others acknowledge, they would likely feel boxed in by both party loyalty and their own future ambitions. Pressure will be high to unify after the last month of infighting, and anyone who takes her on would be risking torpedoing their reputation with the base in a potential 2028 open primary if she were seen as weakened by that and went on to lose.

Some Democrats believe, even with the threat of early ballot deadlines, it could be settled on the floor of the convention in late August. If this stretches out that long, though, multiple Democrats predicted that the hunger for resolution will only intensify.That’s become ever more likely, those politicians and operatives say, both by how much closer they are to Election Day and by how impressed they’ve been by how the vice president has handled these weeks of Democratic crisis. They argue the vice president has not been caught scheming, even in private conversations, and instead has showcased being fiery and loyal to Biden at a series of campaign stops, which will continue on Saturday at a fundraiser she’s headlining in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

“I do believe it has to be the vice president. She’s campaigning vigorously under the mantle and she’s the natural successor. It’s going to be important in the scenario that the president isn’t the nominee that we rally around her immediately,” said one Democratic House member who asked not to be named so as not to be seen undercutting the president.

You’ve got Never Trumpers like Mike Murphy out there pushing for an open convention probably because, as a Republican, he’s just used to thinking about a Black woman nominee as the kiss of death. But this isn’t 2016 — abortion is on the ballot and women are motivated. Also I would have thought that people who worked for John McCain and Mitt Romney would have gotten over that idea as it pertains to Black candidates.

Anyway, the CNN piece goes on to argue that Biden endorsing is hugely important, which it is, and I expect he would do. It points out that there have been no whispers of her plotting a takeover, not even one and that’s pretty impressive. No one has defended him more vociferously and I think that matters to him.

Read the whole thing, there’s a lot more. I have a suspicion that may be the real state of play. People are exhausted with this and most have to be recognizing that it’s already gone on too long and extending it with some kind of reality show circus would only hurt the ball team. God, I hope so, anyway.

I know this guy is mainly about playing to his fellow freaks, but how many normal people would even know what this is supposed to be? https://t.co/wmPWnG0GDT

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) July 20, 2024

I have no idea what that is and I lie online. That’s how deep into the right wing weirdo rabbit hole Elon Musk is. He’s basically nuts but he’s massively influential.

Michael Hilzik in the LA Times ponders the problem of this massively wealthy man with a powerful social media platform:

Here’s a handy two-step process for taking a thoughtful and judicious approach to the burning social and political issues of our time:

1. Examine closely the position taken by Elon Musk, and;

2. Go the other way.

Musk’s drift — more precisely, his headlong dive — into right-wing orthodoxies has been well-chronicled. He has openly endorsed antisemitic tropes, called for the prosecution of the respected immunologist Anthony Fauci (evidently buying into the right-wing fantasy that Fauci helped create the COVID-19 pandemic), and associated himself with a grotesquely ugly conspiracy theory about the assault on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

He reversed policies at X, formerly Twitter, designed to block hate speech, including racist and antisemitic tweets. That has turned the platform into a hive of repulsive partisan commentary.

(Musk blames an imaginary advertisers’ “boycott” for the user decline at X, though the repulsive atmosphere of the platform since his acquisition probably has done more to drive users and advertisers away.)

Musk again put his acrid personal worldview vividly on display with his announcement Tuesday that he would move two of his private companies, Hawthorne-based SpaceX and San Francisco-based X, to Texas.

He made clear that his decision was triggered by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signing of a law that bars school districts from requiring teachers to notify parents of their children’s gender identity changes. Newsom signed the law on Monday.

“This is the final straw,” Musk posted on X. He described the law as one of “many others” in California “attacking both families and companies.”

A few things about this.

If anything, Musk’s corporate activities point to what is often described as a “whim of iron.” He defends his policies and politics as derived from painstaking consideration based on immutable laws of human behavior, but they don’t hold water on those terms. Instead, they point to the social dangers of endowing self-interested personalities with the money to buy unaccountable influence in conflict with the public interest.

Musk appears to have a real problem with transgender rights. According to the Musk biography by Walter Isaacson, this may have originated with the decision of his eldest child, Xavier, to transition at the age of 16. “I’m transgender, and my name is now Jenna,” she texted a relative. “Don’t tell my dad.”

Jenna followed up with a political awakening that Musk ascribed to her attendance at a private school in California. “She went beyond socialism to being a full communist and thinking that anyone rich is evil,” he told Isaacson. Jenna broke off all contact with him.

Musk moved his company to Texas where he pays no income tax. They are also unremittingly hostile to transgender youth which seems to make him happy.

