Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

If there’s one bright spot in the very dark weekend just passed it’s that we didn’t have to hear much from Donald Trump and his henchmen. He was very unhappy about that and whined on his Truth Social platform that nobody was giving him the credit he deserved:

Mostly he’s just been yelling at the clouds while his people have been keeping a low profile. It’s been years since we’ve had such a respite and it almost makes the hell of this Biden debate debacle bearable. Almost. It’s been a very rough few days and from the looks of it it’s not going to let up any time soon.

We’re still awaiting the poll results to see if voters have decided to vote for Trump in light of Biden’s miserable debate performance last Thursday. We’ve seen some numbers that show more people think he shouldn’t run for president again than said that last month but the number was always pretty high. (A majority say the same thing about Trump although fewer than say it about Biden.) But we haven’t yet seen the effects of the debate on voter preferences. Those will start coming in over the next few days and we’ll get a much better sense of just how serious the damage is among actual voters.

Among political pundits and analysts it has been catastrophic. While there are those who say that Biden should stay the course and, so far, the Democratic establishment is backing the president, the vast majority of liberal writers, talking heads and newspaper editorial boards have decided that Biden must go. It’s easy to just dismiss those voices and say they don’t reflect the needs and desires of the American people but it would be a huge mistake to underestimate how hard it will be for Biden to have to fight both Trump and a media establishment that is convinced that he should withdraw from the race. As Biden would say, it’s a big f-ing deal.

Part of this is driven by the fact that many members of the press apparently believe that they were lied to by the White House about Biden’s fitness and are personally offended by that. Throughout many of the op-eds and analyses of the situation is a clear sense of self-righteous anger running through them that they were not let in on the secret. It’s not an uncommon reaction. I recall that the media had a similar solipsistic view of President Bill Clinton’s refusal to admit to them that he had had an affair with a White House employee. In that case the public had a much more nuanced opinion of the scandal and the beltway media’s objections didn’t carry much weight. Clinton not only survived, he had a high approval rating and kept it throughout the rest of his term.

Of course, Bill Clinton wasn’t running for re-election. His Vice President Al Gore was and he paid the price with the media which treated him woefully during that election, largely as a result of the burning resentment they felt toward Clinton. You’re all familiar with how that went. And you know how the lingering effects of that relationship dogged Hillary Clinton over the next 16 years as she pursued her own political career.

Here’s an example of how the new media narrative is shaping up, from media reporter Brian Stelter who says it’s now a referendum on Biden and there’s no more reason to bother covering Trump’s lies since his base and the GOP’s elites don’t care.

To those who say "what about Trump's lies:" There's been no shortage of media coverage of his conduct. But his base doesn't seem to care. GOP elites have mostly made peace with Trump's lies. Conversely, many Dems are very concerned about Biden's capability, so it's more salient.

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 30, 2024

So, even if the public decides that Biden’s performance wasn’t a deal breaker and his numbers have remained close to Trump’s despite the voters’ clear concerns about him, he’ll have an even tougher uphill climb that he already had with that media narrative. It’s not illogical or untoward even for people who think Biden should stick it out to be genuinely concerned about that since the stakes are so high.

While that may be the prevailing consensus among the media, what should happen next is not so clear. There are people demanding an open convention in which there would be a floor fight and delegates rather than voters would decide who the candidate should be. I maintain, as I did right after the debate, that as entertaining as it might be, it would likely be a disaster. The Democratic Party is not known for its discipline and cohesion on a good day. The last thing they need is a knock down drag out internecine fight before the whole country just two months before the election.

In my view that leaves only one option. If Biden decides that in good faith he can’t continue, the only answer is for him to formally pass the torch to his Vice President, the person 81 million people voted for four years ago to replace him if he could not longer be president through illness or death. {Let’s face it, as the oldest president in history we were all very aware of that possibility.} If that’s more or less happened now there’s no reason to look anywhere but the person who has been on the ticket from the beginning for that very purpose. That’s why we have Vice Presidents.

Yes, it’s meant for a president’s term not a campaign but the principle is the same, particularly under these conditions. It’s just too late for a full blown nomination battle. If this happens the party should strive for a seamless transition that’s seen as a continuation of the Biden administration and the Biden campaign that’s already been laid out. There’s no time to completely re-tool.

And there are important technical reasons for that as well. As legal historian Mary Beth Williams pointed out on twitter, the campaign war chest assembled by the Biden Harris campaign cannot be easily transferred to any other candidate. (You’d have to get the permission of every original donor.) She writes:

The B-H campaign fund can donate to candidates, but is subject to the same limits as individual contributors.

Any or all of the war chest can be transferred to federal, state, and/or local political parties, but then the limits on party donations to candidates are in effect. It can also be transferred to a super-PAC, but no coordination with campaigns is allowed.

The DNC could run the general election campaign, but my experience on three “coordinated campaigns” (Gore, Kerry, and Obama ’08,) leaves me very cold on that option.

It took B-H four years to build that war chest, and no candidate could come close to raising that amount in four months. Plus, all the media time is already purchased, the campaign offices are contracted, staff hired, etc.

The only two candidates with full, easy access to all that money and infrastructure are Biden or Harris.

Harris is being a loyal soldier and has been out there forcefully backing Biden. And if he decides to stay in, the campaign should make sure that she stays front and center going forward because all eyes will be on her like never before. Whether anyone wants to admit it, the prospect of a Vice President having to step in, one way or another, has never been so acute.

The next couple of weeks are going to be agonizing for everyone, not the least of whom is Joe Biden himself. James Fallows put it well in a tweet on Sunday: be wary of anyone who says this is an easy call.

Salon

The Supremes are now officially a rogue, radical court

David Kurtz at TPM says it well:

The most consequential decision yet from the six-justice Roberts supermajority was sandwiched between President Biden’s debate pratfall Thursday night and this morning’s Supreme Court decision on former President Trump’s immunity from criminal prosecution. So before it gets wiped clean from the front pages, I want to just take a moment before the immunity decision comes down to re-cast the current court.

The Supreme Court’s decision Friday to overrule Chevron will have vast consequences, many of then unseen or hard to detect, but one of the things we were discussing internally Friday as we assessed the Supreme Court’s term and its four years with a 6-3 conservative supermajority is how the defining characteristic isn’t conservatism at all but the accrual of power to the judiciary at the expense of the executive and legislative branches.

Rather than taking a conservative view of the role of the courts – a modest, humble, restrained posture that is wary of its own power and applies it carefully – the Roberts supermajority has taken a radical course where the judiciary is increasingly the final arbiter not just on the law but on the facts, the interpretation of those facts, the application of those facts in given situations, and the technical, scientific, and professional implications of those facts in the real world.

There’s nothing conservative about it, and you only have to look to conservatives’ exact same complaints about the Warren and especially the Burger courts to see the obvious. We’ve taken to calling the court “right wing” rather than conservative because it’s a more precise description (though it’s still a pretty blunt term). Rather than being driven by a guiding conservative judicial philosophy, however odious it might have been, the current Supreme Court is most consistent when it comes to consolidating power for itself.

It’s one decision after another, wiping out precedent, common sense and centuries of understanding about the meaning of the constitution. They are taking a wrecking ball to the rule of law and our government’s ability to function as a 21st century society.

If you wonder just how far this immunity really stretches:

Roberts: “And some Presidential conduct — for example, speaking to and on behalf of the American people — certainly can qualify as official even when not obviously connected to a particular constitutional or statutory provision.”

So when Trump tells his mob to march to the capitol and fight like hell or they won’t have a country anymore, it’s part of his official duty because he’s speaking “to and on behalf” of the American people? I’m guessing he means yes.

The January 6th case will not be tried before the election, but we knew that. The Supremes decided that presidents are immune from prosecution for their “official acts” and sent the J6 case back to the district court to decide which charges may apply. They explicitly said that his attempts to force the Department of Justice to lie for him and say that they found evidence of fraud when they did not are official acts. So I think it’s fair to say they believe the definition of “official” is extremely broad.

It will take a bit to digest this but it’s clear that it’s pretty bad. If you don’t believe me, read this excerpt from Justice Sotomayor’s dissent:

“When [the president] uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today. Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

The Chief Justice also decimated the independence of the DOJ with this opinion as a bonus:

If you thought Trump was an existential threat before wait until you see what happens if he wins another term and becomes a veritable King.

Update:

The majority opinion in Trump says that (1) official acts can't be evidence; and (2) motive is irrelevant.

If that's the case, how could a president ever actually *be* prosecuted for ordering the military, in his capacity as commander in chief, to kill his chief political rival?

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) July 1, 2024

They seem to believe that Democrats will never abuse this provision. Maybe Democrats need to start giving that some thought.

Meanwhile, back at the presidential contest

While waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to issue its final rulings of this godawful session, I’m reading a post from Mike Lux:

With all the freaking out about Joe Biden and the debate, I keep thinking about the 1984 presidential election. Ronald Reagan, who was in his mid 70s, had a really weak first debate performance, and the political chattering classes came out wondering if he was too old to be president. The dynamic was just like it is today. There was one major difference, though: in that election, the Republican Party universally rallied around their president, reassuring the press and public that he was just fine. In the next debate, Reagan did better, and their campaign rolled on to one of the most decisive wins in American history, a landslide the size of which we haven’t seen since.

There is something about the culture of our Democratic Party that reacts to a setback with panic instead of steady determination and rallying around the flag. We need to calm ourselves down and buck the f’’k up.

Yeah, I know: Biden wasn’t exactly full of youthful energy at that debate. But I do have a question: did y’all not know he was an old guy? That he would be slow in walking to the podium? That he would stumble over some words? As they might say in Casablanca: how shocked are you that there is gambling in this establishment?

But Democrats should not be so quick to forget another set of facts about Joe Biden: he has been the best and most effective president since FDR. He has passed more major legislation, including more than $4 billion in investments in our people and economy, than any president since the New Deal. He has signed the best set of executive orders of any president maybe ever. His appointees at DOJ, the FTC, the SEC, the NLRB, and other key agencies of government have done more to take on corporate greed, monopoly power, and price gouging than any in almost a century.

Why are we talking about dumping the best president in modern history because he had a weak debate performance and is a little old? 

Reagan, the next oldest president in American history, was — unfortunately, because his policies were terrible — the most effective, influential, and successful president in modern history. He went on from that debate stumble not only to win re-election decisively, but to also decisively reshape the way American government has worked in the 40 years since. Joe Biden, unlike the younger and hipper Democratic presidents after Reagan, has begun to finally wrest our government back from the big corporate serving policies of the GOP to a policy agenda that seeks to help working families. 

With that track record of success, the idea that Democrats should dump Biden after one shaky debate performance is profoundly wrong. We need to rally around the flag, gang, and fight like warriors to get the best president of our lifetimes re-elected.

And folks, we are positioned to win this election.

We have a far more popular agenda than the right wing’s monstrous proposals. (Google Project 2025 if you want to check out their workshop of horrors.) We have a track record of remarkable legislative and executive branch accomplishments that is superior to any president at least since LBJ. We have a series of powerful issues — abortion rights, health care, green energy jobs, infrastructure, Social Security, veterans benefits, rebuilding our manufacturing base, and taking on Big Pharma, monopoly power, and price gouging — where we have the political high ground. And we are running against the most horribly flawed candidate of all time.

So my fellow Democrats, it is time to stop freaking out and time to stop worrying about one bad debate. We have an election to win and only about four months to do it. Let’s kick our fighting spirit into full gear, and knock on doors, make calls and texts, take our case to social media, reach out to our friends, and give money. Let’s stop worrying and get to winning.

As the late, great Stan Lee would advise, “‘Nuff said.”

Except:

America: Let's #BucktheEffUp and get back into the fight.

👩‍👩‍👦 Freedom is lived.

🗳 Freedom is for us to defend.

📣 We decide what comes next. Together.

We’ve made history before. And we’ll do it again. Join the fight for #OurFreedomsOurFutures. pic.twitter.com/Y1PCUpS9yO

— Gail Waldby 🇺🇦💉🌊🌎📚 (@GailWaldby) May 15, 2024

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Can’t have that, can we?

From the moment the first African captives arrived on these shores 400 years ago, this land offered white people of every station one ironclad guarantee. Enslaved people were not just property, nor just unpaid agricultural workers and house servants. They’d been assigned a permanent place on the lowest rung of the social ladder. No matter what misfortunes might befall whites, at least they weren’t Black. The New World offered Europeans not only economic opportunity but a guaranteed social floor below which they could not fall.

(Four hundred years later, women still struggle to break through a glass ceiling.)

For some reason, that was on my mind while making coffee. It was on Heather Cox Richardson’s last night in the context of Donald Trump’s comments Thursday night about immigrants taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.” It’s a textbook case of the ruling-class, divide-and-dominate ploy from the cartoon above.

Richardson writes:

In U.S. history it has been commonplace for political leaders to try to garner power by warning their voters that some minority group is coming for their jobs. In the 1840s, Know-Nothings in Boston warned native-born voters about Irish immigrants; in 1862 and 1864, Democrats tried to whip up support by warning Irish immigrants that after Republicans fought to end enslavement, Black Americans would move north and take their jobs. In the 1870s, Californian Denis Kearney of the Workingman’s Party drew voters to his standard by warning that Chinese immigrants were taking their jobs and insisted: “The Chinese Must Go!” 

As Tevye the milkman instructed, it’s a tradition, and not a new idea here:

“In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life,” South Carolina senator James Henry Hammond told his colleagues in 1858. “That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill.” 

Capital produced by the labor of mudsills would concentrate in the hands of the upper class, who would use it efficiently and intelligently to develop society. Their guidance elevated those weak-minded but strong-muscled people in the mudsill class, who were “happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations.”

Aspirations to sharing power, that is. Allow mudsills to vote and society would “be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided,” Hammond warned.  

The only true way to look at the world was to understand that some people were better than others and had the right and maybe the duty, to rule. “I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that ‘all men are born equal’” Hammond wrote, and it was on this theory that some people are better than others that southern enslavers based their proposed new nation. 

“Our new government is founded…upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth,” Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, told supporters. 

That this vision for the country ran contrary to the one advanced in the Declaration (nominally, at least) was of no concern. Treating everyone as born equal would violate the implicit contract with whites guaranteed by Black enslavement. The ruling class always places property and contractual rights ahead of human rights.

But not Abraham Lincoln, Richardson reminds:

Arguments that some races are “inferior,” he said, would “rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and…transform this Government into a government of some other form.” The idea that it is beneficial for some people to be dominated by others, he said, is the argument “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” 

[…]

He went on to tie the mudsill theory to the larger principles of the United States. “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it, where will it stop,” he said. “If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out!” To cries of “No, no,” he concluded to cheers: “Let us stick to it then. Let us stand firmly by it.” 

Ironically, ten years after Hammond’s speech, the defeated South was undergoing the sort of economic and social reconstruction he feared. The resistance led by the Ku Klux Klan ensured that Reconstruction would fail. It wasn’t race-hatred that drove them, I’d argue, as much as hatred of the idea that freed Blacks would share power as whites’ equals. That was a violation of the contract that guaranteed a social floor below which no white man, no matter how poor, could fall. Race is a part of that sentiment, but skin color has always been a handy shorthand for telling in any crowd just who’s who in the pecking order. The South had just fought and lost a devastating war to preserve that order. Even whites with no human property fought to preserve it.

If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you. — Sen. Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas to Bill Moyers (1960)

The promise behind Trump’s pledge to make America “great again” is revealed once again in Trump’s warning that immigrants will take “Black” and “Hispanic” jobs. “Careful, that foreigner wants your cookie,” is his message to nonwhites. The coded message to his nearly all-white MAGA faithful is that, yes, there are still castes of people in this country that represent a social floor below which they can never fall. And Trump promises to guarantee that the mudsills stay there lest society “be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided.”

“Anyone who sees the world through such a lens is on the wrong side of history,” Richardson insists.

More than that, they stand against the very idea behind the flag in which they drape themselves. Remind them every chance you get.

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You all know where I stand on the current presidential crisis. For me it’s either Biden or Harris, Nobody else could possibly keep the Democratic coalition together. If it’s the latter Biden should endorse her right away along with every other establishment Democrat and they should all campaign to the convention as if she is the presumptive nominee. (She was presumptively on the ticket that just won the primaries after all and the one that won the election in 2020.) That’s just me. Either stick it out or go with Harris right now as I’ve explained in earlier posts and will explain further in my column tomorrow morning.

Anyway, here’s a different view:

 Allan Lichtman, the historian who has correctly forecast the results of nine out of the 10 most recent presidential elections argued on Saturday that replacing President Joe Biden could cost Democrats the 2024 election.  

Lichtman, a professor at American University, rejected the growing chorus of political pundits and Democratic activists who have called on Biden, 81, to bow out of the presidential race after his disastrous debate performance last week against former President Donald Trump. The pivotal moment brought fresh questions about Biden’s age and ability to serve a second term.

“It’s a huge mistake. They’re not doctors. They don’t know whether Biden is physically capable of carrying out a second term or not,” Lichtman said during an interview with CNN of calls to replace Biden. “This is all foolhardy nonsense.” 

Lichtman has correctly predicted the outcome of almost every election over the last half century, except for the race in 2000, using a series of 13 historical factors or “keys.”  

The system includes four factors based on politics, seven on performance, and two on candidate personality. Lichtman said the incumbent party would need to lose six of those actors, or “keys,” to lose the White House. 

The keys range from whether a candidate is an incumbent president to the state of the economy and the presence of third-party hopefuls.

Debate performance, however, is not one of the factors that determines the outcome of an election, he argued. Lichtman pointed to historical examples, including the 1984 election in which former President Ronald Reagan swept 49 states despite poor debate performances and concerns over his age. 

When pressed about whether the questions surrounding Biden’s age and mental acuity are “fundamentally different” than his metrics as president, Lichtman doubled down.  

“Debate performances can be overcome,” he said. “At the first sign of adversity the spineless Democrats want to throw under the bus, their own incumbent president. My goodness.” 

It may be that history is not a very good guide to this election. I suspect we are in a new political era that runs by a lot of different rules. And the media is out for blood saying they are personally hurt and angry that the White House didn’t share with them the alleged fact that Biden is more or less a vegetable. That’s yet another very difficult barrier to victory since they seem to care more about that than they care about the fact that Donald Trump wants to put them in camps if they don’t do exactly what he wants.

But Lichtman’s been right before and maybe he’s right now. He says that Biden still checks enough boxes for re-election. I thought you should know.

Trump’s cover-up was even worse than we thought:

It’s too bad that Aileen Cannon has her thumb on the scale for Trump or he might be on trial right now for this obvious treachery:

A trip to Mar-a-Lago taken by former President Donald Trump that aides allegedly “kept quiet” just weeks before FBI agents searched the property for classified materials in his possession raised suspicions among special counsel Jack Smith’s team as a potential additional effort to obstruct the government’s classified documents investigation, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

The previously unreported visit, which allegedly took place July 10-12 in the summer of 2022, was raised in several interviews with witnesses, sources familiar with the matter said, as investigators sought to determine whether it was part of Trump’s broader alleged effort to withhold the documents after receiving a subpoena demanding their return.

At least one witness who worked closely with the former president recalled being told at the time of the trip that Trump was there “checking on the boxes,” according to sources familiar with what the witness told investigators.

A lot has happened in the past few days but one thing hasn’t changed. Donald Trump is a criminal and he’s committed crimes in a dozen different ways. He’s an adjudicated rapist, an admitted sexual assaulter, a fraudster multiple times over, a classified document thief, an insurrectionist coup plotter and a Russian collaborator. His corruption is overwhelming: he’s lines his pockets with hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars and used his political office and candidacy to bribe business leaders and foreign leaders alike.

Let’s not forget what we are dealing with. How to deal with him is suddenly a matter of debate but deal with him we must.

Apropos of nothing, I thought I’d just share this piece from Vox about the NY Times and Hitler:

On November 21, 1922, the New York Times published its very first article about Adolf Hitler. It’s an incredible read — especially its assertion that “Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded.” This attitude was, apparently, widespread among Germans at the time; many of them saw Hitler’s anti-Semitism as a ploy for votes among the German masses.

Times correspondent Cyril Brown spends most of the piece documenting the factors behind Hitler’s early rise in Bavaria, Germany, including his oratorical skills. For example: “He exerts an uncanny control over audiences, possessing the remarkable ability to not only rouse his hearers to a fighting pitch of fury, but at will turn right around and reduce the same audience to docile coolness.”

But the really extraordinary part of the article is the three paragraphs on anti-Semitism. Brown acknowledges Hitler’s vicious anti-Semitism as the core of Hitler’s appeal — and notes the terrified Jewish community was fleeing from him — but goes on to dismiss it as a play to satiate the rubes (bolding mine):

He is credibly credited with being actuated by lofty, unselfish patriotism. He probably does not know himself just what he wants to accomplish. The keynote of his propaganda in speaking and writing is violent anti-Semitism. His followers are nicknamed the “Hakenkreuzler.” So violent are Hitler’s fulminations against the Jews that a number of prominent Jewish citizens are reported to have sought safe asylums in the Bavarian highlands, easily reached by fast motor cars, whence they could hurry their women and children when forewarned of an anti-Semitic St. Bartholomew’s night.

But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.

A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over-emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: “You can’t expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell them the truth about where you really are leading them.”

Now, Brown’s sources in all likelihood did tell him that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was for show. That was a popular opinion during Nazism’s early days. But that speaks to how unprepared polite German society was for a movement as sincerely, radically violent as Hitler’s to take power.

Yeah. Certainly feels familiar. Particularly when you read things like this from King of the Village Jonathan Allen about the next Trump administration:

[L]awmakers from the capable and normie-filled Dakotas delegation, which includes two former governors, will wield influence on issues ranging from agriculture and energy to banking and national security. Oh, and Burgum’s almost certain successor, Representative Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), will arrive in Bismarck to lead his state at the end of this year with deeper connections in the nation’s capital than any modern North Dakota governor.

Just to the west, Wyoming’s senior senator, John Barrasso, is in line to be the second-ranking Senate Republican. Montana Sen. Steve Daines, who as head of the Senate GOP campaign arm this year has largely preempted contentious primaries, could become one of the most influential lawmakers in Washington. That’s thanks to his relationships with Trump and Thune — and the wings of the party each represents — as well as his perch on the tax-writing Finance Committee.

Trump has nudged Daines to consider challenging Thune for leader. However, I’m told by multiple Republicans that the Montanan has already pledged to support his neighbor in South Dakota — and that Daines under a Leader Thune will have a carved-out leadership role harnessing the former Proctor & Gamble executive’s business chops as well as his political savvy and Trump friendship. “There’s going to be a leadership spot for Steve when it’s all said and done,” Senator Mike Rounds, South Dakota’s junior senator and Thune’s leading ally, told me.

Taken together, it’s an imposing array of force from such a sparsely populated corner of the country. Until Montana’s growth recently netted them a second seat, all four states were represented by an at-large House member.

More remarkable is how many of the leading Republicans from the region emerged in the pre-Trump era and, while submitting to varying levels of accommodation, have avoided the bomb-throwing style so many in their party have adopted to keep with current fashions. (The MAGA-obsessed Noem is the notable exception.) “We’re normal,” said Rounds, adding: “It’s not a hard hard-right. We’re Ronald Reagan Republicans.”

Indeed, you could drop most of them in the GOP of 1984 or 2004 and they’d fit right in.“We all kind of sound alike,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) told me, and he wasn’t just referring to their straight-out-of-Fargo accents. “It’s tonal and if you watch Fox News, it doesn’t sound like us.”

What Johnson and so many of the other traditional Republicans from the region are wondering though, is how long can it last. “Are we just lagging behind the populist change or are we going to continue to be different?” he asked. “That to me is the central question. And I don’t really know the answer.”

What I’m more immediately interested in if Republicans do take over Washington next year is whether the “Prairie Pragmatists,” as Johnson calls them, will shape or simply be shaped by the Trump restoration. Perhaps it’s not an either-or distinction. Maybe the more likely outcome is the same Trumpian chaos and bombast while the mild-mannered Scandinavians step cautiously and do what they do best: present as wholly guileless, doncha know, while they hustle furiously.

The Village says it’s going to be fine. Don’t you worry. Real Americans in the Dakotas have a whole boatload of Great Whitebread Hopes ready to save us from Trump and the MAGA hordes. Relax. Just let it happen.

*BTW: Barasso and Daines are hardcore MAGA freaks.

America, 2024. Newsweek:

Taylor Swift is now the most influential celebrity in America. Her popularity is staggering, and her position as a cultural colossus is unquestionable.

At 34, Swift remains unmarried and childless, a fact that some might argue is irrelevant to her status as a role model. But, I suggest, it’s crucial to consider what kind of example this sets for young girls. A role model, by definition, is someone worthy of imitation. While Swift’s musical talent and business acumen are certainly admirable, even laudable, we must ask if her personal life choices are ones we want our sisters and daughters to emulate. This might sound like pearl-clutching preaching, but it’s a concern rooted in sound reasoning.

Here’s that sound reasoning:

Swift’s highly publicized romantic life has been a source of prime tabloid fodder for years. She has dated numerous high-profile men—at least a dozen—including the singers Harry Styles and Joe Jonas, the actor Jake Gyllenhaal, and, more recently, the American football player Travis Kelce. This revolving door of relationships may reflect the normal dating experiences of many young women in today’s world, but it also raises questions about stability, commitment, and even love itself. Should we encourage young girls to see the “Swift standard” as the norm, something to aspire to? Or should we be promoting something a little more, shall we say, wholesome? Would any loving parent reading this want their daughter to date 12 different men in the span of just a few years? This is not an attack on Swift; it’s a valid question that is worth asking.

The superstar’s vocal criticisms of the patriarchy add another layer of complexity. Swift’s recent rallying cry against patriarchal structures stands in stark contrast to her personal dating choices. The singer often dates strong, influential men—celebrities who embody significant social and economic power. This can appear hypocritical. Hypocrisy fundamentally undermines the ability to be a good role model because it involves a contradiction between one’s actions and the principles or values they publicly advocate. Swift either doesn’t realize this or doesn’t care. Neither of the two is a good look.

I’m just going to leave that here for you to contemplate.

Pathetic:

BURGUM: Donald Trump at the end of his term left the White House. We had a smooth transition.

WELKER: January 6 wasn't exactly a smooth transition.

BURGUM: Well, I think we have to say there was a smooth transition … I've been living under what I call the Biden dictatorship. pic.twitter.com/FMjDdbGSYz

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 30, 2024

The “Biden is a basket case but also Joseph Stalin” line is more unsustainable than ever. But I guess they’re still rolling with it. Also, the transition was anything but smooth. Even aside from the obvious — the coup attempt and insurrection —they wouldn’t hold meetings for the new team to prepare, Trump refused the normal courtesy of meeting the Biden’s at the White house and he churlishly refused to attend the inauguration, It was a shitshow from beginning to end.

The relatively muted response from Republicans in the wake of the debate is curious and very unlike them. Dancing on graves is their favorite pastime. Maybe they’re thrown off by the Democrats’ hysterics and don’t yet know how to respond? I suppose it’s possible they’re following the old “when your opponent is destroying himself, let him” but that would be unusual too. Piling on is their second favorite pastime. Weird.

We got some Dear Leader tweets from Steven Miller early on but he’s just been doing his standard grotesque immigrant bashing the last day or so.

Trump put out this whine yesterday:

Poor Trumpie. Nobody’s paying attention to him right now. They’re saying Biden did poorly instead of acknowledging that he’s the bestest and the biggest and the greatest debater who ever lived. Somebody bring him a diet coke and a binky.

Honestly, I have no idea what’s going through their heads but if I had to guess they just don’t know whether to root for Biden to step down or stay in so they’re paralyzed.