Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

This is totally correct. He always sucked. Every single day. Don’t forget.

That means nothing to the zealots

Via Axios:

More than 7 in 10 Americans support access to medication abortion, and even more back the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to regulate drugs, a new Axios-Ipsos poll finds.

The findings suggest a Supreme Court decision that would overrule the FDA to limit access to the commonly used abortion pill mifepristone would be out of step with public sentiment in the post-Roe world.

There’s widespread support for letting women obtain drugs for medication abortion from their doctor or a clinic, with 72% supporting — including half of Republicans — and 26% opposed.

But the public is split almost evenly on obtaining pills through the mail, which is among the FDA permissions that anti-abortion doctors are challenging at high court.

6 in 10 strongly or somewhat agree with states using ballot measures to make, or keep, abortion legal at the state level.

“There is a resounding consensus to stop litigating this, that this is a health issue between a woman and a doctor,” said Ipsos vice president Mallory Newall.

8 in 10, including two-thirds of Republicans, agreed that the government shouldn’t be involved in how a woman manages abortion issues.

On a central question now before the Supreme Court, there’s widespread bipartisan support for allowing the FDA to continue approving and regulating medicines in the U.S., with 79% strongly or somewhat agreeing, including 3 in 4 Republicans.

Most Americans aren’t closely following the fight over medication abortion, with 44% saying they were familiar with this week’s oral arguments before the justices.

About 3 in 10 are aware of studies showing mifepristone is about as safe as over-the-counter pain relievers.

As with our poll after an Alabama Supreme Court decision on IVF embryos, Democrats appear much more tuned in to issues around reproductive rights than Republicans.

Overall attitudes about the legality of abortion remain largely unchanged since Roe v. Wade was overturned: A 15-week nationwide ban on the procedure isn’t resonating much beyond the Republican base, with 58% of the public opposed.

An identical share also said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who backs restrictions on abortion access, though there were significant partisan divisions.

Democrats tend to view President Biden as in step with his party’s abortion policies, but ideologically not as far left as they are.

72% said Biden was moderate or somewhat liberal on abortion, while only 16% characterized him as very liberal. In contrast, 3 in 10 independents characterized him as very liberal.

Biden continues to send signals that he’s a clear ally on abortion and reproductive rights, and that he’s aware it can help turn out the Democratic base.

Please no…

Lara Trump, the co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and the daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump, has released a new song and it’s getting absolutely panned even by many of her own social media followers.

Lara Trump last year unveiled her musical ambitions when she offered up a widely ridiculed cover of Tom Petty’s classic hit “I Won’t Back Down,” and her new track, titled “Anything is Possible,” is taking similar abuse from internet critics.

The song itself is intended as an inspiration ballad that features lyrics such as “Don’t think, just jump / You can’t give up / Know that anything is possible.”

However, many of Trump’s Twitter followers apparently think having a successful musical career is far from possible for her given their comments.

“‘Anything’ isn’t possible,” quipped one user. “Auto tune could not even fix that hag karaoke voice of yours. Just leave us alone and walk away. You have money and can get on a private plane and go anywhere. True hardworking Americans cannot.”

“Can Democrats and Republicans put our differences aside and unite to stop Lara Trump from butchering any more of our favorite songs??” wrote Chris Nelson, a self-identified Florida man and supporter of GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis. “This could bring us together in ways we never thought possible!”

“Are you threatening to sing until we donate?” asked another self-identified DeSantis supporter sarcastically. “Because that is an 8th Amendment violation.”

Although no professional music journalists have yet given their takes on Trump’s new single, the Twitter account for music review website Consequence of Sound responded to the song by simply posting a photo of a person with blood pouring out of their ears.

Gopers falling apart

This is a point worth making over and over again:

Former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton joined Biden at the star-studded event moderated by late night host Stephen Colbert in New York City, and The Atlantic’s Mark Leibowitz told the “Morning Joe” host that he was struck by that show of unity around the president.