He also loves to have free rein to treat his employees like dirt:

Musk can scarcely claim that his own corporate policies are family-friendly. They are, however, arguably self-destructive. Consider his treatment of thousands of former Twitter employees who were summarily fired after he took over the platform in October 2022 and are suing to receive severance payments, bonuses and other benefits they were promised before the takeover.

The mass firings have given rise to about 2,000 arbitration cases and a dozen class-action lawsuits, according to Shannon Liss-Riordan, a Massachusetts labor lawyer who represents the workers in arbitration and filed the lawsuits.

Among the workers’ claims is that while Musk was working to close his acquisition of Twitter, as it was then known, the company promised employees that they would be entitled to “benefits and severance at least as favorable” as what Twitter provided before the Musk takeover. The promises were made by company executives in a series of all-hands meetings at Twitter headquarters and were written into the merger agreement Musk and Twitter management negotiated in April 2022.

“The promises were made to keep employees from fleeing the company during those chaotic months before Musk closed on the acquisition,” Liss-Riordan told me. “Then after he closed, he just defaulted on that promise.”

He forced them into arbitration and then refused to pay — just like his new best pal, Donald Trump.

Leaving aside the ethical implications of a company’s forcing employees into arbitration and then refusing to allow the cases to proceed, Musk’s demand that ex-employees submit to arbitration may be exceptionally more costly for the company than trying to reach a general settlement. Arbitration fees can average $100,000 per case, Liss-Riordan told me; hundreds of millions of dollars in claims may be at issue.

“You have to scratch your head over why Elon Musk has to fight this so hard,” she says. “Would it really be that big a deal to pay the employees what was promised to them? Frankly, it doesn’t seem worth his time.”

He has more money than time and he wants to run the world according to his own narcissistic whims. He’s a real mess but has so much money that he can mess the world up right along with him. He is a literally a Bond villain.

BY the way, that illustration seems to be about IQ but I still don’t know what it means and neither do the people commenting on it.

WATCH: Pete Buttigieg exposes J.D. Vance as an opportunist and hypocrite in 90 seconds.

“When I got to Harvard I found a lot of people like him who’d say whatever they needed to get ahead.” pic.twitter.com/WqzxkU9qYB

— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) July 20, 2024

This is how you do it. He’s just an excellent politician.

Oh, please. Oh, please.

Admit it. You’d love to see the Democratic former district attorney debate the helmet-kissing, multiply convicted, sex-offending, Republican presidential candidate currently out on bail in three jurisdictions. You enjoyed the faces Senate Judiciary Committee witnesses made when it came time for Sen. Kamala Harris to ask questions and their sphincters puckered.

So what does the Donald Trump campaign think about the prospect that their strategy against Joe Biden might get chucked if Harris is their new nemesis?

Well, Republicans still plan to cheat, of course, while accusing Democrats of doing what they’ve promised they themselves will do. They claim the switch is no big deal. They’ll just tar Vice President Harris with the same policies they planned to tar Joe Biden with, especially on immigration. She’s brown-skinned like many immigrants they target, so it’s a bonus for them.

On the other hand (Intelligencer):

Republicans are bracing for the fact that Harris will be a more effective campaigner than Biden and certainly a better debater. And they think that should Harris ultimately become the nominee, she will be awash in positive media coverage from outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post, which Republicans believe have been on a crusade to replace Biden. The positive media coverage will likely result in a modest polling bump for Harris — but Republicans believe it will only be a temporary one.

But Trump’s proclivity for spouting racially coded and misogynist comments “would come out should Harris become the nominee, further turning off college-educated voters and women.”

Thus, Republican pollster Frank Luntz is less than cocky:

“It would change the race significantly because it brings race directly into the picture and it brings gender directly into the picture,” said GOP pollster Frank Luntz. “If Trump goes back to the Trump we’ve known, then all bets are off.”

“I think the Republicans should be a little more careful about what they wish for,” he added. “It reminds me of the dog that catches the car. It doesn’t work out very well for the dog.”

[…]

If the Democratic Party were to execute a switch just months prior to the election, it would represent yet another unprecedented event in a campaign that has been full of them. Many Republicans said that in a year in which nothing has gone according to plan, it would be hard to predict how the latest twist in this race would go.

Oh, they still plan to use every lever at their disposal (including frivolous lawsuits aimed at reaching the U.S. Supreme Court) to monkey-wrench the election. But if Trump finds himself facing Kamala Harris instead of Joe Biden this fall, there will be no pucker. He’s all hole.

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Vaporware for President, revisited

Let’s review. Yes, more denizens of Capitol Hill are calling for Joe Biden to withdraw as the Democrats’ nominee for president, including last night Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Yes, there are a lot of unanswered questions as to how that would work. They’re playing a lot of fantasy football right now inside the Beltway and too few of them are adults. Too many are unnamed sources close to … someone who heard something from someone.

Politico reports that several of those someones dished on a California meeting where several members of the Democratic delegation “talked about the potential political downsides of party elites quickly crowning the vice president as the next nominee.” Harris has to earn it, they mean. What “crowning” means is unclear since delegates still must vote.

No. We *are* there. https://t.co/TMSTJgiSIf

— @TomSullivan@mstdn.social (@BloggersRUs) July 19, 2024

What’s preferred, especially by a teething press and the “Open Convention Wrestlemania crowd,” is a free-for-all, may the best man or woman win process. Great TV. Drama. Pathos. Thrill of victory and agony of defeat stuff. In this scenario, delegates committed to Joe Biden, if released, should be able to vote their consciences. If they all pivot to a Biden-endorsed Harris, no one’s fee-fees will be hurt, see? Clean. Neat.

Or the present chaos could compound (Politico):

“Should he make that decision, there will have to be quick steps. I don’t think we can do a coronation, but obviously the vice president would be the leading candidate,” [Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.)] said, floating a “mini primary” with events that she said could be hosted by former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

The idea of a so-called “blitz primary” has become a popular idea among many House Democrats, including in the California delegation. It had initially been floated by people close to the Obama administration, according to one person familiar with the internal discussions. But others in the party have dismissed it as farcical with so little time until the convention.

Farcical indeed.

Please stop thinking now https://t.co/35RklzrVux

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) July 20, 2024

So who is it that all these brilliant strategists who say Harris "has to earn it" think is on tap to run against her in the fantasy football mini-primary. Marianne Williamson's in. Who else?

— digby (@digby56) July 20, 2024

Back in February, FIVE MONTHS AGO, former Senate staffer Lawrence O’Donnell ran down just how farcical. Please review:

Yet, this process has become a farce anyway, a potentially deadly one for the country.

In February, Politico thought it important to game out a “Plan B” for Democrats: “Because of procedural and political hurdles, it would not be easy to simply swap [Biden] out. The likeliest outcome is that Biden stays on the ticket.” Then, as O’Donnell noted, they spent another 1,300 words considering those unlikely outcomes that are still unlikely for all the same procedural and political reasons. Because that’s what a horse-race press does.

O’Donnell asked a version of what I asked, what AOC asked: What’s the game plan? People working to push Biden out don’t seem to have one. But they may succeed in elbowing him out nevertheless.

Here’s what’s real. The 2024 election isn’t Biden vs. Trump. It’s Democrats’ turnout operation vs. the GOP’s. Some Democratic politicians claim they’re not getting volunteers with Biden atop the ticket. IF TRUE, a Harris ticket might close that enthusiasm gap. Let’s hope. (That’s where you come in.) But if the anti-Bidens have a post-Biden plan, we’re not hearing anything beyond fantasy football.

Tell me when it’s over.

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Panda-monium

The public is getting its first video look at the San Diego Zoo’s new pair of pandas, just ahead of their first chance to see the pandas in person.

Zoo officials on Friday released a video of the pandas, Yun Chuan and Xin Bao, playing in Panda Ridge, their home at the San Diego Zoo.

Officials also announced that the pandas, who arrived to the zoo from China in June, will make their public debut on Thursday, Aug. 8.

“We are delighted to introduce Yun Chuan and Xin Bao to our San Diego Zoo community,” Paul Baribault, president and CEO of San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, said in a statement. “Our newest residents will bring joy to our visitors and symbolize the enduring spirt of international conservation efforts.”

The pandas are the first to enter the United States in over two decades, according to the San Diego Zoo.

Here are some gratuitous panda videos just for fun:

All kids are stubborn no matter the species.. 😂 pic.twitter.com/ayhCchicN4

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) July 19, 2024

Dan Pfeiffer has some thoughts about how they plan to attack Harris if she does become the nominee:

Despite their hatred of the “Crooked Media” (and Crooked Media), the Republicans follow the news. They know what is happening on our side. They built their entire campaign around beating Joe Biden — using concerns about his age as a proxy to frame the race as strong vs. weak. Thanks to Biden’s debate performance, that strategy worked well. As we stand today, Trump is a heavy favorite to return to the White House. The campaign wasn’t set up to beat Kamala Harris or someone else, so Trump supporters are begging Biden to stay in the race. As the convention continues, more and more Republicans are trying to shoehorn Kamala Harris into their speeches.

Here’s JD Vance on Wednesday night:

We need a leader who’s not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man, union and nonunion alike. A leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations, but will stand up for American companies and American industry. A leader who rejects Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s Green New Scam and fights to bring back our great American factories.

