Fasten your seatbelts
You need this.
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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
On Monday afternoon, a few blocks from the White House, conservative legal scholars discussed how to strike back against Donald Trump’s enemies. These subversives, they said, had waged “lawfare” against the Republican nominee, thrown out 2020 election challenges, and blocked scrutiny of a Biden administration that might be gone in six months. What could conservatives do about that, if they won back power?
“We’ve got to start impeaching these judges for acting in such an unbelievably partisan way from the bench,” said John Eastman, a California attorney who was disbarred last year over working with Trump to challenge the 2020 election.
“People who have used this tool against people like John or President Trump have to be prosecuted by Republican or conservative DAs in exactly the same way, for exactly the same kinds of things, until they stop,” said Berkeley Law professor John Yoo.
“I don’t say that we should be the mafia,” said Will Chamberlain, a senior counsel at the Article III Project who’d formerly worked for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “But as a political party, if we aren’t willing to dish anything out, then we can just expect to keep taking it.”
The debate in Atlanta had thrown Democrats into a party-wide panic — and made Republicans more confident than ever of a Trump restoration. And that mood permeated the National Conservatism conference, organized by movement thinkers whose populist politics were brought from the fringe to the White House in 2016.
The MAGA thinkers, policy entrepreneurs, and conservative activists who gathered on Monday were over the moon about Trump’s odds of victory and completely unbothered by Trump’s recent efforts to distance himself from their agenda. They expected to return to power soon, assume influential positions in the administration, and use the federal government to punish their political enemies as harshly as their interpretation of the law would allow.
I know you know it will be bad. But it will actually be worse than we are already imagining.
Democrats are in crisis at the moment, divided over whether President Biden should stay in the race after his disastrous debate last month or clear the way for another, younger candidate.
Biden’s shaky performance raised concerns about whether he can win in November, and prompted calls from prominent Democrats, columnists and others for him to step aside. It’s up to the Democratic Party to sort this out. But it’s time to refocus attention on the only candidate in the race who is patently unfit for office — any office — and an imminent threat to democracy: Donald Trump.
It’s unbelievable that the nation is spending so much time on the question of Biden’s verbal acuity, when the greatest concern ought to be that his challenger is a self-aggrandizing felon and twice-impeached election-denier. Trump fomented the Jan. 6 insurrection, shows contempt for the rule of law and shamelessly lies in pursuit of more power. He’s an authoritarian who admires murderous despots, wants to jail his political enemies and has publicly flirted with declaring himself a dictator on his first day back in office.
With fervent support from the Republican Party, he peddles cruelty, racism and misogyny, demonizing immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country,” demeaning women‘s looks and intelligence, and using disgustingly fascist language to criticize his opponents as “vermin.” He’s a man who lied about his wealth for years to cheat on his taxes, whose business was convicted of criminal tax fraud, and who’s been denounced by many former aides and Cabinet members as a “malignant narcissist” who recklessly puts himself before the American people.
Trump is the only man in the presidential race manifestly unworthy of holding a position of power, and has no business ever returning to the White House. If the GOP had any decency left, its members would be discussing whether to dump Trump for a candidate who isn’t out to bulldoze democratic institutions in favor of autocracy.
Voters should resist viewing this contest through the politics-as-usual lens of past elections. This November is not about dueling personalities, middle-of-the-road policy differences, or as some might see it, an 81-year-old man being the lesser of two evils compared with a 78-year-old man. It’s nothing short of a referendum on our 248-year democracy, and a choice between a trustworthy public servant who upholds American values and a serial liar who wants to push the country into authoritarianism.
Leaders of the Democratic Party have to stop the self-defeating discussion about Biden’s fitness and decide whether to replace him or unify behind him. And Americans must start hearing more about how the records, positions and character of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and any of the prominent Democrats being floated as possible replacements make them all unquestionably superior to Trump.
Agree with this 100%.
As I have written many times now, I think this election is structural — the fascists vs the anti-fascists — so all things being equal I’m not sure there’s a huge advantage for any Democratic candidates over Biden. However, the media is so feral in their denunciations of Biden, and they won’t stop no matter what, that I really wonder if it’s worth it. Harris has her own problems to overcome but with the right defaulting to crude racism and misogyny there’s a possibility that they’ll overplay their hands and actually push the media toward her. (I’m not holding my breath — remember “butheremails.”) Still, they tend to swing back a little bit when they’ve made asses of themselves as they are doing now, so it’s at least possible.