“There is a coherence of purpose when you see three presidents up there,” Leibowitz said. “When you contrast that to, I mean, you will not see a living former Republican president or nominee anywhere near a Trump rally going forward. I mean, this is not a party that has a past, you know, before Donald Trump came on the scene.”

Scarborough agreed, saying that former Trump officials were among the ex-president’s harshest critics.

“That’s such a great point,” Scarborough said. “Let me interrupt because you’re making such a great point, I want to ruin it right now. No, you just said, we have three Democratic presidents, you would never find a Republican president onstage with Donald Trump. You also won’t find his own vice president of four years. You won’t find his first, second or third secretary of defense. You won’t find his secretary of states, you won’t find his secretary of treasury. You won’t find Elaine Chao onstage with him. You won’t find any CIA directors on stage with him. You won’t find 20, 25, 30 of his top people onstage with him because they all say he is bad for America. What a contrast, what a great point for you to bring up.”

Tom mentioned this earlier and I think it says just as much:

The analysis of GOP presidential primary results from more than 1,000 counties shows warning signs for Trump, especially as Republican voters continued to vote against him in closed primaries after he clinched the nomination. And it makes clear that, while independents and crossover voters may have boosted former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in some primaries, a chunk of true Republican voters still wished for someone else to be the party’s nominee.

“You hear a lot of moderate Republicans now who say that they’ll never vote for Trump again,” said Parker Fairbairn, county GOP chair in Emmet County, Michigan, on the northern end of the state’s Lower Peninsula, where Trump won 55 percent of the vote in the 2020 general election. In last month’s primary, he got two-thirds of the vote there.

Maybe they’ll go home or maybe they’ll stay home. Whether they vote for Biden is an open question. But there are plenty of Republicans who really can’t stand Trump anymore, insiders and regular voters alike. It has to mean something.

Trump just loves them:

Former president Donald Trump disseminated on social media on Friday an image of President Biden with his hands and feet tied, the latest example of the Republican candidate’s use of increasingly violent rhetoric and imagery this campaign season.

The image can be seen about halfway through a 20-second video that Trump posted on his Truth Social site. The post says it was recorded Thursday on Long Island, where Trump traveled this week to attend a wake for a recently killed police officer.

In the video, two trucks decorated with giant Trump flags and altered American flags are driving on a highway. On the tailgate door of one of the trucks is the image of Biden bound and lying horizontally.

Similar images of Biden have been circulating on social media for months, if not years, on sites including Instagram, Reddit and Twitter, before the platform changed its name to X. In February, the popular World Star Hip Hop site posted a video of a truck it said was in California featuring such an image.

“This image from Donald Trump is the type of crap you post when you’re calling for a bloodbath or when you tell the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by,’” said Michael Tyler, communication director for Biden’s campaign, referring to the right-wing group involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. “Trump is regularly inciting political violence and it’s time people take him seriously — just ask the Capitol police officers who were attacked protecting our democracy on January 6.”

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign, sent a lengthy statement distancing the campaign from the image, and accusing Democrats of using violent rhetoric against Trump.

“That picture was on the back of a pick up truck that was traveling down the highway,” Cheung said in the statement. “Democrats and crazed lunatics have not only called for despicable violence against President Trump and his family, they are actually weaponizing the justice system against him.”

The message remained live on Trump’s feed late Friday night.

Among the examples Cheung cited in his statement were Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) saying in 2017 “What we’ve got to do is fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets, fight online, fight at the ballot box …” Cheung also cited Biden’s 2018 comment, when he said, “If we were in high school, I’d take him [Trump] behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”

Trump has a history of sharing and promoting violent images featuring his perceived enemies.

In October, Trump shared a doctored video of him hitting a golf ball that hits Biden and knocks him down. (It was similar to a doctored video he shared in 2017, hitting a golf ball into the back of Hillary Clinton, who falls down as a result.) In April 2023, a judge issued a warning to Trump after an image of him holding a bat next to an image of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) was shared from one of the former president’s verified accounts.

In July 2017, Trump shared a video of himself at a professional wrestling match, beating up a man whose face is covered with the CNN logo. The verified account for CNN’s communication team responded to the video with a quote from Trump’s White House spokeswoman at the time, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, falsely claiming Trump “in no way form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence.”

Earlier this month, Trump told supporters in Ohio that some immigrants who are accused of crimes are “not people,” and warned it will be a “bloodbath for the country” if he is not elected.

I think reporters need to start asking Trump if he plans to incite violence if he loses the election. It certainly appears that he’s priming his cult members to be ready for it.

Low-GDP Russia sticks with what works

Heather Cox Richardson spotlights a report warning that Russian disinformation efforts are as vigorous as ever. The report focuses on Ukraine but its implications apply more widely. Russia lacks the West’s resources and collective GDP. So its geopolitical strategy leans heavily on an asymmetrical advantage in information warfare:

This means that the strategy that matters most for the Kremlin is not the military strategy, but rather the spread of disinformation that causes the West to back away and allow Russia to win. That disinformation operation echoes the Russian practice of getting a population to believe in a false reality so that voters will cast their ballots for the party of oligarchs. In this case, in addition to seeding the idea that Ukraine cannot win and that the Russian invasion was justified, the Kremlin is exploiting divisions already roiling U.S. politics. 

Since I am “reading” Barbara McQuade’s “Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America,” Richardson’s post is well-timed.

Russian propaganda is also changing key Western concepts of war, suggesting, for example, that Ukrainian surrender will bring peace when, in fact, the end of fighting will simply take away Ukrainians’ ability to protect themselves against Russian violence. The authors note that Russia is using Americans’ regard for peace, life, American interests, freedom of debate, and responsible foreign relations against the U.S.

The authors’ argument parallels that of political observers in the U.S. and elsewhere: Russian actors have amplified the power of a relatively small, aggressive country by leveraging disinformation. 

They are at work in the E.U. as well.

The far right has been rising in Europe, and Nicholas Vinocur, Pieter Haeck, and Eddy Wax of Politico noted that “Voice of Europe’s YouTube page throws up a parade of EU lawmakers, many of them belonging to far-right, Euroskeptic parties, who line up to bash the Green Deal, predict the Union’s imminent collapse, or attack Ukraine.”

Belgian security services were in on the investigation, and on Thursday, Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo added that Russian operatives had paid European Union lawmakers to parrot Russian propaganda. Intelligence sources told Czech media that Voice of Europe paid politicians from Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Poland to influence the upcoming E.U. elections. Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper said the money was paid in cash or cryptocurrency. 

Hell, Tucker Carlson will carry their water for free. But he’s not alone. More-powerful conservatives are in on the action, Richardson offers.

There are reasons to think the same disinformation process is underway in the United States. Not only do MAGA Republicans, including House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), parrot Russian talking points about Ukraine, but Russian disinformation has also been a key part of the House Republicans’ attempt to impeach President Joe Biden. 

Republicans spent months touting Alexander Smirnov’s allegation that Biden had accepted foreign bribes, with Representative James Comer (R-KY) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) calling his evidence “verifiable” and “valuable.” In February the Department of Justice indicted Smirnov for creating a false record, days before revealing that he was in close contact with “Russian intelligence agencies” and was “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections.”  

On March 19, former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas testified about the investigation into Biden’s alleged corruption before the House Oversight Committee at the request of the Democrats. Parnas was part of the attempt to create dirt on Biden before the 2020 election, and he explained how the process worked.  

“The only information ever pushed about the Bidens and Ukraine has come from Russia and Russian agents,” Parnas said, and was part of “a much larger plan for Russia to crush Ukraine by infiltrating the United States.” Politicians and right-wing media figures, including then-representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), The Hill reporter John Solomon, Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity, and other FNC hosts, knew the narrative was false, Parnas said, even as they echoed it. He suggested that they were permitting “Russia to use our government for malicious purposes, and to reward selfish people with ill-gotten gains.” 

We already know the minority GOP has gerrymandered itself into ill-gotten majorities in the U.S. House and in state legislatures.

The attempt to create a false reality—whether by foreign operatives or homegrown ones—seems increasingly obvious in perceptions of the 2024 election. There has been much chatter, for example, about polls showing Trump ahead of Biden. But the 2022 polls were badly skewed rightward by partisan actors, and Democrat Marilyn Lands’s overwhelming victory over her Republican opponent in an Alabama House election this week suggests those errors have not yet been fully addressed.

There is a reason Merriam-Webster selected “gaslighting” as its word of the year for 2022. As a child of the “better red than dead” 1960s, it feels weird to raise alarms today about the “Russkis.” But it’s not paranoia, they say, if they’re really out to get you.

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

L-O-S-E-R

Donald Trump has hawked “digital trading cards” of himself, Trump gold shoes, and Trump Bibles, a pundit pointed out on Friday. And Trump this and Trump that and Trump vodka he doesn’t drink. Trump is even peddling the hem of his garments like some oleaginous televangelist selling prayer cloths with magical healing powers and weekly “prosperity plans.” The man who once boasted he was so rich he couldn’t be bought advertises every single day that he’s for sale.

Perhaps Trump fatigue finally is setting in. He can still sucker the press into covering his daily outrages. He can still draw eyeballs and clicks. MAGA politicians who rode in on his coattails still genuflect before his image. But can he win a presidential election?

Politico considers that Trump is losing more than the suburbs:

The analysis of GOP presidential primary results from more than 1,000 counties shows warning signs for Trump, especially as Republican voters continued to vote against him in closed primaries after he clinched the nomination. And it makes clear that, while independents and crossover voters may have boosted former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in some primaries, a chunk of true Republican voters still wished for someone else to be the party’s nominee.

“You hear a lot of moderate Republicans now who say that they’ll never vote for Trump again,” said Parker Fairbairn, county GOP chair in Emmet County, Michigan, on the northern end of the state’s Lower Peninsula, where Trump won 55 percent of the vote in the 2020 general election. In last month’s primary, he got two-thirds of the vote there.

What distinguishes Emmet County and similar geographies from the other suburban ones is their broader politics. These aren’t the kinds of suburbs on the outskirts of major cities, where wealthy, educated professionals have already fled the Republican Party.

They’re farther away from urban areas. They’re less densely populated, and they have fewer voters with college degrees. These places — which include North Carolina’s Republican-leaning exurbs, and conservative but less Trump-inclined counties several hours north of Michigan’s major cities — still vote predominantly for Republicans, both at the presidential and local levels. In 2016, when both parties held contested primaries, the Republican voters in these counties backed candidates like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) over Trump, and in the general election they voted for Trump at lower rates than the deep-red rural areas.

I’ll take that, especially here in North Carolina. Even small shifts matter, Politico observes. A reporter at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vice-president announcement this week found more Republicans than disgruntled Democrats supporting the anti-vaxxer candidate. For anybody-but-Trump Republicans, RFK Jr. looks like anybody, and not a Democrat. Others may stay home or simply leave the race at the top of their ballots blank.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden is pitching for Nikki Haley’s voters:

If Democrats can buck historical trends, such voters could play a particularly outsize role in deciding swing states: Candidates other than Trump got at least one quarter of the Republican primary vote across more than 60 counties across North Carolina, Michigan and New Hampshire.

And in Georgia, Arizona and Florida Trump lost primary voters.

Shout out to my friend Sam Edney, Democratic chair in Transylvania County southwest of here.

He tells Politico, “We will pick up a few of these Republicans, I believe that,” adding, “I also hope a substantial number simply don’t vote in the Trump and Mark Robinson races, that will help Democrats as well.”

Especially if we remind voters over and over what freedoms Trump means to take from them next if elected. Project 2025 won’t stop with abortion.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Stoneham Mass.; February 29, 2024 – Visitors to Stone Zoo will notice a fuzzy new face in the prehensile-tailed porcupine habitat.

On February 22, Prickles, a prehensile-tailed porcupine, gave birth to a porcupette. The baby is the fourth offspring for Prickles, age 10, and dad, Shadow, age 11.

The latest prickly addition, who weighed just under 1 pound at birth, is settling in well in the Windows to the Wild space.

The baby received its first medical exam on February 23 and appeared bright, healthy and alert. As with any new birth, the veterinary and animal care teams are closely monitoring the mother and baby. The porcupette has been gaining weight, and will continue to be weighed every day during the first month to make sure there is continued healthy weight gain.

“We’re excited to welcome another porcupine to the zoo family, and to report that they are all doing great. We’ve observed the porcupette grip branches with its prehensile tail, which is an excellent sign of a strong, healthy baby,” says Pete Costello, the Assistant Curator at Stone Zoo. “Prickles is an experienced mother, and we are pleased with the baby’s progress so far.” 

Zoo New England participates in the Prehensile-tailed Porcupine Species Survival Plan (SSP), a cooperative, inter-zoo program coordinated nationally through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). SSPs help to ensure the survival of selected species in zoos and aquariums, most of which are threatened or endangered, and enhance conservation of these species in the wild. This birth is the result of a recommended breeding between Prickles and Shadow.

Or, at least, something to keep in mind

Josh Marshall makes an observation I haven’t seen anyone else make and while it may not prove to be prophetic it’s certainly worth considering. He starts off by noting that while we’ve known for quite some time that the GOP congress is nota serious governing party, this congress has taken it to an entirely new level. As he says, it’s been on “longrunning shutdown drama” and is now only able to function at all with the GOP Speaker running the chamber with Democratic votes, courting his own ouster every single day. More than a few powerful and well-known GOP Reps are retiring, some walking away mid term.

But there’s a lot more:

Then you’ve got the seemingly unrelated Trump takeover of the RNC. Let’s set aside the very important issues of corruption, cronyism and creeping strong-manism. There’s every sign that Trump and his family are going to steer significant amounts of the RNC’s money into a legal slush fund for Trump and his various co-defendants. It’s hard to imagine this won’t further depress giving to the RNC. Some donors won’t care. They either like it or are trying to curry favor. But some donors definitely will care. They either won’t give as much or they’ll direct their funds into other super PACs.

Trump’s new family managers at the RNC instituted widespread layoffs on arrival. It’s conceivable they will replace the canned staffers with better people. But it’s hard to see why that would be a logical assumption. And even if it were true just the disruption and dislocation would have real consequences.

Parties aren’t what they used to be. But the two party committees still play an important mobilization role and an important role supporting state parties. If the RNC is significantly weakened or turned into a Trump legal defense fund that has big implications for the whole election.

Even when you step back and look at the rest of the party committees there’s a similar picture. Democratic House and Senate committees are significantly outraising Republican ones. The NRCC and the NRSC are still under standard management, as far as I know. But the money differential is still important.

I don’t think we can count out the possibility that a combination of demoralization and division, structural breakdown and insufficient funding could lead to a dramatic underperformance in GOP congressional and other campaigns this year. Again, I’m not predicting this. I definitely would not bet on it. There’s a very decent chance Republicans could have a trifecta next year, though I’m increasingly dubious about their chances in the House. We can just look back to 2016. The presidential campaign was a total clown show, led by three different campaign managers in succession. Congressional candidates wavered back and forth over what to do about their presidential candidate. And yet, when the dust settled Republicans controlled everything.

But it’s sort of like playing Jenga. After you pull a few pieces out of the tower it starts to get unstable. That’s just a fact. And they’ve already pulled out a few pieces. To use a slightly different metaphor, that mix of division, committee breakdown and underfunding can catalyze each other. But back to Jenga. You can only pull out so many pieces.

Think about it this way. If something like I’ve described did happen, I think it’s pretty clear people would be saying that all the signs were there and people didn’t put them together or draw the obvious conclusion.

Just something to keep in the back of your mind.

Institutionally, the GOP is now a rag tag mafia family less effective than the Sopranos. If we didn’t have this sick suspicion (born of one too many shocks and disappointments) that nothing will stop Trump, everyone would be talking about this. As it is we are superstitious about assuming anything with this crew so we just note this in passing and move on, afraid of getting our hopes up.