Other speakers previewed what I expect to be the top two attacks if Harris becomes the nominee. One, she was in charge of the border and therefore responsible for the chaos that is so prominent in Republican rhetoric. Not to get into technicalities, but she was not specifically responsible for border security; she was in charge of working with countries in the region to stem the flow of migrants. The second attack is classic MAGA conspiracy-mongering — Harris was part of an effort to cover up Biden’s mental infirmities. The former may have some purchase with swing voters; the latter is mostly red meat for the MAGA base, although it could lead to some uncomfortable media encounters.

“Uncomfortable media encounters” is a gentle way of putting it. The media is loaded for bear on that. It’s not just red meat for the base.

And, needless to say, the right will hit hard with misogyny and racism but I think there’s a good chance that they will overplay that hand. The stuff that’s already percolated up from the fever swamps is so ugly it’s likely to backfire in my opinion.

The upside is that Harris is such a contrast to Trump that she makes it easy to differentiate the two candidacies in ways that the battle between the two graybeards doesn’t do. At this point I think that might be helpful and could balance out the downside.

Whatever happens it needs to happen soon. This story is so dominant that it’s drowning out the Trump freakshow and that’s helping him.

Pfeiffer concludes:

The week has been more of a coronation than a convention. Trump and the Republicans are brimming with confidence about his prospects of returning to the White House. A sense of inevitability loomed over the convention and permeated the media coverage, magnified by the near-miss assassination attempt on the former President. His party and even some in the media are treating Trump as a candidate of destiny. But Trump is not inevitable. He is vulnerable.

Yes, he is ahead in the polls today, but he can be beaten. Look at that guy on stage last night. The speech wasn’t good. It didn’t offer a compelling vision for the country. It was low energy, bordering on somnambulant. Trump couldn’t discuss his policy agenda because that would stick a thumb in the eye of most voters. There was no message. Trump lost his fastball. 

It’s easy to forget, given the tone and tenor of the press coverage over the last week, but the majority of voters in this country are anti-MAGA. Trump can — and will — be defeated if and only if we do the work to once again turn out the coalition that defeated MAGA in 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2022.

Yeah…

yasssssss kevin, drag his ass, yasssss pic.twitter.com/CtHbAfEaep

— kaitlin (@thefactualprep) July 18, 2024

I confess, I did enjoy that.

JV Last at the Bulwark:

My impression from the convention is that Republicans, from Trump on down, are absolutely certain he’s going to win.

[…]

What I saw at this convention wasn’t confidence. It was overconfidence. It was complacency. I saw a party and a candidate who expect a coronation, not a campaign. Who believe that the general election will play out exactly as the primaries did.

What I saw was a tired, meandering old man playing the hits. Still trotting out Lee Greenwood and Franklin Graham.

He says this is an opportunity. He’s sure that Biden will step aside and that “Donald Trump will not run against a zombie campaign the rest of the way. He will be challenged by someone young, scrappy, and hungry.”

I don’t know about that. It seems likely today but who knows? This drama seems to be continuing and the media can speak of nothing else. Last says, ” the Trump we saw last night can be beaten. And the fact that Republicans don’t realize this only adds to his vulnerability.”

I think that’s right. If the Democrats can get it together.

Last gives credit to Trump for not turning the convention into a call for retribution. But is that really true? They were all chanting “fight, fight fight” and wearing pictures of him raising his fist with blood all over his face. He wore that bandage like a purple heart. The convention did seem very low energy all in all but it was probably because the shooter was a registered Republican and yet another young gun nut with an AR-15. In other words, one of them.

But he is worried anyway:

That said, I am concerned about how Republicans will react if Trump loses.

Because that crowd seemed to find the idea of a Trump defeat utterly incomprehensible.

I don’t mean that these guys think Trump is an overwhelming favorite.

I mean that there did not seem to be any recognition that defeat was possible.

You know how, in football, a team that’s favored by three touchdowns will still say, “Sure, but on any given Sunday. That’s why we play the games. Yadda yadda yadda.”

There was none of that. Zero.

I am concerned that this iteration of the Republican party lacks the ability to countenance a loss.

I fear for what a Trump administration would do if he wins. But I also fear for what this Republican party will do if he loses. Because they have moved past electoral politics and into the realm of messianic prophecy.

Yep. They do not think it’s possible to lose. And as I wrote this morning, the ruthless operatives in the GOP are laying the groundwork to exploit that. If Trump wins it will be a nightmare. If he loses it will also be a nightmare. Better the first than the second but either way Trump and MAGA present a clear and present danger.

Prematurely spiking the ball plays right into that plan. And frankly, the Democrats are helping them do it by acting like a bunch of sad sacks telling the media they can’t win. You can already hear them say: “There’s no way that guy could have won! Everybody said he was losing!”