The eminent historian Rick Perlstein weighs in on the media pack:
The NYT detailing 90 reporters onto the Biden deathwatch reveals yet another American civic institition in its glaring failure to stand up to the stress test of imminent fascism. Alas, it falls into agenda-setting elite political journalists’ narcissicism sweet spot: it makes themselves the center of the universe, while denying they have any political agency at all…
…Also, lets them preen in their version of virtue, which is “balancing” all the bad stuff they had to say about the GOP.
Akin to how they puffed up and domesticated the Tea Party, to “balance” the way they puffed up Obama.
#infernaltriangle
…oh, and, bottom line, they’re all so jacked up over the prospect of a ten-way contest of Boar on the Floor. (The Peter Bakers are, yes, the Logan Roy in this scenario.)
If you are unfamiliar with Boar on the Floor it’s from the show Succession. The patriarch and chairman of the company stages the game at a company retreat, Logan Roy, pits the potential successors to his company and fortune against each other:
The rules of the game are simple: you pick your emotionally weakest dinner guests, and force them to them crawl around on the ground making pig noises while you throw sausages at them and chant: “Boar on the floor”. It’s both a power move and a Guantanamo-level act of total humiliation.
Perlstein is exactly right. The Big Foot media are dying for an open convention where they can watch a Democratic shit show — and blame Biden and the administration for being losers.
There are many, but don’t disregard these
Those of us who were born and raised during the cold war (and in a popular culture still steeped in WWII iconography) probably all know the in our bones that it’s a bad idea to just break up the NATO alliance and just leave them on their own after depending on the US for 75 years, especially since Russia appears to be very thirsty at the moment.
It’s very possible this is going to happen under Trump and it is dangerous:
Donald Trump is considering a reduction in intelligence sharing with members of NATO, which depends on the U.S. for the type of information that has helped Ukraine fend off Russia, according to foreign officials informed of the plans.
Trump advisers have told allied countries the reduced intel sharing would be part of a broader plan to scale back U.S. support and cooperation with the 32-nation alliance, according to three European officials and a senior NATO official, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal discussions.
The officials said they learned about the proposal to curb intelligence-sharing during discussions with Trump advisers about broader plans to reduce U.S. involvement with NATO. The former president repeatedly questioned and sought to undercut the alliance during his first term in office.
The curtailment of intel could have dire security consequences, especially for Ukraine as it tries to repel the Russian invasion.
“It’s the American intelligence that helped convince a lot of NATO countries that Putin was resolved to invade Ukraine,” one European official said. “Some countries didn’t believe Russia had the capabilities to carry out a successful military campaign.”
Asked for comment, a spokesperson from the Trump campaign did not respond directly, instead referring to a statement on TruthSocial that the former president “will restore peace and rebuild American strength and deterrence on the world stage.”
Trump isn’t required to say anything coherent about any of this, we know that. Only Democrats have to be conversant in the details of foreign policy and communicate about them clearly. Apparently, he’s immune from everything.
This is important stuff. I don’t know if people really realize what all this is adding up to: an arms race. If you can’t count on the US to defend under Article 5, and you have morons like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump refusing to help with weapons, that’s what you get. And it won’t just be conventional weapons.
Also this:
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd says Biden’s refusal to step aside has made him “rethink a lot of the Biden biography. I still can’t believe he ran for president in the first place, given that his family was in crisis in 2018…You look at what has happened, I can’t believe he has put his… pic.twitter.com/gi7dgiF6Be
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) July 10, 2024
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd says Biden’s refusal to step aside has made him “rethink a lot of the Biden biography. I still can’t believe he ran for president in the first place, given that his family was in crisis in 2018…You look at what has happened, I can’t believe he has put his family through this. And now, looking at his behavior now, in clinging to this, I think the entire narrative on Joe Biden is gonna change, in that everything’s always been about his ambition and his ambition comes first.”
That’s a threat.
But her emails …
Here’s Trump saying the Heritage Foundation was going to lay out his agenda for a second term:
It is the MAGA Manifesto. And he knows it.
Mockery works
It’s Day 1 of Netroots Nation-Baltimore.
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And when?
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.
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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Oh boy.
Someone posted this and it sent a chill down my spine: